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THE MAGIC SKIN
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
HONORE De BALZAC
With Introductions by
GEORGE SAINTSBURY
THE THOMPSON PUBLISHING COMPANY
SAINT LOUIS AND PHILADELPHIA
COPYRIGHTED 1901
BY
Jobn 2). Bvil
All Rirjhts Reserved
CONTENTS
PART 1
PAGE
THE AUTHOR AND HIS WORKS - - - vii
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION - - . - liii
INTRODUCTION - - . . . Ixxi
THE MAGIC SKIN :
(La Pean de Chagrin)
I. THE TALISMAN - - =. . 1
//. A IVOMAN IVITHOUT A HEART - - - 69
///. THE AGONY - • - - - 175
CHRIST IN ELANDERS - - - - 273
{Jisus-Christ en Flandre)
MELMOTH RECONCILED - - - .293
{Melmoth riconciliS)
Translator, Bllen Marriage
PART II
INTRODUCTION - - .
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE •
{La Recherche de VAbsolu)
vol.. I 1
- vu
JPAOB
THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE • - 211
(Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu)
THE MAR AN AS - - - - • - 241
(Les Marana)
EL VERDUGO • - - - 309
(El Verdtigo)
FAREWELL 321
{Adieu)
THE CONSCRIPT - 369
(Le Requisitionnaire)
Translator. Ellen Marriage
for General Index see pa^e 391, Volume 16
ILLUSTRATIONS
PART 1
PORTRAIT OF BALZAC - - - - - - Frontispiece
(Redrawn by J. Allen St. John, from Boulanger's sepia
drawing in the Mus^e de Tours)
PAGE
A LITTLE OLD MAN WHO TURNED THE LIGHT OF THE
LAMP UPON HIM - - - . - - - 23
WE SPENT ABOUT AN HOUR IN FAMILIAR TALK - - I44
PART II
SHE SAW HER FATHER POINTING A PISTOL AT HIS
HEAD ..._ 162
THE OLDER MAN , . . KNOCKED THRICE AT THE
DCOR 213
I
THE MAGIC SKIN
HONORE DE BALZAC.
"Sans genie, je suis flamhe!"
Volumes,* almost libraries, have been written about Balzac ;
and perhaps of very few writers, putting aside the three or
four greatest of all, is it so difficult to select one or a few short
phrases which will in any way denote them, much more sum
them up. Yet the five words quoted above, which come from
an early letter to his sister when as yet he had not "found
his way," characterize him, I think, better than at least some
of the volumes I have read about him, and supply, when they
are properly understood, the most valuable of all keys and
companions for his comprehension.
"If I have not genius, it is all up with me !" A very
matter-cf-fact person may say : "Why ! there is nothing won-
derful in this. Everybody knows that genius is wanted to
make a name in literature, and most people think they have
it." But this would be a little short-sighted, and only ex-
cusable because of the way in which the word "genius" is too
commonly bandied about. As a matter of fact, there is not
so very much genius in the world; and a great deal of more
♦This general introduction attempts to deal chiefly, if not solely, with Balzac's
life, and with the general characteristics of his work and genius. Particular lx)oks
and special exemplifications of that genius will be only incidentally referred to in
it ; more detailed criticism as well as a summary of the bibliographical information,
which is often so interesting and sometimes so important in Balzac's case, being
reserved for the sliort prefaces to the various volumes of the series. I have, liow-
ever, attempted, while making these short prefaces or introductions independently
intelligible and sufficient, to link them to each other and to this general essay, so
that the whole may present a sufficient study of Balzac and a sufficient cotnmentary
on his work.
(vu)
vill HONORE DE BALZAC
than fair performance is attainable and attained by more or
less decent allowances or exhibitions of talent. In prose,
more especially, it is possible to gain a very high place, and
to deserve it, without any genius at all : though it is difficult,
if not impossible, to do so in verse. But what Balzac felt
(whether he was conscious in detail of the feeling or not)
when he used these words to his sister Laure, what his crit-
ical readers must feel when they have read only a very
little of his work, what they must feel still more strongly
when they have read that work as a whole — is that for him
there is no such door of escape and no such compromise.
He had the choice, by his nature, his aims, his capacities,
of being a genius or nothing. He had no little gifts, and
he was even destitute of some of the separate and divisible
great ones. In mere writing, mere style, he was not supreme ;
one seldom or never derives from anything of his the merely
artistic satisfaction given by perfect prose. His humor, ex-
cept of the grim and gigantic kind, was not remarkable ; his
wit, for a Frenchman, curiously thin and small. The minor
felicities of the literature generally were denied to him. Sans
genie, il etait flanihe; flamhe as he seemed to be, and very
reasonably seemed, to his friends when as yet the genius had
not come to him, and when he was desperately striving to
discover where his genius lay in those wondrous works which
"Lord R'Hoone," and "Horace de Saint Aubin," and others
obligingly fathered for him.
It must be the business of these introductions to give what
assistance they may to discover where it did lie; it is only
necessary, before taking up the task in the regular biograph-
ical and critical way of the introductory cicerone, to make
two negative observations. It did not lie, as some have ap-
HONDRE DE BALZAC IX
parently thought, in the conception, or the outlining, or the
filling up of such a scheme as the Coinedie llumaine. In the
first place, the work of every great writer, of the creative kind,
including that of Dante himself, is a comedie humaine. All
humanity is latent in every human being; and the great
writers are merely those who call most of it out of latency
and put it actually on the stage. And, as students bi Balzac
know, the scheme and adjustment of his comedy varied so
temarkably as time went on that it can hardly be said to have
even in its latest form (which would pretty certainly have
been altered again) a distinct and definite character. Its so-
called scenes (cheap criticism may add, and may add truly,
though not to much purpose) are even in the mass by no
means an exhaustive, and are, as they stand, a very "cross,"
division of life: nor are they peopled by anything like an
exhaustive selection of personages. Nor again is Balzac's
genius by any means a mere vindication of the famous defi-
nition of that quality as an infinite capacity of taking pains.
That Balzac had that capacity — had it in a degree probably
unequaled even by the dullest plodders on record — is very
well known, is one of the best known things about him. But
he showed it for nearly ten years before the genius came,
and though no doubt it helped him when genius had cOme,
the two things are in his case, as in most, pretty sufficiently
distinct. What the genius itself was I must do my best to
indicate hereafter, always beseeching the reader to remeniber
that all genius is in its essence and quiddity indefinable. You
can no more get close to it than you can get close to the
rainbow,- and your most scientific explanation of it will always
leave as much of the heart of the fact unexplained as the
scientific explanation of the rainbow leaves of that.
3t HOKORE DE BALZAC
Honore de Balzac was born at Tours on the 16th of May
1799, in the same year which saw the birth of Heine, and
which therefore had the honor of producing perhaps the most
characteristic (I do not say the greatest) writers of the nine-
'teenth century in prose and verse respectively. The family
was a respectable one, though its right to the particle whicii
Balzac always carefully assumed, subscribing himself (with
dubious correctness, though the point is an argued one)
"de Balzac," was contested. And there appears to be no
proof of their connection with Jean Guez de Balzac, the
founder, as some will have him, of modern French prose,
and the contemporary and fellow-reformer of Malherbe.*
Balzac's father, who, as the zac pretty surely indicates, was
a southerner and a native of Langiiedoc, was fifty-three years
old at the birth of his son, whose Christian name was selected
on the ordinary principle of accepting that of the saint on
whose day he was born. Balzac the elder had been a barrister
before the Revolution, but under it he obtained a post in
the commissariat, and rose to be head of that department
for a military division. His wife, who was much younger
than himself and who survived her son, is said to have pos-
sessed both beauty and fortune, and was evidently endowed
with the business faculties so common among Frenchwomen.
When Honore was bom, the family had not long been es-
tablished at Tours, where Balzac the elder (besides his duties)
had a house and some land; and this town continued to be
their headquarters till the novelist, who was the eldest of the
family, was about sixteen. He had two sisters (of whom the
elder, Laure, afterwards Madame Surville, was his first eonfi-
♦ Indeed, a.s the novelist i)olnted out \\ itli sufficient pertinence, his earlier name-
Rake had no hereditary right to the uame at all, and merely took it from some
proixTly
HONORE DE BALZAC Xl
dante and his only authoritative biographer) and a younger
brother, who seems to have been, if not a scapegrace, rather
a burden to his friends, and who later went abroad.
The eldest boy was, in spite of Eousseau, put out to nurse,
and at seven years old was sent to the Oratorian grammar-
school at Vendome, where he stayed another seven years,
going through, according to his own account, the future
experiences and performances of Louis Lambert, but making
no reputation for himself in the ordinary school course. If,
however, he would not work in his teacher's way, he over-
worked himself in his own by devouring books; and was sent
home at fourteen in such a state of health that his grand-
mother (who, after the French fashion, was living with
her daughter and son-in-law), ejaculated : "Voild done cor.ime
le college nous reiivoie les jolis enfants que nous lui en-
voyons!" It would seem indeed that, after making all due
allowance for grandmotherly and sisterly partiality, Balzac
was actually a very good-looking boy and young man, though
the portraits of him in later life may not satisfy the more
romantic expectations of his admirers. He must have had at
all times e3^es full of character, perhaps the only feature that
never fails in men of intellectual eminence; but he certainly
does not seem to have been in his manhood either exactly
handsome or exactly (to use a foolish-sounding term which
yet has no exact equivalent of better sound) "distinguished-
looking." But the portraits of the middle of the century
are, as a rule, rather wanting in this characteristic when com-
pared with those of its first and last periods; and I cannot
think of many that quite come up to one's expectations.
For a short time he was left pretty much to himself, and re-
covered rapidly- But late in 1814 a change of oflfieial duties
xW HONORE DE BALZAO
removed the Balzacs to Paris, and when they had established
themselves in the famous old bourgeois quarter of the Marais.
Honore was sent to divers private tutors or private school-
till he had "finished his classes" in 181G at the age of seven-
teen and a half. Then he attended lectures at the Sorbonne
where Villemain, Guizot, and Cousin were lecturing, and
heard them, as his sister tells us, enthusiastically, though
there are probably no three writers of any considerable repute
in the history of French literature who stand further apart
from Balzac. For all three made and kept their fame by
spirited and agreeable generalizations and expatiations, as
different as possible from the savage labor of observation
on the one hand and the gigantic developments of imagination
on the other, which were to compose Balzac's appeal. His
father destined him for the law; and for three years more
he dutifully attended the offices of an attorney and a notary,
besides going through the necessary lectures and examina-
tions. All these trials he seems to have passed, if not brill-
iantly, yet sufficiently.
And then came the inevitable crisis, which was of an un-
usually severe nature. A notary, who was a friend of the
elder Balzac's and owed him some gratitude, offered not
merely to take Honore into his office, but to allow him to
succeed to his business, which was a very good one, in a
few years on very favorable terms. Most fathers, and nearly
all French fathers, would have jumped at this ; and it so hap-
pened that about the same time M. de Balzac was undergoing
that unpleasant process of compulsory retirement which his
son has described in one of the best passages of the CEuvres
de Jeunesse, the opening scene of Argow le Pirate. It does
not appear that Honore had revolted during his probation —
HONORE DE BALZAC xlll
indeed he is said, and we can easily believe it from his books,
to have acquired a very solid knowledge of law, especially
in bankruptcy matters, of which he was himself to have a
very close shave in future. A solicitor, indeed, told Laure
de Balzac that he found Cesar Birotteau a kind of Balzac
on Banhrnptcy ; but this may have been only the solicitor's
fun.
It was no part of Honore's intentions to use this knowl-
edge— however content he had been to acquire it — in the
least interesting, if nearly the most profitable, of the branches
of the legal profession; and he protested eloquently, and not
jnsuccessfully, that he would be a man of letters and nothing
else. Not unsuccessfully; but at the same time with dis-
tinctly qualified success. He was not turned out of doors;
nor were the supplies, as in Quinet's case only a few months
later, absolutely withheld even for a short time. But his
mother (who seems to have been less placable than her hus-
band) thought that cutting them down to the lowest point
might have some effect. So, as the family at this time
(April 1819) left Paris for a house some twenty miles out of
it, she established her eldest son in a garret furnished in the
most Spartan fashion, with a starvation allowance and an old
woman to look after him. He did not literally stay in this
garret for the ten years of his astonishing and unparalleled
probation; but without too much metaphor it may be said
to have been his Wilderness, and his Wanderings in it to
have lasted for that very considerable time.
We know, in detail, very little of him during the period.
For the first years, between 1819 and 1822, we have a good
number of letters to Laure; between 1822 and 1829, when he
drst made his mark, very few. He began, of course, with
x\v HOXORE DE BALZAC
verse, for which he never had the slightest vocation, and,
almost equally of course, with a tragedy. But by degrees,
and apparently pretty soon, he slipped into v/hat was
his vocation, and like some, though not very many, great
writers, at first did little better in it than if it had not been
his vocation at all. The singular tentatives which, after being
allowed for a time a sort of outhouse in the structure of the
Comedie Humaine, were excluded from the octavo Edition
Definitive five-and-twenty A^ears ago, have never been the
object of that exhaustive bibliographical and critical attention
which has been bestowed on those which follow them. They
were not absolutely unproductive — we hear of sixty, eighty, a
hundred pounds being paid for them, though whether this
was the amount of Balzac's always sanguine expectations,
or hard cash actually handed over, we cannot say. They were
very numerous, though the reprints spoken of above never
extended to more than ten. Even these have never been
widely read. The only person I ever knew till I began this
present task who had read them through was the friend whom
all his friends are now lamenting and are not likely soon to
cease to lament, Mr. Louis Stevenson ; and when I once asked
him whether, on his honor and conscience, he could recom-
mend me to brace myself to the same effort, he said that on
his honor and conscience he must most earnestly dissuade me.
I gather, though I am not sure, that Mr. Wedmore, the latest
writer in English on Balzac at any length, had not read them
through when he wrote.
Now I have, and a most curious study they are. Indeed
I am not sorry, as Mr. Wedmore thinks one would be, to
have been for my sins compelled to read them. Nay, more,
X should have been really sorry if this or some other occasion
HONORE DE BALZAC xv
had not imposed upon me this particular punishment of the
sinner. They are curiously, interestingly, almost enthrall-
ingly bad. Couched for the most part in a kind of Radcliffian
or Monk-Lewisian vein — perhaps studied more directly from
Maturin (of whom Balzac was a great admirer) than from
either — they often begin with and sometimes contain at in-
tervals passages not unlike the Balzac that we know. The
attractive title of Jane la Pale (it was originally called, with
a still more Early Eomantic avidity for baroque titles, Wann-
Clilore) has caused it, I believe, to be more commonly read
than any other. I know at least three if not four people in
England who claim acquaintance with it. It deals with a
disguised duke, a villainous Italian, bigamy, a surprising
offer (which I wish Balzac had had the courage to represent
as accepted and carried out) of the angelic first wife to sub-
mit to a sort of double arrangement, the death of the second
wife and first love, and a great many other things. Argow
le Pirate opens quite decently and in order with that story of
the employe which Balzac was to rehandle so often, but drops
suddenly into brigands stopping diligences, the marriage of
the heroine Annette with a retired pirate marquis of vast
wealth, the trial of the latter for murdering another marquis
with a poisoned fish-bone scarf-pin, his execution, the san-
guinary reprisals by his redoubtable lieutenant, and a finale
of blunderbusses, fire, devoted peasant girl with retrousse
;aose, and almost every possible tremblement.
In strictness mention of this should have been preceded by
mention of Le Vicaire des Ardennes, which is a sort of first
part of Argow le Pirate, and not only gives an account of
his crimes, early history, and manners (which seem to have
been a little robustious for such a mild-mannered man as
'jr! HONORE DE BALZAC
Annette's husband), but tells a thrilling tale of the loves of
the yicaire himself and a young woman, which loves aye
crossed, first by the belief that they are brother and sister,
and secondly by the vicaire having taken orders under this
delusion. La Dernicre Fee is the queerest possible cross be-
tween an actual fairy story a la Nodier and a history of the
fantastic and inconstant loves of a great English lady, the
Duchess of "Sommerset" (a piece of actual scandalum mag-
natum nearly as bad as Balzac's cool use in his acknowledged
vrork of the title "Lord Dudley"). This book begins so well
that one expects it to go on better; but the inevitable defects
in craftsmanship show themselves before long. Le Centenaire
connects itself with Balzac's almost lifelong hankering after
the recherche de Vahsolu in one form or another, for the hero
is a wicked old person who every now and then refreshes his
hold on life by immolating a virgin under a copper bell. It
is one of the most extravagant and "Monk-Lewisy" of the
whole. L'Excommunie, L'Israeliie, and L'Heritiere de Bi-
rague are medigeval or fifteenth century tales of the most luxu-
riant kind, L'Excommunie being the best, L'Israclite the most
preposterous, and UHeritiere de Birague the dullest. But
it is not nearly so dull as Dom Gigadus and Jea7i Louis, the
former of which deals with the end of the seventeenth cen-
tury and the latter with the end of the eighteenth. These
are both as nearly unreadable as anything can be. One in-
teresting thing, however, should be noted in much of this
early work: the affectionate clinging of the author to the
scenery of Touraine, which sometimes inspires him with his
least bad passages.
It is generally agreed that these singular (Euvres de Jeu-
nesse were of service to Balzac as exercises, and no doubt they
HONORS DE BALZAC xvil
were so; but I think something may be said on the other side.
They must have done a little, if not much, to lead him into
and confirm him in those defects of style and form which
distinguish him so remarkably from most writers of his rank.
It very seldom happens when a very young man writes
very much, be it book-writing or journalism, without censure
and without "editing," that he does not at the same time get
into loose and slipshod habits. And I think we may set down
to this peculiar form of apprenticeship of Balzac's not
merely his failure ever to attain, except in passages and
patches, a thoroughly great style, but also that extraordinary
method of composition which in after days cost him and his
publishers so much money.
However, if these ten years of probation taught him his
trade, they taught him also a most unfortunate avocation
or by-trade, which he never ceased to practise, or to try to
practise, which never did him the very least good, and which
not unfrequently lost him much of the not too abundant gains
which he earned with such enormous labor. This was the
"game of speculation." His sister puts the tempter's part
on an unknown "neighbor," who advised him to try to procure
independence by une bonne speculation. Those who have read
Balzac's books and his letters will hardly think that he re-
quired much tempting. He began by trying to publish —
an attempt which has never yet succeeded with a single man
of letters, so far as I can remember. His scheme was not
a bad one, indeed it was one which has brought much money
to other pockets since, being neither more nor less than the
issuing of cheap one-volume editions of French classics..
But he had hardly any capital ; he was naturally quite ig-
norant of his trade, and as naturally the established pub-
svU! HONOR E DE BALZAC
Ushers and booksellers boycotted him as an intruder. So hif
Moliere and his La Fontoine are said to have been sold as
waste paper, though if any copies escaped they would probably
fetch a very comfortable price now. Then, such capital aa
he had having been borrowed, the lender, either out of good
nature or avarice, determined to throw the helve after the
hatchet. He partly advance . himself and partly induced
Balzac's parents to advance more, in order to start the young
man as a printer, to which business Honore himself added
that of typefounder. The story was just the same : knowledge
and capital were again wanting, and though actual bank-
ruptcy was avoided, Balzac got out of the matter at the cost
not merely of giving the two businesses to a friend (in whose
hands they proved profitable), but of a margin of debt from
which he may be said never to have fully cleared himself.
He had more than twenty years to live, but he never cured
himself of this hankering after une honne speculation.
Sometimes it was ordinary stock-exchange gambling; but his
special weakness was, to do him justice, for schemes that had
something more grandiose in them. Thus, to finish here
with the subject, though the chapter of it never actually
finished till his death, he made years afterwards, when he
was a successful and a desperately busy author, a long, trouble-
some, and costly journey to Sardinia to carry out a plan of
resmelting the slag from Roman and other mines there. Thus
in his very latest days, when he was living at Vierzschovnia
with the Hanska and Mniszech household, he conceived the
magnificently absurd notion of cutting down twenty thou-
sand acres of oak wood in the Ukraine, and sending it hi;
railway right across Europe to be sold in France. And he
was rather reluctantly convinced that by the time a single
HONORE I)E HAI-ZAC xix
log reached its market the freight would have eaten up the
value of a whole plantation.
It was perhaps not entirely chance that the collapse of
the printing scheme, which took place in 1827, the ninth
year of the Wanderings in the Wilderness, coincided with
or immediately preceded the conception; of the book which
was to give Balzac passage into the Promised Land. This
was Les Chouans, called at its first issue, which differed con-
siderably from the present form, Le Dernier Chouan ou la
Bretagne en 1800 (later 1799). It was published in 1839
without any of the previous anagrammatic pseudonyms ; and
whatever were the reasons which had induced him to make
his bow in person to the public, they were well justified, for
the book was a distinct success, if not a great one. It occupies
a kind of middle position between the melodramatic romance
of his nonage and the strictly analytic romance-novel of his
later time; and, though dealing with war and love chiefly,
inclines in conception distinctly to the latter. Corentin,
Hulot, and other personages of the actual Comedy (then by
no means planned, or at least avowed) appear; and though the
influence of Scott is in a way paramount* on the surface, the
underwork is quite different, and the whole scheme of the
loves of Montauran and Mademoiselle de Verneuil is pure
Balzac.
It would seem as if nothing but this sun of popular ap-
* Balzac was throughout his life a ferTCiit admirer of Sir Walter, anri I think Mr.
Wedmore, in his passage on the subject, distinctly undervalues both the character
and the duration of this esteem. Balzac was far too acute to commit the common
mistake of thinking Scott superflcial— men who know mankind arc not often blind
to each other's knowledge. And while Mr. Wedmore seems not to know any testi-
mony later than Balzac's thirty-eighth year, it is in his forty-sixth, when all his ow;
best work was done, except the Parents Pauvres, that he contrasts Dunias witn Scoti,
saying that nn relit Walter f^cott, and he does not think any one will re-read Dumas.
This may be unjust to the one writer, but it is conclusive as to any sense of " wasted
time " (his own phrase) having ever existed in Balzac's mind about the other
XX HONORE DE BALZAC
proval had been wanting to make Balzac's genius burst out
in full bloom. Although we have a fair number of letters for
the ensuing 3'ears, it is not very easy to make out the exact
sequence of production of the marvelous harvest which his
genius gave. It is sufficient to say that in the three years
following 1829 there were actually published the Physiologie
du Mariage (of which, as it is not a novel, and for that and
other reasons will not appear in this series, not much more
will have to be said), the charming story of La Maison du
Chat-qui-Pelote, the Peau de Chagrin, the most original and
splendid, if not the most finished and refined, of all Balzac's
books, most of the short Contes Philosopliiques, of which
some are among their author's greatest triumphs, many other
stories (chiefly included in the Scenes de la Vie Privee) and
the beginning of the Contes Drolatiques*
But without a careful examination of his miscellaneous
work, which is very abundant and includes journalism as
well as books, it is almost as impossible to come to a just
appreciation of Balzac as it is without reading the early
works and the letters. This miscellaneous work is all the more
important because a great deal of it represents the artist
at quite advanced stages of his career, and because all its
* No regular attempt will after this be made to indicate the date of production of
successive works, unless the}- connect themselves very distinctly with incidents in
the life or with general critical observations. At the end of this introduction will
be found a full table of the Comedie Hnmaine and the other works ; while, as
explained in the first note, additional bibliographical information, as to dates anci
otherwise, will be found in the short introductions to each volume. It may perhaps
DC worth while to add here, that while the labors of M. de Lovenjoul (to whom
every writer on Balzac must acknowledge the deepest obligation) have cleared this
mutter up almost to the verge of possibility as regards the published works, there is
little light to be thrown on the constant references in the letters to Ixwks which
rever appeared. Sometimes they are known, and they may often be suspected, to
..ave been absorbed into or incorporated with others ; the rest must have been lost
ir destroyed, or, which is not quite impossible, have existed chiefly in the form of
project Nearly a hundred titles of such things are preserved.
HONORE DE BALZAC Sx\
examples, the earlier as well as the later, give us abundant
insight on him as he was "making himself " The comparison
with the early work of Thackeray (in Punch, Fraser, and else-
where) is so striking that it can escape no one who knows the
two. Every now and then Balzac transferred bodily, or with
slight alterations, passages from these experiments to his fin-
ished canvases. It appears that he had a scheme for codify-
ing his "Physiologies" (of wliich the notorious one above
mentioned is only a catchpenny exemplar and very far from
the best) into a seriously organized work. Chance -^as kind
or intention was wise in not allowing him to do so ; but the
value of the things for the critical reader is not less. Here
are tales — extensions of the scheme and manner of the
CEuvres de Jeunesse, or attempts (not often happy) at the
goguenard story of 1830 — a thing for which Balzac's hand
was hardly light enough. Here are interesting evidences
of striving to be cosmopolitan and polyglot — the most inter-
esting of all of which, I think, is the mention of certain
British products as "mufflings." "Muffling" used to be a
domestic joke for "muffin ;" but whether some wicked Briton
deluded Balzac into the idea that it was the proper form or
not it is impossible to say. Here is a Traite de la Vie Ele-
gante, inestimable for certain critical purposes. So early
as 1825 we find a Code des Gens Honnetes, which exhibits
at once the author's legal studies and his constant attraction
for the shady side of business, and which contains a scheme
for defrauding by means of lead pencils, actually carried out
(if we may believe his exulting note) by some literary swin-
dlers with unhappy results. A year later he wrote a Diction-
naire des Enseirjnes de Paris, which we are glad enough to
have from the author of the Chat-qui-Pelote; but the persist-
xxil HONORE DE BALZAC
ence with which this kind of miscellaneous writing occupied
him could not be better exemplified than by the fact that,
of two important works which closely follow this in the col-
lected edition, the Physiologie de V Employe dates from 1841
and the Monographie de la Presse Parislenne from 1843.
It is well known that from the time almost of his success
as a novelist he was given, like too many successful novelists
{not like Scott), to rather undignified and foolish attacks
on critics. The explanation may or may not be found in
the fact that we have abundant critical work of his, and
that it is nearly all bad. Now and then we have an acute
remark in his own special sphere; but as a rule he cannot
be complimented on these performances, and when he was
half-way through his career this critical tendency of his cul-
minated in the unlucky Revue Parisiennc, which he wrote
almost entirely himself, with slight assistance from his
friends, MM. de Belloy and de Grammont. It covers a wide
range, but the literary part of it is consid*^rable, and this
part contains that memorable and disastrous attack on Sainte-
Beuve, for which the critic afterwards took a magnanimous
revenge in his obituary causeric. Although the thing is not
quite unexampled it is not easily to be surpassed in the
blind fury of its abuse. Sainte-Beuve was by no means invul-
nerable, and an anti-critic who kept his head might have
found, as M. de Pontmartin and others did find, the joints
in his armor. But when, a pro pas of the Port Royal more
especially, and of the other works in general, Balzac informs
us that Sainte-Beuve's great characteristic as a writer is
I'ennui, Vennui houeux jusqua mi-jambe, that his style is
intolerable, that his historical handling is like that of Gib-
bon, ITume, and other dull people ; when ho jeers at him for
HONORE DE BALZAC xxiii
-^xhummg "La mere Angelique/' and scolds him for presum-
ing to obscure the glory of the Roi Soldi, the thing is partly-
ludicrous, partly melancholy. One remembers that agreeable
Bohemian, who at a symposium once interrupted his host by
crying, "Man o' the hoose, gie us less o' yer clack and mair
o' yer Jairman wine !" Only, in human respect and other,
we phrase it : "Oh, dear M. de Balzac ! give us more Eugenie
Grandets, more Pere Goriots, more Peaux de Cliagrin, and
don't talk about what you do not understand !"
Balzac was a great politician also, and here, though he may
not have been very much more successful, he talked with more
knowledge and competence. He must have given himself im-
mense trouble in reading the papers, foreign as well as French :
he had really mastered a good deal of the political religion of a
French publicist. It is curious to read, sixty years after date,
his grave assertion that "La France a la conquete de Mada-
gascar a faire," and with certain very pardonable defects
(such as his Anglophobia), his politics may be pronounced
not unintelligent and not ungenerous, though somewhat in-
consistent and not very distinctly traceable to any coherent
theory. As for the Anglophobia, the Englishman who thinks
the less of him for that must have very poor and unhappy
brains. A Frenchman who does not more or less hate and
fear England, an Englishman who does not regard France
with a more or less good-humored impatience, is usually
"either a god or a beast," as Aristotle saith. Balzac began
with an odd but not unintelligible compound, something like
Hugo's, of Napoleonisra and Eoyalism. In 1824, when he
was still in the shades of anonymity, he wrote and published
two by no means despicable pamphlets in favor of Primo-
geniture and the Jesuits^, the latter of which was reprinted
xxlv HONORE DE BALZAC
in 1880 at the last J esultenhetze in France. His Lettres sur
Paris in 1830-31, and his La France et VEtranger in 1836,
are two considerable series of letters from "Our Own Cor-
respondent," handling the affairs of the world with boldness
and industry if not invariably with wisdom. They rather
suggest (as does the later Revue Parisienne still more) the
[political writing of the age of Anne in England, and perhaps
a little later, when "the wits" handled politics and society,
literature and things in general with unquestioned compe-
tence and an easy universality.
The rest of his work which will not appear in this edition
may be conveniently despatched here. The Physiologie du
Mariage and the Scenes de la Vie Conjugale suffer not merely
from the most obvious of their faults but from defect of
knowledge. It may or may not be that marriage, in the hack-
neyed phrase, is a net or other receptacle where all the out-
siders would be in, and all the insiders out. But it is quite
clear that Coelebs cannot talk of it with much authority.
His state may or may not be the more gracious : his judgmfeiit
cannot but lack experience. The "Theatre," which brought
its author little if any profit, great annoyance, and a vast
amount of trouble, has been generally condemned by criti-
cism. But the Contes Drolatiqucs are not so to be given up.
The famous and splendid Succuhe is only the best of them,
and though all are more or less tarred with the brush which
tars so much of French literature, though the attempt to
write in an archaic stylo is at best a very successful tour de
force, and represents an expenditure of brain power by no
means justifiable on ibc part of a man who could have made
so much botler use of it, tliey are never to be spoken of dis-
reflpectfully. 'J'hose who sneer at their "Wardour Street"
HONORE DP] BALZAC xxv
Old French are not usually those best qualified to do so ; and
it is not to be forgotten that Balzac was a real countryman
of Rabelais and a legitimate inheritor of Uauloiserie. Un-
luckily no man can "throw back" in this way, except now
and then as a mere pastime. And it is fair to recollect that
as a matter of fact Balzac, after a year or two, did not waste
much more time on these things, and that the intended ten
dizains never, as a matter of fact, went beyond three.
Besides this work in books, pamphlets, etc., Balzac, as has
been said, did a certain amount of journalism, especially in
the Caricature, his performances including, I regret to say,
more than one puff of his own work; and in this, as well as
by the success of the Cliouans, he became known about 1830
to a much wider circle, both of literary and of private ac-
quaintance. It cannot indeed be said that he ever mixed
much in society; it was impossible that he should do so, con-
sidering the vast amount of work he did and the manner in
which he did it. This subject, like that of his speculations,
may be better finished off in a single passage than dealt with
by scattered indications here and there. He was not one of
those men who can do work by fits and starts in the intervals
of business or of amusement ; nor was he one who, like Scott,
could work very rapidly. It is true that he often achieved im-
mense quantities of work (subject to a caution to be given
presently) in a very few days, but then his working day
was of the most peculiar character. He could not bear dis-
turbance; he wrote (as probably most people do) best at
night, and he could not work at all after heavy meals. His
favorite plan (varied sometimes in detail) was therefore to
dine lightly about five or six, then to go to bed and sleep till
eleven, twelve, or one, and then to get up, and with the help
xxTi HONORE DE BALZAC
only of coffee (which he drank very strong and in enormous
quantities) to work for indefinite stretches of time into the
morning or afternoon of the next day. He speaks of a sixteen
hours' day as a not uncommon shift or spell of work, and
almost a regular one with him ; and on one occasion he avers
that in the course of forty-eight hours he took but three of
rest, working for twenty-two hours and a half continuously
on each side thereof. In such spells, supposing reasonable
facility of composition and mechanical power in the hand
to keep going all the time, an enormous amount can of
course be accomplished. A thousand words an hour is any-
thing but an extraordinary rate of writing, and fifteen hun-
dred by no means unheard of with persons who do not write
rubbish.
The references to this subject in Balzac's letters are vei-y
numerous ; but it is not easy to extract very definite informa-
tion from them. It would be not only impolite but incorrect
to charge him with unveracity. But the very heat of imagi-
nation which enabled him to produce his work created a
sort of mirage, through which he seems always to have re-
garded it; and in writing to publishers, editors, creditors,
and even his own family, it was too obviously his interest
to make the most of his labor, his projects, and his perform-
ance. Even his contemporary, though elder, Southey, the
hardest- working and the most scrupulously honest man of
letters in England who could pretend to genius, seems con-
stantly to have exaggerated the idea of what he could per-
form, if not of what he had performed in a given time. The
most definite statement of Balzac's that I remember is one
which claims the second number of Sur Catherine de Medicis,
"La Confidence des Ruggieri/' as the production of a singK>
HONORE DE BALZAC xxvll
night, and not one of the most extravagant of his nights.
Now "La Confidence des Ruggieri" fills, in the small edition,
eighty pages of nearer four hundred than three hundred
words each, or some thirty thousand words in all. Nobody in
the longest of nights could manage that, except by dictating
it to shorthand clerks. But in the very context of this as-
sertion Balzac assigns a much longer period to the correction
than to the composition, and this brings us to one of the
most curious and one of the most famous points of his literary
history.
Some doubts have, I believe, been thrown on the most
minute account of his ways of composition which we have,
that of the publisher Werdet. But there is too great a con-
sensus of evidence as to his general system to make the
received description of it doubtful. According to this, the
first draft of Balzac's work never presented it in anything
like fulness, and sometimes did not amount to a quarter of
the bulk finally published. This being returned to him from
the printer in "slip" on sheets with very large margins, he
would set to work on the correction ; that is to say, on the
practical rewriting of the thing, with excisions, alterations,
and above all, additions. A "revise" being executed, he would
attack this revise in the same manner, and not unfrequently
more than once, so that the expenses of mere composition
and correction of the press were enormously heavy (so heary
as to eat into not merely his publisher's but his own profits),
and that the last state of the book, when published, was some-
thing utterly different from its first state in manuscript.
And it will be obvious that if anything like this was usual
with him, it is quite impossible to judge his actual rapidity
of composition by the extent of the published result.
xxviil HONORE DE BALZAC
However this may be (and it is at least certain that in the
years above referred to he must have worked his very hardest,
even if some of the work then published had been more or
less excogitated and begun during the Wilderness period),
he certainly so far left his eremitical habits as to become
acquainted with most of the great men of letters of the early
thirties, and also with certain ladies of more or less high
rank, who were to supply, if not exactly the full models, the
texts and starting-points for some of the most interesting
figures of the Comedie. He knew Victor Hugo, but certainly
not at this time intimately; for as late as 1839 the letter
in which he writes to Hugo to come and breakfast with him
at Les Jardies (with interesting and minute directions how
to find that frail abode of genius) is couched in anything
but the tone of a familiar friendship. The letters to Beyle
of about the same date are also incompatible with intimate
knowledge. ISTodier (after some contrary expressions) he
seems to have regarded as most good people did regard that
true man of letters and charming tale-teller; while among
the younger generation Theophile Gautier and Charles de
Bernard, as well as Goslan and others, were his real and con-
stant friends. But he does not figure frequently or emi-
nently in any of the genuine gossip of the time as a haunter
of literary circles, and it is very nearly certain that the as-
siduity with which some of his heroes attend salons and clubs
had no counterpart in his own life. In the first place he
was too busy; in the second he would not have been at home
there. Like the young gentleman in Punch, who "did not
read books but wrote them," though in no satiric sense, he
felt it his business not to frequent society but to create it.
He was, however, aided in the task of creation by the
HONORE HE BALZAC xxix
Jadies already spoken of, who were fairly numerous and ot
divers degrees. The most constant, after his sister Laure,
was that sister's schoolfellow, Madame Ziilma Carraiid, the
wife of a military official at Angoulemc and the possessor
of a small country estate at Frapesle, near Tours. At both
of these places Balzac, till he was a very great man, was a
constant visitor, and with Madame Carraud he kept up for
years a correspondence which has been held to be merely
friendly, and which was certainly in the vulgar sense inno-
cent, but which seems to me to be tinged with something of
that feeling, midway between love and friendship, which ap-
pears in Scott's letters to Lady Abercorn, and which is proba-
bly not so rare as some think. Madame de Berny, another
family friend of higher rank, was the prototype of most of
his "angelic" characters, but she died in 1836. He knew
the Duchesse d'Abrantes, otherwise Madame Junot, and
Madame de Girardin, otherwise Delphine Gay; but neither
seems to have exercised much influence over him. It was
different with another and more authentic duchess, Madame
de Castries, after whom he dangled for a considerable time,
who certainly first encouraged him and probably then snubbed
him, and who is thought to have been the model of his wick-
eder great ladies. And it was comparatively early in the
thirties that he met the woman whom, after nearly twenty
years, he was at last to marry, getting his death in so doing,
the Polish Madame Hanska. These, with some relations
of the last named, especially her daughter, and with a certain
*T.ouise" — an Inconnue who never ceased to be so — were
Balzac's chief correspondents of the other sex, and, as far
as is known, his chief friends in it.
About his life, without extravagant "padding" of guess-
XXX HONORE DE BALZAC
worK or of mere quotation and abstract of his letters, it would
be not so much difficult as impossible to say much; and ac-
cordingly it is a matter of fact that most lives of Balzac,
including all good ones, are rather critical than narrative.
From his real debut with Le Dernier Chouan to his departure
for Poland on the long visit, or brace of visits, from which he
returned finally to die, this life consisted solely of work. One
of his earliest utterances, ''II faut piocher ferme" was his
motto to the very last, varied only by a certain amount of trav-
eling. Balzac was always a considerable traveler; indeed if he
had not been so his constitution would probably have broken
down long before it actually did; and the expense of these
voyagings (though by his own account he generally conducted
his affairs with the most rigid economy), together with the in-
terruption to his work which they occasioned, entered no
doubt for something into his money difficulties. He would go
to Baden or Vienna for a day's sight of Madame Hanska ; his
Sardinian visit has been already noted ; and as a specimen of
others it may be mentioned that he once journeyed from Paris
to Besangon, then from Besancon right across France to An-
gouleme, and then back to Paris on some business of selecting
paper for one of the editions of his books, which his pub-
lishers would probably have done much better and at much
less expense.
Still his actual receipts were surprisingly small, partly,
it may be, owing to his expensive habits of composition, but
far more, according to his own account, because of the Bel-
gian piracies, from which all popular French authors suffered
till (I think) the government of Napoleon the Third man-
aged to put a stop to them. He also lived in such a thick
atmosnhere of bills and advances and cross-claims on and
HONORE DE BALZAC xxx\
by his publishers, that even if there were more documents
than there are it would be exceedingly difficult to get at facts
which are, after all, not very important. He never seems
to have been paid much more than £500 for the newspaper
publication (the most valuable by far because the pirates
could not interfere with its profits) of any one of his novels.
And to expensive fashions of composition and complicated
accounts, a steady back-drag of debt and the rest, must be
added the very delightful, and to a novelist not useless, but
very expensive mania of the collector. Balzac had a genuine
taste for, and thought himself a genuine connoisseur in,
pictures, sculpture, and objects of art of all kinds, old and
new; and though prices in his day were not what they are
in these, a great deal of money must have run through his
hands in this way. He calculated the value of the contents
of the house, which in his last days he furnished with such
loving care for his wife, and which turned out to be a chamber
rather of death than of marriage, at some £16,000. But part
of this was of Madame Hanska's own purchasing, and there
were offsets of indebtedness against it almost to the last.
In short, though during the last twenty years of his life such
actual "want of pence" as vexed him was not due, as it had
been earlier, to the fact that the pence refused to come in,
but only to imprudent management of them, it certainly
cannot be said that Honore de Balzac, the most desperately
hard worker in all literature for such time as was allotted
him, and perhaps the man of greatest genius who was ever
a desperately hard worker, falsified that most uncomfortable
but truest of proverbs — "Hard work never made money."
If, however, he was but scantily rewarded with the money
for which he had a craving (not absolutely, I think, devoid
xxxli HONORE DE BALZAC
of a touch of genuine avarice, but consisting chiefly of the
artist's desire for pleasant and beautiful things, and partly
presenting a variety or phase of the grandiose imagination,
which was his ruling characteristic), Balzac had plenty of the.
fame, for which he cared quite as much as he cared for money.
Perhaps no writer except Voltaire and Goethe earlier made
such a really European reputation; and his books were of
a kind to be more widely read by the general public than
either Goethe's or Voltaire's. In England (Balzac liked the
literature but not the country, and never visited England,
though I believe he planned a visit) this popularity was, for
obvious reasons, rather less than elsewhere. The respectful
vogue which French literature had had with the English in
the eighteenth century had ceased, owing partly to the national
enmity revived and fostered by the great war, and partly to thef*
growth of a fresh and magnificent literature at home during
the first thirty years of the nineteenth in England. But Balzac
could not fail to be read almost at once by the lettered;
and he was translated pretty early, though not perhaps to
any great extent. It was in England, moreover, that by far
his greatest follower appeared, and appeared very shortly.
For it would be absurd in the most bigoted admirer of Thack-
eray to deny that the author of Vanity Fair, who was in Paris
and narrowly watching French literature and French life at
the very time of Balzac's most exuberant flourishing and edu-
cation, owed something to the author of Le Pere Goriot.
There was no copying or imitation; the lessons taught by
Balzac were too much blended with those of native masters,
such as Fielding, and too much informed and transformed
by individual genius. Some may think — it is a point at issue
not merely between Frenchmen and Englishmen, but be-
HONORE DE BALZAC xxxlll
tween good judges of both nations on each side — that in
absolute veracity and likeness to life, in limiting the opera-
tion of the inner consciousness on the outward observation
to strictly artistic scale, Thackeray excelled Balzac as far as
he fell short of him in the powers of the seer and in the
gigantic imagination of the prophet. But the relations of
pupil and master in at least some degree are not, I think,
deniable.
So things went on in light and in shade, in homekeeping
and in travel, in debts and in earnings, but always in work of
some kind or another, for eighteen years from the turning
point of 1829. By degrees, as he gained fame and ceased to
be in the most pressing want of money, Balzac left off to somp
extent, though never entirely, those miscellaneous writings — •
reviews (including puffs), comic or general sketches, political
diatribes, "physiologies" and the like — ^which, with his dis-
carded prefaces and much more interesting matter, were at
last, not many years ago, included in four stout volumes
of the Edition Definitive. With the exception of the Physi-
ologies (a sort of short satiric analysis of this or that class,
character, or personage), which were very popular in the reign
of Louis Philippe in France, and which Albert Smith and
others introduced into England, Balzac did not do any of this
miscellaneous work extremely well. Very shrewd observa-
tions are to be found in his reviews, for instance his indica-
tion, in reviewing La Touche's Fragoleita, of that common
fault of ambitious novels, a sort of woolly and "ungraspable"
looseness of construction and story, which constantly be-
wilders the reader as to what is going on. But, as a rule, he
was thinking too much of his own work and his own princi-
ples of working to enter ver)' thoroughly into the work of
vol.. > —-,
xxxiv HONORS DE BALZAC
others. His politics, those of a moderate but decided Royalist
and Conservative, were, as has been said, intelligent in
theory, but in practice a little distinguished by that neglect
of actual business detail which has been noticed in his specu-
lations.
At last, in the summer of 1847, it seemed as if the E?,chel
for whom he had served nearly if not quite the full fourteen
years alread}^, and whose husband had long been out of the
way, would at last grant herself to him. He was invited to
Vierzschovnia in the Ukraine, the seat of Madame Hanska,
or in strictness of her son-in-law. Count Georges Mniszech;
and as the visit was apparently for no restricted period, and
Balzac's pretensions to the lady's hand were notorious, it
might have seemed that he was as good as accepted. But to
assume this would have been to mistake what perhaps the
greatest creation of Balzac's great English contemporary and
counterpart on the one side, as Thackeray was his contem-
porary and counterpart on the other, considered to be the
malignity of widows. What the reasons were which made
Madame Hanska delay so long in doing what she did at last,
and might Just as well, it would seem, have done years before,
is not certainly known, and it would be quite unprofitable
to discuss them. But it was on the 8th of October 184:7 that
Balzac first wrote to his sister fromYierzschovnia, and it was
not till the 14th of March 1850 that, "in the parish church
of Saint Barbara at Berditchef, by the Count Abbe Czarski>
representing the Bishop of Jitomir [this is as characteristic
of Balzac in one way as what follows is in another] a Madame
Eve de Balzac, bom Countess Rzevuska, or a Madame
Honore de Balzac or a Madame do Balzac the elder" camp
into existence.
HONORE DE BALZAC XXXt
It does not appear that Balzac was exactly unhappy during
this huge probation, which was broken by one short visit
to Paris. The interest of uncertainty was probably much
for his ardent and unquiet spirit, and though he did very
little literary work for him, one may suspect that he would
not have done very much if he had stayed at Paris, for
signs of exhaustion,, not of genius but of physical power, had
shown themselves before he left home. But it is not unjust
or cruel to say that by the delay "Madame Eve do Balzac"
(her actual baptismal name was Evehna) practically killed
her husband. These winters in the severe climate of Russian
Poland were absolutely fatal to a constitution, and especially
to lungs, already deeply affected. At Yierzschovnia itself
he had illnesses, from which he narrowly escaped with life,
before the marriage; his heart broke down after it; and
he and his wife did not reach Paris till the end of May.
Less than three months afterwards, on the 18th of August,
he died, having been visited on the very day of his death in
the Paradise of bric-a-brac which he had created for his
Eve in the Rue Fortunee — a name too provocative of Nemesis
— by Victor Hugo, the chief maker in verse as he himself
was the chief maker in prose of France. He was buried at
Pere la Chaise. The after-fortunes of his house and its oc-
cupants were not happy : but they do not concern us.
In person Balzac was a typical Frenchman, as indeed he
was in most ways. From his portraits there would seem to
have been more force and address than distinction or refine-
ment in his appearance, but, as has been already observed,
his period was one ungrateful to the iconographer. His char-
acter, not as a writer but as a man, must occupy us a little
longer. For some considerable time — indeed it may be sai(3
until the publication of his letters — it was not very favorably
xxxvi HONORE DE BALZAC
judged on the whole. We may, of course, dismiss the childish
scandals (arising, as usual, from clumsy or malevolent mis-
interpretation of such books as the Physiologie de Mariage,
the Peau de Chagrm, and a few others), which gave rise to
caricatures of him such as that of which we read, repre-
senting him in a monk's dress at a table covered with bottles
and supporting a young person on his knee, the whole gar-
nished vnth the epigraph: Scenes de la Vie Cachee. They
seem to have given him, personally, a very unnecessary an-
noyance, and indeed he was always rather sensitive to criti-
cism. This kind of stupid libel will never cease to be devised
by the envious, swallowed by the vulgar, and simply neglected
by the wise. But Balzac's peculiarities, both of life and of
work, lent themselves rather fatally to a subtler miscon-
struction which he also anticipated and tried to remove,
but which took a far stronger hold. He was represented —
and in the absence of any intimate male friends to contra-
dict the representation, it was certain to obtain some cur-
rency— as in his artistic person a sardonic libeler of man-
kind, who cared only to take foibles and vices for his sub-
jects, and who either left goodness and virtue out of sight
altogether, or represented them as the qualities of fools. In
private life he was held up as at the best a self-centered
egotist who cared for nothing but himself and his own work,
capable of interrupting one friend who told him of the death
of a sister by a suggestion that they should change the sub-
ject and talk of "something real, of Eugenie Grandet," and
of levying a fifty per cent commission on another who had
written a critical notice of his, Balzac's, life and works.*
*Sandeau and Gautier, the victims in these two stories, were neither spitefnl, noi
mendacious, nor irrational, so they arc probably true. The second was possibly due
to Balzac's odd notions of " liusincss being business." The first, I have quite
recenlly seen reason to think, may have been a sort of reminiscence of one of the
traits in Diderot's extravagant encomium on Richardson.
HONORE DE BALZAC xxxvl!
With the first of these charges he himself, on different oc-
casions, rather vainly endeavored to grapple, once drawing
up an elaborate list of his virtuous and vicious women, and
showing that the former outnumbered the latter; and, again,
laboring (with that curious lack of sense of humor which
distinguishes all Frenchmen but a very few, and distin-
guished him eminently) to show that though no doubt it is
very difficult to make a virtuous person interesting, he,
Honore de Balzac, had attempted it, and succeeded in it, on
a quite surprising number of occasions.
The fact is that if he had handled this last matter rather
more lightly his answer would have been a sufficient one, and
that in any case the charge is not worth answering. It
does not lie against the whole of his work; -and if it lay as
conclusively as it does against Swift's, it would not neces-
sarily matter. To the artist in analysis as opposed to the
romance-writer, folly always, and villainy sometimes, does
supply a much better subject than virtuous success, and
if he makes his fools and his villains lifelike and supplies
them with a fair contrast of better things, there is nothing
more to be said. He will not, indeed, be a Shakespeare, or
a Dante, or even a Scott; but we may be very well satisfied
with him as a Fielding, a Thackeray, or a Balzac. As to the
more purely personal matter I own that it was some time
before I could persuade myself that Balzac, to speak famil-
iarly, was a much better fellow than others, and I myself,
had been accustomed to think him. But it is also some time
since I came to the conclusion that he was so, and my con-
version is not to be attributed to any editorial retainer. His
education in a lawyer's office, the accursed advice about the
honne speculation, and his constant straitenings for money,
XXXVlll HONORE DE BALZAC
will account for his sometimes looking after the main chance
rather too narrowly; and as for the Eugenie Grandet story
(even if the supposition referred to in a note above be fanci-
ful) it requires no great stretch of charity or comprehen-
sion to see in it nothing more than the awkward, very easily
misconstrued, but not necessarily in the least heartless or
brutal attempt of a rather absent and very much self-centered
recluse absorbed in one subject, to get his interlocutor as well
as himself out of painful and useless dwelling on sorrowful
matters. Self-centered and self-absorbed Balzac no doubt
was; he could not have lived his life or produced his work
if he had been anything else. And it must be remembered
that he owed extremely little to others; that he had the in-
dependence as well as the isolation of the self-centered; that
he never sponged or fawned on a great man, or wronged
others of what was due to them. The only really unpleasant
thing about him that I know, and even this is perhaps due
to ignorance of all sides of the matter, is a slight touch of
snobbishness now and then, especially in those late letters
from Vierzschovnia to Madame de Balzac and Madame Sur-
ville, in which, while inundating his mother and sister with
commissions and requests for service, he points out to them
what great people the Hanskas and Mniszechs are, what
infinite honor and profit it will be to be connected with them,
and how desirable it is to keep struggling engineer brothers"-
in-law and ne'er-do-well brothers in the colonies out of sight
lest they should disgust the magnates.
But these are ^'sma' sums, sma' sums," as Bailie Jarvie
says ; and smallness of any kind has, whatever it may have to
do with Balzac the man, nothing to do vnth Balzac the writer.
With him as with some others, but not as with the larger
HONORE DE BALZAC xxxlx
number, the sense of greatness increases the longer and the
more fully he is studied. He resembles, I think, Goethe
more than any other man of letters — certainly more than
any other of the present century — in having done work which
is very frequently, if not even commonly, faulty, and in yet
requiring that his work shall be known as a whole. His ap-
peal is cumulative; it repeats itself on each occasion with a
slight diiference, and though there may now and then be the
same faults to be noticed, they are almost invariably accom-
panied, not mereh^ by the same, but by fresh merits.
As has been said at the beginning of this essay, no attempt
will be made in it to give that running survey of Balzac's
work which is always useful and sometimes indispensable
in treatment of the kind. That will be administered in brief
introductions to the separate novels or collections of tales
of which each, it is hoped, will itself be cumulative and help
to furnish forth the full presentment of the subject. But
something like a summing up of that subject will here be
attempted, first, because of the manifest inconvenience of
postponing it, and secondly, because it is really desirable
that in embarking on so vast a voyage the reader should have
some general chart — some notes of the soundings and log
generally of those who have gone before him.
There are two things, then, which it is more especially
desirable to keep constantly before one in reading Balzac —
two things which, taken together, constitute his almost unique
Talue, and two things (I think it may be added) which not
a few critics have failed to take together in him, being under
the impression that the one excludes the other, and that to
admit the other is tantamount to a denial of the one. These
two things are, first, an immense attention to detail, some-
si HONORE DE BALZAC
times observed, sometimes invented or imagined; and sec-
ondly, a faculty of regarding these details through a mental
lens or arrangement of lenses almost peculiar to himself,
which at once combines, enlarges, and invests them with a
peculiar magical halo or mirage. The two thousand per-
sonages of the Comedie Humaine are, for the most part,
'^signaled," as the French official word has it, marked and
denoted by the minutest traits of character, gesture, gait,
clothing, abode, what not ; the transactions recorded are very
often (more often indeed than not) given with a scrupulous
and microscopic accuracy of reporting which no detective
could outdo. Defoe is not more circumstantial in detail of
fact than Balzac ; Eichardson is hardly more prodigal of char-
acter-stroke. Yet a very large proportion of these charac-
ters, of these circumstances, are evidently things invented
or imagined, not observed. And in addition to this the
artist's magic glass, his Balzacian speculum, if we may so
say (for none else has ever had it), transforms even the most
rigid observation into something flickering and fanciful, the
outline as of shadows on the wall, not the precise contour of
etching or of the camera.
It is curious, but not unexampled, that both Balzac himself
when he struggled in argument with his critics and those
of his partisans who have been most zealously devoted to him,
have usually tried to exalt the first and less remarkable of
these gifts over the second and infinitely more remarkable.
Balzac protested strenuously against the use of the word
"gigantesque" in reference to his work; and of course it is
susceptible of an unhandsome innuendo. But if we leave
that innuendo aside, if we adopt the sane reflection that
"gigantesque" does not exclude "gigantic," or assert a con-
HONORE DE BALZAO xll
stant failure of greatness, but only indicates that the mag-
nifying process is carried on with a certain indiscriminate-
ness, we shall find none, I think, which so thoroughly well
describes him.
The effect of this singular combination of qualities, appar-
ently the most opposite, may be partly anticipated, but not
quite. It results occasionally in a certain shortcoming as
regards verite vraie, absolute artistic truth to nature. Those
who would range Balzac in point of such artistic veracity on
a level with poetical and universal realists like Shakespeare
and Dante, or prosaic and particular realists like Thackeray
and Fielding, seem not only to be utterly wrong but to pay
their idol the worst of all compliments, that of ignoring his
own special qualifications. The province of Balzac may not
be — I do not think it is — identical, much less co-extensive,
with that of nature. But it is his own — a partly real, partly
fantastic region, where the lights, the shades, the dimensions,
and the physical laws are slightly different from those of this
world of ours, but with which, owing to the things it has
in common with that world, we are able to sympathize, which
we can traverse and comprehend. Every now and then the
artist uses his observing faculty more, and his magnifying
and (since there is no better word) distorting lens less;
every now and then he reverses the proportion. Some tastes
will like him best in the one stage; some in the other; the
happier constituted will like him best in both. These latter
will decline to put Eugenie Grandet above the Peau de
Chagrin, or Le Pere Goriot above the wonderful handful of
tales which includes La Recherche de I'Ahsolu and Le Chef-
d'ceuvre Inconnu, though they will no doubt recognize that
even in the two first named members of these pairs the Bal-
xUi HONORE DE BALZAC
zacian quality, that of magnifying and rendering grandiose,
is present, and that the martyrdom of Eugenie, the avarice
of her father, the blind self-devotion of Goriot to his thank-
less and worthless children, would not be what they are if
they were seen through a perfectly achromatic and normal
medium.
This specially Balzacian quality is, I think, unique. It is
like — it may almost be said to he — the poetic imagination,
present in magnificent volume and degree, but in some mi-
raculous way deprived and sterilized of the specially poetical
quality. By this I do not of course mean that Balzac did not
write in verse: we have a few verses of his, and they are
pretty bad, but that is neither here nor there. The difference
between Balzac and a great poet lies not in the fact that the
one fills the whole page with printed words, and the other
only a part of it — but in something else. If I could put that
something else into distinct words I should therein attain
the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, the primum mobile,
the grand arcanum, not merely of criticism but of all things.
It might be possible to coast about it, to hint at it, by
adumbrations and in consequences. But it is better and
really more helpful to face the difficulty boldly, and to say
that Balzac, approaching a great poet nearer perhaps than
any other prose writer in any language, is distinguished
from one by the absence of the very last touch, the finally
constituting quiddity, which makes a great poet different from
Balzac.
Now, when we make this comparison, it is of the first in-
terest to remember — and it is one of the uses of the com-
parison, that it suggests the remembrance of the fact — that
the great poets have usually been themselves extremely ei-
HONORE DE BALZAC xllll
act observers of detail. It has not made them great poets;
but they would not be great poets without it. And when
Eugenie Grandet starts from le petit banc de hois at the
reference to it in her scoundrelly cousin's letter (to take only
one instance out of a thousand), we see in Balzac the same
observation, subject to the limitation just mentioned, that
we see in Dante and Shakespeare, in Chaucer and Tennyson.
But the great poets do not as a rule accumulate detail. Bal-
zac does, and from this very accumulation he manages to
derive that singular gigantesque vagueness — differing from
the poetic vague, but ranking next to it — which I have here
ventured to note as his distinguishing quality. He bewilders
us a very little by it, and he gives us the impression that he
has slightly bewildered himself. But the compensations of
the bewilderment are large.
For in this labyrinth and whirl of things, in this heat
and hurry of observation and imagination, the special in-
toxication of Balzac consists. Every great artist has his own
means of producing this intoxication, and it differs in. result
like the stimulus of beauty or of wine. Those persons who are
unfortunate enough to see in Balzac little or nothing but an
ingenious piler-up of careful strokes — a man of science tak-
ing his human documents and classing them after an orderly
fashion in portfolio and deed-box — must miss this intoxica-
tion altogether. It is much more agreeable as well as much
more accurate to see in the manufacture of the Comedie
the process of a Cyclopean workshop — the bustle, the hurry,
the glare and shadow, the steam and sparks of Vulcanian
forging. The results, it is true, are by no means confused
or disorderly — neither were those of the forges that worked
under Lipari — but there certainly went much m.ore to them
xliv HONORE DE BALZAC
than the dainty fingering of a literary fretwork-maker or the
dull rummagings of a realist a la Zola.
In part no doubt, and in great part, the work of Balzac
is dream-stuff rather than life-stuff, and it is all the better
for that. What is better than dreams? But the coherence
of his visions, their bulk, their solidity, the way in which
they return to us and we return to them, make them such
dream-stuff as there is all too little of in this world. If it is
true that evil on the whole predominates over good in the
vision of this "Voyant," as Philarete Chasles so justly
called him (and I think it does, though not to the same ex-
tent as I once thought), two very respectable, and in one case
very large, though somewhat opposed divisions of mankind,
the philosophic pessimist and the convinced and consistent
Christian believer, will tell us that this is at least not one of
the points in which it is unfaithful to life. If the author
is closer and more faithful in his study of meanness and vice
than in his studies of nobility and virtue, the blame is due
at least as much to his models as to himself. If, as I fear
must be confessed, he has seldom succeeded in combining
a really passionate with a really noble conception of love,
very few of his countrymen have been more fortunate in that
respect. If in some of his types— rhis journalists, his mar-
ried women, and others — he seems to have sacrificed to con-
ventions, let us remember that those who know attribute to
his conventions such a powerful if not altogether such a
holy influence that two generations of the people he painted
have actually lived more and more up to his painting of
them.
And last of all, but also greatest, has to be considered
the immensity of his imaginative achievement, the huge space
HONORE DE BALZAC xlv
that he has filled for us with vivid creation, the range of
amusement, of instruction, of (after a fashion) edification
which he has thrown open for us all to walk in. It is pos-
sible that he himself and others more or less well-meaningly,
though more or less maladroitly, following his lead, may
have exaggerated the coherence and the architectural design
of the Comedie. But it has coherence and it has design ; nor
shall we find anything exactly to parallel it. In mere bulk
the Comedie probably, if not certainly, exceeds the produc-
tion of any novelist of the first class in any kind of fiction
except Dumas, and with Dumas, for various and well-known
reasons, there is no possibility of comparing it. All others
yield in bulk; all in a certain concentration and intensity;
none even aims at anything like the same system and com-
pleteness. It must be remembered that owing to shortness
of life, lateness of beginning, and the diversion of the author
to other work, the Comedie is the production, and not the
sole production, of some seventeen or eighteen years at
most. Not a volume of it, for all that failure to reach the
completest perfection in form and style which has been ac-
knowledged, can be accused of thinness, of scamped work,
of mere repetition, of mere cobbling up. Every one bears the
marks of steady and ferocious labor, as well as of the
genius which had at last come where it had been so earnestly
called and had never gone away again. It is possible to over-
praise Balzac in parts or to mispraise him as a whole. But
so long as inappropriate and superfluous comparisons are
avoided and as his own excellence is recognized and appre-
ciated, it is scarcely possible to overestimate that excellence
m itself and for itself. He stands alone ; even with Dickens,
who is his nearest analogue, he shows far more points of dif-
xlvl HONORE DE BALZAC
ference than of likeness. His vastness of bulk is not more
remarkable than his peculiarity of quality; and when these
two things coincide in literature or elsewhere, then that in
which they coincide may be called, and must be called, Great,
without hesitation and without reserve.
George Saintsbury.
APPENDIX
The form in which Balzac's works were known to the public
for something like a generation after his death was classified
in the following manner, the division having been, after many
others, made by himself, and being that in which the work
stood at the time of his death, except that the Depute d'Arcis
was not then fully published : —
COMEDIE HUMAINE.
SCENES DE LA VIE PRIVEE.
Tome 1. La Maison du Chat-qui-pelote, Le Bal de
Sceaux. La Bourse. La Vendetta. Mme. Firmiani. TJne
Double Famille.
Tome 2. La Paix du Menage. La Fausse Maitresse.
;fitude de femme. Autre etude de femme. La Grande
Breteche. Albert Savarus.
Tome 3. Memoires de deux Jeunes Mariees. line Fille
d':five.
Tome 4. La Femme de Trente Ans. La Femme aban-
donnee. La Grenadiere. Le Message. Gobseck.
Tome 5. Le Contrat de Mariage. Un Debut dans la vie.
Tome 6. Modeste Mignon.
Tome 7. Beatrix.
Tome 8. Honorine. Le Colonel Chabert. La Messe de
I'Athee. L'Interdiction. Pierre Grassou.
(xlvii)
xrYiii APPENDIX
SCENES DE LA VIE DE PROVINCE.
Tome 9. Ursule Mirouet.
Tome 10. Eugenie Grandet,
Tome 11. Les C^libataires — I. Pierrette. Le Cure de
Tours.
Tome 12. Les Celibataires — II. Un Menage de gargon.
Tome 13. Les Parisiens en Province. L'illustre Gau-
dissart. La Muse du departement.
Tome 14. Les Eivalites. La Vieille Fille. Le Cabinet
des antiques.
Tome 15. Le Lys dans la Vallee.
Tome 16. Illusions Perdues — I. Les Deux Poetes Un
grand Homme de province a Paris, Ire partie.
Tome 17. Illusions Perdues — II. Un grand Homme de
province, 2e p. Eve et David.
SCilNES DE la vie PARISIENNE.
Tome 18. Splendeurs et Mis^res des Courtisanes.
Esther heureuse. A eombien I'amour revient aux vieillards.
Ou menent les mauvais chemins.
Tome 19. La Derni^re Incarnation de Vautrin. Un
Prince de la Boheme. Un Homme d'affaires. Gaudissart II.
Les Comediens sans le savoir.
Tome 20. Histoire des Treize. Ferragus. La Duchesse
de Langeais. La Fille aux yeux d'or.
Tome 21. Le PSre Goriot.
Tome 22. C^sar Birotteau.
Tome 23. La Maison Nucingen. Les Secrets de la prin^
cosse de Cadignan. Les Employes. Sarrasine. Facino
Cane.
APPENDIX xWx
Tome 24. Les Parents Pauvres — I. La Coiisine Bette,
Tome 25. Les Parents Pauvres — 11. Le Cousin Pons.
SCENES DE la vie POLITIQUE.
Tome 26. Une T^n:^breuse Affaire. Un Episode sous
la Terreur.
Tome ^7. L'Envers de l'Histoire Contemporaine.
Madame de la Chanterie. L'Initie. Z. Mareas.
Tome 28. Le Depute d'Arcis.
SCJlNES DE LA VIE MILITAIRE.
Tome 29. Les Chouans. Une Passion dans le desert.
SCENES DE LA VIE DE CAMPAGNE.
Tome 30. Le Medecin de Campagne.
Tome 31. Le Cure de Village.
Tome 32. Les Paysans.
:^tudes philosophiques.
Tome 33. La Peau de Chagrin.
Tome 34. La Recherche de l^Absolu. Jesus-Christ en
Flandre. Melmoth reconcilie. Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu.
Tome 35. L'Enfant Maudit. Gambara. Massimilla
Doni.
Tome 36. Les Marana. Adieu. Le Requisitionnaire.
El Verdugo. Un Drame au bord de la mer. L'Auberge
rouge. L'Elixir de longue vie. Maitre Cornelius.
Tome 37. Sur Catherine de M^dicis. Le Martyr cal-
viniste. Le Confidence des Ruggieri. Les deux Reves.
Tome 38. Louis Lambert. Les Proscrits. Seraphita.
VOL. I. — 4
APPENDIX
ETUDES ANALYTIQUES.
Tome 39. Physiologie du Mariage.
Tome 40. Petites MisSres de la vie Conjdgale.
CONTES DROLATIQUES.
Tome 41. Tome 43. Tome 43.
THEATRE.
Tome 44. Vautrin, drame. Les Kessourees de Quinola,
comedie.
Tome 45. La Maratre, drame. Le Faiseur (Mercadet),
comedie.
(EUVRES DE JEUNESSE.
Tome 46. Jean-Louis.
Tome 47. L'Israelite.
Tome 48. L'H:^ritiere de Birague.
Tome 49. Le Centenaire.
Tome 50. La Derniere Fee.
Tome 51. Le Vicaire des Ardennes.
Tome 52. Argow le Pirate.
Tome 53. Jane la Pale.
Tome 54. Dom Gigadas.
Tome 55. L'Excommunie.
It seems, however, that Balzac left, on a copy of the works,
certain indications of change; and when, many years later,
an Edition Definitive was published, this order, with a few
small changes for convenience sake, was accepted. This
edition added to the Comedie one considerable novel. Les
APPENDIX H
PetUs Bourgeois (a novel, however, which, like Le Depute
d'Arcis, is said to have been finished by another hand),
altered the order and titles of the tales in some cases, and
sometimes varied the text a little. On the whole, however,
Inasmuch as Balzac never did actually issue the Works in this
form, and as, with his restless spirit of change, he would have
pretty certainly made further alterations, the old classifica-
tion seems preferable to the new. It is rather more closely
adhered to in the following translation, but not absolutely,
the great variation of size in the volumes having necessitated
some redistribution of the smaller tales. Nor has it been
thought necessary to observe in publication the order of the
works, the place of each of which in the general scheme will
be immediately recognized by looking at this table.
It should, however, be noted that the Edition Definitive
contains, besides the Petits Bourgeois (but exclusive of the
(Euvres de Jeunesse, which do not there appear), an exceed-
ingly interesting volume of letters, four more of Miscel-
laneous Works, not perhaps of the first attraction to the gen-
eral reader, but invaluable to the student ; and a masterly His-
toire des CEuvres de Balzac, by M. le Vicomte de Spoelberch
de Lovenjoul, in which all the services that the bibliographer
can do to a voluminous and intricate author are bestowed
with a modesty, industry, erudition, and clearness not else-
where surpassed in literature. jSTot much less useful is the
companion volume to the library edition entitled Repertoire
de la Comedie Humaine, by MM. Cerfberr and Christophe, in
which the various appearances of the personages in the novels
are reduced to a sort of biographical dictionary.
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
In giving the general title of "The Human Comedy" to a
work begun nearly thirteen years since, it is necessary to
explain its motive, to relate its origin, and briefly sketch its
plan, while endeavoring to speak of these matters as though
I had no personal interest in them. This is not so difficult
as the public might imagine. Few works conduce to much
vanity; much labor conduces to great diffidence. This ob-
servation accounts for the study of their own works made by
Corneille, Moliere, and other great writers; if it is im-
possible to equal them in their fine conceptions, we may try
to imitate them in this feeling.
The idea of The Human Comedy was at first as a dream
to me, one of those impossible projects which we caress and
then let fly; a chimera that gives us a glimpse of its smiling
woman's face, and forthwith spreads its wings and returns
to a heavenly realm of phantasy. But this chimera, like
many another, has become a reality; has its behests, its
tyranny, M^hich must be obeyed.
The idea originated in a comparison between Humanity
and Animality.
It is a mistake to suppose that the great dispute which has
lately made a stir, between Cuvier and Geoffroi Saint-
Hilaire, arose from a scientific innovation. Unity of
structure, under other names, had occupied the greatest
minds during the two previous centuries. As we read the
extraordinary writings of the mystics who studied the
Uv AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
sciences in their relation to infinity, such as Swedenborgj
Saint-Martin, and others, and the works of the greatest au-
thors on Natural History — Leibnitz, Buffon, Charles Bon<
net, etc., we detect in the monads of Leibnitz, in the organic
molecules of Buffon, in the vegetative force of Needham, in
the correlation of similar organs of Charles Bonnet — who
in 1760 was so bold as to write, "Animals vegetate as plants
do" — we detect, I say, the rudiments of the great law of Self
for Self, which lies at the root of Unity of Plan. There is
but one Animal. The Creator works on a single model for
every organized being. "The Animal" is elementary, and
takes its external form, or, to be accurate, the differences in
its form, from the environment in which it is obliged to de-
velop. Zoological species are the result of these differences.
The announcement and defence of this system, which is in-
deed in harmony with our preconceived ideas of Divine
Power, will be the eternal glory of Geoffroi Saint-Hilaire,
Cuvier's victorious opponent on this point of higher science,
whose triumph was hailed by Goethe in the last article he
wrote.
I, for my part, convinced of this scheme of nature long be-
fore the discussion to which it has given rise, perceived that
in this respect society resembled nature. For does not so-
ciety modify Man, according to the conditions in which he
lives and acts, into men as manifold as the species in Zoology?
The differences between a soldier, an artisan, a man of busi-
ness, a lawyer, an idler, a student, a statesman, a merchant^
a sailor, a poet, a beggar, a priest, are as great, though not
so easy to define, as those between the wolf, the lion, the ass,
the crow, the shark, the seal, the sheep, etc. Thus social
species have always existed, and will always exist, just as
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION Iv
tbnre are zoological species. If Buff on conld produce a
magnificent work by attempting to represent in a book the
whole realm of zoology, was there not room for a work of the
same kind on society ? But the limits set by nature to the
variations of animals have no existence in society. When
Buffon describes the lion, he dismisses the lioness with a few
phrases ; but in society a wife is not always the female of the
male. There may be two perfectly dissimilar beings in one
household. The wife of a shopkeeper is sometimes worthy of
a prince, and the wife of a prince is often worthless com-
pared with the wife of an artisan. The social state has freaks
which Nature does not allow herself ; it is nature plus society.
The description of social species would thus be at least
double that of animal species, merely in view of the two
sexes. Then, among animals the drama is limited; there
is scarcely any confusion; they turn and rend each other —
that is all. Men, too, rend each other; but their greater or
less intelligence makes the struggle far 'more complicated.
Though some savants do not yet admit that the animal na-
ture flows into human nature through an immense tide of
life, the grocer certainly becomes a peer, and the noble some-
times sinks to the lowest social grade. Again, Buffon found
that life was extremely simple among animals. Animals
have little property, and neither arts nor sciences; while
man, by a law that has yet to be sought, has a tendency to
express his culture, his thoughts, and his life in everything
he appropriates to his use. Though Leuwenhoek, Swammer-
dam, Spallanzani, Eeaumur, Charles Bonnet, Miiller, Haller
and other patient investigators have shown us how interest-
ing are the habits of animals, those of each kind arc, at least
to our eyes, always and in every age alike ; whereas the dress.
ivi AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
the manners, the speech, the dwelling of a prince, a banker,
an artist, a citizen, a priest, and a pauper are absolutely un-
like, and change with every phase of civilization.
Hence the work to be written needed a threefold form —
men, women, and things; that is to say, persons and the
material expression of their minds; man, in short, and life.
As we read the dry and discouraging list of events called
History, who can have failed to note that the writers of all
periods, in Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome, have forgotten
to give us the history of manners? The fragment of Petro-
nius on the private life of the Romans excites rather than
satisfies our curiosity. It was from observing this great void
in the field of history that the Abbe Barthelemy devoted his
life to a reconstruction of Greek manners in Le Jeune An-
acharsis.
But how could such a drama, with the four or five thou-
sand persons which a society offers, be made interesting?
How, at the same time, please the poet, the philosopher, and
the masses who want both poetry and philosophy under strik-
ing imagery? Though I could conceive of the importance
and of the poetry of such a history of the human heart, I
saw no way of writing it; for hitherto the most famous
story-tellers had spent their talent in creating two or three
typical actors, in depicting one aspect of life. It was with
this idea that I read the works of Walter Scott. Walter Scott,
the modern troubadour, or finder {tronvere=trouveur) , had
just then given an aspect of grandeur to a class of composi-
tion unjustly regarded as of the second rank. Is it not really
more difficult to compete with personal and parochial inter-
ests by writing of Daphnis and Chloe, Roland, Amadis,
Panurge, Don Quixote, Manon Lescaut, Clarissa, Lovelace,
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION Ivil
Robinson Crusoe, Gil Bias, Ossian, Julie d'Etanges, My
Uncle Toby, Werther, Corinne, Adolphe, Paul and Virginia,
Jeanie Deans, Claverhouse, Ivanhoe, Manfred, Mignon, than
to set forth in order facts more or less similar in every coun-
try, to investigate the spirit of laws that have fallen into
desuetude, to review the theories which mislead nations, or,
like some metaphysicians, to explain what Is'? In the first
place, these actors, whose existence becomes more prolonged
and more authentic than that of the generations which saw
their birth, almost always live solely on condition of their
being a vast reflection of the present. Conceived in the womb
of their own period, the whole heart of humanity stirs within
their frame, which often covers a complete system of philoso-
phy. Thus Walter Scott raised to the dignity of the philoso-
phy of History the literature which, from age to age, sets
perennial gems in the poetic crown of every nation where
letters are cultivated. He vivified it with the spirit of the
past; he combined drama, dialogue, portrait, scenery, and
description; he fused the marvelous with truth — the two ele-
ments of the times; and he brought poetry into close con-
tact with the familiarity of the humblest speech. But as he
had not so much devised a system as hit upon a manner in
the ardor of his work, or as its logical outcome, he never
thought of connecting his compositions in such a way as to
form a complete history of which each chapter was a novel,
and each novel the picture of a period.
It was by discerning this lack of unity, which in no way
detracts from the Scottish writer's greatness, that I perceived
at once the scheme which would favor the execution of my
purpose, and the possibility of executing it. Though dazzled,
so to speak, by Walter Scott's amazing fertility, always him-
iviii AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
self and always original, I did not despair, for I found the
source of his genius in the infinite variety of human nature.
Chance is the greatest romancer in the world; we have only
to study it. French society would be the real author; I
should only be the secretary. By drawing up an inventory
of vices and virtues, by collecting the chief facts of the pas-
sions, by depicting characters, by choosing the principal in-
cidents of social life, by composing types out of a combina-
tion of homogeneous characteristics, I might perhaps suc-
ceed in writing the history which so many historians have
neglected: that of Manners. By patience and perseverance
I might produce for France in the nineteenth century the
book which we must all regret that Eome, Athens, Tyre,
Memphis, Persia, and India have not bequeathed to us ; that
history of their social life which, prompted by the Abbe Bar-
thelemy, Monteil patiently and steadily tried to write for
the Middle Ages, but in an unattractive form.
The work, so far, was nothing. By adhering to the strict
lines of a reproduction a writer might be a more or less
faithful, and more or less successful, painter of types of
humanity, a narrator of the dramas of private life, an
archffiologist of social furniture, a cataloguer of professions,
a registrar of good and evil; but to- deserve the praise of
which every artist must be ambitious, must I not also in-
vestigate the reasons or the cause of these social effects,
detect the hidden sense of this vast assembly of figures, pas-
sions, and incidents ?J And finall}'', having sought — I will
not say having found — this reason, this motive power, must
I not reflect on first principles, and discover in what particu-
lars societies approach or deviate from the eternal law of
truth and beauty? In spite of the wide scope of the pre-
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION lix
liminaries, which might of themselves constitute a book, the
work, to be complete, would need a conclusion. Thus de-
picted, society ought to bear in itself the reason of its work-
ing.
The law of the writer, in virtue of which he is a writer,
and which I do not hesitate to say makes him the equal,
or perhaps the superior, of the statesman, is his judgment,
whatever it may be, on human affairs, and his absolute de-
votion to certain principles. Maehiavelli, Hobbes, Bossuet,
Leibnitz, Kant, Montesquieu, are the science which statesmen
apply. "A writer ought to "have settled opinions on morals '
and politics; he should regard himself as a tutor of men; for
men need no masters to teach them to doubt," says Bonald. '^
I took these noble words as my guide long ago; they are
the written law of the monarchical writer. And those who
would confute me by my own words will find that they have
misinterpreted some ironical phrase, or that they have turned
against me a speech given to one of my actors — a trick pe-
culiar to calumniators.
As to the intimate purpose, the soul of this work, these are
the principles on which it is based.
Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts
and capabilities; society, far from depraving him, as Eous-
seau asserts, improves him, makes him better; but self-in-
terest also develops his evil tendencies. Christianity, above
all, Catholicism, being — as I have pointed out in the Country
Doctor (le Medecin de Campagne) — a complete system for
the repression of the depraved tendencies of man, is the
most powerful element of social order.
In reading attentively the presentment of society cast,
as it were, from the life, with all that is crood and all that
Ix AUTHOR'? INTRODUCTION
is bad in it, we learn this lesson — if thought, or if passion,
which combines thought and feeling, is the vital social ele-
ment, it is also its destructive element. In this respect social
life is like the life of man. Nations live long only by
moderating their vital energy. Teaching, or rather educa-
tion, by religious bodies is the grand principle of life for
nations, the only means of diminishing the sum of evil
and increasing the sum of good in all society. Thought, the
iiving principle of good and ill, can only be trained, quelled,
and guided by religion. The only possible religion is Chris-
tianity (see the letter from Paris in "Louis Lambert," in
which the young mystic explains, a propos to Swedenborg's
doctrines, how there has never been but one religion since
the world began). Christianity created modern nationalities,
and it will preserve them. Hence,, no doubt, the necessity
for the monarchical principle. Catholicism and Royalty are
twin principles.
As to the limits within which these two principles should
be confined by various institutions, so that they may not be-
come absolute, every one will feel that a brief preface ought
not to be a political treatise. I cannot, therefore, enter on
religious discussions, nor on the political discussions of the
day. I write under the light of two eternal truths — Eeligion
and Monarchy; two necessities, as they are shown to be by
contemporary events, towards which every writer of sound
sense ought to tr}' to guide the country back. Without
being an enemy to election, which is an excellent principle
as a basis of legislation, I reject election regarded as the only
social instrument, especially so badly organized as it now is
(1842) ; for it fails to represent imposing minorities, whose
ideas and interests would occupy the attention of a men-
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION Ixi
archical government. Elective power extended to all gives
us government by the masses, the only irresponsible form of
government, under which tyranny is unlimited, for it calls
itself law. Besides, I regard the family and not the indi-
vidual as the true social unit. In this respect, at the risk of
being thought retrograde, I side with Bossuet and Bonald in-
stead of going with modern innovators. Since election has
become the only social instrument, if I myself were to exer-
cise it no contradiction between my acts and my words should
be inferred. An engineer points out that a bridge is about to
fall, that it is dangerous for any one to cross it; but he
crosses it himself when it is the only road to the town.
Napoleon adapted election to the spirit of the French nation
with wonderful skill. The least important members of his
Legislative Body became the most famous orators of the
Chamber after the Eestoration. No Chamber has ever been
the equal of the Corps Legislatif, comparing them man for
man. The elective system of the Empire was, then, indis-
putably the best.
Some persons may, perhaps, think that this declaration
is somewhat autocratic and self-assertive. They will quarrel
with the novelist for wanting to be an historian, and will
call him to account for writing politics. I am simply fu/fill-
ing an obligation — that is my reply. The work I have under-
taken will be as long as a history; I was compelled to ex-
plain the logic of it, hitherto unrevealed, and its principles
^and moral purpose.
^ Having been obliged to withdraw the prefaces formerly
published, in response to essentially ephemeral criticisms, I
will retain only one remark.
Writers who have a purpose in view, were it only a re-
bsil AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
version to principles familiar in the past because they are
eternal, should always clear the ground. Now every one who,,
in the domain of ideas, brings his stone by pointing out an
abuse, or setting a mark on some evil that it may be re-
m.oved — every such man is stigmatized as immoral. The
accusation of immorality, which has never failed to be cast
at the courageous writer, is, after all, the last that can be
brought when nothing else remains to be said to a romancer.
If you are truthful in your pictures ; if by dint of daily and
nightly toil you succeed in writing the most difficult language
in the world, the word immoral is flung in your teeth.
Socrates was immoral ; Jesus Christ was immoral ; they both
were persecuted in the name of the society they overset or
reformed. When a man is to be killed he is taxed with im-
morality. These tactics, familiar in party warfare, are a
disgrace to those who use them. Luther and Calvin knew
well what they were about when they shielded themselves be-
hind damaged worldly interests ! And they lived all the
days of their life.
When depicting all society, sketching it in the immensity
of its turmoil, it happened — it could not but happen — that
the picture displayed more of evil than of good; that some
part of. the fresco represented a guilty couple ; and the critics
at once raised the cry of immorality, without pointing out
the morality of another portion intended to be a perfect con-
trast. As the critic knew nothing of the general plan I
could forgive him, all the more because one can no more
hinder criticism than the use of eyes, tongues, and judgments
Also the time for an impartial verdict is not yet come for
me. And, after all, the author who cannot make up his
mind to face the fire of criticism should no more think of
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION Ixiii
writing than a traveler should start on his journey counting
on a perpetually clear sky. On this point it remains to be
said that the most conscientious moralists doubt greatly
whether society can show as many good actions as bad ones ;
and in the picture I have painted of it there are more virtu-
ous figures than reprehensible ones. Blameworthy actions,
faults and crimes, from the lightest to the most atrocious,
Mways meet with punishment, human or divine, signal or
secret. I have done better than the historian, for I am free.
Cromwell here on earth escajaed all punishment but that
inflicted by thoughtful men. And on this point there have
been divided schools. Bossuet even showed some considera-
tion for the great regicide. William of Orange, the usurper,
Hugues Capet, anotlier usurper, lived to old age with no
more qualms or fears than Henri IV. or Charles I. The
lives of Catherine 11. and of Frederick of Prussia would be
conclusive against any kind of moral law, if they were
judged by the twofold aspect of the morality which guides
ordinary mortals, and that which is in use by crowned heads ;
for, as Napoleon said, for kings and statesmen there are the
lesser and the higher morality. My scenes of political life
are founded on this profound observation. It is not a law ~]
to history, as it is to romance, to make for a beautiful ideal, i
History is, or ought to be, what it was ; while romance ought
to be "the better world," as was said by Mme. Keeker, one of |
the most distinguished thinkers of the last centur)-. 1
Still, with this noble falsity, romance would be nothing
if it were not true in detail. Walter Scott, obliged as he
was to conform to the ideas of an essentially hypocritical na- j
tion, was false to humanity in his picture of woman, be-
cause his models were schismatics. The Protestant woman
bciv AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
has no ideal. She may be chaste, pure, virtuous; but her
unexpansive love will always be as calm and methodical as
the fulfilment o^ a duty. It might seem as though the
Virgin Mary had chilled the hearts of those sophists who
have banished her from heaven with her treasures of loving-
kindness. In Protestantism there is no possible future foi'
the woman who has sinned; while, in the Catholic Church,
the hope of forgiveness makes her sublime. Hence, for the
Protestant writer there is but one Woman, while the Catholic
writer finds a new woman in each new situation. If Walter
Scott had been a Catholic, if he had set himself the task of
describing truly the various phases of society which have
successively existed in Scotland, perhaps the painter of Effie
and Alice — the two figures for which he blamed himself in
his later years — might have admitted passion with its sins
and punishments, and the virtues revealed by repentance.
Passion is the sum-total of humanity. Without passion, re-
ligion, history, romance, art, would all be useless.
Some persons, seeing me collect such a mass of facts and
paint them as they are, with passion for their motive power,
have supposed, but wrongly, that I must belong to the school
of Sensualism and Materialism — two aspects of the same
thing — Pantheism. But their misapprehension was perhaps
justified — or inevitable. I do not share the belief in in-
definite progress for society as a whole; I believe in man's
improvement in himself. Those who insist on reading in
me the intention to consider man as a finished creation are
strangely mistaken. Seraphita, the doctrine in action of the
Christian Buddha, seems to me an ample answer to this
rather heedless accusation.
In certain fragments of this lon<]r work I have tried to
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION Ixv
popularize the amazing facts, I may say the marvels, of elec-
tricity, which in man is metamorphosed into an incalculable
force; but in what ^ray do the phenomena of brain and
nerves, which prove the existence of an undiscovered world of
psychology, modify the necessary and undoubted relations
of the worlds to God? In what way can they shake the
Catholic dogma? Though irrefutable facts should some day
place thought in the class of fluids which are discerned only
by their effects while their substance evades our senses, even
when aided by so many mechanical means, the result will
be the same as when Christopher Columbus detected that the
earth is a sphere, and Galileo demonstrated its rotation. Our
future will be unchanged. The wonders of animal mag-
netism, with which I have been familiar since 1820; the
beautiful experiments of Gall, Lavater's successor; all the
men who have studied mind as opticians have studied light —
two not dissimilar things — point to a conclusion in favor
of the mystics, the disciples of St. John, and of those great
thinkers who have established the spiritual world — the sphere
in which are revealed the relations of God and man.
A sure grasp of the purport of this work will make it clear
that I attach to common, daily facts, hidden or patent to
the eye, to the acts of individual lives, and to their causes
and principles, the importance which historians have hitherto
ascribed to the events of public national life. The un-
known struggle which goes on in a valley of the Indre
between Mme. de Mortsauf and her passion is perhaps as
great as the most famous of battles {Le Lys dans la ValUe).
In one the glory of the victor is at stake ; in the other it is
heaven. The misfortunes of the two Birotteaus, the priest
and the perfumer, to me are those of mankind. La Fosseuse
Vnu T. — 5
Ixvl AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
(Medecin de Campagne) and Mme. Graslin (Cure de Vil-
lage) are almost the sum-total of woman. We all suffer thus
every day. I have had to do a hundred times what Hichard-
son did but once. Lovelace has a thousand forms, for social
corruption takes the hues of the medium in which it lives.
Clarissa, on the contrary, the lovely image of impassioned
virtue, is drawn in lines of distracting purity. To create £
variety of Virgins it needs a Eaphael. In this respect, per-
haps literature must yield to painting.
Still, I may be allowed to point out how many irreproach-
able figures — as regards their virtue — are to be found in
the portions of this work already published : Pierrette 'Lor-
rain, Ursule Mirouet, Constance Birotteau, La Fosseuse,
Eugenie Grandet, Marguerite Claes, Pauline de Villenoix,
Madame Jules, Madame de la Chanterie, Eve Chardon,
Mademoiselle d'Esgrignon, Madame Firmiani, Agathe
Eouget, Renee de Maucombe; besides several figures in the
middle-distance, who, though less conspicuous than these,
nevertheless, offer the reader an example of domestic virtue ;
Joseph Lebas, Genestas, Benassis, Bonnet the cure, Minoret
the doctor, Pillerault, David Sechard, the two Birotteaus,
Chaperon the priest. Judge Popinot, Bourgeat, the Sauviats,
the Tascherons, and many more. Do not all these solve the
difficult literary problem which consists in making a virtuous
person interesting?
It was no small task to depict the two or three thousand
conspicuous types of a period ; for this is, in fact, the number
presented to us by each generation, and which the Human
Comedy will require. This crowd of actors, of characters,
this multitude of lives, needed a setting — if I may be par-
doned the expression, a gallery. Hence tlie very naturar divi-
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION lxvi\
sion, as already known, into Scenes of Private Life, of Pro-
vincial Life, of Parisian, Political, Military, and Country
Life. Under these six heads are classified all the studies of
manners which form the history of society at large, of all its
faits et gestes, as our ancestors would have s^id. These six
classes correspond, indeed, to familiar conceptions. Each
has its own sense and meaning, and answers to an epoch in
the life of man. I may repeat here, but very briefly, what was
written by Felix Davin — a young genius snatched from litera-
ture by an early death. After being informed of my plan,
he said that the Scenes of Private Life represented child-
hood and youth and their errors, as the Scenes of Provincial
Life represented the age of passion, scheming, self-interest,
and ambition. Then the Scenes of Parisian Life give a
picture of the tastes and vice and unbridled powers which
conduce to the habits peculiar to great cities, where the ex-
tremes of good and evil meet. Each of these divisions has
its local color — Paris and the Provinces — a great social an-
tithesis which held for me immense resources.
And not man alone, but the principal events of life, fall
into classes by types. There are situations which occur in
every life, typical phases, and this is one of the details I most
sought after. I have tried to give an idea of the different
districts of our fine country. My work has its geography,
as it has its genealogy and its families, its places and things,
Its persons and their deeds; as it has its heraldry, its nobles
and commonalty, its artisans and peasants, its politicians and
dandies, its army — in short, a whole world of its own.
After describing social life in these three portions, I had
to delineate certain exceptional lives, which comprehend
the interests of many people, or of everybody, and are in
Ixvili AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
a degree outside the general law. Hence we have Scenes
of Political Life. This vast picture of society being finished
and complete, was it not needful to display it in its most
violent phase, beside itself, as it were, either in self-defence
or for the sake of conquest? Hence the Scenes of Military
Life, as yet the most incomplete portion of my work, but
for which room will be allowed in this edition, that it may
form part of it when done. Finall}^, the Scenes of Country
Life are, in a way, the evening of this long day, if I may
so call the social drama. In that part are to be found the
purest natures, and the application of the great principles of
order, politics, and morality.
Such is the foundation, full of actors, full of comedies
and tragedies, on which are raised the Philosophical Studies
— the second part of my work, in which the social instru-
ment of all these effects is displayed, and the ravages of the
mind are painted, feeling after feeling; the first of this
series. The Magic Sbin, to some extent forms a link between
the Philosophical Studies and Studies of Manners, by a
work of almost Oriental fancy, in which life itself is shown
in a mortal struggle with the very element of all passion.
Besides these, there will be a series of Analytical Studies,
of which I will say nothing, for one only is published as yet
— The Physiology of Marriage.
In the course of time I purpose writing two more works
of this class. First, the Pathology of Social Life, then an
Anatomy of Educational Bodies, and a IMonograph on A^irtue.
In looking forward to what remains to be done, my readers
will perhaps echo what my publishers say, "Please God to
spare you !" I only ask to be less tormented by men and
things than I have hitherto been since I began this terrific
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION Ixlx
labor. I have had this in my favor, and I thank God for it,
that the talents of the time, the finest characters and the
truest friends, as noble in their private lives as the former
are in public life, have wrung my hand and said. Courage !
And why should I not confess that this friendship, and
the testimony here and there of persons unknown to me,
have upheld me in my career, both against myself and
against unjust attacks; against the calumny which has often
persecuted me, against discouragement, and against the too
eager hopefulness whose utterances are misinterpreted as
those of overweening conceit? I had resolved to display
stolid stoicism in the face of abuse and insults; but on two
occasions base slanders have necessitated a reply. Though
the advocates of forgiveness of injuries may regret that I
should have displayed my skill in literary fence, there are
many Christians who are of opinion that we live in times
when it is as well to show sometimes that silence springs
from generosity.
The vastness of a plan which includes both a history and a
criticism of society, an analysis of its evils, and a discussion
of its principles, authorizes me, I think, in giving to my
work the title under which it now appears — The Human
Comedy. Is this too ambitious? Is it not exact? That,
when it is complete, the public must pronounce.
Pabis, Jvly 1842.
INTRODUCTION
The Peau de Chagrin is the one book of Balzac's which it
is difficult for those who know it to approach without a
somewhat uncritical enthusiasm. It is not faultless; no
book of his is, and this cannot challenge the epithet, even
to the extent to which not a few others can challenge it. It
is earlier than almost any of the mature novels, except the
Chouans; and it bears in some respects the marks of its
earliness as well as, in others, those of that rather artificial
scheme of representing life, which was so strongly charac-
teristic of the author, and which, while it helped him in con-
ceiving the Comeclie Humaine, imposed a certain restraint
and hamper on the Comedie itself.. We could spare a good
deal of the journalist and other talk at the orgy; and more
persons than Emile have gone to sleep over, or have escaped
sleep only by skipping, the unconscionable length of
Eaphael's story.
But these are the merest and most miserable of details.
In the first place, the conception is of the very finest. You
may call it an etude philosophique, or you may not; you
may class it as an "allegory" on the banks of the Nile or
the Seine, or any other river, if you like. Neither title will
do it any harm, and neither can explain it or exalt it higher.
The Law of Nemesis — the law that every extraordinary ex-
pansion or satisfaction of heart or brain or will is paid for —
paid for inevitably, incom mutably, without the possibility
(Ixxi)
IxxU INTRODUCTION
of putting off or transferring the payment — is one of the
truths about which no human being with a soul a little above
the brute has the slightest doubt. It may be put religiously
as, "Know that for all these things God will bring thee into
judgment;" or philosophically, as in the same book, "All
things are double, one against the other;" or in any other
fashion or language. But it is an eternal and immutable
verity, and the soul of man bears witness to it.
It is Balzac's way to provide abundant, and not always
economically arranged backgrounds and contrasts for his
central pictures; and the gaming-house (the model of how
many gaming-houses since?), the gorgeous capharnaum of
the curiosity shop, and the "orgy" provide these in the pres-
ent case lavishly enough. The orgy is undoubtedly the
weakest. It is only touched with others by the pleasant
and good-humored skit of Gautier in Les Jeune-France; but
the note there struck is, as usual with "Theo," the right one.
You cannot "organize" an orgy; the thing comes naturally
or not at all ; and in the splendors of Taillef er, as in those of
Trimalchio, there is a certain coldness.
But this is soon forgotten in the absorbing interest of the
Skin and its master. The only adverse comment which has
ever occurred to me is, that one might perhaps have expected
a longer period of insouciance, of more or less reckless en-
joyment of the privileges, to elapse before a vivid conscious-
ness of the curse and of the penalty. I know no answer,
unless it be that Balzac took the orgy itself to be, as it were,
the wild oats of Raphael's period — in which case he had not
much to show for it. But wlien the actual consciousness
wakes, when the Skin has been measured on the napkin, and
its shrinking noted, nothing is questionable any longer. The
INTRODUCTION IxxiU
frenzied anxiety of the victim is not overdone; the way in
which his very frenzy leads him to malve greater and even
greater drafts on his capital of power without any corre-
sponding satisfaction is masterly. And the close is more
masterly still. To some tastes the actual conclusion may be a
thought too allegorical, but in mil-huit-cent-trente your alle-
gory was your only wear; and Gautier, in the pleasant book
above cited, was thoroughly in the fashion when he auda-
ciously put a hidden literary meaning on the merry tale of
"Celle-ci et celle-la." Here, too, if anywhere, the opposition
of Pauline and Foedora in this way is justified. It softens
off the too high-strung tragedy of the catastrophe at the
same time that it points the moral, and it rounds as much
as it adorns the tale.
It has been observed, in no carping or hypercritical spirit,
that passages of the book are somewhat high-flown in style.
The fact is that Balzac had rather a tendency to this style,
and only outgrew it, if he ever did outgrow it, by dint of its
greater and greater unfitness for his chosen subjects. Here,
if anywhere, it was excusable, just as here, if anywhere, the
gigantic element in his genius found scope and play. There
had been some "inventories" in literature before, and there
have been many more since the description of the curiosity
shop; but none, if we except the brief Shakespearian perfec-
tion of that in Clarence's dream, and none at all in a heaped
and minute style, can approach this. The thing is night-
marish— you see the magots and the armor, the pictures and
the statues, and amongst them all the sinister "piece of
shagreen," with the ineffaceable letters stamped on it.
And so over all the book there is the note of the voyant,
of the seer who sees and who makes others see. This note
Ixxiv INTRODUCTION
is seldom an idyllic or merely pleasant one; the writer who
has it must have, even in such a book as the Medecin de Cam-
pagne, a black thread in his twist, a sombre background to
his haj^py valley. Here the subject not only excuses, but
demands a constant sombreness, a tone of thunder in the
air, of eclipse and earthquake. And the tone is given. A
very miserable person would he be who endeavored to pick
out burlesque points in the Peau de Chagrin, the most apoca-
lyptic of the novels of the nineteenth century, and yet one of
the most soberly true in general theme and theory. When
one thinks of the tireless efforts which have been made, es-
pecially of late years, to "pejorate" pessimism and blacken
gloom, and of the too general conclusion of yawn or laugh
to which they bring us, it is doubly curious to come back to
this sermon by a ver}^ unpriestly preacher on the simple text,
"Whom the gods curse, to hiin they grant the desires of his
heart."
Two other tales are here included. Jesus-Christ en Flandre
is good, and Melmoth reconcilie, inferior in itself, has a spe-
cial and adventitious interest. Maturin, whose most famous
book (quite recently reprinted after long forgetfulness, but
one of European interest in its time, and of special influence
on Balzac) can hardly be said to receive here a eontinuatior/
which is exactly en suite, and the odd thing is that nothing
was further from Balzac's mind than to parody his original.
The thing, therefore, is a curious example of the difference
of point of view, of the way in which an English conception
travesties itself when it gets into French hands. Maturin
was an infinitely smaller man than Shakespeare, and Balzac
was an infinitely greater man tban Ducis; but "equals aquals"
as they say, or used to say, in Maturin's country. I do not
INTRODUCTION Ixxv
know that Maturin fared much better at the hands of Balzae
than Shakespeare has fared at the hands of Duels and a long
succession of adapters down to the present day in France.
La Peau de Chagrin appeared first in August 1831, pub-
lished in two volumes, by Gosselin and Canel, with a Preface
and a "MoraliU," which the author afterwards cut out. Of
its four chapters or divisions the first originally bore the title
of the whole book, and the last that of "Conclusion," not
"Epilogue," which was afterwards affixed to it. One or two
fragments, not incorporated in the finished book, exist, having
been previously published. Balzac reviewed it himself, more
than once, in the Caricature and elsewhere, both at its first
appearance and afterwards, when it reappeared in the same
year with other stories and a new Preface by Philarete
Chasles as Romans et Contes Philosophiques. This was re-
published more than once till, in 1835, it took rank anew
in the Etudes Pliilosopliiques, while ten years later, under the
same sub-title, it was finally classed in the first complete ar-
rangement of the Comedie Humaine.
Of those here added, Jesus-Christ en Flandre was one of
the Romans et Contes Philosophiques, which Gosselin pub-
lished in 1831, and remained as such till the constitution of
the Comedie. It is a sort of Aaron's rod among Balzac's
stories, and swallowed up a minor one called L'Eglise.
Mehnoth reconcilie, dating from 1835, first appeared in a
miscellany, Le Livre des Contes; then it was an Etude Philo-
sophique; and in 1845 it received its class in the Comedie.
G. S.
THE MAGIC SKIN
To Monsieur Savary, Member of Le Acadcmie des Sciences.
Sterne— Tristram Shandy, ch. cccxxii.
THE TALISMAN
Towards the end of the month of October 1829 a young
man entered the Palais-Eoyal just as che gaming-houses
opened, agreeably to the law which protects a passion by its
V017 nature easily excisable. He mounted the staircase of
one of the gambling hells distinguished by the number 36^
without too much deliberation.
(1)
2 THE MAGIC SKIN
"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 revela-
tion ? 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 j^ou 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 wretched-
ness 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 em-
bodiment of the passion reduced to its simplest terms. There
were traces of past anguish in its wrinkles. He supported
THE TALISMAN 3
iife on the glutinous soups at Darcet's, and gambled away hk
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 tlie 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 there, no doubt, by Providence, who has set loath-
ing 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 stimula-
tion, 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 Avho have come in search of diver-
sion, 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? Be-
tween the daylight gambler and the player at night there is
4 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 e3^es w^hose calmness terrifies
you, faces that fascinate, glances that seem as if they had
power to turn the cards over and consume them. The grand-
est hours of a gambling saloon are not the opening ones. If
Spain has bull-fights, and Eome once had her gladiators, Paris
waxes proud of her Palais-Eoyal, 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 indiffer-
ence 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
THE TALISMAN 6
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 mis-
fortune.
There were several gamblers in the room already when the
young man entered. Three bald-headed seniors were loung-
ing 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 Eed or Black.
He seemed a modern Tantalus, with all the pleasures of his
epoch at his lips, a beardless 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.
VOL. 1, — 6
6 TFIE .M.\r,!0 SKIN
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 ap-
pearance 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 Eevolution ?
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 hoj^es. 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 drooj^ed, 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 token
to the convict's prison, the prisoners^ welcome him respectfully.
and these evil spirits in human shapfe, experienced in torraentf ,
THE TALISMAN 7
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 elfects of mingled beauty and terror.
There he stood like some erring angel that has lost his radi-
ance; 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 her-
self 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 youi
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 by-
8 THE MAGIC SKJtN
stander 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 feel-
ing 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 croupier'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 English-
man, 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 Ms 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 TALISMAN 9
the old watch-dog, who had noted its shabhy condition, re-
turned 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-Eoyal, reached the Eue Saint Honore, took the direc-
tion of the Tuileries, and crossed the gardens with an un-
decided 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 there 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 tlie skies ; he
has caught glimpses of some heaven Wyond 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 en-
deavors ! Every suicide is an awful poem of sorrow. Where
will you find a work of genius floating above the seas of
Uterature that can compare with this paragraph :
10 THE MAGIC SKIN
"Yesterday, at foiir 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 hing 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 storm}
atmosphere, all decreed that he should die.
He bent his way toward the Pont Eoyal, 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 #iir 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 answ(T was a ready smile, which showed tlie 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 in-
scription above it in letters twelve inches high: The Royal
Humane Society's Apparatus.
A vision of M. Dacheux rose before him, equipped by his
THE TALISMAN 11
philanthropy, calling out and setting in motion the too
cincacious 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 fumiga-
tions; 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 un-
recognizable corpse to a Avorld 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-
haad books displayed on the parapet, and life w^as 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 v/ith 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 gentle-
man ! 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
15 THE MAGIC SKIN
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
lionteux, 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 harrow-
ing 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, tliis 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 fash-
ionable 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 indiffer-
ent 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 deliglitful thought at night, "I looked rather well to-
day."
THE TALISMAN 13
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 ex-
amining 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 j^ainful 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 ex-
perience 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? Dizzi-
ness 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.
14 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 remark-
able here downstairs ; but if I ma}^ trouble 3^ou 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 im-
perceptibly 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 per-
force 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 stufEed 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 ISTapoleon'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 sur-
rounded by a cloud, seemed to look longingly out of Latour's
pastel at an Indian chibook, while she tried to guess the pur-
pose of the spiral curves that wound towards her. Instru-
ments of death, poniards, curious pistols, and disguised
weapons had been flung down pell-mell among the parapher-
nalia of daily life; porcelain tureens, Dresden plates, trans
THE TALISMAN 15
lucent cups from China, old salt-cellars, comfit-boxos belong-
ing 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 imagina-
tion, smothered lights caught the eye. A thin coating of in-
evitable dust covered all the multitudinous corners and con-
volutions 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
16 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 w^orld. 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 Eome were there in life, the bath
was disclosed, the toilette of a languid Julia, dreaming, wait-
ing for her TibuUus. Strong with the might of Arabic spells,
the head of Cicero evoked memories of a free Eome, and un-
rolled before him the scrolls of Titus Livius. The young man
beheld Senatus Populusque Rom,anus; consuls, lictors, togas
with purple fringes ; the fighting in the Forum, the angry peo-
ple, passed in review before him like the cloudy faces of a
dream.
Then Christian Eome 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 Eegenerate 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-sbaped eyes. He shivered over midnight
adventures, cut short by the cool thrust of a jealous blade, as
\
THE TALISMAN 17
he gaw a medijieval 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 indescrib-
able 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 re-
straint 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 mas-
sacres 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 gar-
18 THE MAGIC SKIN
ment 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 from
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 liis answer in her eyes.
He caught at all delights, at all sorrows; grasped at ex-
istence 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 TsTotre Dame.
He ascended the inner staircase which led to the first floor.
THE TALISMAN 19
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
liim. 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 ex-
travagant 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 Tvith 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 drtist 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 injinenye suite of
rooms, all decorated and gilt by eighteenth century artists.
"Thousands of millions, you might sayf said the florid
shopman ; "but you have seen nothing as yet. Go up to the
third floor, and 3^011 shall see !"
The stranger followed his guide to a foarth gallery, where
one by one there passed before his v/ea,ried eyes several
pictures by Poussin, a magnificent stat':te by Michael Angelo,
enchanting landscapes by Claude Lori-aine, a Gerard Dow
(like a stray page from Sterne), Eembrandts, Mfirillos, and
pictures by Velasquez, as dark and full of coloi as a poem
of Byron's; then came classic bas-reliefs, finoly-cui agates,
wonderful cameos ! Works of art upon works of art, till the
craftsman's skill palled on the mind, masterpiece after master-
piece till art itself became hateful at last and enthusiasm died.
20 THE MAGIC SKIN
He came upon a Madonna by Eaphael, but he was tired of
Raphael; a figure by Correggio never received the glance it
demanded of him. A priceless vase of antique porphyry
oarved round about with pictures of the most grotesquely
jvanton 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 con-
stantly 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 concen-
tration 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 eoHer, suspended from a nail by a silver chain.
"Ah, monsieur keeps the key of it," said the stout assist-
ant mysteriously. "If you wish to see the portrait, T 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 l)cd after bed and layer upon layer of the
quarries oJE Montlnartre or among the schists of the Ural
THE TALISMAN 21
range, the soul receives with dismay a glimpse of millions
of peoples forgotten by feeble human memory and un-
recognized 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 im-
mortal 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 popula-
tion 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 im-
pression in it, says to you, "Behold I" 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. Em-
boldened 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 the 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
VOL. I — 7
22 THE MAGIC SKIN
chamhre comes in and says, "Madame la comtesse answers
that she is expecting monsieur."
All the wonders which had brought the known world before
the 3'oung man's mind wrought in his soul much the same
feeling of dejection that besets the philosoi^her 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 tor-
menting 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 sur-
roundings.
A mysterious Sabbath began, rivaling the fantastic scenes
witnessed by Faust upon the Brocken. But these optical illu-
sions, produced by weariness, overstrained eyesight, or the ac-
cidents 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 ofP the
drowsiness, and felt a cold breath of air as an unknown furry
something swept past his cheeks. He shivered. A muffled
clutter of the windows followed; it was a bat, he fancied, that
A little old man wlio turiit-d the light of the lamp upon him
THE TALISMAN 23
had given hiiu this chilly sepulchral caress. He could j'^et
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 ot
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 siglit 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 sus-
pended, 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
24 THE MAGIC SKIN
air. A gray pointed beard concealed the chin of this fan-
tastical 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 in-*
exorably stern expression of his small green eyes that n:.
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 de-
tecting 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 ojjen, 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 siglit, as he shook off the dreamy fancies and
THE TALISMAN 25
thoii2:hts of death that had lulled him. An instant of dismay,
a luonientary return to belief in nursery tales, may be for-
given 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 oj^iura can produce.
But tliis 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 con-
tempt. And yet the stranger submitted himseli to the in-
fluence 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, mon-
sieur?" 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 Eaphael 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 can-
vas to the stranger's admiring gaze. At sight of this death-
less 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
26 THE MAGIC BKIN
spectator. Some influence falling from heaven bade ceasfe
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 im-
passioned 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 in-
terpretation 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.Eaphael'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 new 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 for-
lorn 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
THE TALISMAN . 27
old man. "I came to see your treasures to while away the
time till night should come and I could drown myself de-
cently. 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 a
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
28 THE MAGIC SKIN
French centime, a para from the Levant, a German heller, a
Russian kopeck, a Scottish farthing, a single obelus or
sestertius from the ancient world, or one piastre from the
new, without offering you an3'thing whatever in gold, silver,
or copper, notes or drafts, I will make you richer, more power-
ful, and of more consequence than a constitutional king."
The younger 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 appear-
ance at first sight inexplicable. The young sceptic went up
to this so-called talisman, which was to rescue him from his
woes, with a scoffing phrase in liis thoughts. Still a harmless
curiosity led him to bend over it and look at it 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 mark-
ings of the graining were so sharp and clear, that every par-
ticle of the surface of the bit of Oriental leather was in it-
self 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
THE TALISMAN 2JJ
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 per-
petuated 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 gritHns, whose ex-
istence 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 ey6d the charac-
ters of this Oriental sentence.
"Yes," said the old man, "it is better to attribute it to
man's agency than to God's/'
30 THE MAGIC SKIN
The mysterious words were thus arranged:
Or, as it runs in English:
POSSESSING ME THOU SHALT POSSESS ALL THINGS.
BUT THY LIFE IS JStlNE, EOE GOD HAS SO WILLED IT.
WISH^ AND THY WISHES SHALL BE FULFILLED;
BUT MEASUEE 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. 'Tov^
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 TALISMAN 31
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 m.en 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 ? Be-
fore you came here, you had made up your mind to kill your-
self, 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 Eegency. I was like you, then,
in poverty; I have begged my bread; but for all that, I am
now a centenarian with a couj}le of years to spare, and a mill-
ionaire 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
32 THE MAGIC SKIN
the ordinary functions of my economy. In a word, it is not
in the heart which can be broken, nor in the senses that be-
come 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 hav::
seen the whole world. I have learned all languages, lived
after every manner. I have lent a Chinaman money, takin;>:
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 man-
ner 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, unsoiled 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 enjoy-
ments 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 Avere romances which I could read
by the power of vision within me. As I have never overtaxed
my constitution, I still enjoy rol)ust health ; and as my mind
is endowed with all the force that I have not wasted, this
THE TALISMAN 33
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 sum-
mon 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 revo-
lutions 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 withih your soul, compared with the im-
m^easurable joys of movement, unstraugled by the cords of
time, unclogged by the fetters of space; the joys of behold-
ing 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 wis-
dom ? 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 hj a sermon worthy of Sweden-
borg, nor by 3'our Oriental amulet, nor yet by your charitable
endeavors to keep me in a world wherein existence is no
34 THE MAGIC SKIN
longer possible for me. . . . Let me see now," he added^
clutching the talisman convnlsivel}^ 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 perfec-
tion! Let me have young boon companions, witty, iin-
warped 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 unlcnown 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 ex-
travagant. The Brahmin from whom I had this skin once
explained to me that it would bring about a mysterious con-
nection between the fortunes and wishes of its possessor.
THE TALISMAN 85
Your first wish is a vulgar one, which I could fulfil, but 1
\ea\e 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 hus-
banded so philosophically."
He went out without heeding the old man's heavy sigh,
went back through the galleries and down the staircase, fol-
lowed by the stout assistant who vainly tried to light his pas-
sage; 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 r
Such were the gratifying expressions exchanged between
tbem.
"Why, it is Eaphael!"
"Good ! we were looking for you."
"What! it is you, then?"
These three friendly exclamations quickly followed the in-
sults, as the light of a street lamp, flickering in the wind,
fell upon the astonished faces of the group.
36 THE MAGIC SKIN
"My dear fellow, j^ou must come with us !" said the young
man that Eaphael 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, Eaphael 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 cer-
tainly did not look like duns, creditors, sheriff's officers, or
the like. But no matter ! Eastignac had seen you the even-
ing 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 3'OU anywhere. Your name was not in the
jailers' registers at the St. Pelagic nor at La Force ! Govern-
ment 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
either at Court or in the common jails. We talked of canoniz-
ing 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, Eaphael looked at the Seine, at
<^he 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.
THE TALISMAN 37
"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 wlio 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 peo-
ple, 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 be-
sides, 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 d'Antin. But this you may not know perhaps.
The Government, that is, the aristocracy of lawyers and bank-
ers 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 im-
partially. 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 ;
nnd 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
38 THE MAGIC SKIN
authorit}^ 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 Bonapart-
ists a bit, and revietual the Centre; provided that we are al-
lowed 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 per-
spicacity discovers the intentions of Austria, England, or
Eussia before either Eussia, 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 Mettornichs — all the clever Crispins
who treat the destinies of a kingdom as gamblers' stakes,
just as ordinary men play dominoes for hirschenwasser. 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 cir-
cumscribed saturnalias of the petty modern Lucullus. He
is rich enough to infuse pomp into trifles, and style and
charm into dissipation. . . Are you listening, Eaphael?"
asked the orator, interrupting himself.
"Yes," answered the young man, less surprised by the ac-
complishment of his wishes than by the natural manner in
which the events had come about.
THE TAIJSMAN Sb
He could not bring himself to believe in magic, but ho
marveled at the accidents of human fate.
"Yes, you say, just as if you were thinking of your grand-
father'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 judg-
ments 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, ex-
cept 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 Eaphael.
"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 the 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 Chartreux
left us here in France; it is a sort of infirmary reserved foi
little Lord Byrons who, having crumpled up their lives like
a serviette after dinner, have nothing left to do but to set their
40 THE MAGIC SKIN
country ablaze, blow their own brains out, plot for a republic,
or clamor for a war "
"ifimile,^' 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 ever
day."
"Yes."
"You are a coxcomb !"
"Why, we read the newspapers as it is V
"i^ot 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."
(Lhatting thus, like good fellows who have known their De
Viris iUustribus for years past, they reached a mansion in the
Eue Joubert.
;6mile 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 pos-
sessed all the qualities that his defects permitted. An out-
spoken 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 whole 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
a,nd reputation, on which he slept, and ran the risk of waking
up to old age in a workhouse. A steadfast friend to the gal-
lows foot, a cynical swaggerer with a child's simplicity, a
".vorker only from necessity or caprice.
THE TAIJSMAN 41
"In the language of Maitre Alcofribas, we are about to
make a famous tronqon de chiere lie" he remarked to Kaphael
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
:<f 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 ''tyle stood beside other
^'oung writers who lacked ideas, and authors of poetical prose
by prosaic poets.
4^ THE MAGIC SKIN
At the sight of all these incomplete beings, a simple Saint
iSimonian, 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 sparkling 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, u
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 thou-
sand crowns sat on their host. His eyes turned impatiently
tovrards the door from time to time, seeking one of his guests
who kept him waiting. Very soon a stout little person ap-
peared, who was greeted by a complimentary murmur ; it was
the notary who had invented the newspaper that very morn-
ing. A valet-de-chambre in black opened the doors of a vast
dining-room, whither every one w^ent without ceremony, and
took Ms 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 preten-
THE TALISMAN 43
sion, 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 jiutting morality into our actions/' he said, sighing.
"Ti-uly 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 care-
fully 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
Eevolution. 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 glitter-
ing ray like the stab of a dagger to him? . . , Let us
go in, one might as w^ell believe in Mahomet. If common re-
port speak truth, here are thirty men of talent, and good fel-
lows too, prepared to dine off the flesh and blood of a whole
44 THE MAGIC SKIN
family ; . . . and here are we ourselves, a pair of young-
sters full of open-hearted enthusiasm, and we shall be par-
takers 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 ad-
miration 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. Rain-
bow 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 have 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 his 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 e3'es sparkled.
While intoxication was only dawning, the conversation did
not overstep the bounds of civility; but banter and hon mots
slipped by degrees from every tongue; and then sland(;r began
to rear its little snake's head, 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 some-
what heated. Every one ate as he spoke, spoke while he ate,
and drank without heeding the quantity of the liquor, the
wine was so ])iting, the bouquet so fragrant, the example
THE TALISMAN 45
around so infectious. Taillcfer made a point of stimulating
his guests, and plied tliem with the formidable wines of the
Ehone, 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 re-
peatedly 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 Eossini's. Insidious toasts, swagger, and chal-
lenges 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 up-
roar 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 in-
tellect, 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; uncon-
sciously fulfilling the will of God, who has suffered evil and
good to abide in nature, and reserved the secret of their con-
tinual strife to Himself. A frantic travesty of debate ensued.
4e THE MAGIC SKIN
a Walpurgis-revel of intellects. Between the dreary jests of
these children of the Eevolution 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?" »alC,
the notary, indicating Baphael. "I thought I heard some or.c
call him Valentin."
"Vvliat stuff' is this?" said fimile, laughing; "plaif^
Valentin, say you ? Eaphael 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 Eaphael's head, fimile out-
lined a crown upon it. The notary bethought himself a
moment, but soon fell to drinl<:ing 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
apassing 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 XL, Eichelieu, Eobespierre,
and Napoleon were but the same man who crosses our civiliza-
tions now and again, like a comet across the sky," said a dis-
ciple of Ballanche.
'^hy try to fathoui the designs of Providence?" said
Canalis, maker of ballads.
THE TALISMAN 47
"Come, now," said the man who set up for a critic, "there
is nothing more elastic in the world than your Provi-
dence/'
"Well, sir, Louis XIY. sacrificed more lives over digging
the foundations of the Maintenon's aqueducts, than the Con-
vention 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 Eepiihli-
can.
"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 ! W^hat's-his-name, the Republican, con-
siders 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 organiza-
tions?" 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 lav/ 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
48 THE MAGIC SKIN
left him to clean my clothes after his fashion, he would soon
clean me out."
"Crass idiots !" replied the Eepublican, "you era for setting
a nation straight with toothpicks. To your way of thinking,
justice is more dangerous than thieves."
"Oh, dear !" cried the attorney Desroches.
"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 in-
solvent."
"It would be much less trouble, no doubt, to amuse our-
selves 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 with-
out securing a triumph for any one system. Is not that the
vicious circle in which the whole moral vv^orld 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, gen-
tlemen, here's to Charles X., the father of liberty."
"Why not?" asked fimile. "When law becomes despotic,
_norals are relaxed, and vice versa."
"Let us drink to the imbecility of authority, which gives
•is such an authority over imbeciles !" said the banker.
"Napoleon left us glory, at any rate, my good friend !" ex-
claimed 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
THE TALISMAN 49
philosopher, at either extreme of the moral scale, hold prop-
erty 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 morn-
ing. . . ."
"Who is talking about death? Pray don't trifle, I have
an uncle."
"Could you bear his loss with resignation?"
"Xo 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
50 I'HE MAGIC SKIN
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 names 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 aggra-
vating 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, every-
thing, 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 l)lockhead is a fool, without a college of fathers to promote
tlu'iii to those positions."
"You are a Carlist."
THE TALISMAN bl
"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
si'ulptor, 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 aggrega-
tions increased, government advanced by a decomposition of
the primitive rule, more or less skilfully managed. For ex-
ample, 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 inter-
est 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 cle\?er man or an idiot, a virtuous
person or a criminal ?"
52 THE MAGIC SKIN
"Can any one treat of virtue thus ?" cried Cursy. "Virtue,
the subject of every drama at the theatre, the denou-
ment 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. Accord-
ing to you moralists and politicians, the laws you set up are
always to go before those of nature, and opinion before con-
science- 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 La-
f ayettes ?"
"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
THE TALISMAN 53
notion. Ancient religious were but tlie unchecked develop-
ment 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 His-
tory of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles, a most en-
trancing 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 Charen-
ton.' "
"You are a fool !"
"And you are a rogue I"
"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.
"They can hardly stand on their legs."
"Ah, I can't stand upright, perhaps ?" asked the pugnacious
Nathan, straightening himself up like a stag-beetle about to
%•
He stared stupidly round the table, then, completely ex-
hausted by the effort, sank back into his chair, and mutely
hung his head.
"Would it not have been nice," the critic said to his neigh-
bor, "to fight about a book I have neither read nor seen ?"
"fimile, look out for your coat; your neighbor is growing
pale," said Bixiou.
"Kant ? Yet another ball fiung out for fools to sport with,
sir ! Materialism and spiritualism are a fine pair of battle-
dores with which charlatans in long gowns keep a shuttlecock
a-going. Suppose tbat God is everywhere, as Spinoza says,
or flint all things proceed from God, as says St. Paul . . .
V.JL. 1 9
<i4 THE MAGIC SKIN
the nincompoops, the door shuts or opens, but isn't the move-
ment the same? Does the fowl come from tlie 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 1"
"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 !"
*^here 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 vou 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 hlack 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 repre-
sented 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, sus-
tained and carried pyramids of strawberries, pines, fresh
dates, golden grapes, clear-skinned peaches, oranges brought
THE TALISMAN 55
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 Avas 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 pene-
trated 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
pyramids of fruit were ransacked, voices grew thicker, 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 shuf-
fled 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 to stir, but encouraged his guests' extravagances
with a fixed grimacing smile, meant to be hospitable and ap-
propriate. His large face, turning from blue and red to a
56 THE MA.G1C SKIN
purple shade terrible to see, partook of the general commotion
by movements like the heaving and pitcliing of a brig.
"iSTow, did you murder them ?" Emile asked him.
"Capital punishment is going to be abolished, they say, in
favor of the Eevolution of July," answered Taillefer, raising
his eyebrows with drunken sagacity.
"Don't they rise up before you in dreams at times?''
Raphael j)ersisted.
"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!" Eaphael 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 aritlunetic and
the papal Pater noster. Pshaw ! let us drink. Trinq was,
I believe, the oracular answer of the dive houteille 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
w^ondrously represented by some five hundred intellects. It
neutralizes opposing forces and gives free play to civiliza-
tion, that Titan queen who has succeeded the ancient terrible
figure of the king, that sham Providence, reared by man be-
tween 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/'
Tilmile replied, quite unimpressed. "It has drained our hearts
and veins dry to make a mimic deluge. No matter ! Every
THE TALISMAN 5T
man who thinks must range himself heneath 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 in-
termediate world that sej^arates us from the Deity."
"Believest thou?" asked Kaphael 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 heav}^ morasses of indigestion, denied the possibility of
movement. The noisy and the silent were oddly as-
sorted.
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 in-
temperate pleasures of the banquet seemed to fade away at
this titillating spectacle, prepared by their amphitryon to ap-
peal 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 wo-
men, 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
58 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 trans-
parent 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 in-
nocence, with a semblance of conventional unction about their
heads, were there like apparitions that a breath might dissi-
pate. 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 emo-
tion.
Italians shone in the throng, serene and self-possessed in
their bliss ; handsome jSTormans, with splendid figures ; women
of the south, with black hair and well-shaped eyes. Lebel
might have summoned together all the fair women of Ver-
sailles, 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 togethei
in a murmuring group like bees in a hive. The combination
of timid embarrassment with coquettishness and a sort of
THE TALISMAN 59
expostulation was the result either of calculated effect or a
spontaneous modesty. Perhaps a sentiment of which women
are never utterly divested proscribed to them the cloak of
modesty to hoi<ahtcn and enliance the charms of wantonness.
So the venerable Taiilefer'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 miirmur of admiration, which vibrated like a soft
musical note. Wine had not taken love for traveling com-
panion; instead of a violent tumult of passions, the guests
thus taken by surprise, in a moment of weakness, gave them-
selves 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 ad-
vances 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 assist-
ance 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 ap-
proached by a tall, well-proportioned girl of stately bearing :
her features were irregular, but her face was striking and
vehement in expression, jiud impressed the mind by the vigor
of its contrasts. Her dark hair fell in luxuriant curls, wii.b
m THE MAGIC SKIN
which some hand seemed to have played havoc alr€:ady, 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 deli-
cacy 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 lij)s 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 sug-
gested 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, hei ])assion, 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 St
THE TALISMAN 61
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 enjoy-
ment; the enjoyment that comes of squandering the accumu-
lations 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 prema-
turely old; enjoyment only possible to giants weary of their
power, tormented by reflection, or for whom strife has be-
come a plaything.
"What is your name ?" asked Eaphael.
"Aquilina."
"Out of Venice Preserved!" exclaimed ;fimile.
"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 fimile
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 Eochelle, she will never get to the end of it.
That's enough, Aquilina. As if every woman could not be-
wail 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-look-
ing little person that a fairy wand ever drew from an en-
chanted eggshell. She had come up noiselessly, and they be-
came 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
62 THE MAGIC SKIN
shyer, whiter, more ingenuous than this young girl, seetA-
ingly 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 mis-
led the friends. Ea|)hael and ^fimile took the cofl:ee 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 revela-
tion of heartless corruption and voluptuous cruelty. Heed-
less enough to perpetrate a crime, hard}^ 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 foresee a future in the hospital, and make
no effort to avert it ?"
'^hat 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
THE TALISMAN 63
•sprinkles on our brows, withers up the Avoman in ns, 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 cla}^; 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. Eags 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'Alengon, 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 ex-
travagances? 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."
64 THE MAGIC SKIN
"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
Eaphael.
"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 5'ears of a hourgeoise existence,
and so it is all summed up."
"Is not a woman hateful without virtue?" lEmile said to
Eaphael.
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," fimile 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 i"
THE TALISMAN 65
"Have you no fear of the price to be paid some day for
all this?""
"Even then," she said, "instead of min^jling 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 Eochelle," 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 a 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; ex-
cited 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
66 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 5'et almost impossible to dis-
tinguish 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 chamhre
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 be-
fore their doors?" was Taillefer's rejoinder.
Eaphael'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 djdng. 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 in-
terpretation of human wisdom ; whilst at this minute the re-
mains of all the intellectual treasures ravaged by us at table
THE TALISMAN 67
are comprised in these two women, the living and authentic
typGs 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 in-
telligence 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!" Eaphael 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 ac-
count. 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, Cary-
mara."
"You make me doubt the existence of a God, for your
stupidity is greater than His power," said fimile. "Our be-'
loved Rabelais summed it all up in a shorter word than your
'Carymary, Carymara/ from his Peut-etre Montaigne de-
rived his own Que sais-je? After all, this last word of
moral science is scarcely more than the cry of Pyrrhus set
us THE MAGIC SKIN
betwixt good and evil, or Buridan's ass between the two
measures of oats. But let this everlasting question alone, re-
solved 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 Xotre Dame?"
"Ah, if you but knew my history !"
"Pooh," said Emile ; "I did not think 3'ou could be so com-
monplace; that remark is hackneyed. Don't you know that
everv one of us claims to have suifered as no other ever
did ?"
"Ah !" Raphael sighed.
""What a mountebank art thou with thy 'Ah' ! Look here,
now. Does some disease of 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 3' our mistress' hair to hazard
the money at play ? Have you ever drawn a sham bill of ex-
change 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 dis-
own 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 crustacete^ 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 fimile,
as, half plaintive, half ajnused.he took Raphael's hand.
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 69
II
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART
After a moment's silence, Eaphael 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 com-
prise 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 ap-
pears 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 fimile.
"Very likely," said Eaphael 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 ]6mile, half-plaintively, half-
comically. '
"When I left school," Eaphael 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 owd
VOL. I — lO
70 THE MAGIC SKIN
study, and I had to rise at five in the morning and he 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 circum-
scribed by the laws of time and space, and my father re-
quired 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 pro-
longed 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 merri-
ment and gleeful thoughts, and seemed to cover them with a
leaden pall. Any effusive demonstration on my part was re-
ceived 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 xo 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 be-
forehand, lie would take me to I.es Bouffons, or to a concert
or ball, whore T hoped to find a mistress. . . . A
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 71
mistress ! that meant independence. But bashful and timid
as I was, knowing nobody, and ignorant of the dialect of
drawing-rooms, 1 alwa^-s 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 morn-
ing 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 under-
stand 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 brood-
ings charmed away by music. I breathed my sorrows forth
in melodies. Beethoven or Mozart would keep my confidences
sacred. N'owadays, 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 Due 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
72 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 ot
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 un-
raveled. 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 de-
liberate 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 a 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,
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 75
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 in-
tense 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
74 THE MAGIC SKIN
they could neither move nor rattle on the way back; and 1
played no more.
" '^Vhat 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, Eaphael, 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 in-
come 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 grati-
tude, Kaphael,' 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 hence-
forth. In a year's time you will be a doctor of law. Not
without some hardship and privation you have acquired the
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 75
sound knowledge and the love of, and application to, work
ihat is indispensable to public men. You must learn to
know me, Eapliael. 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 Eevolution 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 Eestoration, while it brought back considerable prop-
erty 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 ^^ears he struggled with
liquidators, diplomatists, and Prussian and Bavarian courts
of law, over the disputed possession of these unfortunate en-
dowments. My father plunged me into the intricate laby-
rinths 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
76 "THE MAGIC SKIN
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 my-
self to influential kinsmen, or to people likely to be useful to
us. My relaxations were lawsuits, and memorials still fur-
nished 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 de-
light; 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 mid-
dle 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 liad ruined me! The thought killed him
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 77
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 ren-
dered,' my future lay in a linen bag with eleven hundred and
twelve francs in it, human society stood before me in the per-
son 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 Eaphael !'
"The good fellow was crying.
"Such were the events, dear fimile,that ruled my destinies,
moulded my character, and set me, while still young, in an
utterly false social position," said Eaphael 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
78 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 awk-
ward; 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. T
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, 1
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 in-
spired 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. T declare, on my soul
and conscience, that the attainment of power, or of a great
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 79
name in literature, seemed to me "an easier victory than a suc-
cess 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 it,self ; lack-
ing either opportunity or courage or experience. I despaired,
maybe, of making myself understood, or I feared to be under-
stood but too well ; and yet the storm within me was ready to
burst at every chance courteous look. In spite of ray readi-
ness to take the semblance of interest in look or word for a
tenderer solicitude, I dared neither to speak no'r 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 T admired the heroes of this set when
80 THE MAGIC SKIN
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," Eaphael 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
the 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."
fimile 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
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 81
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
viypocrisy. And I, who in the same hour's space am al-
ternately 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 other-
wise than take my simplicity for cynicism, my innocent
candor for impudence? They found my knowledge tire-
some ; my feminine languor, weakness. I was held to be list-
less 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 ex-
press, the system I must establish, the knowledge I must in-
terpret.
"Let me pour out my follies, dear fimile; 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 uj)on a pedestal, weave crowns for his head, and have
82 THE MAGIC SKIN
complaisant mistresses. I myself would often be a general,
nay, emperor ; I have been a Byron, and then a nobody. Af-
ter 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 m those who will not permit themselves to be dis-
tracted 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 re-
sumed 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 fimile, 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 jts 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 endow-
ment 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 thom. 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 lias not the leisure to sit beside
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 83
a sofa and give liimself 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-masquerad-
ing! 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 at-
tracted 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, w^as possessed of wealth
that could not circulate, and of knowledge so wide and so im-
perfectly 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 impossi-
bilities, that my spirits rose. It was as if I had laid a wager
v/ith 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.
84 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 phmged 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 im.-
periled my life in order to live. By reducing my require-
ments 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 ;fimile.
"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 wonder-
ful 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 can-
not 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
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 86
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 j 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 sing-
ing; 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 break 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
VOL. 1- II - ^
S6 THE MAGIC SKIN
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, T
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 I'Estrapade, I saw a girl of fourteen play-
ing with a battledore at the corner of the Eue de Cluny ; her
winsome ways and laughter amused the neighbors.
September was not yet over ; it was warm and fine, so that
<vomen sat chatting before their doors as if it were a fete-day
A WOMAN WITHOTTT A HEART 87
•■'1 some country town. At first I watched the charming ex-
pression 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 dilapi-
dated 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 furni-
ture. 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 Pionihi
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
88 THE MAGIC SKIN
solution of life. The tranquillity and peace that a scholar
needs is something as sweet and exhilarating as love. Un-
speakable joys are showered on us by the exertion of our
mental faculties; the quest of ideas, and the tranquil con-
templation 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, at-
tains 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 sus-
tained also by the prospect of a brilliant future? At each
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 89
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 thon 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 w^hither 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 fimile, 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 talk-
ing, but I went to sit and mutely listen to professors who
gave public lectures at the Bihliothcque 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 Avooed it ! Tn phort. my life has been a cruel contra-
diction, a perpetual cheat. After that, judge a man!
90 THE MAGIC SKIN
"Sometifhes my natural propensities broke out like a fire
long smothered. I was debarred from tho women whose so-
ciety I desired, stripped of everything and lodged in an
artist's garret, and by a sort of mirage or calenture I was sur-
rounded 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
wa3's and behavior, scrutinized my appearance and divined my
poverty, there could not but be some bonds between us; per-
haps 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 sis-
ters; they speak a common language; they have the same
(generosity — the generosity that possesses nothing, and so is
lavish of its aflFoction, 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 bv
her mother, whom I even surprised mending my linen ; she
blushed for the charitable occupation. In spite of m3^self;
they took charge of me, and I accepted their services.
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 91
"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 1 well repulse the delicate atten-
tions of Pauline, who would noiselessly bring me my frugal
repast, w'hen she noticed that I had taken nothing for seven
or eight hours ? She had the tact of a woman and the inven-
tiveness of a child; she would smile as she made sign to mt
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 grena-
diers of the Imperial guard. He had been taken prisoner by
the Cossacks, at the passage of the Beresina; and when Xa-
poleon 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 wav T
came to have some hours of recreation. Pauline had naturui
82 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 pedagog/te'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 in-
tegrity 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 con-
tract is implied, and its conditions should be thoroughly un-
derstood. We are free to break with the woman who sells
herself, but not with the young girl who has given herself tc
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 9S
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 mis-
fortunes? My poverty made its selfish voice heard, and set
an iron barrier between that gentle nature and minG. Be-
sides, 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 V amour! But let it be in silk and cashmere, sur-
rounded 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 pow-
dered 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 ^Tappings 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 j^ards 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 en-
graved by a jeweler; in short, a liking for all that is adven-
94 THE MAGIC SKIN
titious and least woman in woman. I have scorned and
reasoned with mj'self, 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 waken 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 en-
dowed 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 in-
vulnerable, load her with our crimes, make of her the fantas-
tical doll of our drawing-rooms, the frail being who lies abed
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 rae, as it brings the scenes of our childhood,
A WOMAX WITHOUT A HEART 95
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 medita-
tions; the faint light from my window fell upon her and was
reflected back in silvery rays from her thick black hair; some-
times 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 Eastignac, 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 hiin 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 irre-
sistible effect upon me. I should die an unrecognized failure
in a hospital, Eastignac 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 Eue 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 "dis-
ye THE MAGIC SKIN
sipated life." We need not stop to look at what people think,
but see the results. You work, 5^ou say? Very good, but
nothing will ever come of that. Now, I am ready for any-
thing and fit for nothing. As lazy as a lobster ? Very likely,
but I succeed everywhere. I go out into society, I push my-
self forward, the others make way before me; I brag and an:
believed ; I incur debts which somebody else pays ! Dissipa-
tion, 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 Eeceiver-General,
of making a wealthy marriage, or of an appointment of at-
tache 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 da}' in
this world? . . . Your work is completed/ he went on
after a pause; 'you are immensely clever! Well, 3^ou 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 even-
ing, by way of a beginning. I will introduce you to a house
where all Paris goes, all ovr Paris, that is — the Paris of ex-
quisites, millionaires, celebrities, all the folic v^ho talk golr!
like Chrysostom. When they have taken up a book, that bock
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 97
becomes the fashion ; and if it is sonietliing 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 understand-
ing of the theoT-y of success. To-morrow evening you shall
go to see that queen of the moment — the beautiful Counters
Foedora. . . .'
" 'I have never heard of her. . . .'
" 'You Hottentot !' laughed Eastignac ; '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 Eussian. 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? Fcedora haunted me
like some evil thought, with which you seek to come to terms.
A voice said in me, 'You are going to see Fcedora !' 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 de-
sires, and the object of my life ?
"The name called up recollections of the conventional glit-
ter of the world, the upper world of Paris with its brilliant
fetes and the tinsel of its vanities. The woman brought be-
fore me all the problems of passion on which my mind con-
tinually ran. Perhaps it was neither the woman nor the name,
but my own propensities, that sprang up within me and
'ernpted me afresh. Here was the Countess Foedora, rich
•uid loveless, proof against the temptations of Paris; was not
r.his woman the very incarnation of my hopes and visions?
98 THE MAGIC SKIN
I fashioned her for myself, drew her in fancy, and dreamed
of her. I could not sleep that night ; I became her lover ; ]
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; 1
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 wf.s
not troublesome. Fortunately, I owned a fairly creditable
black coat and a white waistcoat ; of all my fortune there now
remained about 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 was 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 carr}' 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.
"Eastignac, 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 de-
scribed her as mean, vain, and suspicious ; but though mean,
she was ostontaiious, her vanity was transparent, and her mis-
trust 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
Fcedora has been quite cool and disinterested, and my remarks
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 99
must have some truth in them. I was looking to your futuro
when I thought of introducing you to her ; so mind very care-
fully what I am about to say. She has a terrible memory.
She is clever enough to drive a diplomatist v/ild; 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 vdien 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 sum-
mer 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
Jess than a count. Aren't you a marquis ? Go ahead if you
fancy her. This is what you may call receiving your instruc-
tions.'
"His raillery made me think that Rastignae 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 per-
sonal 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 oppor-
tunity comes within our reach, o{)portunity that does not
overwhelm, because study has prepared us for the struggles of
public life.
"I found a woman of about tvv'enty-two 3'-ears of age; she
way- of average height, was dressed in white, and held a feathef
100 THE MAGIC SKIN
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, pre-
pared 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 con-
fused by the attention that every one paid to me; but Ras-
tignac 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,
1 spoke when it fell to me to speak, trying to state the ques-
tions at issue in words more or less profound, witty or trench-
ant, and I made a certain sensation. Rastignac was a prophet
for the thousandth time in his life. As soon as the gather-
ing 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 apart-
ment 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 con-
cealed by tapestried curtains, and the paneling by hangings;
the clock and the pattern of the carpet were made to harmo-
nize 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 uiodorn room, it was so
pleasant and fresh, and not heavy, but su])dued with its dead
gold hues. It had all the vague sentiment of a German bal-
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART lOt
lad; it "jras a retreat fit for some romance of 1827, perfumed
by the exotic flowers set in their stands. Another apartmenr
in the suite was a gilded reproduction of the Louis Quatorze
period, with modern paintings on the walls in odd but pleas-
ant contrast.
" 'You would not be s© badly lodged,' was Eastignac'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 any-
body 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 explana-
tion. 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;
102 THE MAGIC SKIN
then I confuted her feminine reasoning with a word, and
roused her curiosity by drawing her attention to an every-
day 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; she 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 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 the 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 mis-
tress 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 de-
tected 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 brouglit
out all the golden color \n her eyes, in which blue streaki
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART lOB
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 inex-
plicable 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, di-
vided perhaps by the line between head and body : the one,
the head alone, seemed to be susceptible, and the other phleg-
matic. 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 ascendencv only
the more complete because it comprehended a sympathy of
desire.
"I went away completely enraptured with this woman, daz-
zled by the luxury around her, gratified in everv faculty of
my soul — noble and base, good and evil. When I felt mvself
so excited, eager, and elated, I thought I understood the at-
traction 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
104 THE MAGIC SKIN
keep them all. A woman is a coquette so long as she knows
not love.
" 'Well,' I said to Eastignac, '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
Fcedora lived. Almost all the breadth of Paris lies between
her mansion and the Eue 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 ruin-
ous. As a matter of fact, there is many a Lauzun among
students of law, who finds it impossible to approach a lady-
love 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 til-
burys, 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 con-
ditions, 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 de-
pended upon it.
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 105
"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 in-
creasing her self-esteem; I never left her in a state of indif-
ference; 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 read}^ rhetorical phrases of Jean-Jacques Kousseau,
in whose room perhaps I was lodging; nor among the feeble
inventions of two centuries of our literature, nor in any pic-
ture 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 Kossini's, the Madonna of
Murillo's now in the possession of General Soult, Lescombat's
letters, a few sayings scattered through collections of anec-
dotes; but most of all the prayers of religious eestatics, 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 repro-
ducible in color, marble, sound, or articulate speech, could
ever render the force, the truth, the completeness, the sud-
denness with which love awoke in me. To speak of art, is to
speak of illusion. Love passes through endless transforma-
tions before it passes for ever into our existence and makes it
glow with its own color of fl^ame. The process is impercep-
tible, 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 trans-
ports of Lovelace, as one reads Clarissa Harlowe. Love is
like some fresh spring, that leaves its cresses, its gravel bed
lOe THE MAGIC SKIN
and flowers, to become first a stream and then a river, chang-
ing its aspect, and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in
some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find mo-
notony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless con-
templation.
"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? Kot one of the mysterious scenes that draw us in-
sensibly 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 indistin-
guishable something in her hair made brown shadows on hei
fair temples: in each new phase Foedora spoke. Every slight
variation in her beauty made a new pleasure for my eyes, dis-
closed 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 de-
liglits then showered upon me have left indelible impressions
A WOMAN Wn HOTTT A HEART lO"!
^»ehind. Her voice would cause a frenzy in me that I could
haidly 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 Fcedora 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 con-
fess 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 re-
ceived this warning? There is something in these inward
tremors that shallow people find astonishing, but the phe-
nomena of our inner consciousness are produced as simply as
those of external vision; so I was not surprised, but much
vexed. My siudies of our mental f acuities, so little under-
stood, helped me at any rate to find in my own excitement
1^ THE MAGIC SKIN
some living proofs of my theories. There was something ex-
ceedingly odd in this combination of lover and man of sci-
ence, of downright idolatry of a woman with the love of
knowledge. The causes of the lover's despair were highly in-
teresting 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
staj^ed 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 next day.
After any witticism of hers, she would give me an inquiring
glance, as if she had souglit 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.
" ^ill 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. Fcedora'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 com-
missionaire 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 mo, my good fellow !' come from me in the hard
voice of thwarted passion; and yet I was that man's brother
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 109
in misfortune, as I knew too well ; and once I had so lightly
paid away seven hundred thousand francs! The footman
pushed the m&n aside, and the horses sprang forward. As we
returned, Foodora, 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 T
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 warn-
ing, 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 compli-
ment. 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 feel-
ing 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 care-
fully chosen her words beforehand. Oh, my friend, there are
women who take pleasure in piercing hearts, and deliberately
no THE MAGIC SKIN
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 hun-
dred-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 hide-
ous?
"Fcedora 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 couhl only
despise me, if I allowed them to make love to me without re-
turn. 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 oiiijht
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. Con-
sidered with regard to your species, you are a prodigy. Now
let tJS investigate, in good faith, the causes of this psycho
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART HI
logical anomaly. Does there exist in you, as in many women,
a certain pride in self, a love of your own loveliness, a refine-
ment of egoism which makes you shudder at the idea of be-
longing to another; is it the thought of resigning your own
will and submitting to a superiority, though only of conven-
tion, which displeases you? You would seem to me a thou-
sand times the 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 Avish 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 abso-
lutely 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— rto me they all seem ugly and detestable. And
you are right,' I added, feeling my heart swell within me;
Tiow 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 ridi-
culed 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 pun-
ishing you for your impertinence.'
" 'You could banish me without needing to give me the
reasons for your harshness.' As I spoke I felt that 1 could
kill her if she dismissed me.
112 THE MAGIC SKIN
" 'You are mad/ she said, smiling still.
" 'Did you never think/ I went on, 'of the effects of pas-
sionate love? A desperate man has often murdered his mis-
tress.'
" 'It is better to die than to live in miser}-,' 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 be-
tween 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 that 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
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 113
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 1
had so far kept mine in a precarious state of efficiency. It had
been neither strikingly new, nor utterly shabby, neither nap-
less 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 wa^ 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 re-
flect, lest they lose their happiness, and the absorbing nature
of their pleasures absolves their indifference to the misfor-
tunes 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.
114 THE MAGIC SKIN
So when wealthy men pour out their devotion, their fortunes,
and their lives, they gain somewhat by these commonly enter-
tained 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 hesi-
tated 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.
" 'Eaphael is much nicer-looking than the student in
number seven,' said Pauline; Tiis 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 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.
" 'Tie is just as dear to me as a brother,' she laughed. 'I
sbonld bo finely ungrateful if T felt no friondshin for him.
Didn't he teach me music and drawing and grammar, and
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 115
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 in-
dustrious 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 Fcedora'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 ex-
tend 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 li^ht fell on rr- a.rd cried;
116 THE MAGIC SKIN
" *Dieu ! how pale you are ! and you are wet through ! My
mother will try to wipe you dry. Monsieur Eaphael,' 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, thai
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 re-
proachme 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 east 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 T spoke en-
lightened the two women, for they seemed to understand, and
eyed me with curiosity and alarm. Here Avas the affection
that I had looked for in the fflaeial regions of the great
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 117
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 Gosjiel 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 h(M* 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 inclina-
tion 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 reso-
lutions. 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
118 THE MAGIC SKIN
in our own eyes ; it is the life of another that we revere within
us ; then and so 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 Fredora's strange resolution to him,
and with that I slept.
" 'Ah, ha !' cried Eastignae, as he saw me enter his lodging
at nine o'clock in the morning. 'I know what brings you
here. Fcedora 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.
" 'N"ot 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 un-
detected. 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, disclos-
ing, 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
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 119
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 discon-
certed me by the coolness of his manners and his absolute
self-possession. While we were taking coffee after an ex-
cellent 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, dis-
tinguished both by personal attractions and elegant attire,
and now he said to me :
" 'Here's your man,' as he beckoned to this gentleman
vnth 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, "lei Von pent ecrire soi-meme."
He is acute enough to deceive an entire congress of diplo-
matists. In a couple of words, he is a moral half-caste, not
quite a fraud, nor entirely genuine. But, hush ! he has suc-
ceeded 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 his-
torical memoirs in my hands, and I cannot find anv one
120 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 specula-
tion, 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 t\\'enty-five louis as com-
mission, 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 punc-
tually.'
"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
stupefied by the flippancy and ease with which he had sold my
venerable aunt, la Marquise de Montbauron,
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 125
ce n
'T 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 petti-
coat, 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
ra}^ garret ? This world has aspects that are very vilely dis-
honorable.'
" 'Yes,' said Eastignac, 'that is all very poetical, but this
is a matter of business. What a child you are ! Now, listen
to me. x4s 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.'
" 'Eicher than you think,' he laughed. 'If I have my
commission from Finot in this matter, it goes to you, can't
3'ou 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
122 THE MAGIC SKIN
mania for continually asking my opinion, and I have to look
as if 1 entered into all this German sensibility, and to know
a pack of ballads — drugs, all of them, that my doctor ab-
solutely prohibits. As yet I have not been able to Avean her
fr:)m 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. Oli,
if she would only say 7non ange and hrouiller instead of man
anclie and prouiller, she would be perfection !'
"^^e 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 mone}', a Avealth 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-filysees, we paid a
visit to Eastignac's hatter and tailor. Thanks to the 'iSTeck-
lace,' 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 fashion-
able voung men who made Fcedora's circle. I went home,
locked myself in, and stood by my dormer window, out-
wardly 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 I 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 Luxem-
bourg, and to go thence to see with her the Museum and
Jardin des Plantes.
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 123
" 'The man is waiting for an answer/ said Pauline, after
quietly waiting for a moment.
"I hastily scrawled my acknowledgments, and Pauline took
the note. I changed my dress. When my toilette was ended,
and 1 looked at myself with some complaisance, an icy shiver
ran through me as I thought :
"•' 'Will Fcedora walk or drive ? Will it rain or shine ? — i^o
uiatter, though,' I said to myself; Svhichever it i.';, can one
ever reckon with feminine caprice? She will have no mone}'
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 intel-
lectual 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 tlie
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 imag-
inary 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 lirit-
lessness 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 whicli 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 faltcird, 'that you had hurt yourself :
The man who brought tlic letter ' (she broke off as if
124 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 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 them-
selves had determined her to go on foot, by way of the boule-
vards, 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 droj)s 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 trans-
ports 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,
of 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 dis-
sonance 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," Kaphael went on, after a moment of
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 125
silence, as if he were replying to an objection raised by him-
self. "I did not analyze my pleasures nor count my heart-
beats then, as a miser scrutinizes and weighs his gold pieces.
Ko; 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 to you my aversion for 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 consum-
mate 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 Due de Navarreins would be very
useful to me, with an all-powerful person in Eussia,' she went
on, persuasion in every modulation of her voice, 'whose in-
tervention I need in order to have justice done me in a matter
the 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 Due 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.
126 THE MAGIC SKIN
**^ 'Oh, how dear to me is this silence that you have im-
posed 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 !
"Fortunateh', 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 pres-
ence 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 my-
self, so to speak. ]\Iy 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
Ave 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 hoxir
she chose to grant to me, and so prolong my ecstasy. My
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 127
happiness was increased by the extent of the money I
sacrificed. It was niidnight before .she dismissed me. But
on the morrow, for all that, my heroism cost me a good many
remorseful pangs; 1 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 adopt-
ing the 'English system.' He really wanted to establish my
credit by setting me to raise loans, on the theory that bor-
rowing 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
128 THE MAGIC SKIN
love; and T affected gaiety but ill, like a courtier who has a
bitter mortification to hide. I tried in every way to make my-
self 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 w^hen I had frittered away the day
in this way, I went back to my work at night, securing merelv
two or three hours' sleep in the earl}^ morning.
"But I had not, like Eastignac, the 'English system^ at my
finger-ends, and I very soon saw mj^self without a penny,
I fell at once into that precarious way of life which in-
dustriously 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 extinguish-
ing love. By the light of warning gleams my soul sometimes
recognized the gulfs that lay between us. The countess con-
firmed all my fears ; I had never yet detected any tear in her
eyes; an affecting scene in a play left her smiling and un-
moved. All her instincts were selfish; she could not divine
another's joy or sorrow. She had made a fool of me, in
fact!
J "I had rejoiced over a sacrifice to make for her, and al-
most humiliated myself in seeking out my kinsman, the Due
de Navarreins, a selfish man who was ashamed oi 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 ao ill at ease that I piti^^J
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 129
him. T blushed for this pettiness amid grandeur, and
ponuriousness 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 Fcedora 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 pre-
sented to her. One evening she chose to mortify me before
the duke by a look, a gesture, that it is useless to try to ex-
press 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 m}^ soul into the double joy of love and of hear-
ing 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 froiu
the face I turned upon her, she met it with that studied smile
of hers, the conventional expression that sits on the lips of
pvery portrait in every exhibition. She was not listening to
the music. The divine pages of Rossini, Cimarosa, oi
130 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 rest-
less too beneath the apparent calm; fashion tyrannized over
her; her box, her bonnet, her carriage, her own personality
absorbed her entirely. My merciless knowledge thoroughlv
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 polite-
ness was rather subservient. And yet for those she singled
out, her honeyed Avords expressed natural kindness, her pre-
tentious 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
heart capable of a woman's tenderness, if I could 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 the 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 com-
plete ascendency over her. Keen gi'ief liad j)ierccd 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
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART ISl
in the world, with no one to whom she could stretch her Hand,
witli 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 com-
ment on this prospect of so terrible a revenge of thwarted
nature was horrible.
'*'[ 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 r-rguments of luxury, by
the reasoning of this woman of the world in which she
lived; and blamed myself for my infatuated idolatry. I my-
self had not loved Pauline because she was poor; and had
not the wealthy Foedora a right to repulse Eaphael? Con-
science 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 libert}', 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
representation of some wretched farce or other. A bos
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 m\
life.
132 THE MAGIC SKIN
'^e had once come out of the theatre when it was raining
heavily; Fcedora had called a cab for me before 1 could
escape from her show of concern ; she would not admit any of
my excuses — my liking for Avet weather, and my wish to go
to the gaming-table. She did not read my poverty in my
embarrassed attitude, nor 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 revolu-
tion 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 the 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.
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 133
"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. "^Hy
tones had been so >;earching 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 j)redicament 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 neces-
sary. I found two five-franc pieces at the back of the piano,
that had slipped without 3''our 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 1'
VOL. I — 14
134 THE MAGIC SKIN
"'The woman whom you will love is going to kill yon
— there is no doubt of it/ she said, looking at me with
Bterm.
"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 super-
stitious ; 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. Dur-
ing 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 my-
self, thinking of the torments I had endured for many months
past.
"Paulino's fifteen francs were invaluable to me. Fcedora,
thinking of the stifling odor of the crowded place where we
woro to spend several hours, was sorry that she had voi
brought a bouquet; I went in search of flowers for her, a-
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 1 35
I had kifl alrearly my life and my fate at her feet. With a
pleasure in which compunction mingled, I gave her a bouquet.
1 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; T 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 Fa^dora 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.
" 'Foodora 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 nnnatural one.'
"I shuddered at the thought. Then I decided on a plan,
at once the wildest and the most rational that lover ever
136 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 Fcedora
received, her rooms were far too crowded for the hall-portei
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 im-
patience. 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 wains-
coting, 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 undis-
turbed 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 loop-
holes in them, through which I could sea
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 137
"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.
Eastignac drew roars of laughter by merciless sarcasms at the
expense of my rivals.
" 'M. de Eastignac 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 friend-
ships 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 per-
fect social products.
" '^One of your friends is not clever, so you speak of his
integrity and his candor. Another's work is heavy; you in-
troduce 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 bene-
138 THE MAGIC SKIN
fit, 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 con-
versation 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 presump-
tion was notorious, and who even made it contribute to his
success, took up the glove thrown down so scornfully by Ras-
tignac. He began an unmeasured eulogy of me, my per-
formances, 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 Ras-
tignac. '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, witli one of those treacherous and fallacious sub-
tleties that it can use to soothe all our pangs.
"If Fcedora loved me, I tliought, she would be sure to dis-
guise her feelings by some mocking jest. How often the
heart protests against a lie on the lips !
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART l3S
"Well, very soon my audacious rival, left alone with the
countess, rose to go.
'"What! already?' asked she jn 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 wild-
est 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; Fcedora'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 wo-
man 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.
140 THE MAGIC SKIN
" '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
ransr again ; her maid hurried in. Where "^he had been I
cannot tell ; she came in by a secret staircase. I was anxiou?
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 little 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.
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 141
**'You ought to marry, madanie, and liave 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 ar-
rangement, 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 gossip-
ing 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 resolu-
tions !
"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;
I then, after some further time spent in punctiliously render-
ing various services that showed how seriously Foedora re-
spected 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
142 THE MA(;iC SKIN
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 cr}^ 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. \
drew the rustling silk curtains apart, -left my post, went tc
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 tlie 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 com-
pelled 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 praj^er or a malediction,
a forecast or a memor}'^, 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 ex-
plaining 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 contradictor;,
opinions and decisions without number. T could not deuv
my heart to the woman I saw before me, witli the calm, pure
beauty in her face. I resolved to make one more effort. Tf
I told her the story of my life, my love, my sacrifices, mifrht
I not awaken pity in her or draw a tear from her who never
wept?
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 143
"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 Fcedora 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 had 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 look-
ing 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 my-
self 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
144 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 see^ire 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 acknowl-
edges 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 strange-
ness added an indescribable coquettish grace to her attrac-
tions. 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 my-
self 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, 1 received a favor — T was allowed to kiss
We speut auout au Uoux in laanUiar talii
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 145
her hand. She daintily drew off the glove, and my whole som
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 re-
mained 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 in-
fluence. 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 Avere 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 mis-
understood. What sufferings have I not endured for your
sake ! For these, however, you were not to blame ; but in. a
few minutes yon 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 ac-
cepts such portions of the world as stronger spirits refuse.
Then there is poverty in splendor, a Spanish pauper, con-
cealing 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
146 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 re-
produce it. It was no colorless chronicle of blighted affec-
tions; 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
voiir life in peace. It would be a blundering kind of hatred
thai would murder you ! You need not fear violence of any
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 147
kind ; T 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 cheer-
fully, '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 linger-
ing 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.'
i " '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 faith-
148 THE MA(;iC SKIN
fully 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 de-
light to hear those cruel words you have just uttered, so well
I love you. 0, 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 Dieii!'
" 'Like the day before yesterday ! Yes,' she said, 'I was
thinking of my stockbroker; 1 had forgotten to tell him to
convert my five per cent stock into the threes, and the three
per cents had fallen during the day.'
"I looked at her, and my eyes glittered with anger. Some-
times a crime may be a whole romance; I understood that
just then. She was so accustomed, no doubt, to the most im-
passioned 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.'
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 149
" *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 ad-
vocate,' she said, smiling. There is a fervency about your
pleadings.'
" 'The present is yours,' 1 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 vours 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 in-
fatuation, 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 muse had fled. I could not
exorcise the brilliant mocking image of Foedora. Something
morbid brooded over every thought, a vague longing as dread-
ful 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.
VOL. I — 15
150 THE MAGIC SKIN
" 'You are killing yourself/ she said, imploringly ; "^you
should go out and see 3'our friends '
" Tauline, you were a true prophet ; Fredora is killing me.
I want to die. My life is intolerable.'
" 'Is there only one woman in the world?' she asked, smil-
ing. '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 some-
times 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,' Eas-
tignac interrupted.
" *I am mad/ I cried; 'I can feel the madness raging at
times in my brain. My ideas are like shadows; they flit be-
fore me, and T cannot grasp them. Death woiild be pref-
erable 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 tap})ed my forehead. 'What dc>
you say to opium ?'
"'Pshaw! horrid an^onies/ said Rastignac.
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 151
" *0r 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 pon-
dered 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 Mnne. 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 a 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 en-
deavor 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 every-
thing. 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
152 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 !'
"Rastignae'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 any-
thing 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 S3^stematic
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 m}^ scholar's temperate life, a life which would per-
haps have been a long and honorable one, and that T 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 tlie matter with you ?' she asked.
"I rose and quietly counted out the money owing to her
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 153
molher, and added to it sufficient to pay for six months' rent
in advance. She watched me in some ahirm.
" 'I am going to leave you, dear Pauline.'
" *I knew it !' she exclaimed.
" 'Listen, my child. I have not given up the idea of com-
ing 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 in-
nocent fair brow of hers, like snow that has not yet touched
the earth — a father's or a brother's kiss. She tied. I would
not see Madame Gaudin, hung m_y 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 1 thought I saw tears in
Pauline's eyes, and I groaned. Moved perhaps by a com-
mon impulse, we parted in haste like people who fear the con-
tagion of the plague.
"As I waited M'lth 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 lier arms. Costly furniture of
various kinds — love tokens, very likely — was scattered about.
154 THE MAGIC SKIN
Old shoes lay on a luxurious sofa. The comfortable arm-
chair into which I had thrown myself bore as many scars as a
veteran; the arms were gashed, 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 merely for one individual, who leads
the life of the senses and does not trouble himself over in-
consistencies.
"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 ;
who 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 vesta-
holder ; 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
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 155
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 on saying, distilling our
joy drop by drop.
" 'We won't go to sleep,' cried Rastignac. 'Joseph ! somt
punch !'
"He threw gold to his faithful attendant.
" 'There is your share,' he said ; 'go and bury yourself if
you can.'
"iSText day I went to Lesage and chose my furniture, took
the rooms that you know in the Euo Taitbout, and left the
decoration to one of the best upholsterers. I bought horses.
1 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 flatter-
ingly 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 langunge 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. T was alwnvs spruce and carefully
dressed. I had some ro])iiia(ion for cleverness. There w;is
no sign about me of that fearful way of living which mnkes
198 THE MAGIC SKIN
a man into a mere digesting apparatus, a funnel, a pampered
beast.
'^ery 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
Vv'ill 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 b}^ Eossini. Does he not
renounce these courses in the same frame of mind that leads
an abstemious man to forswear Euffec 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 enjoy-
ment as a system, a system which establishes seldom ex-
perienced sensations and makes them habitual, which concen-
■ trates 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
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 157
of self-interest produces Politics. Excesses of every sort are
brothers. These social enormities possess the attraction of
the abyss; they draw us 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 gen-
tleman'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 ex-
ecutioner 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, ae
nature has its accessions of love.
"For men in private life, for a vegetating Mirabeau dream-
ing 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
1
153 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 enjoy-
ments with which life teems abundantly, at the price of his
own death, like the mythical persons in legends who sold them-
selves 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 ^^hat the mystic's ecstasy
is for the soul. Intoxication steeps you in fantastic imag-
inings 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 consciqus-
ness. Is it not because they all feel the need of absolute re-
pose? 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
corrnptod thorn in oithor sonl or ])ody. so as to make all their
powers futile, and their efl'orts of no avail.
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 159
''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 to me, 'Let us be going !' as to Eaphael 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 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 super-
vened; each brought me keen and abundant pangs. The
first came a few days after I had flung myself, like
Sardanapalus, on ray 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, al-
ways see her through my potations, see her still when I was
160 THE MAGIC SKIN
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 flmg
it at her feet !
"Well, I quickly exhausted my funds, but owing to those
three years of discipline, I enjoyed the most robust healtii,
and on the day that 1 found myself without a penny I felt
remarkabl}' 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 be-
gin 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 one-
self,' says Eusebe Salverte. After these excursions I re-
turned to the room I had never quitted, like a doppel-
ganger 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 my-
self 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 Jiving? Why had I eaten puddings a la
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 161
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, 1 might look to :;ee a gentle-
man 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. Re-
morse only brings us to the scaffold, where the executioner in-
vests 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 3-our creditors, and more-
over 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 hate-
ful ; you must put up with their crass ignorance and calculat-
ing 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,
162 THE MAGIC SKIN
and recognize nothing but money. I myself held money in
abhorrence.
"Or a bill niay 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 execu-
tion, or with a duel in prospect, rocked as they are by delu-
sive 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 inlc — 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 a 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 oftlcers 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 pre-
pares the way for crime, and brings together the planks for
the scaffold. My bills were protested. Three days after-
wards 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 T 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 bad laid hold
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 163
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 a scholar's tranciuil 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 Eastignac'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 Fcedora'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 fore-
head. 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 T must have false friends and
courtesans, wine and good cheer to distract me. The tics that
164 THE MAGIC SKIN
attach a man to family life had been permanently broken for
me. I had become a galley-slave of pleasure, and must ac-
complish my destiny of suicide. During the last days of ray
prosperity, I spent every night in the most incredible ex-
cesses ; 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 sym-
bol 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 generoUiS, when every-
thing 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 prop-
erty truly ! I am rich ; I could buy you all, even the deputy
snoring over there. Scum of society, give me your benedic-
tion ! I am the Pope."
Raphael's vociferations had been hitherto drowned by a
thorough-bass of snores, but now they became suddenly audi-
ble. 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! fimile, I havp 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
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 16B
all daughters of Eve. There is notliing dramatic about that
rigmarole of yours."
"Ah, but you were sleeping, slyboots."
"No— 'Death or Fccdora !'— I have it !"
"Wake up !" Kaphael shouted, beating fimile with the
piece of shagreen as if he meant to draw electric fluid out
of it.
"Tonnerre!" said fimile, springing up and flinging his
arms round Eaphael; "my friend, remember the sort of wo-
men 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, Eaphael, 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
Fcfidora; 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 Petra?a to boot; and the universe, and you too, if I
choose. If I choose — Ah! be careful. I can buy up all
your 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."
VOL. I — 16
166 THE MAGIC SKIN
At the word, fimile 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, an 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 de-
sires expand "
"The skin, I tell you."
*^es."
'^ou 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 maunder-
ings?"
"I will bet you I can prove it. Let us measure it "
"Goodness ! he will never get off to sleep," exclaimed
ifimile, as he watched Raphael rummaging busily in the
dining-room.
Thanks to the peculiar clearness with which external ob-
jects 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 fimile ; "let us measure it !"
The two friends spread out the table-napkin and laid t;:c
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 167
Magic Skin upon it. As lilmile's hand appeared to bo
steadier than Eaphael'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 mill-
ionaire !"
"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 Eaphael's nar-
rative 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 her-
self. 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 conscious
168 THE MAGIC SKIN
ness by the warm rays of sunlight that shone upon the
sleepers' heads. Their movements during slumber had dis-
ordered 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 dis-
colored, 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
ej'es 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 con-
fronted thus with sin, the skeleton in rags, lifeless and hollow,
bereft of the sophistries of the intellect and the enchant-
ments 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 Taillcfer, 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'Auherge rouge). The picture was
complete. A picture of a foul life in the midst of luxury,
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 169
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 be-
lieves 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 sensa-
tions 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 honey-
suckle 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. Nearly everybody was
sorry for himself, fimile 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 any-
thing to-day, so this day is lost, and I vote for breakfast."
At this Taillefer went out to give some orders. The wo-
men 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
170 THE MAGIC SKIN
looked unable to continue the boisterous festivity; but these
wan forms revived all at once, stood in groups, and talked
and smiled. Some servants quickl}' and adroitly set the
furniture and everytliing else in its place, and a magnificent
breakfast was got ready.
The guests hurried into the dining-room. Everything
there bpre 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 per-
suaded of the pleasures of lassitude, lest they should, be
forced to admit their own 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 tbere would be some in-
heritance to sample and divide, involving inventories and en-
grossing; 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; "3'ou can jot do^vn 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 r
"Ah ! Ah !"
"One moment," cried Cardot, fairly deafened by a chorus
of wretched jokes. "I came here on serious business. I
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 171
am bringing six millions for one of you." (Dead silence.)
"]\Ionsieur/' he went on, turning to Eaphael, who at the
inonient was unceremoniously wiping his eyes on a corner of
the table-napkin, "was not your mother a Mile. O'Flaharty ?"
"Yes," said Eaphael 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 incalcuUahle 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 Mile. Barbara Marie O'Flaharty foi
a fortnight past, when yesterday at dinner "
Just then Eaphael 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 tliis news of great wealth brought by the
notary.
This abrupt subservience of fate brought Eaphael
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 u])on the linen.
"Why, what is the matter with him?" Taillefer cried.
"He comes by his fortune very cheaply."
" 8outiens-le Cliatillon!" said Bixiou to fimile. "The joy
will kill him."
172 THE MAGIC SRIN
A ghastly white hue overspread every line of the wan
features of the heir-at-law. His face was drawn, every out-
line grew haggard; the hollows in his livid countenance grew
deeper, and his eyes were tixed 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.
Eaphael 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
fimile.
The hurrah set up by tlie jovial assembly rang in Valentin's
ears, but he could not gras]) the sense of a single word.
Vague thoughts crossed him of the Breton peasant's life of
A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART 173
mechanical labor, without a wish of any kind; he pictured
him burdened with a family, tilling the soil, living on buck-
wheat meal, drinking cider out of a pitcher, believing in the
Virgin and the King, taking the sacrament at Piaster, danc-
ing 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 Haphael.
"Bravo !" Taillefer exclaimed ; 'you understand your posi-
tion; a fortune confers the privilege of being impertinent.
You are one of us. Gentlemen, let us drink to the might of
gold ! M. Valentin here, six times a millionaire, has become
a power. He is a king, like all the rich ; everything is at his
disposal, everything lies under his feet. From this time forth
the axiom that ^all Frenchmen are alike in the eyes of the
law,' is for him a fib at the head of the Constitutional
Charter. He is not going to obey the law — the law is going
to obey him. There are neither scaffolds nor executioners
for millionaires."
"Yes, there are," said Eaphael; "they are their own ex-
ecutioners."
"Here is another victim of prejudices !" cried the banker.
"Let us drink !" Raphael said, putting the talisman into his
pocket.
"What are you doing ?" said fimile, checking his movement.
"Gentlemen," he added, addressing the company, who were
rather taken aback by Eaj^hael's behavior, "you must know
that our friend Valentin here — what am I saying? — I mean
my Lord Marquis de Valentin — is in the possession of a secret
for obtaining wealth. His wishes are fulfilled as soon as he
knows them. He will make us all rich together, or he is a
flunkey, and devoid of all decent feeling."
"Oh, Raphael dear, T should like a set of pearl orna-
ments !" Euphrasia exclaimed.
174 THE MAGIC SKIN
"If he has any gratitude in him, he will give me a couple
of carriages with fast steppers," said Aquilina.
"Wish for a hundred thousand a year for me V
"Indian shawls !'*
"Pay my debts !"
"'Send an apoplexy to my uncle, the old stick !''
"Ten thousand a year in the funds, and I'll cry quits w:!'.">
you, Raphael !"
"Deeds of gift and no mistake," Avas the notary's com-
ment.
"He ought, at least, to rid me of the gout !"
"Lower the funds !" shouted the banker.
These phrases flew about like the last discharge of rockets
at the end of a display of fireworks; and were uttered, per-
haps, more in earnest than in jest.
"My good friend," £mile said solemnly, "I shall be quite
satisfied with an income of two hundred thousand livres.
Please to set about it at once."
"Do you not know the cost, fimile?" asked Eaphacl.
"A nice excuse !" the poet cried ; "ought we not to sacrifice
ourselves for our friends?"
"I have almost a mind to wish that you all were dead."
Valentin made answer, with a dark, inscrutable look at his
boon companions.
"Dying people are frightfully cruel," said fimile, laughing.
"You are rich now," he went on gravely; "very well, I wiU
give you two months at most before you grow vilely selfish.
You are so dense already that you cannot understand a jok(\
You have only to go a little further to believe in your Magic
Skin."
Raphael kept silent, fearing the banter of the company ;
but he drank immoderately, trying to drown in intoxication
the recollection of his fatal power.
THE AGONY 175
III
THE AGONY
In the early days of December an old man of some seventy
years of age pursued his way along the Eue de Varenne,
in spite of the falling raiji. He peered up at the door of
each house, trying to discover the address of the Marquis
Eaphael de Valentin, in a simple, childlike fashion, and with
the abstracted look peculiar to philosophers. His face
plainly sliowed traces of a struggle between a heavy mortifica-
tion and an authoritative nature; his long, gray hair hung
in disorder about a face like a piece of parchment shriveling
in the fire. If a painter had come upon this curious charac-
ter, he would, no doubt, have transferred him to his sketch-
book on his return, a thin, bony figure, clad in black, and have
inscribed beneath it : "Classical poet in search of a rhyme."
When he had identified the number that had been given to
him, this reincarnation of Eollin knocked meekly at the door
of a splendid mansion.
''Is Monsieur Eaphael in?" the worthy man inquired of
the Swiss in livery.
"My Lord the Marquis sees nobody," said the servant,
swallowing a huge morsel that he had just dipped in a large
bowl of coffee.
"There is his carriage," said the elderly stranger, pointing
to a fine equipage that stood under the wooden canopy that
sheltered the steps before the house, in place of a striped
linen awning. "He is going out ; I will wait for him."
"Then you might wait here till to-morrow morning, old
boy," said the Swiss. "A carriage is alv/ays waiting for mon-
sieur. Please to go away. If I were to let any stranger
come into the house without orders, I should lose an income
of six hundred francs."
A tall old man, in a cost^jme not unlike that of a
subordinate in the Civil Service, came out of the vestibule and
176 THE MAGIC SKIN
hurried part of the way down the steps, while he made a
survey of the astonished elderly applicant for admission.
"What is more, here is M. Jonathan," the Swiss remarked;
"speak to him."
Fellow-feeling of some kind, or curiosity, brought the two
old men together in a central space in the great entrance-
court. A few blades of grass were growing in the crevices of
the pavement; a terrible silence reigned in that great house.
Thesight of Jonathan's face would have made you long to un-
derstand the mystery that brooded over it, and that was an-
nounced by the smallest trifles about the melancholy place.
When Raphael inherited his uncle's vast estate, his first
care had been to seek out the old and devoted servitor of
whose affection he knew that he was secure. Jonathan had
wept tears of joy at the sight of his young master, of whom
he thought he had taken a final farewell ; and when the mar-
quis exalted him to the high office of steward, his happiness
could not be surpassed. So old Jonathan became an in-
termediary power between Raphael and the world at large.
He was the absolute disposer of his master's fortune, the blind
instrument of an unknown will, and a sixth sense, as it were,
by which the emotions of life were communicated to
Raphael.
"I should like to speak with M. Raphael, sir," said the
elderly person to Jonathan, as he climbed up the steps some
way, into a shelter from the rain.
"To speak with my Lord the Marquis ?" the steward cried.
"He scarcely speaks even to me, his foster-father!"
"But I am likewdse his foster-father," said the old man.
"If your wife was his foster-mother, I fed him myself with
the milk of the Muses. He is my nursling, my child, cants
alumnus! I formed his mind, cultivated his understanding,
developed his genius, and, I venture to say it, to my own
honor and glory. Is he not one of the most remarkable
men of our epoch ? He was one of my pupils in two lower
fornip, and in rhetoric. T am his professor."
"Ah, sir, then you are M. Porriquet?"
THE AGONY 177
"Exactly, sir, but "
"Hush ! hush I" Jonathan called to two underlings,
whose voices broke the monastic silence that shrouded the
house.
"But is the Marquis ill, sir ?" the professor continued.
"My dear sir," Jonathan replied, "Heaven only knows what
is the matter with my master. You see, there are not a
couple of houses like ou^s anywhere in Paris. Do you under-
stand ? Not two houses. Faith, that there are not. My Lord
the Marquis had this hotel purchased for him; it formerly
belonged to a duke and a peer of France; then he spent three
hundred thousand francs over furnishing it. That's a good
deal, you know, three hundred thousand francs ! But every
room in the house is a perfect wonder. 'Good,' said I to
myself when I saw this magnificence; 'it is just like it used to
be in the time of my lord, his late grandfather; and the
3^oung marquis is going to entertain all Paris and the Court !'
Nothing of the kind ! My lord refused to see any one what-
ever. 'Tis a funny life that he leads, M. Porriquet, you un-
derstand. An inconciliahle life. He rises every day at the
same time. I am the only person, you see, that may enter
his room. I open the shutters at seven o'clock, summer
or winter. It is all arranged very oddly. As I come in I
say to him :
" 'You must get up and dress, my Lord Marquis.'
"Then he rises and dresses himself. I have to give him
his dressing-gown, and it is always after the same pattern,
and of the same material. I am obliged to replace it when it
can be used no longer, simply to save him the trouble of ask-
ing for a new one. A queer fancy ! As a matter of fact, he
has a thousand francs to spend every day, and he does as he
pleases, the dear child. And besides, I am so fond of him
that if he gave me a box on the ear on one side, I should hold
out the other to him ! The most difficult things he will tell
me to do, and yet I do them, you know ! He gives me such
a lot of trifles to attend to, that I am well set to work ! He
reads the newspapers, doesn't he ? Well, my instructions are
178 THE MAGIC SKIN
to put them always in the same place, on the same table. I
always go at the same hour and shave him myself ; and don't
I tremble ! The cook would forfeit the annuity of a thou-
sand crowns that he is to come into after my lord's death, if
breakfast is not served inconciliahly at ten o'clock precisely.
The menus are drawn up for the whole year round, day after
day. My Lord the Marquis has not a thing to wish for. He
has strawberries whenever there are any, and he has the earli-
est mackerel to be had in Paris. The programme is printed
every morning. He knows his dinner by rote. In the next
place, he dresses himself at the same hour, in the same
clothes, the same linen, that I always put on the same chair,
you understand? I have to see that he always has the same
cloth; and if it should happen that his coat Came to grief
(a mere supposition), I should have to replace it by another
without saying a word about it to him. If it is fine, I go in
and say to my master :
" 'You ought to go out, sir.'
"He says Yes, or No. If he has a notion that he will go
out, he doesn't wait for his horses; they are always ready
harnessed; the coachman stops there inconciliahly, whip in
hand, just as you see him out there. In the evening, after
dinner, my master goes one day to the Opera, the other to
the Ital no, he hasn't yet gone to the Italiens, though,
for I could not find a box for him until yesterday. Then he
comes in at eleven o'clock precisely, to go to bed. At any
time in the day when he has nothing to do, he reads — he is
always reading, you see — it is a notion he has. My instruc-
tions are to read the Journal de la Librairie before he sees
it, and to buy new books, so that he finds them on his chim-
ney-piece on the very day that they are published. I have
orders to go into his room every hour or so, to look after the
fire and everything else, and to see that he wants nothing.
He gave me a little book, sir, to learn off by heart, with all my
duties written in it — a regular catechism! In summer I
hnvc to keep a cool and even temperature with blocks of ice,
and at all seasons to put fresh flowers all about. He is rich !
THE AGONY 175^
He has a thousand francs to spend every da}- ; he can indulge
his fancies ! And he hadn't even necessaries for so long,
poor child ! He doesn't annoy anybody ; he is as good as
gold; he never opens his mouth, for instance; the house and
garde^ are absolutely silent. In short, my master has not a
single wish left ; everything comes in the twinkling of an eye,
if he raises his hand, and instanter. Quite right, too. If
servants are not looked after, everything falls into confusion.
You would never believe the lengths he goes about things.
His rooms are all — what do you call it? — er — er — en suite.
Very well ; just suppose, now, that he opens his room door or
the door of his study ; presto ! all the other doors fly open of
themselves by a patent contrivance; and then he can go from
one end of the house to the other and not find a single door
shut; which is all ver}^ nice and pleasant and convenient for
us great folk ! But, on my word, it cost us a lot of money !
And, after all, M. Porriquet, he said to me at last :
" 'Jonathan, you will look after me as if I were a baby in
long clothes.' Yes, sir, 'long clothes !' those were his very
words. 'You will think of all my requirements for me.' I
am the master, so to speak, and he is the servant, you un-
derstand? The reason of it? Ah, my word, that is just
what nobody on earth knows but he himself and God
Almighty. It is quite inconciliable !"
"He is writing a poem !" exclaimed the old professor.
"You think he is writing a poem, sir ? It's a very absorb-
ing affair, then! But, you know, T don't think he is. He
often tells me that he wants to live like a vergetation; he
wants to vergetate. Only yesterday he was looking at a tulip
while he was dressing, and he said to me :
" 'There is my own life — I am vergetating, my poor
Jonathan.' Now, some of them insist that that is mono-
mania. It is inconciliable !"
"All this makes is very clear to me, Jonathan," the pro-
fessor answered, with a magisterial solemnity that greatly
impressed the old servant, "that your master is absorbed in a
great work. He is deep in vast meditations, and has no wish to
180 THE MAGIC SKIN
be distracted by the petty preoccupations of ordinary life.
A man of genius forgets everything among his intellectual
labors. One day the famous Xewton "
"Newton? — oh, ah! I don't know the name," said
Jonathan.
"Newton, a great geometrician," Porriquet went on, "once
sat for twent3^-four hours leaning his elbow on the table ;
when he emerged from his musings, he was a day out in his
reckoning, just as if he had been sleeping. I will go to see
him, dear lad; I may perhaps be of some use to him."
"Not for a moment !" Jonathan cried. "Not though you
were King of France — I mean the real old one. You could
not go in unless you forced the doors open and walked over
my body. But I will go and tell him you are here,
M. Porriquet, and I will put it to him like this, 'Ought he to
come up ?' And he will say Yes or No. I never say, 'Do
you wish?' or 'Will you?' or 'Do you want?' Those words
are scratched out of the dictionary. He let out at me once
with a 'Do you want to kill me ?' he was so very angry."
Jonathan left the old schoolmaster in the vestibule, sign-
ing to him to come no further, and soon returned with a
favorable answer. He led the old gentleman through one
magnificent room after another, where every door stood open.
At last Porriquet beheld his pupil at some distance seated be-
side the fire.
Raphael was reading the paper. He sat in an armchair,
wrapped in a dressing-gown with some large pattern on it.
The intense melancholy that preyed upon him could be dis-
cerned in his languid posture and feeble frame; it was de-
picted on his brow and white face ; he looked like some plant
bleached by darlcness. There was a kind of effeminate grace
about him ; the fancies peculiar to wealthy invalids were also
noticeable. His hands were soft and white, like a pretty
woman's; he wore his fair hair, now grown scanty, curled
about his temples with a refinement of vanity.
The Greek cap that he wore was pulled to one side by the
weight of its tassel; too heavy for the light material of which
THE AGONY . Igl
it was made. He had let the paper-knife fall at his feet, a
malachite blade with gold mounting, which he had used to
cut the leaves of a book. The amber mouthpiece of a
magnificent Indian hookah lay on his knee; the enameled
coils lay like a serpent in the room, but he had forgotten to
draw out its fresh perfume. And yet there was a complete
contradiction between the general feebleness of his young
frame and the blue eyes, where all his vitality seemed to
dwell; an extraordinary intelligence seemed to look out from
them and to grasp everything at once.
That expression was painful to see. Some would have
read despair in it, and others some inner conflict terrible as
remorse. It was the inscrutable glance of helplessness that
must perforce consign its desires to the depths of its own
heart ; or of a miser enjoying in imagination all the pleasures
that his money could procure for him, while he declines to
lessen his hoard; the look of a bound Prometheus, of the
fallen Napoleon of 1815, when he learned at the Elysee the
strategical blunder that his enemies had made, and asked for
twenty-four hours of command in vain; or rather it was the
same look that Raphael had turned upon the Seine, or upon
his last piece of gold at the gaming-table only a few months
ago.
He was submitting his intelligence and his will to the
homely common-sense of an old peasant whom fifty years
of domestic service had scarcely civilized. He had given up
all the rights of life in order to live; he had despoiled his
soul of all the romance that lies in a wish; and almost re-
joiced at thus becoming a sort of automaton. The better to
struggle with the cruel power that he had challenged, he
had followed Origen's example, and had maimed and
chastened his imagination.
The day after he had seen the diminution of the Magic
Skin, at his sudden accession of wealth, he happened to be
at his notary's house. A well-known physician had told them
quite seriously, at dessert, how a Swiss attacked by consump-
tion had cured himself. The man had never spoken a word
VOL. I — 17
182 THE MAGIC SKIN
for ten years, and had compelled himself to draw six breaths
onlj^, every minute, in the close atmosphere of a cow-house,
adhering all the time to a regimen of exceedingly light diet.
"I will be like that man," thought Raphael to himself. He
wanted life at any price, and so he led the life of a machine
in the midst of all the luxury around him.
The old professor confronted this youthful corpse and
shuddered; there seemed something unnatural about the
meagre, enfeebled frame. In the Marquis, with his eager
eyes and careworn forehead, he could hardly recognize the
fresh-cheeked and rosy pupil with the active limbs, whom
he remembered. If the worthy classicist, sage critic, and
general preserver of the traditions of correct taste had read
Byron, he would have thought that he had come on a Man-
fred when he looked to find Childe Harold.
"Good day, pere Porriquet," said Eaphael, pressing the old
schoolmaster's frozen fingers in his own hot damp ones;
*'how are you?"
"I am very well," replied the other, alarmed by the touch
of that feverish hand. "But how about you ?"
"Oh, I am hoping to keep myself in health."
"You are engaged in some great work, no doubt ?"
"No," Raphael answered. "Exegi monumentum, pSre
Porriquet; I have contributed an important page to science,
and have now bidden her farewell for ever. I scarcely
know where my manuscript is."
"The style is no doubt correct ?" queried the schoolmaster,
"You, I hope, would never have adopted the barbarous
language of the new school, which fancies it has worked
such wonders by discovering Ronsard !"
"My work treats of physiology pure and simple."
"Oh, then, there is no more to be said," the schoolmaster
answered. "Grammar must yield to the exigencies of dis-
covery. Nevertheless, young man, a lucid and harmonious
gtyle — the diction of Massillon, of M. de Buff on, of the
great Racine — a classical style, in short, can never spoil any-
thing But, my friend," the schoolmaster interrupted
THE AGONY 183
himself, "I was forgetting the object of my visit, which
concerns my own interests."
Too late Raphael recalled to mind the verbose eloquence
and elegant circumlocutions which in a long professorial
career had grown habitual to his old tutor, and almost re-
gretted that he had admitted him ; but just as he was about to
wish to see him safely outside, he promptly suppressed his
secret desire with a stealthy glance at the Magic Skin.
It hung there before him, fastened down upon some wliite
material, surrounded by a red line accurately traced about
its prophetic outlines. Since that fatal carouse, Eaphael
had stifled every least whim, and had lived so as not to cause
the slightest movement in the terrible talisman. The Magic
Skin was like a tiger with which he must live without
exciting its ferocity. He bore patiently, therefore, with the
old schoolmaster's prolixity.
Porriquet spent an hour in telling him about the persecu-
tions directed against him ever since the Eevolution of July.
Theworthy man, having a liking for strong governments, had
expressed the patriotic wish that grocers should be left to
their counters, statesmen to the management of public
business, advocates to the Palais de Justice, and peers of
France to the Luxembourg; but one of the popularity-seek-
ing ministers of the Citizen King had ousted him from his
chair, on an accusation of Carlism, and the old man now
found himself without pension or post, and with no bread
to eat. As he played the part of guardian angel to a poor
nephew, for whose schooling at Saint Sulpice he was paving,
he came less on his own account than for his adopted child's
sake, to entreat his former pupil's interest with the new
minister. He did not ask to be reinstated, but only for a
position at the head of some provincial school.
Raphael had fallen a victim to unconquerable drowsiness
by the time that the worthy man's monotonous voice ceased
to sound in his ears. Civility had compelled him to look
at the pale and unmoving eyes of the deliberate and tedious
old narrator, till he himself had reached stupefaction,
magnetized in an inexplicable wav by the power of inertia.
184 THE MAGIC SKIN
"Well, my dear pere Porriqiiet," he said, not very certain
what the question was to whicli he was replying, "but I can
do nothing for you, nothing at all. I wish very heartily tha<-
you may succeed "
All at once, without seeing the change wrought on the
old man's sallow and wrinkled brow by these conventional
phrases, full of indifference and selfishness, Kaphael sprang
to his feet like a startled roebuck. He saw a thin white line
between the black piece of hide and the red tracing about
it, and gave a cry so fearful that the poor professor was
frightened by it.
"Old fool ! Go !" he cried. "You will be appointed as
headmaster ! Couldn't you have asked me for an annuity
of a thousand crowns rather than a murderous wish ? Your
visit would have cost me nothing. There are a hundred
thousand situations to be had in France, but I have only
one life. A man's life is worth more than all the situations
in the world. — Jonathan !"
Jonathan appeared.
"This is your doing, double-distilled idiot ! What made
you suggest that I should see M. Porriquet ?" and he pointed
to the old man, who was petrified with fright. "Did I put
myself in your hands for j^ou to tear me in pieces? You
have just shortened my life by ten years ! Another blunder
of this kind, and you will lay me where I have laid my father.
Would I not far rather have possessed the beautiful Foedora ?
And I have obliged that old hulk instead — that rag of
humanity ! I had money enough for* him. And, moreover,
if all the Porriquets in the world were dying of hunger, what
is that to me ?"
Kaphael's face was white with anger; a slight froth marked
his trembling lips; there was a savage gleam in his eyes.
The two elders shook with terror in his presence like two
children at the sight of a snake. The young man fell back
in his armchair, a kind of reaction took place in him, the tears
flowed fast from his angry eyes.
"Oh, my life !" he cried, "that fair life of mine. Never
THE AGONY 185
to know a kindly thought again, to love no more; nothing is
left to me !"
He turned to the professor and went on in a gentle voice —
"The harm is done, my old friend. Your services have been
well repaid; and my misfortune has at any rate contributed
to the welfare of a good and worthy man."
His tones betrayed so much feeling that the almost unin-
telligible words drew tears from the two old men, such tears
as are shed over some pathetic song in a foreign tongue.
"He is epileptic/' muttered Porriquet.
"I understand your kind intentions, my friend," Raphael
answered gently. "You would make excuses for me. Ill-
health cannot be helped, but ingratitude is a grievous fault.
Leave me now," he added. "To-morrow or the next day, or
possibly to-night, you will receive your appointment; Re-
sistance has triumphed over Motion. Farewell."
The old schoolmaster went away, full of keen apprehension
as to Valentin's sanity A thrill of horror ran through him ;
there had been something supernatural, he thought, in the
scene he had passed through. He could hardly believe his
own impressions, and questioned them like one uwakened.
from a painful dream.
"Now attend to me, Jonathan," said the youLj man to
his old servant. "Try to understand the charge confided to
you."
'TTes, my Lord Marquis."
"I am as a man outlawed from humanity."
"Yes, my Lord Marquis."
"All the pleasures of life disport themselves rous J my bed
of death, and dance about me like fair women; but if I
beckon to them, I must die. Death always confronts me.
You must be the barrier between the world and me.''
"Yes, my Lord Marquis," said the old servant, wiping the
drops of perspiration from his wrinkled forehead. "But if
you don't wish to see pretty Avomen, how will you manage at
the Italiens this evening? An English family is returning to
London, and I have taken their box for the rest of the sea-
186 THE MAGIC SKIN
son, and it is in a splendid position — superb; in the first
row."
Eaphael, deep in his own deep musings, paid no attention
to him.
Do you see that splendid equipage, a brougham painted a
dark brown color, but with the arms of an ancient and noble
family shining from the panels? As it rolls past, all the
shop-girls admire it, and look longingly at the yellow satin
lining, the rugs from la Savonnerie, the daintiness and fresh-
ness of every detail, the silken cushions and tightly -fitting
glass windows. Two liveried footmen are mounted behind
this aristocratic carriage ; and within, a head lies back among
the silken cushions, the- feverish face and hollow eyes of
Raphael, melancholy and sad. Emblem of the doom of
wealth ! He flies across Paris like a, rocket, and reaches the
peristyle of the Theatre Favart. The passers-by make way
for him; the two footmen help him to alight, an envious
crowd looking on the while.
"What has that fellow done to be so rich ?" asks a poor law-
student, who cannot listen to the magical music of Rossini
for lack of a five-franc piece.
Raphael walked slowly along the gangway ; he expected no
enjoyment from these pleasures he had once coveted so
eagerly. In the interval before the second act of Semiramide
he walked up and down in the lobby, and along the corridors,
leaving his box, which he had not yet entered, to look after it-
self. The instinct of property was dead within him already.
Like all invalids, he thought of nothing but his own suffer-
ings. He was leaning against the chimney-piece in the green-
room. A group had gathered about it of dandies, young and
old, of ministers and ex-ministers, of peers without peerages,
and peerages without peers, for so the Revolution of July had
ordered matters. Among a host of adventurers and
journalists, in fact, Raphael beheld a strange, unearthly
figure a few paces away among the crowd. He went towards
this grotesque object to see it better, half-closing his eyes with
exceeding superciliousness.
THE AGONY 187
'TVhat a wonderful bit of painting!" he said to himself.
The stranger's hair and eyebrows and a Mazarin tuft on the
chin had been dyed black, but the result was a spurious,
glossy, purple tint that varied its hues according to the
light; the hair had been too white, no doubt, to take the
preparation. Anxiety and cunning were depicted in the nar-
row, insignificant face, with its wrinkles incrustcd by thick
layers of red and white paint. This red enamel, lacking on
some portions of his face, strongly brought out his natural
feebleness and livid hues. It Avas impossible not to smile
at this visage with the protuberant forehead and pointed
chin, a face not unlike those grotesque wooden figures that
German herdsmen carve in their spare moments.
An attentive observer looking from Eaphael to this elderly
Adonis would have remarked a young man's eyes set in a
mask of age, in the case of the Marquis, and in the other case
the dim eyes of age peering forth from behind a mask of
youth. Valentin tried to recollect when and where he had
seen this little old man before. He was thin, fastidiously
cravatted, booted and spurred like one-and-twenty ; he crossed
his arms and clinked his spurs as if he possessed all the
wanton energy of youth. He seemed to move about without
constraint or difficulty. He had carefully buttoned up hig
fashionable coat, which disguised his powerful, elderly frame,
and gave him the appearance of an antiquated coxcomb who
still follows the fashions.
For Eaphael this animated puppet possessed all the in-
terest of an apparition. He gazed at it as if it had been
some smoke-begrimed Rembrandt, recently restored and
newly framed. This idea found him a clue to the truth
among his confused recollections ; he recognized the dealer in
antiquities, the man to whom he owed his calamities !
A noiseless laugh broke just then from the fantastical
personage, straightening the line of his lips that stretched
across a row of artificial teeth. That laugh brought out, for
Eaphael's heated fancy, a strong resemblance between the
man before him and the type of head that painters have
188 THE MAGIC SKIN
assigned to Goethe's Mephistopheles. A crowd of super
stitious thoughts entered Kaphael's sceptical mind; he was
convinced of the powers of the devil and of all the sorcerer's
enchantments embodied in mediaeval tradition, and since
worked up by poets. Shrinking in horror from the destiny
of Faust, he prayed for the protection of Heaven with all
the ardent faith of a dying man in God and the Virgin. A
clear, bright radiance seemed to give him a glimpse of the
heaven of Michael Angelo or of Raphael of Urbino: a vener-
able white-bearded man, a beautiful woman seated in an
aureole above the clouds and winged cherub heads. Now he
had grasped and received the meaning of those imaginative,
almost human creations; they seemed to explain what had
happened to him, to leave him yet one hope.
But when the greenroom of the Italiens returned upon
his sight he beheld, not the Virgin, but a very handsome
young person The execrable Euphrasia, in all the splendor
of her toilette, with its orient pearls, had come thither, im-
patient for her ardent, elderly admirer. She was insolently
exhibiting herself with her defiant face and glittering eyes
to an envious crowd of stockbrokers, a visible testimony to
the inexhaustible wealth that the old dealer permitted her to
squander.
Raphael recollected the mocking wish with which he had
accepted the old man's luckless gift, and tasted all the sweets
of revenge when he beheld the spectacle of sublime wisdom
fallen to such a depth as this, wisdom for which such humilia-
tion had seemed a thing impossible. The centenarian greeted
Euphrasia with a ghastly smile, receiving her honeyed words
in reply. He offered her his emaciated arm, and went twice
or thrice round the greenroom with her; the envious glances
and compliments with which the crowd received his mistress
delighted him ; he did not see the scornful smiles, nor hear
the caustic comments to which he gave rise.
"In what cemetery did this young ghoul unearth that
corpse of hers ?" asked the dandy of the Romantic faction.
Euphrasia began to smile. The speaker was a slender,
THE AGONY 189
fair-haircfl 3'onth, with bright blue eyes, and a moustache.
His short dress coat, hat tilted over one ear, and sharp tongue,
all denoted the species.
"How many old men," said Raphael to himself, "bring an
upright, virtuous, and hard-working life to a close in folly !
His feet are cold already, and he is making love."
"Well, sir," exclaimed Valentin, stopping the merchant's
progress, while he stared hard at Euphrasia, "have you quite
forgotten the stringent maxims of your philosophy?"
"Ah, I am as happy now as a young man," said the other,
in a cracked voice. "I used to look at existence from a wrong
standpoint. One hour of love has a whole life in it."
The playgoers heard the bell ring, and left the greenroom
to take their places again. Eaphael and the old merchant
separated. As he entered his box, the Marquis saw Foedora
sitting exactly opposite to him on the other side of the
theatre. The Countess had probably only just come, for she
was just flinging off her scarf to leave her throat uncovered,
and was occupied with going through all the indescribable
manoeuvres of a coquette arranging herself. All eyes were
turned upon her. A young peer of France had come with her ;
she asked him for the lorgnette she had given him to carry.
Raphael knew the despotism to which his successor had re-
signed himself, in her gestures, and in the way she treated her
companion. He was also under the spell no doubt, another
dupe beating with all the might of a real affection against the
woman's cold calculations, enduring all the tortures from
which Valentin had luckily freed himself.
Foedora's face lighted up with indescribable joy. After
directing her lorgnette upon every box in turn, to make a
rapid survey of all the dresses, she was conscious that by her
toilette and her beauty she had eclipsed the loveliest and best-
dressed women in Paris. She laughed to show her white
teeth; her head with its wreath of flowers was never still, in
her quest of admiration. Her glances went from one box to
another, as she diverted herself with the awkward way in
which a Russian princess wore her bonnet, or over the utter
190 THE MAGIC SKIN
failure of a bonnet with which a banker's daughte" had dis-
figured herself.
All at once she met Raphael's steady gaze and turned pale,
aghast at the intolerable contempt in her rejected lover's
eyes. Not one of her exiled suitors had failed to own her
power over them; Valentin alone was proof against her at-
tractions. A power that can be defied with impunity is draw-
ing to its end. This axiom is as deeply engraved on the heart
of woman as in the minds of kings. In Raphael, therefore,
Foedora saw the deathblow of her influence and her ability
to please. An epigram of his, made at the Opera the day be-
fore, was already known in the salons of Paris. The biting
edge of that terrible speech had already given the Countess
an incurable wound. We know how to cauterize a wound, but
we know of no treatment as yet for the stab of a phrase. As
every other woman in the house looked by turns at her and
at the Marquis, Foedora would have consigned them all to the
oubliettes of some Bastille; for in spite of he.?- capacity for
dissimulation, her discomfiture was discerned by her rivals.
Her unfailing consolation had slipped from her at last. The
delicious thought, "I am the most beautiful," the thought that
at all times had soothed every mortification, had turned into
a lie.
At the opening of the second act a woman took up her
position not very far from Raphael, in a box that had been
empty hitherto. A murmur of admiration went up from the
whole house. In that sea of human faces there was a move-
ment of every living wave; all eyes were turned upon the
• stranger lady. The applause of young and old was so pro-
longed, that when the orchestra began, the musicians turned
to the audience to request silence, and then they themselves
joined in tbe plaudits and swelled the confusion. Excited
talk began in every box, every woman equipped herself with an
opera glass, elderly men grew young again, and polished the
glasses of their lorgnettes with their gloves. The enthusiasm
subsided by degrees, the stage echoed with the voices of the
singersj and order reigned as before. The aristocratic section,
THE AGONY Idl
ashamed of having yielded to a spontaneous feeling, again
assumed their wonted politely frigid manner. The well-to-do
dislike to be astonished at anything; at the first sight of a
beautiful thing it becomes their duty to discover the defect
in it which absolves them from admiring it, — the feeling of all
ordinary minds. Yet a few still remained motionless and
heedless of the music, artlessly absorbed in the delight of
watching Eaphael's neighbor.
Valentin noticed Taillefer's mean, obnoxious countenance
by Aquilina's side in a lower box, and received an approving
smirk from him. Then he saw !fimile, who seemed to say
from where he stood in the orchestra, "Just look at that lovely
creature there, close beside you !" Lastly, he saw Eastignac,
with Mme. de Nucingen and her daughter, twisting his gloves
like a man in despair, because he was tethered to his place,
and could not leave it to go any nearer to the unknown fair
divinity.
Raphael's life depended upon a covenant that he had made
with himself, and had hitherto kept sacred. He would give
no special heed to any woman whatever; and the better to
guard against temptation, he used a cunningly contrived
opera-glass which destroyed the harmony of the fairest fea-
tures by hideous distortions. He had not recovered from the
terror that had seized on him in the morning when, at a mere
expression of civility, the Magic Skin had contracted so
abruptly. So Eaphael was determined not to turn his face in
the direction of his neighbor. He sat imperturbable as a
duchess with his back against the corner of the box, thereby
shutting out half of his neighbor's view of the stage, appear-
ing to disregard her, and even to be unaware that a pretty
woman sat there just behind him.
His neighbor copied Valentin's position exactly; she leaned
her elbow on the edge of her box and turned her face in three-
f|uarter profile upon the singers on the stage, as if she were
sitting to a painter. These two people looked like two es-
tranged lovers still sulking, still turning their backs upon
each other, who will go into each other's arms at the first
tender word.
192 THE MAGIC SKIN
Now and again his neighbor's ostrich feathers or her haii
came in contact with Raphael's head, giving him a pleasurable
thrill, against which he sternly fought. In a little while he
felt the touch of the soft frill of lace that went round hei
dress; he could hear the gracious sounds of the folds of hci
dress itself, light rustling noises full of enchantment ; he coulc
even feel her movements as she breathed; with the gentle stir
thus imparted to her form and to her draperies, it seemed tc
Eaphael that all her being was suddenly communicated U
him in an electric spark. The lace and tulle that caressed hin
imparted the delicious warmth of her bare, white shoulders.
By a freak in the ordering of things, these two creatures, kept
apart by social conventions, with the abysses of death between
them, breathed together and perhaps thought of one another.
Finally, the subtle perfume of aloes completed the work of
Raphael's intoxication. Opposition heated his imagination,
and his fancy, become the wilder for the limits imposed upon
it, sketched a woman for him in outlines of fire. He turned
abruptly, the stranger made a similar movement, startled no
doubt at being brought in contact with a stranger; and they
remained face to face, each with the same thought.
"Pauline !"
"M. Eaphael !"
Each surveyed the other, both of them petrified with aston-
ishment. Raphael noticed Pauline's daintily simple costume.
A woman's experienced eyes would have discerned and ad-
mired the outlines beneath the modest gauze folds of her
bodice and the lil}'' whiteness of her throat. And then her
more than mortal clearness of soul, her maidenly modesty,
her graceful bearing, all were unchanged. Her sleeve was
quivering with agitation, for the beating of her heart was
shaking her whole frame.
"Come to the Hotel de Saint-Quentin to-morrow for your
papers," she said. "I will be there at noon. Be punctual."
She rose hastily, and disappeared. Raphael thought of fol-
lowing Pauline, feared to compromise her, and stayed. He
looked at Fcedora; she seemed to him positively ugly. Unable
THE AGONY 103
to understand a single phrase of the music, and feeling stifled
in the theatre, he went out, and returned home with a full
heart.
"Jonathan," he said to the old servant, as soon as he lay in
bed, "give me half a drop of laudanum on a piece of sugar,
and don't wake me to-morrow till twenty minutes to twelve."
"I want Pauline to love me !" he cried next morning, look-
ing at the talisman the while in unspeakable anguish.
The skin did not move in the least; it seemed to have lost
its i^ower to shrink; doubtless it could not fulfil a wish ful-
filled already.
"Ah!" exclaimed Raphael, feeling as if a mantle of lead
had fallen away, which he had worn ever since the day when
the talisman had been given to him ; "so you are playing me
false, you are not obeying me, the pact is broken ! I am
free ; I shall live. Then was it all a wretched joke ?" But he
did not dare to believe in his own thought as he uttered it.
He dressed himself as simply as had formerly been his
wont, and set out on foot for his old lodging, trying to go
back in fancy to the happy days when he abandoned himself
without peril to vehement desires, the days when he had not
3^et condemned all human enjoyment. As he walked he be-
held Pauline — not the Pauline of the Hotel Saint-Quentin,
but the Pauline of last evening. Here was the accomplished
mistress he had so often dreamed of, the intelligent young
girl with the loving nature and artistic temperament, who
understood poets, who understood poetry, and lived in lux-
urious surroundings. Here, in short, was Foedora, gifted
with a great soul; or Pauline become a coantess, and twice a
millionaire, as Fcedorti had been. When he reached the worn
threshold, and stood upon the broken step at the door, where
in old days he had had so many desperate thoughts, an old
woman came out of the room within and spoke to him.
"You are M. Raphael de Valentin, are you not?"
"Yes, good mother," he replied.
"You know your old room then," she replied; "you are
expected up there."
194 THE MAGIC SKIN
"Does Mme. Gaiidin still own the house?" Raphael asked.
"Oh no, sir. Mme. Gaudin is a baroness now. She lives in
a fine house of her own on the other side of the river. Her
husband has come back. My goodness, he brought back
thousands and thousands. They say she could buy up all the
Quartier Saint-Jacques if she liked. She gave me her base-
ment room for nothing, and the remainder of her lease. Ah,
she's a kind woman all the same ; she is no more proud to-day
than she was yesterday,"
Eaphael hurried up the staircase to his garret ; as he reached
the last few steps he heard the sounds of a piano. Pauline
was there, simply dressed in a cotton gown, but the way that
it was made, like the gloves, hat, and shawl that she had
thrown down carelessly upon the bed, revealed a change of
fortune.
"Ah, there you are !" cried Pauline, turning her head, and
rising with unconcealed delight.
Eaphael went to sit beside her, flushed, confused, and
happy; he looked at her in silence.
"Why did you leave us then?" she asked, dropping her eyes
as the flush deepened on his face. "What became of you ?"
"Ah, I have been very miserable, Pauline; I am very mis-
erable still."
"Alas !" she said, filled with pitying tenderness. "I guessed
your fate yesterday when I saw you so well dressed, and ap-
parently so wealthy; but in reality? Eh, M. Eaphael, is it
as it always used to be with you?"
Valentin could not restrain the tears that sprang to his
eyes.
"Pauline," he exclaimed, "I "
He went no further, love sparkled in his eyes, and his emo-
tion overflowed his face.
"Oh, he loves me ! he loves me !" cried Pauline.
Eaphael felt himself unable to say one word ; he bent his
head. The young girl took his hand at this; she pressed it
as she said, half sobbing and half laughing: —
"Eich, rich, happy and rich ! Your Pauline is rich. But
THE AGONY 195
I? Oh, I ought to be very pocr to-day. I have said, times
without number, that I would give all the wealth upon this
earth for those words, 'He loves me !' 0 my Raphael ! I have
millions. You like luxury, you will be glad; but you must
love me and my heart besides, for there is so much love for
you in my hexirt. You don't know? My father has come
back. I am a wealthy heiress. Both he and my mother leave
me completely free to decide my own fate. I am free — do
you understand?"
Seized with a kind of frenzy, Raphael grasped Pauline's
hands and kissed them eagerly and vehemently, with an al-
most convulsive caress. Pauline drew her hands awaj'', laid
them on Raphael's shoulders, and drew him towards her.
They understood one another — in that close embrace, in the
unalloyed and sacred fervor of that one kiss without an after-
thought— the first kiss by which two souls take possession of
each other.
"Ah, I will not leave 3^ou any more," said Pauline, falling
back in her chair. "I do not know how I come to be so bold. !"
she added, blushing.
"Bold, my Pauline? Do not fear it. It is love, love true
and deep and everlasting like my own, is it not ?"
"Speak !" she cried, "Go on speaking, so long your lips
have been dumb for me."
"Then you have loved me all along ?"
"Loved you? Mon Dieu! How often I have wept here,
setting your room straight, and grieving for your poverty
and my own. I would have sold myself to the evil one to
spare you one vexation ! You are my Raphael to-day, really
my own Raphael, with that handsome head of yours, and
your heart is mine too ; 3'es, that above all, your heart — 0
wealth inexhaustible ! Well, where was I ?" she went on after
a pause. "Oh yes ! We have three, four, or five millions, I
believe. If I were poor, I should perhaps desire to bear your
name, to be acknowledged as your wife ; but as it is, I would
give up the whole world for vou, T would be your servant
still, now and always. Why, Raphael; if I give you my for-
196 THE MAGIC SKIN
tune, my heart, myself to-day, I do no more than I did thai
day when I put a certain five-franc piece in the drawer
there," and she pointed to the table. "Oh, how your exnlta-
tion hurt me then !"
"Oh, why are you rich ?" Raphael cried ; "why is there no
vanity in you ? I can do nothing for you."
He wrung his hands in despair and happiness and love.
"When you are the Marquise de Valentin, I know that the
title and the fortune for thee, heavenly soul, will not be
worth "
"One hair of your head," she cried.
"I have millions too. But what is wealth to either of us
now ? There is my life — ah, that I can offer, take it."
"Your love, Raphael, your love is all the world to me. Are
your thoughts of me ? I am the happiest of the happy !"
"Can any one overhear us ?" asked Raphael.
"Nobody," she replied, and a mischievous gesture escaped
her.
"Oome, then !" cried Valentin, holding out his arms.
She sprang upon his knees and clasped her arms about his
neck.
"Kiss me !" she cried, "after all the pain you have given
me; to blot out the memory of the grief that your joys have
caused me; and for the sake of the nights that I spent in
painting hand-screens "
"Those hand-screens of yours ?"
"Now that we are rich, my darling, I can tell you all about
it. Poor boy ! how easy it is to delude a clever man ! Could
you have had white waistcoats and clean shirts twice a week
for three francs every month to the laundress? Why, you
used to drink twice as much milk as your money would have
paid for. 1 deceived you all round — over firing, oil, and eve)-
money. 0 Raphael mine, don't have me for your wife, I a^ii
far too cunning !" she said laughing.
"But how did you manage ?"
"I used to work till two o'clock in the morning ; I gave m\
THE AGONY 197
mother half the money made by my screens, and the other
half went to you."
They looked at one another for a moment, Loth bewildered
by love and gladness.
"Some day we shall have to pay for this happiness by some
terrible sorrow," cried Kaphael.
"Perhaps you are married?" said Pauline. "Oh, I will
not give you up to any other woman."
"I am free, my beloved."
"Free !" she repeated. "Free, and mine !"
She slipped down upon her knees, clasped her hands, and
looked at Eaphael in an enthusiasm of devotion.
"I am afraid I shall go mad. How handsome you are !"
she went on, passing her fingers through her lover's fair hair.
"How stupid your Countess Foedora is ! How pleased I was
yesterday with the homage they all paid to me ! She has
never been applauded. Dear, when I felt your arm against
my back, I heard a vague voice within me that cried, 'He if:
there !' and I turned round and saw you. I fled, for I longed
so to throw my arms about you before them all."
"How happy you are — you can speak !" Eaphael exclaimed.
"My heart is overwhelmed ; I would weep, but I cannot. Do
not draw your hand away. I could stay here looking at you
like this for the rest of my life, I think ; happy and content."
"0 my love, say that once more !"
"Ah, what are words?" answered Valentin, letting a hot
tear fall on Pauline's hands. "Some time I will tr}' to tell
you of my love ; just now I can only feel it."
"You," she said, "with your lofty soul and your great
genius, with that heart of yours that I know so well ; are you
really mine, as I am yours ?"
"For ever and ever, my sweet creature," said Raphael in an
uncertain voice. "You shall be my wife, my protecting angel.
My griefs have always been dispelled by your presence, and
my courage revived; tbat angelic srnile now on your lips has
purified me, so to speak. A new life seems about to begin for
me. The cruel past and my wretched follies are hardly more
VOL. I — 18
198 THE MAGIC SKIN
to me tlian evil dreams. At your side I breathe an at-
mosphere of happiness, and I am pure. Be with me always,"
he added, pressing her solemnly to his beating heart.
"Death may come when it will," said Pauline in ecstasy;
"I have lived !"
Happy he who shall divine their joy, for he must have
experienced it.
"I wish that no one might enter this dear garret again,
my Eaphael," said Pauline, after two hours of silence.
'^e must have the door walled up, put bars across the
window, and buy the house," the Marquis answered.
"Yes, we will," she said. Then a moment later she added :
"Our search for your manuscripts has been a little lost sight
of," and they both laughed like children.
"Pshaw ! I don't care a jot for the whole circle of the
sciences," Raphael answered.
"Ah, sir, and how about glory ?"
"I glory in you alone."
"You used to be very miserable as you made these little
scratches and scrawls," she said, turning the papers over.
"My Pauline '"
"Oh yes, I am your Paulino — and what then?"
'^Vhere are you living now ?"
"In the Eue Saint Lazare. And you ?"
"In the Rue de Varenne."
"What a long way apart we shall be until " She
stopped, and looked at her lover with a mischievous and co-
quettish expression.
"But at the most we need only be separated for a fort-
night," Raphael answered.
"Really! we are to be married in a fortnight?" and she
juniped for joy like a child.
"I am an unnatural daughter !" she went on. "I give no
more thought to my father or my mother, or to anything in
the world. Poor love, you don't know that my father is verv
ill? He returned from the Indies in very bad health. He
nearly died at Haviv, where we went to find him. Good
THE AGONY 199
heavens!" she cried, looking at her watch; "it is three o clock
already ! I ought to bo back again when he wakes at four.
I am mistress of the house at home; my mother does every-
thing that I wish, and my father worships me ; but I will not
abuse their kindness, that would be wrong. My poor father !
He would have me go to the Italiens yesterday. You will
come to see him to-morrow, will 3'ou not ?"
"Will Madame la Marquise de Valentin honor me by tak-
ing my arm?"
"I am going to take the key of this room away with me,"
she said. "Isn't our treasure-house a palace ?"
"One more kiss, Pauline."
"A thousand, mon Dieu!" she said, looking at Eaphael.
"Will it always be like this? I feel as if I were dreaming."
They went slowly down the stairs together, step for step,
with arms closely linked, trembling both of them beneath
their load of joy. Each pressing close to the other's side,
like a pair of doves, they reached the Place de la Sorbonne,
where Pauline's carriage was waiting.
"I want to go home with you," she said. "I want to see
your own room and your study, and to sit at the table where
you work. It will be like old times," she said, blushing.
She spoke to the servant. "Joseph, before returning home
I am going to the Eue de Varenne. It is a quarter-past three
now, and I must be back again by four o'clock. George must
hurry the horses." And so in a few moments the lovers came
to Valentin's abode.
"How glad I am to have seen all this for myself !" Pauline
cried, creasing the silken bed-curtains in Eaphael's room be-
tween her fingers. "As I go to sleep, I shall be here in
thought. I shall imagine j'our dear head on the pillow there.
Raphael, tell me, did no one advise you about the furniture
of your hotel ?"
"Fo one whatever."
"Really ? It was not a woman who "
"Pauline !"
"Oh, I know I am fearfully jealous. You have good taste.
I will have a bed like yours to-morrow."
200 THE MAGIC SKIN
Qttite beside himself with happiness, Eaphael caught Pau-
line in his arms.
"Oh, my father !" she said ; "my father "
"I will take you back to him," cried Valentin, "for I want
to be away from you as little as possible,"
"How loving vou are ! I did not venture to suggeffi
it "
"Are you not my life ?"
It would be tedious to set down accurately the charming
prattle of the lovers, for tones and looks and gestures that
cannot be rendered alone gave it significance. Valentin went
back with Pauline to her own door, and returned mth as
much happiness in his heart as mortal man can know.
When he was seated in his armchair beside the tire, think-
ing over the sudden and complete way in which his wishes
had been fulfilled, a cold shiver went through him, as if the
blade of a dagger had been plunged into his breast — he
thought of the Magic Skin, and saw that it had shrunk
a little. He uttered the most tremendous of French oaths,
without any of the Jesuitical reservations made by the Ab-
bess of Andouillettes, leant his head against the back of the
chair, and sat motionless, fixing his unseeing eyes upon the
bracket of the curtain pole.
"Good God !" he cried ; "every wish ! Every desire of mine J
Poor Pauline ! "
He took a pair of compasses and measured the extent of
existence that the morning had cost him.
"I have scarcely enough for two months !" he said.
A cold sweat broke out over him ; moved by an ungovern-
able spasm of rage, he seized the Magic Skin, exclaiming :
"I am a perfect fool !"
He rushed out of the house and across the garden, and
flung the talisman down a well.
"Vogue la galere/' cried he. "The devil take all this non-
sense."
So Paphael gave himself up to the happiness of being
beloved, and led with Pauline the life of heart and heart.
THE AGONY 901
Difficulties which it would be somewhat tedious to describe
had delayed their marriage, which was to take place early
in March. Each was sure of the other; their affection had
been tried, and happiness had taught them how strong it
was. Never has love made two souls, two natures, so ab-
solutely one. The more they came to know of each other
the more they loved. On either side there was the same
hesitating delicacy, the same transports of joy such as angels
know ; there were no clouds in their heaven ; the will of either
was the other's law.
Wealthy as they both were, they had not a caprice which
they could not gratify, and for that reason had no caprices.
A refined taste, a feeling for beauty and poetry, was instinct
in the soul of the bride ; her lover's smile was more to her
than all the pearls of Ormuz. She disdained feminine
finery; a muslin dress and flowers formed her most elaborate
toilette.
Pauline and Eaphael shunned every one else, for solitude
was abundantly beautiful to them. The idlers at the Opera,
or at the Italiens, saw this charming and unconventional
pair evening after evening. Some gossip went the round of the
salons at first, but the harmless lovers were soon forgotten in
the course of events which took place in Paris; their
marriage was announced at length to excuse them in the
eyes of the prudish ; and as it happened, their servants did
not babble; so their bliss did not draw down upon them any
very severe punishment.
One morning towards the end of February, at the time
when the brightening days bring a belief in the nearness of
the joys of spring, Pauline and Raphael were breakfasting
together in a small conservatory, a kind of drawing-room
filled with flowers, on a level with the garden. The mild
rays of the pale winter sunlight, breaking through the thicket
of exotic plants, warmed the air somewhat. The vivid con-
trast made by the varieties of foliage, the colors of the
masses of flowering shrubs, the freaks of light and shadow,
gladdened the eyes. While all the rest of Paris still sought
202 THE MAGIC SKIN
warmth from its melancholy hearth, these two were laugh-
ing in a bower of camellias, lilacs, and blossoming heath.
Their happy faces rose above lilies of the valley, narcissus
blooms, and Bengal roses. A mat of plaited African grass,
variegated like a carpet, lay beneath their feet in this
hixurious conservatory. The walls, covered with a green
linen material, bore no traces of damp. The surfaces of the
rustic wooden furniture shone with cleanliness. A kitten,
attracted by the odor of milk, had established itself upon
the table ; it allowed Pauline to bedabble it in coffee ; she was
playing merrily with it, taking away the cream that she had
just allowed the kitten to sniff at, so as to exercise its
patience, and keep up the contest. She burst out laughing
at every antic, and by the comical remarks she constantly
made, she liindered Eaphael from perusing the paper ; he had
dropped it a dozen times already. This morning picture
seemed to overflow with inexpressible gladness, like every-
thing that is natural and genuine.
Eaphael, still pretending to read his paper, furtively
watched Pauline with the cat — his Pauline, in the dressing-
gown that hung carelessly about her; his Pauline, with her
hair loose on her shoulders, with a tiny, white, blue-veined
foot peeping out of a velvet slipper. It was pleasant to
see her in this negligent dress; she was delightful as some
fanciful picture by Westall; half -girl, half-woman, as she
seemed to be, or perhaps more of a girl than a woman, there
was no alloy in the happiness she enjoyed, and of love she
knew as yet only its first ecstasy. When Raphael, absorbed
in happy musing, had forgotten the existence of the news-
paper, Pauline flew upon it, crumpled it up into a ball, and
throw it out into the garden; the kitten sprang after the
rotating object, which spun round and round, as politics
are wont to do. This childish scene recalled Raphael to
himself. He would have gone on reading, and felt for the sheet
that ho no longer possessod. Joyous laughter rang out like
the song of a bird, one peal leading to another.
"I am quite jealous of the paper," she said, as she wiped
THE AGONY 203
rtvay the tears that her childlike merriment had brought
into her eyes. "Now, is it not a heinous offence," she ^eiit
on, as she became a woman all at once, "to read Russian
proclamations in my presence, and to attend to the prosings
of the Emperor Nicholas rather than to looks and words of
love V
"I was not reading, my dear angel; I was looking at
you."
Just then the gravel walk outside the conservatory rang
with the sound of the gardener's heavily nailed boots.
"I beg your pardon, my Lord Marquis — and yours, too,
madame — if I am intruding, but I have brought you a
curiosity the like of which I never set eyes on. Drawing a
bucket of water just now, with due respect, I got out this
strange salt-water plant. Here it is. It must be thoroughly
used to water, anyhow, for it isn't saturated or even damp
at all. It is as dry as a piece of wood, and has not swelled
a bit. As my Lord Marquis certainly knows a great deal
more about things than I do, I thought I ought to
bring it, and that it would interest him."
Therewith the gardener showed Eaphael the inexorable
piece of skin ; there were barely six square inches of it left.
"Thanks, Vaniere," Eaphael said. "The thing is very
curious."
"What is the matter with you, my angel; you are grow-
ing quite white !" Pauline cried.
"You can go, Vaniere."
"Your voice frightens me," the girl went on; "it is so
strangely altered. What is it? How are you feeling?
Where is the pain? You are in pain! — Jonathan! here!
call a doctor !" she cried.
"Hush, my Pauline," Eaphael answered, as he regained
composure. "Let us get up and go. Some flower here has
a scent that is too much for me. It is that verbena, per-
haps."
Pauline flew upon the innocent plant, seized it by the
stalk, and flung it out into the garden; then with all the
204 THE MAGIC SKIN
might of the love between them, she clasped Raphael in a
close embrace, and with languishing coquetry raised her red
lips to his for a kiss.
"Dear angel," she cried, "when I saw you turn so white,
I understood that I could not live on without you ; your
life is my life too. Lay your hand on my back, Raphael
mine; I feel a chill like death. The feeling of cold is there
yet. Your lips are burning. Hdw is your hand? — Cold as
ice," she added.
"Mad girl !" exclaimed Raphael.
"AVhy that tear? Let me drink it."
"0 Pauline, Pauline, you love me far too much !"
"There is something very extraordinary going on in your
mind, Raphael ! Do not dissimulate. I shall very soon
find out your secret. Give that to me," she went on, taking
the Magic Skin.
"You are my executioner !" the young man exclaimed,
glancing in horror at the talisman.
"How changed your voice is !" cried Pauline, as she
dropped the fatal symbol of destiny.
"Do you love me?" he asked.
"Do I love you ? Is there any doubt ?"
"Then, leave me ; go away !"
The poor child went.
"So !" cried Raphael, when he was alone. "In an en-
lightened age, when we have found out that diamonds are a
crystallized form of charcoal, at a time when everything is
made clear, when the police would hale a new Messiah before
the magistrates, and submit his miracles to the Academic des
Sciences — in an epoch when we no longer believe in any-
thing but a notary's signature — that I, forsooth, should
believe in a sort of Mene, Telcel, Upharsin! No, by Heaven,
I will not believe that the Supreme Being would take
pleasure in torturing a harmless creature. — Let us see the
learned about it."
Between the Hallo des Vins, with its extensive assembly
of barrels, and the Salpetriere, that extensive seminary of.
THE AdONY 205
drunkenness, lies a small pond, which TJaphael soon reached.
All sorts of ducks of rare varieties were there disporting
themselves ; their colored markings shone in the sun like the
glass in cathedral windows. Every kind of duck in the
world was represented, quacking, dahbling, and moving
about — a kind of parliament of ducks assembled against its
will, but luckily without either charter or political principles,
living in complete immunity from sportsmen, under the
eyes of any naturalist that chanced to see them.
"That is M. Lavrille," said one of the keepers to Eaphael,
who had asked for that high priest of zoology.
The Marquis saw a short man buried in profound re-
flections, caused by the appearance of a pair of ducks. The
man of science was middle-aged; he had a pleasant face,
made pleasanter still by a kindly expression, but an absorp-
tion in scientific ideas engrossed his whole person. His
peruke was strangely turned up, by being constantly raised
to scratch his head; so that a line of white hair was left
plainly visible, a witness to an enthusiasm for investiga-
tion, which, like every other strong passion, so withdraws
as from mundane considerations, that we lose all conscious-
ness of the "I" within us. Raphael, the student and man
of science, looked respectfully at the naturalist, who devoted
his nights to enlarging the limits of human knowledge, and
whose very errors reflected glory upon France; but a
she-coxcomb would have laughed, no doubt, at the break
in continuity between the breeches and striped waistcoat
worn jy the man of learning; the interval, moreover, was
modestly filled by a shirt which had been considerably
creased, for he stooped and raised himself by turns, as his
zoological observations required.
After the first interchange of civilities, Raphael thought it
necessary to pay M. Lavrille a banal compliment upon his
ducks.
"Oh, we are well off for ducks," the naturalist replied.
"The genus, moreover, as you doubtless know, is the most
prolific in the order of palmipeds. It begins with the
206 THE MAGIC SKIN
swan and ends with the zin-zin duck, comprising in all one
hundred and thirty-seven very distinct varieties, each hav-
ing its own name, habits, country, and character, and every
one no more lil^e another than a white man is like a negro.
Eeally, sir, when we dine off a duck, we have no notion for
the most part of the vast extent "
He interrupted himself as he saw a small pretty duck
come up to the surface of the pond.
"There you see the cravatted swan, a poor native of
Canada ; he has come a very long way to show us his bro\yn
and gray plumage and his little black cravat ! Look, he is
preening himself. That one is the famous eider duck that
provides the down, the eider-down under which our fine
ladies sleep; isn't it pretty? Who would not admire the
little pinkish white breast and the green beak? I have just
been a witness, sir," he went on, "to a marriage that I had
long despaired of bringing about; they have paired rather
auspicioush% and I shall await the results very eagerly.
This will be a hundred and thirty-eighth species, I flatter my-
self, to which, perhaps, my name will be given. That is the
newly mated pair," he said, pointing out two of the ducks ;
"one of them is a laughing goose {anas albifrons), and the
other the great whistling duck, Buffon's anas ruffina. 1
have hesitated a long while between the whistling duck, the
duck with white eyebrows, and the shoveler duck {anas
clypeata). Stay, that is the shoveler — that fat, brownish
black rascal, with the greenish neck and that coquettish
iridescence on it. But the whistling duck was a crested
one, sir, and you will understand that I deliberated no longer.
We only lack the variegated black-capped duck now. These
gentlemen here, inianimously claim that that variety of duck
is only a repetition of the curve-beaked teal, but for my ovn
part," — and the gesture he made was worth seeing. It ex-
pressed at once the modesty and pride of a man of science ;
the pride full of obstinacy, and the modesty well tempered
with assurance.
"I don't think it is," he added. "You see, my dear ciV;
THE AGONY 201
that we are not amusing ourselves here. I am engaged at
this moment upon a monograph on the genus duck. But I
am at your disposal."
While they went towards a rather pleasant house in the
Eue de Buffon, Eaphael submitted the skin to M. Lavrille's
inspection.
"I know the product," said the man of science, when he
had turned his magnifying glass upon the talisman. "It
used to be used for covering boxes. The shagreen is very
old. They prefer to use skate's skin nowadays for making
sheaths. This, as you are doubtless aware, is the hide of the
raja sephen, a Eed Sea fish."
"But this, sir, since you are so exceedingly good "
"This," the man of science interrupted, as he resumed,
"this is quite another thing; between these two shagreens,
sir, there is a difference just as wide as between sea and land,
or fish and flesh. The fish's skin is harder, however, than
the skin of the land animal. This," he said, as he indicated
the talisman, "is, as you doubtless know, one of the most
curious of zoological products."
"But to proceed " said Eaphael.
"This," replied the man of science, as he flung himself
down into his armchair, "is an ass' skin, sir."
"Yes, I know," said the young man.
"A very rare variety of ass is found in Persia," the
naturalist continued, "the onager of the ancients, equus
asinus, the Tcoulan of the Tartars; Pallas went out there to
observe it, and has made it known to science, for as a matter
of fact the animal for a long time was believed to be
mythical. It 's mentioned, as you know, in Holy Scripture;
Moses forbade that is should be coupled with its own species,
and the onager is yet more famous for the prostitutions of
which it was the object, and which are often mentioned by
the prophets of the Bible. Pallas, as you know doubtless,
states in his Act. Petrop. tome II., that these bizarre excesses
are still devoutly believed in among the Persians and the
Nogais as a sovereign remedy for lumbago and sciatic gout
208 THE MAGIC SKIN
We poor Parisians scarcely believe that. The Museum has
no example of the onager.
"What a magnificent animal !" he continued. "It is full
of mystery; its eyes are provided with a sort of burnished
covering, to which the Orientals attribute the powers of
fascination; it has a glossier and finer coat than our hand-
somest horses possess, striped with more or loss tawny bands,
very much like the zebra's hide. There is something pliant
and silky about its hair, which is sleek to the touch. Its
powers of sight vie in precision and accuracy with those of
man; it is rather larger than our largest domestic donkeys,
and is possessed of extraordinary courage. If it is surprised
by any chance, it defends itself against the most dangerous
wild beasts with remarkable success ; the rapidity of its move-
ments can only be compared with the flight of birds; an
onager, sir, would run the best Arab or Persian horses to
death. According to the father of the conscientious Doctor
Niebuhr, whose recent loss we are deploring, as you doubtless
know, the ordinary average pace of one of these wonderful
creatures would be seven thousand geometric feet per hour.
Our own degenerate race of donkeys can give no idea of the
ass in his pride and independence. He is active and spirited
in his demeanor; he is cunning and sagacious; there is grace
about the outlines of his head ; every movement is full of at-
tractive charm. In the East he is the king of beasts.
Turkish and Persian superstition even credits him with a
mysterious origin ; and when stories of the prowess attributed
to him are told in Thibet or in Tartary, the speakers mingle
Solomon's name with that of this noble animal. A tame
onager, in short, is worth an enormous amount ; it is well-
nigh impossible to catch them among the mountains, where
they leap like roebucks, and seem as if they could fly like
birds. Our myth of the winged horse, our Pegasus, had its
origin doubtless in these countries, where the shepherds could
see the onager springing from one rock to another. In
Persia they breed assos for the saddle, a cross between a
tamed onager and a she-ass, and they paint them red, follow-
THE AGONY 209
ing immemorial tradition. Perhaps it was this custom that
gave rise to our own proverb, 'Surely as a red donkey.' At
some period when natural history was much neglected in
France, I think a traveler must have brought over one of
these strange beasts that endures servitude with such im-
patience. Hence the adage. The skin that you have laid
before me is the skin of an onager. Opinions differ as to
the origin of the name. Some claim that Chagri is a
Turkish word; others insist that Chagri must be the name
of the place where this animal product underwent the
chemical process of preparation so clearly described by
Pallas, to which the peculiar graining that we admire is
due; Martellens has written to me saying that Chdagri is a
river "
"I thank you, sir, for the information that you have given
me; it would furnish an admirable footnote for some Dom
Calmet or other, if such erudite hermits yet exist ; but I have
had the honor of pointing out to you that this scrap was in
the first instance quite as large as that map," said Kaphael,
indicating an open atlas to Lavrille; "but it has shrunk
visibly in three months' time "
"Quite so," said the man of science. "I understand.
The remains of any substance primarily organic are
naturally subject to a process of decay. It is quite easy to
understand, and its progress depends upon atmospherical
conditions. Even metals contract and expand appreciably,
for engineers have remarked somewhat considerable inter-
stices between great blocks of stone originally clamped to-
gether with iron bars. The field of science is boundless, but
human life is very short, so that we do not claim to be ac-i
quainted with all the phenomena of nature." '
"Pardon the question that I am about to ask you, sir,"
Raphael began, half embarrassed, "but are you quite sure that
this piece of skin is subject to the ordinary laws of zoology,
and that is can be stretched?"
"Certainly oh, bother ! " muttered M. Lavrille,
trying to stretch the talisman. "But if you, sir, will go to
210 THE MAGIC SKIN
see Planchette," he added, "the celebrated professor of
mechanics, he will certainly discover some method of acting
upon this skin, of softening and expanding it."
"Ah, sir, you are the preserver of my life," and Raphael
took leave of the learned naturalist and hurried off to
Planchette, leaving the worthy Lavrille in his study, all
among the bottles and dried plants that filled it up.
Quite unconsciously Eaphael brought away with him from
this visit, all of science that man can grasp, a terminology
to wit. Lavrille, the worthy man, was very much like
Sancho Panza giving to Don Quixote the history of the
goats; he was entertaining himself by making out a list of
animals and ticking them off. Even now that his life was
nearing its end, he was scarcely acquainted with a mere frac-
tion of the countless numbers of the great tribes that God has
scattered, for some unknown end, throughout the ocean of
worlds.
Eaphael was well pleased. "I shall keep my ass well in
hand," cried he. Sterne had said before his day, "Let us
take care of our ass, if we wish to live to old age." But it
is such a fantastic brute !
Planchette was a tall, thin man, a poet of a surety, lost in
one continual thought, and always employed in gazing into
the bottomless abyss of Motion. Commonplace minds accuse
these lofty intellects of madness ; they form a misinterpreted
race apart that lives in a wonderful carelessness of luxuries
or other people's notions. They will spend whole days at a
stretch, smoking a cigar that has gone out, and enter a
drawing-room with the buttons on their garments not in
every case formally wedded to the button-holes. Some day
or other, after a long time spent in measuring space, or in
accumulating Xs under Aa-Gg, they succeed in analyzing
some natural law, and resolve it into its elemental principles,
md all on a sudden the crowd gapes at a new machine; or
it is a handcart perhaps that overwhelms us with astonish-
ment by the apt simplicity of its construction. The modest
man of science smiles at his admirers, and remarks, "What
THE AGONY 211
is that invention of mine? Nothing whatever. Man can-
not create a force; he can but direct it; and science consists
in learning from nature."
The mechanician was standing bolt upright, planted on
both feet, like some victim dropped straight from the gibbet,
when Eaphael broke in upon him. He was intently
watching an agate ball that rolled over a sun-dial, and
awaited its final settlement. The worthy man had re-
ceived neither pension nor decoration ; he had not known
how to make the right use of his ability for calculation. He
was happy in his life spent on the watch for a discovery ; he
had no thought either of reputation, of the outer world,
nor even of himself, and led the life of science for the sake of
science.
"It is inexplicable," he exclaimed. "Ah, your servant,
sir," he went on, becoming aware of Raphael's existence.
"How is your mother? You must go and see my wife."
"And 1 also could have lived thus," thought Eaphael, as he
recalled the learned man from his meditations by asking
of him how to produce any effect on the talisman, which he
placed before him.
"Although my credulity must amuse you, sir," so the Mar-
quis ended, "I will conceal nothing from you. That skin
seems to me to be endowed with an insuperable power of
resistance."
"People of fashion, sir, always treat science rather
superciliously," said Planchette. "They all talk to us pretty
much as the incroyahh did when he brought some ladies to
see Lalande just after an eclipse, and remarked, 'Be so good
as to begin it over again !' What effect do you want to pro-
duce? The object of the science of mechanics is either the
application or the neutralization of the laws of motion. As
for motion pure and simple, I tell you humbly, that we can-
not possibly define it. That disposed of, unvarying
phenomena have been observed which accompany the actions
of solids and fluids. If we set up the conditions by which
these phenomena are brought to pass, we can transport bodies
212 THE MAGIC SKIN
or communicate locomotive power to them at a predeter-
mined rate of speed. We can ])roject them, divide them
up in a few or an infinite number of pieces, accordingly as
we break them or grind them to powder ; we can twist bodies
or make them rotate, modify, compress, expand, or extend
them. The whole science, sir, rests upon a single fact.
"You see this ball," he went on; "here it lies upon this
slab. Now, it is over there. What name shall we give to
what has taken place, so natural from a physical point of
view, SO' amazing from a moral? Movement, locomotion,
changing of place? W^hat prodigious vanity lurks under-
neath the words. Does a name solve the difficulty? Yet it
is the whole of our science for all that. Our machines either
make direct use of this agency, this fact, or they convert it.
This trifling phenomenon, applied to large masses, would
send Paris flying. We can increase speed by an expenditure
of force, and augment the force by an increase of speed.
But what are speed and force? Our science is as powerless
to tell us that as to create motion. Any movement what-
ever is an immense power, and man does not create power
of any kind. Everything is movement, thought itself is a
movement, upon movement nature is based. Death is a
movement whose limitations are little known. If God is
eternal, be sure that He moves perpetually; perhaps God is
movement. That is why movement, like God, is inexplic-
able, unfathomable, unlimited, incomprehensible, intangible.
Who has ever touched, comprehended, or measured move^
ment? We feel its effects without seeing it; we can even
deny them as we can deny the existence of a God.
Where is it? Where is it not? Whence comes it?
What is its source? What is its end? It surrounds
us, it intrudes upon us, and yet escapes us. It is
evident as a fact, obscure as an abstraction; it is at
once effect and cause. It requires space, even as we, and
what is space? Movement alone recalls it to us; without
movement, space is but an empty meaningless word. Like
space, like creation, like the infinite, movement is an in-
THE AGONY 213
soluble problem which confounds human reason; man will
never conceive it, whatever else he may be permitted to con-
ceive.
"Between each point in space occupied in succession by
that ball," continued the man of science, "there is an abyss
confronting human reason, an abyss into which Pascal fell.
In order to produce any effect upon an unknown substance,
we ought first of all to study that substance; to know
whether, in accordance with its nature, it will be broken by
the force of a blow, or whether it will withstand it; if it
breaks in pieces, and you have no wish to split it up, we shall
not achieve the end proposed. If you want to compress it, a
uniform impulse must be communicated to all the particles
of the substance, so as to diminish the interval that separates
them in an equal degree. If you wish to expand it, we
should try to bring a uniform eccentric force to bear on
every molecule; for unless we conform accurately to this
law, we shall have breaches in continuity. The modes of
motion, sir, are infinite, and no limit exists to combinations
of movement. Upon what effect have you determined ?"
"I want any kind of pressure that is strong enough to
expand the skin indefinitely," began Kaphael, quite out of
patience.
"Substance is finite," the mathematician put in, "and
therefore will not admit of indefinite expansion, but
pressure will necessarily increase the extent of surface at the
expense of the thickness, which will be diminished until the
point is reached when the material gives out "
"Bring aboiit that result, sir," Eaphael cried, "and you
will have earned millions."
"Then I sliould rob you of your money," replied the other,
phlegmatic as a Dutchman. "I am going to show you, in a
word or two, that a machine can be made that is fit to crush
Providence itself in pieces like a fly. It would reduce a
man to the conditions of a piece of waste paper; a man —
boots and spurs, hat and cravat, trinkets and gold, and
all "
VOL. I — IQ " -
214 THE MAGIC SKIN
'^^hat a fearful machine!"
"Instead of flinging their brats into the water, the Chinese
ought to make them useful in this way," the man of science
went on, without reflecting on the regard man has for his
progeny.
Quite absorbed by his idea, Planchette took an empty
flower-pot, with a hole in the bottom, and put it on the sur-
face of the dial, then he went to look for a little clay in a
Wrner of the garden. Eaphael stood spellbound, like a child
'to whom his nurse is telling some wonderful story.
Planchette put the clay down upon the slab, drew a pruning-
knife from his pocket, cut two branches from an elder tree,
and began to clear them of pith by blowing through them,
as if Eaphael had not been present.
"There are the rudiments of the apparatus," he said.
Then he connected one of the wooden pipes with the bottom
of the flower-pot by a clay joint, in such a way that the
mouth of the elder stem was just under the hole of the
flower-pot; you might have compared it to a big tobacoj-
pipe. He spread a bed of clay over the surface of the slab,
in a shovel-shaped mass, set down the flower-pot at the
wider end of it, and laid the pipe of the elder stem along
the portion which represented the handle of the shovel.
Next he put a lump of clay at the end of the elder stem
and therein planted the other pipe, in an upright position,
forming a second elbow which connected it with the first
horizontal pipe in such a manner that the air, or any given
fluid in circulation, could flow through this improvised piece
of mechanism from the mouth of the vertical tube, along the
intermediate passages, and so into the large empty flower-
pot.
"This apparatus, sir," he said to Eaphael, with all the
gravity of an academician pronouncing his initiatory dis-
course, "is one of the great Pascal's grandest claims upon
our admiration."
"I don't understand."
The man of science smiled. He went up to a fruit-tree
THE AGONY 215
and took down a little phial in which the druggist had sent
him some liquid for catching ants; he broke off the bottom
and made a funnel of the top, carefully fitting it to the
mouth of the vertical liollowed stem that he had set in the
clay, and at the opposite end to the great reservoir, repre-
sented by the flower-pot. Next, by means of a watering-
pot, he poured in sufficient water to rise to the same level in
the large vessel and in tho tiny circular funnel at the end
of the elder stem.
Eaphael was thinking of his piece of skin.
"Water is considered to-day, sir, to be an incompressible
body," said the mechanician; "never lose sight of that
fundamental principle; still it can be compressed, though
only so very slightly that we should regard its faculty for
contracting as a zero. You see the amount of surface pre-
sented by the water at the brim of the flower-pot?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very good; now suppose that that surface is a thousand
times larger than the orifice of the elder stem through
which I poured the liquid. Here, 1 am taking the funnel
away "
"Granted."
"Well, then, if by any method whatever I increase the
volume of that quantity of water by pouring in yet more
through the mouth of the little tube; the water thus com-
pelled to flow downwards would rise in the reservoir, repre-
sented by the flower-pot, until it reached the same level at
either end."
"That is quite clear," cried Eaphael.
"But there is this difference," the other went on. "Sup-
pose that the thin column of water poured into the little
vertical tube there exerts a force equal, say, to a pound
weight, for instance, its action will be punctually communi-
cated to the great body of the liquid, and will be trans-
mitted to every part of the surface represented by the water
in the flower-pot so that* at the surface there will be a
thousand columns of water, every one pressing upwards as
21 6 THE MAGIC SKIN
if they were impelled by a force equal to that which compels
the liquid to descend in the vertical tube; and of necessity
they reproduce here," said Planchette, indicating to
Raphael the top of the flower-pot, "the force introduced
over there, a thousand-fold," and the man of science
pointed out to the marquis the upright wooden pipe set iui
the clay.
"That is quite simple," said Eaphael.
Planchette smiled again.
"In other words," he went on, with the mathematician's
natural stubborn propensity for logic, "in order to resist the
force of the incoming water, it would be necessary to exert,
upon every part of the large surface, a force equal to that
brought into action in the vertical column, but with this
difference — if the column of liquid is a foot in height, the
thousand little columns of the wide surface will only have a
ver}'- slight elevating power.
"Now," said Planchette, as he gave a fillip to his bits of
stick, *1et us replace this funny little apparatus by steel
tubes of suitable strength and dimensions; and if you cover
the liquid surface of the reservoir with a strong sliding plate
of metal, and if to this metal plate you oppose another, solid
enough and strong enough to resist any test; if, further-
more, you give me the power of continually adding water to
the volume of liquid contents by means of the little vertical
tube, the object fixed between the two solid metal plates
must of necessity yield to the tremendous crushing force
which indefinitely compresses it. The method of continually
pouring in water through a little tube, like the manner of
communicating force through the volume of the liquid to
a small metal plate, is an absurdly primitive mechanical
device. A brace of pistons and a few valves would do it all.
Do you perceive, my dear sir," he said, taking Valentin
by the arm, "there is scarcely a substance in existence that
would not be compelled to dilate when fixed in between these
two indefinitely resisting surfaces?"
"^Vhat ! the author of the Lettres provinciales invented
it?" T{;iphacl exclaimed.
THE AGONY 211
•*He and no other, sir. The science of mechanics knows
no simpler nor more beautiful contrivance. The opposite
principle, the capacity of expansion possessed by water, has
brought the steam-engine into being. But water will only
expand up to a certain point, while its incompressibility,
being a force in a manner negative, is, of necessity,
infinite."
"If this skin is expanded," said Eaphaeh "I promise you
to erect a colossal statue to Blaise Pascal; to found a prize
of a hundred thousand francs to be offered every ten years
for the solution of the grandest problem of mechanical
science effected during the interval; to find dowries for all
your cousins and second cousins, and finally to build an
asylum on purpose for impoverished or insane mathe-
maticians."
"That would be exceedingly useful," Planchette replied.
"We will go to Spieghalter to-morrow, sir," he continued,
with the serenity of a man living en a plane wholly intel-
lectual. "That distinguished mechanic has just completed,
after my own designs, an improved mechanical arrangement
by which a child could get a thousand trusses of hay inside
his cap."
"Then good-bye till to-morrow."
"Till to-morrow, sir."
"Talk of mechanics !" cried Raphael ; "isn't it the great-
est of the sciences? The other fellow with his onagers,
classifications, ducks, and species, and his phials full of
bottled monstrosities, is at best only fit for a billiard-marker
in a saloon."
The next morning Raphael went off' in great spirits to find
Planchette, and together they set out for the Rue de la
Sante — auspicious appellation ! Arrived at Spieghalter's,
the young man found himself in a vast foundrv'; his eyes
lighted upon a multitude of glowing and roaring furnaces.
There was a storm of sparks, a deluge of nails, an ocean of
pistons, vices, levers, valves, girders, files, and nuts; a sea
of melted metal, baulks of timber and bar-steel. Iron filings
218 THE MAGIC SKIN
filled your throat. There was iron in the atmosphere; the
men were covered with it; everything reeked of iron. The
iron seemed to be a living organism; it became a fluid,
moved, and seemed to shape itself intelligently after every
fashion, to obey the worker's every caprice. Through the up-
roar made by the bellows, the crescendo of the falling ham-
mers, and the shrill sounds of the lathes that drew groans from
the steel, Eaphael passed into a large, clean, and airy place
where he was able to inspect at his leisure the great press
that Planchette had told him about. He admired the cast-
iron beams, as one might call them, and the twin bars oi
steel coupled together with indestructible bolts.
"If you were to give seven rapid turns to that crank,''
said Spieghaltcr, pointing out a beam of polished steel, "you
would make a steel bar spurt out in thousands of jets, that
would get into your legs like needles."
"The deuce !" exclaimed Eaphael.
Planchette himself slipped the piece of skin between the
metal plates of the all-powerful press; and, brimful of the
certainty of a scientific conviction, he worked the crank
energetically.
"Lie flat, all of you ; we are dead men \" thundered Spieg-
halter, as he himself fell prone on the floor.
A hideous shrieking sound rang through the workshops.
The water in the machine had broken the chamber, and now
spouted out in a jet of incalculable force; luckily it went
in the direction of an old furnace, which was overthrown,
knocked to pieces, and twisted like a house that has been
enveloped and carried away by a waterspout.
"Ha!" remarked Planchette serenely, "the piece of skin
is as safe and sound as my eye. There was a flaw in your
reservoir somewhere, or a crevice in the large tube "
"N"o, no; I know my reservoir. The devil is in your con-
trivance, sir; you can take it away," and the German pounced
upon a smith's hnmrner, flung the skin down on an anvil,
and, with all the strength that rage gives, dealt the talisman
the most formidable blow that had ever resounded through
his workshops.
THE AGONY 219
"There is not so much as a mark on it \" said Planchette,
stroking the perverse bit of skin.
The workmen hurried in. The foreman took the skin and
buried it in the glowing coal of a forge, while, in a semi-
circle round the fire, they all awaited the action of a huge
pair of bellows. Eaphael, Spieghalter, and Professor
Planchette stood in the midst of the grimy expectant crowd,
liaphael, looking round on faces dusted over with iroi?
filings, white eyes, greasy blackened clothing, and hairf
chests, could have fancied himself transported into the wild
nocturnal world of German ballad poetry. After the skin
had been in the fire for ten minutes, the foreman pulled it
out with a pair of pincers.
"Hand it over to me," said Raphael.
The foreman held it out by way of a joke. The Marquis
readily handled it; it was cool and flexible between his
fingers. An exclamation of alarm went up; the workmen
fled in terror. Valentin was left alone with Planchette in
the empty workshop.
"There is certainly something infernal in the thing !" cried
Raphael, in desperation. "Is no human power able to give
me one day more of existence ?"
"I made a mistake, sir," said the mathematician, with a
penitent expression; "we ought to have subjected that pe-
culiar skin to the action of a rolling machine. Where could
my eyes have been when I suggested compression !"
"It was I that asked for it," Raphael answered.
The mathematician heaved a sigh of relief, like a culprit
acquitted by a dozen jurors. Still, the strange problem
afforded by the skin interested him ; he meditated a moment,
and then remarked:
"This unknown material ought to be treated chemically by
re-agents. Let us call on Japhet — perhaps the chemist nia\
have better luck than the miechanic."
Valentin urged his horse into a rapid trot, hoping to find
the chemist, the celebratorl Japhet, in his laboratory.
"Well, old friend," Planchette began, seeing Japhet in his
armchair, examining a precipitate; "how goes chemistry?"
220 THE MAGIC SKIN
"Gone to sleep. Nothing new at all. The Aeademie, how
ever, has recognized the existence of salicine, but salicine.
asparagine, vauqueline, and digitaline are not really discov-
eries "
"Since you cannot invent substances," said Eaphael, "you
are obliged to fall back on inventing names."
*'Most emphatically true, young man."
"Here," said Planehette, addressing the chemist, "try to
analyze this composition; if you can extract any element
whatever from it, I christen it diaboline beforehand, for we
have just smashed a hydraulic press in trying to compress it."
"Let's see ! let's have a look at it !" cried the delighted
chemist ; "it may, perhaps, be a fresh element."
"It is simply a piece of the skin of an ass, sir," said
Raphael.
"Sir !" said the illustrious chemist sternly.
"I am not joking," the Marquis answered, laying the piece
of skin before him.
Baron Japhet applied the nervous fibres of his tongue to
the skin; he had skill in thus detecting salts, acids, alkalis,
and gases. After several experiments, he remarked :
"No taste whatever ! Come, we will give it a little fluoric
acid to drink."
Subjected to the influence of this ready solvent of animal
tissue, the skin underwent no change whatsoever.
"It is not shagreen at all!" the chemist cried. "We will
treat this unknown mystery as a mineral, and try its mettle
by dropping it in a crucible where I have at this moment
some red potash."
Japhet went out, and returned almost immediately.
"Allow me to cut away a bit of this strange substance, sir,"
he said to Eaphael; "it is so extraordinary "
"A bit !" exclaimed Raphael ; "not so much as a hair's-
breadth. You may try, though," he added, half banteringly,
half sadly.
The chemist broke a razor in his desire to cut the skin;
THE AGONY 221
he tried to break it by a powerful electric shock ; next he sub-
mitted it to the influence of a galvanic battery; but all the
thunderbolts his science wotted of fell harmless on the dread-
ful talisman.
It was seven o'clock in the evening. Planchette, Japhet,
and Eaphael, unaware of the flight of time, were awaiting the
outcome of a final experiment. The Magic Skin emerged
triumphant from a formidable encounter in which it had
been engaged with a considerable quantity of chloride of
nitrogen.
"It is all over with me," Raphael wailed. "It is the finger
of God ! I shall die ! " and he left the two amazed sci-
entific men.
"We must be very careful not to talk about this affair at
the Academic; our colleagnes there would laugh at us,"
Planchette remarked to the chemist, after a long pause, in
which they looked at each other without daring to communi-
cate their thoughts. The learned pair looked like two Chris-
tians who had issued from their tombs to find no God in the
heavens. Science had been powerless; acids, so much clear
water; red potash had been discredited; the galvanic battery
and electric shock had been a couple of playthings.
"A hydraulic press broken like a biscuit !" commented
Planchette.
"I believe in the devil," said the Baron Japhet, after a mo-
ment's silence.
"And I in God," replied Planchette.
Each spoke in character. The universe for a mechanician
is a machine that requires an operator; for chemistry — that
fiendish employment of decomposing all things — the world
is a gas endowed with the power of movement.
"We cannot deny the fact," the chemist replied.
"Pshaw ! those gentlemen the doctrinaires have invented
a nebulous aphorism for our consolation — Stupid as a fact."
"Your aphorism," said the chemist, "seems to me as a fact
very stupid."
222 THE MAGIC g»lN
They began to laugh, and went off to dine like folk for
whom a miracle is nothing more than a phenomenon.
Valentin reached his own house shivering with rage and
consumed with anger. He had no more faith in anything.
Conflicting thoughts shifted and surged to and fro in his
brain, as is the case with every man brought face to face with
an inconceivable fact. He had readily believed in some hid-
den flaw in Spieghalter's apparatus; he had not been sur-
prised by the incompetence and failure of science and of fire ;
but the flexibility of the skin as he handled it, taken with its
stubbornness when all the means of destruction that man
possesses had been brought to bear upon it in vain — these
things terrified him. The incontrovertible fact made him
dizzy.
"I am mad," he muttered. "I have had no food since the
morning, and yet I am neither hungry nor thirsty, and there
is a fire in my breast that burns me."
He put back the skin in the frame where it had been en-
closed but lately, drew a line in red ink about the actual con-
figuration of the talisman, and seated himself in his arm-
chair.
"Eight o'clock already !" he exclaimed. "To-day has gone
like a dream."
He leaned his elbow on the arm of the chair, propped his
head with his left hand, and so remained, lost in secret dark
reflections and consuming thoughts that men cond<?mned to
die bear away with them.
"0 Pauline!" he cried. "Poor child! there are gulfs that
love can never traverse, despite the strength of his. wings."
Just then he very distinctly heard a smothered; sigh, and
knew by one of the most tender privileges of passionate love
that it was Pauline's breathing.
"That is my death warrant," he said to himself. "If she
were there, I should wish to die in her arms."
A burst of gleeful and hearty laughter made him turn his
face towards the bed; lie saw Pauline's face tlirough the
transparent curtains, smiling like a child for gladness over
THE AGONY 223
a successful piece of mischief. Tier pretty hair fell over her
shoulders in countless curls; she looked like a Bengal rose
upon a pile of white roses.
"I cajoled Jonathan/' said she. "Doesn't the bed belong
to me, to me who am your wife? Don't scold me, darling;
I only wanted to surprise you, to sleep beside you. Forgive
me for my freak."
She sprang out of bed like a kitten, showed herself gleam-
ing in her lawn raiment, and sat down on Eaphael's knee.
"Love, what gulf were you talking about?" she said, with
an anxious expression apparent upon her face.
"Death."
"You hurt me," she answered. "There are some thoughts
upon which we, poor women that we are, cannot dwell; they
are death to us. Is it strength of love in us, or lack of cour-
age ? I cannot tell. Death does not frighten me," she began
again, laughingly. "To die with you, both together, to-mor-
row morning, in one last embrace, would be joy. It seems to
me that even then I should have lived more than a hundred
years. What does the number of days matter if we have
spent a whole lifetime of peace and love in one night, in one
hour?"
"You are right; Heaven is speaking through that pretty
mouth of yours. Grant that I may kiss you, and let us die,"
said Eaphael.
"Then let us die," she said, laughing.
Towards nine o'clock in the morning the daylight streamed
through the chinks of the window shutters. Obscured some-
what by the muslin curtains, it yet sufficed to show clearly
the rich colors of the carpet, the silks and furniture of the
room, where the two lovers were lying asleep. The gilding
sparkled here" and there. A ray of sunlight fell and faded
upon the soft down quilt that the freaks of love had thrown
to the ground. The outlines of Pauline's dress, hanging from
a cheval glass, appeared like a shadowy ghost. Her dainty
shoes had been left at a distance from the bed. A nightingale
came to perch upon tlie sill ; its trills repeated over again, and
-224 THE MAGIC SKIN
the sounds of its wings suddenly shaken out for flight, awoke
Eaphael.
"For me to die," he said, following out a thought begun Ji,
his dream, "my organization, the mechanism of flesh and bono,
that is quickened by the will in me, and makes of me an indi-
vidual man, must display some perceptible disease. Doctor-
ought to understand the symptoms of any attack on vitality,
and could tell me whether I am sick or sound."
He gazed at his sleeping wife. She had stretched her head
out to him, expressing in this way even while she slept the
anxious tenderness of love. Pauline seemed to look at him
as she lay with her face turned towards him in an attitude as
full of grace as a young child's, with her pretty, half-opened
mouth held out towards him, as she drew her light, even
breath. Her little pearly teeth seemed to heighten the redness
of the fresh lips with the smile hovering over them. The red
glow in her complexion was brighter, and its whiteness was,
so to speak, whiter still just then than in the most impassioned
moments of the waking day. In her unconstrained grace, as
she lay, so full of believing trust, the adorable attractions of
childhood were added to the enchantments of love.
Even the most unaffected women still obey certain social
conventions, which restrain the free expansion of the soul
within them during their waking hours; but slumber seems
to give them back the spontaneity of life which makes infancy
lovely. Pauline blushed for nothing; she was like one of those
beloved and heavenly beings, in whom reason has not yet put
motives into their actions and mystery into their glances. Her
profile stood out in sharp relief against the fine cambric of the
pillows ; there was a certain sprightliness about her loose hair
in confusion, mingled with the deep lace ruffles; but she was
sleeping in happiness, her long lashes were tightly pressed
against her cheeks, as if to secure her eyes from too strong a
light, or to aid an effort of her soul to recollect and to hold fast
a bliss that had been perfect but fleeting. Her tiny pink and
white ear, framed by a lock of her hair and outlined by a
vt^rapping of Mechlin lace, would have made an artist, a
THE AGONY 225
painter, an old man, wildl}^ in love, and would perhaps have
restored a madman to his senses.
Is it not an ineffable bliss to behold the woman that 3'^ou
love, sleeping, smiling in a peaceful dream beneath your pro-
tection, loving you even in dreams, even at the point where
the individual seems to cease to exist, offering to you yet the
mute lips that speak to you in slumber of the latest kiss? Is
it not indescribable happiness to see a trusting woman, half-
clad, but wrapj^ed round in her love as by a cloak — modesty in
the midst of dishevel men t — to see admiringly her scattered
clothing, the silken stocking hastily put off to please you last
evening, the unclasped girdle that implies a boundless faith in
you. A whole romance lies there in that girdle; the woman
that it used to protect exists no longer; she is yours, she has
become you; henceforward any betrayal of her is a blow dealt
at yourself.
In this softened mood Eaphael's eyes wandered over the
room, now filled with memories and love, and where the very
daylight seemed to take delightful hues. Then he turned his
gaze at last upon the outlines of the woman's form, upon
youth and purity, and love that even now had no thought that
was not for him alone, above all things, and longed to live for
ever. As his eyes fell upon Pauline, her own opened at once
as if a ray of sunlight had lighted on them.
"Good-morning," she said, smiling. "How handsome you
are, bad man V
The grace of love and youth, of silence and dawn, shone in
their faces, making a divine picture, with the fleeting spell
over it all that belongs only to the earliest days of passion,
just as simplicity and artlessness are the peculiar possession of
cliildhood. Alas ! love's springtide joys, like our own youth-
ful laughter, must even take flight, and live for us no longer
save in memory; either for our despair, or to shed some sooth-
ing fragrance over us, according to the bent of our inmost
thoughts.
"What made me wake you ?" said Eaphael. "It was so great
226 THE MAGIC SKIN
a pleasure to watch 3^011 sleeping that it brought tears to my
eyes."
"And to mine, too," she answered. "I cried in the night
while I watched you sleeping, but not with happiness.
Eaphael, dear, pray listen to me. Your breathing is labored
while you sleep, and something rattles in your chest that
jfrightens me. You have a little dry cough when you are
asleep, exactly like my father's, who is dying of phthisis. In
those sounds from your lungs I recognized some of the pe-
culiar symptoms of that complaint. Then you are feverish :
I know you are; your hand was moist and burning
Darling, you are young," she added with a shudder, "and you
could still get over it if unfortunately But, no," she cried
cheerfully, "there is no 'unfortunately,' the disease is con-
tagious, so the doctors say."
She flung both arms about Eaphael, drawing in his breath
through one of those kisses in which the soul reaches its end.
"I do not wish to live to old age," she said. "Let us both
die young, and go to heaven while flowers fill our hands."
"We always make such designs as those when we are well
and strong," Eaphael replied, burying his hands in Pauline's
hair. But even then a horrible fit of coughing came on, one
of those deep ominous coughs that seem to come from the
depths of the tomb, a cough that leaves the sufferer ghastly
pale, trembling, and perspiring ; with aching sides and quiver-
ing nerves, with a feeling of weariness pervading the very
marrow of the spine, and unspeakable languor in every vein.
Eaphael slowly laid himself down, pale, exhausted, and over-
come, like a man who has spent all the strength in him over
one final effort. Pauline's eyes, grown large with terror, were
fixed upon him; she lay quite motionless, pale, and silent.
"Let us commit no more follies, my angel," she said, trying
not to let Eaphael see the dreadful forebodings that disturbed
her. She covered her face Avith her hands, for she saw Death
before her — the hideous skeleton. Eaphael's face had grown
as pale and livid as any skull unearthed from a churchyard
to assist the studies of some scientific man. Pauline reraem-
THE AGONY 227
bered the exclamation that had escaped from Valentin the
previous evening, and to herself she said :
"Yes, there are gulfs that love can never cross, and therein
love must bury itself."
On a March morning, some days after this wretched scene,
Raphael found himself seated in an armchair, placed in the
window in the full light of day. Four doctors stood round
him, each in turn trying his pulse, feeling him over, and ques-
tioning him with apparent interest. The invalid sought to
guess their thoughts, putting a construction on every move-
ment they made, and on the slightest contractions of their
brows. His last hope lay in this consultation. This court of
appeal was about to pronounce its decision — life or death.
Valentin had summoned the oracles of modern medicine,
so that he might have the last word of science. Thanks to
his wealth and title, there stood before him three embodied
theories ; human knowledge fluctuated round the three points.
Three of the doctors brought among them the complete circle
of medical philosophy ; they represented the points of conflict
round which the battle ragod, between Spiritualism, Analysis,
and goodness knows what in the way of mocking eclecticism.
The fourth doctor was Horace Bianchon, a man of science
with a future before him, the most distinguished man of the
new school in medicine, a discreet and unassuming representa-
tive of a studious generation that is preparing to receive the
inheritance of fifty years of experience treasured up by the
ficole de Paris, a generation that perhaps will erect the monu-
ment for the building of which the centuries behind us have
collected the difi'erent materials. As a personal friend of the
Marquis and of Rastignac, he had been in attendance on the
former for some days past, and was helping him to answer
the inquiries of the three professors, occasionally insisting
somewhat upon those symptoms which, in his opinion, pointed
to pulmonary disease.
"You have been living at a great pace, leading a dissipated
life, no doubt, and you have devoted yourself largely to intel-
lectual work ?" queried one of the three celebrated authorities,
228 THE MAGIC SKIN
addressing Eaphael. He was a square-headed man, with n
large frame and energetic organization, which seemed to mark
him out as superior to his two rivals.
"I made up my mind to kill myself with debauchery, after
spending three years over an extensive work, with which per-
haps you may some da}' occupy yourselves," Raphael replied.
The great doctor shook his head, and so displayed his sat
isfaction. "I was sure of it," he seemed to say to himself. Ho
was the illustrious Brisset, the successor of Cabanis and
Bichat, head of the Organic School, a doctor popular with
believers in material and positive science, who see in man a
complete individual, subject solely to the laws of his own
particular organization; and who consider that his normal
condition and abnormal states of disease can both be traced to
obvious causes.
After this reply, Brisset looked, without speaking, at a
middle-sized person, whose darkly flushed countenance and
glowing eyes seemed to belong to some antique satyr ; and who,
leaning his back against the corner of the embrasure, was
studying Eaphael, without saying a word. Doctor Came-
ristus, a man of creeds and enthusiasms, the head of the
"Vitalists," a romantic champion of the esoteric doctrines of
Van Helmont, discerned a lofty informing principle in human
life, a mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon which mocks
at the scalpel, deceives the surgeon, eludes the drugs of
the pharmacopoeia, the formula of algebra, the demonstra-
tions of anatomy,. and derides all our efforts; a sort of in-
visible, intangible flame, which, obeying some divinely ap-
pointed law, will often linger on in a body in our opinion
devoted to death, while it takes flight from an organization
well fitted for prolonged existence.
A bitter smile hovered upon the lips of the third doctor
Maugredie, a man of acknowledged ability, but a Pyrrhonist
and a scoffer, with the scalpel for his one article of faith.
He would consider, as a concession to Brisset, that a man
who, as a matter of fact, was perfectly well was dead, and
recognize with Cameristus that a man might be living on
THE AGONY 22ft
tifter his apparent demise. He found something sensible in
every theory, and embraced none of them, claiming that the
best of all systems of medicine was to have none at all, and
to stick to facts. This Panurge of the Clinical Schools,
the king of observers, the great investigator, great sceptic, the
man of desperate expedients, was scrutinizing the Magic Skin.
"I should very much like to be a witness of the coincidence
of its retrenchment with your wish," he said to the Marquis.
"Where is the use ?" cried Brisset.
"Where is the use?" echoed Cameristus.
"Ah, you are both of the same mind," replied Maugredie.
"The contraction is perfectly simple," Brisset went on.
"It is supernatural," remarked Cameristus.
"In short," Maugredie made answer, with affected
solemnity, and handing the piece of skin to Raphael as he
spoke, "the shriveling faculty of the skin is a fact inexplica-
ble, and yet quite natural, which, ever since the world be-
gan, has been the despair of medicine and of pretty women."
All Valentin's observation could discover no trace of a feel-
ing for his troubles in any of the three doctors. The three
received every answer in silence, scanned him unconcernedly,
and interrogated him unsympathetically. Politeness did
not conceal their indifference; whether deliberation or cer-
tainty was the cause, their words at any rate came so seldom
and so languidl}^, that at times Raphael thought that their
attention was wandering. From time to time Brisset, the
sole speaker, remarked, "Good ! just so !" as Bianchon pointed
out the existence of each desperate symptom. Cameristus
seemed to be deep in meditation; Maugredie looked like a
comic author, studying two queer characters with a view tO(
reproducing them faithfully upon the stage. There was deep,
unconcealed distress, and grave compassion in Horace
Bianchon's face. He had been a doctor for too short a time
to be untouched by suffering and unmoved by a deathbed;
he had not learned to keep back the sympathetic tears that
obscure a man's clear vision and prevent him from seizing,
like the general of an army, upon the auspicious moment for
victory, in utter disregard of the groans of dying men.
VOL. I — 20
230 THE MAGIC SKIN
After spending about half an hour over taking in some sort
the measure of the patient and the complaint, much as a
tailor measures a young man for a coat when he orders his
redding outfit, the authorities uttered several commonplaces,
and even talked of politics. Then they decided to go
into Eaphael's study to exchange their ideas and frame their
verdict,
"May I not be present during the discussion, gentlemen?'^
Valentin had asked them, but Brisset and Maugredie pro-
tested against this, and, in spite of their patient's entreaties,
declined altogether to deliberate in his presence.
Eaphael gave way before their custom, thinking that he
could slip into a passage adjoining, whence he could easily
overhear the medical conference in which the three professors
were about to engage.
"Permit me, gentlemen," said Brisset, as they entered, "to
give you my own opinion at once. I neither wish to force
it upon you nor to have it discussed. In the first place, it is
unbiased, concise, and based on an exact similarity that exists
between one of my own patients and the subject that we have
been called in to examine; and, moreover, I am expected at
my hospital. The importance of the case that demands my
presence there will excuse me for speaking the first word.
The subject with which we are concerned has been exhausted
in an equal degree by intellectual labors — what did he set
about, Horace ?" he asked of the young doctor.
"A Theory of the Will.' "
"The devil ! but that's a big subject. He is exhausted,
I say, by too much brain-work, by irregular courses, and by
the repeated use of too powerful stimulants. Violent ex-
ertion of body and mind has demoralized the whole system.
It is easy, gentlemen, to recognize in the symptoms of the
face and body generally intense irritation of the stomach, an
affection of the great sympathetic nerve, acute sensibility of
the epigastric region, and contraction of the right and left
hypochondriac. You have noticed, too, the large size and
prominence of the liver. M. Bianehon has, besides, con-
THE AGONY 231
istfintly watched the patient, and he tells us that digestion i?
troublesome and difficult. ■ Strictly speaking, there is no
stomach left, and so the man has disappeared. The brain is
atrophied because the man digests no longer. The pro-
gressive deterioration wrought in the epigastric region, the
seat of vitality, has vitiated the whole system. Thence, by
continuous fevered vibratipns, the disorder has reached tlie
brain by means of the nervous plexus, hence the excessive
irritation in that organ. There is monomania. The patient
is burdened with a fixed idea. That piece of skin really con-
tracts, to his way of thinking; very likely it always has
been as we have seen it; but whether it contracts or no, that
thing is for him just like the fly that some Grand A^izier or
other had on his nose. If you put leeches at once on the
epigastrium, and reduce the irritation in that part, which is
the very seat of man's life, and if you diet the patient, the
monomania will leave him. I will say no more to Dr.
Bianehon; he should be able to grasp the whole treatment as
well as the details. There may be, perhaps, some complica-
tion of the disease — the bronchial tubes, possibly, may be also
inflamed; but I believe that treatment for the intestinal
organs is very much more important and necessary, and more
urgently required than for the lungs. Persistent study of
abstract matters, and certain violent passions, have induced
serious disorders in that vital mechanism. However, we are
in time to set these conditions .right. Nothing it too seriously
affected. You will easily get your friend round again," he
remarked to Bianehon.
"Our learned colleague is taking the effect for the cause,"
Cameristus replied. "Yes, the changes that he has observed
so keenly certainly exist in the patient; but it is not the
stomach that, by degrees, has set up nervous action in the
system, and so affected the brain, like a hole in a window
pane spreading cracks round about it. It took a blow of some
kind to make a hole in the window; who gave the blow?
Do we know that? Have we investigated the patient's case
sufficiently? Are we acquainted with all the events of his
life?
232 THE MAGIC SKIN
"The vital principle, gentlemen," he continued, "th«
Archeus of Van Helmont, is affected in his case — the very
essence and centre of life is attacked. The divine spark, the
transitory intelligence which holds the organism together^
which is the source of the will, the inspiration of life, has
ceased to regulate the daily phenomena of the mechanism
and the functions of ever}'^ organ.; thence arise all the com-
plications which my learned colleague has so thoroughly ap-
preciated. The epigastric region does not affect the brain
but the brain affects the epigastric region. No," he went on,
vigorously slapping his chest, "no, I am not a stomach in the
form of a man. No, everything does not lie there. I do
not feel that I have the courage to say that if the epigastric
region is in good order, everything else is in a like con-
dition
"We cannot trace," he went on more mildly, "to one
physical cause the serious disturbances that supervene in
this or that subject wliich has been dangerously attacked, nor
submit them to a uniform treatment. No one man is like
another. We have each peculiar organs, differently affected,
diversely nourished, adajjted to perform different functions,
and to induce a condition necessary to the accomplishment of
an order of things which is unknown to us. The sublime
will has so wrought that a little portion of the great All is set
within us to sustain the phenomena of living; in every man
it formulates itself distinctly, making each, to all appear-
ance, a separate individual, yet in one point co-existent with
the infinite cause. So we ought to make a separate study of
each subject, discover all about it, find out in what its life con-
sists, and wherein its power lies. From the softness of a wet
sponge to the hardness of pumice-stone there are infinite fine
degrees of difference. Man is just like that. Between the
sponge-like organizations of the lymphatic and the vigorous
iron muscles of such men as are destined for a long life,
what a margin for errors for the single inflexible system of a
lowering treatment to commit ; a system that reduces the
capacities of the human fraaue, which you always conclude
THE AGONY 233
have been over-excited. Let us look for the origin of the
disease in the mental and not in the physical viscera. A
doctor is an inspired being, endowed by God with a special
gift — the power to read the secrets of vitality; just as the
prophet has received the eyes that foresee the future, the poet
his faculty of evoking nature, and the musician the power
of arranging sounds in an harmonious order that is possibly
a copy of an ideal harmony on high."
"There is his everlasting system of medicine, arbitrary,
monarchical, and pious," muttered Brisset.
"Gentlemen," Maugredie broke in hastily, to distract at-
tention from Brisset's comment, "don't let us lose sight of
the patient."
"What is the good of science?" Raphael moaned. "Here
is my recovery halting between a string of beads and a rosary
of leeches, between Dupuytren's bistoury and Prince Hohen-
lohe's prayer. There is Maugredie suspending his judgment
on the line'that divides facts from words, mind from matter.
Man's '^it is,' and *it is not,' is always on my track; it is the
Carymary Carymara of Rabelais for evermore : my disorder
is spiritual, Carymary, or material, Carymara. Shall I live ?
They have no idea. Planchette was more straightforward
with me, at any rate, when he said, 'I do not know.' "
Just then Valentin heard Maugredie's voice.
"The patient suffers from monomania; very good, I am
quite of that opinion," he said, ^'but he has two hundred thou-
sand a year; monomaniacs of thatjcind are very uncommon.
As for knowing whether his epigastric region has affected his
brain, or his brain his epigastric region, we shall find that
out, perhaps, whenever he dies. But to resume. There is no
disputing the fact that he is ill ; some sort of treatment he
must have. Let us leave theories alone, and put leeches on
him, to counteract the nervous and intestinal irritation, as
to the existence of which we all agree ; and let us send him to
drirk the waters, in that way we shall act on both systems at
once. If there really is tubercular disease, we can hardly ex-
pect to save his life ; so that "
234 THE MAGIC SKIN
Eaphael abiiiptly left the passage, and went back to his
armchair. The four doctors very soon came out of the
i;tudy; Horace was the spokesman.
"These gentlemen/' he told him, "have unanimously
agreed that leeches must be applied to the stomach at once,
and that both physical and moral treatment are imperatively
needed. In the first place, a carefully prescribed rule of
diet, so as to soothe the internal irritation" — here Brisset
signified his approval ; "and in the second, a hygienic regimen,.
to set your general condition right. We all, therefore, rec-
ommend you to go to take the waters at Aix in Savoy; or,
if you like it better,, at Mont Dore in Auvergne ; the air and
the situation are both pleasanter in Savoy than in the Cantal,
but you will consult your own taste."
Here it was Cameristus who nodded assent.
"These gentlemen," Bianchon continued, "having rec-
ognized a slight affection of the respiratory organs, are agreed
as to the utility of the jjrevious course of treatment that I
have prescribed. They think that there will be no difficulty
about restoring you to health, and that everything depends
upon a wise and alternate employment of these various
means. And "
"And that is the cause of the milk in the cocoanut," said
Eaphael, with a smile, as he led Horace into his study to pay
the fees for this useless consultation.
"Their conclusions are logical," the young doctor replied.
"Cameristus feels, Brisset examines, Maugredie doubts. Has
not man a soul, a body, and an intelligence? One of these
three elemental constituents always influences us more or less
strongly ; there will always be the personal element in human
science. Believe me, Raphael, we effect no cures ; we only
assist them. Another system — the use of mild remedies while
Nature exerts her powers — lies between the extremes of theory
of Brisset and Cameristus, but one ought to have known the
patient for some ten years or so to obtain a good result on
these lines. Negation lies at the back of all medicine, as in
every other science. So endeavor to live wholesomely; try a
THE AGONy 235
trip to Savoy ; the best course is, and always will be, to trust
to Nature/'
It was a month later, on a fine summer-like evening, that
several people, who Avere taking the waters at Aix, returned
from the promenade and met together in the salons of the
Club. Eaphael remained alone by a window for a long time.
His back was turned upon the gathering, and he himself Avas
deep in those involuntary musings in which thoughts ariso in
succession and fade away, shaping themselves indistinctly,
passing over us like thin, almost colorless clouds. Melancholy
is sweet to us then, and delight is shadowy, for the soul is
half asleep. Valentin gave himself up to this life of sensa-
tions ; he was steeping himself in the warm, soft twilight, en-
joying the pure air with the scent of the hills in it, happy in
that he felt no pain, and had tranquilized his threatening
Magic Skin at last. It grew cooler as the red glow of the
sunset faded on the mountain peaks; he shut the window
and left his place.
"Will you be so kind as not to close the windows, sir ?" said
an old lady ; "we are being stifled "
The peculiarly sharp and jarring tones in which the phrase
was uttered grated on Eaphael's ears; it fell on them like
an indiscreet remark let slip by some man in whose friendship
we would fain believe, a word which reveals unsuspected
depths of selfishness and destroys some pleasing sentimental
illusion of ours. The Marquis glanced, with the cool in-
scrutable expression of a diplomatist, at the old lady, called
a servant, and, when he came, curtly bade him
"Open that window."
Great surprise was clearly expressed on all faces at the
words. The whole roomful began to whisper to each other,
and turned their eyes upon the invalid, as though he had
given some serious offence. Raphael, who had never quite
managed to rid himself of the bashfulness of his early youth,
felt a momentary confusion ; then he shook off his torpor, ex-
erted his faculties, and asked himself *the meaning of this
strange scene.
236 THE MAGIC SKIN
A sudden and rapid impulse quickened his brain ; the past
weeks appeared before him in a clear and definite vision ; the
reasons for the feelings he inspired in others stood out for
him in relief, like the veins of some corpse which a naturalist,
by some cunningly contrived injection, has colored so as to
show their least ramifications.
He discerned himself in this fleeting picture; he followed
out his own life in it, thought by thought, day after day.
He saw himself, not without astonishment, an absent gloomy
figure in the midst of these lively folk, always musing over
his own fate, always absorbed by his own sufferings, seem-
ingly impatient of the most harmless chat. He saw hov/ he
had shunned the ephemeral intimacies that travelers are so
ready to establish — no doubt because they feel sure of never
meeting each other again — and how he had taken little heed
of those about him. He saw himself like the rocks without,
unmoved by the caresses or the stormy surgings of the
waves.
Then, by a gift of insight seldom accorded, he read the
thoughts of all those about him. The light of a candle
revealed the sardonic profile and yellow cranium of an old
man; he remembered now that he had won from him, and
had never proposed that the other should have his revenge;
a little further on he saw a pretty woman, whose lively
advances he had met with frigid coolness; there was not a
face there that did not reproach him with some wrong done,
inexplicably to all appearance, but the real offence in every
case lay in some mortification, some invisible hurt dealt to
self-love. He had unintentionally jarred on all the small
susceptibilities of the circle round about him.
His guests on various occasions, and those to Avhom he
had lent his horses, had taken offence at his luxurious ways ;
their ungraciousness had been a surprise to him; he had
spared them further humiliations of that kind, and they had
considered that he looked down upon them, and had accused
him of haughtiness ever since. He could read their inmost
thoughts as he fatliomed their natures in this way. Society
THE A(50NY 237
with its polish and varnish grew loathsome to him. He was
envied and hated for his wealth and superior ability; his re-
serve bafiled the inquisitive ; his humility seemed like haughti-
ness to these petty superficial natures. He guessed the secret
unpardonable crime which he had committed against them ;
he had overstepped the limits of the jurisdiction of their
mediocrity. He had resisted their inquisitorial tyranny; he
could dispense with their society ; and all of them, therefore,
had instinctively combined to make him feel their power, and
to take revenge upon this incipient royalty by submitting him
to a kind of ostracism, and so teaching him that they in their
turn could do without him.
Pity came over him, first of all, at this aspect of man-
kind, but very soon he shuddered at the thought of the po^^er
that came thus, at will, and flung aside for him the veil of
flesh under which the moral nature is hidden away. He
closed his eyes, so as to see no more. A black curtain was
drawn all at once over this unlucky phantom show of truth;
but still he found himself in the terrible loneliness that sur-
rounds every power and dominion. Just then a violent fit
of coughing seized him. Far from receiving one single word
— indifferent, and meaningless, it is true, but still containing,
among well-bred people brought together by chance, at least
some pretence of civil commiseration — he now heard hostile
ejaculations and muttered complaints. Society there as-
sembled disdained any pantomime on his account, perhaps
because he had gauged its real nature too well.
"His complaint is contagious."
"The president of the Club ought to forbid him to enter
the salon."
"It is contrary to all rules and regulations to cough in
that way!"
"When a man is as ill as that, he ought not to come to
take the waters "
"He will drive me away from the place.''
Eaphael rose and walked about the rooms to screen him-
self from their unanimous execrations. He thought to find
238 THE MAGIC SKIN
a shelter, and went up to a young lady who sat doing nothing,
minded to address some pretty speeches to her; but as he
came towards her, she turned her back upon him, and pre-
tended to be watching the dancers. Raphael feared lest he
might have made use of the talisman already that evening;
and feeling that he had neither the wish nor the courage to
break into the conversation, he left the salon and cook refuge
in the billiard-room. No one there greeted him, nobody
spoke to him, no one sent so much as a friendly glance in his
direction. His turn of mind, naturally meditative, had dis-
covered instinctively the general grounds and reasons for the
aversion he insj^ired. This little world was obeying, uncon-
sciously perhaps, the sovereign law which rules over polite
society; its inexorable nature was becoming apparent in its
entirety to Eaphael's eyes. A glance into the past showed it
to him, as a type completely realized in Foedora.
He would no more meet with sympathy here for his bodily
ills than he had received it at her hands for the distress in
his heart. The fashionable world expels every suffering
creature from its midst, just as the body of a man in robust
health rejects any germ of disease. The world holds suffering
and misfortune in abhorrence; it dreads them like the plague ;
it never hesitates between vice and trouble, for vice is a luxury.
Ill-fortune may possess a majesty of its own, but society can
belittle it and make it ridiculous by an epigram. Society
draws caricatures, and in this way flings in the teeth of
fallen kings the affronts which it fancies it has received from
them; society, like the Roman youth at the circus, never
shows mercy to the fallen gladiator ; mockery and money are
its vital necessities. "Death to the weak!" That is the
oath taken by this kind of Equestrian order, instituted in
their midst by all the nations of the world; evei*y where it
makes for the elevation of the rich, and its motto is deeply
graven in hearts that wealth has turned to stone, or that have
been reared in aristocratic prejudices.
Assemble a collection of school-boys together. That will
give you a society in miniature, a miniature which represents
THE AGONY 239
life mdre truly, because it is so frank and artless; and in it
you will always find poor isolated beings, relegated to some
place in the general estimation between pity and contempt,
on account of their weakness and suffering. To these the
Evangel promises heaven hereafter. Go lower yet in the
scale of organized creation. If some bird among its fellows
in the courtyard sickens, the others fall upon it with tlicir
beaks, pluck out its feathers, and kill it. The whole worki
in accordance with its charter of egotism, brings all its
severity to bear upon wretchedness that has the hardihood to
spoil its festivities, and to trouble its joys.
Any sufferer in mind or body, any helpless or poor man,
is a pariah. He had better remain in his solitude; if he
crosses the boundary-line, he will find winter everywhere ; he
will find freezing cold in other men's looks, manners, words,
and hearts; and lucky indeed is he if he does not receive an
insult where he expected that sympathy would be expended
upon him. Let the dying keep to their bed of neglect, and age
sit lonely by its fireside. Portionless maids, freeze and burn
in your solitary attics. If the world tolerates misery of any
kind, it is to turn it to account for its own purposes, to make
some use of it, saddle and bridle it, put a bit in its mouth,
ride it about, and get some fun out of it.
Crotchety spinsters, ladies' companions, put a cheerful face
upon it, endure the humors of your so-called benefactress,
carry her lapdogs for her; you have an English poodle for
your rival, and you must seek to understand the moods of
your patroness, and amuse her, and — keep silence about your-
selves. As for you, unblushing parasite, uncrowned king of
unliveried servants, leave your real character at home, let
your digestion keep pace with your host's, laugh when he
laughs, mingle your tears with his, and find his epigrams
amusing; if you want to relieve your mind about him, wait
till he is ruined. That is the way the world shows its respect
for the unfortunate ; it persecutes them, or slays them ; it de-
prives them of their manhood, or humbles them in the dust.
Such thoughts as these welled up in Raphael's heart with
240 THE MAGIC SKIN
the suddenness of poetic inspiration. He looked around
him, and felt the influence of the forbidding glooin that
society breathes out in order to rid itself of the unfortunate;
it nipped his soul more effectually than the east wind grips
the body in Decemher. He locked his arms over his chest, set
his back against the wall, and fell into a deep melancholy.
He mused upon the meagre happiness that this depressing
way of living can give. What did it amount to? Amuse-
]:ient with no pleasure in it, gaiety without gladness, joyless
festivity, fevered dreams empty of all delight, firewood or
ashes on the hearth without a spark of flame in them. When
he raised his head, he found himself alone, all the billiard
players had gone.
"I have only to let them know my power to make them
worship my coughing fits," he said to himself, and wrapped
himself against the world in the cloak of his contempt.
Next day the resident doctor came to call upon him, and
took an anxious interest in his health. Eaphael felt a thrill
of joy at the friendly words addressed to him. The doctor's
face, to his thinking, wore an expression that was kind and
pleasant; the pale curls of his wig seemed redolent of
philanthropy ; the square cut of his coat, the loose folds of his
trousers, his big Quaker-like shoes, everything about him down
to the powder shaken from his queue and dusted in a circle
upon his slightly stooping shoulders, revealed an apostolic
nature, and spoke of Christian charity and of the self-sacrifice
of a man, who, out of sheer devotion to his patients, had com-
pelled himself to learn to play whist and tric-trac so well that
he never lost money to any of them.
"My Lord Marquis," said he, after a long talk with Eaphael,
"I can dispel your uneasiness beyond all doubt. I know your
constitution well enough by this time to assure you that the
doctors in Paris, whose great abilities I know, are mistaken as
to the nature of your complaint. You can live as long as
Methuselah, my Lord Marquis, accidents only excepted.
Your lungs are as sound as a blacksmith's bellows, your
stomach would put an ostrich to the blush ; but if you persist
THE AGONY 241
in living at a higli altitude, 3011 are running the risk of a
prompt interment in consecrated soil. A few words, my
Lord Marquis, will make my meaning clear to you.
"Chemistry," he began, "has shown us that man's breath-
ing is a real process of combustion, and the intensity of its
action varies according to the abundance or scarcity of the
phlogistic element stored up by the organism of each in-
dividual. In your case, the phlogistic or inflammatory element
is abundant ; if you will permit me to put it so, you generate
superfluous oxygen, possessing as you do the inflammatory
temperament of a man destined to experience strong emo-
tions. While you breathe the keen, pure air that stimulates
life in men of lymphatic constitution, you are accelerating
an expenditure of vitality already too rapid. One of the
conditions of existence for you is the heavier atmosphere of
the plains and valleys. Yes, the vital air for a man consumed
by his genius lies in the fertile pasture-lands of Germany, at
Toplitz or Baden-Baden. If England is not obnoxious to
you, its misty climate would reduce your fever ; but the situa-
tion of our baths, a thousand feet above the level of the
Mediterranean, is dangerous for you. That is my opinion
at least," he said, with a deprecatory gesture, "and I give it in
opposition to our interests, for, if you act upon it, we shall
unfortunately lose you."
But for these closing words of his, the affable doctor's
seeming good-nature would have completely won Raphael
over; but he was too profoundly observant not to understand
the meaning of the tone, the look and gesture that accom-
panied that mild sarcasm, not to see that the little man had
been sent on this errand, no doubt, by a flock of his rejoicing
patients. The florid-looking idlers, tedious old women,
nomad English people, and fine ladies who had given their
husbands the slip, and were escorted hither by their lovers —
one and all were in a plot to drive away a wretched, feeble crea-
ture about to die, who seemed unable to hold out against a
daily renewed persecution ! Raphael accepted the challenge; he
foresaw some amusement to be derived from their manoeuvres.
242 THE MAGIC SKIN
"As you would be grieved at losing me," said he to the
doctor, "I will endeavor to avail mj'self of your good advice
without leaving the place. I will set about having a house
built to-morrow, and the atmosphere within it shall be
regulated by your instructions."
The doctor understood the sarcastic smile that lurked about
Raphael's mouth, and took his leave without finding another
word to say.
The Lake of Bourget lies seven hundred feet above the
Mediterranean, in a great hollow among the jagged peaks of
the hills; it sparkles there, the bluest drop of water in the
world. From the summit of the Cat's Tooth the lake below
looks like a stray turquoise. This lovely sheet of water is
about twenty-seven miles round, and in some places is nearly
five hundred feet deep.
Under the cloudless sky, in your boat in the midst of the
great expanse of water, with only the sound of the oars in your
ears, only the vague outline of the hills on the horizon before
you; you admire the glittering snows of the French
Maurienne; you pass, now by masses of granite clad in the
velvet of green turf or in low-growing shrubs, now by
pleasant sloping meadows ; there is always a wilderness on the
one hand and fertile lands on the other, and both harmonies
and dissonances compose a scene for you where everything
is at once small and vast, and you feel yourself to be a poor
onlooker at a great banquet. The configuration of the
mountains brings about misleading optical conditions and
illusions of perspective ; a pine-tree a hundred feet in height
looks to be a mere weed; wide valleys look as narrow as
meadow paths. ' The lake is the only one where the con-
fidences of heart and heart can be exchanged. There one can
love; there one can meditate. Nowhere on earth will you
find a closer understanding between the water, the sky, the
mountains, and the fields. There is a balm there for all the
ngitations of life. The place keeps the secrets of sorrow to
itself, the sorrow that grows less beneath its soothing in-
fluence; and to love, it gives a grave and meditative cast.
THE AGONY 243
deepening passion and purifying it. A kiss there becomes
something great. But beyond all other things it is the
Jake for memories; it aids them by lending to them the hues
of its own waves; it is a mirror in which everything is re-
tiected. Only here, with this lovely landscape all around him,
could Raphael endure the burden laid upon him; here he
could remain as a languid dreamer, without a wish of his
own.
He went out upon the lake after the doctor's visit, and
was landed at a lonely point on the pleasant slope where the
village of Saint-Innocent is situated. The view from this
promontory, as one may call it, comprises the heights of
Bugey with the Ehone flowing at their foot, and the end of
the lake ; but Eaphael liked to look at the opposite shore from
thence, at the melancholy looking Abbey of Haute-Combe, the
burying-place of the Sardinian kings, who lie prostrate there
before the hills, like pilgrims come at last to their journey's
end. The silence of the landscape was broken by the even
rhythm of the strokes of the oar; it seemed to find a voice for
the place, in monotonous cadences like the chanting of monks.
The Marquis was surprised to find visitors to this usually
lonely part of the lake; and as he mused, he watched the
people seated in the boat, and recognized in the stern the
elderly lady who had spoken so harshly to him the evening
before.
No one took any notice of Raphael as the boat passed,
except the elderly lady's companion, a poor old maid of noble
family, who bowed to him, and whom it seemed to him that
he saw for the first time. A few seconds later he had already
forgotten the visitors, who had rapidly disappeared behind the
promontory, when he heard the fluttering of a dress and the
sound of light footsteps not far from him. He turned about
and saw the companion: and, guessing from her embarrassed
manner that she wished to speak with him, he walked towards
her.
She was somewhere about thirty-six years of age, thin
and tall, reserved and prim, and, like all old maids, seemed
244 THE MAGIC SKIN
puzzled to know which way to look, an expression no longer
in keeping with her measured, springless, and hesitating steps.
She was both young and old at the same time, and, by a cer-
tain, dignity in her carriage, showed the high value which
she set upon her charms and perfections. In addition, her
movements were all demure and discreet, like those of women
who are accustomed to take great care of themselves, no doubt
because they desire not to be cheated of love, their destined
end.
"Your life is in danger, sir; do not come to the Club
again !'"' she said, stepping back a pace or two from Eaphael,
as if her reputation had been already compromised.
"But, mademoiselle," said Eaphael, smiling, ''please
explain yourself more clearly, since you have condescended
so far "
"Ah," she answered, "unless I had had a very strong
motive, I should never have run the risk of offending the
countess, for if she ever came to know that I had warned
you "
"And who would tell her, mademoiselle ?" cried Eaphael.
"True," the old maid answered. She looked at him,
quaking like an owl out in the sunlight. "But think of
yourself," she went on; "several young men, who want to
drive you away from the baths, have agreed to pick a quarrel
with you, and to force you into a duel."
The elderly lady's voice sounded in the distance.
"Mademoiselle," began the Marquis, "my gratitude "
But his protectress had fled already; she had heard the voice
of her mistress squeaking afresh among the rocks.
"Poor girl ! unhappiness always understands and helps the
unhapp3%" Eaphael thought, and sat himself down at the foot
of a tree.
The key of every science is, beyond cavil, the mark of in-
terrogation; we owe most of our greatest discoveries to a
Why? and all the wisdom in the world, perhaps, consists in
asking Wherefore? in every connection. But, on the other
hand^ this acquired prescience is the ruin of our illusion^.
THE AGONY 245
So Valentin, having taken the old maid's kindly action for
the text of his wandering thoughts, without the deliberate
promptings of philosophy, must find it full of gall and worm-
wood.
"It is not at all extraordinary that a gentlewoman's gen-
tlewoman should take a fancy to me," said he to himself. "I
am twenty-seven years old, and I have a title and an income
of two hundred thousand a year. But that her mistress, who
hates water like a rabid cat — for it would be hard to give the
palm to either in that matter — that her mistress should have
brought her here in a boat ! Is not that very strange and
wonderful ? Those two women came into Savoy to sleep like
marmots; they ask if day has dawned at noon; and to think
that they could get up this morning before eight o'clock, to
take their chance in running after me \"
Very soon the old maid and her elderly innocence became,
in his eyes, a fresh manifestation of that artificial, malicious
little world. It was a paltry device, a clumsy artifice, a piece
of priest's or woman's craft. Was the duel a myth, or did
they merely want to frighten him ? But these petty creatures,
impudent and teasing as flies, had succeeded in wounding his
vanity, in rousing his pride, and exciting his curiosity. Un-
willing to become their dupe, or to be taken for a coward,
and even diverted perhaps by the little drama, he went to the
Club that very evening.
He stood leaning against the marble chimney-piece, and
stayed there quietly in the middle of the principal saloon,
doing his best to give no one any advantage over him; but
he scrutinized the faces about him, and gave a certain vague
offence to those assembled, by his inspection. Like a dog
aware of his strength, he awaited the contest on his own
ground, without unnecessary barking. Towards the end of
the evening he strolled into the cardroom, walking between
the door and another that opened into the billiard-room,
throwing a glance from time to time over a group of young
men that had gathered there. He heard his name mentioned
after a turn oy •^wq. Although they lowered their voices.
246 THE MAGIC SKIN
Eaphael easily guessed that he had become the topic of their
debate, and he ended by catching a plirase or two spoken
aloud.
"You?"
"Yes, I."
"I dare you to do it I"
"Let us make a bet on it !"
"Oh, he will do it."
Just as Valentin, curious to learn the matter of the wager,
came up to pay closer attention to what they were saying,
a tall, strong, good-looking young fellow, who, however, pos-
sessed the impertinent stare peculiar to people who
have material force at their back, came out of the billiard-
room.
"I am deputed, sir," he said cooll}'^ addressing the Mar-
quis, "to make you aware of something which you do not
seem to know ; your face and person generally are a source of
annoyance to every one here, and to me in particular. You
have too much politeness not to sacrifice yourself to the public
good, and I beg that you will not show yourself in the Club
again."
"This sort of joke has been perpetrated before, sir, in gar-
rison towns at the time of the Empire; but nowadays it is
exceedingly bad form," said Eaphael drily.
"I am not joking," the young man answered; "and I re-
peat it : your health will be considerably the worse for a stay
here; the heat and light, the air of the saloon, and the
company are all bad for your complaint."
"Where did you study medicine ?" Raphael inquired.
"I took my bachelor's degree on Lepage's shooting-ground
in Paris, and was made a doctor at Cerizier's, the king of
foils."
"There is one last degree left for you to take," said
Valentin; "study the ordinary rules of politeness, and you
will be a perfect gentleman."
The young men all came out of the billiard-room just then,
some disposed to laugh, some silent. The attention of other
THE AGONY 247
players was drawn to the matter; they left their cards to
watch a quarrel that rejoiced their instincts. Raphael, alone
among this hostile crowd, did his best to keep cool, and not
to put himself in any way in the wrong; but his adversary
having ventured a sarcasm containing an insult couched in
unusually keen language, he replied gravely :
"We cannot box men's ears, sir, in these days, but I am at a
loss for any word by which to stigmatize such cowardly be-
havior as yours."
"That's enough, that's enough. You can come to an ex-
planation to-morrow/' several young men exclaimed, interpos-
ing between the two champions.
Eaphael left the room in the character of aggressor, after
he had accepted a proposal to meet near the Chateau de
Bordeau, in a little sloping meadow, not very far from the
newly made road, by Avhich the man who came off victorious
could reach Lyons. Eaphael must now either take to his bed
or leave the baths. The visitors had gained their point. At
eight o'clock next morning his antagonist, followed by two
seconds and a surgeon, arrived first on the ground.
"We shall do very nicely here ; glorious weather for a duel !"
he cried gaily, looking at the blue vault of sky above, at the
waters of the lake, and the rocks, without a single melancholy
presentiment or doubt of the issue. "If I wing him," he
went on, "I shall send him to bed for a month ; eh, doctor ?"
"At the very least," the surgeon replied ; "but let that wil-
low twig alone, or you will weary your wrist, and then you
will not fire steadily. You might kill your man then instead of
wounding him."
The noise of a carriage was heard approaching.
"Here he is," said the seconds, who soon descried a caleche
coming along the road; it was drawn by four horses, and there
were two postilions.
"What a queer proceeding!" said Valentin's antagonist;
"here he comes post-haste to be shot."
The slightest incident about a duel, as about a stake at
cards, makes an impression on the minds of those deeply
248 THE MAGIC SKIN
concerned in the results of the affair; so the young man
awaited the arrival of the carriage with a kind of uneasiness.
It stopped in the road; old Jonathan laboriously descended
from it, in the first place, to assist Raphael to alight ; he sup-
ported him with his feeble arms, and showed him all the
minute attentions that a lover lavishes upon his mistress.
Both became lost to sight in the footpath that lay between
the highroad and the field where the duel was to take place;
they were walking slowly, and did not appear again for some
time after. The four onlookers at this strange spectacle felt
deeply moved by the sight of Valentin as he leaned on his
servant's arm; he was wasted and pale; he limped as if he
had the gout, went with his head bowed down, and said not a
word. You might have taken them for a couple of old men,
one broken with years, the other worn out with thought ; the
elder bore his age visibly written in his white hair, the younger
was of no age.
"I have not slept all night, sir;" so Raphael greeted his
antagonist.
The icy tone and terrible glance that went with the words
made the real aggressor shudder; he knew that he was in
the wrong, and felt in secret ashamed of his behavior. There
was something strange in Raphael's bearing, tone, and ges-
ture; the Marquis stopped, and every one else was likewise
silent. The uneasy and constrained feeling grew to a
height.
"There is yet time," he went on, "to offer me some slight
apology ; and offer it you must, or you will die, sir ! You
rely even now on your dcxterit}^, and do not shrink from an
encounter in which you believe all the advantage to be upon
your side. Very good, sir; I am generous, I am letting you
know my superiority beforehand. I possess a terrible power.
I have only to wish to do so, and I can neutralize your skill,
dim your eyesight, make your hand and pulse unsteady, and
even kill you outright. I have no wish to be compelled to
exercise my power; the use of it costs me too dear. You
would not be the only one to die. So if you refuse to
THE AGONY 249
apologize to nie, no matter what your experience in murder,
your ball will go into the waterfall there, and mine will speed
straight to your heart though I do not aim it at you."
Confused voices interrupted Kaphael at this point. All
the time that he was speaking, the Marquis had kept his in-
tolerably keen gaze fixed upon his antagonist; now he drew
himself up and showed an impassive face, like that of a
dangerous madman.
"Make him hold his tongue," the young man had said to
one of his seconds ; "that voice of his is tearing the heart out
of me."
"Say no more, sir; it is quite useless," cried the seconds and
the surgeon, addressing Eaphael.
"Gentlemen, I am fulfilling a duty. Has this young gen-
tleman any final arrangements to make ?"
"That is enough; that will do."
The Marquis remained standing steadily, never for a
moment losing sight of his antagonist ; and the latter seemed,
like a bird before a snake, to be overwhelmed by a well-nigh
magical power. He was compelled to endure that homicidal
gaze ; he met and shunned it incessantly.
"I am thirsty; give me some water " he said again to
the second.
"Are you nervous?"
"Yes," he answered. "There is a fascination about that
man's glowing eyes."
"Will you apologize?"
"It is too late now."
The two antagonists were placed at fifteen paces' distance
from each other. Each of them had a brace of pistols at hand,
and, according to the programme prescribed for them, each
was to fire twice when and how he pleased, but after the
signal had been given by the seconds.
"What are you doing, Charles ?" exclaimed the young man
who acted as second to EaphaeFs antagonist ; "you are putting
in the ball before the powder !"
"I am a dead man," he muttered, by way of answer; "you
have put me facing the gun "
250 THE MAGIC SKIN
"The sun lies behind you," said Valentin sternly and
solemnly, while he coolly loaded his pistol without heeding
the fact that the signal had been given, or that his antagonist
was carefully taking aim.
There was something so appalling in this supernatural un-
concern, that it affected even the two postilions, brought
thither by a cruel curiosity. Raphael was either trying his
power or playing with it, for he talked to Jonathan, and
looked towards him as he received his adversary's firo.
Charles' bullet broke a branch of willow, and ricocheted over
the surface of the water; Eaphael fired at random, and shot
his antagonist through the heart. He did not heed the young
man as he dropped; he hurriedly sought the Magic Skin
to see what another man's life had cost him. The talisman
was no larger than a small oak-leaf.
"What are you gaping at, you postilions over there? Let
us be off," said the Marquis.
That same evening he crossed the French border, im-
mediately set out for Auvergne, and reached the springs of
Mont Dore. As he traveled, there surged uj) in his heart, all
at once, one of those thoughts that come to us as a ray of sun-
light pierces through the thick mists in some dark valley — a
sad enlightenment, a pitiless sagacity that lights up the ac-
complished fact for us, that lays our errors bare, and leaves
us without excuse in our own e3'^es. It suddenly struck him
that the possession of power, no matter how enormous, did
not bring with it the knowledge how to use it. The sceptre is a
plaything for a child, an. axe for a Richelieu, and for a
Napoleon a lever by which to move the world. Power leaves
us just as it finds us; only great natures grow greater by
its means. Raphael had had everything in his power, and
he had done nothing. ,
At the springs of Mont Dore he came again in contact
with a little world of people, who invariably shunned him with
the eager haste that animals display when they scent afar off
one of their own species lying dead, and flee away. The dis-
like was mutual. His late adventure had given him a deep
THE AGONY 251
distaste for society; his first care, consequently, was to find a
lodging at some distance from the neighborhood of the
springs. Instinctively he felt within him the need of close
contact with nature, of natural emotions, and of the vegeta-
tive life into which we sink so gladly among the fields.
The day after he arrived he climbed the Pic de Sancy, not
without difficulty, and visited the higher valleys, the skyey
nooks, undiscovered lakes, and peasants' huts about Mont,
Dore, a country whose stern and wild features are no^\' be-|
ginning to tempt the brushes of our artists, for sometimes
wonderfully fresh and charming views are to be found there,
affording a strong contrast to the frowning brows of those
lonely hills.
Barely a league from the village Raphael discovered a nook
where nature seemed to have taken a pleasure in hiding away
all her treasures like some glad and mischievous child.
At the first sight of this unspoiled and picturesque retreat,
he determined to take up his abode in it. There, life must
needs be peaceful, natural, and fruitful, like the life of a
plant.
Imagine for yourself an inverted cone of granite hollowed
out on a large scale, a sort of basin with its sides divided up
by queer winding paths. On one side lay level stretches with no
groMi;h upon them, a bluish uniform surface, over which the
rays of the sun fell as upon a mirror ; on the other lay cliffs
split open by fissures and frowning ravines; great blocks of
lava hung suspended from them, while the action of rain
slowly prepared their impending fall; a few stunted trees,
tormented by the wind, often crowned their summits; and
here and there in some sheltered angle of their ramparts a
clump of chestnut-trees grew tall as cedars, or some cavern
in the yellowish rock showed the dark entrance into its depths,
set about by flowers and brambles, decked by a little strip
of green turf.
At the bottom of this cup, which perhaps had been the
crater of an old-world vol en no, lay a pool of water as pure
and bright as a diamond. Granite boulders lay around the
252 THE MAGIC SKIN
deep basiii;, and willows, mountain-ash trees, yellow-flag lilies,
and numberless aromatic plants bloomed about it, in a realm
of meadow as fresh as an English bowling-green. The fine
soft grass was watered by the streams that trickled through
the fissures in the cliffs; the soil was contintially enriched by
the deposits of loam which storms washed down from the
heights above. The pool might be some three acres in ex-
tent; its shape was irregular, and the edges were scalloped
like the hem of a dress ; the meadow might be an acre or two
acres in extent. The cliffs and the water approached and re-
ceded from each other; here and there, there was scarcely
width enough for the cows to pass between them.
After a certain height the plant life ceased. Aloft in air
the granite took upon itself the most fantastic shapes, and as-
sumed those misty tints that give to high mountains a dim
resemblance to clouds in the sky. The bare, bleak cliffs, with
the fearful rents in their sides, pictures of wild and barren
desolation, contrasted strongly with the pretty view of the
valley ; and so strange were the shapes they assumed, that one "
of the cliffs had been called "The Capuchin," because it was
so like a monk. Sometimes these sharp-pointed peaks, these
mighty masses of rock, and airy caverns were lighted up one
by one, according to the direction of the sun or the caprices
of the atmosphere; they caught gleams of gold, dyed them-
selves in purple ; took a tint of glowing rose-color, or turned
dull and gray. Upon the heights a drama of color was al-
ways to be seen, a play of ever-shifting iridescent hues like
those on a pigeon's breast.
Oftentimes at sunrise or at sunset a ray of bright sunlight
would penetrate between two sheer surfaces of lava, that
might have been split apart by a hatchet, to the very depths of
that pleasant little garden, where it would play in the waters
of the pool, like a beam of golden light which gleams through
the chinks of a shutter into a room in Spain, that has been
carefully darkened for a siesta. When the sun rose above the
old crater that some antediluvian revolution had filled with
water, its rocky sides took warmer tones, the extinct volcano
THE AGONY 253
glowed again, and its sudden heal quickened the sprouting
seeds and vegetation, gave color to the flowers, and ripened
the fruits of this forgotten corner of the earth.
As Eaphael reached it, he noticed several cows grazing in
the pasture-land ; and when he had taken a few steps towards
the water, he saw a little house built of granite and roofed
with shingle in the spot where the meadowland was at its
widest. The roof of tliis little cottage harmonized with every-
thing about it ; for it had long been overgrown with ivy, moss,
and flowers of no recent date. A thin smoke, that did not
scare the birds away, went up from the dilapidated chimney.
There was a great bench at the door between two huge honey-
suckle bushes, that were pink with blossom and full of scent.
The walls could scarcely be seen for branches of vine and
sprays of rose* and jessamine that interlaced and grew entirely
as chance and their own will bade them; for the inmates
of the cottage seemed to pay no attention to the growth which
adorned their house, and to take no care of it, leaving to it the
fresh capricious charm of nature.
Some clothes spread out on the gooseberry bushes were dry-
ing in the sun. A cat was sitting on a machine for stripping
hemp; beneath it lay a newly scoured brass caldron, among
a quantity of potato-parings. On the other side of the house
Eaphael saw a sort of barricade of dead thorn-bushes, meant
no doubt to keep the poultry from scratching up the vegetables
and pot-herbs. It seemed like the end of the earth. The dwell-
ing was like some bird's-nest ingeniously set in a cranny of
the rocks, a clever and at the same time a careless bit of work-
manship. A simple and kindly nature lay round about it ; its
rusticity was genuine, but there was a charm like that of
poetry in it ; for it grew and throve at a thousand miles' dis-
tance from our elaborate and conventional poetry. It was
like none of our conceptions; it was a spontaneous growth, a
masterpiece due to chance.
As Eaphael reached the place, the sunlight fell across it
from right to left, bringing out all the colors of its plants and
trees ; the yellowish or gray bases of the crags, the different
254 THE MAGIC SKIN
shades of the green leaves, the masses of flowers, pink, blue, or
VN'hite, the climbing plants with their bell-like blossoms, and
the shot velvet of the mosses, the purple-tinted blooms of the
heather, — ever3'^thing was either brought into relief or made
fairer yet by the enchantment of the light or by the contrast-
ing shadows ; and this was the case most of all with the sheet
of water, wherein the house, the trees, the granite peaks, and
the sky were all faithfully reflected. Everything had a radi-
ance of its own in this delightful picture, from the sparkling
mica-stone to the bleached tuft of grass hidden away in the
sofi shadows ; the spotted cow with its gloss}' hide, the delicate
water-plants that hung down over the pool like fringes in a
nook where blue or emerald colored insects were buzzing
about, the roots of trees like a sand-besprinkled shock of hair
above grotesque faces in the flinty rock surfa'ce, — all these
things made a harmony for the eye.
The odor of the tepid water ; the scent of the flowers, and
the breath of the caverns which fllled the lonely place, gave
Eaphael a sensation that was almost enjoyment. Silence
reigned in majesty over these woods, which possibly are un-
known to the tax-collector; but the barking of a couple of
dogs broke the stillness all at once; the cows turned their
heads towards the entrance of the valley, showing their moist
noses to Eaphael, stared stupidly at him, and then fell to
browsing again. A goat and her kid, that seemed to hang on
the side of the crags in some magical fashion, capered and
leapt to a slab of granite near to Eaphael, and stayed there
a moment, as if to seek to know who he was. The yapping of
the dogs brought out a plump child, who stood agape, and
next came a white-haired old man of middle height. Both of
these two beings were in keeping with the surroundings, the
air, the flowers, and the dwelling. Health appeared to over-
flow in this fertile region ; old age and childhood thrived there.
There seemed to be, about all these types of existence, the
freedom and carelessness of the life of primitive times, a hap-
piness of use and wont that gave the lie to onr philosophical
platitudes, and wrought a cure of all its swelling passions in
the heart.
THE AGONY 255
The old man belonged to the type of model dear to the
mascnlihe brush of Schnctz. The countless wrinkles upon his
brown face looked as if they would be hard to the touch ; the
straight nose, the prominent cheek-bones, streaked with red
veins like a vine-leaf in autumn, the angular features, all
were characteristics of strength, even where strength existed
no longer. The hard hands, now that they toiled no longer,
had preserved their scanty white hair ; his bearing was that of
an absolutely free man ; it suggested the thought that, had he
been an Italian, he would have -perhaps turned brigand, for
the love of the liberty so dear to him. The child was a regular
mountaineer, with the black eyes that can face the sun with-
out tlinching, a deeply tanned complexion, and rough brown
hair. His movements were like a bird's — swift, decided, and
unconstrained; his clothing was ragged; the white, fair skin
showed through the rents in his garments. There they both
stood in silence, side by side, both obeying the same impulse ;
in both faces were clear tokens of an absolutely identical
and idle life. The old man had adopted the child's amuse-
ments, and the child had fallen in with the old man's humor;
there was a sort of tacit agreement between two kinds of fee-
bleness, between failing powers well-nigh spent and powers
just about to unfold themselves.
Very soon a woman who seemed to be about thirty years.
old appeared on the threshold of the door, spinning as she
came. She was an Aiivergnate, a high-colored, comfortable-
looking, straightforward sort of person, with white teeth ; her
cap and dress, the face, full figure, and general appearance,
were of the Auvergne peasant stamp. So was her dialect;
she was a thorough embodiment of her district; its hard-
working ways, its thrift, ignorance, and heartiness all met in
her.
She greeted Eaphael, and they began to talk. The dogs
quieted down ; the old man went and sat on a bench in the
sun; the child followed his mother about wherever she went,
listening without saying a word, and staring at the stranger.
"You are not afraid to live here, good woman ?"
256 THE MAGIC SKIN
"What should we be afraid of, sir? When we bolt thp
door, who ever could get inside? Oh, no, we aren't afrai<i
at all. And besides," she said, as she brought the Marquis
into the principal room in the house, "what should thieves
come to take from us here?"
She designated the room as she spoke; the smoke -
blackened walls, with some brilliant pictures in blue, red, ant!
green, an "End of Credit," a Crucifixion, and the "Grenadiert,
of the Imperial Guard" for their sole ornament; the furni-
ture here and there, the old wooden four-post bedstead, the
table with crooked legs, a few stools, the chest that held
the bread, the flitch that hung from the ceiling, a jar of salt,
a stove, and on the mantelshelf a few discolored yellow plaster
figures. As he went out again Raphael noticed a man half-
way up the crags, leaning on a hoe, and watching the house
with interest.
"That's my man, sir," said the Auvergnate, unconsciously
smiling in peasant fashion; "he is at work up there."
"And that old man is your father?"
"Asking your pardon, sir, he is my man's grandfather.
Such as you see him, he is a hundred and two, and yet quite
lately he walked over to Clermont with our little chap ! Oh,
he has been a strong man in his time; but he does nothing
,now but sleep and eat and drink. He amuses himself with
the little fellow. Sometimes the child trails him up the hill-
sides, and he will just go up there along with him."
Valentin made up his mind immediately. He would live
between this child and old man, breathe the same air; eat
their bread, drink the same water, sleep with them, make the
blood in his veins like theirs. It was a dying man's fancy.
For him the prime model, after which the customary existence
of the individual should be shaped, the real formula for the
.life of a human being, the only true and possible life, the
life-ideal, was to become one of the oysters adhering to this
rock, to save his shell a day or two longer by paralyzing the
power of death. One profoundly selfish thought took pos-
session of him, and the whole universe was swallowed up and
THE AGONY 257
lost in it. For him the universe existed no longer ; the whole
world had come to be within himself. For the sick, the world
begins at their pillow and ends at the foot of the bed; and
this countryside was Kaphael's sick-bed.
Who has not, at some time or other in his life, watched the
comings and goings of an ant, slipped straws into a yellow
slug's one breathing-hole, studied the vagaries of a slender
dragon-fl}'-, pondered admiringly over the countless veins in
an oak-leaf, that bring the colors of a rose window in some
Gothic cathedral into contrast with the reddish background?
Who has not looked long in delight at the effects of sun and
rain on a roof of brown tiles, at the dewdrops, or at the
variously shaped petals of the flower-cups ? Who has not sunk
into these idle, absorbing meditations on things without, that
have no conscious end, yet lead to some definite thought at
last? Who, in short, has not led a lazy life, the life of
childhood, the life of the savage without his labor? This
life without a care or a wish, Eaphael led for some days'
space. He felt a distinct improvement in his condition, a
wonderful sense of ease, that quieted his apprehensions and
soothed his sufferings.
He would climb the crags, and then find a seat high up on
some peak whence he could see a vast expanse 'of distant
country at a glance, and he would spend whole days in this
way, like a plant in the sun, or a hare in its form. And at
last, growing familiar with the appearances of the plant-life
about him, and of the changes in the sk}^ he minutely noted
the progress of everything working around him in the water,
on the earth, or in the air. He tried to share the secret
impulses of nature, sought by passive obedience to become
a part of it, and to lie within the conservative and despotic
jurisdiction that regulates instinctive existence. He no
longer wished to steer his own course.
Just as criminals in olden times were safe from the pursuit
of justice, if they took refuge under the shadow of the altar,
so Eaphael made an effort to slip into the sanctuary of life.
He succeeded in becoming an integral part of the great and
258 THE MAGIC SKIN
mighty fruit-producing organization ; he had adapted himself
to the inclemency of the air, and had dwelt in every cave
among the rocks. He had learned the ways and habits of
growth of every plant, had studied the laws of the water-
courses and their beds, and had come to know the animals;
he was at last so perfectly at one with this teeming earth,
jthat he had in some sort discerned its mysteries and caught
the sjiirit of it.
The infinitely varied forms of ever}'' natural kingdom were,
to his thinking, only developments of one and the same sub-
stance, different combinations brought about by the same im-
pulse, endless emanations from a measureless Being which
was acting, thinking, moving, and growing, and in harmony
with which he longed to grow, to move, to think, and act.
He had fancifully blended his life with the life of the crags ;
he had deliberately planted himself there. During the
earliest days of his sojourn in these pleasant surroundings,
Valentin tasted all the pleasures of childhood again, thanks to
the strange hallucination of apparent convalescence, which
is not unlike the pauses of delirium that nature mercifully
provides for those in pain. He went about making trifling dis-
coveries, setting to work on endless things, and finishing none
of them ; the evening's plans were quite forgotten in the morn-
ing; he had no cares, he was happy; he thought himself
saved.
One morning he had lain in bed till noon, deep in the
dreams between sleep and waking, which give to realities a
fantastic appearance, and make the wildest fancies seem solid
facts ; while he was still uncertain that he was not dreaming
yet, he suddenly heard his hostess giving a report of his health
to Jonathan, for the first time. Jonathan came to inquire
after him daily, and the Auvergnate, thinking no doubt that
Valentin was still asleep, had not lowered the tones of a voice
developed in mountain air.
"No better and no worse," she said. "He coughed all last
night again fit to kill himself. Poor gentleman, he coughs
and spits till it is piteous. My husband and I often wonder
THE AGONY 259
to each other where he gets the strength from to cough like
that. It goes to your heart. What a cursed complaint it
is ! He has no strength at all. I am always afraid I shall
find him dead in his bed some morning. He is every bit as
pale as a waxen Christ. Dame! I watch him while he
dresses; his poor body is as thin as a nail. And he does
[not feel well now; but no matter. It's all the same; he
wears himself out with running about as if he had health and
to spare. All the same, he is very brave, for he never com-
plains at all. But really he would be better under the
earth than on it, for he is enduring the agonies of Christ.
I don't wish that myself, sir ; it is quite against our interests ;
but even it he didn't pay us what he does, I should be
just as fond of him; it is not our own interest that is our
motive."
"Ah, mon Dieu !" she continued, "Parisians are the
people for these dogs' diseases. Where did he catch
it, now ? Poor young man ! And he is so sure that he
is going to get well ! That fever just gnaws him, you know ;
it eats him away; it will be the death of him. He has no
notion whatever of that; he does not know it, sir; he sees
nothing You mustn't cry about him, M. Jonathan; you
inust remember that he will be happy, and will not suffer
any more. You ought to make a neuvaine for him; I have
seen wonderful cures come of a nine days' prayer, and I
would gladly pay for a wax taper to save such a gentle crea-
ture, so good he is, a paschal lamb "
As Eaphael's voice had grown too weak to allow him to
make himself heard, he was compelled to listen to this horrible
loquacity. His irritation, however, drove him out of bed at
length, and he appeared upon the threshold.
"Old scoundrel !" he shouted to Jonathan ; "do you mean
to put me to death ?"
The peasant woman took him for a ghost, and fled.
"I forbid you to have any anxiety whatever about my
health," Eaphael went on.
"Yes, my Lord Marquis," said the old servant, wiping
away his tears.
260 THE MAGIC SKIN
"And for the future you had very much better not come
here without my orders."
Jonathan meant to be obedient, but in the look full of pity
and devotion that he gave the Marquis before he went.
Raphael read his own death-warrant. Utterly disheartened,
brought all at once to a sense of his real position, Valentin
sat down on the threshold, locked his arms across his chest,
and bowed his head. Jonathan turned to his master in alarm.,
with "My Lord "
"Go away, go av/ay," cried the invalid.
In the hours of the next morning, Raphael climbed the
cragSj and sat down in a mossy cleft in the rocks, whence he
could see the narrow path along ^\hich the Avater for the
dwelling was carried. At the base of the hill he saw
Jonathan in conversation with the Auvergnate. Some
malicious power interpreted for him all the woman's head-
shakings, melancholy gestures, and garrulous forebodings,
and filled the breeze and the silence with her ominous words.
Thrilled vrith horror, he took refuge among the highest sum-
mits of the mountains, and stayed there till the eyening ; but
yet he could not drive away the gloomy presentiments
awakened within him in such an unfortunate manner by a
cruel solicitude on his account.
The Auvergne peasant herself suddenly appeared before
him like a qhadow in the dusk; a perverse freak of the poet
within him found a vague resemblance between her black and
white striped petticoat and the-bony frame of a spectre.
"The damp is falling now, sir," said she. "If you stop out
there, you will go off just like rotten fruit. You must
come in. It isn't healthy to breathe the damp, and you have
taken nothing since the morning, besides."
"Tonnerre de Dieu! old witch," he cried; "let me live after
my own fashion, I tell j^ou, or I shall be off altogether. It
is quite bad enough to dig my grave every morning; you
might let it alone in the evenings at least "
"Your grave, sir! I dig your grave! — and where may
yoiir grave be? I want to see you as old as father there, and
THE AGONY 261
not in your grave by any manner of means. The grave !
that comes soon enough for us all ; in the grave "
"That is enough/' said Raphael.
"Take my arm, sir."
The feeling of pity in others is very difficult for a man to
bear, and it is hardest of all when the pity is deserved.
Hatred is a tonic — it quickens life and stimulates revenge;
but pity is death to us — it makes our weakness weaker still.
It is as if distress simpered ingratiatingly at us; contempt
lurks in the tenderness, or tenderness in an affront. In the
centenarian Eaphael saw triumphant pity, a wondering pity
in the child's eyes, an officious pity in the woman, and in her
husband a pity that had an interested motive ; but no matter
how the sentiment declared itself, death was always its im-
port.
A poet makes a poem of everything ; it is tragical or joyful,
as things happen to strike his imagination; his lofty soul
rejects all half-tones; he always prefers vivid and decided
colors. In Raphael's soul this compassion produced a terrible
poem of mourning and melancholy. When he had wished
to live in close contact with nature, he had of course for-
gotten how freely natural emotions are expressed. He would
think himself quite alone under a tree, whilst he struggled
with an obstinate coughing fit, a terrible combat from which
he never issued victorious without utter exhaustion after-
wards ; and then he would meet the clear, bright eyes of the
little boy, who occupied the post of sentinel, like a savage
in a bent of grass; the eyes scrutinized him with a childish
wonder, in which there was as much amusement as pleasure,*
and an indescribable mixture of indifference and interest.'
The awful Brother, you must die, of the Trappists seemed
constantly legible in the eyes of the peasants with whom
Eaphael was living; he scarcely knew which he dreadec?
most, their unfettered talk or their silence ; their presence be-
came torture.
One morning he saw two men in black prowling about in
VOL. 1 — ?a
262 THE MAGIC SKIN
his neighborhood, who furtively studied him and took ob-
servations. They made as though they had come there for
a stroll, and asked him a few indifferent questions, to which
he returned short answers. He recognized them, both. One
was the cure and the other the doctor at the springs ; Jonathan
had no doubt sent them, or the people in the house had called
them in, or the scent of an approaching death had drawn
them thither. He beheld his own funeral, heard the chanting
of the priests, and counted the tall wax candles ; and all that
lovely fertile nature around him, in whose lap he had thought
to find life once more, he saw no longer, save through a veil
of crape. Eveiything that but lately had spoken of length
of days to him, now prophesied a speedy end. He set out
the next day for Paris, not before he had been inundated with
cordial wishes, which the people of the house uttered in
melancholy and ^vistful tones for his benefit.
He traveled through the night, and awoke as they passed
through one of the pleasant valleys of the Bourbonnais.
View after view swam before his gaze, and passed rapidly
away like the vague pictures of a dream. Cruel nature spread
herself out before his eyes with tantalizing grace. Sometimes
the Allier, a liquid shining ribbon, meandered through the
distant fertile landscape; then followed the steeples of ham-
lets, hiding modestly in the depths of a ravine with its yellow
clilf s ; sometimes, after the monotony of vineyards, the water-
mills of a little valley would be suddenly seen; and every-
where there w^ere pleasant chateaux, hillside villages, roads
with their fringes of queenly poplars; and the Loire itself, at
last, with its wide sheets of water sparkling like diamonds
amid its golden sands. Attractions everywhere, without end !
This nature, all astir with a life and gladness like that of
childhood, scarcely able to contain the impulses and sap of
•Tune, possessed a fatal attraction for the darkened gaze of
the invalid. He drew the blinds of his carriage windows,
and betook himself again to slumber.
Towards evening, after they bad passed Ccsne, he wns
awakened by lively music, and found himself confronted with
THE AGONY 263
a Tillage fair. The horses were changed near the market-
place. Whilst the postilions were engaged in making the
transfer, he saw the people dancing merrily, pretty and at-
tractive girls with flowers about them, excited youths, and
finally the jolly wine-flushed countenances of old peasants.
Children prattled, old women laughed and chatted; every-
thing spoke in one voice, and there was a holiday gaiety
about everything, down to their clothing and the tables that
were set out. A cheerful expression pervaded the square
and the church, the roofs and windows; even the very door-
ways of the village seemed likewise to be in holiday trim.
Eaphael could not repress an angry exclamation, nor yet
a wish to silence the fiddles, annihilate the stir and bustle,
stop the clamor, and disperse the ill-timed festival; like a
dying man, he felt unable to endure the slightest sound, and
he entered his carriage much annoyed. When he looked out
upon the square from the window, he saw that all the happi-
ness was scared away ; the peasant women were in flight, and
the benches were deserted. Only a blind musician, on the
scaffolding of the orchestra, went on playing a shrill tune on
his clarionet. That piping of his, without dancers to it,
and the solitary old man himself, in the shadow of the
lime-tree, with his curmudgeon's face, scanty hair, and ragged
clothing, was like a fantastic picture of Eaphael's wish. The
heavy rain was pouring in torrents; it was one of those
thunderstorms that June brings about so rapidly, to cease
as suddenly. The thing was so natural, that, when Eaphael
had looked out and seen some pale clouds driven over by a
gust of wind, he did not think of looking at the piece of skin.
He lay back again in the corner of his carriage, which was
very soon rolling upon its way.
The next day found him back in his home again, in his
own room, beside his own fireside. He had had a large fire
lighted; he felt cold. Jonathan brought him some letters;
they were all from Pauline. He opened the first one without
any eagerness, and unfolded it as if it had been the gray-
264 THE MAGIC SKIN
paper form of application for taxes made by the revenue col-
lector. He read the first sentence :
"Gone ! This really is a flight, my Eaphael. How it is ?
No one can tell me where you are. And who should know if
not I ?"
He did not wish to learn any more. He calmly took up the
letters and threw them in the fire, watching with dull and
lifeless eyes the perfumed paper as it was twisted, shriveled,
bent, and devoured by the capricious flames. Fragments that
fell among the ashes allowed him to see the beginning of a
sentence, or a half -burnt thought or word ; he took a pleasure
in deciphering them — a sort of mechanical amusement.
"Sitting at your door — expected — Caprice — I obey — Eivals
— I, never ! — thy Pauline — love — no more of Pauline ? — If
you had wished to leave me for ever, you would not have
deserted me — Love eternal — To die "
The words caused him a sort of remorse; he seized the
tongs, and rescued a last fragment of the letter from
the flames.
"I have murmured," so Pauline wrote, "but I have never
complained, my Raphael ! If you have left me so far behind
you, it was doubtless because you wished to hide some heavy
grief from me. Perhaps you will kill me one of these days,
but you are too good to torture me. So do not go away from
me like this. There ! I can bear the worst of torment, if
only I am at your side. Any grief that you could cause me
would not be grief. There is far more love in my heart
for you than I have ever yet shown you. I can endure any-
thing, except this weeping far away from you, this ignorance
of your "
Eaphael laid the scorched scrap on the mantelpiece, then
all at once he flung it into the fire. The bit of paper was
too clearly a symbol of his own love and luckless existence.
"Go and find M. Bianchon," he told Jonathan.
Horace came and found Eaphael in bed.
"Can you prescribe a draught for me — some mild opiate
which will always keep me in a somnolent condition,
THE AGONY 265
a draught that will not be injurious although taken con-
stantly."
"Nothing is easier," the young doctor replied; "but you
will have to keep on your feet for a few hours daily, at any
rate, so as to take your food."
"A few hours!" Raphael broke in; "no, no! I only wish
to be out of bed for an hour at most."
"What is your object ?" inquired Bianchon.
"To sleep ; for so one keeps alive, at any rate," the patient
answered. "Let no one come in, not even Mile. Pauline de
Wistchnau !" he added to Jonathan, as the doctor was writing
out his prescription.
"Well, M. Horace, is there any hope?" the old servant
asked, going as far as the flight of steps before the door,
with the young doctor.
"He may live for some time yet, or he may die to-night.
The chances of life and death are evenly balanced in his
case. I can't understand it at all," said the doctor, with a
doubtful gesture. "His mind ought to be diverted."
"Diverted ! Ah, sir, you don't know him ! He killed a
man the other day without a word! — Nothing can divert
him !"
For some days Eaphael lay plunged in the torpor of this
artificial sleep. Thanks to the material power that opium
exerts over the immaterial part of us, this man with the
powerful and active imagination reduced himself to the level
of those sluggish forms of animal life that lurk in the depths
of forests, and take the form of vegetable refuse, never
stirring from their place to catch their easy prey. He had
darkened the very sun in heaven; the daylight never entered
liis room. About eight o'clock in the evening he would leave
liis bed. with no very clear consciousness of his own existence ;
he would satisfy the claims of hunger and return to bed im-
mediately. One dull blighted hour after another only
iirought confused pictures and appearances before him, and
lights and shadows against a background of darkness.
He lay buried in deep silence; movement and intelligence
266 THE MAGIC SKIN
were completely annihilated for him. He woke later than
usual one evening, and found that his dinner was not ready.
He rang for Jonathan.
"You can go," he said. "I have made you rich ; you shall
be happy in your old age ; but I will not let you muddle away
my life any longer. Miserable wretch! I am hungry —
where is my dinner ? How is it ? — Answer me !"
A satisfied smile stole over Jonathan's face. He took a
candle that lit up the great dark rooms of the mansion with
its flickering light; brought his master, who had again be-
come an automaton, into a great gallery, and flung a door
suddenly open. Eaphael was all at once dazzled by a flood of
light and amazed by an unheard-of scene.
His chandeliers had been filled with wax-lights ; the rarest
flowers from his conservatory were carefully arranged about
the room; the table sparkled with silver, gold, crystal, and
porcelain; a royal banquet was spread — ^the odors of the
tempting dishes tickled the nervous fibres of the palate.
There sat his friends; he saw them among beautifr.l women
in full evening dress, with bare necks and shoulders, with
flowers in their hair; fair women of every type, with
sparkling eyes, attractively and fancifully arrayed. One had
adopted an Irish jacket, which displayed the alluring out-
lines of her form; one wore the "basquina" of Andalusia,
with its wanton grace ; here was a half-clad Dian the huntress,
there the costume of Mile, de la Valliere, amorous and coy;
and all of them alike w^ere given up to the intoxication of
the moment.
As Eaphacl's death-pale face shov^ed itself in the door-
way, a sudden outcry broke out, as vehement as the blaze of
this improvised banquet. The voices, perfumes, and lights,
the exquisite beauty of the women, produced their effect upon
his senses, and awakened his desires. Delightful music, from
anseen players in the next room, drowned the excited tumult
in a torrent of harmony — the whole strange vision was com-
plete.
Raphael felt a caressing pressure of his own hand, a wo-
THE AGONY 2^7
man's white, youthful arms were stretched out to grasp him,
and the hand was Aquilina's. He knew now that this scene
was not a fantastic illusion like the fleeting pictures of his
disordered dreams; he uttered a dreadful cry, slammed the
door, and dealt his heartbroken old servant a blow in
the face.
"Monster !" he cried, "so you have sworn to kill me !" and
trembling at the risks he had Just now run, he summoned
all his energies, reached his room, took a powerful slee2)ing
draught, and went to bed.
"The devil !" cried Jonathan, recovering himself. "And
M. Bianchon most certainly told me to divert Iris mind."
It was close upon midnight. By that time, owing to one of
those physical caprices that are the marvel and the despair
of science, Eaphael, in his slumber, became radiant with
beauty. A bright color glowed on his pale cheeks. There
was an almost girlish grace about the forehead in which his
genius was revealed. Life seemed to bloom on the quiet face
that lay there at rest. His sleep was sound; a light, even
breath was drawn in between the red lips ; he was smiling—
he had passed no doubt through the gate of dreams into a
noble life. Was he a centenarian now? Did his grand-
children come to wish him length of days ? Or, on a rustic
bench set in the sun and under the trees, was he scanning,
like the prophet on the mountain heights, a promised land»
a far-off time of blessing.
"Here you are !"
The words, uttered in silver tones, dispelled the shadowy
faces of his dreams. He saw Pauline, in the lamplight,
sitting upon the bed ; Pauline grown fairer yet through sorrow
and separation. Raphael remained bewildered by the sight
of her face, Avhite as the petals of some water flower, and the
shadow of her long, dark hair about it seemed to make it
whiter still. Her tears had left a gleaming trace upon her
cheeks, and hung there yet, ready to fall at the least move-
ment. She looked like an angel fallen from the skies, or a
jpirit that a breath might waft away, as she sat there all in
268 THE MAGIC SKIN
white, with her head bowed, scarcely creasing the quilt he-
neath her weight.
"Ah, I have forgotten everything!" she cried, as Eaphael
opened his eyes. "I have no voice left except to tell you,
*I am yours.' There is nothing in my heart but love. Angel
of my life, you have never been so beautiful before ! Your
eyes are blazing But come, I can guess it all. You
have been in search of health without me ; you were afraid of
me well "
"Go ! go ! leave me," Eaphael muttered at last. "Why do
you not go? If you stay, I shall die. Do you want to see
me die ?"
"Die?" she echoed. "Can you die without me? Die?
But you are 3' oung ; and I love 3'ou ! Die ?" she asked, in a
deep, hollow voice. She seized his hands with a frenzied
movement. "Cold !" she wailed. "Is it all an illusion ?"
Eaphael drew the little bit of skin from under his pillow;
It was as tiny and as fragile as a periwinkle-petal. He showed
it to her.
"Pauline !" he said, "fair image of my fair life, let us say
good-bye."
"Good-bye?" she echoed, looking surprised,
"Yes. This is a talisman that grants all my wishes,
and that represents my span of life. See here, this is
all that remains of it. If you look at me any longer, I shall
die "
The young girl thought that A^alentin had grown light-
headed; she took the talisman and went to fetch the lamp.
By its tremulous light which she shed over Eaphael and
the talisman, she scanned her lover's face and the last morsel
of the magic skin. As Paulino stood there, in all the beauty
of love and terror, Eaphael was no longer able to control
his thoughts: memories of tender scenes, and of passionate
and fevered joys, overwhelnibd the soul that had so long lair
dormant within liim, and kindled a fire not quite extinct.
"Pauline ! 1 Aniline ! Come to me "
A dreadful cry came from the girl's throat, her eyes dilated
\
THE AGONY 269
with horror, her eyebrows were distorted and drawn apart by
an unspeakable anguish; she read in Eaphael's eyes the
vehement desire in which she had once exulted, but as it grew '
she felt a light movement in her hand, and the skin con-
tracted. She did not stop to think ; she fled into the next
room, and locked the door.
"Pauline ! Pauline !" cried the dying man, as he rushed
after her ; "I love you, I adore you, I want you, Pauline ! 1
must curse you if you will not open the door for me. I wish
to die in your arms !"
With unnatural strength, the last effort of ebbing life.
he broke down the door, and saw his mistress writhing upon
a sofa. Pauline had vainly tried to pierce her heart, and
now thought to find a rapid death by strangling herself with
her shawl.
"If I die, he will live," she said, trying to tighten the knot
that she had made.
In her struggle with death her hair hung loose, her
shoulders were bare, her clothing was disordered, her eyes
were bathed in tears, her face was flushed and drawn with the
horror of despair; yet as her exceeding beauty met Eaphael's
intoxicated eyes, his delirium grew. He sprang towards her
like a bird of prey, tore away the shawl, and tried to take her
in his arms.
The dying man sought for words to express the wish that
was consuming his strength ; but no sounds would come except
the choking death-rattle in his chest. Each breath he drew
sounded hollower than the last, and seemed to come from
his very entrails. At the last moment, no longer able to
utter a sound, he set his teeth in Pauline's breast. Jonathan
appeared, terrified by the cries he had heard, and tried to tear
away the dead body from the grasp of the girl who was
crouching with it in a corner.
"What do you want?" she asked. "He is mine, I have
killed him. Did I not foresee how it would be?*'
270 THE MAGIC SKIN
EPILOGUE
"And what became of Pauline ?"
"Pauline? Ah! Do you sometimes spend a pleasant
winter evening by your own fireside, and give yourself up
luxuriously to memories of love or youth, while you watci;
the glow of the fire where the logs of oak are burning?
Here, the fire outlines a. sort of chessboard in red square:,
there it has a sheen like velvet ; little blue flames' start up and
flicker and play about in the glowing depths of the brasier.
A mysterious artist comes and adapts that flame to his own
ends ; by a secret of his own he draws a visionary face in the
midst of those flaming violet and crimson hues, a face with
unimaginable delicate outlines, a fleeting apparition which no
chance will ever bring back again. It is a woman's face, her
hair is blown back by the wind, her features speak of a
rapture of delight; she breathes fire in the midst of the
fire. She smiles, she dies, j'ou will never see her any more.
Farewell, flower of the flame ! Farewell, essence incomplete
and unforeseen, come too early or too late to make the spark
of some glorious diamond/'
"But, Pauline?"
"You do not see, then ? I will begin again. Make way ! make
way ! She comes, she is here, the queen of illusions, a woman
fleeting as a kiss, a woman bright as lightning, issuing in a
blaze like lightning from the sky, a being uncreated, of spirit
and love alone. She has wrapped her shadowy form in flame, or
perhaps the flame betokens that she exists but for a moment.
The pure outlines of her shape tell you that she comes from
heaven. Is she not radiant as an angel ? Can you not hear
the beating of her wings in space? She sinks down beside
you more lightly than a bird, and you are entranced by her
awful eyes; tliere is a magical power in her light breathing
that draws your lips to hers; she flics and you follow; you feel
the earth beneath you no longer. If you could but once touch
that form of snow with your eager, deluded hands, once twine
THE AGONY 271
the golden hair round your fingers, place one kiss on those
shining eyes ! There is an intoxicating vapor around, and the
spell of a siren music is upon you. Every nerve in you is
quivering; you are filled with pain and longing. 0 joy for
which there is no name ! You have touched the woman's lips,
and you are wakened at once by a horrible pang. Oh ! ah !
yes, you have struck your head against the corner of the bed-
post, you have been clasping its brown mahogany sides, and
chilly gilt ornaments; embracing a piece of metal, a brazen
Cupid."
"But how about Pauline, sir?"
"What, again? Listen. One lovely morning at Tours a
young man, who held the hand of a pretty woman in his,
went on board the Ville d' Angers. Thus united they both
looked and wondered long at a white form that rose
elusively out of the mists above the broad waters of
the Loire, like some child of the sun and the river,
or some freak of air and cloud. This translucent
form was a sylph or a naiad by turns; she hovered
in the air like a word that haunts the memory, which
seeks in vain to grasp it; she glided among the islands, she
nodded her head here and there among the tall poplar trees ;
then she grew to a giant's height ; she shook out the countless
folds of her drapery to the .light ; she shot light from the
aureole that the sun had litten about her face; she hovered
above the slopes of the hills and their little hamlets, and
seemed to bar the passage of the boat before the Chateau
d'Usse. You might have thought that La dame des belles
cousines sought to protect her country from modern in-
trusion."
"Well, well, I understand. So it went with Pauline. But
how about Fcedora ?"
"Oh! Fcedora, you are sure to meet with her! She was
at the Bouffons last night, and she will go to the Opera this
evening, and if you like to take it so, she is Society/'
I
CHRIST IN FLANDERS
To Marcelline Desbordes-Valmore, a daugliter of Flanders, of
whom these modern days may well be proud, 1 dedicate this
quaint legend of old Flanders.
De Balzac.
At a dimly remote period in the history of Brabant, com-
munication between the Island of Cadzand and the Flemish
coast was kept up by a boat which carried passengers from
one shore to the other. Middelbarg, the chief town in the
island, destined to become so famous in the annals of
Protestantism, at that time only numbered some two or
three hundred hearths; and the prosperous town of Ostend
was an obscure haven, a straggling village where pirates dwelt
in security among the fishermen and the few poor merchants
who lived in the place.
But though the town of Ostend consisted altogether of
some score of houses and three hundred cottages, huts or
hovels built of the driftwood of wrecked vessels, it never-
theless rejoiced in the possession of a governor, a garrison,
a forked gibbet, a convent, and a burgomaster, in short, in
all the institutions of an advanced civilization.
Who reigned over Brabant and Flanders in those days?
On this point tradition is mute. Let us confess at once that
this tale savors strongly of the marvelous, the mysterious,
and the vague; elements which Flemish narrators have in-
fused into a story retailed so often to gatherings of workers
on winter , evenings, that the versions vary widely in poetic
merit and incongruity of detail. It has been told by every
generation, handed down by grandames at the fireside,
narrated night and day, and the chronicle has changed its
complexion somewhat in every age. Like some great build-
ing that has suffered manv modifications of successive genera-
273
274 CHRIST IN FLANDERS
tions of architects, some sombre weather-beaten pile, the de-
light of a poet, the story would drive the commentator and
the industrious winnower of words, facts, and dates to despair.
The narrator believes in it, as all superstitious minds in
Flanders likewise believe; and is not a whit wiser nor more
credulous than his audience. But as it would be impossible to
make a harmony of all the different renderings, here are the
outlines of the story; stripped, it may be, of its picturesque
quaintness, but with all its bold disregard of historical truth,
and its moral teaching approved by religion — a myth, the
blossom of imaginative fancy ; an allegory that the wise may
interpret to suit themselves. To each his own pasturage, and
the task of separating the tares from the wheat.
The boat that served to carry passengers from the Island
of Cadzand to Ostend was upon the point of departure ; but
before the skipper loosed the chain that secured the shallop
to the little jetty, where people embarked, he blew a horn
several times, to warn late lingerers, this being his last
journey that day. Night was falling. It was scarcely possi-
ble to see the coast of Flanders by the dying fires of the
sunset, or to make out upon the hither shore any forms of
belated passengers hurrying along the wall of the dykes that
surrounded the open country, or among the tall reeds of the
marshes. The boat was full.
"What are you waiting for ? Let us put off !" they cried.
Just at that moment a man appeared a few paces from the
jetty, to the surprise of the skipper, who had heard no sound
of footsteps. The traveler seemed to have sprung up from
the earth, like a peasant who had laid himself down on the
ground to wait till the boat should start, and had slept till
the sound of the horn awakened him. Was he a thief? or
some one belonging to the custom-house or the police?
As soon as the man appeared on the jetty to which the
boat was moored, seven persons who were standing in the
stern of the shallop hastened to sit down on the benches, so as
to leave no room for the newcomer. It was the swift and
CHRIST IN FLANDERS 2,75
instinctive working of tlie aristocratic spirit, an impulse of
exclusivencss that comes from the rich man's heart. Four
of the seven personages belonged to the most aristocratic
families in Flanders. First among them was a young knight
with two beautiful greyhounds; his long hair flowed from be-
neath a jeweled cap ; he clanked his gilded spurs, curled the
ends of his moustache from time to time with a swaggering
grace, and looked round disdainfully on the rest of the crew.
A high-born damsel, with a falcon on her wrist, only spoke
with her mother or with a churchman of high rank, who was
evidently a relation. All these persons made a great deal
of noise, and talked among themselves as though there were
no one else in the boat; yet close beside them sat a man of
great importance in the district, a stout burgher of Bruges,
wrapped about with a vast cloak. His servant, armed to the
teeth, had set down a couple of bags filled with gold at his
side. Next to the burgher came a man of learning, a doctor of
the University of Louvain, who was traveling with his clerk.
This little group of folk, who looked contemptuously at each
other, was separated from the passengers in the forward part
of the boat by the bench of rowers.
The belated traveler glanced about him as he stepped on
board, saw that there was no room for him in the stern, and
went to the bows in quest of a seat. They were all poor people
there. At first sight of the bareheaded man in the brown
camlet coat and trunk-hose, and plain stiff linen collar, they
noticed that he wore no ornaments, carried no cap nor bonnet
in his hand, and had neither sword nor purse at his girdle,
and one and all took him for a burgomaster sure of his author-
ity, a worthy and kindly burgomaster like so many
a Fleming of old times, whose homely features and charac-
ters have been immortalized by Flemish painters. The poorer
passengers, therefore, received him with de:nonstrations of
respect that provoked scornful tittering at the other end of
the boat. An old soldier, inured to toil and hardship, gave
up his place on the bench to the newcomer, and seated him-
self on the edge of the vessel, keeping his balance by plant-
276 CHRIST IN B^LANDERS
ing his feet against one of those transverse beams, like the
backbone of a fish, that hold the planks of a boat together.
A young mother, who bore her baby in her arms, and seemed
to belong to the working class in Ostend, moved aside to make
room for the stranger. There was neither servility nor scorn
in her manner of doing this; it was a simple sign of the
goodwill by which the poor, who know by long experience
the value of a service and the warmth that fellowship brings,
give expression to the open-heartedness and the natural im-
pulses of their souls; so artlessly do they reveal their good
qualities and their defects. The stranger thanked her by a
gesture full of gracious dignity, and took his place between
the young mother and the old soldier. Immediately behind
him sat a peasant and his son, a boy ten years of age. A
beggar woman, old, wrinkled, and clad in rags, was crouching,
with her almost emptA^ wallet, on a great coil of rope that lay
in the prow. One of the rowers, an old sailor, who had knoA\Ti
her in the days of her beauty and prosperity, had let her come
in "for the love of God," in the beautiful phrase that the
common people use.
"Thank you kindly, Thomas," the old woman had said.
"I will say two Paters and two Aves for you in my prayers
to-night."
The skipper blew his horn for the last time, looked along
the silent shore, flung off the chain, ran along the side of the
boat, and took up his position at the helm. He looked at the
sky, and as soon as they were out in the open sea, he shouted
to the men : 'Tull away, pull vrith all your might ! The sea
is smiling at a squall, the witch ! I can feel the swell by the
way the rudder works, and the storm in my wounds."
The nautical phrases, unintelligible to ears unused to the
sound of the sea, seemed to put fresh energy into the oars;
they kept time together, the rhythm of the movement
was still even and steady, but quite unlike the previous
manner of rowing; it was as if a cantering horse
had broken into a gallop. The gay company seated
in the stern amused themselves by watching the bravmy arms.
CHRIST IN FLANDERS 277
the tanned faces, and sparkling eyes of the rowers, the play
of the tense muscles, the physical and mental forces that were
being exerted to bring them for a trifling toll across the
channel. So far from pitying the rowers' distress, they
pointed out the men's faces to each other, and laughed at
the grotesque expressions on the faces of the crew who were
straining every muscle; but in the fore part of the boat the
soldier, the peasant, and the old beggar woman watched the
sailors with the sympathy naturally felt by toilers who live by
the sweat of their brow and know the rough struggle, the
strenuous excitement of effort. These folk, moreover, whose
lives were spent in the open air, had all seen the warnings
of danger in the sky, and their faces were grave. The young
mother rocked her child, singing an old hymn of the Church
for a lullaby.
"If we ever get there at all," the soldier remarked to the
peasant, "it will be because the Almighty is bent on keeping
us alive.''
"Ah ! He is the Master," said the old woman, "but I think
it will be His good pleasure to take us to Himself. Just look
at that light down there . . ." and she nodded her head as
she spoke towards the sunset.
Streaks of fiery red glared from behind the masses of
crimson-flushed brown cloud that seemed about to unloose a
furious gale. There was a smothered m'armur of the sea,
a moaning sound that seemed to come from the depths, a low
warning growl, such as a dog gives when he only means mis-
chief as yet. After all, Ostend was not far away. Perhaps
painting, like poetry, could not prolong the existence of the
picture presented by sea and sky at that moment beyond the
time of its actual duration. Art demands vehement contrasts,
wherefore artists usually seek out Nature's most striking
effects, doubtless because they despair of rendering the great
and glorious charm of her daily moods ; yet the human soul
is often stirred as deeply by her calm as by her emotion, and
by silence as by storm.
For a moment no one spoke on b-^"^'^ tbp. boat. Every one
VOL. 1 — 23
278 CHRIST IN FLANDERS
watched that sea and sky, either with some preseHtimetit of
danger, or because they felt the influence of the religious
melancholy that takes possession of nearly all of us at the
close of the day, the hour of prayer, when all nature is hushed
save for the voices of the bells. The sea gleamed pale and
wan, but its hues changed, and the surface took all the colors
of steel. The sky was almost overspread with livid gray, but
down in the west there were long narrow bars like streaks
of blood ; while lines of bright light in the eastern sky, sharp
and clean as if drawn by the tip of a brush, were separated by
folds of cloud, like the wrinkles on an old man's brow. The
whole scene made a background of ashen grays and ha!f-tints,
in strong contrast to the bale-fires of the sunset. If written
language might borrow of spoken language some of the bold
figures of speech invented by the people, it might be said
with the soldier that "the weather had been routed," or, as
the peasant would say, "the sky glowered like an executioner."
Suddenly a wind arose from the quarter of the sunset, and the
skipper, who never took his eyes off the sea, saw the swell on
the horizon line, and cried :
"Stop rowing !"
The sailors stopped immediately, and let their oars lie on
the water.
"The skipper is right," said Thomas coolly. A great wave
caught up the boat, carried it high on its crest, only to plunge
it, as it were, into the trough of the sea that seemed to yawn
for them. At this mighty upheaval, this sudden outbreak of
the wrath of the sea, the company in the stern turned pale,
and sent up a terrible cry.
"We are lost !"
"Oh, not yet !" said the skipper calmly.
As he spoke, the clouds immediately above their heads were
torn asunder by the vehemence of the wind. The gray mass
was rent and scattered east and west with ominous speed, a
dim uncertain light from the rift in the sky fell full upon the
boat, and the travelers beheld each other's faces. All of them,
the noble and the wealthy, the sailors and the poor passengers
CHRIST IN FLANDERS i579
alike, were amazed for a moment by the appearance of the last
comer. His golden hair, parted upon his calm, serene fore-
head, fell in thick curls about his shoulders; and his face,
sublime in its sweetness and radiant with divine love, stood
out against the surrounding gloom. He had no contempt
for death ; he knew that he should not die. But If at the first
the company in the stern forgot for a moment the implacable
fury of the storm that threatened their lives, selfishnc'^s and
their habits of life soon prevailed again.
"How lucky that stupid burgomaster is, not to see the risks
we are all running ! He is just like a dog, he will die with-
out a struggle," said the doctor.
He had scarcely pronounced this highly judicious dictum
when the storm unloosed all its legions. The wind blew from
every quarter of the heavens, the boat span round like a top,
and the sea broke in.
"Oh ! my poor child ! My poor child ! . . . Who will
save my baby ?" the mother cried in a heart-rending voice.
"You yourself will save it," the stranger said.
The thrilling tones of that voice went to the young mother's
heart and brought hope with them ; she heard the gracious
words through all the whistling of the wind and the shrieks
of the passengers.
"Holy Virgin of Good Help, who art at Antwerp, I promise
thee a thousand pounds of wax and a statue, if thou wilt res-
cue me from this !" cried the burgher, kneeling upon his bags
of gold.
"The Virgin is no more at Antwerp than she is here," was
the doctor's comment on this appeal.
"She is in heaven," said a voice that seemed to come from
the sea.
"Who said that?"
" 'Tis the devil !" exclaimed the servant. "He is scoffing
at the Virgin of Antwerp."
"Let us have no more of your Holy Virgin at present," the
pkipper cried to the passengers. "Put your hands to the scoops
and bail the water out of the ' oat. — And the rest of you,"
280 CHRIST IN FLANDERS
he went on, addressing the sailors, "pull with all your might ?
Now is the time; in the name of the devil who is leaving you
in this world, be your own Providence ! Every one knows that
the channel is fearfully dangerous; I have been to and fro
across it these thirty years. xA.m I facing a storm for the first
time to-night ?" ^
He stood at the helm, and looked, as before, at his boat and
at the sea and sky in turn.
"The skipper always laughs at everything," muttered
Thomas.
"Will God leave us to perish along with those wretched
creatures ?" asked the haughty damsel of the handsome cava-
lier.
"No, no, noble maiden. . . . Listen !" and he caught
her by the waist and said in her ear, "I can swim ; say nothing
about it ! I will hold you by your fair hair and bring you
safely to the shore ; but I can onl}^ save you."
The girl looked at her aged mother. The lady was on her
knees entreating absolution of the Bishop, who did not heed
her. In the beautiful eyes the knight read a vague feeling of
filial piety, and spoke in a smothered voice.
"Submit yourself to the will of God. If it His pleasure to
take your mother to Himself, it will doubtless be for her hap-
piness— in the other world," he added, and his voice dropped
still lower. "And for ours in this," he thought within him-
self.
The Dame of Rupelmonde was lady of seven fiefs beside
the barony of Gavres.
The girl felt the longing for life in her heart, and for love
that spoke through the handsome adventurer, a young mis-
creant who haunted churches in search of a prize, an heiress
to marry, or ready money. The Bishop bestowed his benison
on the waves, and bade them be calm ; it was all that he could
do. He thought of his concubine, and of the delicate feast
with which she would welcome him ; perhaps at that very
moment she was bathing, perfuming herself, robing herself
in velvet, fastening her ncckh ce and her Jeweled clasps; and
CHRIST IN FLANDERS 281
the perverse Bishop, so far from thinking of the power of Holy
Church, of his duty to comfort Christians and exhort them
to trust in God, mingled worldly regrets and lover's sighs
with the holy words of the breviary. By the dim light that
shone on the pale faces of the company,' it was possible to see
their differing expressions as the boat was lifted high in air
by a wave, to be cast back into the dark depths; the shallop
quivered like a fragile leaf, the plaything of the north wind
in the autumn; the hull creaked, it seemed ready to go to
pieces. Fearful shrieks went up, followed by an awful
silence.
There was a strange difference between the behavior of the
folk in the bows and that of the rich or great people at the
other end of the boat. The young mother clasped her infant
tightly to her breast every time that a great wave threatened
to engulf the fragile vessel ; but she clung to the hope that the
stranger's words had set in her heart. Each time that her
eyes turned to his face she drew fresh faith at the sight, the
strong faith of a helpless woman, a mother's faith. She lived
by that divine promise, the loving words from his lips; the
simple creature waited trustingly for them to be fulfilled, and
scarcely feared the danger any longer.
The soldier, holding fast to the vessel's side, never took
his eyes off the strange visitor. He copied on his own rough
and swarthy features the imperturbability of the other's face,
applying to this task the whole strength of a will and intel-
ligence but little corrupted in the course of a life of mechan-
ical and passive obedience. So emulous was he of a calm and
tranquil courage greater than his own, that at last, perhaps
unconsciously, something of that mysterious nature passed
into his own soul. His admiration became an instinctive zeal
for this man, a boundless love for and belief in him, such a
love as soldiers feel for their leader when he has the power
of swaying other men, when the halo of victories surrounds
him, and the magical" fascination of genius is felt in all that
he does. The poor outcast was murmuring to herself :
"Ahl miserable wretch that I am! Have I not suffered
282 CHRIST IN FLANDERS
enough to expiate the sins of my youth ? Ah ! wretched
woman, why did you leave the gay life of a frivolous French-
woman? why did you devour the goods of God with church-
men, the substance of the poor with extortioners and fleecers
of the poor? Oh! I have sinned indeed! — Oh my God! my
God! let me finish my time in hell here in this world of
misery."
And again she cried, "Holy Virgin, Mother of God, have
pity upon me !"
"Be comforted, mother. God is not a Lombard usurer. I
may have killed people good, and bad at random in my time,
but I am not afraid of the resurrection."
"Ah ! master lancepesade, how happy those fair ladies are,
to be so near to a bishop, a holy man I They will get absolution
for their sins," said the old woman. "Oh! if I could only
hear a priest say to me, 'Thy sins are forgiven !' I should
believe it then."
The stranger turned towards her, and the goodness in his
face made her tremble.
"Have faith," he said, "and you will be saved."
"May God reward you, good sir," she answered. "If what
you say is true, I will go on pilgrimage barefooted to Our
Lady of Loretto to pray to her for you and for me."
The two peasants, father and son, were silent, patient, and
submissive to the will of God, like folk whose wont it is to fall
in instinctively with the ways of Nature like cattle. At the
one end of the boat stood riches, pride, learning, debauchery,
and crime — human society, such as art and thought and edu-
cation and worldly interests and laws have made it; and at
this end there was terror and wailing, innumerable different
impulses all repressed by hideous doubts — at this end, and at
this only, the agony of fear.
Above all these human lives stood a strong man, the skip-
per; no doubts assailed him, the chief, the king, the fatalist
among them. He was trusting in himself rather than in
Providence, crying, "Bail away!" instead of "Holy Virgin,"
defying the storm, in fact, and struggling with the sea like a
wrestler.
CHRIST IN FLANDERS 283
But the helpless poor at the other end of the wherry I The
mother rocking on her bosom the little one who smiled at the
storm; the woman once so frivolous and gay, and now tor-
mented with bitter remorse; the old soldier covered with
scars, a mutilated life the sole reward of his unflagging loy-
alty and faithfulness. This veteran could scarcely count on
the morsel of bread soaked in tears to keep the life in him,
yet he was always ready to laugh, and went his way merrily,
happy when he could drown his glory in the depths of a po'i
of beer, or could tell tales of the wars to the children who
admired him, leaving his future with a light heart in the
hands of God. Lastly, there were the two peasants, used to
hardships and toil, labor incarnate, the labor by which the
world lives. These simple folk were indifferent to thought
and its treasures, ready to sink them all in a belief ; and their
faith was but so much the more vigorous because they had
never disputed about it nor analyzed it. Such a nature is a
virgin soil, conscience has not been tampered with, feeling is
deep and strong; repentance, trouble, love, and work have
developed, purified, concentrated, and increased their force
of will a hundred times, the will — the one thing in man that
resembles what learned doctors call the Soul.
The boat, guided by the well-nigh miraculous skill of the
steersman, came almost within sight of Ostend, when, not
fifty paces from the shore, she was suddenly struck by a
heavy sea and capsized. The stranger with the light about
his head spoke to this little world of drowning creatures :
"Those who have faith shall be saved ; let them follow me !"
He stood upright, and walked with a firm step upon the
waves. The young mother at once took her child in her arms,
and followed at his side across the sea. The soldier too
sprang up, saying in his homely fashion, "Ah ! nom d'un pipe!
I would follow you to the devil ;" and without seeming aston-
ished by it, he walked on the water. The old worn-out sinner,
believing in the omnipotence of God, also followed the
stranger.
The two peasants said to each other, "If they are walking
284 CHRIST IN FLANDERS
on the sea, why should we not do as ihey do ?" and they also
arose and hastened after the others. Thomas tried to follow,
but his faith tottered ; he sank in the sea more than once, and
rose again, but the third time he also walked on the sea.
The bold steersman clung like a remora to the wreck of his
boat. The miser had had faith, and had risen to go, but he
tried to take his gold with him, and it was his gold that
dragged him down to the bottom. The learned man had
scoffed at the charlatan and at the fools who listened to him ;
and when he heard the mysterious stranger propose to the
passengers that they should walk on the waves, he began to
laugh, and the ocean swallowed liim. The girl was dragged
down into the depths by her lover. The Bishop and the older
lady went to the bottom, heavily laden with sins, it may be,
but still more heavil}' laden with incredulity and confidence
in idols, weighted down by devotion, into which alms-deeds
and true religion entered but little.
The faithful flock, who walked with a firm step high and
dry above the surge, heard all about them the dreadful whis-
tling of the blast ; great billows broke across their path, but an
irresistible force cleft a way for them through the sea. These
believing ones saw through the spray a dim speck of light
flickering in the window of a fisherman's hut on the shore,
and each one, as he pushed on bravely towards the light,
seemed to hear the voice of his fellow cr3dng, "Courage \"
through all the roaring of the surf; yet no one had spoken a
word — so absorbed was each by his own peril. In this way
they reached the shore.
When they were all seated near the fisherman's fire, they
looked round in vain for their guide with the light about him.
The sea washed up the steersman at the base of the cliff on
which the cottage stood ; he was clinging with might and main
to the plank as a sailor can cling when death stares him in
the face; the Man went down and rescued the almost ex-
hausted seaman; tben he said, as he held out a rjuccoring
hand above the man's head :
"Good, for this once; but do not try it again; the example
would be too bad."
CHRIST IN FLANDERS 285
He took the skipper on his shoulders, and carried him to
the fisherman's door; knocked for admittance for the ex-
hausted man; then, when the door of the humble refuge
opened, the Saviour disappeared.
The Convent of Mercy was built for sailors on this spot,
where for long afterwards (so it was said) the footprints of
Jesus Christ could be seen in the sand; but in 1793, at the
time of the French invasion, the monks carried away this
precious relic, that bore witness to the Saviour's last visit to
earth.
There at the convent I found myself shortly after the Eevo-
lution of 1830. I was weary of life. If you had asked me the
reason of my despair, I should have found it almost impos-
sible to give it, so languid had grown the soul that was melted
within me. The west wind had slackened the springs of my
intelligence. A cold gray light poured down from the
heavens, and the murky clouds that passed overhead gave a
boding look to the land; all these things, together with the
immensity of the sea, said to me, "Die to-day or die to-mor-
row, still must we not die ?" And then I wandered on,
musing on the doubtful future, on my blighted hopes.
Gnawed by these gloomy thoughts, I turned mechanically into
the convent church, with the gray towers that loomed like
ghosts through the sea mists. I looked round with no kindling
of the imagination at the forest of columns, at the slender
arches set aloft upon the leafy capitals, a delicate labyrinth
of sculpture. I walked with careless eyes along the side aisles
that opened out before me like vast portals, ever turning upon
their hinges. It was scarcely possible to see, by the dim light
of the autumn day, the sculptured groinings of the roof, the
delicate and clean-cut lines of the mouldings of the graceful
pointed arches. The organ pipes were mute. There was no
sound save the noise of my own footsteps to awaken the
mournful echoes lurking in the dark chapels. I sat down at
the base of one of the four pillars that supported the tower,
near the chgir. Thence I could see the whole of the building.
28ft CHRIST IN FLANDERS
I gazed, and no ideas connected with it arose in ray mind. I
-aw without seeing the mighty maze of pillars, the great rose
windows that hung like a network suspended as by a miracle
n air above the vast doorways. I saw the doors at the end of
the side aisles, the aerial galleries, the stained glass windows
framed in archways, divided by slender columns, fretted into
flower forms and trefoil by iine filigree work of carved stone.
A dome of glass at the end of the choir sparkled as if it had
been built of precious stones set cunningly. In contrast to the
roof with its alternating spaces of v.'hiteness and color, the
two aisles lay to right and left in shadow so deep that the
faint gray outlines of their hundred shafts were scarcely
visible in the gloom. I gazed at the marvelous arcades, the
scroll-work, the garlands, the curving lines, and arabesques
interwoven and interlaced, and strangely lighted, until by
^heer dint of gazing my perceptions became confused, and I
stood upon the borderland between illusion and reality, taken
in the snare set for the eyes, and almost light-headed by
reason of the multitudinous changes of the shapes about me.
Imperceptibly a mist gathered about the carven stone-
work, and I only beheld it through a haze of fine golden dust,
like the motes that hover in the bars of sunlight slanting
through the air of a chamber. Suddenly the stone lacework
of the rose windows gteamed through this vapor that had
made all forms so shadowy. Every moulding, the edges of
every carving, the least detail of the sculpture was dipped in
silver. The sunlight kindled fires in the stained windows,
their rich colors sent out glowing sparks of light. The shafts
began to tremble, the capitals were gently shaken. A light
shudder as of delight ran through the building, the stones
were loosened in their setting, the wall-spaces swayed with
graceful caution. Here and there a ponderous pier moved as
solemnly as a dowager when she condescends to complete a
quadrille at the close of a ball. A few slender and graceful
columns, their heads adorned with wreaths of trefoil, began
to laugh and dance here and there. Some of the pointed
arches dashed at the tall lancet windows, who, like ladies of
CHRIST IN FLANDERS 287
the Middle Ages, wore the armorial bearings of their houses
emblazoned on their golden robes. The dance of the mitred
arcades with the slender windows became like a fray at a
tourney.
In another moment every stone in the church vibrated,
without leaving its place; for the organ-pipes spoke, and I
heard divine music mingling with the songs of angels, an
unearthly harmony, accompanied by the deep lotes of the
bells, that boomed as the giant towers rocked and swayed- on
their square bases. This strange Sabbath seemed to me the
most natural thing in the world ; and I, who had seen Charles
X. hurled from his throne, was no longer amazed by any-
thing. Nay, I myself was gently swaying with a see-saw
movement that influenced my nerves pleasurably in a manner
of which it is impossible to give any idea. Yet in the midst
of this heated riot, the cathedral choir felt cold as if it were
a winter day, and I became aware of a multitude of women,
robed in white, silent, and impassive, sitting there. The
sweet incense smoke that arose from the censers was grateful
to my soul. The tall wax candles flickered. The lectern,
gs;y as a chanter undone by the treachery of wine, was skip-
ping about like a peal of Chinese bells.
Then I knew that the whole cathedral was whirling round
so fast that everything appeared to be undisturbed. The
colossal Figure on the crucifix above the altar smiled upon me
with a mingled malice and benevolence that frightened me ; I
turned my eyes a-way, and marveled at the bluish vapor that
slid across the pillars, lending to them an indescribable
charm. Then some graceful women's forms began to stir on
the friezes. The cherubs who upheld the heavy columns
shook out their wings. I felt myself uplifted by some divine
power that steeped me in infinite joy, in a sweet and languid
rapture. I would have given my life, I think, to have pro-
longed these phantasmagoria for a little, but suddenly a
shrill voice clamored in my ears:
"Awake and follow me !"
A withered woman took my hand in hers : its icy coldness
288 CHKIST IN FLANDERS
crept through every nerve. The bones of her face showe(5
plainly through the sallow, almost olive-tinted wrinkles of
the skin. The shrunken, ice-cold old woman wore a black
robe, which she trailed in the dust, and at her throat there
was something white, which I dared not examine. I could
scarcely see her wan and colorless eyes, for they were fixed
in a stare upon the heavens. She drew me after her alon.u'
the aisles, leaving a trace of her presence in the ashes that
she shook from her dress. Her bones rattled as she walked,
like the bones of a skeleton ; and as we went I heard behind
me the tinkling of a little bell, a thin, sharp sound that rang
through my head like the notes of a harmonica.
"Suffer !" she cried, "suffer ! So it must be !"
We came out of the church; we went through the dirtiest
streets of the to-wn, till we came at last to a dingy dwelling,
and she bade me enter in. She dragged me with her, calling
to me in a harsh, tuneless voice like a cracked bell :
"Defend me ! defend me !"
Together we went up a winding staircase. She knocked
at a door in the darkness, and a mute, like some familiar of
the Inquisition, opened to her. In another moment we
stood in a room hung with ancient, ragged tapestry, amid
piles of old linen, crumpled muslin, and gilded brass.
"Behold the wealth that shall endure for ever !" said she.
I shuddered with horror; for just then, by the light of a
tall torch and two altar candles, I saw distinctly that this
woman was fresh from the graveyard. She had no hair. I
turned to fly. She raised her fieshless arm and encircled
me with a band of iron set with spikes, and as she raised it
a cry went up all about us, the cry of millions of voices —
the shouting of the dead !
"It is my purpose to make thee happy for ever," she said.
"Thou art my son."
We were sitting before the hearth, the ashes lay cold upmi
it; the old shrunken woman grasped my hand so tightly in
hers that T could not choose but stay. T looked fixedly at
her, striving to read the story of her life from the things
CHRIST IN FILANDERS 289
among which she was crouching. Had she indeed any life
in her? It was a mystery. Yet I saw plainly that once
she must have been young and beautiful; fair, with all the
charm of simplicity, perfect as some Greek statue, with the
brow of a vestal.
"Ah ! ah !" I cried, "now 1 know thee !' Miserable woman,
why hast thou pros! i luted thyself? In the age of thy
passions, in the time of thy prosperity, the grace and purity
of thy youth were forgotten. Forgetful of thy heroic devo-
tion, thy pure life, thy abundant faith, thou didst resign thy
primitive power and thy spiritual supremacy for fleshly
power. Thy linen vestments, thy couch of moss, the cell
in the rock, bright with rays of the Light Divine, was for-
saken; thou hast sparkled with diamonds, and shone with
the glitter of luxury and pride. Then, grown bold and in-
solent, seizing and overturning all things in thy course like
a courtesan eager for pleasure in her days of splendor, thou
hast steeped thyself in blood like some queen stupefied by
empery. Dost thou not remember to have been dull and
heavy at times, and the sudden marvelous lucidity of other
moments ; as when Art emerges from an orgy ? Oh ! poet,
painter, and singer, lover of splendid ceremonies and pro-
tector of the arts, Avas thy friendship for art perciiance a
caprice, that so thou shouldst sleep beneath magnifieent
canopies? Was there not a day when, in thy fantastic
pride, though chastity and humility were prescribed to thee,
thou hadst brought all things beneath thy feet, and set thy
foot on the necks of princes; when earthly dominion, and
wealth, and the mind of man bore thy yoke? Exulting in
the abasement of humanity, joying to witness the uttermost
lengths to which man's folly would go, thou hast bidden thy
lovers walk, on all fours, and required of them their lands
and wealth, nay, even their v/ives if they were worth aught
to thee. Thou hast devoured millions of men without a
cause ; thou hast flung away lives like sand blown by the wind
from West to East. Thou hast come down from the heights
i90 CHRIST IN FLANDERS
of thought to sit among the kings of men. Woman ! instead
of comforting men, thou hast tormented and afllicted them !
Knowing that thou couldst ask and have, thou hast demanded
— blood ! A little flour surely should have contented thee,
accustomed as thou hadst been to live on bread and to
mingle water with thv wine. Unlike all others in all things,
formerly thou wouldst bid they lovers fast, and they obeyed.
Why should thy fancies have led thee to require things im-
possible? Why, like a courtesan spoiled by her lovers, hast
thou doted on follies, and left those undeceived who sought
to explain and justify all thy errors ? Then came the days of
thy later passions, terrible like the love of a woman of forty
years, with a fierce cry thou hast sought to clasp the whole
universe in one last embrace — and thy universe recoiled from
thee !
"Then old men succeeded to thy young lovers ; decrepitude
came to thy feet and made thee hideous. Yet, even then,
men with the eagle power of vision said to thee in a glance,
'Thou shalt perish ingloriousl}-, because thou hast fallen away,
because thou hast broken the vows of thy maidenhood. The
angel with peace written on her forehead, who should have
shod light and joy along her path, has been a Messalina, de-
lighting in the circus, in debauchery, and abuse of power.
The days of thy virginity cannot return; henceforward thou
shalt be subject to a master. Thy hour has come ; the hand
of death is upon thee. Thy heirs believe that thou art rich;
they will kill thee and find nothing. Yet try at least to fling
away this raiment no longer in fashion; be once more as in
the days of old ! — Nay, thou art dead, and by thy own deed !'
"Is not this thy story?" so I ended. "Decrepit, tooth-
less, sliivering crone, now forgotten, going thy ways without
so much as a glance from passers-by! Why art thou still
alive? What doest thou in that beggar's garb, uncomely and
desired of none ? Where are thy riches ? — for what were they
spent? Where are thy treasures? — what great deeds hast
thou done?"
CHRIST IN FLANDERS 891
At this demand, the shriveled woman raised her bony
form, flung off her rags, and grew tall and radiant, smiling
as she broke forth from the dark chrysalid sheath. Then like
a butterfly, this diaphanous creature emerged, fair and youth-
ful, clothed in white linen, an Indian from creation issuing
her palms. Her golden hair rippled over her shoulders, her
|eyes glowed, a bright mist clung about her, a ring of
'gold hovered above her head, she shook the flaming blade of
a sword towards the spaces of heaven.
"See and believe !" she cried.
And suddenly I saw, afar off, many thousands of cathedrals
like the one that I had just quitted; but these were covered
with pictures and with frescoes, and I heard them echo with
entrancing music. Myriads of human creatures flocked to
these great buildings, swarming about them like ants on an
ant-heap. Some were eager to rescue books from oblivion
or to copy manuscripts, other were helping the poor, but
nearly all were studying. Up above this countless multitude
rose giant statues that they had erected in their midst, and
by the gleams of a strange light from some luminary as
powerful as the sun, I read the inscriptions on the bases of
the statues — Science, History, Literature.
The light died out. Again I faced the young girl.
Gradually she slipped into the dreary sheath, into the ragged
cere-cloths, and became an aged woman again. Her familiar
brought her a little dust, and she stirred it into the ashes
of her chafing-dish, for the weather was cold and stormy;
and then he lighted for her, whose palaces had been lit with
thousands of wax-tapers, a little cresset, that she might see
to read her prayers through the hours of night.
"There is no faith left in the earth ! . . ." she said.
In such a perilous plight did I behold the fairest and the
greatest, the truest and most life-giving of all Powers.
'^ake up, sir, the doors are just about to be shut," said
a hoarse voice. I turned and beheld the beadle's ugly
282 CHRIST IN FLANDERS
countenance; the man was shaking me by the arm, and the
cathedral lay wrapped in shadows as a man is wrapped in
his cloak.
"Belief," I said to myself, "is Life ! I have just
witnessed the funeral of a monarchy, now we must defend
the church/'
Paris, Febrvmry 1881.
MELMOTH RECONCILED
To Monsieur le Gi'neral Baron de Pommereul, a token of the
friendship between our fathers, which survives in their sons.
De Balzac.
There is a special variety of human nature obtained in the
Social Kingdom by a process analogous to that of the
gardener's craft in the Vegetable Kingdom, to wit, by the
forcing-house — a species of hybrid which can be raised neither
from seed nor from slips. This product is known as the
Cashier, an anthropomorphous growth, watered by religious
doctrine, trained up in fear of the guillotine, pruned by
vice, to flourish on a third floor with an estimable wife by
his side and an uninteresting family. The number of
cashiers in Paris must always be a problem for the
physiologist. Has any one as yet been able to state correctly
the terms of the proportion sum wherein the cashier figures
as the unknown a;? Where will you find the man who shall
live with wealth, like a cat with a caged mouse? This man,
for further qualification, shall be capable of sitting boxed in
behind an iron grating for seven or eight hours a day during
seven-eighths of the year, perched upon a cane-seated chair
in a space as narrow as a lieutenant's cabin on board a man-
of-war. Such a man must be able to defy anchylosis of the
knee and thigh joints ; he must have a soul above meanness,
in order to live meanly ; must lose all relish for money by dint
of handling it. Demand this peculiar specimen of any creed,
educational system, school, or institution you please, and
select Paris, that city of fiery ordeals and branch establish-
ment of hell, as the soil in which to plant the said cashier.
So be it. Creeds, schools, institutions, and moral systems,
all human rules and regulations, great and small, will, one
VOL. 1—24 (293)
•^94 MELMOTII RECONCILED
after another, present much the same face that an intimate
friend turns upon you when you ask him to lend you a thou-
sand francs. "With a dolorous dropping of the jaw, they in-
dicate the guillotine, much as your friend aforesaid will
furnish you with the address of the money-lender, pointing
you to one of the hundred gates by which a man comes to
the last refuge of the destitute.
Yet nature has her freaks in the making of a man's mind ;
she indulges herself and makes a few honest folk now and
again, and now and then a cashier.
Wherefore, that race of corsairs whom we dignify with
the title of bankers, the gentry who take out a license for
which they pay a thousand crowns, as the privateer takes
out his letters of marque, hold these rare products of the
incubations of virtue in such esteem that they confine them
in cages in. their counting-houses, much as governments pro-
cure and maintain specimens of strange beasts at their own
charges.
If the cashier is possessed of an imagination or of a fervid
temperament; if, as will sometimes happen to the most com-
plete cashier, he loves his wife, and that wife grows tired
of her lot, has ambitions, or merely some vanity in her com-
position, the cashier is undone. Search the chronicles of
the counting-house. You will not find a single instance of a
cashier attaining a position, as it is called. They are sent to
the hulks ; they go to foreign parts ; they vegetate on a second
floor in the Rue Saint-Louis among the market gardens of
the Marais. Some day, when the cashiers of Paris come to a
sense of their real value, a cashier will be hardly obtainable
for money. Still, certain it is that there are people who are
fit for nothing but to be cashiers, just as the bent of a certain
order of mind inevitably makes for rascality. But, oh
marvel of our civilization ! Socict}'' rewards virtue with an
income of a hundred louis in old age, a dwelling on a second
floor, bread sufficient, occasional new bandana handkerchiefs,
an elderly wife and her ofTspring.
So much for virtue. But for the opposite course, a little
MELMOTH KECONCILED 5295
boldness, a faculty for keopinff on the windward side of the
'aw, as Turenne outflanked Montecuculi, and Society will
sanction the theft of millions, shower ribbons upon the thief,
cram him with honors, and smother him with consideration.
Government, moreover, works harmoniously with this pro-
foundly illogical rcasoner — Society. Government levies a
conscription on the 3''oung intelligence of the kingdom at the
age of seventeen or eighteen, a conscription of precocious
power. Great ability is prematurely exhausted by excessive
brain-work before it is sent up to be submitted to a process
of selection. Nurserymen sort and select seeds in much the
same way. To this process the Government brings profes-
sional appraisers of talent, men who can assay brains as
experts assay gold at the Mint. Five hundred such heads,
set afire with hope, are sent up annually by the most progres-
sive portion of the population ; and of these the Government
takes one-third, puts them in sacks called the flcoles, and
shakes them up together for three years. Though every one
of these young plants represents vast productive power, they
are made, as one may say, into cashiers. They receive ap-
pointments; the rank and file of engineers is made up of
them; they are employed as captains of artillery; there is
no (subaltern) grade to which they may not aspire. Finally,
when these men, the pick of the youth of the nation, fattened
on mathematics and stuffed with knowledge, have attained
the age of fifty years, they have their reward, and receive
as the price of their services the third-floor lodging, the wife
and family, and all the comforts that sweeten life for
mediocrity. If from among this race of dupes there should
escape some five or six men of genius who climb the highest
heights, is it not miraculous ?
This is an exact statement of the relations between Talent
and Probity on the one hand, and Government and Society
on the other, in an age that considers itself to be progressive.
Without this prefatory explanation a recent occurrence in
Paris would seem improbable ; but preceded by this summing
up of the situation, it will perhaps receive some thoughtful
296 MELMOTH RECONCILED
attention from minds capable of recognizing the real plague-
spots of our civilization, a civilization which since 1815 has
been moved by the spirit of gain rather than by principles of
honor.
About five o'clock, on a dull autumn afternoon, the cashier
of one of the largest banks in Paris was still at his desk,
working by the light of a lamp that had been lit for some
time. In accordance with the use and wont of commerce,
the counting-house was in the darkest corner of the low-
ceiled and far from spacious mezzanine floor, and at the
very end of a passage lighted only by borrowed lights. The
ofhce doors along this corridor, each with its label, gave the
place the look of a bath-house. At four o'clock the stolid
porter had proclaimed, according to his orders, "The bank is
closed." And by this time the departments were deserted,
the letters despatched, the clerks had taken their leave. The
wives of the partners in the firm Avere expecting their lovers ;
the two bankers dining with their mistresses. Everything
was in order.
The place where the strong boxes had been bedded in sheet-
iron was just behind the little sanctum, where the cashier was
busy. Doubtless he was balancing his books. The open
front gave a glimpse of a safe of hammered iron, so
enormously heavy (thanks to the science of the modern in-
ventor) that burglars could not carry it away. The door only
opened at the pleasure of those who knew its password.
The letter-lock was a warden who kept its own secret and
could not be bribed ; the mysterious word was an ingenious
realization of the ''Open sesame !" in the Arahinn Nights.
But even this was as nothing. A man might discover the
password; but unless he knew the lock's final secret, the
ultima ratio of this gold-guarding dragon of mechanical
science, it discharged a blunderbuss at his head.
The door of the room, the walls of the room, the shutters
of the windows in the room, the whole place, in fact, was
lined with sheet-iron a third of an inch in thickness, oon-
MELMOTH RECONCILED 297
cealed behind the thin wooden paneling. The shutters had
been closed, the door had been shut. If ever man could feel
confident that he was absolutely alone, and that there was
no remote possibility of being watched by prying eyes, that
man was the cashier of the house of Nucingen and Company,
in the Rue Saint-Lazare.
Accordingly the deepest silence prevailed in that iron cave.
The fire had died out in the stove, but the room was full of
that tepid warmth which produces the dull heavy-headedness
and nauseous queasiness of a morning after an orgy. The
stove is a mesmerist that plays no small part in the reduction
of bank clerks and porters to a state of idiocy.
A room with a stove in it is a retort in which the power
of strong men is evaparcted, where their vitality is exhausted,
and their wills enfeebled. Government offices are part of a
great scheme for the manufacture of the mediocrity necessary
for the maintenance of a Feudal System on a pecuniary basis
— and money is the foundation of the Social Contract. (See
Les Employes.) The mephitie vapors in the atmosphere of
a croAvded room contribute in no small degree to bring about a
gradual deterioration of intelligences, the brain that gives
off the largest quantity of nitrogen asphyxiates the others, in
the long run.
The cashier was a man of five-and-forty or there-
abouts. As he sat at the table, the light from a moderator
lamp shining full on his bald head and glistening fringe of
iron-gray hair that surrounded it — this baldness and the
round outlines of his face made his head look very like a
ball. His complexion was brick-red, a few wrinkles had
gathered about his eyes, but he had the smooth, plump hands
of a stout man. His blue cloth coat, a little rubbed and
worn, and the creases and shininess of his trousers, traces
of hard wear that the clothes-brush fails to remove, would
impress a superficial observer with the idea that here was a
thrifty and upright human being, sufficient of the philosopher
or of the aristocrat to wear shabby clothes. But, unluckily,
it is easy to find penny-wise people who will prove weak>
wasteful, or inccmpetent in .the canital things of life.
298 MfiLMOTH RECONCILED
The cashier wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his
button-hole, for he liad been a major of dragoons in the
time of the Emperor. M. de Nucingen, who had been a con-
tractor before lie became a banker, had had reason in those
days to know the honorable disposition of his cashier, who
then occupied a high position. Reverses of fortune had be-
fallen the major, and the banker out of regard for him paid
him five hundred francs a month. The soldier had become a
cashier in the year 1813, after his recovery from a wound re-
ceived at litudzianka during the Eetreat from Moscow, fol-
lowed by six months of enforced idleness at Strasbourg,
whither several officers had been transported by order of the
Emperor, that they might receive skilled attention. This
particular officer, Castanier by name, retired with the
Honorary grade of colonel, and a pension of two thousand
four hundred francs.
In ten years' time the cashier had completely effaced the
soldier, and Castanier inspired the banker with such trust in
him, that he was associated in the transactions that went
on in the private office behind his little counting-house. The
baron himself had access to it b}'' means of a secret staircase.
There, matters of business were decided. It was the bolting-
room where proposals were sifted; the pri\^^ council chamber
where the reports of the money market were analyzed; cir-
cular notes issued thence ; and finally, the private ledger and
the journal which summarized the work of all the depart-
ments were kept there.
Castanier had gone himself to shut the door which opened
on to a staircase that led to the parlor occupied by the two
bankers on the first floor of their hotel. This done, he had
sat down at his desk again, and for a moment he gazed at a
little coIlGetian of letters of credit drawn on the firm of
Watschildine of London. Then he had taken up the pen and
imitated the banker's signature upon each. Nucingen he
wrote, and eyed the forged signatures critically to see which
seemed the most perfect copy.
Suddenly he looked up as if a needle had pricked him.
MELMOTH RECONCILED 299
''You are not alone !" a boding voice seemed to cry in his
'?oart ; and indeed the forger saw a man standing at the little
grated window of the counting-house, a man whose breathing
vas so noiseless that he did not seem to breathe at all.
Castanier looked, and saw that the door at the end of the
passage was wide open; the stranger must have entered by
that way.
For the first time in his life the old soldier felt a sensa-
tion of dread that made him stare open-mouthed and wide-
eyed at the man before him ; and for that matter, the appear-
ance of the apparition was sufficiently alarming even if un-
accompanied by the mysterious circumstances of so sudden
an entry. The rounded forehead, the harsh coloring of the
long oval face, indicated quite as plainly as the cut of his
clothes that the man was an Englishman, reeking of his
native isles. You had only to look at the collar of his over-
coat, at the voluminous cravat which smothered the crushed
frills of a sliirt front so white that it brought out the change-
less leaden hue of an impassive face, and the thin red line
of the lips that seemed made to suck the blood of corpses;
and you can guess at once at the black gaiters buttoned up
to the knee, and the half-puritanical costume of a wealthy
Englishman dressed for a walking excursion. The intoler-
able glitter of the stranger's eyes produced a vivid and un-
pleasant impression, which was only deepened by the rigid
outlines of his features. The dried-up, emaciated creature
seemed to carry within him some gnawing thought that con-
sumed him and could not be appeased.
He must have digested his food so rapidly that he could
doubtless eat continually without bringing any trace of color
into his face or features. A tun of Tokay vin de succession
would not have caused any faltering in that piercing glance
that read men's inmost thoughts, nor dethroned the merciless
reasoning faculty that always seemed to go to the bottom of
things. There was something of the fell and tranquil majesty
of a tiger about him.
"I have come to cash this bill of exchange, sir," he said.
300 MELMOTH tlECONCILED
Castanier felt the tones of his voice thrill through every nerve
with a violent shock similar to that given by a discharge
of electricity.
''The safe is closed," said Castanier.
*'It is open," said the Englishman, looking round the count-
ing-house. "To-morrow is Sunday, and I cannot wait. The
amount is for five hundred thousand francs. You have the
money there, and I must have it."
"But how did you come in, sir?"
The Eno;lishman smiled. That smile frightened Castanier.
No words could have replied more fully nor more
peremptorily than that scornful and imperial curl of the
stranger's lips. Castanier turned away, took up fifty packets,
each containing ten thousand francs in bank-notes, and held
them out to the stranger, receiving in exchange for them a
bill accepted by the Baron de Nucingen. A sort of convul-
sive tremor ran through him as he saw a red gleam in the
stranger's eyes when they fell on the forged signature on the
letter of credit.
"It ... it wants your signature . . ." stammered
Castanier, handing back the bill.
"Hand me your pen," answered the Englishman.
Castanier handed him the pen with which he had just
committed forgery. The stranger wrote John Melmoth,
then ho returned the slip of paper and the pen to the cashier.
Castanier looked at the handwriting, noticing that it sloped
from right to left in the Eastern fashion, and Melmoth dis-
appeared so noiselessly that when Castanier looked up again
an exclamation broke from him, partly because the man was
no longer there, partly because he felt a strange painful sen-
sation such as our imagination might take for an effect of
poison.
The pen that Melmoth had handled sent the same sicken-
ing heat through him that an emetic produces. But it
seemed impossible to Castanier that the Englishman should
have guessed his crime. TTis inwnrrl qualms he attributed
to the palpitation of the heart that, according to received
MELMOTH KECONCILED 301
ideas, was sure to follow at once on such a "turn" as the
stranger had given him.
"The devil take it; I am very stupid. Providence is'
watching over me; for if that brute had come round to see
my gentlemen to-morrow, my goose would have been cooked !"
said Castanier, and he burned the unsuccessful attempts at
forgery in the stove.
He put the bill that he meant to take with him in an
enevlope, and helped himself to five hundred thousand francs
in French and English bank-notes from the safe, which he
locked. Then he put ever3^thing in order, lit a candle, blew
out the lamp, took up his hat and umbrella, and went out
sedately, as usual, to leave one of the two keys of the strong
room with Madame de Nucingen, in the absence of her hus-
band the Baron.
"You are in luck, M. Castanier," said the backer's wife
as he entered her room ; "we have a holiday on Monday ; you
can go into the country, or to Soizy."
"Madame, will you be so good as to tell your husband that
the bill of exchange on Watschildine, which was behind time,
has just been presented ? The five hundred thousand francs
have been paid; so I shall not come back till noon on
Tuesday."
"Good-bye, monsieur; I hope you will have a pleasant
time."
"The same to you, madame," replied the old dragoon as
he went out. He glanced as he spoke at a young man well
known in fashionable society at that time, a M. de Eastignac,
who was regarded as Madame de Nucingen's lover.
"Madame," remarked this latter, "the old boy looks to rnc
as if he meant to play you some ill turn."
"Pshaw ! impossible ; he is too stupid."
"Piquoizeau," said the cashier, walking into the porter's
room, "what made you let anvbodv come up after four
o'clock?"
"I have been smoking a pipe here in the doorway ever since
302 MELMOTH RECONCILED
four o'clock," said the man, "and nobodj- has gone
into the bank. Nobody has come out either except the gen-
tlemen "
"Are you quite sure?"
"Yes, upon my word and honor. Stay, though, at four
o'clock M. Werbrust's friend came, a young fellow from
Messrs. du Tillet & Co., in the Rue Joubert."
"All right," said Castanier, and he hurried away.
The sickening sensation of heat that he had felt when It
took back the pen returned in greater intensity. "Milli'.
diables!" thought he, as he threaded his way along the Boule-
vard de Gand, "haven't I taken proper precautions? Let
me think ! Two clear days, Sunday and Monday, then a
day of uncertainty before they begin to look for me; al-
together, three days and four nights' respite. I have a couple
of passports and two different disguises; is not that enough
to throw tTie cleverest detective off the scent? On Tuesday
morning I shall draw a million francs in London before the
slightest suspicion has been aroused. My debts I am leaving
behind for the benefit of my creditors, who will put a T'*
on the bills, and I shall live comfortably in Italy for the
rest of my days as the Conte Ferraro. I was alone with him
when he died, poor fellow, in the marsh of Zembin, and I
shall slip into his skin. . . . Mille diables! the woman
who is to follow after me might give them a clue ! Think
of an old campaigner like me infatuated enough to tie myself
to a petticoat tail ! . . . Why take her ? I must leave
her behind. Yes, I could make up my mind to it; but — I
know myself — I should be ass enough to go back to her. Still,
nobody knows Aquilina. Shall I take her or leave her ?"
"You will not take her!" cried a voice that filled Castanier
with sickening dread. He turned sharply, and saw the
Englishman.
"The devil is in it !" cried the cashier aloud.
Melmoth had passed his victim by this time; and if
Caistanier's first impulse had been to fasten a quarrel on a
♦Protested
MELMOTH RECONCILED 30S
man who road his own thoughts, he \\ as so much torn up by
opposing feelings that the immediate result was a temporary
paralysis. When he resumed his walk he fell once more
into that fever of irresolution which besets those who are
so carried away by passion that they are ready to commit a
crime, but have not sufficient strength of character to keep
it to themselves without suffering terribly in the process.
So, although Castanicr had made up his mind to reap the
fruits of a crime which was already half executed, he
hesitated to carry out his designs. For him, as for many
men of mixed character in whom weakness and strength are
equally blended, the least trifling consideration determinas
whether they shall continue to lead blameless lives or become
actively criminal. In the vast masses of men enrolled in
Napoleon's armies there were many who, like Castanier,
possessed the purely physical courage demanded on the battle-
field, yet lacked the moral courage which makes a man as
great in crime as he could have been in virtue.
The letter of credit was drafted in such terms that im-
mediately on his arrival he might draw twenty-five thousand
pounds on the firm of Watschildine, the London cor-
respondents of the house of Nucingen. The London house
had been already advised of the draft about to be made upon
them ; he had written to them himself. He had instructed an
agent (chosen at random) to take his passage in a vessel
which was to leave Portsmouth with a wealthy English family
on board, who were going to Italy, and the passage-money
had been paid in the name of the Conte Ferraro. The
smallest details of the scheme had been thought out. He had
arranged matters so as to divert the search that would be
made for him into Belgium and Switzerland, while he him-
self was at sea in the English vessel. Then, by the time that
Nucingen might flatter himself that he was on the track of
his late cashier, the said cashier, a.s the Conte Ferraro,
hoped to be safe in Naples. He had determined to
disfigure his face in order to disguise himself the more
completely, aiid by means of an acid to imitate the
304 MELMOTH RECONCILED
scars of smallpox. Yet, in spite of all these pre-
cautions, which surely seemed as if they must secure him
complete immunity, his conscience tormented him; he was
afraid. The even and peaceful life that he had led for so
long had modified the morality of the camp. His life was
stainless as yet ; he could not sully it without a pang. So for
the last time he abandoned himself to all the influences of the
better self that strenuously resisted.
"Pshaw !" he said at last, at the corner of the Boulevard
and the Eue Montmartre, "I will take a cab after the play
this evening and go out to Versailles. A post-chaise will be
ready for me at my old quartermaster's place. He would
keep my secret even if a dozen men were standing ready to
shoot him down. The chances are all in my favor, so far as
I see; so I shall take my little Naqui with me, and I
will go."
"You will not go !" exclaimed the Englishman, and the
strange tones of his voice drove all the cashier's blood back to
his heart.
Melmoth stepped into a tilbury which was waiting for him,
and was whirled away so quickly, that when Castanier looked
up he saw his foe some hundred paces away from him, and
•before it even crossed his mind to cut oif the man's retreat
the tilbury was far on its way up the Boulevard Montmartre.
"Well, upon my word, there is something supernatural
about this !" said he to himself. "If I were fool enough
to believe in God, I should think that He had set Saint
Michael on my tracks. Suppose that the devil and the police
should let me go on as I please, so as to nab me in the nick
of time? Did any one ever see the like! But there, this
is folly . . ."
Castanier went along the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre,
slackening his pace as he neared the Eue Richer. There on
the second floor of a block of buildings which looked out
upon some gardens, lived the unconscious cause of Castanier's
crime — a young woman known in the quarter as Mme. de la
Garde. A concise history of certain events in the cashier's
MELMOTH RECONCILED 305
past life musJ, he given in order to explain these facts, and
to give a complete presentment of the crisis when
he yielded to temptation.
Mme. de la Garde said that she was a Piedmontese. No
one, not even Castanier, knew her real name. She was one of
those young girls, who are driven by dire misery, by inability
to earn a living, or by fear of starvation, to have recourse to a
trade which most of them loathe, many regard with indiffer-
ence, and some few follow in obedience to the laws of their
constitution. But on the brink of the gulf of prostitution
in Paris, the young girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure as the
Madonna, had met with Castanier. The old dragoon was too
rough and homely to make his way in society, and he was
tired of tramping the boulevard at night and of the kind of
conquests made there by gold. For some time past he had
desired to bring a certain regularity into an irregular life.
He was. struck by the beauty of the poor child who had drifted
by chance into his arms, and his determination to rescue her
from the life of the streets was half benevolent, half selfish,
as some of the thoughts of the best of men are apt to be.
Social conditions mingle elements of evil witJh the promptings
of natural goodness of heart, and the mixture of motives un-
derlying a man's intentions should be leniently judged.
Castanier had just cleverness enough to be very shrewd where
his own interests were concerned. So he concluded to be a
philanthropist on either count, and at first made her his
mistress.
"Hey ! Iisy !" he said to himself, in his soldierly fashion.
"I am an old wolf, and a sheep shall not make a fool of
me. Castanier, old man, before you set up housekeeping,
reconnoitre the girl's character for a bit, and see if she is a
steady sort."
This irregular union gave the Piedmontese a status the
most nearly approaching respectability among those which
the world declines to recognize. During the first year she
took the nom de guerre of Aquilina, one of the characters in
Venice Preserved which she had chanced to read. Sh9
306 MELMOTH RECONCILED
fancied that she resembled the courtesan in face and general
appearance, and in a certain precocity of heart and brain
of which she was conscious. When Castanier found that her
life was as well regulated and virtuous as was possible for a
social outlaw, he manifested a desire that they should live
as husband and wife. So she took the name of Mme. de la
Garde, in order to approach, as closely as Parisian usages
permit, the conditions of a real marriage. As a matter of
fact, many of these unfortunate girls have one fixed idea,
to be looked upon as respectable middle-class women, who
lead humdrum lives of faithfulness to their husbands; wo-
men who would make excellent mothers, keepers of household
accounts, and menders of household linen. This longing
springs from a sentiment so laudable, that society should
take it into consideration. But society, incorrigible as ever,
will assuredly persist in regarding the married woman as a
corvette duly authorized by her flag and papers to g© on her
own course, while the woman who is a wife in all but name
is a pirate and an outlaw for lack of a document. A day
came when Mme. de la Garde would fain have signed herself
"Mme. Castanier." The cashier was put out by this.
"So 3'ou do not love me well enough to marry me?" she
said.
Castanier did not answer ; he was absorbed by his thoughts.
The poor girl resigned herself to her fate. The ex-dragoon
was in despair. Naqui's heart softened towards him at the
sight of his trouble; she tried to soothe him, but what could
she do when she did not know what ailed him ? When Naqui
made up her mind to know the secret, although she never
asked him a question, the cashier dolefully confessed to the
existence of a Mme. Castanier. Tbis lawful wife, a thousand
times accursed, was living in a humble way in Strasbourg on
a small property there ; he wrote to her twice a year, and kept
the secret of her existence so well, that no one suspected that
he was married. The reason of this reticence? If it is
familiar to many military men who may chance to be in a
Itke pi-edicainent, it is perhaps worth while to give the
story.
MELMOTH RECONCILED 307
Your genuine trooper (if it is allowable here to employ
the word which in the army signifies a man who is destined
to die as a captain) is a sort of serf, a part and parcel of
his regiment, an essentially simple creature, and Castanier
was marked out by nature as a victim to the wiles of mothers
with grown-up daughters left too long on their hands. It
was at Nancy, during one of those brief intervals of repose
when the Imperial armies were not on active service abroad,
that Castanier was so unlucky as to pay some attention to
a young lady with whom he danced at a ridotto, the provincial
name for the entertainments often given by the military to
the townsfolk, or vice versa, in garrison towns. A scheme
for inveigling the gallant captain into matrimony was im-
mediately set on foot, one of those schemes by which mothers
secure accomplices in a human heart by touching all its motive
springs, while they convert all their friends into fellow-con-
spirators. Like all people possessed by one idea, these ladies
press everything into the service of their great project, slowly
elaborating their toils, much as the ant-lion excavates its
funnel in the sand and lies in wait at the bottom for its
victim. Suppose that no one strays, after all, into that care-
fully constructed labyrinth? Suppose that the ant-lion dies
of hunger and thirst in her pit ? Such things may be, but if
any heedless creature once enters in, it never comes out. All
the wires which could be pulled to induce action on the
captain's part were tried; appeals were made to the secret
interested motives that always come into play in such cases;
they worked on Castanier's hopes and on the weaknesses and
vanity of human nature. Unluckily, he had praised the
daughter to her mother when he brought her back after a
waltz, a little chat followed, and then an invitation in the
most natural way in the world. Once introduced into the
house, the dragoon was dazzled by the hospitality of a family
who appeared to conceal their real wealth beneath a
show of careful economy. He was skilfully flattered on all
sides, and every one extolled for his benefit the various
treasui^s there displayed. A neatly timed dinner, served
308 MELMOTH r.ECONOlLED
on plate lent by an uncle, the attention shown to him b*
the onl}' daughter of the house, the gossip of the town, a well-
to-do sub-lieutenant who seemed likely to cut the ground from
under his feet — all the innumerable snares, in short, of the
provincial ant-lion were set for him, and to such good
purpose, that Castanier said five years later, "To this day
I do not know how it came about !"
The dragoon received tifteen thousand francs with the lady,
who, after two years of marriage, became the ugliest and con-
sequently the most peevish woman on earth. Luckily they
had no children. The fair complexion (maintained by a
Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color in her face, which
spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread with
blotches and pimples; her figure, which had seemed so
straight, grew crooked, the angel became a suspicious and
shrewish creature who drove Castanier frantic. Then the
fortune took to itself wings. At length the dragoon, no
longer recognizing the woman whom he had wedded, left her
to live on a little property at Strasbourg, until the time when
it should please God to remove her to adorn Paradise. She
was one of those virtuous women who, for want of other
occupation, would weary the life out of an angel with com-
plainings, who pray till (if their prayers are heard in heaven)
they must exhaust the patience of the Almighty, and say
everything that is bad of their husbands in dovelike murmurs
over a game of boston with their neighbors. When Aquilina
learned all these troubles she clung still more affectionately
to Castanier, and made him so happy, varying with woman's
ingenuity the pleasures with which she filled his life, that
all unwittingly she was the cause of the cashier's downfall.
Like many women who seem by nature destined to sound
all the depths of love, Mme. de la Garde was disinterested.
She asked neither for gold nor for jewelry, gave no thought
to the future, lived entirely for the present and for the
pleasures of the present. She accepted expensive ornaments
and dresses, the carriage so eagerly coveted by women of her
class, as one harmony the more in the picture of life. There
MBLMOTH RECONCILED 309
was absolutely no vanity in her desire not to appear at a better
advantage but to look the fairer, and, moreover, no woman
could live without luxuries more cheerfully. When a man of
generous nature (and military men are mostly of this stamp)
meets with such a woman, he feels a sort of exasperation at
finding himself her debtor in generosity. He feels that he
could stop a mail coach to obtain money for her if he has
not sufficient for her whims. He will commit a crime if so
he may be great and noble in the eyes of some woman or of
his special public; such is the nature of the man. Such a
lover is like a gambler who would be dishonored in his own
eyes if he did not repay the sum he borrowed from a waiter in
a gaming-house; but will shrink from no crime, will leave
his wife and children without a penny, and rob and murder,
if so he may come to the gaming-table with a full purse, and
his honor remain untarnished among the frequenters of that
fatal abode. So it was with Castanier.
He had begun by installing Aquilina in a modest fourth-
floor dwelling, the furniture being of the simplest kind.
But when he saw the girl's beauty and great qualities,
when he had known inexpressible and unlooked-for happiness
with her, he began to dote upon her; and longed to adorn
his idol. Then Aquilina's toilette was so comically out of
keeping with her poor abode, that for both their sakes it was
clearly incumbent on him to move. The change swallowed
up almost all Castanier's savings, for he furnished his
domestic paradise with all the prodigality that is lavished on a
kept mistress. A pretty woman must have everything pretty
about her; the unity of charm in the woman and her sur-
roundings isingles her out from among her sex. This senti-
ment of homogeneity indeed, though it has frequently escaped
the attention of observers, is instinctive in human nature ;
and the same prompting leads elderly spinsters to surround
themselves with dreary relics of the past. But the lovely
Piedmontese must have the newest and latest fashions, and
all that was daintiest and prettiest in stuffs for hangings,
in silks or jewelry, in fine china and other brittle and fragile
VOL. 1—25
510 MELMOTH RECONCILED
wares. She asked for nothing ; hut when she was called upon
to make a choice, when Castanier asked her, "Which do you
like?" she would answer, "Why, this is the nicest!" Love
never counts the cost, and Castanier therefore always took
the "nicest."
When once the standard had been set up, there was nothing
for it but everything in the household must be in conformity,
from the linen, plate, and crystal through a thousand and one
items of expenditure down to the pots and pans in the kitchen.
Castanier had meant to "do things simply," as the saying
goes, but he gradually found himself more and more in
debt. One expense entailed another. The clock called for
candle sconces. Fires must be lighted in the ornamental
grates, but the curtains and hangings were too fresh and
delicate to be soiled by smuts, so they must be replaced by
patent and elaborate fireplaces, warranted to give out no
smoke, recent inventions of the people who are clever at
drawing up a prospectus. Then Aquilina found it so nice to
run about barefooted on the carpet in her room, that Castanier
must have soft carpets laid everywhere for the pleasure of
playing with Kaqui. A bathroom, too, was built for her,
everything to the end that she might be more comfortable.
Shopkeepers, workmen, and manufacturers in Paris have
a mysterious knack of enlarging a hole in a man's purse.
They cannot give the price of anything upon inquiry; and
as the paroxysm of longing cannot abide delay, orders are
given by the feeble light of an approximate estimate of
cost. The same people never send in the bills at once, but
ply the purchaser with furniture till his head spins. Every-
thing is so pretty, so charming ; and every one is satisfied.
A few months later the obliging furniture dealers are
metamorpbosed, and reappear in the shape of alarming totals
on invoices that fill the soul with their horrid clamor; they
are in urgent want of the money; they are, as you may say,
on the brink of bankruptcy, their tears flow, it is heart-
rending to hear them! And then the gulf yawns, and
gives up serried columns of figures marching four deep,
MELMOTH RECONCILED dll
when as a matter of fact they should have issued innocently
three by three.
Before Castanier had any idea of how much he had spent,
he had arranged for Aquilina to have a carriage from a livery
stable when she went out, instead of a cab. Castanier was a
gourmand; he engaged an excellent cook; and Aquilina, to
please him, had herself made the purchases of early fruit and
vegetables, rare delicacies, and exquisite wines. But, as
Aquilina had nothing of her own, these gifts of hers, so
precious by reason of the thought and tact and graciousness
that prompted them, were no less a drain upon Castanier's
purse; he did not like his Naqui to be without money, and
Naqui could not keep money in her pocket. So the table
was a heavy item of expenditure for a man with Castanier's in-
come. The ex-dragoon was compelled to resort to various
shifts for obtaining money, for he could not bring himself
to renounce this delightful life. He loved the woman too
well to cross the freaks of the mistress. He was one of those
men who, through self-love or through weakness of character,
can refuse nothing to a woman ; false shame overpowers them,
and they rather face ruin than make the admissions : '^I can-
not " "My means will not permit " "I cannot
afford ''
When, therefore, Castanier saw that if he meant to emerge
from the abyss of debt into which he had plunged, he must
part with Aquilina and live upon bread and water, he was
so unable to do without her or to change his habits of life,
that daily he put off his plans of reform until the morrow.
The debts were pressing, and he began by borrowing money.
His position and previous character inspired confidence, and
of this he took advantage to devise a system of borrowing
money as he required it. Then, as the total amount of
debt rapidly increased, he had recourse to those commercial
inventions known as accommodation hills. This form of bill
does not represent goods or other value received, and the first
endorser pays the amount named for the obliging person
who accepts it. This species of ^^raud is tolerated because it
S12 MELMOTH RECONCILED
it impossible to detect it, and, moreover, it is an imaginary
fraud which only becomes real if payment is ultimately re-
fused.
When at length it was evidently impossible to borrow any
longer, whether because the amount of the debt was now
so greatly increased, or because Castanier was unable to pay
the large amount of interest on the aforesaid sums of money,
the cashier saw bankruptcy before him. On making this
discovery, he decided for a fraudulent bankruptcy rather than
an ordinary failure, and preferred a crime to a misdemeanor.
He determined, after the fashion of the celebrated cashier of
the Eoyal Treasury, to abuse the trust deservedly won, and
to increase the number of his creditors by making a final
loan of the sum sufficient to keep him in comfort in a foreign
country for the rest of his days. All this, as has been seen,
he had prepared to do.
Aquilina knew nothing of the irksome cares of this life;
she enjoyed her existence, as many a woman does, making
no inquiry as to where the money came from, even as sundry
other folk will eat their buttered rolls untroubled by any rest-
less spirit of curiosity as to the culture and growth of wheat ;
but as the labor and miscalculations of agriculture lie on
the other side of the baker's oven, so beneath the unap-
preciated luxury of many a Parisian household lie intolerable
anxieties and exorbitant toil.
While Castanier was enduring the torture of the strain,
and his thoughts were full of the deed that should change his
whole life, Aquilina was lying luxuriously back in a great
armchair by the fireside, beguiling the time by chatting with
her waiting-maid. As frequently happens in such cases
the maid had become the mistress' confidante, Jenny
having first assured herself that her mistress' ascendency over
Castanier was complete.
"What are we to do this evening? Leon seems de-
termined to come," IMmo. de la Garde was saying, as she read
a passionate epistle indited upon a faint gray notepaper.
"Here is the master !" said Jenny.
MELMOTH RECONCILED 313
Castanier came in. Aquilina, nowise disconcerted,
crumpled up the letter, took it with the tongs, and held it in
the flames.
"So that is what you do with your love-letters, it is ?" asked
Castanier.
"Oh goodness, yes," said Aquilina; "is it not the best way
of keeping them safe? Besides, fire should go to the fire,
as water makes for the river."
"You are talking as if it were a real love-letter,
Naqui "
"Well, am I not handsome enough to receive them?" she
said, holding up her forehead for a kiss. There was a care-
lessness in her manner that would have told any man less
blind than Castanier that it was only a piece of conjugal duty,
as it were, to give this joy to the cashier; but use and wont
had brought Castanier to the point where clear-sightedness
is no longer possible for love.
"I have taken a box at the Gymnase this evening," he said ;
"let us have dinner early, and then we need not dine in a
hurry."
"Go and take Jenny. I am tired of plays. I do not know
what is the matter with me this evening ; I would rather stay
here by the fire."
"Come, all the same though, Naqui; I shall not be here
to bore you much longer. Yes, Quiqui, I am going to start
to-night, and it will be some time before I come back again.
I am leaving everything in your charge. Will you keep your
heart for me too ?"
"Neither my heart nor anything else," she said; "but
when you come back again, Naqui will still be Naqui for
you."
"Well, this is frankness. So you would not follow me ?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Eh ! why, how can I leave the lover who writes me such
sweet little notes?" she asked, pointing to the blackened scrap
of paper with a mocking smile.
314 MELMOTH RECONCILED
"Is there an}^ truth in it?" asked Castanier. "Have you
really a lover?"
"Eeally !" cried Aquilina ; "and have you never given it
a serious thought, dear ? To begin with, you are fifty years
old. Then you have just the sort of face to put on a fruit
stall; if the woman tried to sell you for a pumpkin, no one
would contradict her. You puff and blow like a seal when
you come upstairs ; your paunch rises and falls like a diamond
on a woman's forehead! It is pretty plain that you served
in the dragoons; you are a very ugly-looking old man.
Fiddle-de-dee. If you have any mind to keep my respect, I
recommend you not to add imbecility to these qualities by
imagining that such a girl as I am will be content with your
asthmatic love, and not look for youth and good looks and
pleasure by way of a variety "
"Aquilina ! you are laughing, of course ?"
"Oh, very well; and are you not laughing too? Do you
take me for a fool, telling me that you are going away? *I
am going to start to-night !' " she said, mimicking his tones.
"Stuff and nonsense! Would you talk like that if you were
really going from your Naqui? You would cry, like the
booby that you are !"
"After all, if I go, will you follow ?" he asked.
"Tell me first whether this journey of yours is a bad joke
on not."
"Yes, seriously, I am going."
"Well, then, seriously, I shall stay. A pleasant journey to
you, my boy! I will wait till you come back. I would
sooner take leave of life than take leave of my dear, cozv
Paris "
"Will you not come to Italy, to ISTaples, and lead a pleasant
life there — a delicious, luxurious life, with this stout old
fogy of yours, who puffs and blows like a seal ?"
"No."
"Ungrateful girl !"
"Ungrateful?" she cried, rising to her feet. 'T might
leave this house this moment and take nothing out of it but
MELMOTH RECONCILED 315
myself. I shall have given you all the treasures a young
girl can give, and something that not every drop in your veins
and mine can ever give me back. If, by any means whatever,
by selling my hopes of eternity, for instance, I could recover
my past self, body as soul (for I have, perhaps, redeemed my
soul), and be pure as a lily for my lover, I would not hesitate
a moment ! What sort of devotion has rewarded mine ?
You have housed and fed me, just as you give a dog food and,
a kennel because he is a protection to the house, and he may'
take kicks when we are out of humor, and lick our hands
as soon as we are pleased to call to him. And which of us two
will have been the more generous ?"
"Oh ! dear child, do you not see that I am joking ?" re-
turned Castanier. "I am going on a short journey; I shall
not be away for very long. But come with me to the
Gymnase; I shall start just before midnight, after I have
had time to say good-bye to you."
"Poor pet ! so you are really going, are you ?" she said.
She put her arms round his neck, and drew down his head
against her bodice.
"You are smothering me !" cried Castanier, with his face
buried in Aquilina's breast. That damsel turned to say in
Jenny's ear, "Go to Leon, and tell him not to come till one
o'clock. If you do not find him, and he comes here during
the leave-taking, keep him in your room. — Well," she went
on, setting free Castanier, and giving a tweak to the tip of
his nose, "never mind, handsomest of seals that you are. I
will go to the theatre with you this evening! But all in
good time ; let us have dinner ! There is a nice little dinner
for you — ^just what you like."
*'It is very hard to part from such a woman as you !" ex-
claimed Castanier.
"Very well then, why do 3-ou go?" asked she.
"Ah ! why ? why ? If I were to begin to explain the reasons
why, I must tell you things that would prove to you that I
love 3'^ou almost to madness. Ah ! if you have sacrificed your
honor for me, I have sold mine for you; we are quits. Is
that We?"
316 MELMOTH RECONCILED
''What is all this about ?" said she. "Come, now, promise
me that if I had a lover you would still love me as a father ;
that would be love ! Come, now, promise it at once, and
give us your fist upon it."
"I should kill you," and Castanier smiled as he spoke.
They sat down to the dinner table, and went thence to the
Gymnase. When the first part of the performance was over,
it occurred to Castanier to show himself to some of his ac-
quaintances in the house, so as to turn away any suspicion of
his departure. He left Mme. de la Garde in the corner box
where she was seated, according to her modest wont, and went
to walk up and down in the lobby. He had not gone many
paces before he saw the Englishman, and with a sudden
return of the sickening sensation of heat that once before had
vibrated through him, and of the terror that he had felt al-
ready, he stood face to face with Melmoth.
"Forger !"
At the word, Castanier glanced round at the people who'
were moving about them. He fancied that he could see
astonishment and curiosity in their eyes, and wishing to be
rid of this Englishman at once, he raised his hand to strike
him — and felt his arm paralyzed by some invisible power
that sapped his strength and nailed him to the spot. He
allowed the stranger to take him by the arm, and they walked
together to the green-room like two friends.
"Who is strong enough to resist me?" said the English-
man, addressing him. "Do you not know that everything
here on earth must obey me, that it is in my power to do
everything? I read men's thoughts, I see the future, and I
know the past. I am here, and I can be elsewhere also.
Time and space and distance are notning to me. The whole
world is at my beck and call. I have the power of continual
enjoyment and of giving joy. I can see through walls, dis-
cover hidden treasures, and fill my hands with them. Palaces
arise at my nod, and my architect makes no mistakes. 1 can
make all lands break forth into blossom, heap up their gold
and precious stones, and surround myself with fair wome»
MELMOTH RECONCILED 317
and ever new faces ; everything is yielded np to my will. I
could gamble on the Stock Exchange, and my speculations
would be infallible; but a man who can find the hoards that
misers have hidden in the earth need not trouble himself
about stocks. Feel the strength of the hand that grasps you ;
poor wretch, doomed to shame ! Try to bend the arm of
iron ! try to soften the adamantine heart ! Fly from me if
you dare ! You would hear my voice in the depths of the
eaves that lie under the Seine; you might hide in the Cata-
combs, but would you not see me there? My voice could be
heard through the sound of the thunder, my eyes shine as
brightly as the sun, for I am the peer of Lucifer !"
Castanier heard the terrible words, and felt no protest nor
contradiction within himself. He walked side by side with
the Englishman, and had no power to leave him.
"You are mine; you have just committed a crime. I have
found at last the mate whom I have sought. Have you a
mind to learn your destiny ? Aha ! you came here to see a play,
and you shall see a play — ^nay, two. Come. Present me to
Mme. de la Garde as one of your best friends. Am I not
your last hope of escape?"
Castanier, followed by the stranger, returned to his box;
and in accordance with the order he had just received, he
hastened to introduce Melmoth to Mme. de la Garde.
Aquilina seemed to be not in the least surprised. The
Englishman declined to take a seat in front, and Castanier
was once more beside his mistress; the man's slightest wish
must be obeyed. The last piece was about to begin, for, at
that time, small theatres only gave three pieces. One of the
actors had made the Gymnase the fashion, and that evening
Perlet (the actor in question) was to play in a vaudeville
called the Le Comedien d'Etampes, in which he filled four
different parts.
When the curtain rose, the stranger stretched out his hand
over the crowded house. Castanier's cry of terror died
away, for the walls of his throat seemed glued together as
Melmoth pointed to the stage, and the cashier knew that the
play had been changed at the Englishman's desire.
318 MELMOTH RECONCILED
He saw the strong-room at the hank ; he saw the Baron de
Nueingen in conference with a police-officer from the Pre-
fecture, who was informing him of Castanier's conduct, ex-
plaining that the cashier had absconded with money taken
from the safe, giving the history of the forged signature.
The information was put in writing; the document signed
and duly despatched to the Public Prosecutor.
"Are we in time, do you think?" asked Nueingen.
"Yes," said the agent of police; *'he is at the Gymnase,
and has no suspicion of anything."
Castanier fidgeted on his chair, and made as if he would
leave the theatre, but Melmoth's hand lay on his shoulder,
and he was obliged to sit and watch; the hideous power of
the man produced an effect like that of nightmare, and he
could not move a ]imb. Nay, the man himself was the night-
mare; his presence weighed heavily on his victim like a
poisoned atmosphere. When the wretched cashier turned to
implore the Englishman's mercy, he met those blazing eyes
that discharged electric currents, which pierced through him
and transfixed him like darts of steel.
^'What have I done to you ?" he said, in his prostrate help-
lessness, and he breathed hard like a stag at the water's edge.
"What do you want of me?"
"Look !" cried Melmoth.
Castanier looked at the stage. The scene had been changed.
The play seemed to he over, and Castanier beheld himself
stepping from the carriage with Aquilina; but as he entered
the courtyard of the house in the Eue Richer, the scene again
was suddenly changed, and he saw his own house. Jenny was
chatting by the fire in her mistress' room with a subaltern
officer of a line regiment then stationed at Paris.
"He is going, is he?" said the sergeant, who seemed to
belong to a family in easy circumstances; "I can be happy
at my ease ! I love Aquilina too well to allow her to belong
to that old toad ! I, myself, am going to marry Mme. de la
Garde !" cried the sergeant.
'•'Old toad !" Castanier murmured piteously.
MELMOTtI RECONCILED 319
'^Here come the master and mistress ; hide yonrself ! Stay,
get in here, Monsieur Leon," said Jenny. "The master won't
stay here for very long."
Castanier watched the sergeant hide himself among
Aquilina's gowns in her dressing-room. Almost immediately
he himself appeared upon the scene, and took leave of his
mistress, who made fun of him in "asides" to Jenny, while
she uttered the sweetest and tenderest words in his ears. She
wept with one side of her face, and laughed with the other.
The audience called for an encore.
"Accursed creature !" cried Castanier from his box.
Aquilina was laughing till the tears came into her eyes.
"Goodness !" she cried, "how funny Perlet is as the English-
woman ! . . . Why don't yoii laugh? Every one else in
the house is laughing. Laugh, dear!" she said to Casta-
nier.
Melmoth burst out laughing, and the unhappy cashier
shuddered. The Englishman's laughter wrung his heart and
tortured his brain ; it was as if a surgeon had bored his skull
with a red-hot iron.
"Laughing ! are they laughing !" stammered Castanier.
He did not see the prim English lady whom Perlet was
acting with such ludicrous effect, nor hear the English-French
that had filled the house with roars of laughter; instead of all
this, he beheld himself hurrying from the Eue Richer, hailing
a cab on the Boulevard, bargaining with the man to take him
to Versailles. Then once more the scene changed. He
recognized the sorry inn at the corner of the Rue de
rOrangerie and the Rue des Recollets, which was kept by his
old quartermaster. It was two o'clock in the morning, the
most perfect stillness prevailed, no one was there to watch his
movements. The post-horses were put into the carriage (it
fame from a house in the Avenue de Paris in which an
Englishman lived, and had been ordered in the foreigner's
name to avoid raising suspicion). Castanier saw that he
had his bills and his passports, stepped into the carriage,
and set out. But at the barrier he saw two gendarmes lying
320 MELMOTH RECONCILED
in wait lor the carriage. A cry of horror hurst from him
but Melmoth gave him a glance, and again the sound died in
his throat.
"Keep your eyes on the stage, and be quiet !" said the Eng-
lishman.
In another moment Castanier saw himself flung into prison
at the Conciergerie ; and in the fifth act of the drama, en-
titled The Cashier, he saw himself, in three months^ timC;.
condemned to twenty years of penal servitude. Again a cry
broke from him. He was exposed upon the Place du
Palais-de-Justice, and the executioner branded him with a red-
hot iron. Then came the last scene of all ; among some sixty
convicts in the prison yard of the Bicetre, he was awaiting his
turn to have the irons riveted on his limbs.
"Dear me ! I cannot laugh any more \ . . ." said
Aquilina. "You are very solemn, dear boy ; what can be the
matter? The gentleman has gone."
"A word with you, Castanier," said Melmoth when the
piece was at an end, and the attendant was fastening Mme.
(le la Garde's cloak.
The corridor was crowded, and escape impossible.
"Very well, what is it?"
"No human power can hinder you from taking Aquilina
home, and going next to Versailles, there to be arrested."
"How so ?"
"Because you are in a hand that will never relax its grasp,"
returned the Englishman.
Castanier longed for the power to ntt'er some word that
should blot him out from among living men and hide hira
in the lowest depths of hell.
"Suppose that the Devil were to make a bid for your soul,
would you not give it to him now in exchange for the power
of God? One single word, and those five hundred thousand
francs shall be back in the Baron de Nucingen's safe; then
you can tear up your letter of credit, and all traces of your
crime will be obliterated. Moreover, you would have gold
in torrents. You hardly believe in anything perhaps ? Well,
MEIvMOTH RECONCILED 321
if all this comes to pass, you will believe at least in the
Devil."
"If it were only possible!" said Castanier joyfully.
"The man who can do it all gives you his word that it is
possible/' answered the Englisliman.
Melmonth, Castanier, and Mme. de la Garde wore standing
out in the Boulevard when Melmoth raised his arm. A
drizzling rain was falling, the streets were muddy, the air
was close, there was thick darkness overhead; but in a
moment, as the arm was outstretched, Paris was filled with
sunlight; it was high noon on a bright July day. The trees
were covered with leaves; a double stream of joyous holiday
makers strolled beneath them. Sellers of liquorice water
shouted their cool drinks. Splendid carriages rolled past
along the streets. A cry of terror broke from the casliier,
and at that cry rain and darkness once more settled down
upon the Boulevard.
Mme. de la Garde had stepped into the carriage. "Do be
quick, dear \" she cried ; "either come in or stay out. Really,
you are as dull as ditch-water this evening "
*^hat must I do ?" Castanier asked of Melmoth.
*^ould you like to take my place ?" inquired the English-
man.
"Yes."
''Very well, then; I will be at your house in a few
moments."
"By the by, Castanier, you are rather off your balance,"
Aquilina remarked. "There is some mischief brewing: you
were quite melancholy and thoughtful all through the play.
Do you want anything that I can give you, dear? Tell me."
"I am waiting till we are at home to know whether you
love me."
"You need not wait till then," she said, throwing her arms
round his neck. *'There !" she said, as she embraced him,
passionately to all appearance, and plied him with the coax-
ing caresses that are part of the business of such a life as
hers, like stage action for an actress.
322 MBLMOTH RECONCILED
•'^Vhere is the music ?" asked Castanier.
"What next? Only think of your hearing music nowl"
"Heavenly music!" he went on. "The sounds seem to
come from above/'
"What? You have always refused to give me a box at
the Italiens because you could not abide music, and are you
turning music-mad at this time of day? Mad — that you
are ! The music is inside your own noddle, old addle-pate !''
she went on, as she took his head in her hands and rocked
it to and fro on her shoulder. "Tell me now, old
man; isn't it the creaking of the wheels that sings in your
ears ?"
"Just listen, Naqui ! If the angels make music for God
Almighty, it must be such music as this that I am drinking
in at every pore, rather than hearing. I do not know how
to tell you about it ; it is as sweet as honey-water !"
"Why, of course, they have music in heaven, for the angels
in all the pictures have harps in their hands. He is mad,
upon my word!" she said to herself, as she saw Casta-
nier's attitude; he looked like an opium-eater in a bliss-
ful trance.
They reached the house. Castanier, absorbed by the
thought of all that he had just heard and seen, knew not
whether to believe it or no ; he was like a drunken man, and
utterly unable to thinlc connectedly. He came to himself in
Aquilina's room, whither he had been supported by the united
efforts of his mistress, the porter, and Jenny; for he had
fainted as he stepped from the carriage.
"He will be here directly ! Oh, my friends, my friends,"
he cried, and he flung himself despairingly into the depths
of a low chair beside the fire.
Jenny heard the bell as he spoke, and admitted the English-
man. She announced that "a gentleman had come who had
made an appointment with the master," when Melmoth sud-
denly appeared, and deep silence followed. He looked at the
porter — the porter went; he looked at Jenny — and Jenny
went likewise.
MELMOTH RECONCILED 823
"Madame," said Melmoth, turning to Aquilina, "with your
permission, we will conclude a piece of urgent business."
He took Castanier's hand, and Castanier rose, and the two
men went into the drawing-room. There was no light in
the room, but Melmoth's eyes lit up the thickest darkness.
The gaze of those strange eyes had left Aquilina like one
spellbound; she was helpless, unable to take any thought for
her lover; moreover, she believed him to be safe in Jenny's
room, whereas their early return had taken the waiting-
woman by surprise, and she had hidden the officer in the
dressing-room. It had all happened exactly as in the drama
that Melmoth had displayed for his victim. Presently the
house-door was slammed violently, and Castanier reappeared.
'"What ails you ?" cried the horror-struck Aquilina.
There was a change in the cashier's appearance. A strange
pallor overspread his once rubicund countenance ; it wore the
peculiarly sinister and stony look of the mysterious visitor.
The sullen glare of his eyes was intolerable, the fierce light in
them seemed to scorch. The man who had looked so good-
humored and good-natured had suddenly grown tyrannical
and proud. The courtesan thought that Castanier had
grown thinner; there was a terrible majesty in his brow; it
was as if a dragon breathed forth a malignant influence that
weighed upon the others like a close, heavy atmosphere. For
a moment Aquilina knew not what to do.
''What passed between you and that diabolical-looking man
in those few minutes?" she asked at length.
"I have sold my soul to him. I feel it; I am no longer
the same. He has taken my self, and given me his soul in
exchange."
"What?"
"You would not understand it at all. . . . Ah? He was
right," Castanier went on, "the fiend was right! I see
everything and know all things. — You have been deceiving
me!"
Aquilina turned cold with terror. Castanier lighted a
candle and went into the dressing-room. The unhappy girl
324 MELMOTH RECONCILED
followed him in dazed bewilderment, and great was her aston
ishment when Castanier drew the dresses that hung there
aside and disclosed the sergeant.
''Come out, my boy," said the cashier; and, taking Leon
by a button of Ms overcoat, he drew the officer into his
room.
The Piedmontese, haggard and desperate, had flung herself
into her easy-chair. Castanier seated himself on a sofa by the
fire, and left Aquilina's lover in a standing position.
"You have been in the army," said Leon; "I am ready to
give you satisfaction."
"You are a fool," said Castanier drily. "I have no oc-
casion to fight. I could kill you by a look if I had any mind
to do it, I will tell you what it is, youngster ; why should I
kill you? I can see a red line round your neck — ^the
guillotine is waiting for you. Yes, you will end in the
Place de Greve. You are the headsman's property ! there
is no escape for you. You belong to a vendita of the
Carbonari. You are plotting against the Government."
"You did not tell me that," cried the Piedmontese, turn-
ing to Leon.
"So you do not know that the Minister decided this morn-
ing to put down your Society ?" the cashier continued. "The
Procureur-General has a list of your names. You have
been betrayed. They are busy drawing up the indictment at
this moment."
"Then was it you who betrayed him ?" cried Aquilina, and
with a hoarse sound in her throat like the growl of a tigress
she rose to her feet ; she seemed as if she would tear Castanier
in pieces.
"You know me too well to believe it,''' Castanier retorted.
Aquilina was benumbed by his coolness.
"Then how do you know it?" she murmured.
"I did not know it until I went into the drawing-room ;
now I know it — now I see and know all things, and can do
all things."
The sergeant was overcome with amazement.
MELMOTH RECONCILED 325
'^ery well then, save him, save him, dear!" cried the girl,
flinging herself at Castanier's feet. "If nothing is impossi-
ble to you, save him ! I will love you, I will adore you, 1
will be your slave and not your mistress. I will obey your
wildest whims; you shfill do as you will with me. Yes, yes,
I will give you more than love; you shall have a daughter's
devotion as well as . . . Rodolphe ! why will you not un-
derstand ! After all, however violent my passions may be, I
shall be yours for ever ! What should I say to persuade you ?
I will invent pleasures . . . I . . . Great heavens !
one moment ! whatever you shall ask of me — to fling myself
from the window, for instance— you will need to say but one
word, 'Leon !' and I will plunge down into hell. I would bear
any torture, any pain of body or soul, anything you might
inflict upon me !"
Castanier heard her with indifl^erence. For all answer, he
indicated Leon to her with a fiendish laugh.
"The guillotine is waiting for him," he repeated.
"No, no, no ! He shall not leave this house. I will save
him !" she cried. "Yes; I will kill any one who lays a finger
upon him ! Why will you not save him ?" she shrieked aloud ;
her eyes were blazing, her hair unbound. "Can you save
him?"
"I can do everything."
"Why do you not save him?"
"Why?" shouted Castanier, and his voice made the ceiling
ring. — "Eh ! it is my revenge ! Doing evil is my trade !"
"Die?" said Aquilina; "must he die, my lover? Is
it possible?"
She sprang up and snatched a stiletto from a basket that
stood on the chest of drawers and went to Castanier, who be-
gan to laugh.
"You know very well that steel cannot hurt me now "
Aquilina's arm suddenly dropped like a snapped harp
string.
"Out with you, my good friend," said the cashier, turning
to the sergeant, "and go about your business."'
VOL. I — 26
326 MELMOTH RECONCILED
He held out his hand; the other felt Castanier's superior
power, and could not choose but obey.
"This house is mine; I could send for the commissary of
police if I chose, and give you up as a man who has hidden
himself on my premises, but I would rather let you go ; I am
a fiend, I am not a spy."
"I shall follow him I" said Aquilina.
"Then follow him," returned Castanier. — ^"Here, Jenny
Jenny appeared.
"Tell the porter to hail a cab for them. — Here, Naqui,"
said Castanier, drawing a bundle of bank-notes from his
pocket; "you shall not go away like a pauper from a man
who loves you still."
He held out three hundred thousand francs. Aquilina took
the notes, flung them on the floor, spat on them, and trampled
upon them in a frenzy of despair.
"We will leave this house on foot," she cried, "without a
farthing of your money. — Jenny, stay where you are."
"Good-evening !" answered the cashier, as he gathered up
the notes again. "I have come back from my journey. —
Jenny," he added, looking at the bewildered waiting-maid,
"you seem to me to be a good sort of girl. You have no mistress
now. Come here. This evening you shall have a master."
Aquilina, who felt safe nowhere, went at once with the
sergeant to the house of one of her friends. But all Leon's
movements were suspiciously watched by the police, and after
a time he and three of his friends were arrested. The whole
story may be found in the newspapers, of that day.
Castanier felt that he had undergone a mental as well as
a physical transformation. The Castanier of old no longer
existed — the boy, the young Lothario, the soldier who had
proved his courage, who had been tricked into a marriage and
disillusioned, the cashier, the passionate lover who had com-
mitted a crime for Aquilina's sake. His inmost nature hnd
suddenly asserted itself. His brain had expanded, his senses
MELMOTH RECONCILED 32?
had developed. His thoughts comprehended the whole world ;
he saw all the things of earth as if he had been raised to some
high pinnacle above the world.
Until that evening at the play he had loved Aquilina to
distraction. Rather than give her up he would have shut
his eyes to her infidelities; and now all that blind passion had
passed away as a cloud vanishes in the sunlight.
Jenny was delighted to succeed to her mistress' position
and fortune, and did the cashier's will in all things; but
Castanier, who could read the inmost thoughts of the soul,
discovered the real motive underlying this purely physical
devotion. He amused himself with her, however, like a mis-
chievous child who greedily sucks the juice of the cherry and
flings away the stone. The next morning at breakfast time,
when she was fully convinced that she was a lady and the
mistress of the house, Castanier uttered one by one the
thoughts that filled her mind as she drank her coffee.
"Do you know what 3^ou are thinking, child?" he said,
smiling. "I will tell you: 'So all that lovely rosewood fur-
niture that I coveted so much, and the pretty dresses that
I used to try on, are mine now! All on easy terms that
Madame refused, I do not know why. My word ! if I might
drive about in a carriage, have jewels and pretty things, a box
at the theatre, and put something by ! with me he should lead
a life of pleasure fit to kill him if he were not as strong as
a Turk ! I never saw such a man !' — Was not that just what
you were thinking," he went on, and something in his t^oice
made Jenny turn pale. "Well, yes, child; you could not
stand it, and I am sending you away for your own good ; you
would perish in the attempt. Come, let us part good friends,"
and he coolly dismissed her with a very small sum of money.
The first use that Castanier had promised himself that he
would make of the terrible power bought at the price of his
'eternal happiness, was the full and complete indulgence of
all his tastes.
He first put his affairs in order, readily settled his ac-
count with M. de Nucingen, who found a worthy German to
328 MELMOTH RECONCILED
succeed him, and then determined on a carouse worthy of the
palmiest days of the Roman Empire. He plunged into dissi-
pation as recklessly as Belshazzar of old went to that last feast
in Babylon. Like Belshazzar, he saw clearly through his
revels a gleaming hand that traced his doom in letters of
flame, not on the narrow walls of the banqueting-chamber,
but over the vast spaces of heaven that the rainbow spans.'
His feast was not, indeed, an orgy confined within the limits
of a banquet, for he squandered all the powers of soul and
body in exhausting all the pleasures of earth. The table
was in some sort earth itself, the earth that trembled beneath
his feet. His was the last festival of the reckless spendthrift
who has thrown all prudence to the winds. The devil had
given him the key of the storehouse of human pleasures; he
had filled and refilled his hands, and he was fast nearing the
bottom. In a moment he had felt all that that enormous
pov^-er could accomplish; in a moment he had exercised it,
proved it, wearied of it. What had hitherto been the sum of
human desires became as nothing. So often it happens that
with possession the vast poetry of desire must end, and the
thing possessed is seldom the thing that we dreamed of.
Beneath Melmoth's omnipotence lurked this tragical anti-
climax of so many a passion, and now the inanity of human
nature was revealed to his successor, to whom infinite power
brought Nothingness as a dowry.
To come to a clear understanding of Castanier's strange
position, it must be borne in mind how suddenly these rev-
olutions of thought and feeling had been wrought; how
quickly they had succeeded each other; and of these things
it is hard to give any idea to those who have never broken
the prison bonds of time, and space, and distance. His rela-
tion to the world without had been entirely changed with the
expansion of his faculties.
Like Melmoth himself, Castanier could travel in a few
moments over the fertile plains of India, could soar on the
vvmgs of demons above African desert spaces, or skim the sur-
face of the seas. The same insight that could read the inmost
MELMOTH RECONCILED 329
thoughts of others, could apprehend at a glance the nature of
an}^ material object, just as he caught as it were all flavors
at once upon his tongue. He took his pleasure like a despot ;
a blow of the axe felled the tree that he might eat its fruits.
The transitions, the alternations that measure joy and pain,
and diversify human happiness, no longer existed for him
He had so completely glutted his appetites that pleasure must
overpass the limits of pleasure to tickle a palate cloyed with
satiety, and suddenly grown fastidious beyond all measure, so
that ordinary pleasures became distasteful. Conscious that
at will he was the master of all the women that he could
desire, knowing that his power was irresistible, he did not
care to exercise it ; they were pliant to his unexpressed wishes,
to his most extravagant caprices, until he felt a horrible thirst
for love, and would have love beyond their pov/er to give.
The world refused him nothing save faith and prayer, the
soothing and consoling love that is not of this world. He
was obeyed — it was a horrible .position.
The torrents of pain, and pleasure, and thought that shook
his soul and his bodily frame would have overwhelmed the
strongest human being; but in him there was a power of
vitality proportioned to the power of the sensations that as-
sailed him. He felt within him a vague immensity of long-
ing that earth could not satisfy. He spent his days on out-
spread wings, longing to traverse the luminous fields of space
to other spheres that he knew afar by intuitive perception,
a clear and hopeless knowledge. His soul dried up within
him, for he hungered and thirsted after things that can
neither be drunk nor eaten, but for which he could not choose
but crave. His lips, like Melmoth's, burned with desire; he
panted for the unknown, for he knew all things.
The mechanism and the scheme of the world was apparent
to him, and its working interested him no longer; he did not
long disguise the profound scorn that makes of a man of ex-
traordinary powers a sphinx who knows everything and says
nothing, and sees all things with an unmoved countenance.
He felt not the slightest wish to communicate his knowledge
330 MELMOTH RECONCILED
to other men. He was rich with all the wealth of the world,
with one effort he could make the circle of the globe, and
riches and power were meaningless for him. He felt the
awful melancholy of omnipotence, a melancholj^ which Satan
and God relieve by the exercise of infinite power in mysterious
ways known to them alone. Castanier had not, like his
Master, the inextinguishable energy of hate and malice;
he felt that he was a devil, but a devil whose time was not
yet come, while Satan is a devil through all eternity, and
being damned beyond redemption, delights to stir up the
world, like a dung heap, with his triple fork and to thwart
therein the designs of God. But Castanier, for his mis-
fortune, had one hope left.
If in a moment he could move from one pole to the other
as a bird springs restlessly from side to side in its cage, when,
like the bird, he has crossed his prison, he saw the vast im-
mensity of space beyond it. That vision of the Infinite left
him for ever unable to see humanity and its affairs as other
men saw them. The insensate fools who long for the power
of the Devil gauge its desirability from a human standpoint ;
they do not see that with the Devil's power they will likewise
assume his thoughts, and that they will be doomed to remain
as men among creatures who will no longer understand them.
The ISTero unknown to history who dreams of setting Paris
on fire for his private entertainment, like an exhibition of a
burning house on the boards of a theatre, does not suspect that
if he had that power, Paris would become for him as little
interesting as an ant-heap by the roadside to a hurrying
passer-by. The circle of the sciences was for Castanier
something like a logogriph for a man who does not know the
key to it. Kings and Governments were despicable in his
eyes. His great debauch had be(>n in some sort a deplorable
farewell to his life as a man. The earth had grown too nar-
row for him, for the infernal gifts laid bare for him the
secrets of creation — he saw the cause and foresaw its end.
He was shut out from all that men call "heaven" in all
languages under the sun; he could no longer tliink of heaven.
MELMO'TH RECOMCILBD Sftl
Then he came to understand the look on his predecessor's
face and the drying up of the life within ; then he knew all
that was meant by the baffled hope that gleamed in Melmoth's
eyes; he, too, knew the thirst that burned those red lips, and
tlie agony of a continual struggle between two natures grown
to giant size. Even yet he might be an angel, and he knew
himself to be a fiend. His was the fate of a sweet and gentle
creature that a wizard's malice has imprisoned in a mis-
shapen form, entrapping it by a pact, so that another's will
must set it free from its detested envelope.
As a deception only increases the ardor with which a man
of really great nature explores the infinite of sentiment in a
woman's heart, so Castanier awoke to find that one idea lay
like a weight upon his soul, an idea which was perhaps the
key to loftier spheres. The very fact that he had bartered
away his eternal happiness led him to dwell in thought upon
the future of those who pray and believe. On the morrow of
his debauch, when he entered into the sober possession of his
power, this idea made him feel himself a prisoner; he knew
the burden of the woe that poets, and prophets, and great
oracles of faith have set forth for us in such mighty words ;
he felt the point of the Flaming Sword plunged into his side,
and hurried in search of Melmoth. What had become of his
predecessor ?
The Englishman was living in a mansion in the Eue Ferou,
near Saint-Sulpice — a gloomy, dark, damp, and cold abode.
The Rue Ferou itself is one of the most dismal streets in
Paris; it has a north aspect like all the streets that lie at
right angles to the left bank of the Seine, and the houses are
in keeping with the site. As Castanier stood on the threshold
he found that the door itself, like the vaulted roof, was hung
with black; rows of lighted tapers shone brilliantly as though
some king were lying in state ; and a priest stood on either
side of a catafalque that had been raised there.
"There is no need to ask why you have come, sir,'' the old
hall porter said to Castanier; "you are so like our poor dear
master that is gone. But if you are his brother, you have
332 MELMOTH RECONCILED
come too late to bid him good-bye. The good gentleman died
the night before last."
"How did he die ?" Castanier asked of one of the priests.
"Set your mind at rest," said an old priest ; he partly raised
as he spoke the black pall that covered the catafalque.
Castanier, looking at him, saw one of those faces that faith
has made sublime; the soul seemed to shine forth from every
line of it, bringing light and warmth for other men, kindled
by the unfailing charity within. This was Sir John Mel-
moth's confessor.
"Your brother made an end that men may envy, and that
must rejoice the angels. Do you know what joy there is in
heaven over a sinner that repents? His tears of penHence,
excited by grace, flowed without ceasing ; death alone checked
them. The Holy Spirit dwelt in him. His burning words,
full of lively faith, were worthy of the Prophet-King. If,
in the course of my life, I have never heard a more dreadful
confession than from the lips of this Irish gentleman, I have
likewise never heard such fervent and passionate prayers.
However great the measures of his sins may have been, his
repentance has filled the abyss to overflowing. The hand of
God was visibly stretched out above him, for he was com-
pletely changed, there was such heavenly beauty iu his face.
The hard eyes were softened by tears ; the resonant voice that
struck terror into those who heard it took the tender and com-
passionate tones of those who themselves have passed through
deep humiliation. He so edified those who heard his words,
that some who had felt drawn to see the spectacle of a
Christian's death fell on their knees as he spoke of heavenly
things, and of the infinite glory of God, and gave thanks and
praise to Him. If he is leaving no worldly wealth to his
family, no family can possess a greater blessing than this that
he surely gained for them, a soul among the blessed, who will
watch over you all and direct you in the path to heaven."
These words made such a vivid impression upon Castanier
that he instantly hurried from the house to the Church of
Saint-Sulpice, obeying what might be called a decree of fate.
Melmoth's repent ance had stupefied him.
MELMOTH RE(X)XCILED 333
At that time, on certjiin morninos in the week, a preacher,
famed for his eloquence, was wont to liold conferences, in
the course of which he demonstrated the truths of the
Catholic faith for the youth of a generation proclaimed to
be indifferent in matters of belief by another voice no less
eloquent than his own. The conference had been put off to a
later hour on account of Melmoth's funeral, so Castanicr ar-
rived just as the great preacher was epitomizing the proofs
of a future existence of happiness with all the charm of
eloquence and force of expression which have made him
famous. The seeds of divine doctrine fell into a soil pre-
pared for them in the old dragoon, into whom the Devil had
glided. Indeed, if there is a phenomenon well attested by
experience, is it not the spiritual phenomenon, commonly
called "the faith of the peasant"? The strength of belief
varies inversely with the amount of use that a man has made
of his reasoning faculties. Simple people and soldiers belong -
to the unreasoning class. Those who have marched through
life beneath the banner of instinct are far more ready to re-
ceive the light than minds and hearts overwearied with the
world's sophistries.
Castanier had the southern temperament; he had joined
the army as a lad of sixteen, and had followed the French
flag till he was nearly forty years old. As a common trooper,
he had fought day and night, and day after day, and, as
in duty bound, had thought of his horse first, and of himself
afterwards. While he served his military apprenticeship,
therefore, he had but little leisure in which to reflect on the
destiny of man, and when he became an officer he had his
men to think of. He had been swept from battlefield to
battlefield, but he had never thought of what comes
after death. A soldier's life does not demand much thinking.
Those who cannot understand the lofty political ends in-
volved and the interests of nation and nation; who cannot
grasp political schemes as well as plans of campaign, and
combine the science of the tactician with that of the admin-
istrator, are bound to live in a state of ignorance; the most
334 MELMOTH RECONCILED
boorish peasant in the most backward district in Fra'nce is
scarcely in a worse case. Such men as these bear the brunt
of w^ar, yield passive obedience to the brain that directs them,
and strike down the men opposed to them as the woodcutter
fells timber in the forest. Violent physical exertion is suc-
ceeded by times of inertia, when they repair the waste. They
fight and drink, fighi and eat, fight and sleep, that they may
the better deal hard blows; the powers of the mind are not
greatly exercised in this turbulent round of existence, and the
character is as simple as heretofore.
When the men -who have shown such energy on the battlefield
return to ordinary civilization, most of those who have not
risen to high rank seem to have acquired no ideas, and to have
no aptitude, no capacity, for grasping new ideas. To the utter
amazement of a younger generation, those who made our
armies so glorious and so terrible are as simple as children,
and as slow^-witted as a clerk at his worst, and the captain of
a thundering squadron is scarcely fit to keep a merchant's
day-book. Old soldiers of this stamp, therefore, being in-
nocent of any attempt to use their reasoning faculties, act
upon their strongest impulses. Castanier's crime was one of
those matters that raise so many questions, that, in order to
debate about it, a moralist might call for its "discussion by
clauses," to make use of a parliamentary expression.
Passion had counseled the crime; the cruelly irresistible
power of feminine witchery had driven him to commit it;
no man can say of himself, "I will never do that," when a
siren joins in the combat and throws her spells over him.
So the word of life fell upon a conscience newly awakened
to the truths of religion which the French Eevolution and a
soldier's career had forced Castanier to neglect. The solemn
words, "You wdll be happy or miserable for all eternity !"
made but the more terrible impression upon him, because ho
had exhausted earth and shaken it like a barren tree; because
his desires could effect all things, so that it was enough that
any spot in earth or heaven should be forbidden him, and he
forthwith thought of nothing else. If it were allowable to
MELMOTH RECONCILED 335
compare snch great things with social follies, Castanier's posi-
tion was not unlike that of a banker who, finding that his all-
powerful millions cannot obtain for him an entrance into the
society of the noblesse, must set his heart upon entering that
circle, and all the social privileges that he has already ac-
quired are as nothing in his eyes from the moment when he
discovers that a single one is lacking.
Here was a man more powerful than all the kings on earth
put together; a man who, like Satan, could wrestle with God
Himself; leaning against one of the pillars in the Church
of Saint-Sulpice, weighed down by the feelings and thoughts
that oppressed him, and absorbed in the thought of a Future,
the same thought that had engulfed Melmoth.
"He was very happy, was Melmoth !" cried Castanier.
"He died in the certain knowledge that he would go to
heaven."
In a moment the greatest possible change had been wrought
in the cashier's ideas. For several days he had been a
devil, now he was nothing but a man ; an image of the fallen
Adarn^, of the sacred tradition embodied in all cosmogonies.
But while he had thus shrunk he retained a germ of great-
ness, he had been steeped in the Infinite. The power of
hell had revealed the divine power. He thirsted for heaven
as he had never thirsted after the pleasures of earth, that are
so soon exhausted. The enjoyments which the fiend promises
are but the enjoyments of earth on a larger scale, but to the
joys of heaven there is no limit. He believed in God, and
the spell that gave him the treasures of the world was as
nothing to him now ; the treasures themselves seemed to him
as contemptible as pebbles to an admirer of diamonds; they
were but gewgaws compared with the eternal glories of the
other life. A curse lay, he thought, on all things that came
to him from this source. He sounded dark depths of pain-
ful thought as he listened to the service performed for ]\Iel-
moth. The Dies irm filled him with awe; he felt all the
grandeur of that cry of a repentant soul trembling before the
Throne of God. The Holy Spirit, like a devouring flame,
passed through him as fire consumes straw.
336 MELMOTH RECONCILED
The tears were falling from his eyes when — "Are you a rela-
tion of the dead ?" the beadle asked him.
"I am his heir/' Castanier answered.
"Give something for the expenses of the services !" cried
the man.
"No," said the cashier. (The Devil's money should not go
to the Church.)
"For the poor !"
"No."
"For repairing the Church P
"No."
"The Lady Chapel !"
"No."
"For the schools V*
"No."
Castanier went, not caring to expose himself to the sour
looks that the irritated functionaries gave him.
Outside, in the street, he looked up at the Church of Saint-
Sulpice. "What made people build the giant cathedrals I
have seen in every country ?" he asked himself. "The feeling
shared so widely throughout all time must surely be based
upon something."
"Something ! Do you call God something f" cried his con-
science. "God! God! God! . . ."
The word was echoed and re-echoed by an inner voice, till
it overwhelmed him; but his feeling of terror subsided as he
heard sweet distant sounds of music that he had caught faintly
before. They were singing in the church, he thought, and his
eyes scanned the great doorway. But as he listened more
closely, the sounds poured upon him from all sides ; he looked
round the square, but there was no sign of any musicians.
The melody brought visions of a distant heaven and far-off
gleams of hope ; but it also quickened the remorse that had set
the lost soul in a ferment. He went on his way through
Paris, walking as men walk who are crushed beneath the
burden of their sorrow, seeing everything with unseeing eyes,
loitering like an idler, stopping without cause, muttering to
MELMOTH RECONCILED S^'i
himself, careless of tlie traffic, making no effort to avoid a bloTV
from a plank of timber.
Imperceptibly repentance brought him under the influence
of the divine grace that soothes while it bruises the heart so
terribly. His face came to wear a look of Melmoth, some-
thing great, with a trace of madness in the greatness — a
look of dull and hopeless distress, mingled with the excited
eagerness of hope, and, beneath it all, a gnawing sense of
loathing for all that the world can give. The humblest of
prayers lurked in the eyes that saw with such dreadful clear-
ness. His power was the measure of his anguish. His body
was bowed down by the fearful storm that shook his soul, as
the tall pines bend before the blast. Like his predecessor, he
could not refuse to bear the burden of life ; he was afraid to die
while he bore the yoke of hell. The torment grew intoler-
able.
At last, one morning, he bethought himself how that Mel-
moth (now among the blessed) had made the proposal of an
exchange, and how that he had accepted it ; others, doubtless,
would follow his example; for in an age proclaimed, by the
inheritors of the eloquence of the Fathers of the Church, to be
fatally indifferent to religion, it should be easy to find a man
who would accept the conditions of the contract in order to
prove its advantages.
"There is one place where you can learn what kings will
fetch in the market ; where nations are weighed in the balance
and systems appraised; where the value of a government is
stated in terms of the five-franc piece; where ideas and
beliefs have their price, and everything is discounted; where
God Himself, in a manner, borrows on the security of His
revenue of souls, for the Pope has a running account there.
Is it not there that I should go to traffic in souls ?"
Castanier went quite joyously on 'Change, thinking that it
would be as easy to buy a soul as to invest money in the Funds.
Any ordinary person would have feared ridicule, but Castanier
knew by experience that a desperate man takes everything
seriously. A .prisoner lying under sentence of death would
338 MELMOTH RECONCILED
listen to the madman who should tell him that by pro-
nouncing some gibberish he could escape through the key-
hole ; for suffering is credulous, and clings to an idea until it
fails, as the swimmer borne along by the current clings to the
branch that snaps in his hand.
Towards four o'clock that afternoon Castanier appeared
among the little knots of men who were transacting private
business after 'Change. He was personally known to some of
the brokers; and while affecting to be in search of an ac-
quaintance, he managed to pick up the current gossip and
rumors of failure.
"Catch me negotiating bills for Claparon & Co., my boy.
The bank collector went round to return their acceptances
to them this morning," said a fat banker in his outspoken
way. "If you have any of their paper, look out."
Claparon M^as in the building, in deep consultation with a
man well known for the ruinous rate at which he lent money.
Castanier went forthwith in search of the said Claparon, a
merchant who had a reputation for taking heavy risks that
meant wealth or utter ruin. The money-lender walked away
as Castanier came up. A gesture betrayed the speculator's
despair.
^'Well, Claparon, the Bank wants a hundred thousand
francs of you, and it is four o'clock ; the thing is known, and
it is too late to arrange your little failure comfortably," said
Castanier.
"Sir!"
"Speak lower," the cashier went on. "How if I were to
propose a piece of business that would bring you in as much
money as you require?"
"It would not discharge my liabilities ; every business that
I ever heard of wants a little time to simmer in."
"I know of something that will set you straight in a
moment," answered Castanier; "but first you would have
to "
"Do what?"
''Sell your sliare of paradise. It is a matter of business
MELMOTH RECONCILED ^9
tike anything else, isn't it? We all hold shares in the great
Speculation of Eternity."
"I tell you this," said Claparon angrily, "that I am just
the man to lend you a slap in the face. When a man is in
trouble, it is no time to play silly jokes on him."
"I am talking seriously," said Castanier, and he drew a
bundle of notes from his pocket.
"In the first place," said Claparon, "I am not going to sell
my soul to the Devil for a trifle. I want five hundred thou-
sand francs before I strike "
"Who talks of stinting you ?" asked Castanier, cutting him
short. "You shall have more gold than you could stow in
the cellars of the Bank of France."
He held out a handful of notes. That decided Claparon.
"Done," he cried ; "but how is the bargain to be made ?"
"Let us go over yonder, no one is standing there," said
Castanier, pointing to a corner of the court.
Claparon and his tempter exchanged a few v/ords, with their
faces turned to the wall. None of the onlookers guessed the
nature of this by-play, though their curiosity was keenly ex-
cited hj the strange gestures of the two contracting parties.
When Castanier returned, there was a sudden outburst of
amazed exclamation. As in the Assembly where the least
event immediately attracts attention, all faces were turned
to the two men who had caused the sensation, and a shiver
passed through all beholders at the change that had taken
place in them.
The men who form the moving crowd that fills the Stock
Exchange are soon known to each other by sight. They watch
each other like players round a card-table. Some shrewd
observers can tell how a man will play and the condition of
his exchequer from a survey of his face; and the Stock Ex-
change is simply a vast card-table. Every one, therefore, had
noticed Claparon and Castanier. The latter (like the Irish-
man before him) had been muscular and powerful, his eyes
were full of light, his color high. The dignity and power in
his face had struck awe into them all ; they wondered how old
340 MELMOTH RECONCILED
Castanier had come by it; and now they beheld Castanier
divested of his power, shrunken, wrinkled, aged, and feeble.
He had drawn Claparon out of the crowd with the energy of
a sick man in a fever fit; he had looked like an opium-eater
during the brief period of excitement that the drug can give ;
DOW, on his return, he seemed to be in the condition of utter
exhaustion in which the patient dies after the fever departs,
or to be suffering from the horrible prostration that follows on
excessive indulgence in the delights of narcotics. The in-
fernal power that had upheld him through his debauches had
left him, and the body was left unaided and alone to endure
the agony of remorse and the heavy burden of sincere re-
pentance. Claparon's troubles every one could guess; but
Claparon reappeared, on the other hand, with sparkling e3^es,
holding his head high with the pride of Lucifer. The crisis
had passed from the one man to the other.
"Now you can drop off with an easy mind, old man," said
Claparon to Castanier.
"For pity's sake, send for a cab and for a priest; send for
the curate of Saint-Sulpice !" answered the old dragoon, sink-
ing down upon the curbstone.
The words "a priest" reached the ears of several people, and
produced uproarious jeering among the stockbrokers, for faith
with these gentlemen means a belief that a scrap of paper
called a mortgage represents an estate, and the List of Fund-
holders is their Bible.
"Shall I have time to repent ?" said Castanier to himself, in
a piteous voice, that impressed Claparon.
A cab carried away the dying man ; the speculator went to
the bank at once to meet his bills ; and the momentary sensa-
tion produced upon the throng of business men by the sudden
change on the two faces, vanished like the furrow cut by a
ship's keel in the sea. News of the greatest importance kept the
attention of the world of commerce on the alert; and when
commercial interests are at stake, Moses might appear with his
two luminous horns, and his coming would scarcely receive
the honors of a pun, the gentlemen whose business it is to
write the Market Reports would ignore his existence.
MELMOTH RECONCILED 341
When Claparon had made his payments, fear seized upon
him. There was no mistake about his power. He went on
'Change again, and ofl'ered his bargain to other men in em-
barrassed circumstances. The Devil's bond, "together with
the rights, easements, and privileges appertaining thereunto,"
— to use the expression of the notary who succeeded Claparon,
changed hands for the sum of seven hundred thousand francs.
The notary in his turn parted with the agreement with the
Devil for five hundred thousand francs to a building con-
tractor in difficulties, who likewise was rid of it to an iron
merchant in consideration of a hundred thousand crowns.
In fact, b}' five o'clock people had ceased to believe in the
strange contract, and purchasers were lacking for want of
confidence.
At half-past five the holder of the bond was a house-
painter, who was lounging by the door of the building in the
Rue Feydeau, where at that time stockbrokers temporarily
congregated. The house-painter, simj)le fellow, could not
think what was the matter with him. He "felt all anyhow" ;
so he told his w4fe when he went home.
The Eue Feydeau, as idlers about town are aware, is a
place of pilgrimage for youths who for lack of a mistress be-
stow their ardent affection upon the whole sex. On the first
floor of the most rigidly respectable domicile therein dwelt one
of those exquisite creatures whom it has pleased heaven to
endow with the rarest and most surpassing beauty. As it is im-
possible that they should all be duchesses or queens (since
there are many more pretty women in the world than titles
and thrones for them to adorn), they are content to make
a stockbroker or a banker happy at a fixed price. To this
good-natured beauty, Euphrasia by name, an unbounded
ambition had led a notary's clerk to aspire. In short, the
second clerk in the office of Maitre Crottat, notary, had fallen
in love with her, as youth at two-and-twenty can fall in love.
The scrivener would have murdered the Pope and run amuck
through the whole sacred college to procure the miserable
sum of a liundred louis to pay for a shawl which had turned
VOL. 1 — 27
34d MfiLMOTH RECONCILED
Euphrasia's head, at which price her waiting-woman had
promised that Euphrasia shoukl be his. The infatuated
youth walked to and fro under Madame Euphrasia's windows,
like the polar bears in their cage at the Jardin des Plantes,
with his right hand thrust beneath his waistcoat in the region
of the heart, which he was fit to tear from his bosom, but as
yet he had only wrenched at the elastic of his braces.
"What can one do to raise ten thousand francs ?" he asked
himself. "Shall I make off with the money that I must pay
on the registration of that conveyance ? Good heavens ! my
loan would not ruin the purchaser, a man with seven millions !
And then next day I would fling myself at his feet and say,
*I have taken ten thousand francs belonging to you, sir; 1
am twenty-two years of age, and I am in love with Euphrasia
— that is my story. My father is rich, he will pay you back ;
do not ruin me ! Have not you yourself been twenty-two
years old and madly in love?' But these beggarly land-
owners have no souls ! He would be quite likely to give me up
to the public prosecutor, instead of taking pity upon me.
Good God ! if it were only possible to sell your soul to the
Devil ! But there is neither a God nor a Devil ; it is
all nonsense out of nursery tales and old wives' talk. What
shall I do ?"
"If you have a mind to sell your soul to the Devil, sir,"
said the house-painter, who had overheard something that the
clerk let fall, "you can have the ten thousand francs."
"And Euphrasia !" cried the clerk, as he struck a bargain
with the devil that inhabited the house-painter.
The pact concluded, the frantic clerk went to find the
shawl, and mounted Madame Euphrasia's staircase; and as
(literally) the devil was in him, he did not come down for
twelve days, drowning the thought of hell and of his privileges
in twelve days of love and riot and forgetful ness, for
which he had bartered away all his bopcs of a paradise to
come.
And in this way the secret of the vast power discovered and
acquired by the Irishman, the ofi'spriug of Maturin's brain,
MELMOTH RECONCILBD 843
was, lost to mankind; and the various Orientalists, Mystics,
and Archaeologists who take an interest in these matters were
unable to hand down to posterity the proper method of in-
voking the Devil, for tlie following sufficient reasons :
On the thirteenth day after these frenzied nuptials the
wretched clerk lay on a pallet bed in a garret in his master's
house in the Eue Saint-Honore. Shame, the stupid goddess
who dares not behold herself, had taken possession of the
young man. He had fallen ill ; he would nurse himself ; mis-
judged the quantity of a remedy devised by the skill of a
practitioner well known on the walls of Paris, and succumbed
to the effects of an overdose of mercury. His corpse was as
black as a mole's back. A devil had left unmistakable traces
of its passage there; could it have been Ashtaroth?
"The estimable youth to whom you refer has been carried
away to the planet Mercury," said the head clerk to a German
demonologist who came to investigate the matter at first
hand.
"I am quite prepared to believe it," answered the Teuton.
"Oh !"
"Yes, sir," returned the other. "The opinion you advance
coincides with the very words of Jacob Boehme. In the
forty-eighth proposition of The Threefold Life of Man he says
that 'if God hath brought all things to pass with a let there
BE, the FIAT is the secret matrix which comprehends and ap-
prehends the nature which is formed by the spirit born of
Mercury and of God/ "
"What do you say, sir ?"
The German delivered his quotation afresh.
"We do not know it," said the clerks.
"Fiat? ..." said a clerk. "Fiat lux!"
"You can verify the citation for yourselves," said the
German. "You will find the passage in the Treatise of the
Threefold Life of Man, page 75 ; the edition was published
by M. Migneret in 1809. It was translated into French by
a philosopher who had a great admiration for the famous
shoemaker."
344 MELMOTH RECONCILED
"Oh ! he was a shoemaker, was he ?" said the head clerk.
"In Prussia," said the German.
"Did he work for the King of Prussia ?" inquired a BcBotian
of a second clerk.
"He must have vamped up his prose/'^ said a third.
"That man is colossal !" cried the fourth, pointing to the
Teuton.
That gentleman, though a demonologist of the first rank,
did not know the amount of devilry to be found in a notary's
clerk. He went away without the least idea that they were
making game of him, and fully under the impression that the
young fellows regarded Boehme as a colossal genius.
"Education is making strides in France," said he to him-
self.
Fasis, May 6, 1SS&
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
AND OTHER STORIES
INTRODUCTION
The volume of the old edition of the Comedie Humaine,
which opened with La Recherche de I'Absolu, together with
that generally entitled Les Marana, contains the cream and
flower of Balzac as a story-teller; and the first excels the
second in showing the fiery heat and glow of the author's
imagination. The chief of the minor elements, Le Chef-
d'oeuvre inconnu, has seemed to some the actual masterpiece
of the author.
La Recherche de VAhsoIu is, as has been said, a novel in
itself. Taking minor points only, it is a masterpiece. That
there is a certain parallelism, probably unconscious, between
the way in which Balthazar Claes as unconsciously kills his
wife, and the way in which IMonsieur Grandet kills his, is cer-
tainly no drawback to the book; for the repetition, if it is a
repetition, only shows how genius can repeat. Indeed, there is
the same demonstration contained in the same books in the
representation of the diverse martyrdoms of Madame Claes
and her daughter Marguerite, fatal in the former case, hap-
pily changed in the latter. In no book is Balzac's faculty of
Dutch drawing, as far as scenes and details go, more brill-
iantly shown; in none are the minor characters — from the
famulus Lemulquinier, with his fatal belief in his master's
madness, downwards — better ; while Marguerite Claes and her
mother, especially Marguerite, are by common consent to be
ranked among Balzac's greatest triumphs in portraying
'Tionest women."
(vu)
viM INTRODUCTION
But these .things, though they illustrate the general prin-
ciple that the presence of a great central interest and figure
•will radiate greatness and interest on its surroundings, would
contribute comparatively little to the effect of the book if
it were not for the Seeker after the Absolute himself. No-
■where, perhaps, has the hopeless tyranny of the fij^ed idea,
the ferocious (not exactly selfish) absorption in the pursuit
of a craze, been portrayed with quite the same power as here.
And we know and feel that the energy, the fire, the perfec-
tion of the handling are due to sympathy — that Balzac a few
generations earlier would have sought the Philosopher's
Stone with the same desperate energy as Balthazar. Prob-
ably nothing but his prior attachment to literary work pre-
vented him from doing something similar; while actually,
and as it was, he kept himself in lifelong difficulties by no
very different persistence in the corresponding, if more ig-
noble. Game of Speculation.
I have just said that the tyranny of the ideal has nowhere
been more successfully portrayed than in La Recherche de
VAhsolu; but there is perhaps one exception, and it is Le
Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu, which should be carefully compared
with the larger fiction. The attraction of this wonderful and
terrible piece for all who have anything to do with the things
of the spirit, whether in the way of criticism or in the way of
creation, can hardly be exaggerated. I remember many years
ago spending half an evening in discussing, in a sort of
amoebean strain, its merits with the late Mr. Stevenson; and
everybody knows the compliment which a distinguished
American writer has paid it by attempting a sort of para-
phrase of its original. The same interest is present here
and in La Recherche, but it is a little complicated, a little
INTRODUCTION \x
refined upon. Here, too, there is the sorcery of the ideal, the
frenzied passion for attainment and perfection. But here
there is a special nuance almost as closely connected with
Balzac's individuality as the general scheme. "We know that
the mania of constant retouching, of adding strokes, was a
danger of his own ; that he did actually indulge in it to an
extent very prejudicial to his pecuniary interest, and per-
haps not always advantageous to the effect of his work,
though the artist in words is hardly exposed to any such ab-
solutely hopeless catastrophe in such a case as is the artist
in line and color.
Yet, wonderful as this is, it cannot in its limited space,
and with its intensely concentrated interest, vie with the
amplitude, the variety, the dignity of the Recherche. Balzac
might have made this too long: he was not always proof
against that temptation. But in it, as in Eugenie Grandet,
with which it has been already compared, he has hit the ex-
act mean between a short tale and a long novel, has not
sinned by digression and episode, has hardly sinned by undue
indulgence in detail. The interest is perhaps remoter from
the general human understanding than that of Eugenie and
one or two others. But it is handled with equal mastery,
and the effect is at least equally good.
It is not, of course, that a knowledge of Balzac's own pe-
culiarities adds anything to the sense of the artistic eminence
of these two stories. That would be clear if we knew noth-
ing whatever about the other part of the matter. But it can-
not be regarded as uninteresting that we should thus know
the secret of the furia, the "nobler gust" of sympathy and
enjoyment with which the writer, consciously or uncon-
sciously, must have set about these two great, and in his
own work, almost incomparable things.
Jt INTRODUCTION
The group of short stories which, in the first complete
odition of the Comedie, opens with Les Marana, contains,
as I have said, with that in which La Recherche de I'Absolu
leads off, the very finest productions of the author on a small
^cale. Almost all the pieces herein contained were early
work, written when Balzac was under the combined excite-
ment of his emergence from the valley of the shadow in
which he had toiled so long, and of the heat and stress of
the political and literary Eevolution of 1830. All of them
show his very freshest matured power, not as yet in the slight-
est degree sicklied o'er by any excessive attempt to codify or
g^ystematize. It is true that they are called Etudes Philoso-
phiques, and that it puzzles the adroitest advocate to make
out any very particular claim that they have to the title.
But "philosophy," a term pretty freely abused in all lan-
guages, had in French been treated during the eighteenth
century and earlier as a sort of "blessed word," which might
mean anything, from the misbeliefs and disbeliefs of those
who did not believe in the devil to the pursuits of those who
meddled with test-tubes and retorts. Balzac seems generally
to have meant by it something that was not mere surface-
literature — that was intended to make the reader think and
feel. In this sense very little of his own work is unworthy
of the title, and we certainly need not refuse it to Les Marana
and its companions.
The only objection that I can think of to the title-tale is
a kind of uncertainty in the plan of the character of Juana.
It is perfectly proper that she should fall an unsophisticated
victim to the inherited tendencies (let it be remembered that
Balzac worked this vein with discretion long before it was
tediously overworked by literarjr Darwinians), to her own
INTRODUCTION Xl
genuine affection, and to the wiles of Montefiore. It is quite
right, as well as satisfactory, that she should refuse her se-
ducer when she discovers the baseness of his motives. It is
natural enough, especially in a southern damsel, that she
should submit to the convenient cloak of marriage with
Diard, and even make him a good and affectionate wife after-
wards. But Balzac seems to me — perhaps I am wrong — to
have left us in undue doubt whether she killed Diard purel)
out of Castilian honor, or partly as a sort of revenge for tho
sufferings she had undergone in enduring his love. A mix-
ture of the two would be the finer and the truer touch, and
therefore it is probable that Balzac meant it; but I think
he should have indicated it, not by any clumsy labeling or
explanation, but by something "leading up." It ma}', how-
ever, seem that this is a hypercriticism, and certainly the tale
is fine enough.
The fantastic horror of Adieu may seem even finer to some,
but a trifle overwrought to others. Balzac, who had very
little literary jealousy in his own way and school, made a
confession of enthusiastic regret afterwards that he, Balzac,
could not attain to the perfection of description of the
Eussian retreat which Beyle had achieved. Both were ob-
server-idealists, and required some touch of actual experience
to set their imaginations working, an advantage which, in
this case, Balzac did not possess, and Beyle did. But I do
not think that any one can reasonably find fault with the
scenes on the Beresina here. The induction (to use Sack-
ville's good old word) of the story is excellent: and there is
no part of a short story, hardly even the end, which is so im-
portant as the beginning; for if it fails to lay a grip on the
reader, it is two to one that ho will not go on with it. The
character of Philip de Slicx is^ finely touched, and the con-
xii INTRODUCTION
trast of the unconscious selfishness of his love with the uncle's
affection is excellent, and not in the least (as it might be)
obtrusive. But the point of danger, of course, is in the repre-
sentation of the pure animalized condition of the unhappy
Countess, and her monkey-like tricks. It is never quite cer-
tain that a thing of this kind will not strike the reader, in
some variable mood, with a sense of the disgusting, of the
childish, of the merely fantastic, and any such sense in a
tale appealing so strongly to the sense of "the pity of it" is
fatal. I can only say that I have read Adieu at long intervals
of time and in very different circumstances, and have not felt
anything of the kind, or anything but the due pity and terror.
The style, perhaps, is not entirely Balzac's own; the in-
terest is a little simple and elementary for him; but he
shows that he can handle it as well as things more compli-
cated and subtler.
Le Requisitionnaire, El Verdugo, and Un Drame au hord
de la Mer* may be called, assuredly in no uncomplimentary
or slighting sense, anecdotes rather than stories. The hinge,
the centre, the climax, or the catastrophe (as from different
points of view we may call it), is in all cases more important
than the details and the thread of narrative. They are all
good, but El Verdugo is far the best: the great incident of
the father blessing his son and executioner in the words
"Marquis [his own title] frappe sans peur, tu es sans re-
proche," being worthy of Hugo himself.
La Recherche de VAhsolu appeared in 1834, with seven
chapter-divisions, as a Scene de la Vie Privee; was publisliprl
by itself in 1839 by Charpcntier; and took its final place a^
a part of the Comedie in 1815. ,
• Vn Drame au lord de la Mcr Is included iu a later volume.
INTRODUCTION Xlll
All the Marana group of stories appeared together in the
fourth edition of the Etudes Philosophiques, 1835-1837.
Most of them, however, had earlier appearances in periodicals
and in the Romans et Contes Philosophiques, which preceded
the Etudes. And in these various appearances they were sub-
jected to their author's usual processes of division and unifica-
tion, of sub-titling and cancelling sub-titles. Les Marana
appeared first in the Revue de Paris for the last month of
1832 and the first of 1833; while it next made a show, oddly
enough, as a Scene de la Vie Parisienne. Adieu appeared in
t"he Mode during June 1830, and was afterwards for a time
a Scene de la Vie Privee. Le Requisitionnaire was issued by
the Revue de Paris of February 23, 1831; El Verdugo by the
Mode for January 29, 1830; L'Auberge Rouge in the Revue
de Paris, August 1831 ; L'Elixir de longue Vie, by the same
periodical for October 1830; Maitre Cornelius, again by the
same for December 1831. Un Drame au lord de la Mer alone
appeared nowhere except in book form with its companions;
but in 1843 it left them for a time (afterwards to return),
and as La Justice Paternelle accompanied La Muse du De-
partement, Albert Savarus, and Facino Cane in a separate
publication.
Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu appeared in the Artiste of 1831,
before its present date, as a "Conte fantastique," in two parts.
It almost immediately became one of the Romans et Contes
Philosophiques, passed in 1837 to the Etudes Philosophiques,
was most unequally yoked for a time with Les Comediens
sans le savoir, and took definite rank in 1845 as usual.
G. S.
Note. — VAvberge Rouge, U Elixir de longue Vie, Un Drams an bord de la Mer, and
''la'dre Comilius have been omitted, and postponed to a future volume, owing tc
exigencies of space.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
To Madame Josephine Delannoy nee Doumerc.
Madame, may God grant that this, my book, may live longer
than I, for then the gratitude which I owe to you, and which T
hope will equal your almost maternal liindness to me, would last
beyond the limits prescribed for human affection. This sublime
privilege of prolonging life in our hearts for a time by the life
of the worli we leave behind us would be (if we could only be
sure of gaining it at last) a reward indeed for all the labor under-
talien by those who aspire to suoh an immortality. Yet again I
say— May God grant it!
De Balzac.
There is in Douai, in the Rue de Paris, a house that may
be singled out from all others in the city; for in every re-
spect, in its outward appearance, in its interior arrange-
ments, and in every detail, it is a perfect example of an old
Flemish building, and preserves all the characteristics of a
quaint style of domestic architecture thoroughly in keeping
with the patriarchal manners of the good folk in the Low
Countries. But before proceeding to describe the house,
it may not be wholly imnecessary here to enter, on behalf
of authors, a protest in favor of those didactic prelimi-
naries for which the ignorant and impatient reader has so
strong a dislike. There are persons who crave sensations,
yet have not patience to submit to the influences which pro-
duce them ; who would fain have flowers without the seed, the
child without gestation. Art, it would seem, is to accom-
plish ivhat nature cannot.
2 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
It SO happens that human life in all its aspects, wide or
narrow, is so intimately connected with architecture, that with
a certain amount of observation we can usually reconstract
a bygone society from the remains of its public monuments.
From relics of household stuff, we can imagine its owners
"in their habit as they lived." Archgeologj^ in fact, is to the
body social somewhat as comparative anatomy is to animal
organizations. A complete social system is made clear to us
by a bit of mosaic, just as a whole pa^t order of things is
implied by the skeleton of an ichthyowaiirus. Beholding the
cause, we guess the effect, even as we proceed from the effect
to the cause, one deduction folloving another until a chain
of evidence is complete, until tht" man of science raises up a
whole bygone world from the dead, and discovers for us not
only the features of the Pastj but even the warts upon those
features.
Hence, no doubt, the prodigious interest which people take
in descriptions of architecture so long as the writer keeps
hia own idiosyncrasies out of the text and does not obscure
the facts with theories of his own; for every one, by a
simple process of deduction, can call up the past for himself
as he reads. Human experience varies so little, that the past
seems strangely like the presenr; and when we learn what
has been, it not seldom happens that we also behold plainly
what shall be again. As a matter of fact, we can seldom see
a picture or a description of any place wherein the current
of human life has once flowed, without being put in mind of
our own personal experience, our broken resolutions, or our
blossoming hopes; and the contrast between the present, in
which our heart's desire is never given to us, and the future,
when our wishes may be fulfilled, is an inexhaustible source
of melancholy or delightful musings. How is it that Flemish
art, with its pictures of Flemish life, makes an almost ir-
resistible appeal to our feelings whenever the little details are
faithfully rendered? Perhaps the secret of the charm lies
in this — that there seems less uncertainty and perplexity in
this matter-of-fact life than in any otlier. Such art could
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE t
hardly exist without the opulent comfort which comes of
a prosperity of long use and wont ; it depicts an existence peace-
ful to the verge of beatitude, wiih all its complicated family
ties and domestic festivals; but it i^ no less the expression
of a tranquillity wcllnigh monotonous, of a prosperity which
frankly finds its happiness in self-indulgence, which has noth-
ing left to wish for, because its every desire is gratified as soon
as it is formed. Even passionate temperaments, that measure
the force of life by the tumult of the soul, cannot see these
placid pictures and feel unmoved; it is only shallow people
who think that because the pulse beats so steadily the heart is
cold.
The energy that expends itself in a sudden and violent out-
break produces a far greater effect on the popular imagina-
tion than an equal force exerted slowly and persistently. The
crowd have neither the time nor the patience to estimate an
enormous power which is uniformly exerted; they do not re-
flect on appearances; they are borne too swiftly along the
current of life; it is therefore only transcendent passion that
makes any impression upon them, and the great artist is
most extolled when he exceeds the limits of perfection:
Michael Angelo, Bianca Cappello, Mademoiselle de la
Valliere, Beethoven, Paganini, — ^you may pass their names in
review. It is only a rare and great power which knows that
there must be no overstepping of the limit line, that sets in
the first place that quality of symmetry, that completeness
which stamps a perfect work of art with the profound re-
pose which ha€ so strong a charm for those who are capable
of recognizing it. But the life adopted by this practical
people is in all respects the ideal life of the citizen as con-
ceived of by the lower classes; it is a bourgeois paradise in
which nothing is lacking to fill the measure of their felicity.
A highly refined materialism is the distinguishing charac-
teristic of Flemish life. There is something dull, dreary,
and unimaginative about English "comfort;" but a Flemish
interior, with its glowing colors, is a delight to the eyes, and
there is a blithe simplicity about the homeliness of Flemish
4 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
life; evidently the burden of toil is not too heavily felt, and
the tobacco-pipe shows that the Flemings have grasped and
applied the Neapolitan doctrine of far niente, while a tran-
quil appreciation of art and beauty in their surroundings
is no less evident. In the temper of the people, indeed,
there are two of the most essential conditions for the cultiva-
tion of art: patience, and that capacity for taking pains
which is necessary if the work of the artist is to live; these
are pre-eminently the characteristics of the patient and
painstaking Fleming. The magical splendor, the subtle
beauty of poetry, are attainments impossible for patience
and conscientiousness, you think ? Their life in Flanders must
be as monotonously level as the lowlands of Holland, and
as dreary as their clouded skies ! But it is nothing of the
kind. The power of civilization has been brought to bear in
every direction — even the effects of the climate have been
modified.
If you notice the differences between the products of various
parts of the globe, it surprises you at first that the prevailing
tints of the temperate zones should be grays and tawny-
browns, while the brilliant colors are confined to tropical re-
gions— a natural law which applies no less to habits of life.
But Flanders, with her naturally brown and sober hues, has
learned how to brighten the naturally foggy and sullen
atmosphere in the course of many a political revolution. From
her old lords, the Dukes of Burgundy, she passed to the
Kings of Spain and France ; she has been forced to seek allies
in Holland and in Germany, and Flemish life bears witness
to all these changes. There are traces of Spanish dominion
in their lavish use of scarlet, of lustrous satins, in the bold
designs of their tapestry, in their drooping feathers and
mandolins, in their stately and ceremonious customs. From
Venice, in exchange for their linen and laces, they received
the glasses of fantastic form in which the wine seems to glow
with a richer color. From Austria they received the tradition
of the grave and deliberate diplomacy which, to quote the
popular adage, "made three steps in a bushel basket."
THE QUEST OF THE 'iBSOLUTB 5
Their trade with the Indies has brought them in abun-
dance the grotesque inventions of China and the marvels of
Japan. But with all their reeeptiveness,. their power of
absorbing everything, of giving out nothing, and of patiently
enduring any yoke, Flanders could hardly be regarded as
anything but a European curiosity shop, a mere confusion of
nationalities, until the discovery of tobacco inaugurated a
new era. Then the national character was fused and formed
out of all these scattered elements, and the features of the
first Fleming looked forth at last upon the world through
a cloud of tobacco-smoke. Ever since that time — no matter
for their frontiers and their lands divided piecemeal — there
is no question of the solidarity of the Flemings ; they are one
nation, thanks to the tankard and the tobacco-pipe.
So Flanders, with its practical turn, has constantly as-
similated the intellectual and material wealth of its masters
and neighbors, until the country, originally so dreary and
unromantic, has recast its life on a model of its own choos-
ing, acquiring the habits and manners best suited to the
Flemish temperament without apparently losing its own in-
dividuality or independence. The art of Flanders, for in-
stance, did not strive after ideal forms; it was content to
reproduce the real as it had never been reproduced before.
It is useless to ask this country of monumental poetry for
the verve of comedy, for dramatic action, for musical genius,
for the bolder flights of the epic or the ode ; its bent is rather
for experimental science, for lengthy disputations, for work
that demands time, and smells somewhat of the lamp. All
their researches are of a practical kind, and must conduce to
physical well-being. They look at facts and see nothing be-
yond them; thought must bear the yoke and be subservient
to the needs of life; it must occupy itself with realities, and
never soar above or beyond them. Their sole conception of a
national career was a sort of political thrift, their force in
insurrection was the outcome of an energetic desire to have
sufficient elbow-room at table and to take their ease beneath
the eaves of their steedes.
0 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
It was this love of comfort, together with the independent
attitude of mind which is a result of prosperity, that led
them first to feel that desire for liberty which, later on, was
to set all Europe in a ferment. Moreover, there is a dogged
tenacity about a Fleming and a fixity of idea which makes
him grow dangerous in the defence of his rights. They are
a thorough people ; and whether it is a question of architecture
or furniture, of dykes or agriculture or insurrection, they
never do things by halves. No one can approach them in
anything they set themselves to do. The manufacture of
lace, involving the patient cultivation of flax and the still
more patient labor of the worker, together with the industry
of the linen weaver, have been the sources of their wealth from
one generation to another.
If you wished to paint Stability incarnate, perhaps you
could not do better than take some good burgomaster of the
Low Countries for model ; a man not lacking in heroism, and,
as has often been seen, ready to die in his citizen fashion an
obscure death for the rights of his Hansa.
But the grace and poetry of this patriarchal existence is
naturally revealed in a description of one of the last remain-
mg houses, which at the time when this story begins still pre-
served the traditions and the characteristics of that life in
Douai.
Of all places in the department of the Nord, Douai (alas !)
is the town which is being modernized most rapidly ; modern
innovations are bringing about a revolution there. Old
buildings are disappearing day by day, old-world ways are
almost forgotten in the widespread zeal for social progress.
Douai now takes its tone, its ways of life, and its fashions
from Paris; in Douai there will soon be little left of the old
Flemish tradition save its assiduous and cordial hospitality,
together with the courtesy of Spain, the opulence and
cleanliness of Holland. The old brick-built houses are being
replaced by hotels with white stone facings. Substantial
Batavian comfort is disappearing to make way for elegant
frivolity imported from France.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 1
The house in which the events took place, which are to
be described in the course of this story, was almost half-way
down the Eue de Paris, and has borne in Douai, for more
than two hundred years, the name of the Maison Claes.
The Van Claes had formerly been among the most cele-
brated of the families of craftsmen who fovmded the com-
mercial prosperity of the Netherlands. For many genera-
tions Claes succeeded Claes as the Dean of the great and pow-
erful Guild of Weavers in Ghent. When Charles V. endeavored
to deprive the city of its privileges and Ghent rose in revolt,
the wealthiest of the Claes found himself so deeply compro-
mised that, foreseeing the inevitable end and the fate re-
served for him and his companions, he sent away his wife
and children and valuables under a French escort, before
the city was invested by the Imperial troops. Events proved
that the fears of the Dean of the Guild were but too well
founded. When the city capitulated, he and some few fellow-
citizens were excepted by name from the general amnesty, and
the defender of the rights and privileges of Ghent was
hanged as a rebel against the Empire. The death of Claes
and his companions bore- its fruits; in the years to come
these useless cruelties were to cost the King of Spain the
best part of the Netherlands. Of all seed sown on earth,
the blood of the martyrs in the surest, and the harvest follows
soonest upon the sowing.
While Philip II. visited the sins of revolted Ghent upon
its children's children, and ruled Douai with a rod of iron,
the Claes (whose vast fortunes were unimpaired) connected
themselves by marriage with the elder branch of the noble
house of Molina, an alliance which repaired the fortunes of
that illustrious family, and enabled them to purchase back
their estates; and the broad lands of Nourho, in the king-
dom of Leon, came to support an empty title. After this,
the course of the family fortunes was sufficiently uneventful
until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the fam-
ily of Claes, or rather the Douai branch of it, was represented
in the person of M. Balthazar Claes-Molina, Count of Nourho,
8 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
who preferred to style himself simply Balthazar Claes. Oi
all the vast wealth accumulated by his ancestors who had kept
so many looms at work, and set in motion so many wheels of
commerce, there remained to Balthazar an income of about
fifteen thousand livres, derived from landed property in and
around Douai, the house in the Rue de Paris, and its furni-
ture, which was worth a little fortune. As for the estates
in Leon, they had caused a lawsuit between Molina of Flan-
ders and Molina of Spain. The Molinas of Leon gained the
day, and assumed the title of Counts of j^ourho, although
in truth it belonged to the elder branch, the Flemish Claes;
but bourgeois vanity in the Belgian house rose superior to
Castilian pride.
When, therefore, formal designations were registered, Bal-
thazar Claes put off the rags of Spanish nobility to shine
with all the lustre of his descent from citizens of Ghent. The
instinct of patriotism was so strong in the exiled families, that
until the very end of the eighteenth century the Claes re-
mained faithful to family traditions, manners, and customs.
They only married into the most strictly bourgeois families,
requiring a certain number of al.dermeu, burgomasters, or
the like civic dignitaries among the ancestors of the bride-
elect before receiving her among them. Now and then a Claes
would seek a wife in Bruges or Ghent, or as far away as Liege,
or even in Holland, that so the domestic traditions might
be kept up. Their circle became gradually more and more
restricted, until towards the end of the last century it was
limited to some seven or eight families of municipal nobility,
wearers of heavy-hanging, toga-like cloaks, who combined the
dignified gravity of the magistrate with that of the Spanish
grandee, and whose manner of life and habits were in har-
mony with their appearance. The family of Claes was looked
on by the rest of the citizens with a kind of awe that was al-
most superstitious. The unswerving loyalty, the spotless in-
tegrity of the Claes, together with their staid, impressive de-
meanor under all circumstances, had given rise to a sort
of legend of the Claes, and the "Maiaou Claes" was as much
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 9
Pii institution in the city as the Fete de Gayant. The spirit
of old Flanders seemed to fill the old house in the Eue de
Paris, in which lovers of municipal antiquity would find a
perfect example of the unpretending houses which the wealthy
burghers of the Middle Ages built for themselves to dwell in.
The principal adornment of the house front was the great
doorway with its folding leaves of oak, studded with large
nails, arranged in groups of five; in the centre the Claes had
proudly carved their arms, two spindles conjoined. The
pointed archway was of sandstone, and was surmounted by
a little statuette of St. Genevieve with her spindle, set in a
sort of shrine with a cross above it. The delicate carving
about the shrine and the doorway had grown somewhat darker
by the lapse of time ; but so carefully had it been kept by the
owners of the house, that every detail was visible at a pass-
ing glance. The clustered shafts in the jambs on either side
the doorway had preserved their dark gray color, and shone
as if their surfaces had been polished. The windows were all
alike. The sill was supported by a richly-carved bracket, the
window frame was of white stone and in the form of a cross,
so that the window itself was divided into four unequal parts,
the two lower lights being nearly twice the size of the upper.
Each of the upj^er divisions was surmounted by an arch,
which sprang from the height of the central mullion. These
arches consisted of a triple row of bricks, each row jutting
out above the one* beneath it by way of ornament; the bricks
in each row, moreover, alternately projected and receded
about an inch, so as to form a sort of checkered pattern. The
small lozenge-shaped panes were set in exceedingly slender
reticulating bars, which were painted red.
For the sake of added strength a course of white stone was
built at intervals into the brick walls, which were jointed with
white mortar, and the corners of the house were constructed
of white stone quoins.
There were two windows on the ground floor, one on either
side of the door, five in the first story, and but three in the
second, while the third immediately beneath the roof was
10 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
lighted by a single circular window, divided into five com-
partments, and faced with sandstone. This window was set
in the centre of the orable like a rose window over the arched
gateway of a cathedral.
The weathercock on the ridge of the roof was a spindle
tilled with flax. The two sides of the great gable rose step-
wise from the height of the first story, and at this departing
point a grotesque gargoyle on either side discharged the rain-
water from the gutters. All round the base of the house
there ran a projecting course of sandstone like a step.
Finally, on either side, between the window and the door lay
a trap-door, heavily bound and hinged with iron scroll-work,
a relic of the days of yore.
Ever since the house had been built the front had been
carefully scoured twice a year ; not a particle of mortar came
loose or fell out but was immediately replaced. The costliest
marbles- in Paris are not kept so clean and so free from
dust as the window-bars, sills, and outside stonework of this
Flemish dwelling. The whole house front was in perfect
preservation. The color of the surface of the brick might be
somewhat darkened by time, but it was as carefully kept as
an old picture or some book-lover's cherished folio, — treasures
that would never grow old were it not for the noxious gases
distilled by our atmosphere, which no less threaten the lives
of their owners. The clouded skies of Flanders, the damp-
ness of the climate, the absence of light or air caused by the
somewhat narrow street, soon dimmed the glories of this
periodically renewed cleanliness, and, moreover, gave the
house a dreary and depressing look. A poet would have wel-
comed a few blades of grass in the openwork of the little
shrine, and some mosses on the surface of the sandstone ; he
might have wished for a cleft or crack here and there in those
two orderly rows of bricks, so that a swallow might find a
place in which to build her nest beneath the red triple arches
of the windows. There was an excessive neatness and
smoothness about the house front, worn with repeated scour-
ings; an air of sedate propriety and of grim respectability
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 11
which would have driven a Romantic writer out of the oppo-
site house if he had been so ill advised as to take up his abode
there.
When a visitor had pulled the wrought-iron bell-handle
that hung by the side of the door, and a maid-servant from
some inner region had opened the heavy folding-doors, they
fell to again with a clang that echoed up into the lofty roof
of a great paved gallery, and died away in remote murmurs
through the house. You would have thought that the doors
had been made of bronze. From the gallery, which was al-
ways cool, with its walls painted to resemble marble, and
its paved floor strewn with fine sand, you entered a large
square inner court paved with glazed tiles of a greenish color.
To the left lay the kitchens, laundry, and servants' hall ; to
the right the wood-house, the coal-cellars, and various of-
fices. Every window and door '/as ornamented with carving,
which was kept exquisitely spotless and free from dust. The
whole place was shut in by four red walls striped with bars of
white stone, so that the daylight which penetrated into it
seemed in its passage to take a faint red tint, which was re-
flected by every figure, and gave a mysterious charm and
strange unfamiliar look to every least detail.
On the further side of this courtyard stood that portion of
the house in which the family lived, the quartier de derriere,
as they call it in Flanders, a building exactly similar to
the one facing the street. The first room on the ground
floor was a parlor lighted by four windows ; two looked out
upon the courtyard, and two upon a garden, a space of
ground about as large as that on which the house was built.
Access to this garden and to the courtyard was given bv two
opposite glass doors, which occupied the same relative posi-
tion as the street door; so that as soon as a stranger entered,
the whole house lay before him, as well as a distant vista of
the greenery at the further end of the garden beyond it.
Visitors were received in that portion of the house which
looked out upon the street, and strangers were lodged in
apartments in th-c second story; but though these rooms con-
12 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
tained works of art and costly furniture, there was nothing
which, in the eyes of Claes himself, could be compared with
the art treasures that filled the rooms which had been the
centre of family life for centuries, and a discerning taste
would have confirmed his judgment. The historian should
not omit to record of the Claes who died for the cause of
freedom in Ghent, that he had accumulated nearly forty thou-
sand silver marks, gained by the manufacture of sail-cloths
for the all-powerful navy of Venice. The Flemish craftsman
was a man of substance, and had for his friend the celebrated
wood-carver Van Huysium of Bruges. Many times the artist
had had recourse to his friend's purse. When Ghent rose
in revolt. Van Huysium, then himself a wealthy man, had
secretly carved for his old friend a piece of paneling of
massive ebony, on which he had wrought the story of Van
Artevelde, the brewer who for a little while ruled over Flan-
ders. This piece of wood-work consisted of sixty panels, and
contained about fourteen hundred figures; it was considered
to be Van Huysium's masterpiece.
When Charles V. made up his mind to celebrate his entry
into the city which gave him birth by hanging twenty-six
of its burghers, the victims were consigned to the custody
of a captain, who (so it was said) had offered to connive at
Claes' escape in return for these panels of Van Huysium's,
but the weaver had previously sent them into France.
The parlor in the house in the Eue de Paris was wainscoted
entirely Mnth these panels. Van Huysium, out of respect
for the memory of the martyr, had come himself to set them
in their wooden framework, painted with ultramarine, and
covered with a gilded network, so that this is the most com-
plete example of a master whose least fragments are now
worth their weight in gold. Titian's portrait of Claes in
the robes that he wore as President of the Tribunal des
Parchons looked down from the chimney-piece; he still
seemed to be the head of the family which regarded him with
veneration as its great man. The chimney-piece, itself
originally plain stone, had been reconstructed of white marble
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 13
during the eighteenth century. A venerable timepiece stood
upon the ledge between two five-branched candle sconces,
tortuous, elaborate, and in the worst possible taste, but all
of massive silver. The four windows were draped with crim-
son brocaded damask curtains, covered with a dark flowered
pattern, and lined with white silk; the furniture had been
re-covered with the same material in the time of Louis XIV.
The polished 'floor was evidently modern — large squares of
white wood, with slips of oak inserted between them, but the
ceiling yet preserved the peculiarly deep hues of Dutch oak.
Perhaps it had been respected because Van Huysium had
carved the masks on the medallions bordered with scrolls
which adorned it.
In each of the four corners of the parlor stood a short col-
umn, with a five-branched silver sconce upon it, like those
upon the chimney-piece, and a round table occupied the
centre of the room. Several card-tables were ranged along
the walls with much precision ; and on the white marble slabs
of two gilded console tables stood, at the time when this story
begins, two glass globes full of water, in which gold and sil-
ver fish were swimming above a bed of sand and shells.
The room was sombre, and yet aglow with color. The ceil-
ing of dark oak seemed to absorb the light, and to give none
of it back into the room. If the sunlight pouring in from
the windows that looked out into the garden scintillated
from every polished ebony figure on the opposite wall, the
light admitted from the courtyard was always so faint that
even the gold network on the other side looked dim in the
perpetual twilight.
A bright day brought out all the glories of the place ; but,
for the most part, its hues were subdued and soft, and like
the sombre browns and reds of autumn forests, they took
brighter hues only in the sun. It is unnecessary to describe
the "Maison Claes" at further length. Many of the scenes
in the course of this story will, of course, take place in other
parts of the house, but it will be sufficient for the present
to have some idea of its general arrangement.
14 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
On a Sunday afternoon towards the end of August, in the
year 1812, a woman was sitting in a large easy-chair by one
of the windows that looked out on the garden. It was after
the time of vespers. The rays of sunlight falling en the side
of the house slanted across the room in broad beams, played
with fantastic effect on the opposite wall, and died away
among the sombre ebony figures of the panels; but the
woman sat in the purple shadow cast by the damask curtain.
A painter of mediocre ability could not have failed to make
a striking picture if he had faithfully portra3'ed a face with
*so sad and wistful an expression. The woman was sitting
with her feet stretched out before her in a listless attitude;
apparently she had lost all consciousness of her physical ex-
istence, and one all-absorbing thought had complete posses-
sion of her mind, a thought which seemed to open up the
paths of the future just as a ray of sunlight piercing through
the clouds lights up a gleaming path on the horizon of the
sea. Her hands hung over the arms of the chair; her head,,
as though it bore a load of thought too heavy, had fallen
back against the cushions. She wore a loose cambric gown,
very simply made; the scarf about her shoulders was care-
lessly knotted on her breast, so that the lines of her figure
were almost concealed. Apparently she preferred to call at-
tention to her face rather than to her person ; and it was a
face which, even if it had not been brought into strong re-
lief by the light, would have arrested and fixed the attention
of any beholder, for its expression of dull, hopeless misery
would have struck the most heedless child. Nothing is more
terrible to witness than such anguish as this in one who
seldom gives way to it ; the burning tears that fell from time
to time seemed like the fier}^ lava flood of a volcano. So
might a dying mother weep who is compelled to leave her
children in the lowest depths of wretchedness without a single
human protector.
The lady seemed to be about forty years of age. She was
more nearly beautiful now than she had ever been in her girl-
hood. Clearly she was no daughter of the land. Her hair
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 15
was thick and black, and fell in curls over her shoulders and
about her face; her forehead was very prominent, narrow
at the temples, sallow in hue, but the black eyes flashed fire
from beneath her brows, and she had the dark pallor of the
typical Spaniard. The perfect oval of her face attracted a
second glance; the ravages of smallpox had destroyed the
delicacy of its outlines, but had not marred its graciousness
and dignity; at times it seemed as if the soul had power to
restore to it all its pristine purity of form. If pride of birth
was revealed in the thick tightly folded lips, there was also*
natural kindliness and graciousness in their expression; but
the feature which gave most distinction to a masculine type
of face was an aquiline nose. Its curve was somewhat too
strongly marked, the result, apparently, of some interior de-
fect; but there was a subtle refinement in its outlines, in the
thin septum and fine transparent nostrils that glowed in the
light with a bright red. She was a woman who might, or
might not, be considered beautiful, but no one could fail to
notice the vigorous yet feminine head.
She was short, lame, and deformed; she had married later
than women usually do, and this partly because it was in-
sisted that her slow-wittedness was stupidity; yet more than
one man had read the indications of ardent passion and of in-
exhaustible tenderness in her face, and had fallen completely
under the spell of a charm that was difficult to reconcile with
so many defects. She bore in many ways a strong resemblance
to the Spanish grandee, her ancestor the Duke of Casa-Eeal.
Perhaps the force of the charm which romantic natures had
erewhile found so tyrannous, the power of a fascination that
sways men's hearts, but is powerless to rule their destinies,
had never in her life been greater than now, when it was
wasted, so to speak, on empty space. She seemed to be watch-
ing the gold fish in the glass before her, but in truth her eyes
saw nothing, and she raised them from time to time, as if
imploring Heaven in despair ; it would seem that such trouble
as hers could be confided to God alone.
The room was perfectly silent save for the chirping of the
16 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
crickets without; the shrill notes of a few cicadas came in
with a breath of hot air from the little garden, which was
like a furnace in the afternoon sun. From a neighboring
room there came smothered sounds; silver or china rattled,
or chairs were moved, as the servants laid the cloth for dinner.
Suddenly the lady started and seemed to listen; she took
her handkerchief, dried her eyes, and endeavored to smile;
so successfully did she efface all traces of sorrow, that from
her seeming serenity it might have been thought that she
had never known an anxiety or a care in her life. It was
the sound of a man's footstep that had wrought the change.
It echoed in the long gallery built over the kitchens and the
servants' quarters, which united the front part of the house
with the back portion in which the family lived. Whether
it was because weak health had so long confined her to the
house that she could recognize the least noise in it at once;
or because a highly-wrought temperament ever on the watch
can detect sounds that are imperceptible to ordinary ears ; or
because nature, in compensation for so many physical disad-
vantages, had bestowed a gift of sense-perception seldom ac-
corded to human beings apparently more happily constituted ;
this sense of hearing was abnormally acute in her. The sound
of the footsteps came nearer and nearer. And soon, not only
for an impassioned soul such as hers, which can annihilate
time and space at will that so it may find its other self, but
for any stranger, a man's step on the staircase wliich led to
the parlor was audible enough.
There was something in the sound of that footstep which
would have struck the most careless mortal ; it was impossible
to hear it with indifference. We are excited by the mere
sounds of hurry or flight; when a man springs up and raises
the alarm of "Fire !" his feet are at least as eloquent as his
tongue, and the impression left by a slow measured tread
is every whit as powerful. The deliberate, heavy, lagging
footfall in the gallery would no doubt have irritated im-
patient people ; but a nervous person, or an observer of human
nature, could scarcely have heard it without feeling a thrill
I'HE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 17
of something very like dread. Was there any life in those
feet that moved so mechanically ? It was a dull, heavy sound,
as if the floor boards had been struck by an iron weight. The
slow, uncertain step called up visions of a man bending under
a load of years, or of a thinker walking majestically beneath
the weight of worlds. The man reached the lowest stair, and
set foot upon the pavement slowly and irresolutely. In the
great hall he paused for a moment. A passage led thence to
the servants' quarters, a door concealed in the wainscot gave
admittance to the parlor, and through a second parallel door
you entered the dining-room.
A light tremor, caused by a sensation like an electric shock,
ran through the frame of the woman in the easy-chair; but
a sweet smile trembled on her lips, her face lighted up with
eager expectation, and grew fair and radiant like the face of
an Italian Madonna. She summoned all her strength, and
forced back her terrors into some inner depth; then she
turned and looked towards the door set in the panels in the
corner of the parlor; it flew open so suddenly that the start-
ling sound was quite sufficient to account for and to cover her
agitation.
Balthazar Claes appeared and made several paces forward;
he either .did not look at the woman in the low chair, or if
he looked at her, it was with unseeing eyes. He stood up-
right in the middle of the parlor, his head slightly bent, and
supported by his right hand. The smile faded from the
woman's face ; her heart was pierced by a horrible pang, felt
none the less keenly because it had come to be a part of her
daily experience, her dark brows contracted with pain, deep-
ening lines already traced there by the frequent expression
of strong feeling, and her eyes filled with tears, which she
hastily brushed away, as she looked at Balthazar.
There was something exceedingly impressive about the
head of the house oi Claes. In his younger days he had
borne a strong resemblance to the heroic martyr who had
threatened to play the part of Artevelde and defied the
Emperor, Charles V, ; but at the present moment the man of
18 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
fifty or thereabouts might have been sixty years of age and
more; and with the beginnings of a premature old age, the
likeness to his great-minded ancestor had ceased. His tall
figure was slightly bent ; perhaps he had contracted the habit
by stooping over his books, or perhaps the curvature was due
to the weight of a head over-heavy for the spine. He was
broad-chested and square-shouldered; his lower extremities,
though muscular, were thin; j^ou could not help casting about
for some explanation of this puzzling singularity in a frame
which evidently had once been perfectly proportioned. His
thick, fair hair fell carelessly over his shoulders in the Ger-
man fashion, in a disorder which was quite in keeping with
a strange air of slovenliness and general neglect. His fore-
head was broad and high; the prominence of the region to
which Gall has assigned Ideality was very strongly marked.
The clear, dark-blue eyes seemed to have a power of keen and
quick vision, a characteristic often noted in students of occult
sciences. The shape of the nose had doubtless once been per-
fect ; it was very long, the nostrils had apparently grown wider
by involuntary tension of the muscles in the continual ex-
ercise of the sense of smell. The hollows in a face which was
beginning to age seemed all the deeper by force of contrast
with the high cheek-bones, thickly covered with short hair.
The mouth with its gracious outlines seemed, as it were, to be
imprisoned between the nose and a short, sharply tumed-up
chin.
Certain theorists, who have a fancy for discerning animal
resemblances in human countenances, would have seen in the
long, rather than oval, face of Balthazar Claes a likeness to
the head of a horse. There was no softness or roundness
about its outlines ; the skin was tightly drawn over the bones
as if it had shrunk under the scorching influence of a fire
that burned within ; there were moments when the eyes looked
out into space as if seeking for the realization of his hopes,
and at such times this fire that consumed him seemed to
escape from his nostrils.
There are deep thoughts which seem to be living forces
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 19
of which great men are the embodiment; some such thought
seemed to be visibly expressed in the pale face with its deeply-
carved wrinkles, to have scored the furrows on a brow like
that of some old king full of cares, and to shine forth
most clearly from the brilliant eyes ; the fire in them seemed
to be fed by the temperate life which is the result of the
tyrannous discipline of great ideas, and by the fires of a
mighty intelligence. They were deeply set and surrounded
by dark circles, which seemed to tell of long vigils and of
terrible prostration of mind consequent on reiterated disap-
pointments, of hopes that sprang up anew only to be blighted,
of wear and tear of body and mind. Art and Science are
jealous divinities; their devotees betray themselves by un-
mistakable signs. There was a dreamy abstractedness and
aloofness in Balthazar Claes' manner and bearing which was
quite in keeping with the magnificent head so lacking in
human quality. His large hands, covered with hair, were
soiled ; there were jet-black lines at the tips of the long finger
nails. There was an air of slovenliness about the master of
the house which would not have been tolerated in any of its
other inmates.
His shoes were seldom cleaned, or the laces were broken
or missing. His black cloth breeches were covered with stains,
buttons were lacking on his waistcoat, his cravat was askew,
his coat had assumed a greenish tint, here and there the seams
had given way; everything about him, down to the smallest
trifle, combined to produce an uncouth effect, which in an-
other would have indicated the lowest depths of outcast
misery, but in Balthazar Claes it was the neglect of genius.
Vice and genius bring about results so similar that
ordinary people are often misled by them. What is genius
but a form of excess which consumes time and money and
health and strength? It is an even shorter road to the hos-
pital than the path of the prodigal. Men, moreover, appear
to pay more respect to vice than to genius; for they decline
to give it credit or credence. It would seem that genius con-
!'erns itself with aims so fax remote, that society is shy of cast-
20 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUT©
ing accounts with it in its lifetime; such poverty and
wretchedness are clearly unpardonable. Society prefers to
have nothing to do with genius.
Yet there were moments when it would have been hard to
refuse admiration to Balthazar Claes — moments when, in
spite of his absent-mindedness and mysterious preoccupa-
tion, some impulse drew him to his fellows, and the face of
the thinker was lighted up by a kindly thought expressed
in the eyes, the hard light in them disappeared, and he looked
round him and returned (so to speak) to life and its realities ;
at such times there was an attractive beauty in his face, a
gracious spirit looked forth from it. Any one who saw him
then would regret that such a man should lead the life of a
hermit, and add that "he must have been very handsome in
his youth." A vulgar error. Balthazar Claes had never
looked more interesting than at this moment. Lavater would
certainly have studied the noble head, have recognized the
unwearying patience, the stainless character, the steadfast
loyalty of the Fleming, the great and magnanimous nature,
the power of passion that seemed calm because it was strong.
Such a man would have been a constant and devoted friend,
his morals would have been pure, his word sacred; all these
qualities should have been dedicated to the service of his coun-
try, to his own circle of friends, and to his family ; it was the
will of the man which had given them a fatal misdirection;
and the citizen, the responsible head of a household and dis-
poser of a large fortune, who should have been the guide of
his children towards a fair future, lived apart in a world of
his own in converse with a familiar spirit, a world in which
his duties and affections counted for nothing. A priest
would have seen in him a man inspired by God, an artist
would have hailed him as a great master, an enthusiast
might have taken him for some seer after the pattern of
Swedenborg.
As he stood by the window, his ragged, disordered, and
threadbare costume was in strange contrast with the graceful
dainty attire of the womaai "vho watched him so sadly. A"
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 21
nice taste in dress often distinguishes persons of mental
ability or refinement of soul who suffer from bodily deformity.
They are conscious that their beauty is the beauty of mind
and soul, and are content to dress simply, or they discover
how to divert attention from their physical defects by a
studied elegance in every detail. And the woman in the low
chair had not only a generous soul, but she loved Balthazar
Claes with that woman's intuition which is a foretaste of the
intelligence of angels. She had been brought up in one of
the noblest families of Belgium, so that even if her taste had
not been instinctive it would have been acquired ; and, tutored
since then by her desire to please the eyes of the man she
loved, she had learned to dress herself admirably, and to
adopt a style which subdued the effect of her deformity.
Moreover, although one shoulder was certainly larger than
the other, there was no other defect in her figure. She
glanced through the window into the courtyard, and then into
the garden, as if to make sure that no one was within hear-
ing, turned meekly to Balthazar, and spoke in the low tones
that Flemish women use, for the love between these two had
long since conquered Castilian pride.
"YovL must be very deep in your work, Balthazar? This
is the thirty-third Sunday since you have been to mass or
vespers."
Claes made no reply. His wife bowed her head, clasped
her hands, and waited, watching him the while. She knew
that his silence was due neither to contempt nor to indiffer-
ence, but to the tyranny of an all-absorbing thought. In
the depths of some natures the sensitive delicacy of youth
lingers long after youth has departed, and Balthazar Claes
would have shrunk from uttering any thought that might
vvound, however slightly, a woman who was always oppressed
with the painful consciousness of her physical deformity. And
this dread was ever present with him. He understood, as few
men do, how a word or a single glance has power to efface the
happiness of whole years; nay, that such words have a more
cruel power, because they are utterly at variance with the
22 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
constant tenderness of the past ; for we are so made that out
happiness makes us more keenly sensitive to pain, while sor-
row has no such power of intensifying a transitory gleam of
joy. After a few moments, Balthazar roused himself, gave
a quick glance round him, and said, "Vespers ? . . . Ah !
the children have gone to vespers."
He stepped towards the window, and looked out into the
garden, where the tulips blazed in all their glory. Then he
stopped suddenly, as if he had come into collision with a wall,
and exclaimed, "Why should they not combine in a given
time?"
"Can he be going mad ?" his terrified wife asked herself.
If the reader is to understand the interest of this scene,
and the Situation out of which it arose, it will be necessary
to glance over the previous history of Balthazar Claes and
of the granddaughter of the Duke of Casa-Eeal.
Towards the end of the year 1783, M. Balthazar Claes-
Molina de Nourho, then twenty-two years of age, might have
passed for a "fine gentleman," as we say in France. He had
just completed his education in Paris; his manners had been
formed in the society of Mme. d'Egmont, a set composed
of Frenchmen who came originally of Belgian families, or of
Belgians distinguished either by birth or by fortune. Great
nobles and persons of the highest fashion, such as the Count
of Horn, the Prince of Aremberg, the Spanish Ambassador,
and Helvetius were among the Belgian residents in Paris. The
young Claes had relations and friends there who introduced
him into the great world, just as the great world was about
to return to chaos; but, like many young men, he was at-
tracted at first by glory and by knowledge rather than by
frivolity. He frequented the society of learned men, waxed
enthusiastic for science, and became an ardent disciple
of Lavoisier, who was then better known for the vast fortune
he had acquired as farmer-geiieral of taxes than for the
scientific discoveries wbich were to make the name of the
great chemist famous long after the farmer-general was for-
gotten.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 23
But Claes was yonng, and as hanrlsoine as Helvetius, and
Lavoisier was not his on!}'- instructor. Under the tuition of
women in Paris he soon learned to distil the more volatile
elixirs of wit and gallantry; and although he had previously
thrown himself into his studies with an enthusiasm that had
won the commendations of his master, he deserted Lavoisier's
laboratory to take final lessons in savior-vivre under the
guidance of the arbitresses of good manners and good taste,
the queens of the high society which forms a sort of family
all over Europe.
These intoxicating dreams of success did not last long,
however; Balthazar Claes breathed the air of Paris for a
while; and then, in no long time, he turned his back on
the capital, wearied b}^ the empty life, which had nothing
in it to satisfy an enthusiastic and affectionate nature. It
seemed to him that the quiet happiness of family life, a vision
called up by the very name of his native Flanders, was the
life best suited to his character and to the aspirations of his
heart. The gilding of Parisian salons had not effaced old
memories of the sombre harmonies of the parlor in the old
house in Douai, of the little garden, and the happy days of
his childhood.
Those who would fain dwell in Paris should have no ties
of home or of fatherland. Paris is the chosen city of the
cosmopolitan, or of those who are wedded to social ambition ;
by means of art, science, or political power, they gain a hold
on the world which they never relax.
The child of Flanders went back to the house in Douai as
La Fontaine's pigeon flew home to its nest. It was the day
of the Fete Gayant, and tears came into his eyes at the sight
of the procession. Gayant, the Luck of the city, the embodi-
ment of the spirit of old Flemish traditions, had been intro-
duced into Douai since his family had been driven to take
refuge there. The Maison Claes was empty and silent; his
father and mother had died during his absence, and for some
time family affairs required his presence there.
After the first sorrow for his loss his thoughts turned to
24 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
marriage. AH the sacred ties -which boimd him to his home
and the pieties of the hearth had reawakened a strong desire
in him to complete the happy existence of which he had
dreamed; he determined to do as his forefathers had done,
and went to Ghent, to Bruges, and to Antwerp in search of a
bride. He probably had ideas of his own as to marriage,
for it had always been said of him from his earliest youth
that he never could keep to the beaten track, or do as other
people did.
It so fell out that one day while on a visit to one of his rela-
tions in Ghent, he heard of a young lady in Brussels concern-
ing whom opinions differed considerably. Some considered
that Mile. Temninck's beauty was quite spoiled by her de-
formity, others hotly insisted that she was perfection. Among
these last was Balthazar Claes' somewhat elderly cousin, who
told his guests that, beautiful or no. Mile. Temninck had a
Boul whicli would have induced him to marry her if he had
been choosing a wife. And with that he told how she had
given up all her claims on the family estates so that her
younger brother might make a marriage befitting his rank
and name ; thus setting his happiness before her own, and sac-
rificing her life to him, for it was scarcely to be expected
that Mile. Temninck would marry now that she had no for-
tune and the bloom of youth was past, when no suitor had
presented himself for the heiress in her girlhood.
A few days later Balthazar Claes had obtained an intro-
duction to Mile. Temninck, now a woman of twenty-five years
of age, and had fallen deeply in love with her. Josephine
de Temninck chose to regard this as a passing fancy, and re-
fused to listen to M. Claes; but the influence of passion is
very subtle, and in this love for her in a man who had youth
and good looks, and a straight, well-knit frame, there wns
something so attractive to the poor lame and deformed girl
that she yielded to it.
Could a whole volume suffice to tell the story of the lov
that thus dawned in the girl's heart? The world had pro-
nounced her to be plain, and she had meekly acquiesced in
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 25
the decision, conscious though she was of possessing the ir-
resistible charm which calls forth true and lasting love. And
now at the prospect of happiness, what fierce jealousy awoke
in her, what wild projects of vengeance if a rival stole a
glance, what agitations and fears such as seldom fall to the
lot of women, which cannot but lose by being passed over in
a few brief words ! The analysis must be minute. Doubt, the
dramatic element in love, would be the keynote of a story in,
which certain souls would find once more the poetry of those
early days of uncertainty, long since lost but not forgotten;
the ecstasy in the depths of the heart which the face never
betrays, the fear of not being understood, and the unspeak-
able joy of a swift response; the misgivings which lead the
soul to shrink within itself; the moments when, as if drawn
forth by some magnetic power, the soul reveals itself in the
eyes by infinite subtle shades; wild thoughts of suicide that
arise at a word, only to be laid to rest by a tone in a voice
whose vibrations reveal unsuspected depths of feeling;
tremulous glances full of terrible audacity; swift, passionate
longings to speak or act rendered powerless by their very
vehemence; communings of soul with soul in commonplace
phrases which owe all their eloquence to the faltering of the
voice; mysterious workings of that divine discretion and
modesty of soul which is generous in the shade, and finds ex-
quisite delight in sacrifices which can never be recognized;
youthful love, in short, with the weaknesses of its strength.
Mile. Josephine de Temninck was a coquette through lofti-
ness of soul. The painful consciousness of her deformity
made her as unapproachable and hard to please as the pret-
tiest of women. She dreaded that a day would come when
her lover would cease to care for her, and the thought
awakened her pride and destroyed her confidence in her-
self. With stoical firmness, she locked away in her inmost
heart the first feelings of happiness in which other women
love to deck themselves in the ej^es of the world. The more
love drew her to Balthazar Claes, the less she dared to give
expression to love. A glance, a gesture, a question, or -d
26 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
response from a pretty woman would have been flattering to
a man ; but for her, was not any advance a humiliating specu-
lation ? A pretty woman can be herself, people look leniently
on her follies or mistakes; but a single glance has power to
stop the play of expression on a plain woman's features, to
make her still more timid, shy, and awkward. Does she
not know that she of all women can afford no blunders ; that
no indulgence will be extended to her; nay, that no one will
give her any opportunity of repairing them? She must al-
ways be faultless; does not the thought chill and dishearten
her while the constant strain exhausts her powers? Such a
woman can only live in an atmosphere of divine indulgence,
and where can the hearts be found in which indulgence is
not poisoned by a lurking taint of pity ?
There is a sort of consideration more painful to sensitive
souls than even positive unkindness, for it aggravates their
misfortunes by continually giving them prominence. The
cruel politeness of society was intolerable to Mile, de Tem-
ninck. She schooled herself into self-possession, forced back
into some inner depth the most beautiful thoughts that arose
in her soul, and took refuge in an icy reserve of manner and
bearing. She only dared to love in secret, and was eloquent
or charming only in solitude. She was plain and insignifi-
cant in broad daylight, but she would have been a beautiful
women if she could have lived by candle-light. Not seldom
she had made perilous trials of Balthazar's love, risking her
whole happiness to be the surer of it, disdaining the aid of
dress and ornaments, by which the effect of deformity could be
softened or concealed, and the Spaniard's eyes grew full of
witchery when she saw that even thus she was beautiful for
Balthazar Claes.
Yet even the rare moments when she ventured to give her-
self up to the joy of being loved were embittered by distrust
and fears. Before long she began to ask herself whether Claet?
wished to marry her that he might have a docile slave,
whether he had not some defect which made him content to
wed a poor deformed girl. The doubts and anxieties which
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 2T
continually harassed licr made those hours unspeakably pre-
cious, in which she felt sure that this was a true and lasting
love which should make her amends for all the slights of the
world. She provoked discussions on the delicate subject of
her own plainness, dwelling upon it and exaggerating it that
she might the better probe her lover's nature, and came in
this way by some truths but little flattering; yet she loved
him for the perplexity in which he found himself when she
had led him on to say that a woman is most beloved for a
beautiful soul and for the devotion which makes the days of
life flow on in quiet happiness; that after a few years of
marriage a wife may be the loveliest woman on earth or the
plainest, it makes no difl^erence to her husband. In support
of this theory he had heaped together such truth as lies in
various paradoxical assertions that beauty is of very little
consequence, till he suddenly became aware of the ungracious-
ness of his arguments. All the goodness of his heart was re-
vealed by the tact and delicacy with which he gradually
changed his ground and made Mile. Temninck understand
that for him she was perfect.
Perhaps, in a woman, devotion is the highest height of
love. Devotion was not wanting in this girl who did not dare
to hope that love would not fail. She felt attracted by the
prospect of a struggle in which sentiment was to triumph
over beauty; there was something great, she thought, in giv-
ing herself to love with no blind faith that love would last;
and finally, this happiness, brief as it might prove, must cost
her so dear that she could not refuse to taste it. These ques-
tionings and inward struggles gave all the charm, all the
varying moods of passion to this exalted nature, and inspired
in Balthazar a love that was almost chivalrous.
The marriage took place in the beginning of the year 1795.
They went back to Douai to spend the first weeks of their
married life in the ancestral home of the Claes. The household
treasures there had been increased. Mile, de Temninck
brought with her several fine paintings by Murillo and Velas-
quez, her mother's diamonds, and the splendid wedding pres-
28 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
ents sent by her brother, who had siieeeeded to the title, and
was now Duke of Casa-Real. Few women were as happy as
Mme. Claes. There was not the slightest cloud in the happi-
ness that lasted for fifteen years, a happiness that, like a
bright light, transformed even the most trivial details of daily
life.
In most men there are inequalities of character which
cause continual dissonances, small weaknesses that lead to
bickerings, till the harmony of domestic life is spoiled, and
the fair ideals perish. One man may be conscientious and
hardworking, but he is hard and stern; another is good-
natured but obstinate;. a third will love his wife sincerely,
but he never knows his own mind; while a fourth is so ab-
sorbed in his ambitions that he looks on affection as a debt
to be discharged, and if he gives all the vanities of fortune
he takes all joy out of the day.
Mediocrity, in short, is by its very nature incomplete,
though its sins of omission and commission are not heinous.
Clever folk are as changeable as the barometer, genius alone
is essentially good. Perfect happiness is accordingly only to
be found at either extreme of the intellectual scale; there is
a like equability of temperament in the good-natured idiot
and in the man of genius, arising in the one case from weak-
ness, and in the other from strength of character. Both
are capable of a constant sweetness of temper, which softens
the roughnesses of life. In the one its source is an easy-
natured tolerance, and in the other it springs from in-
dulgence; a man of genius, moreover, is the interpreter of a
sublime thought, which cannot fail to bring his whole life
into conformity with itself. Both natures are simple and
transparent; the one because of its shallowness, the other
by reason of its depth. Clever women, therefore, are suffi-
ciently ready to take a dunce as the best substitute for a
man of genius.
Balthazar's greatness of character showed itself from the
first in the most trivial details of life. Conjugal love was
a magnificent thing in his eyes; he determined to develop all
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 29
its beauty; and, like all powerful characters, he could not
bear that there should be any falling short in attainment.
His ingenuity continually varied the calm monotony of hap-
piness, and everything that he did bore the stamp of a noble
nature. For instance, although he was in sympathy with the
philosophical movement of the eighteenth century, he in-
stalled a priest in his household until the year 1801 (a step
which laid him open to the severe penalties of the Revolu-
tionary code), humoring the bigoted Catholicism which his
Spanish wife had imbibed with her mother's milk. After the
Eoman Catholic worship was restored in France, he went
with her every Sunday to mass.
His attachment never quitted the forms of passion. He
never asserted the protecting power that women love so well
to feel, because to his wife it would have seemed like pity.
On the contrary, by a most ingenious form of flattery he
treated her as his equal, and would break into playful re-
bellion against her authority, as a man will sometimes permit
himself to set the power of a pretty woman at defiance. A
smile of happiness always hovered upon his lips, and his tones
were unvaryingly gentle.
He loved his Josephine for her sake and for his own with
a warmth and intensity which is a constant tribute to the
beauty and the character of a wife. Fidelity, often the re-
sult of social, religious, or interested considerations, seemed
in his case to be involuntary, and was always accompanied
by the sweet flatteries of the springtime of love. Duty was
the sole obligation of marriage which was unknown to these
two equally loving beings, for Balthazar Claes found in Jo-
sephine de Temninck a constant and complete realization of
his hopes. His heart was always satisfied to the full ; he was
always happy, and never weary of his happiness. As might
have been expected, the granddaughter of the house of Casa-
Real, with her Spanish blood, possessed the secret of an "in-
finite variety," but she had no less a capacity for a limitless
devotion, and a woman's genius lies in devotion, as all her
beauty consists in grace.- Her love was a blind fanaticism;
60 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
at a sign from him she would have gone joyfully to her death
Balthazar's delicacy had brought out all the womanly gen-
erosity of her nature, and she longed to give more than she
received. This mutual exchange of a happiness which each
in turn lavished upon the other, visibly centered her life with-
out her, and filled her words, her looks, and actions with a
love that only grew stronger with time. On all sides grati-
tude enriched and varied the life of the heart, just as the cer-
tainty that each lived only for the other made littleness im-
possible, and the least accessories of such a life ceased to be
trivialities.
But in the whole feminine creation are there any happier
woman than the deformed wife who is not crooked for the
eyes she loves, the lame woman when her husband would not
have her other than she is, and the wife grown old and gray
who is still young for him? Human passion can go no fur-
ther than this. When a woman is adored for what is usually
regarded as a defect, is not this her greatest glory? It is
easy to forget in a moment's fascination that a woman does
not walk straight ; but when she is loved because she is lame,
it is the apotheosis of her infirmity. In the evangel of women
these words should perhaps be written, "Blessed are the imper-
fect, for theirs is the Jcingdom of love." And of a truth beauty
must be a misfortune for a woman, for the flower of beauty
that withers so soon counts for so much in the feeling that she
inspires ; is she not loved for her beauty as an heiress is wedded
for her gold? But a woman without this perishable dower,
after which the children of Adam seek so eagerly, knows the
love that is love indeed, the inmost mystery of passion, the
union of soul with soul. The day of disillusion can never
come for her. Her charm is not recognized by the world,
she owes it no allegiance, and is fair for one alone ; and when
she makes it her glory that her defects should be forgotten^
she cannot but succeed in her aim.
Accordingly, the best loved women in history have been
by no means perfectly beautiful for ordinary eyes ; Cleopatra^
Joanna of Naples, Diana of Poitiers, Mile, de la Valliere.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 31
Madame de Pompadour, and nearly all women famous
throughout the world for the love which they once inspired,
have had their defects and shortcomings, while others of
whom it is recorded that there was no flaw in their loveliness
have over and over again seen love end in piteous tragedy.
Do mankind live, after all, rather by sentiment than by pleas-
ure? Perhaps there is a limit to the charm of mere physical
beauty, while the beauty of the soul is infinite? Is not thi>.
the moral of the tale which forms a setting to the Arabian
Nights? If Henry VIII. had found a hard-featured wife,
she might have defied the axe, and retained the wandering
fancy of her royal master.
Mme. Claes was ill-educated, a curious circumstance, but
explainable enough in the daughter of a Spanish grandee.
She could read and write, but until her parents took her from
the convent where her girlhood was spent (that is to say,
until she was twenty years old) she had read nothing but the
works of religious ascetics. On her entrance into society,
and for a little while after, she had been too eager for amuse-
ment to learn anything but the frivolous arts of the toilette;
and later, she had been so deeply mortified by her ignorance,
that she never ventured to take any part in conversation, and
was set down in consequence as an unintelligent girl. But
one result of her neglected and mystical education had been
that her natural capacities for thought and feeling had been
unspoiled. In society she was as plain and uninteresting as
an hekess; but for her husband she grew beautiful and
thoughtful.
Balthazar made some attempt, it is true, in the early years
of their marriage to teach his wife, so that she might not feel
at a disadvantage in this wa}'-, but doubtless he was too late,
for Josephine had no memory save that of the heart. She
never forgot a syllable that he let fall concerning themselves ;
every least detail of their happy life was fresh in her mind,
w-hile yesterday's lesson was forgotten. This invincible ig-
norance might have brought about serious discords between
many a husband and wife ; but Mme. Claes' love for her hus-
32 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
band was almost a religion, and the intuition of passionate
love and desire to preserve her happiness had made her quick-
witted. She so contrived matters that she always appeared
to understand, and her ignorance was very seldom too ap-
parent. Not only so, but when two love each other so well
that every day seems for them the first day of their love, such
vital happiness has a marvelous power of transforming the
whole conditions of life. Does it not become like childhood,
careless of everything that is not love or joy and laughter?
While the life stirs in us, and its fires burn fiercely, we let
it burn unthriftily, nor set ourselves to measure the means
or the end. For the rest, Mme. Claes understood her posi-
tion as a wife better than any daughter of Eve. Her char-
acter was a piquant combination of Spanish pride with the
submissiveness of the Flamande which makes the domestic
hearth so attractive. She was dignified; she could command
respect by a glance which revealed a consciousness of her own
value and her high descent, but before Claes she trembled.
She had set her husband so on high, so near to God, that
the thought of what he would say or think controlled her
ever}'' thought or action, and her love had come to have a
tinge of awe which heightened it. She had made it a point
of honor to maintain the old Flemish bourgeois traditions of
the house; she had prided herself on the plenty and comfort
of her housekeeping, on the classic cleanliness of every de-
tail ; everything must be of the best, every dish at dinner must
be exquisitely cooked and served. She so ruled things- in her
household that all their outer life was in harmony with the
life of the heart.
They had two boys and two girls. The oldest child, a girl
named Marguerite, was born in 1796; the youngest, a three-
year-old boy, they had called Jean Balthazar. Motherly love
was almost as strong in Mme. Claes as her affection for
her husband. Sometimes, especially in the last years of her
life, there was a cruel struggle between love for her husband
and love for her children, when two claims upon her heart
so nearljr equal had become in some sort antagonistic. This
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 33
was the domestic drama hidden away in the sleepy old house,
and in the scene with which the story opens her tears and
the anguish on her face were caused by a fear that she had
sacrificed her children to her husband.
In 1805 Mme. Claes' brother had died leaving no children.
His sister, according to Spanish law, could not inherit the
estates, which passed with the title to the heir-at-law; but
the Duke had left to her about sixty thousand ducats, and
the representative of the younger branch of the house did
not challenge the will. No thought of interest had ever'
mingled with their love; yet Josephine found a certain satis-
faction in the thought that her fortune now equaled that of
her husband, and was glad that in her turn she brought some-
thing to him from whom she had been generously content
to receive everything. So it chanced that Balthazar's mar-
riage, which prudent people had condemned, turned out to
be a good match from a worldly point of view.
It was a sufficiently difficult problem to know what to do
with the money. The Maison Claes was so rich in treasures
of art, in pictures and valuable furniture, that it was scarcely
possible to find anything worthy of being added to such a
collection, formed by the taste of their ancestors. The noble
collection of pictures had been begun by one generation and
completed by those that followed, a love of art having thus
become a family tradition. There were fifty paintings in the
state apartments on the first floor, and in the long gallery
which connected those rooms with the quarter in which the
family lived there were more than a hundred famous pic-
tures by Eubens, Euysdael, Van Dyck, Terburg, Gerard Dow,
Teniers, Mieris, Paul Potter, Wouverman, Eembrandt, Hob-
bema, Cranach, and Holbein. Three centuries of patient re-
search had assembled them. Examples of the French and
Italian schools were in the minority, but nevertheless they
were all of them genuine and of capital importance.
Another generation had been amateurs of Oriental porce-
lain. Some Claes, long dead and gone, had been an enthu-
siastic collector of old furniture or of silver plate ; Balthazar a
34 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
own father, the last survivor of the once famous Dutch so-
ciety, had bequeathed to his son one of the finest known col-
lections of tulips; there was not a Claes but had left some
trace of his ruling passion, and every Fleming is a born col-
lector. The old house was superbly furnished with heir-
looms, which represented vast sums of money. Without, it
was as smooth and bare as a sea-shell, and like a shell it was
decked within with fair colors and radiant mother-of-pearl.
Balthazar Claes also possessed a country house in the plain
of Orchies. So far from adopting the French plan and liv-
ing up to his income, he never spent more than one-fourth
of it, following old Batavian usages. This put him on the
same footing as the wealthiest persons in Douai, for their
yearly expenditure never exceeded twelve hundred ducats.
In the days when the Civil Code became the law of the
land, the wisdom of this course was abundantly evident. By
virtue of the clause des Successions, which divides the estate
in equal shares among the children, each child's share would
have been small, and the treasures stored for so long in the
house of Claes must have one day been dispersed. With his
wife's concurrence Balthazar invested Mme. Claes' fortune
in such a manner as to secure to each of their children a posi-
tion similar to that in which they had been brought up, and
the house of Claes was still kept up on the old footing. They
bought woods which had suffered somewhat in the recent
wars, but which in ten years' time, with due care, were likely
to increase enormously in value.
The society in which M. Claes moved consisted of the oldest
families of Douai. His wife's noble qualities and character
were so thoroughly appreciated, that by a sort of tacit agree-
ment the social regulations so stringently enforced in old-
fashioned towns were somewhat relaxed in her case. During
the winter months, which were always spent in Douai, she
seldom left her house, and went very little into society — so-
ciety came to her. She received every Wednesday, and gave
three large dinner parties every month. It was generally
recognized that Mme. Claes felt more at ease in her own house
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 35
and she herself was little inclined to leave it ; her love for her
husband and her children, whom she was bringing up very
carefully, kept her at home.
Until the year 1809 there was no change in the ways of
the household, thus privileged to form an exception to ac-
cepted social rules. The life of these two beings, with its
hidden depths of love and joy, flowed on to all appearance
like other lives. Balthazar Claes' passion for his wife, which
she had known how to keep, seemed, as he himself said, to
have determined his bent, and his innate perseverance was
employed in the cultivation of happiness, as he had culti-
vated tulips in his youth ; it absolved him from the necessity
for a mania traditional in Ms family. But at the end of the
year a change came over Balthazar; it came about so imper-
ceptibly that at first Mme. Claes did not think it necessary to
ask the reason of these ominous signs. One evening he
seemed preoccupied as he went to bed, and she conscientiously
respected his mood. Her woman's tact and habits of submis-
sion had always led her to wait for Balthazar's confidence;
she felt far too sure of his affection to give way to Jealousy.
Yet though she knew that any inquiry would meet with a
prompt answer, the old impressions of early life had given her
an instinctive dread of a rebuff. Her husband's moral malady
went through many stages, and only by slow degrees did it
assume an acute form, and grow so intolerably violent that
at last the happiness of a whole household was destroyed.
However engrossing Balthazar's thoughts might be, he was
ready for many months to lay them aside to talk with her;
and there was no alteration in his affection, his frequent silent
moods were the only indications of the change that was being
wrought in his character.
It was long before Mme. Claes gave np the hope that her
husband would approach the subject himself and tell her
about his mysterious preoccupations. Sometimes she thought
that he was waiting until there should be some practical
result of his labors; there is a kind of pride in so many men
which leads them to fight their battles alone and to appear
36 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTS!
only as victors. In that day of triumph the light of happi-
ness would shine all the more brightly for being withdrawn
for a while, and Balthazar's love would fill up all the blank
spaces in the page of life, blanks for which his heart was not
to blame. Josephine knew her husband well enough to know
that he would never forgive himself if he discovered that his
Pepita's happiness had been overcast for so many months.
So she kept silence, and felt it a kind of joy to suffer through
him and for him; for in her passion there was a trace of the
piety of the Spaniard, which can never distinguish between
religion and love, and cannot understand a love without
suffering. She waited for a return of affection, saying to
herself every evening, "It will surely come to-morrow!" as
if love were an absent wanderer. During all these secret
troubles she was expecting her youngest child. There had
been a horrible revelation of a wretched future. Everything
seemed to draw her husband from her, and even in his love
he was preoccupied. Her woman's pride, wounded for the
first time, sounded the depths of the mysterious gulf which
separated her from the Claes of their early married life.
From that time things grew worse and worse. Claes, who
but lately had been immersed in family happiness, who played
with his children for whole hours together at romping games
on the carpet, in the parlor, or in the garden walks, who
seemed as if he could only live beneath the dark eyes of his
Pepita, did not notice his wife's condition, forgot to share
in the family life, and seemed to forget his own existence.
The longer Mme. Claes delaj'^ed to ask the reason of his
preoccupation, the more her courage failed her. Her blood
seemed to boil at the thought, and her voice died in her
throat. At last she felt convinced that her husband had
ceased to care for her, and grew seriously alarmed. This
dread grew upon her; she brooded over it till her hours were
filled with unhappy musings and feverish excitement, and
she began to despair. She juptificd Balthazar at her own
expense, telling herself that she was old and vigly. Then
it seemed to her that she saw a generous motive, huraiJiatinj;
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 37
though it might bo to her pride, in his ahsorption in his
work ; it was a kind of negative f aithf uhiess ; she determined
to give him back his independence by bringing about a secret
divorce, that clue to the apparent happiness of not a few
houseliolds. Yet before renouncing tlieir old Ufe, she made
an effort to read her husband's heart — and found it shut.
She saw how Baltliazar, by slow degrees, became indifferent,
to everything that had once been dear to him; he cared nc
longer for his tulips in flower; he seemed to have forgotten
the very existence of his children. Clearly this passion was
one of those that lie without the pale of the heart's affections,
but which no less, as women think, dry up the springs of
affection. Love slept, but had not fled. This was some com-
fort, though the trouble itself remained as heretofore; and
hope, the explanation of all situations like these, prolonged
the crisis.
Sometimes, just as the poor wife's despair had grown to
such a pitch that she had gathered courage to question her
husband, there would be a brief interval of happiness, and
Balthazar would make it clear to her that though he might
be in the clutches of some diabolical thought, it was a thought
which still permitted him to be himself again at times. In
these brief moments, when her sky grew brighter, she was
too eager to enjoy the gleam of happiness, too afraid to lose
any of it by her importunity, to ask for an explanation ; and
just as she nerved herself to speak, he would escape her.
While the words were on her lips, Balthazar would suddenly
leave her, or he would fall into deep musings from which
nothing could arouse him.
Before very long there set in a reaction of the mental on
the physical existence. The havoc thus wrought was scarcely
visible at first, save to the eyes of a loving woman, who
watched for a clue to her husband's inmost thoughts in their
slightest manifestations. She could often scarcely keep back
the tears as she saw him fling himself down after dinner inte
an easy-chair by the fireside, and sit there with his eyes fixed
on one of the dark panels, gloomy, abstracted, utterly heedless
38 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
of the dead silence about him. She watched, too, Vrith an
aching heart the gradual changes for the worse in the face
that love had made sublime for her; it seemed as if the life
of the soul was day by day withdrawing itself and leaving an
expressionless mask. At times his eyes grew glassy, as if the
faculty of sight in them had been converted to a power of
inner vision. After the children had gone to bed, after long
silent hours full of painful and solitary brooding, poor Pepita
would venture to ask, "Do you feel ill, dear?" Sometimes
Balthazar would not answer at all, or he came to himself
with a start like a man suddenly awakened from sleep, and
said, "No," in harsh, sepulchral tones, which fell heavily on
his wife's quivering heart.
Josephine tried at first to keep this anomalous state of
things in their household a secret from the outer world, but
this proved to be impossible. Balthazar's behavior was known
and discussed in every coterie, in every salon; and, as fre-
quently happens in little towns, certain circles were better
informed as to the Claes' afEairs than Mme. Claes herself.
Several of her friends broke through the silence prescribed
by politeness, and showed so much solicitude on her account,
that she hastened to explain her husband's singular conduct.
"M. Balthazar," she said, "was engaged on a great work.
It took up all his time and energies; but if it succeeded, it
would make him famous, and his native town would have
reason to be proud of him."
Patriotic enthusiasm runs high in Douai; you would be
hard put to it to find a town more eager for distinction ; the
prospect of glory was gratifying to local vanity; there was a
reaction in people's minds, and M. Claes' proceedings were
Tiewed more respectfully.
His wife's guesses were not so very far from the truth.
Workmen had been employed for some time past in the garret
above the state apartments, whither Balthazar went every
morning. He spent more and more of his time up there now.
until at last he was in the garret all day long, and his wife
and the rest of the family fell in with the new ways by de-
grees.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 39
But Mme. Claes had yet to learn, to her unspeakable an-
guish, that her husband was always buying scientific appa-
ratus in Paris; that books, machines, and costly materials
of all kinds were being sent to him; and that he was bent
on discovering the Philosopher's Stone. All this she must
hear through the officious kindness of friends who were sur-
prised to find her in ignorance of her husband's doings. It
was a bitter humiliation. These friends proceeded to say
that she ought to think of her children and of her own future,
and that she would be doing very wrong if she did not use her
influence with her husband to turn him from the paths
of error into which he had strayed. Mme. Claes might sum-
mon a great lady's insolence to her aid, and silence this absurd
talk; but a sudden terror seized her in spite of her confident
tone, and she determined that she would no longer efface
herself. She would choose her ground, and speak to her hus-
band on an equal footing; and so, feeling less tremulous, she
ventured to ask Balthazar for the cause of the change in him
and the reason of his continual seclusion. The Fleming
frowned as he answered her:
"My dear, you would not understand it in the least.'*
One day Josephine had begged hard to know this secret,
playfully grumbling that she who shared his life might not
share all Ms thoughts.
"If you want to know about it so much," Balthazar an-
swered, seeing his wife on her knees, "I will tell you. I am
studying chemistry," he said, stroking her black hair, "and
I am the happiest man in the world."
Two years after the winter in which M. Claes began his
experiments, the house was no longer the same. Perhaps
the chemist's abstracted ways had given offence; perhaps his
acquaintances felt themselves to be in the way ; or it may
have been that the anxieties of which Mme. Claes never spoke
had altered her, and people found her less charming than
heretofore. Whatever the cause might be, she only received
visits from her most intimate friends, and Balthazar went
nowhere. He shut himself up in his laboratory all day, and
40 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
sometimes all night; his family never saw him except at
dinner. After the second year the winter and- summer were
alike spent in Douai ; his wife had no desire to leave Balthazar
and go alone to their country house.
Balthazar would take long solitary walks, sometimes onlv
returning on the following day. Those were long nights of
sickening anxiety for his wife. In Douai, as in most fortified
towns, the gates of the city were shut at a fixed hour; when
search and inquiry within the walls had been made in vain,
poor Mme. Claes had not even the support of expectation,
half hope, half anguish, and must wait till morning as best
she might. And in the morning Balthazar would return as
if nothing had happened. He had simply forgotten, in his
abstraction, the hour at which the gates were closed, and
had no suspicion of the torture which he had inflicted on his
family. The joy and relief were nearly as perilous for Mme.
Claes as terror and suspense had been. She made no com-
ment; she never spoke to him of his wanderings. Once she
had begun to ask a question, and she had not forgotten the
tone of amazement in which he answered:
"Why, cannot one take a walk ?"
The passions cannot be deceived. Mme. Claes' own misgiv-
ings bore witness of the truth of the reports which she had
at first so lightly contradicted. She had suffered so much
from polite conventional sympathy in her youth that she had
no wish to experience it a second time. She therefore im-
mured herself more closely than ever in her home, her ac-
quaintances dropped off, and her few remaining friends soon
followed suit.
Balthazar's slovenly attire was by no means the least of her
troubles. There is always something degrading in neglect
of this kind for a man who belongs to the upper classes; and
-he felt it all the more keenly, because she had been used to
a Flemish refinement of cleanliness. With the help of Le-
mulquinier, her husband's valet, Josephine tried for a while
to repair the havoc wrought by these pursuits ; but the new
garments with which, without Claes' knowledge, she replaced
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 41
the torn, burnt, and stained clothing, were little better than
rags by the end of the day, and she gave up the attempt in
despair.
After fifteen years of happiness, it seemed to the wife, who
iiad never known a pang of jealousy, that she counted for
nothing in the heart where she had reigned but lately, and
the Spaniard in her nature awoke. Science was her rival.
Science had won her husband's heart from her, and love re-
newed its strength in the fires of jealousy that consumed her
heart. But what could she do? What resistance could she
make against this slowly growing tyrannous power tha^t never
relaxed its hold? this invisible rival who could not be slain?
A woman's power is limited by nature; how can she engage
in a struggle with an Idea, with the infinite delights of
thought and charms that are always renewed? What could
she attempt in the face of the coquetries of ideas which take
new forms and grow fairer amid difficulties, which beckon
to the seeker, and lure him on so far from the world that
he grows forgetful of all things else, and human love and
human ties are as nothing to him ?
A day came at last when, in spite of strict orders from
Balthazar, his wife determined that at least in bodily presence
she would be near him; she also would live in the garret
where he had shut himself up, and meet her rival there on
her own ground and at close quarters ; she would be with her
husband during the long hours which he lavished on the
terrible mistress who had won his heart from her. She meant
to steal into the mysterious workshop, and to earn the right
of remaining there. But as she dreaded an explosion of
wrath, and feared a witness of the scene, she waited for a
day when her husband should be alone, before making her
effort to share with Lemulquinier the right of entry into the
laboratory. For some time she had watched the man's com-
ings and goings, and almost hated him. Was it not intolerable
that the servant should know all that she longed to learn,
all that her husband hid from her, and that she did not dare
to ask ? It seemed to her that Lemulquinier was more privi-
42 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
leged, and stood higher in her husband's estimation than she,
his own wife.
So she w»ent to the garret, trembling, yet almost happy,
and for the first time in her life was made to feel Balthazar's
anger. Scarcely had she opened the door, when he rushed
forward and seized her, and pushed her out on to the staircase
so roughly that she narrowly escaped a headlong fall.
"God be praised ! You are still alive !" cried Balthazar,
as he helped her to rise.
The splinters of a shattered glass mask fell about Mme.
Claes ; she looked up and saw her husband's face, white, hag-
gard, and terrified.
"Dear, I told you not to come here," he gasped, sinlcing
down on a step as if all his strength had left him. "The
saints have saved 3^our life. I wonder how it chanced that
my eves were fixed on the door just then. We were all but
killed!"
"I should have been very happy to die so," she said.
"M}'- experiment is utterly ruined," Balthazar went on. '1.
could not forgive any one else for causing me such a grievous
disappointment; it is too painful. In another moment I
should perhaps have decomposed nitrogen! . . . There,
go back to your own affairs-," and Balthazar returned to his
laboratory.
''/ should perhaps have decomposed nitrogen T the poor
wife said to herself, as she went back to her own room; and
once there, she burst into tears.
The phrase conveyed no meaning to her. Men, whose edu-
cation gives them a certain readiness to deal with* new ideas,
do not know how painful it is to a woman to lack the power
to understand the thoughts of the man she loves. These
divine creatures are more indulgent than we are; they do not
tell us when they fail to find response to the language of their
souls; they shrink from making us feel the superiority of their
sentiments, dissemble their pain joyfully, and are silent about
the pleasures that we do not enter into. But they are more
ambitious in love than we are^ they must do more than wed
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 43
a man's Vieart, they must share his thoughts as well. Igno-
rance of her husband's scientific pursuits gave Mme. Claes
a more intolerable heartache than a rival's beauty could
have caused. The woman who loves the most is at least con-
scious of this advantage over her rival; but such neglect as
this left her face to face with her utter helplessness ; it was a
humiliating indifference to all the affections that help us to
live.
Josephine loved, but she did not know; and her want of
knowledge separated her from her husband. But besides
this and beyond this, there lay a last extremity of torture;
he was often between life and death, it seemed; under the
same roof, and yet far from her, he was risking his life with-
out her knowledge, in dangers which she might not share.
It was like hell — ^a prison for the soul from which there was
no way of escape, where there was no hope left. Mme. Claes
determined that at any rate she would learn in what the
attractions of this science consisted, and privately set herself
to read works on chemistry. Then the house became like a
convent.
The "Maison Claes" had passed through all these successive
changes, and by the time that this story commences was almost
"dead to the world."
The crisis grew more complicated. Like all impassioned
natures, Mme. Claes never thought of herself ; and those who
know love, know that where affection is concerned money is
of small moment, and interest and affection are almost incom-
patible. Yet it was not without a cruel pang that Josephine
learned that there was a mortgage of three hundred thousand
francs on her husband's estates. There were documents which
proved this beyond a doubt, and gave occasion for gossip and
dismayed conjecture in the town. Mme. Claes, justly
alarmed, felt compelled, proud though she was, to make in-
quiries of her husband's notary, to confide her anxieties to
him, or to enable him to guess them ; and was forced to hear
from the lips of the man of business the humiliating in-
quiry— "Then has not M. Claes as yet said anything to you
aboTitit?''
44 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
Luckily, Balthazar's notar}' was almost a relation. M.
Claes' grandfather had married one of the Pierquins of
Antwerp, of the same family as the Pierquins of Douai ; and
ever since the marriage the latter branch, though scarcely
acquainted with the Claes, had looked upon them as cousins.
M. Pierquin, a young man of six-and-twent}^ had just suc-
ceeded to his father's position; he alone, in his quality of
notary and kinsman, had the right of entry to the house
Mme. Balthazar Claes had lived for many months in such
complete seclusion, that she was obliged to go to him for in
formation of a disaster which was already known to every
cne in Douai.
Pierquin told her that in all probability large sums were
owing to the firm which supplied her husband with chemicals.
This firm, after making inquiries, had executed all M. Claes'
orders without hesitation, and let him have unlimited credit.
Mme. Claes commissioned Pierquin to ask them for an ac-
count of the goods supplied to tier husband. Two months
later, MM. Protez and Chiffreville, manufacturing chemists,
sent in a statement by which it appeared that a hundred
thousand francs were owing to them.
Mme. Claes and Pierquin studied the document with amaze-
ment that increased with each fresh item. Among enig-
matical entries, commercial expressions, and undecipherable
scientific hieroglyphs, it gave them a shock to find mention
of diamonds and precious metals, albeit in small quantities,
and of mysterious substances, apparently so difficult to pro-
cure or to produce that they were enormously valuable. The
vast number of different items, the cost of carriage and of
packing valuable scientific instruments and delicately ad-
justed machinery for transit, the expense of all the apparatus,
together with the fact that many of the chemical compound's
had been specially prepared by M. Claes' directions, accounted
sufficiently for the startling amount of the total.
In the interests of his cousin, the notaiy made inquiries
concerning MM. Protez and Chiffreville, and the accounts
which he received of them convinced him that they had bepn
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 45
perfectly honest in their dealings with M. Claes; indeed, they
had been more than honest, they had gone out of their way
to keep him informed of the discoveries of Parisian chemists
in order to save him expense.
Mme. Claes entreated Pierquin to keep the singular nature
of these transactions a secret. If they were known in the
town, all Douai would say at once that her husband was mad.
But Pierquin told her that this was impossible; that he had
obtained all possible delay already; and that as the bills for
such large amounts had been formally noted, the secret was
not in his keeping. He laid bare the whole extent of the
wound, telling his cousin that if she could not contrive to
prevent her husband from squandering his money in this reck-
less way, the family estates would be mortgaged up to their
value in less than six months. As to making any effort him-
self, he added that he, Pierquin, had spoken to his cousin on
the subject, with due deference, more than once, and that it
had been utterly useless. Balthazar had answered once for
all that in all his researches his object was to make a fortune
and a famous name for his family. So in addition to the
anguish which had clutched at Josephine's heart for the past
two years — a cumulative torture, in which every sad or happy
memory of the past added to the pain of the present — she was
to know a horrible unceasing dread of worse to follow, of an
appalling future.
A woman's presentiments are often marvelously correct.
How is it that women fear so far oftener than they hope in
all matters relating to this present life ? Why do they reserve
all their faith for religious beliefs in a future world? How
is it that they are so quick to discern coming trouble or any
turning-point in our career? Perhaps the very closeness of
the tie that binds a woman to the man she loves makes her an
admirable judge of his capacity, and with the instinct of love
she estimates his faculties and knows his tastes, his passions,
his faults, and good qualities. She is always studying these
sources of man's destiny, and with the intimate knowledge
of the causes comes the fatal gift of foreseeing their effects
46 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
under all conceivable conditions. "Women derive their insight
into the Future from their clear-sightedness in such tilings as
they see in the Present, and the accuracy of their forecasts
is due to the perfection of their nervous organization, whicK
enables them to detect and interpret the slightest sign of
thought or feeling. The}'' feel the great storms that shake
another soul, and every fibre in them vibrates in harmony.
They feel or they see. And Mme. Claes, though estranged
from her husband for two years, felt that the loss of their
fortune was impending.
In Balthazar's passionate persistence she had seen the re-
flection of his fiery enthusiasm. If it were true that he was
tr}-ing to discover the secret of making gold, he would cer-
tainly fling Ills last morsel of bread into the crucible with per-
fect indifference; but what was he seeking to discover?
. So far she had loved husband and children without attempt-
ing to distinguish the claims of either upon her heart. Bal-
thazar had loved the children as she did; the children had
never come between them. Now, all at once she discovered
that she was at times more a mother than a wife, as heretofore
she had been a wife rather than a mother. Yet she felt that
she was ready even yet to sacrifice herself, her fortune, and
her children to the welfare of the man who had loved and
chosen and adored her, the man for whom she was still the
only woman in the world; and then came remorse that she
should love her children so little, and despair at being placed
between two hideous alternatives. Her heart suffered as a
wife, as a mother she suffered in lier children, and as a Chris-
tian she suffered for it all. She said nothing of the terrible
conflict in her soul. After all, her husband was the sole
arbiter of their fate ; he was the master who must shape their
destinies ; he was accountable to God and to none other. How
could she reproach him with putting her fortune to such uses,
after the disinterestedness which had been so amply proved
during the first ten years of their married life? Was she a
judge of his designs? And yet her conscience asserted what
she knew to be in keeping with all laws written and unwritten.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 47
that parents possess their fortune not for themselves, but for
their children, and have no right to alienate the worldly
wealth which they hold in trust for them.
Rather than take it upon herself to solve these intricate
problems, she had chosen to shut her eyes to them; like a
man on the brink of a precipice, who will not look into the
yawning depths into which he knows that he must sooner
or later fall.
For the past six months her husband had allowed her noth-
ing for housekeeping expenses. The magnificent diamonds
which her brother had given to her on the day of her marriage
had been secretly sold in Paris, and she had put the whole
household on the most economical footing. She had dis-
missed the children's governess, and even little Jean's nurse. ■
Formerly the luxury of a carriage had been quite unknown
among the Flemish burghers, who lived so simply and held
their heads so high. So there had been no provision in the
Maison Claes itself for this modern innovation, and Balthazar
had been obliged to have his stables and coach-house on the
opposite side of the street. Since he had been absorbed in
chemistry he had ceased to superintend that part of the
menage, essentially a man's province, and Mme. Claes put
down the carriage. She was so much of a recluse that the
expense was as useless as it was heavy; and this would have
been reason sufficient to give for her retrenchments, but she
did not attempt to give color to them by any pretexts. Hith-
erto, facts had given the lie to her words, and now silence
became her best.
Such changes as these, moreover, were almost inexcusable
in Holland, where any one who lives up to his income is looked
on as a madman. Only as her oldest girl. Marguerite, was
now nearly sixteen years old, Josephine would wish her to
make a great match, it was thought, and to establish her in
the world in a, manner befitting the daughter of the house
of Claes, connected as it was with the Molinas, the Van
Ostrom-Temnincks, and the Casa-Reals. The money realized
by the sale of the diamonds had been exhausted some few days
48 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
before the opening scene of this story. On that very after-
noon, as Mme. Claes had met Pierquin on her way to vespers
with her children, he had turned and walked with them as
far as the Church of Saint Pierre, talking confidentially the
while.
"It would be a breach of the friendship which attaches
me to your family/' he said, "if I were to attempt to conceal
from you, cousin, the risks you are running. I must implore
3'ou to set them before your husband. Who else has influence
sufficient to arrest him on the brink of the precipice? Your
estates are so heavily mortgaged that they will scarcely pay
interest on the sums borrowed. At this moment you have no
income whatever. If you once cut down the woods, your last
hope of salvation will be gone. Cousin Balthazar owes
thirty thousand francs to Protez and Chiffreville in Paris;
how will you pay them ? How are }' ou going to live ? And
what will become of you if Claes keeps on buying acids and
alkalis, and glassware, and voltaic batteries, and such like
gimcracks ? All your fortune has flown off in gas and smuts ;
you have nothing but the house and the furniture left. A
couple of days ago there was some talk of mortgaging the
house itself, and what do you think Claes said ? — 'The devil !'
— ^'Tis the first sign of sense he has shown these three years."
Mme. Claes in her distress clutched Pierquin's arm. "Keep
our secret !" she entreated, raising her eyes to heaven.
The wOrds had fallen like a thunderbolt. She sat quietly
on her chair among her children, so overcome that she could
not pray. Iler prayer-book lay open on her knee, but she
never turned a leaf; her painful thoughts were as all-
absorbing as her husband's musings. The sounds of the organ
fell on her ears, but Spanish pride and Flemish integrity sent
louder echoes through her soul. The ruin of her children was
complete ! She could no longer hesitate between their claims
and their father's honor. The immediate prospect of a col-
lision with Claes appalled her; he was so great in her eyes,
so much above her, tliat the l)are idea of his anger was scarcely
less fearful than the thought of the wrath of God. She could
'THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 4»
no longer be so devoutly submissive, a change had come over
her life. For her children's sake she must thwart the wishes
of the husband whom she idolized.
His thoughts soared among the far-off heights of science,
but she must bring him down to the problems of everyday
existence; must break in upon his dreams of a fair future,
•nid confront him with the present in its most prosaic aspect,
with practical details revolting to artists and great men. For
his wife, Balthazar Claes was a giant intellect, a man whose
greatness the world would one day recognize; he could only
have forgotten her for the most splendid hopes; and then he
■was so able, so wise and far-seeing, she had heard him speak
so well on so many subjects, that she felt no doubt that he
spoke the truth when he said that his researches were to bring
fame and fortune to them all. His love for his wife and
children was not only great, it was boundless; how could
such love come to an end? Doubtless it was stronger and
deeper than ever, it was only the form that was changed;
and she who was so nobly disinterested, so generous and sensi-
tive, must continually sound the word "money" in the great
man's ears; must make him see poverty in its ugliest shape,
and the rattle of coin and cries of distress must break in on
the sweet voices that sang of fame.
And suppose that Balthazar's affection for her should grow
less ? Ah ! if she had had no children, how bravely and gladly
she would have faced the change he had wrought in her des-
tiny! Women who have been brought up amid wealthy sur-
roundings soon feel the emptiness of the life that luxury may
disguise, but cannot fill ; it palls on them, but their hearts are
not seared; and when once they have discovered for them-
selves the happiness that lies in a constant interchange of
sincere feeling and thought, when they are certain of being
loved, they do not shrink from a narrow monotonous exist-
ence, if only that existence is the one best suited to the being
who loves them. All their own ideas and pleasures are sub-
ordinated to the lightest demands of that life without theii
6© THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
own ; and the future holds but one dread for them — the dread
of separation.
At this moment Pepita felt that her children stood between
her and her real life, as science had separated Balthazar Claes
from her. When she returned from vespers she flung herself
down in her low chair, dismissed the children with a caution to
make no noise, and sent to ask her husband to come to speak
with her ; but in spite of the insistence of the old man-servant
Lemulquinier, Balthazar had not stirred from his laborator}'.
Mme. Claes had time to think over her position, and had
fallen into deep musings, forgetful of the hour and the day.
The thought that they owed thirty thousand francs which
they could not pay roused painful memories; all the troubles
of the past started up to meet the troubles of the present
and the future. She was overwhelmed by the problem, the
burden grew too heavy for her, and she gave way to tears.
When Balthazar came at last, he looked more abstracted,
more formidable, more distraught than she had ever seen him ;
and when he gave her no answer, she sat for a while like one
fascinated by the vacant unseeing gaze; the remorseless
thoughts that had wrung drops of sweat from his brow seemed
to exert a spell over her also. With the first shock came the
wish that she might die. But the scientific inquiry made in
those absent tones roused her courage just as her heart began
to fail her; she would grapple with this hideous and mysteri-
ous power which had robbed her of her lover, her children of
their father, and the family of their wealth, and had over-
clouded all her happiness. Yet she could not help trem-
bling, shudder after shudder ran through her ; was it not the
most solemn moment of her life — a moment that held all her
future — as it was the outcome of all her past?
And at this point, weak-minded people, timid souls, or
ihose who, sensitive by nature, are prone to exaggerate little
trials of life, men who, in spite of themselves, feel a nervous
tremor when they stand before the arbiters of their fate, may
readily imagine tbe thoughts that crowded up in her mind.
Her brain reeled, and her heart grew lieavy with pent-up
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 51
emotion, as she saw her husband go slowly towards the garden
door. Few women have not known the misery of such inward
debates as hers, so that even those whose hearts have not
throbbed violently over a confession of extravagance, or of
debts to their dressmaker, will have some faint idea of how
terribly the pulse beats when life is at stake. A pretty woman
can fling herself at her husband's feet, the graceful attitudes
of her sorrow can plead for her, but Mme. Claes was painfully
conscious of her deformity, and this added to her fears. When
she saw Balthazar about to leave her, her first impulse had
been to spring to his side, but a cruel thought restrained her.
How could she rise and stand before him ? She would appear
ridiculous in the eyes of a man who had lost the old illusions
of love, and now would see her as she was. Rather than lose
one tittle of her power, Josephine would have lost fortune
and children. She would avoid all possible evil influences at
this crisis.
"Balthazar !'*
He started at the sound of her voice and coughed. Then,
without paying any attention to his wife, he turned in the
direction of one of the small square spittoons which are placed
at intervals along the wainscot in all Dutch and Flemish
houses; the force of old habit and association was so strong
in him that the man, who was hardly conscious of the exist-
ence of human beings, was always careful of the furniture.
This curious trait was a source of intolerable pain to poor
Josephine, who could not understand it; at this moment she
lost command over herself, and her agony of mind drew from
her a sharp cry of suffering, an exclamation in which all her
wounded feelings found expression.
"Monsieur ! I am speaking to you !"
'^hat does that signify?" answered Balthazar, turning
round abruptly, and giving his wife a quick glance. The
hasty words fell like a thunderbolt.
"Forgive me, dear. . ." she said, with a white face. She
tried to rise to her feet, and held out her hand to him, but
sank back a rain exhausted.
52 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
*"rhis is killing me !" she said, in a voice broken by soba.
The sight of tears brought a revulsion in Balthazar, as ift
most absent-minded people; it was as if a sudden light had
been thrown for him on the mystery of this crisis. He took
up Mme. Claes at once in his arms, opened a door which led
into the little ante-chamber, and sprang up the staircase so
hastily that his wife's dress caught on one of the carved
dragon's heads of the balusters ; there was a sharp sound, and
a whole breadth was torn away. He kicked open the door of
a little room into which their apartments opened, and found
that the door of his wife's room was locked. He set Josephine
gently down in an armchair, saying to himself, "Grood
heavens ! where is the key ?"
"Thank you, dear," said Mme, Claes, as she opened her
eyes. "It is a long while since I have felt so near to your
heart."
"Great heavens !" cried Claes. '^here is the key ? There
are the servants "
Josephine signed to him to take the key which hung sus-
pended from a riband at her side. Balthazar opened the
door and hastily laid his wife on the sofa; then he went out
to bid the startled servants remain downstairs, ordered them
to serve dinner at once, and hurried back to his wife.
*^hat is it, dear heart?" he asked, seating himself beside
her. He took her hand and kissed it.
"It is nothing," she said; "the pain is over now, only I
wish that I had God's power, and could pour all the gold
in the world at your feet."
*^hy gold?" he asked, as he drew his wife to him, held
her tightly in his arms, and kissed her again on the forehead.
"Dearest love, do you not give me the greatest of all wealth,
loving me as 3^ou do?"
"Oh ! Balthazar, why should you not put an end to all this
wretchedness, as your voice just now dispelled the trouble in
my heart? You are not changed at all ; 1 see that now."
'Wretchedness ? What do you u:.ean, dearest ?"
**We are ruined, dear."
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 53
"Kuined?" he echoed. He began to smile, and fondly
stroked the hand which lay in his. When he spoke again
there was an unaccustomed tenderness in his voice.
"To-morrow, dearest, we may find ourselves possessed of
inexhaustible wealth. Yesterday, while trying to discover
far greater secrets, I think I found out how to crystallize
carbon, the very substance of the diamond. ... Oh!
dear wife, in a few days' time, you will forgive me for my
wandering wits ; for they are apt to wander at times, it seems.
I spoke hastily just now, did I not? But you will make
allowances for me, the thought of you is always present with
me, and my work is all for you, for us "
"That is enough," she said; "we will say no more now,
dear. This evening we will talk over it all. My trouble
seemed more than I could bear, and now joy is almost too
much for me."
She had not thought to see the old tender expression in his
face, to hear such gentle tones again in his voice, to recover
all that she thought she had lost.
"Certainly," he said. "Let us talk it over this evening.
If I should grow absorbed in something else, remind me of
my promise. I should like to forget my calculations this
evening, and to surround myself with family happiness,
with the pleasures of the heart, for I need them, Pepita, I
am longing for them."
"And will you tell me what you are trying to discover,
Balthazar?"
"Why, you would not understand it at all if I did, poor
littk one."
"That is what you think ? But for these four months past
I have been reading about chemistry, dear, so that I could
talk about it with you. I have read Fourcroy, Lavoisier,
Chaptal, Nollet, Eouelle, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac, Spallan-
zani, Leuwenhoek, Galvani, Voita, — all the books ie fact
about this science that you adore. Come, you can tell mx»
your secrets now."
"Oh! you are an angel!" cried Balthazar, falling on his
m THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
knees beside his wife, and shedding tears that made her trem«
ble. "We shall understand each other in everything !"
"Ah!" she said. "I would fling myself into your furnace
fire to hear such words from you, to see you as you are now."
She heard her daughter's footsteps in the next room, and
sprang hastily to the door.
*^hat is it, Marguerite ?" she asked of her eldest girl.
"M. Pierquin is here, mother dear. You forgot to give
out the table-linen this morning, and if he stays to
dinner "
Mme. Claes drew a bunch of small keys from her pocket
and gave them to her daughter, indicating as she did so the
cupboards of foreign woods which lined the ante-chamber.
"Take it from the Graindorge linen," she said, "on the
right-hand side."
"As this dear Balthazar of mine is to come back to me
to-day, I should like to have him all complete,'* she said,
going back to the room with mischievous sweetness in her
eyes. "Now, dear, go to your room, and do me a favor — dress
for dinner, as Pierquin is here. Just change those ragged
clothes of yours. Only look at the stains ! And is it muriatic
or sulphuric acid which has burned those holes with the yellow
edges ? Go and freshen yourself up a little ; as soon as I have
changed my dress, I will send Mulquinier to you."
Balthazar tried to pass into his room by the door which
opened into it, forgetting that it was locked on the other
side. He was obliged to go out through the ante-chamber.
"Marguerite," called Mme. Claes, "leave the linen on the
armchair there, and come and help me to dress; I would
rather not have Martha."
Balthazar had laid his hand on Marguerite's shoulder, and
turned her towards him, saying merrily :
"Good-evening, little one! You are very charming to-day
in that muslin frock and rose-colored sash."
He grasped Marguerite's hand in his, and kissed her fore-
head.
"Mammal" cried the girl, as she went into her mother'^
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 55
room, "papa kissed me Just now, and he looked so pleased
and happy !"
"Your father is a vcr}^ great man, dear child; he has been
working for three years that his family may be rich and
illustrious, and now he feels sure that he has reached the end
of his ambitions. To-day should be a great day for us all."
"We shall not be alone in our joy, mamma dear; all the
servants were sorry, too, to see him look so gloomy. . . .
Oh ! not that sash, it is so limp and faded."
"Very well, but we must be quick. I must go down and
speak to Pierquin. Where is he?"
"In the parlor; he is playing with Jean."
"Where are Gabriel and Felicie ?"
"I hear their voices out in the garden."
"Well, then, just run away downstairs and see after them,
or they will pick the tulips ; your father has not even seen the
tulips all this year, perhaps he would like to go out and look
at them after dinner. And tell Mulquinier to take everything
your father wants up to his room."
When Marguerite had left her, Mme. Claes went to the
window and looked out at her children playing below in the
garden. They were absorbed in watching one of those gleam-
ing insects with green, gold-bespangled wings that are popu-
larly called "diamond beetles."
"Be good, my darlings," she said, throwing up the window
sash to let the fresh air into the room. Then she tapped
gently on the door that opened into her husband's apartments,
to make sure that he was not lost once more in a waking
dream. He opened it, and when she saw that he was dressing,
she said merrily :
"You will not leave me to entertain Pierquin all by myself
for long, will you ? You will come down as soon as you can ?"
and she tripped away downstairs so lightly that a stranger
hearing her footsteps would not have thought that she was
lame. Half-way down the staircase, she met Lemulquinier.
"When monsieur carried madame upstairs," said the man,
'*her dress was torn by one of the balusters ; not that the scrap
56 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
of stuff matters at all, but the dragon's head is broken, and
I do not know who is to mend it. It quite spoils the staircase;
such a handsome piece of carving as it was too !"
"Pshaw! Mulquinier, do not have it mended; it is not a
misfortune."
"Not a misfortune?" said Mulquinier to himself. '^'How
is that? What has happened? Can the master have dis-
covered the Absolute ?"
"Good-day, M. Pierquin," said Mme. Claes, as she opened
the parlor door.
The notary hastened to offer his arm to his cousin, but she
never took any arm but her husband's, and thanked him by
a smile, as she said, "Perhaps you have come for the thirty
thousand francs?"
"Yes, madame. When I reached home I found a memo-
randum from MM. Protez and Chiffreville, who have drawn
six bills, each for five thousand francs, on M. Claes."
"Ver}' well," she answered ; "say nothing to-day about it to
Balthazar. Stay and dine with us; and if he should happen
to ask why you have called, please invent some plausible
excuse. Let me have the letter; I will tell him about this
affair myself. It will be all right," she went on, seeing the
notar}^'s astonishment; "in a very few months my husband
will probably pay back all the money which he has borrowed."
The last phrase was spoken in a low voice. The notary
meanwhile watched Mile. Claes, who was coming from the
garden, followed by Gabriel and Felieie.
"I have never seen Mile. Marguerite look so charming,"
he said.
Mme. Claes, sitting in her low chair, with little Jean on her
knees, raised her face and looked from her daughter to the
notary with seeming carelessness.
Pierquin was neither short nor tall, stout nor thin ; he
was good-looking in a commonplace way, with a discontented
rather than melancholy expression ; it was not a thoughtful
face in spite of its vague dreaminess. He had a name for being
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE W
a misanthrope, but he had an excellent appetite, and was too
anxious to get on in the world to stand very far aloof from
it. He had a trick of gazing into space, an attitude of in-
difference, a carefully cultivated talent for silence, which
seemed to indicate profound depths of character; but which,
as a matter of fact, served to conceal the shallowness and
insignificance of a notary whose whole mind was entirely
absorbed by material interests. He was still sufficiently young
to be emulous and ambitious; the prospect of marrying into
the Claes family would have been quite enough to call forth all
his zeal, even if he had had no ulterior motive in the shape of
avarice, but he was not prepared to act a generous part until
he knew his position exactly. When Claes seemed to be in a
fair way to ruin himself, the notary grew stiff, curt, and
uncompromising as an ordinary man of business ; but as soon
as he suspected that something after all might come of his
cousin's work, he at once became affectionate, accommodating,
almost officious; and yet he never sounded his own motives
for these naive changes of manner. Sometimes he looked on
Marguerite as an Infanta, a princess to whose hand a poor
notary dared not aspire; sometimes she was only a penniless
girl, who might think herself lucky if Pierquin condescended
to make her his wife. He was a thorough provincial and a
Fleming; there was no harm in liim; but his transparent
selfishness neutralized his better qualities, as his personal
appearance was spoiled by his absurd affectations.
As Mme. Claes looked at the notary she remembered the
curt way in which he had spoken that day in the porch of
St. Peter's Church, and noticed the change in his manner
wrought by this evening's conversation. She read the
thoughts in the depths of his heart, and gave a keen glance
at her daughter, but evidently there was no thought of her
cousin in the girl's mind. A few minutes were spent in dis-
cussing town talk, and then the master of the house came
down from his room. His wife had heard him moving about
in the room above with indescribable pleasure, his step was
so quick and light that she pictured Claes grown youthful
68 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
again, and awaited his coming with such eagerness that in
spite of herself a quiver of excitement thrilled her as he
came down the staircase.
A moment later Balthazar entered, dressed in a costume of
that day. His high boots, reaching almost to the knee, were
carefully polished, the tops were turned down, leaving white
silk stockings visible. He wore blue kerseymere breeches,
fastened with gold buttons, a white-flowered waistcoat, and a
blue dress-coat. He had shaved himself and combed and
perfumed his hair, his nails had been pared, and his hands
washed with so much care that any one who had seen him
an hour before would hardly have recognized him again. In-
stead of an old man almost in his dotage, his wife and chil-
dren and the notary beheld a man of forty, with an irresistible
air of kindliness and courtesy. His face was thin and worn,
but the hardness and sharpness of outline, which told a tale
of weariness and strenuous labor, gave a certain air of re-
finement to his face.
"Good-day, Pierquin," said Balthazar Claes.
The chemist had become a father and husband again. He
took up his youngest child and tossed him up and down.
"Just look at the youngster," he said to the notary.
"Doesn't a pretty child like, this make you wish you were
married ? Take my word for it, my dear boy, family pleasures
make up for everything
"Brr!" he cried, as Jean went up to the ceiling. "Down
you come," and he set the child on the floor. Gleeful shrieks
of laughter broke from the little one as he found himself so
high in the air one moment and so low the next. The mother
looked away lest any one might see how deeply she was moved
by this game of play. It was such a little thing, yet it meant
a revolution in her life.
"Now let us hear how you are getting on," said Balthazar,
depositing his son upon the polished floor, and flinging him^
self into an easy-chair ; but the little one ran to him at once ;
some glittering gold buttons peeped out above his father's
high boots in a quite irresistible way.
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 59
"You are a darling!" said his father, taking him in his
arms, "a Claes every inch of you ! You run straight. —
Well, Gabriel, and how is Pere Morillon?" he said to
his eldest son, as he pinched the boy's ear. "Do you manage
to hold your own manfully against exercises and Latin trans-
lations ? Do you keep a good grip on your mathematics ?"
Balthazar rose and went over to Pierquin with the courte-
ous friendliness which was natural to him. "Perhaps you
have something to ask me, my dear fellow?" he said, as he
took the notary's arm and drew him out into the garden,
adding as they went, "Come and have a look at my tulips."
Mme. Claes looked after her husband, and could scarcely
control her Joy. He looked so young, so kindly, so much
himself again. She too rose from her chair, put her arm
round her daughter's waist, and kissed her.
"Dear Marguerite," she said; "darling child, I love you
more than ever to-day."
"Papa has not been so nice for a long, long time.'*
Lemulquinier came to announce that dinner was served.
Mme. Claes took Balthazar's arm before Pierquin could offer
his a second time, and the whole family went into the dining-
room.
Overhead the beams and rafters had been left visible in
the vaulted ceiling, but the woodwork was cleaned and care-
fully polished once a year, and the intervening spaces were
adorned with paintings. Tall oak sideboards lined the room,
the more curious specimens of the family china were arranged
on the tiers of shelves, the purple leather which covered the
walls were stamped with designs in gold, representing hunting
scenes. Here and there above the sideboards a group of
foreign shells, or the bright-colored feathers of rare tropical
birds, glowed against the sombre background.
The chairs were the square-shaped kind with twisted legs
and low backs covered with fringed stuff, which once were
found in every household all over France and Italy. In one
of these Eaphael seated his "Madonna of the Chair.'' They
had not been changed since the beginning of the sixteenth
60 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTB
century, and the framework was black with age, but the
oold-headed nails shone as if they were new only yesterday,
and the stuff, carefully renewed from time to time, was a rich
deep red. The Flanders of the sixteenth century, with its
.Spanish innovations, seemed to have risen out of the past.
The wine flasks and decanters on the table preserved in
their bulb-shaped outlines the grace and dignity of antique
vases; the glasses were the same old-fashioned goblets with
long, slender stems that are seen in old Dutch pictures. The
English earthenware was decorated with colored figures in
high relief, Wedgwood's ware and Palissy's designs. The
silver ,was massive, square-sided, and richly ornamented; it
was in a very literal sense family plate, for no two pieces
were alike, and the rise and progress of the fortunes of the
house of Claes might have been traced from its beginnings
in the varying styles of these heirlooms.
It will readily be imagined that a Claes would make it
a point of honor to have table-linen of the most magnificent
kind, and the table-napkins were fringed in the Spanish
fashion. The splendors locked away in the state apartments
only came to light to grace festival days; their glories were
never dimmed, so to speak, by familiarity. This was the
linen, plate, and earthenware in daily use, and everything
in the quarter of the house where the family lived bore the
stamp of a patriarchal quaintness. Add one more charming
detail to complete the picture — a vine clambering about the
windows set them in a framework of green leaves.
"You are faithful to old traditions, madame," said Pier-
quin, as he received a plateful of thymy soup, in which
there were small rissolettes made of meat and fried bread,
according to the approved Dutch and Flemish recipe, "this
is the kind of soup that always made part of the Sunday
dinner in our father's time; it has been a standing dish in
the Low Countries for ages, but I never meet with it now
except here and in my uncle Des Eaquet's house. Oh ! stay
a moment though, old M. Savaron de Savarus at Tournai
still takes a pride in having it served, but old Flemish ways
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 61
dre rapidly disappearing. Furniture must be a la grecque
nowadays; there are classical bucklers, lances, helmets, and'
fasces on every mortal thing. Everybody is rebuilding his
house, selling his old furniture, melting down his plate, or
getting rid of it for Sevres porcelain, which is nothing like
as beautiful as old Dresden or Oriental china. Oh ! I myself
am a Fleming to the backbone. It goes to my heart to see
coppersmiths buying up beautiful old furniture at the price
of firewood for the sake of the metal in the wrought-incrusted
copperwork, or the pewter inlaid in it. Society has a mind
to change its skin, I suppose, but the changes are more than
skin deep ; we are losing the faculty of producing along with
the old works of art. There is not time to do anything con-
scientiously when every one lives in such a hurry. The last
time I was in Paris I was taken to see the pictures exhibited
in the Louvre, and, upon my honor, they are only fit for fire-
screens ! Yards of canvas with no atmosphere, no depth of
tone. Painters really seem to be afraid of their colors. And
they intend, so they say, to upset our old school. . ...
Heaven help them !"
"Our old masters used to study their pigments," said Bal-
thazar; "they used to test them singly and in combinations,
submitting them to the action of sunlight and rain. Yes,
you are right; nowadays the material resources of art receive
less attention than formerly."
Mme. Claes was not listening to the conversation. The
notary's remark that china had come into fashion had set her
thoughts wandering, and a bright idea had at once occurred
to her. She would sell the massive silver plate which her
brother had left her; perhaps in that way she might pay the
thirty thousand francs.
Presently her husband's voice sounded through her mus-
ings. "Aha !" Balthazar was saying, "so they talk about my
studies in Douai ?"
"Yes," answered Pierquin, "everybody is wondering what
it is that you are spending so much money over. I heard
the First President, yesterday, lamenting that a man of your
62 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
ability should set out to find the philosopher's stone. I took
it upon mj'self to reply that you were too learned not to know-
that it would be attempting the impossible, too good a Chris-
tian to imagine that you could prevail over God, and that
a Claes was far too shrewd to give hard cash for po\':der of
pimperlimpimp. Still, I must confess that I share in the
regret that is generally felt over your withdrawal from so-
ciety. You really might be said to be lost to the town. In-
deed, madame, you would have been pleased if you knew how
highly ever}^ one spoke of you and of M. Claes."
"It was very kind of you to put a stop to such absurd
reports, which would make me ridiculous if no worse came
of it," answered Balthazar. '^'Oh ! so the good folk of Douai
think that I am ruined ! Very good, my dear Pierquin, on
our wedding day, in two months' time, I will give a fete on
a splendid scale, which shall reinstate me in the esteem of our
dear money-worshiping fellow-townsmen."
The color rushed into Mme. Claes' face; for the past two
3-ears the anniversary had been forgotten. This evening was
an interval in Balthazar's life of enthusiasm which might be
compared to one of those lucid moments in insanity when the
powers of the mind shine with unwonted brilliance for a little
while ; never had there been such point and pith and sparkle
in his talk, his manner to his children had never been more
playfully tender, he was a father once more, and no festival
could have given his wife such joy as this. Once more his
eyes sought hers with a constant expression of sympathy in
them; she felt a delicious consciousness that the same feeling
and the same thought stirred in the depths of either heart.
Old Lemulquinier seemed to have grown young again;
seldom, indeed, had he been known to be in such spirits. The
change in his master's manner had even more significance
for him than for his mistress. Mme. Claes was dreamin;?
of happiness, but visions of fortune filled the old serving
man's brain, and his hopes were high. He had been wont
to help with the mechanical part of the work, and perhaps
some words let fall by his master when an experiment had
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 63
failed, and the end seemed further and further off, had not
been lost on the servant. Perhaps he had become infected
with his master's enthusiasm, or an innate faculty of imita-
tion had led Lemulquinier to assimilate the ideas of those
with whom he lived. He regarded his master with a half-
superstitious awe and admiration in which there was a trace
of selfishness. The laboratory was for him very much what
a lottery-office is for many people — hope organized. Every
night as he lay down he used to say to himself, "To-morrow,
who knows but Ave may be rolling in gold?" And in the
morning he awoke with a no less lively faith.
He was a thorough Fleming, as his name indicated. In
past ages the common people were distinguished merely by
nicknames; a man was called after the place he came from,
after his trade, or after some moral quality or personal trait.
But when one of the people was enfranchised, his nickname
became his family name, and was transmitted to his burgher
descendants. In Flanders, dealers in flax thread were called
mulquiniers; and the old valet's ancestor, who passed from
serfdom into the burgher class, had, doubtless, dealt in linen
thread. That had been some generations ago, and now the
grandson of the dealer in flax was reduced to the old condition
of servitude, albeit, unlike his grandsire, he received wages.
The history of Flanders, its flax trade, its industries, and
its commerce was in a manner epitomized in the old servant,
who was often called Mulquinier for the sake of euphony.
There was something quaint in his appearance and char-
acter. In person he was tall and thin ; his broad, triangular
countenance had been so badly scarred by the smallpox that
the white shiny seams gave it a grotesque appearance; the
little tawny eyes, which exactly matched the color of his sleek,
sandy perruque, seemed to look askance at everything. He
stalked solemnly and mysteriously about the house ; his whole
bearing and manner excused the curiosity which he awakened.
It was believed, moreover, that as an assistant in the labora
tory he shared and kept his master's secrets, and he was in
consequenfte invested with a sort of halo of romance. Dwell-
64 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
ers in the Eue de Paris watched him as he came and went,
with an interest not unmixed with awe; for when questioned
he was wont to deliver himself of Delphic utterances, and to
throw out vague hints of fabulous wealth. He was proud
of being necessary to his master, and exercised, on the
strength of it, a petty tyranny over his fellow-servants, taking
advantage of his position to make himself master below stairs.
Unlike Flemish servants, who become greatly attached to the
family they serve, he cared for no one in the house but Bal-
thazar; Mme. Claes might be in trouble, some piece of good
fortune might befall the household, but it was all one to
Lemulquinier, who ate his bread and butter and drank his
beer with an unmoved countenance.
After dinner, Mme. Claes suggested that they should take
coffee in the garden beside the centre bed of tulips. The
flowers had been carefully labeled and planted in pots, which
were imbedded in the earth and arranged pyramid fashion,
with a unique specimen of parrot-tulip at the highest point.
No other collector possessed a bulb of the Tulipa Claesiana.
Balthazar's father had many times refused ten thousand
florins for this marvel, which had all the seven colors; the
edges of its slender petals gleamed like gold in the sun. The
older Claes had taken extraordinary precautions, keeping
it in the parlor, lest by any means a single seed should be
stolen from him, and had often passed entire days in admir-
ing it. The stem was strong, elastic, erect, and a beautiful
green color; the flower cup possessed the perfect form and
pure brilliancy of coloring which were once so much sought
after in these gorgeous flowers.
"Thirty or forty thousand francs' worth there !" was the
notar}''s comment, as his eyes wandered from the mass of color
to Mme. Claes' face; but she was too much delighted by the
sight of the flowers, which glowed like precious stones in the
rays of the sunset, to catch the drift of this business-like
remark.
"^^hat is the good of it all ? you ought to sell them,"
Pierquin went on, tuniing to Balthazar.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 65
'Tshaw ! what is the money to me !" answered Claes, with,
the gesture of a man to whom forty thousand francs is a
mere trifle.
There was a brief pause, filled by the children's exclama-
tions.
"Do look at this one, mamma \"
"Oh, what a beauty !"
"What is this one called, mamma?"
"What an abyss for the human mind !" exclaimed Bal-
thazar, clasping his hands with a despairing gesture. "One
combination of hydrogen and oxygen, in different proportions,
but under the same conditions, and all those different colors
are produced from the same materials !"
The terms which he used were quite familiar to his wife,
but he spoke so rapidly that she did not grasp his meaning;
Balthazar bethought him that she had studied his favorite
science, and said, making a mysterious sign, 'TTou should
understand that, but you would not yet understand all that
I meant," and he seemed to relapse into one of his usual
musing fits.
"I should think so," said Pierquin, taking the cup of coffee
which Marguerite handed him. "Drive Nature out by the
door and she comes in at the window," he went on, speaking
to Mme. Claes in a low voice. "You will perhaps be so good
as to speak to him yourself; the devil himself would not rouse
him now from his cogitations. He will keep on like this till
to-morrow morning, I suppose."
He said good-bye to Claes, who appeared not to hear a
syllable, kissed little Jean in his mother's arms, made a pro-
found bow to Mme. Claes, and went. As soon as the great
door was shut upon the visitor, Balthazar threw his arm
round his wife's waist, and dispelled all her uneasiness over
his feigned reverie by whispering in her ear, "I knew exactly
how to get rid of him !"
Mme. Claes raised her face to her husband without attempt-
ing to hide the happy tears which filled her eyes. Then she
66 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
let little Jean slip to the ground, and laid her head or Bal-
thazar's shoulder.
"Let us go back to the parlor," she said after a pause.
Balthazar was in the wildest spirits that evening; he in-
vented innumerable games for the children, and joined ic
them himself so heartily that he did not notice that his wife
left the room two or three times. At half-past nine o'clock,
when Jean had been put to bed, and Marguerite had helped
her sister Felieie to undress, she came downstairs into the
parlor and found her mother sitting in the low chair talking
with her father, and saw that her hand lay in his. She turned
to go without speaking, fearing to disturb her father and
mother, but Mme. Claes saw her.
"Here, come here. Marguerite, dear child," she said, draw-
ing the girl towards her, and kissing her affectionately. "Take
your book with you to your room," she added, "and mind you
go early to bed."
"Good-night, darling child," said Balthazar.
Marguerite gave her father a good-night kiss and vanished.
Claes and his wife were left alone for awhile. They watched
the last twilight tints fade away in the garden, the leaves
turned black, the outlines grew dim and shadowy in the sum-
mer dusk. When it was almost dark, Balthazar spoke in an
unsteady voice. "Let us go upstairs," he said.
Long before the introduction of the English custom of re-
garding a wife's apartment as a sort of inner sanctuary, a
Flamande's room had been impenetrable. This is due to no
ostentation of virtue on the part of the good housewives ;
it springs from a habit of mind acquired in early childhood,
a household superstition which looks on a bedroom as a deli-
cious sanctuary, where there should be an atmosphere of
gentle thoughts and feelings, where simplicity is combined
with all the sweetest and most sacred associations of social
life.
Any woman in Mme. Claes' position would have done her
best to surround herself with dainty belongings; but Mme.
Claes had brought a refined taste to the task, and a knowledge
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 67
of the subtle influence which externals exert upon our moods.
What would have been luxury for a pretty woman, was for
her a necessity. "It is in one's own power to be a pretty
woman," so another Josephine had said; but there had been
something artificial in the grace of the wife of the First
Consul, who had never lost sight of her maxim for a moment;
Mme. Claes had understood its import, and was always simple
and natural.
Familiar as the sight of his wife's room was to Balthazar,
he was usually so unmindful of the things about him that a
thrill of pleasure went through him, as if he saw it now for the
first time. The vivid colors of the tulips, carefully arranged
in the tall, slender porcelain jars, seemed to be part of the
pageant of a woman's triumph, the blaze of the lights pro-
claimed it as joyously as a flourish of trumpets. The candle-
light falling on the gridelin silken stuffs brought their pale
tints into harmony with the brilliant surroundings, breaking
the surface with dim golden gleams wherever it caught the
light, shining on the petals of the flowers till they glowed
like heaped-up gems. And these preparations had been made
for him ! It was all for him !
Josephine could have found no more eloquent way of tell-
ing him that he was the source of all her joys and sorrows.
There was something deliciously soothing to the soul in this
room, something that banished every thought of sadness, till
nothing but the consciousness of perfect and serene happiness
was left. The soft clinging perfume of the Oriental hang-
ings filled the air without palling on the senses; the very
curtains, so carefully drawn, revealed a jealous anxiety to
treasure the lowest word uttered there, to shut out everything
beyond from the eyes of him whom she had won back.
Mme. Claes drew the tapestry hangings across the door
that no sound might reach them from without. Then, as
she stood for a moment wrapped in a loose dressing-gown
with deep frills of lace at the throat, her beautiful hair, black
and glossy as a raven's wing, making a setting for her face,
Josephine glanced with a bright smile at her husband, who
68 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
was sitting by the hearth. A witty woman, who at times
grows beautiful when her soul passes into her face, can ex-
press irresistible hopes in her smile.
A woman's greatest charm consists in a constant appeal
to a man's generosity, in a graceful admission of helpless-
ness, which stimulates his pride and awakens his noblest feel-
ings. Is there not a magical power in such a confession of
weakness? When the rings had slid noiselessly over the cur-
tain rod, she went towards her husband, laying her hand on
a chair as though to find support, or to move more gracefully
and dissemble her lameness. It was a mute request for help.
Balthazar seemed lost in thought ; his eyes rested on the pale
olive face against its dusky background with a sense of per-
fect satisfaction; now he shook off his musings, sprang up,
took his wife in his arms, and carried her to the sofa. This
was exactly what she had intended.
"You promised/' she said, taking his hands, which thrilled
at her touch, "to let me into the secret of your researches.
You must admit, dear, that I am worthy of the confidence,
for I have been brave enough to study a science which the
Church condemns, so that I may understand all that you say»
But you must not hide anything from me; I am curious.
And, first of all, tell me how it chanced that one morning
you looked so troubled when I had left you so happy the even-
ing before ?"
^'You are dressed so coquettishly to talk about chemistry ?"
"No, dear, to learn a secret which will let me a little fur-
ther into your heart; is not that the greatest of all joys for
me? All the sweetness of life is comprised, and has its
source, in a closer understanding between two souls. And
now, when your love is wholly and solely mine, I want to know
this tyrannous Idea which drew you away from me for so
long. Yes, I am more jealous of a thought than of all the
women in the world. Love is vast, but love is not infinite;
and in science there are unfathomable depths ; I cannot let
you go forth into them alone. I hate everything that can
come between us; some day the fame that you are seeking so
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 69
eagerly will be yours, and I shall be miserable.- Fame would
give you intense pleasure, would it not? and I alone should
be the source of your pleasures, monsieur."
"No, dear angel, it was not a thought that set me on this
glorious quest; it was a man."
"A man !" she cried aghast.
"Do you remember the Polish officer, Pepita, who spent a
night here in our house in 1809 ?"
"Do I remember him? I am vexed with myself because
I see his face so often — his bald head, the curling ends of
his moustache, his sharp worn features, and those eyes of
his, like flickering fires lit in hell, shining out of the coal-
black hollows under his brows ! There was something appall-
ing in his listless mechanical way of walking ! If all the inns
had not been full, he certainly should never have spent the
night here !"
"Well, that Polish gentleman was a M. Adam de Wierz-
chownia," answered Balthazar. "That evening, when you
left us sitting in the parlor by ourselves, we fell somehow to
talking about chemistry. He had been forced to relinquish
his studies from poverty, and had become a soldier. If I re-
member rightly, it was over a glass of eau sucree that we
recognized each other as adepts. When I told Mulquinier to
bring the sugar in lumps and not in powder, the captain gave
a start of surprise.
" *Have you ever studied chemistry ?' he asked.
" 'Yes, with Lavoisier,' I told him.
" *You are very lucky/ he exclaimed ; 'you are rich, you
are your own master '
"He gave one of those groans that reveal a hell of
misery hidden and locked away in a man's heart or brain,
a sigh of suppressed and helpless rage of which words cannot
give any idea, and completed his sentence with a glance that
made me shudder. After a pause, he told me that, since
what might be called the Death of Poland, he had taken
refuge in Sweden, and there had sought consolation in the
study of chemistry, which had always had an irresistible at-
traction for him.
70 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
"^ell/ he added, 'I see that you have recognized, as I
have, that if gum arabic, sugar, and starch are reduced to a
fine powder, they are almost indistinguishable, and if
analyzed, yield the same ultimate result/
"There was a second pause. He eyed me keenly for
awhile, then he spoke confidentially and in a low voice. To-
day only the recollection of the general sense of those solemn
words remains with me; but there was something so earnest
in his tones, such fierce energy in his gestures, that every word
seemed to vibrate through me, to be beaten into my brain
with hammer-strokes. These, in brief, were his reasonings;
for me they were like the coal which the seraphim laid on the
lips of the prophet Isaiah, for after my studies with Lavoisier
I could understand all that they meant.
" 'The ultimate identity of these three substances, to all
appearance so different,' he went on, 'suggested the idea that
all natural productions might be reduced to a single element.
The investigations of modern chemistry have proved that this
law holds good to a large extent. Chemistry classifies all
creation under two distinct headings — Organic Nature and
Inorganic Nature. Organic nature comprises every animal
or vegetable growth, every organic structure however elemen-
tary, or, to speak more accurately, everything which possesses
more or less capacity of motion, which is the measure of its
sentient powers. Organic nature is therefore the most im-
portant part of our world. Now, analysis has reduced all the
products of organic nature to four elements, three of wliich
are gases — nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen; and the fourth,
carbon, is a non-metallic solid.
" 'Inorganic nature, on the other hand — ^with so little di-
versity among its forms, with no power of movement or of
sentience, destitute, perhaps, of the power of growth, con-
ceded to it on insufficient grounds by Linnseus — inorganic
nature numbers fifty-three simple bodies, and all its products
are formed by their various combinations. Is it likely that
the constituents should be most numerous when the results
are so little various ? My old master used to hold that there
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 71
was a single element common to all these fifty-three bodies,
and that some unknown force, no longer exerted, brought
about the apparent modifications ; this unknown force, in his
opinion, the human intellect might discover and apply once
more. Well, then, imagine that force discovered and once
more set in motion, chemistry would be the science of a single
element.
" 'Organic and inorganic nature are probably alike based
upon four elements ; but if we should succeed in decomposing
nitrogen, for instance, which we may look upon as a negation,
their number wovild be reduced to three. We are on the very
verge of the Grand Ternary of the ancients — we, who are wont
to scoff, in our ignorance, at the alchemists of the Middle
Ages ! Modern Chemistry has gone no further than this. It
is much, and yet it is very little. Much has been accom-
plished, for chemistry has learned to shrink before no difficul-
ties; little, because what has been accomplished is as nothing
compared with what remains to do. 'Tis a fair science, yet
she owes much to chance.
" 'There is the diamond, for instance, that crystallized
drop of pure carbon, the very last substance, one would think,
that man could create. The alchemists themselves, the chem-
ists of the Middle Ages, who thought that gold could be re-
solved into its different elements, and made up again from
them, would have shrunk in dismay from the attempt to make
the diamond. Yet we have discovered its nature and the law
of its cr}'stallization.
" 'As for me,' he added, 'I have gone further yet ! I have
learned, from an experiment I once made, that the mysterious
Ternary, which has filled men's imaginations from time im-
memorial, will never be discovered by any analytical process,
for analysis tends in no one special direction. But, in the
first place, I will describe the experiment. You take seeds
of cress (selecting a single one from among the many sub-
stances of organic nature), and sow them in flowers of sul-
phur, which is a simple inorganic body. Water the seeds with
distilled water, to make certain that no unknown element
72 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
mingles with the products of germination. Under these con-
ditions the seeds will sprout and grow, drawing all theii
nourishment from elements ascertained by analysis. From
time to time cut the cress and burn it, until you have col-
lected a sufficient quantity of ash for your analysis ; and what
does it yield? Silica, alumina, calcic phosphate and car-
bonate, magnesia carbonate, potassic sulphate and carbonate,
and ferric oxide; just as if the cress had sprung up in the
earth by the waterside. Yet none of these substances are pres-
ent in the soil in which the cresses grew ; sulphur is a simple
body, the composition of distilled water is definitely known;
none of them exist in the seeds themselves. We can only sup-
pose that there is one element common to the cress and its
environment; that the air, the distilled water, the flowers of
sulphur, and the various substances detected by an analysis
of the calcined cress (that is to say, the potassium, lime,
magnesia, alumina, and so forth) are all various forms of one
common element, which is free in the atmosphere, and that
the sun has been the active agent.
" 'There can be no cavil as to this experiment,' he ex-
claimed, 'and thence I deduce the existence of the Absolute !
One Element common to all substances, modified by a unique
Force — that is stating the problem of the Absolute in its sim-
plest form, a problem which the human intellect can solve,
or so it seems to me.
" 'You are confronted at the outset by the mysterious
Ternary, before which humanity has knelt in every age — •
Primitive Matter, the Agency, and the Eesult. Throughout
all human experience you will find the awful number Three,
in all religions, sciences, and laws. And there,' he said,
'war and poverty put an end to my researches !
" 'You are a pupil of Lavoisier's ; you are rich, and can
spend your life as j'ou will, I will share my guesses at truth
with you, the results of the experiments which gave me
glimpses of the end to which research should be directed.
The Primitive Element must be an element common to
oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon; the Agency must
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE T3
be the common principle of positive and negative electricity.
If after inventing and applying test upon test you can estab-
lish these two theories beyond a doubt, you will be in posses-
sion of the First Cause, the key to all the phenomena of na-
ture.
" *0h ! monsieur, when you carry there/ he said, striking
his forehead, 'the last word of creation, a foreshadowing of
the Absolute, can you call it living to be dragged hither and
thither over the earth, to be one among blind masses of men
who hurl themselves upon each other at a given signal with-
out knowing why? My waking life is an inverted dream.
My body comes and goes, does this and that, amid men and
cannon, goes under fire, and marches across Europe at the
bidding of a power which I despise ; and I have no conscious-
ness of it all. My inmost soul is rapt in the contempla-
tion of one fixed idea, engrossed by one all-absorbing thought
— the Quest of the Absolute; to detect the force that is seen
at work when a few seeds, which cannot be told one from an-
other, set under the same conditions, will spring up and blos-
som, and some flowers will be white and some wdll be yellow.
You can see its mysterious operation in insects, by feeding
silkworms, apparently alike in structure, on the same leaves,
and some will spin a white, others a yellow cocoon; you can
see it in man himself when his own children bear no re-
semblance to their father or mother. Hence, may we not
logically infer that there is one Cause underlying these ef-
fects, beneath all the phenomena of nature? Is it not in' con-
formity with all our thoughts of God to imagine that He has
brought everything to pass by the simplest means ?
'' 'The followers of Pythagoras of old adored the One
whence issued the Many (their expression for the Primi-
tive Element) ; men have reverenced the number Two, the
first aggregation and type of all that follow; and in every
age and creed the number Three has represented God (that
is to say. Matter, Force, and Eesult) ; through all these con-
fused gropings of the human mind there is a dim perception
of the Absolute ! Stahl and Beeher, Paracelsus and Agrippa,
74 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
all great seekers of occult causes, had for password TrismB'
gistus — that is to say, the Grand Ternary. Ignorant people,
who echo and re-echo the old condemnations of alchemy, that
transcendental chemistry, have doubtless no suspicion that our
discoveries justify the impassioned researches of those for-
gotten great men !
" 'Even when the secret of the Absolute is found, the prob-
lem of Movement remains to be grappled with. Ah me ! while
shot and shell are my daily fare, while I am commanding men
to fling away their lives for nothing, my old master is making
discovery on discovery, soaring higher and faster towards the
Absolute. And I ? I shall die, like a dog, in the corner of a
battery! . . .'
"As soon as the poor great man had grown somewhat
calmer, he said in a brotherly fashion that touched me :
"/If I should think of any experiment worth making, I
will leave it to you before I die.'
"My Pepita," said Balthazar, pressing his wife's hand,
"tears of rage and despair coursed down his hollow cheeks as
he spoke, and his words kindled a fire in me. Somewhat in
this way Lavoisier had reasoned before, but Lavoisier had not
the courage of his opinions . . ."
"Indeed !" cried Mme. Claes, interrupting, in spite of her-
self, "then it was this man who only spent one night under
our roof that robbed us all of your affection ; one phrase, one
single word of his has ruined our children's happiness and our
own ? Oh ! dear Balthazar, did he make the sign of the cross ?
Did you look at him closely? Only the Tempter could have
those yellow eyes, blazing with the fire of Prometheus. Yes.
Only the Fiend himself could have snatched you away from
me ; ever since that day you have been neither father nor hus-
band nor head of the household "
"What !" exclaimed Balthazar, springing to his feet, and
looking searchingly at his wife, "do you blame your husband
for rising above other men, that he may spread the divine
purple of glory beneath your feet? a poor tribute compared
with the treasures of your heart. Why, do you know what I
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 75
have achieved in these three years ? I have made giant strides,
my Pepita !" he cried, in his enthusiasm.
It seemed to his wife at that moment that the glow of in-
spiration lighted up his face as love had never done, and her
tears flowed as she listened.
"I have combined chlorine and nitrogen; I have decom-
posed several substances hitherto believed to be elements;
I have discovered new metals. Nay," he said, as he looked at
his weeping wife, "I have decomposed tears. Tears are com-
posed of a little phosphate of lime, chloride of sodium, mucus
and water."
He went on speaking without seeing that Josephine's face
was drawn and distorted with pain; he had mounted the
winged steed of science, and was far from the actual world.
"That analysis, dear, is one of the strongest proofs of the
theory of the Absolute. All life, of course, implies com-
bustion; the duration of life varies as the fire burns rapidly
or slowly. The existence of the mineral is prolonged in-
definitely, for in minerals combustion is potential, latent, or
imperceptible. In the case of many plants this waste is so
constantly repaired through the agency of moisture, that their
life seems to be practically endless ; there are living vegetable
growths which have been in existence since the last cataclysm.
But when, for some unknown end, nature makes a more deli-
cate and perfect piece of mechanism, endowing it with
sentience, instinct, or intelligence (which mark three suc-
cessive stages of organic development), the combustion of
vitality in such organisms varies directly with the amount
performed.
"Man, representing the highest point of intelligence, is a
piece of mechanism which possesses the Faculty of Thought,
one-half of creative power. And combustion is accordingly
more intense in man than in any other animal organism. ; its
effects may be in a measure traced by the presence of phos-
phates, sulphates, and carbonates in the system, which are
revealed by analysis. What are these substances but traces
of the action of electric fluid, the life-giving principle?
76 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
Should we not look to find the compounds produced by elec-
tricity in greater variety in man than in any other animal ?
Was it not to be expected that man would possess greater
faculties for absorbing larger quantities of the Absolute Ele-
ment, greater powers of assimilating it, an organization more
perfectly adapted for converting it to his own uses, for dra'>\ -
ing from it his physical force and his mental power? I am
sure of it. Man is a matrass. In my opinion the idict'.s
brain contains less phosphorus, loss of all the products of
electro-magnetism, which are redundant in the madman ;
they are present in small quantities in the ordinary brain,
and are found in their right proportion in the brain of the
man of genius. The porter, the dancer, the universal lover,
and the glutton misdirect the force stored up in their systems
through the agency of electricity. Indeed, our senti-
ments "
"That is enough, Balthazar! You terrify me; these are
blasphemies. What, my love for you is "
"Matter etherealized, and given off," answered Claes, "the
secret doubtless of the Absolute. Only think of it! If I
should be the first — I the first — if I find it out ... if
I find ... if I find .. . !"
The words fell from him in three different tones of voice ;
his face gradually underwent a change ; he looked like a man
inspired.
"I will make metals, I will make diamonds ; all that nature
docs I will do."
"Will you be any happier?" cried Josephine, in her despair.
"Accursed science! Accursed fiend! You are forgetting,
Claes, that this is the sin of pride by which Satan fell. You
are encroaching on God !"
"Oh! Oh!"
"He denies God !" she cried, wringing her hands. "Claes,
God wields a power which will never be yours."
At this slight on his beloved science Claes looked at his
wife, and a quiver seemed to pass through him.
"i;\^hat force ?" he said.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 77
"The one sole force — Movement. That is what I have
g-athered from the books I have read for your sake. You can
analyze flowers, or fruit, or Malaga wine, and of course dis-
cover their exact chemical composition, and find elements in
them which apparently are not to be found in the surround-
ings, as with that cress you spoke of; possibly by dint of ef-
fort you could collect those elements together, but would you
make flowers, or fruit, or Malaga wine from them? Could
you reproduce the mysterious action of the sun ? of the Span-
ish climate? Decomposition is one thing, creation is an-
other."
"If I should discover the compelling force, I could create."
"Nothing will stop him !" cried Pepita, with despair in
her voice. "Oh, my love, love is slain. I have lost love . . ."
She burst into sobs, and through her tears her eyes seemed
more beautiful than ever for the sorrow, and pity, and love
that shone in them.
"Yes," she said, sobbing, "you are dead to everything else.
I see it all. Science is stronger in you than you yourself ; you
have soared too far and too high ; you can never drop to earth
again to be the companion of a poor woman. What happi-
ness could I give you now ? Ah ! I tried to believe that God
had made you to show forth His works and to sing His
praises; that this irresistible and tyrannous power had been
set in your heart by God's own hand. It was a melancholy
consolation. But, no. God is good; He would have left a
little room in your heart for the wife who idolizes you, and
the children over whom you should watch. The fiend alone
could enable you to walk alone among those bottomless pits ;
in darkness, lighted not by faith in heaven, but by a hideous
belief in your own powers ! Otherwise, you would have seen,
dear, that you had run through nine hundred thousand francs
in three years. Ah ! do me justice, my God on earth ! I do
not murmur at anything you do. If we had only each other,
I would pour out both our fortunes at your feet; I would
pray you to take it and fling it in your furnace, and laugh
to see it vanish in curling smoke. Then, if we were poor,
78 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
I should not be ashamed to beg, so that you might have coal
for your furnace fire. Oh ! more than that, I would joyfully
fling myself into it, if that would help you to fiud your ex-
ecrable Absolute, since it seems that all your happiness and
hopes are bound up in that unsolved riddle. But there are
our children, Claes; what will become of our children if you
do not find out this hellish secret very soon? Do you know
why Pierquin came this evening? It was to ask for thirty
thousand francs, a debt which we cannot pay. Your estates
are yours no longer. I told liim that you had the thirty thou-
sand francs, to spare the awkwardness of answering the ques-
tion he was certain to ask; and it has occurred to me that
we might raise the money by selling our old-fashioned
silver."
She saw the tears about to gather in her husband's eyes,
flung herself at his feet, and raised her clasped hands im-.
ploringly in despair,
"Dearest," she cried, "if you cannot give up your studies,
leave them for a little until we can save money enough for
you to resume them again. Oh ! I do not condemn them ! To
please you, I will blow your furnace fires; but do not drag
our children down to poverty and want. You cannot love
them surely any more; science has eaten away your heart,
but you owe it to them to leave their lives unclouded, you
must not leave them to a life of wretchedness. I have not
loved them enough. I have often wished that I had borne
no children, that so our souls might be knit more closely to-
gether, that I might share your inner life ! And now, to
stifle my remorse, I must plead my children's cause before
my own."
Her hair had come unbound, and fell over her shoulders ;
all the thoughts that crowded up within her seemed to flash
like arrows from her eyes. She triumphed over her rival.
Balthazar caught her in his arms, laid her on the sofa, and
sat at her feet.
"And it is I who have caused your grief?" he said, speak-
ing like a man awakened from a painful dream.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 79
"Poor Clacs, if you hurt us, it was in spite of yourself,"
she said, passing her hand through his hair. "Come, sit here
beside me," she added, jjointing to a place on the sofa. "There !
I have forgotten all about it, now that we have you again.
It is nothing, dear, we shall retrieve all our losses; but you
will not wander so far from your wife again? Promise me
that you will not. My great, handsom„e Claes. You must
let me exercise over that noble heart of yours the woman's
influence that artists and great men need to soothe them in
failure and disappointment. You must let me cross you some-
times, for your own good. I will never abuse the power, and
you may answer sharply and grumble at me. Yes, you shall
be famous, but you must be happy too. Do not put chemistry
first. Listen ! we will not ask too much ; we will let science
share your heart with us, but you must deal fairly, and our
half of your heart must be really ours ! Now, tell me, is not
my unselfishness sublime?"
She drew a smile from Balthazar. "With a woman's won-
derful tact, she had changed the solemn tone of their talk,
and brought the burning question into the domains of jest,
a woman's own domain. But even with the laughter on her
lips, something seemed to clutch tightly at her heart, and her
pulse scarcely throbbed as evenly and gently as usual; but
when she saw revived in Balthazar's eyes the expression which
used to thrill her with delight and exultation, and knew that
none of her old power was lost, she smiled again at him, as she
said:
"Believe me, Balthazar, nature made us to feel; and
though you will have it that we are nothing but an electrical
mechanism, your gases and etherealized matter will never
account for our power of foreseeing the future."
"Yes," he answered, ^^by means of affinities. The power
of vision which makes the poet and the deductive power of
the man of science are both based on visible affinities, though
they are impalpable and imponderable, so that ordinary minds
look on them as ^moral phenomena,' but in reality they are
purely physical. Every dreamer of dreams sees and draws
80 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
deductions from what he sees. Unluckily, such affinities as
these are too rare, and the indications are too slight to be sub-
mitted to analysis and observation."
"And this," she said, coming closer for a kiss, to put chem-
istry, which had returned so inopportunely at her question,
to flight again, "is this to be an affinity?"
"No, a combination; two substances which have the same
sign produce no chemical action."
"Hu&h ! hush !" she said, "if you do not wish me to die of
sorrow. Yes, dear, to see my rival always before me, even
in the ecstasy of love, is more than I can bear."
"But, my dear heart, you are always in every thought of
mine; my work is to make our name famous, you are the
undercurrent of it all."
"Let us see ; look into my eyes !"
Excitement had brought back all the beauty of youth to her
face, and her husband saw nothing but her face above a mist
of lace and muslin. "Yes, I did very wrong to neglect you
for science. And, Pepita, when I fall to musing again, as
I shall do, you must rouse me; I wish it."
Her eyes fell, and she let him take her hand, her greatest
beauty, a hand that was at once strong and delicately shaped.
"But I am not satisfied yet," she said.
"You are so enchantingly lovely, that you can ask and have
anything."
"I want to wreck your laboratory and bind this science of
yours in chains," she said, fire flashing from her eyes.
'^ell then, the devil take chemistry !"
"All my grief is blotted out by this moment," she said;
"after this inflict any pain on me."
Tears came to Balthazar's eyes at the words.
"You arc right," he said; "I only saw you through a veil,
as it were, and I no longer heard you, it had come to
that "
"If I had been alone," she said, "I could have borne it in
silence ; I would not have raised my voice, my sovereign ;
but there were your sons to think of, Claes. Be &ure of this.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 81
that if you had dissipated all your fortune, even for a glorious
end, your great motives would have weighed for nothing with
the world, your children would have sufTered for what the
world would call your extravagance. It should be sufficient,
should it not, for your far-seeing mind, if your wife calls
your attention to a danger which you had not noticed? Let
us talk no more about it," she added, smiling at him, with a
bright light dancing in her eyes. "Let us not be only half
happy this evening, Claes."
On the morrow of this crisis in the fortunes of the house-
hold, Balthazar Claes never went near his laboratory, and
spent the day in liis wife's society. Doubtless at Josephine's
instance he had promised to relinquish his experiments. On
the following day the family went to spend two months in
the country, only returning to town to make preparations for
the ball that had always been given in former years on the
anniversary of their marriage.
Balthazar's affairs had become greatly involved, partly
through debts, partly through neglect; every day brought
fresh proof of this. His wife never added to his annoyance
by reproaches; on the contrary, she did her utmost to meet
and smooth over their embarrassments. There had been seven
servants in their household on the occasion of their last "At
Home," only three of them now remained — Lemulquinier,
Josette the cook, and an old waiting-maid, Martha by name,
who had been with her mistress ever since Mile. Josephine
left her convent. With so limited a retinue it was impossible
to receive the aristocracy of Douai ; but Mme. Claes, who was
equal to the emergency, suggested that a chef should be sent
for from Paris, that their gardener's son should be pressed
into their service, and that they should borrow Pierquin's
man. Nothing betrayed the straits they were in.
During the three weeks of preparation Mme. Claes kept her
husband so cleverly employed that he did not miss his old
occupations. She commissioned him to choose the flowers and
exotic plants for the decoration of the staircase, the rooms,
and the gallery; at another time she sent him to Dunkirk
82 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
to procure some of the huge fish, without which a Netherland
banquet would be shorn of all its glory. A fete given by the
Claes was a very important function, demanding a prodigious
amount of forethought and a heavy correspondence; for in
the Low Countries, where family traditions of hospitality are
sedulously maintained, for masters and servants alike, a suc-
cessful dinner is a triumph scored at the expense of the
guests.
Oysters arrived from Ostend, fruit was sent for from Paris,
and grouse from Scotland, no detail was neglected, the Maison
Claes was to entertain on the old lavish scale. Moreover, the
ball at the Maison Claes was a well-known social event with
which the winter season opened in Douai, and Douai at that
time was the chief town in the department. For fifteen
years, therefore, it had behooved Balthazar to distinguish
himself on this occasion ; and so well had he acquitted himself
as a host, that the ball was talked of for twenty leagues round.
The toilettes, the invitations sent out, and any novelty that
appeared even in the smallest details, were discussed all over
the department.
This bustle of preparation left Claes little time for medita-
tion on the Quest of the Absolute. His thoughts had been
turned into other channels, old domestic instincts revived the
dormant pride of the Fleming, the householder awoke, and
the man of science flung himself heart and soul into the task
of astonishing the town. He determined that some new re-
finement of art should give this evening a character of its
own ; and of all the whims of extravagance he chose the fair-
est, the costliest, and most fleeting, filling his house with
scented thickets of rare plants, and preparing bouquets for
the ladies. Everything was in keeping with this unprece-
dented luxury; it seemed as if nothing that could ensure
success were lacking.
But the 29th Bulletin, bearing the particulars of the rout
of the Grand Army and of the terrible passage of the Bere-
sina, reached Douai that afternoon The news made a deep
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 83
and gloomy impression on the Douaisiens, and out of patriot-
ism every one declined to dance.
Among the letters that reached Douai from Poland, there
was one for Balthazar. It was from M. de Wierzchownia,
who was at that moment in Dresden, dying of the wounds
received in a recent engagement. Several ideas had occurred
to him, he said, since they had spoken together of the Quest
of the Absolute, and these ideas he desired to leave as a legacy
to his host of three years ago. After reading the letter Claes
fell into deep musings, which did honor to his patriotism;
but his wife knew better, she saw that a second ai^ deeper
shadow had fallen over her festival. The glory of the Maison
Claes seemed dimmed, as it were, by its approaching eclipse ;
there was a feeling of gloom in the atmosphere in spite of the
magnificence, in spite of the display of all the treasures of
bric-a-brac collected by six generations of amateurs, and now
beheld for the last time by the admiring eyes of the Douai-
siens.
The queen of the evening was Marguerite, who made her
first appearance in society. All eyes were turned on her>
partly because of her fresh simplicity and the innocent frank-
ness of her expression, partly because the young girl seemed
almost like a part of the old house. With the soft rounded
contour of her face, the chestnut hair parted in the middle,
and smoothed down on either side of her brow, clear hazel
eyes, pretty rounded arms and plump yet slender form, she
might have stepped out of the canvas of one of the old Flem-
ish pictures on the wall. You could read indications of a
firm will in the broad high forehead, gentle, shy, and sedate
as she seemed ; and though there was nothing sad or languid
about her, there was but little girlish gleefulness in her face.
Thoughtfulness there was, and thrift, and a sense of duty,
all Flemish characteristics; and on a second glance, there was
a certain charm of softness of outline and a meek pride which
atoned for a lack of animation, and gave promise of domestic
happiness. By some freak of nature, which physiologists as
yet cannot explain, she bore no likeness to either father or
84 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
mother, but she was the living image of her maternal great-
grandmother, a Conyncks of Bruges, whose portrait had been
religiously preserved, and bore witness to the resemblance.
Supper gave some life to the ball. If the disasters that had
befallen the Grand Army forbade the relaxation of dancing,
no one apparently felt that the prohibition need apply to the
pleasures of the table. Good patriots, however, left early,
and only a few indifferent spirits remained, with some few
card-players, and the intimate friends of the family. Little
by little silence fell on the brilliantly lighted house, to which
all Douai had been wont to flock, and by one o'clock in the
morning the gallery was empty, the candles were extinguished
in one salon after another, and the courtyard itself, so lately
full of noises and lights, had settled down into its wonted
darkness and gloom. It was like a foreshadowing of t?ie
future.
As soon as the Claes returned to their rooms, Balthazar
gave his wife the Polish officer's letter to read; she gave it
back to him mournfully, she foresaw the end.
From that day forth the tedium of his life began visibly
to weigh on Balthazar's spirits. In the morning, after break-
fast, he used to play with little Jean for a while in the parlor,
and talked with the two girls, who were busy with their
sewing, or embroidery, or lace- work; but he soon wearied of
the play and of the talk, and everything seemed to be a set
task. When his wife came down, having changed her wrapper
for a morning dress, he was still sitting in the low chair,
gazing blankly at Marguerite and Felicie ; the rattle of their
bobbins apparently did not disturb him. When the newspaper
came, he read it deliberately through, like a retired tradesman
at a loss how to kill time. Then he would rise to his feet,
look at the sky for a while through the window panes, list-
lessly mend the fire, and sit down again in his chair, as if the
tyrannous ideas within him had deprived him of all conscious-
ness of his movements.
Mme. Claes keenly regretted her defective education and
lack of memory. It was difficult for her to sustain an inter-
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 85
estiBg conversation; perhaps it is always difficult for two
persons who have said everything to each other to find any-
thing new to talk of unless they look for it among indifferent
topics. The life of the heart has its moments, and wants con-
trasts; the practical questions of daily life are soon disposed
of by energetic minds accustomed to make prompt decisions,
and social frivolity is unendurable to two souls who love.
Such souls, thus isolated, who know each other thoroughly,
should seek their enjoyments in the highest regions of
thought, for it is impossible to set something little against
something that is vast. Moreover, when a man has dwelt for
long on great subjects, he is not easy to amuse, unless there
is something of the child in his nature, the power of flinging
himself into the present moment, the simple f resh-heartedness
that makes men of great genius such charming children ; but
is not this youthfulness of heart rare indeed among those who
have set themselves to see and know and understand things ?
During those months Mme. Claes tried all the expedients
which love or necessity could suggest ; she even learned to play
backgammon, a game that had always presented insuperable
difficulties to her mind ; she tried to interest Balthazar in the
girls' education, consulting him about their studies, planning
courses of lessons; but all these resources came to an end at
last, and Josephine and Balthazar were in something the
same position as Mme. de Maintenon and Louis XIV. But
Mme. de Maintenon could bring the pomps of power to her
aid; she had wily courtiers who lent themselves to her come-
dies, playing their parts as ambassadors from Siam, and
envoys from the grand Sophi, to divert a weary king; and
Louis XIV., after draining the wealth of France, had known
what it was to be reduced to a younger brother's shifts for
raising money; Jie had outlived youth and success, and had
come to know old age and failure, and, in spite of his gran-
deur, to a piteous sense of his own helplessness ; and she, the
royal bonne, who had soothed his children, was not always
able to soothe their father, who had squandered wealth and
power and human lives, who had given his life for vanity
86 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
and set God at naught, and was now pajdng the penalty of it
all. But Claes was not sulfering from exhaustion, but from
unemployed energy.
One overwhelming thought possessed him. He was dream-
ing of the glories of science, of adding to the knowledge of
the world, of fame that might have been his. He was suffering
as a struggling artist suffers, like Samson bound to the pillars
of the temple of the Philistines. So the result was much
the same for the two sovereigns, though the intellectual mon-
arch was suffering through his strength, and the other through
his weakness.
What could Pepita do, unaided, for this kind of scientific
nostalgia? At first she tried every means that family life
afforded her, then she called society to the rescue, and gave
two "cafes" every week. Cafes had recently superseded "teas"
in Douai. At these social functions, the invited guests sipped
the delicious wines and liqueurs with which the cellars al-
ways overflow in that favored land, drank their cafe noir or
cafe au lait frappe, and partook of various Flemish delicacies ;
while the women sang ballads, discussed each other's toilettes,
and retailed all the gossip of the town. It is just as it was in
the time of Mieris or Terburg, always the same pictures, but
some of the details are altered; the drooping scarlet feathers
and gray high-crowned hats are wanting, and you miss the
guitars and the picturesque costumes of the sixteenth century.
Balthazar made strenuous efforts to act his part as master
of the house, but his constrained courtesy and forced anima-
tion left him in a state of languor, which showed but too
plainly what inroads the malady had made, and these dissi-
pations were powerless to alleviate the symptoms. Balthazar,
on the brink of the precipice, might catch at branch after
branch, but the fall, though delayed, was so much the heavier.
He never spoke of his old occupations, ho never uttered re-
grets, knowing that it was quite impossible to continue his
work, but his voice and movements were languid, his vitality
seemed to be at a low ebb. This depression could be seen
even in the listless way in which he would take up the tongs,
and Iniild fantastic pyramids with tlie glowing coals.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 87
It was a visible relief when the evening was over; sleep
perhaps delivered him for a while from the importunities of
thought ; but with the morning came the thought that another
day must be lived through, and he counted the hours of con-
sciousness as an exhausted traveler might reckon out the
leagues of desert that lie between him and his journey's end.
If Mme. Claes knew the causes of this weariness, she tried
to shut her eyes to its effects; she would not see the havoc that
it wrought. But though she might steel herself against the
sight of his mental distress, his kindness of heart left her
helpless. When Balthazar listened to Jean's laughter or the
girls' chatter, and seemed all the while to hear an inner thought
more plainly than his children's voices, Mme. Claes did not
dare to ask him what that thought was ; but when she saw him
shake off his sadness, and try to seem cheerful, that he might
not cast a gloom over others, his generosity made her falter in
her purpose. His romps with little Jean and playful talk
with the two little girls brought a flood of tears to poor Jose-
phine's eyes, and she had to hurry from the room to hide
her feelings; her heroism was costing her dear, it was break-
ing her heart. There were times when Mme. Claes longed to
say, "Kill me, and do as you like !"
Little by little the fire seemed to die out of Balthazar's
eyes, and the dull bluish hues of age crept over them. Every-
thing seemed to be done with an effort ; there was a dull hope-
lessness in the tones of his voice and in his manner even
towards his wife. Towards the end of April things had
grown so much worse that Mme. Claes took alarm. She had
blamed herself bitterly and incessantly for having exacted
this promise, while she admired the Flemish faith and loyalty
with ?vhicii it was kept. One day when Balthazar looked more
depressed than ever, she hesitated no longer ; she would sacri-
fice everything if so he might live.
"I give you back your word, dear," she said.
Balthazar looked at her in amazement.
"You are thinking of your experiments, are you not?" she
went on.
88 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
He answered with a terrible readiness, by a gesture, but
Mme. Claes had no thought of reproach; she had had
time to sound the depths of the abyss into which they were
both about to plunge together. She took his hand in hers
and pressed it as she smiled at him.
"Thank you, dearest," she said, "I am sure of my power;
you have given up what was dearer than life for my sake.
Now it is my turn to give up. I have sold a good many of
my diamonds, but there are some left, and with those that
my brother gave me we could raise money enough for you to
continue your experiments. I thought I would keep the
jewels for our two girls, but your fame will more than make
up for the sparkling stones, and besides, you will give them
finer diamonds some day."
The sudden flash of joy over her husband's face was like
a death-knell to Josephine's last hopes, and she saw with
anguish that his passion was stronger than himself. Claes
had a belief which enabled him to walk without faltering in
a path which in his wife's eyes led by the brink of a precipice.
He had this faith to sustain him, but to her who had no faith
fell the heavier share of the burden ; does not a woman always
suffer for two? At this moment she chose to believe in his
success, seeking thus to excuse herself for her share in the
certain wreck of their fortunes.
"The love of my whole life would never repay your devo-
tion, Pepita," said Claes, deeply moved.
He had scarecly spoken the words before Marguerite and
Felicie came into the room to wish thieir father and mother
good-morning. Mme. Claes looked down; for a moment she
felt almost guilty before the two children; she felt that she
had sacrificed their future to a wild delusion ; but her husband
took them on his knees and talked and laughed with them,
because the joy he felt craved expression. Thenceforth Mme.
Claes shared in her husband's life of enthusiasm. Science
itself and desire of fame was everything to Claes ; she not only
S3Tnpathized with his aims, but all her hopes of her children's
future were now bound up in his pursuits. Yet when her
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 89
director the Abbe de Solis had sold her diamonds for her in
Paris, when packages began to arrive from the firm of manu-
facturing chemists, all the unhappy wife's peace of mind de-
serted her. It was as if the restless malevolent spirit that
possessed her husband tormented her also, and she lived in
constant and disquieting expectation. It was she who now
sometimes sat like one dead all day long in her low chair,
unable to act or to think from the very vehemence of her
wishes. Balthazar was at work the while in his laboratory,
but she had no outlet for her energies ; the pent-up forces of
her nature harassed her soul as doubts and fears. Sometimes
she blamed herself for weakly humoring a passion which she
felt convinced was hopeless ; she would remember M. de Solis'
censure, and rise from her chair and walk to the window, and
look up at the laboratory chimney with dismay and dread.
If a curl of smoke went up from it, she would watch it rise in
despair, and conflicting ideas strove within her until her brain
reeled. Her children's future was vanishing in that smoke,
but she was saving their father's life. Was it not her first
duty to make him happy? This last thought would bring
peace for a little space.
She had the freedom of the laboratory now, and might stay
there as long as she pleased, but even this melancholy satis-
faction had to be given up. It was too painful to see Bal-
thazar so absorbed in his work that he did not even notice
her presence ; sometimes, too, she felt that she was actually in
the way ; the pangs of jealousy became intolerable, every little
unintentional neglect was a deadly wound, a wild desire would
seize her that the house might be blown up, and so put an
end to it all. She made a barometer, therefore, of old Lemul-
quinier. When she heard him whistle as he came and went,
or laid the table for breakfast and dinner, she augured that
her husband's experiments had turned out well; that there
was some hope of success in the near future; but if Lemul-
quinier was sad or sulky, she turned sad, wistful eyes on him :
was Balthazar also depres^orl ? A sort of tacit understand in?
was established between them at last, in spite of the proud
90 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLtTTB
reserve of the mistress and the surly independence of the man-
servant.
She had no resource in herself, no power of throwing ofE
the thoughts that depressed her; she experienced to the full
every crisis of hope or despair; the load of anxiety for the
husband and the children that she loved weighed more and
more heavily on the trembling wife and mother. She scarcely
noticed how dreary the house was, or the silence and gloom
that once had chilled her heart as she sat in the parlor all day
long; she had grown silent too, and forgot to smile. She
brought up her two daughters to be good housewives ; with a
mother's sad foresight, she tried to teach them various
branches of womanly skill against the day when they might
come face to face with poverty. But beneath the monotonous
surface of existence the pulses of life beat painfully. By the
end of the summer Balthazar had not only spent all the money
which the old Abbe de Solis had raised by selling the diamonds
in Paris, but he was in debt — he owed some twenty thousand
francs to Protez and Chiffreville.
In August 1813, about a j'^ear after the day of the opening
scene of this story, Claes was no nearer the end in view,
though he had made several interesting discoveries, for which,
unluckily, he cared not at all. The day which saw his pro-
gramme completely carried out found him overwhelmed with
a sense of failure. The thought of the vast sums of money
which had been spent, and all to no purpose, drove him to
despair. It was a wretched ending to his hopes. He left his
garret, came slowly down into the parlor where the children
were, sank into one of the low chairs, and sat there for a while
like one dead, paying no heed to the questions with which his
wife plied him. He escaped upstairs that he might have no
witness to his grief. Josephine followed him, and brought
him into her room ; and tliere, alone with her, Balthazar gave
way to his despair. In the man's tears, in the broken words
that bore witness to the artist's discouragement, in the re-
morse of the father, there was something so wild and inco-
herent, so dreadful, so touching, that Mme. Claes, watching
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 91
nim, felt an anguish that she had never known before. The
victim comforted the executioner.
When Balthazar said with horrible earnestness, "I am a
scoundrel; I am risking our children's lives and yours; 1
ought to kill myself, it would be a good thing for you all," the
words cut her to the heart. She knew her husband so well
that she was in terror lest he should act at once on this horri-
ble suggestion; and one of those revulsions of feelings that
stir life to its depths swept over her, a revulsion all the more
dangerous because Pepita allowed no sign of agitation to
appear, and tried to be calm and dispassionate.
"This time I have not consulted Pierquin, dear," she said ;
'Tie may be friendly, but he would not be above feeling a secret
satisfaction if we were ruined, so I have taken the advice of
an old man who has a father's kindness for us. My confessor,
the Abbe de Solis, suggested a way of averting ruin at any
rate. He came to see your pictures ; and he thinks that if we
sell those in the gallery we could pay oif all the mortgages as
well as your debts to Protez and Chiffreville, for I expect
there is something owing to them?"
Claes bent his head as a sign of assent; already his hair
was grown white.
"M. de Solis knows the Happes and the Dunckers of Am-
sterdam," she went on; "they have a mania for buying pic-
tures, their money was only made yesterday ; and as they know
that such works of art are only to be found in old family col-
lections, they will be only too glad to give their full value for
the paintings. Even when our estates are clear, there will
still be something left over, for the pictures will bring in at
least a hundred thousand ducats, and then you can go on with
your work. We need very little, the two girls and I ; we will
be very careful; and in time we will save enough money to
fill the empty frames again with other pictures, and in the
meantime you shall be happy."
Balthazar raised his face to his wife's; he felt half doubt-
ful, half relieved. They had exchanged roles. The wife had
become the protecting power; and he, in spite of the sympathy
98 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
of hearts between them, held Josephine in his arms, and did
not feel that she was convulsed with anguish, did not see how
the tresses of her hair were shaken by the throbbing of hei
heart, nor notice the nervous quivering of her lips.
"I have not dared to tell you," he cried, "that I am
scarcely separated from the Absolute by a hair's-breadth. 1
have only to discover a means of submitting metals to intense
heat in a vessel where the pressure of the atmosphere is nil— =
in short, in a perfect vacuum, and I shall volatize them."
Mme. Claes almost broke down, the egoistic answer was
too much for her. She had expected passionate gratitude for
her devotion, and she received — a problem in chemistry. She
left her husband abruptly, went down stairs into the parlor,
sank into her low chair again, and burst into tears. Her two
daughters, Marguerite and Felicie, each took one of her hands
in theirs, and knelt on either side of her, wondering at her
grief.
'^hat is it, mother ?" they asked her again and again.
"Poor children ! I am dying ; I feel that I have not long to
live."
Marguerite shuddered as she looked at her mother's face,
and for the first time noticed a ghastly pallor beneath the
dark olive hue of the skin,
"Martha ! Martha !" called Felicie. "Come here, mamma
wants you."
The old waiting-woman came running from the kitchen.
When she saw the livid color that had replaced the dusky
brown-red tints in her mistress' face —
"Body of Christ !" she cried in Spanish, "madame is dy-
ing !"
She hurried away to bid Josette heat some water for a foot-
bath for her mistress, and then returned.
"Don't frighten the master, Martha ; say nothing about
it," said Mme. Claes. "Poor dear girls !" she added con-
vulsively, clasping Marguerite and Felicie to her heart. "If
T could only live long enough to see you both happy and mar-
ried.— Martha," she went on, "tell Lemulquinier to go to
M. de Solis and ask him to come to see me."
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 93
The thunderbolt that struck down the mistress of the
nouse naturally brought dismay in the kitchen. Josette and
Martha, old and devoted servants, were so deeply attached to
Mme. Claes and her two daughters that the blow was as
heavy as it was unexpected. The terrible words : "Madame is
dying, monsieur must have killed her ! Be quick and get
ready a mustard bath !" had drawn sundry ejaculations from
Josette, who hurled them at Lemulquinier. Lemulquinier,
calm and phlegmatic as ever, was eating his breakfast at a
corner of the table, underneath one of the windows which
looked out on the yard. The whole kitchen was as spick and
span as the daintiest boudoir,
"I knew how it would end," remarked Josette, looking
straight at the valet as she spoke. She had climbed on to a
stool to reach down a copper kettle which shone like bur-
nished gold. "What mother could look on and see her chil-
dren's father amusing himself by frittering away a fortune,
like the master does, and everything flying away in smoke."
Josette's countenance, framed in its frilled cap, was not
unlike the round wooden nut-crackers that Germans carve;
she gave Lemulquinier a sharp glance out of her little blood-
shot eyes, which was almost venomous. For all answer the
old valet gave a shrug worthy of a sorely-tried Mirabeau, and
opened his cavernous mouth, but only to put a piece of bread
and butter, accompanied by a morsel of red herring, into
it.
"If madame would let monsieur have some money," he said
at length, "instead of bothering him, we should all be swim-
ming in gold very soon ! There is not the thickness of a
farthing between us and the "
"Well, then, you, with your twenty thousand francs of sav-
ings, why don't you hand them over to the master? He is
your master, and since you put such faith m his sayings and
doings "
"You know nothing about them, Josette. Just mind your
pots and pans, and boil the water," said the Fleming, inter-
rupting the cook.
iH THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
"I know what I know; I know that we once had several
thousand ounces of silver plate here, and you have melted it
down, you and your master between you; and we shall ver}
soon have only six halfpennies left out of five pence."
"And the master," put in Martha, 'Vill kill madame, and
get rid of a wife who holds him back, and will not let hin;
eat everything up. He is possessed, that is quite plain. You
are risking your soul at the least, Lemulquinier, if you have
one, that is, for you are just like a block of ice, when all the
rest of us are in such trouble. The young ladies are crying
like Magdalens. Be quick and go for M. de Soils !"
"I have the master's orders to set the laboratory straight,"
said the valet. "It is too far from here to the Quartier
d'Esquerchin. Go yourself."
"Just listen to the brute !" said Martha. "Who is to give
madame her foot-bath? Is she to be left to die, with the
blood gone to her head ?"
"Mulquinier !" said Marguerite from the dining-room,
which was next to the kitchen, "when you have left the mes-
sage for M. de Solis, go and ask Dr. Pierquin to come at
once."
"Hein ! you will have to go !" said Josette.
"Mademoiselle, monsieur told me to clear out the labora-
tory," answered Lemulquinier, turning triumphantly to the
two women-servants.
M. Claes came down the stairs at this moment, and Mar-
guerite spoke to him. "Father, can you spare us Mulquinier
to go on an errand into the town ?"
"There, you miserable old heathen, you will have to go
now !" said Martha, as she heard M. Claes answer in the af-
firmative.
The lack of goodwill and devotion to the family on the
valet's part was a sore point; the two women and Lemul-
quinier were always bickering, and his indifference increased
their loyal affection. This apparently paltry quarrel was to
bring about great results in future days when the family
stood in need of help in misfortune.
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 95
Once more Balthazar became so absorbed that he did not
notice how ill his wife was. He gave little Jean a ride on
his knee, but his thoughts were all the while with the problem
which he might hope once more to solve. He saw the water
brought for his wife's foot-bath, for she had not strength
to leave the parlor, or the low chair into which she had sunk.
He watched the two girls as they busied themselves about
their mother, and did not try to account for their anxiety
and care of her. Mme. Claes laid her fingers on her lips if
Marguerite or Jean seemed about to speak. A scene of this
nature was certain to make a young girl think; and Mar-
guerite, standing between her father and mother, was old
enough and sensible enough to understand what it meant.
A time always comes in the history of every family when
the children begin consciously or unconsciously to judge their
parents. Mme. Claes felt that this critical time had come;
that the girl of sixteen, with her strong sense of justice,
would see what would appear to her to be her father's faults
very plainly, and Mme. Claes set herself to justify his con-
duct. The profound respect which she showed for him at
this moment, the way in which she effaced herself for fear
of disturbing his meditations, left a deep impression on her
children's minds; they looked on their father with something
like awe. But in spite of the infectious nature of this devo-
tion, Marguerite could not help recognizing it, and her ad-
miration increased for the mother to whom she was bound
so closely by every incident of daily life. The young girl's
affection had deepened ever since she had dimly divined her
mother's troubles and had pondered over them; no human
power could have kept the knowledge of them from Mar-
guerite; a word heedlessly let fall by Josette or Martha had
enlightened her as to their cause. In spite of Mme. Claes'
reserve, her daughter had unraveled thread by thread the
mystery of this household traged}^.
In time to come Marguerite would be her mother's active
helper and confidante, and, perhaps, in the end a formidable
Judge. Mme. Claes watched Marguerite anxiously, and tried
96 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
to fill her heart with her own devotion; she saw the youn^
girl's firmness and sound judgment, and shuddered to think
of possible strife between father and daughter when she
should be no more, and Marguerite had taken her place. Poor
woman ! she dreaded the consequences of her death far more
than death itself. The resolution she had just taken had
been prompted by forethought for Balthazar. By freeing her
husband's estate from all liabilities, she left it independent,
and forestalled all future disputes by separating his interests
from those of her children; she hoped to see him happy
until her eyes were closed, and when that day came, Mar-
guerite would be the guardian angel who watched over the
family. She hoped to leave her tenderness in Marguerite's
heart, and so, from beyond the grave, her love should still
shine upon those so dear to her. Yet she shrank from lower-
ing Claes in Marguerite's eyes, and would not impart
her misgivings and fears until the inevitable moment came;
she watched Marguerite more closely than ever, wondering
whether of her own accord the young girl would be a mother
to her brothers and sisters, and a gentle and tender helpmeet
to her father.
So Mme. Claes' last days were embittered by fears and sad
forebodings of which she could speak to no one. She felt that
her deathblow had been dealt her in that last fatal scene,
and her thoughts turned to the future; while Balthazar, now
totally unfitted for the cares of property and the interests
of domestic life, thought of nothing but the Absolute. The
deep silence in the parlor was only broken by the monotonous
beating of Balthazar's foot ; he did not notice that little Jean
had wearied of his ride, and climbed down from his father's
knee. Marguerite, sitting beside her mother, looked at her
white, sorrowful face, and then glanced from time to time
at her father, and wondered why he showed no feeling. Pres-
ently the street door shut to with a clang that echoed through
the house, and the family saw the old Abbe de Solis slowly
crossing the court on his nephew's arm.
"Oh ! here is M. Emmanuel/' cried Felieie.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE OY
"Good boy !" murmured Mme. Claes, as she saw Emmanuel
de Solis ; "I am glad to see him again."
Marguerite's face flushed at her mother's praise. Only two
days ago the sight of the Abbe's nephew had stirred myste-
rious feelings in her heart, and awakened thoughts that had
hitherto lain dormant. Only two days ago her mother's con-
fessor had come to see the pictures in the gallery, and one of
those small events that pass unheeded, and alter the whole
course of a life, had then taken place; for this reason a brief
sketch of the two visitors must be given here.
Mme. Claes made it a rule of conduct to perform the duties
of her religion in private. Her director, who now entered
the house for the second time, was scarcely known by sight to
its inmates; but it was impossible to see the uncle and
nephew together without feeling touched and reverent, and
their visit had left the same impression on every one.
The Abbe de Solis was an old man of eighty, with silver
hair; all the ebbing life in the feeble, wasted face seemed to
linger in the eyes. He walked with difficulty, for one of his
tihrunken legs terminated in a painfully deformed foot en-
cased in a velvet wrapping, so that he always needed the sup-
port of a crutch or of his nephew's arm. Yet when you saw
the bent figure and emaciated frame, you felt that an iron
will sustained that fragile and suffering body, and that a
pure and religious soul dwelt within it. The Spanish priest,
distinguished for his vast learning, his knowledge of the
world, and his sincere piety, had been successively a Domin-
ican friar, cardinal-penitentiary of Toledo, and vicar-general
of the archbishopric of Mechlin. The influence of the house
of Casa-Eeal would have made him one of the highest dig-
nitaries of the Church; but even if the French Eevolution
had not put an end to his ecclesiastical career, grief for the
death of the young Duke, whose governor he had been, had
led him to retire from active life, and to devote himself en-
tirely to the education of a nephew, who had been left a^i
orphan at a very early age.
After the French conquest of the Netherlands he h?J
U6 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
settled in Douai to be near Mme. Claes. In Ws youth he had
felt an enthusiastic reverence for Saint Theresa, and had
always decided leanings towards the more mystical side of
Christianity. There have alv>'ays been Illuminists and Quiet-
ists in Flanders ; Mile. Bourignon made most of her converts
among the Flemings ; and the old Abbe de Solis found a little
flock of Catholics in Douai, who still clung, undeterred by
papal censure, to the doctrines of Fenelon and Mme. Guyon,
and was the more glad to stay among them because they
looked on him as a father in the faith. His morals were
austere, his life had been exemplary ; it was said that he had
the gift of trance, and had seen visions. But the stem
ascetic was not utterly divorced from the things of this life;
his affection for his nephew was a link that bound him to
the world, and he was thrifty for Emmanuel's sake. He laid
his flock under contribution for a work of charity before hav-
ing recourse to his own purse; and he was so widely known
and respected for his disinterestedness, his perspicacity was
so seldom at fault, that every one was ready to answer his
appeals. To give some idea of the contrast between uncle
and nephew, the older man might be compared to a hollow
willow by the water side, and the younger to a briar-rose
climbing about the old lichen-covered tree, and covering it
with graceful garlands, which seem to support it.
Emmanuel had been rigidly brought up. His uncle
hardly allowed him to go out of his sight ; no damsel wps ever
more jealously guarded by her mother; and Emmanuel was
almost morbidly conscientious and innocently romantic.
Souls that draw all their force from religion retain the bloom
of youth that is rubbed off so soon, and the old priest had
checked the development of pleasure-loving instincts in his
pupil; constant study and an almost monastic discipline had
been his preparation for the battle of life. Such a bringing
up, which launched Emmanuel into the world with all his
youthful :^reshness of heart, might make his happiness if his
affections were rightly placed at the outset, and had endowed
him with an angelic purity which invested him with some^
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 99
thing of the charm of a young girl. The gentle eyes veiled a
brave and fearless soul ; there was a light in them that thrilled
other souls, as the sound given out by crystal vibrates on the
ear. His face was eloquent, yet his features were regular;
no one could fail to be struck by their flawless delicacy of
outline, and by the expression of repose which comes from
inward peace. His fair complexion seemed still more brill-
iant by force of contrast with his dark eyes and hair. Every-
thing about him was in harmony; his voice did not disap-
point the expectations raised by so beautiful a face, and his
almost feminine grace of movement and clear, soft gaze were
in keeping with his voice. He did not seem to be aware that
his half-melancholy reserve, his self-repression, his respectful
and tender solicitude for his uncle, excited interest in him ;
but no one who had seen the two together — the younger man
carefully adapting himself to the old Abbe's tottering gait,
heedfully looking ahead for the smoothest path, and avoid-
ing any obstacle over which the elder might stumble, could
fail to recognize in Emmanuel those generous qualities of
heart and brain that make man so noble a creature.
Emmanuel's real greatness showed itself in his love for his
uncle, who could do no wrong in his eyes, to whom he ren-
dered an unquestioning obedience; some prophetic instinct,
surely, had suggested the gracious name given to him at the
font. If in private or abroad the old Abbe exerted the stern
and arbitrary authority of a Dominican father, Emmanuel
would sometimes raise his head in such noble protest, — with
a gesture which seemed to say that if another man had ven-
tured to oppose him, he would have shown his spirit, — that
gentle natures were touched by it, as painters are moved by
the sight of a great work of art ; for a beautiful thought has
the same power to stir our souls, whether it is revealed in a
living human form, or made real for us by the power of art.
Emmanuel had come with his uncle to see the pictures in
the Maison Claes; and Marguerite, having learned from
Martha that the Abbe de Solis was in the picture-gallery,
found some light pretext for speaking to her mother, so that
100 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
she might see the great man of whom she had heard so much.
She had gone thither unthinkingly, hiding her little strata-
gem under the careless manner by which young girls so ef-
fectually conceal their real thoughts, and by the side of the
old man dressed in black, with his deathly pallor and bent
and stooping frame, she had seen Emmanuel's young and
beautiful face. The two young creatures had gazed at each
other with the same childlike wonder in their eyes; Em°
manuel and Marguerite must surely have met each other be-
fore in their dreams. Their eyes fell at once, and met again
with the same unconscious avowal.
Marguerite took her mother's arm and spoke to her in a
low voice to keep up the pretence of her errand; and from
under shelter of her mother's wing, as it were, she turned,
with a swan-like movement of her throat, to glance once more
at Emmanuel, who still stood with his uncle on his arm.
The windows of the gallery had been distributed so that
all the light should fall on the pictures, and the dimness of
the shadows favored the stolen glances which are the delight
of timid souls. Neither of them had, of course, advanced
even in thought as far as the if with which passion begins;
but both of them felt that their hearts were stirred with a
vague trouble which youth keeps to itself, shrinking perhaps
from disclosing the secret, or wishing to linger over its sweet-
ness. The first impression which calls forth the long dormant
emotion of youth is nearly always followed by a mute wonder
such as children feel when, for the first time, they hear music.
Some children laugh at first, and then grow thoughtful;
others listen gravely for awhile, and then begin to laugh; but
there are souls who are destined to live for poetry or love,
and they listen long, with a mute request to hear the music
again; their eyes are lighted up with pleasure, or with a
dawning sense of wonder at the Infinite. If we are always
bound with all the force of early association to the spot where
we first understood the beauty and mystery of sound; if we
remember the musician and even the instrument with delight,
how can we help loving the other soul that for the first time
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE lOl
reveals the music of life to us? Does not the heart from
which we draw our first breath of love become, as it were,
our native country? Emmanuel and Marguerite were each
for each that musical voice which awakens a sleeping sense;
it was as if a hand had vvithdrawn the veil of cloud and
pointed out to them the distant shore bathed in a noonday
blaze of light.
When Mme. Claes made the Abbe pause for a moment be-
fore a picture of an angel by Guide, Marguerite leant for-
ward a little to see what Emmanuel thought of it, and Em-
manuel glanced at Marguerite, comparing the mute thought
shadowed forth on the painter's canvas with the thought re-
vealed in the girl who stood there in life before him. She
felt and understood the unconscious and delicious flattery.
The old Abbe gravely praised the beautiful composition, and
Mme. Claes replied; the young people were silent.
The mysterious dusk of the gallery, the quiet that brooded
over the house, the presence of their elders, all the circum-
stances of their meeting, served to stamp it on the memory,
and to deepen the vague outlines of a shadowy dream. All
the confused thoughts that fell like rain in Marguerite's soul
seemed to have spread themselves out like a wide, clear sea,
which was lighted up by a ray of light when Emmanuel stam-
mered out a few words as he took leave of Mme. Claes. The
young, rich voice exerted a mysterious spell over her heart;
the revelation was complete; it only rested with Emmanuel
whether it should bear fruit for him ; for the man who first
awakens love in a girl's heart is often an unconscious instru-
ment of fate, and leaves his work unfinished. Marguerite
bowed in confusion; her good-bye was a glance that
seemed to express her regret at losing this pure and charming
vision. Like the child, she wanted to hear her music once
again.
The leave-taking took place at the foot of the old stair-
case, before the parlor door, and from the parlor window
she watched the uncle and nephew cross the court, and foi
lowed them with her eyes until the street door closed on ■'.hero
3102 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTBi
Mme. Claes had been so deeply engrossed with the weighty
matters which her director had come to discuss, that she had
not thought of watching her daughter's face ; and on the oc-
casion of this second visit she was again full of such terrible
trouble, that she did not see in the red flush on Marguerite's
face the indications of happiness and the workings of a girlish
heart.
By the time the old Abbe was announced Marguerite had
taken up her work again, and apparently found it so interest-
ing that she greeted the uncle and nephew without raising
her eyes from it. M. Claes returned the Abbe de Solis'
bow mechanically, and left the parlor as if his presence were
demanded elsewhere. The venerable Dominican seated him-
self beside Mme. Claes with one of those keen glances by
which he seemed to read the depths of souls ; he had scarcely
seen M. Claes and his wife before he guessed that some catas-
trophe had taken place.
"Go into the garden, children," said the mother. "Mar-
guerite, take Emmanuel to see your father's tulips."
Marguerite, somewhat embarrassed, took Felieie's hand in
hers and looked towards the visitor, who reddened and fol-
lowed her out of the parlor, catching up little Jean to keep
himself in countenance. When all four of them were out in
the garden, Jean and Felicie scampered off, and Marguerite,
left alone with young M. de Solis, went towards the bed of
tulips, which Lemulquinier always planted out in the same
way, year after year.
"Are you fond of tulips ?" Marguerite asked, as Emmanuel
seemed unwilling to break the silence.
"They are magnificent, mademoiselle; but a love of tulips
is an acquired taste. The flowers dazzle me; I expect that
it is because I am so used to working in my dark little room
beside my uncle ; I like softer colors better."
He looked at Marguerite as he uttered the last words; but
in that glance, full of confused longings, there was no sug-
gestion that the quiet face before him, with its white velvet
surface and soft color, was like a flower.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 103
"Do j-ou work very hard?" Marguerite asked Emmanuel
as they went towards a green-painted garden seat. "You
will not be so close to the tulips here," she added ; "they will
not be so tiring to your eyes. You are right, the colors are
dazzling; they make one's eyes ache."
"Yes, I work hard," the young man answered after a short
pause, spent in smoothing the gravel on the path with his
foot. "I work at all sorts of things. . . . My uncle
meant to make a priest of me "
"Oh !" Marguerite exclaimed naively.
"I objected; I felt that I had no vocation. But it took a
great deal of courage to cross my uncle's wishes. He is so
kind and so very fond of me. Quite lately he paid for a sub-
stitute to save me from the conscription, and I am only a poor
orphan nephew "
"Then what do you mean to do?" asked Marguerite, with
a sudden gesture, which seemed as if she would fain take
the words back again, for she added:
"Pardon me, monsieur; you must think me very inquisi-
tive."
"Oh ! mademoiselle, nobody but my uncle has ever asked
me the question," said Emmanuel, looking at her admiringly
and gratefully. "I am to be a schoolmaster. There is no
help for it; I am not rich, you see. If I can obtain a head-
mastership in some school in Flanders, I shall have enough to
live upon. I shall marry some woman who will be content
with very little, and whom I shall love. That is the sort of
life that is in prospect for me. Perhaps that is why I would
rather have a moon-daisy from the fields about Orchies, a
flower that no one looks at, than these glowing tulips, all
purple and golden and emerald and sapphire. The tulips
seem to me a sort of symbol of a brilliant and luxurious life,
just as the moon-daisy is like a quiet, old-fashioned life, a
poor schoolmaster's life such as mine will be."
"Until now, I have always called the moon-daisies mar-
guerites," said she.
Emmanuel de Solis flushed up to the eyes; he racked his
104 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
brains for an answer, and tormented the gravel with his boots.
So many things occurred to him, and were rejected as silly,
that the pause grew embarrassing, and he was forced to say
something. "I did not venture to pronounce your name
. . . " he said at last, and got no further.
"A schoolmaster !" she went on.
"Oh! I shall be a schoolmaster for the sake of a secure
position, mademoiselle, but I want to do other things as well,
something great that wants doing. ... I should like
some bit of historical research best.'^
"Oh !"
That "Oh," which seemed to cover the speaker's private re-
flections, added to the young man's embarrassment. He began
to laugh foolishly, and said :
"You are making me talk about my own affairs, made-
moiselle, when I should speak to you of yourself."
"I think my mother and your uncle must have finished
their talk/' she said, looking at the parlor windows.
"Your mother looked very much altered, I thought."
"She is in trouble, and says nothing to us about her
troubles, and we can only feel sorry for her, that is all we can
do."
As a matter of fact, Mme. Claes had just consulted the
Abbe de Solis on a difficult case of conscience, which he alone
could resolve. Euin was clearly impending; and now that
the pictures were about to be sold, she thought of keeping
back a large part of the purchase money, a sort of reserve fund
to secure her children against want. Balthazar took so little
heed of his affairs that it would be easy to do this without his
knowledge. After mature deliberation, and after taking all
the facts of the case into consideration, the old Dominican
had given his sanction to this prudent course. The conduct
of the sale devolved on him, and the whole matter was ar-
ranged privately for fear of injuring M. Claes' credit.
The old Abbe sent his nephew to Amsterdam duly armed
with letters of introduction; and the young man, delighted to
have this ojjporUmity of doing a service to the house of Claes,
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 105
succeeded in selling the collection in the picture gallery to
the celebrated bankers, Happe and Duncker, ostensibly for
tiie sum of eighty thousand Dutch ducats, but fifteen thou-
sand ducats were to be paid secretly over and above this
amount to Mine. Clacs. The pictures were so well known that
a single letter from Balthazar accepting the proposals made
by Messieurs Happe and Duncker completed the bargain.
Emmanuel de Solis was commissioned to receive the price of
the pictures, which he remitted by other than the ordinary
channels, so that Douai might know nothing of the transac-
tion which had just taken place.
By the end of September, Balthazar had paid his debts,
cleared his liabilities, and was at work once more; but the
glory of the Maison Claes had departed. Yet Balthazar was
so blinded by his passion that he seemed to feel no regrets;
he was so confident that he could retrieve all his losses in a
little while, that he had reserved the right to repurchase his
pictures. And as for Josephine, in her eyes the paintings
were as nothing compared with the happiness of her husband
and children; she filled the blank spaces in the gallery with
pictures from the state apartments, and rearranged the furni-
ture in the rooms where the family sat, so that the empty
spaces on the walls should not be noticed.
Balthazar had about two hundred thousand francs with
which to begin his experiments afresh, his debts were all paid,
and M. de Solis and his nephew became trustees for Mme.
Claes' reserve fund, which was swelled somewhat further, for
gold was at a premium in those days of European wars, and
the Abbe de Solis sold the ducats, receiving for them sixty-
six thousand francs in crowns, which were stored away in the
Abbe's cellar.
For eight months Mme. Claes had the sad satisfaction of
seeing her husband entirely engrossed in his work; but she
never recovered from the shock received that August after-
noon, and fell into a decline, from which there was no re-
covery. Science had Balthazar in its clutches ; the disasters
that befell the armies of France, the first fall of Napoleon,
106 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
the return of the exiled Bourbons, all the events of those
eventful years could not draw his attention from his studies ;
he was no longer a citizen, as he had ceased to be a husband
and a father. He was a chemist.
Towards the end of the year 1814 the wasting disease that
had attacked Mme. Claes had made such progress that she
could not leave her bed. She would not drag out this slov-'
death in her own room where she had lived in her happier
days, it was too full of memories, and she could not help
drawing comparisons between the present and the past, which
overwhelmed her with despair, so she lay dov/nstairs in the
parlor. The doctors had humored the desire of her heart,
pronouncing the room to be more airy, cheerful, and con-
venient than her own apartment; her bed had been placed
between the chimney-piece and the window, so that she could
look out into the garden. The last days of her life were epent
in perfecting her work on earth, in implanting in her daugh-
ters' hearts the passionate devotion of her own. She could no
longer show her love for her husband, but she was free to
lavish her affection on her daughters, and the charm of this
life of close communion between mother and daughters was
all the sweeter because it had begun so late.
The little scruples of a too sensitive affection weighed upon
her, as upon all generous natures, like remorse. Her chil-
dren had not always known, she thought, the love which was
their due, and she tried to atone for all these imagiaary
wrongs; they felt her exquisite tenderness in her constant
thought and care for them. She would fain have sheltered
them in her heart, and nestled them beneath her failing -uings,
given them in one day the love that they should have had in
those days when she had neglected them. Her soul was full
of remorse, which gave a fervent warmth to her words and
caresses; her eyes dwelt fondly on her children before the
kind tones of her voice thrilled their hearts; her hand
seemed always to be stretched out in benediction.
The hospitality of the ]\Iaison Claes had come to an end
after the first splendid effort; Balthazar never gave another
THE QUEST OP" THE ABSOLUTB 107
ball on the anniversary of his marriage, and saw no visitors ;
the house was quieter than ever, hut this occasioned no sur-
prise in Douai, for Mme. Claos' illness was a sufficient reason
in itself for the change. The debts had been paid, and this
had put a stop to gossip, and during the foreign occupation
of Flanders and the war of the Hundred Days the chemist
was completely forgotten. For two years Douai was almost
in a state of siege, occupied in turn by French troops or for-
eign soldiers ; it became a city of refuge for all nationalities
and for peasants obliged to fly from the open country ; people
lived in fear for their property, and even in terror of their
lives ; and in such a time of calamity and anxiety no one had
a thought to spare for others. The Abbe de Soils and his
nephew, and the two Pierquins, were Mme. Claes' only vis-
itors.
The winter of 1814-1815 was a long and most painful
agony for her. Her husband seldom came to see her. He sat
with her after dinner, it ife true, for a few hours; but she
had not sufficient strength now to keep up a long conversa-
tion ; and when he had repeated two or three remarks, which
he never varied, he sat beside her without speaking, and the
dismal silence in the parlor was unbroken. The only breaks
in this dreary monotony were the evenings when the Abbe
de Soils and his nephew came to the Maison Claes. The old
Abbe played backgammon with Balthazar; while Marguerite,
seated at her mother's bedside, talked with Emmanuel. Mme.
Claes smiled on their innocent happiness, and would not let
them see how sweet and how painful it was to her aching
heart to feel the fresh breath of the dawn of love in the words
that they let fall. The tones of the two young voices, so full
of charm for the lovers, almost broke her heart ; she surprised
a glance of comprehension exchanged between them, and
memories of her youth and the happy past brought her
thoughts to the present, and she felt all its bitterness to the
full as she lay there like one already dead. Emmanuel and
Marguerite instinctively divined her sufferings, and delicacy
of feeling led them to check the sweet playfulness of love lest
it should add to her pain.
108 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTK
ISTo one as yet seems to have discovered that our sentiments
have a life of their own, and take their character from the
circumstances which gave them birth; the places in which
they gathered strength, the thoughts that filled our minds at
the time, influence their development and leave their impress
upon them. There is a love like that of Mme. Claes, passion-
ate in its beginnings and passionate to the end; there is a
love, on which everything smiles from the outset, that ncvrr
loses the glad freshness of its morning, and reaps its harveb:
of happiness amid laughter and rejoicing; but there is also
a love early enveloped in sadness or surrounded by misfor-
tune, its pleasures are painful and dearly bought, snatched
amid fears, embittered by remorse, or clogged with despair.
This love in the depths ol their hearts, which neither Mar-
guerite nor Emmanuel recognized as yet, this feeling that had
been awakened in a moment of stillness and silence beneath
the dusky roof of the picture gallery, in the presence of the
austere old Abbe, was tinged with something of the sober
twilight hues of its earliest surroundings; it was grave and
reticent, but full of subtle shades of sweetness, and furtive
joys over which they lingered in secret as over stolen grapes
snatched in some vineyard nook.
Beside this bed of pain they never dared to give expression
to their thoughts, and all unconsciously their emotion gath-
ered strength because it was repressed in the depths of their
hearts, and only revealed itself in their care for the invalid.
It seemed to Emmanuel that this drew them more closely to-
gether, and that he was already a son to Marguerite's mother;
though instead of the sweet language of lovers he received
only sad grateful thanks from Marguerite. Their sighs of
happiness as they exchanged glances were scarcely distin-
guishable from the sighs drawn from them by the sight of the
mother's suffering; their brief moments of felicity, implied
confessions, and unspoken promises, moments when thel;
hearts went out towards each other, stood out, like the Al-
legories painted by Raphael, against a dark background. Each
felt a trust and confidence in the other, though no words had
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE lOS
been said; they felt that the sun still shone, though heavy
dark clouds had gathered overhead, and they knew not what
wind could scatter them; the future seemed doubtful, per-
haps trouble would dog them all their lives, so they sat
limidly among the gloomy shadows without daring to ask,
"Shall we finish the day together ?"
Yet, beneath the tenderness that Mme. Claes showed for her
children, there lay concealed other thoughts to which she
nobly refused to listen. Her children never caused her ap-
prehensions and terror ; they were her comfort, but they were
not her life ; she lived for them, but she was dying for Bal-
thazar. Painful though it might be for her to have her hus-
band by her side, absent in thought for whole hours, to re-
ceive an unseeing glance from time to time, yet she was un-
conscious of her sufferings so long as he was with her. Bal-
thazar's indifference to his dying wife would have seemed un-
pardonable to any stranger who chanced to witness it, but
Mme. Claes and her daughters were so used to it, and under-
stood him so well, that they forgave him.
If Mme. Claes had some dangerous seizure in the course
of the day, if she felt worse or seemed to be at the point of
death, Claes was the one person in the house, or indeed in the
whole town, who did not know that the wife who had once
been so passionately loved was in danger. Lemulquinier
knew it, but Felicie and Marguerite had been forbidden by
their mother to speak to Claes of her illness.
Mme. Claes was happy when she heard his footsteps in the
picture gallery as he crossed it on his way to dinner ; she was
about to see him, she summoned all her strength to meet
the coming joy. The color rushed to the pale face of the
dying woman as he entered, she almost looked as she had
been wont to do in health; the man of science came to her
bedside and took her hand in his, and never saw her as she
really was: for him alone she was always well. In reply to
his, "How are you to-day, dear wife?" she would answer,
'^Better, dear!" and he in his preoccupied mood readily be-
lieved her when she spoke of getting up again, of being quite
110 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
\rell to-morrow. He was so abstracted that he never saw
that there was anything seriously wrong with his wife, and
thought the disease of which she was dying was some pass-
ing ailment. Every one else knew that she was dying, but
for him she was full of life.
This year saw the husband and wife completely severed.
Claes slept in a distant room, lived in his laboratory or study
from morning till night, and never saw Pepita save in the
presence of his daughters and the few friends of the house
v/ho came to visit her. He had learned to do without her.
The two who had once shared every thought drifted further
and further apart; the moments of close communion, of rap-
ture, of expansion, which are the life of the heart, came seldom
and more seldom, and the rare moments of bliss ceased alto-
gether. If physical suffering had not come to her aid and-filled
up the empty days, the anguish of her isolation might have
killed Josephine, but she was dying. She was sometimes in- such
terrible pain that she was glad that he, whom she never
ceased to love, was not there to be a witness of her sufferings.
And for the part of the evening that Balthazar spent with
her, she lay watching him, feeling that he was happy after his
fashion, and this happiness which she had procured for him
she made her own. This meagre satisfaction must suffice
for her now; she no longer asked if she was beloved; she
strove to believe it, and went softly, fearing that this thin
sheet of ice should give way and her heart and all her hopes
should be drowned in the dark depths that yawned beneath.
Nothing ever happened to break the monotony of the days ;
the disease that wasted Mme. Claes' strength perhaps con-
tributed to the apparent peace, for her affection could only
play a passive part, and weakness made it easier to wait and
endure patiently. The year 1816 opened under these gloomy
conditions.
In the last days of February came the sudden shock which
brought the angelic woman, who, so the Abbe de Solis said,
was almost sinless, to the grave. The blow came from Pier-
quin.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 111
He watched for an opportunity when the two girls were
sufficiently far away to whisper in her ear, "Madame, M. Claes
has commissioned me to borrow three hundred thousand
francs on his estates ; you must take measures to secure your
children's property."
Mme. Claes clasped her hands and raised her eyes. She
thanked the notary by a kindly inclination of the head and
by a sad smile, which touched Pierquin. The words were like
the stab of a knife; they killed Pepita. The rest of the day
she spent with the painful thoughts that swelled her heart;
she felt like some traveler who has walked steadily and
bravely along the dizzy brink of a precipice, till some pebble
slips from under his feet, and, losing his balance, he at last
falls headlong into the depths. As soon as the notary left
the house, _Mme. Claes asked Marguerite for writing materials,
and summoned all her strength to write her final directions
and requests. Many times she stopped and looked up at Mar-
guerite; the time for making her confidence had come.
Marguerite had taken her mother's place as head of the
household during this illness, and had more than realized the
dying woman's hopes of her. Mme. Claes feared no longer
for the family she was leaving under the care of this strong
and loving guardian angel; she should still live on in Mar-
guerite. Both the women doubtless felt that there were sad
secrets to be told ; whenever the mother glanced at Marguerite,
the girl looked up at once, and the eyes of both were full of
tears. Several times, as Mme. Claes laid down the pen. Mar-
guerite had begun, "Mother? . . ." and had broken oft'
because her voice failed her; and her mother, absorbed
in her last thoughts, did not hear her entreaty. At last the
letter was finished ; and Marguerite, who had held the taper
while it was sealed, turned away to avoid seeing the direc-
tion.
"'You can read it, my child !" the dying woman said, with
a heart-rending tone in her voice.
Marguerite watched her mother's fingers as she wrote. For
my daughter Marguerit6»
112 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
"I will rest now/' she added, putting the letter under hei
pillow, "and then we will talk."
She fell back on her pillows as if exhausted by the effort
she had just made, and slept for several hours. When she
awoke, all her children were kneeling around her in fervent
prayer. It was a Thursday ; Gabriel and Jean had just come
home from school; Emmanuel de Solis — who for the past six
months had been one of the masters there, teaching history
and philosophy — had come with them.
"Dear children, we must bid each other farewell," she
cried, "You are all with me to the last, and he . . ."
She did not finish the sentence.
"M. Emmanuel," said Marguerite, who saw the deathly
pallor of her mother's face, "will you tell our father that
mamma is much worse ?"
Young de Solis went up to the laboratory, and through
Lemulquinier's good offices saw Balthazar for a moment ; the
chemist heard the young man's urgent entreaties, and an-
swered, "I am coming."
"My friend," Mme. Claes said when Emmanuel returned
from this errand, "will you take my two boys away, and ask
your uncle to come to me? I must take the last sacraments,
I think, and I should like to receive them from his hand."
When she was left once more with the two girls she made
a sign which Marguerite understood. Felicie was sent away,
and the mother and daughter were alone.
"I had something to say to you, mamma dear," said Mar-
guerite, who did not realize how ill her mother was, and
knew nothing of the shock which Pierquin's ill-advised
revelation had given her. "I have been without money for
housekeeping expenses these ten days past, and the servants'
wages have not been paid for six months. I have twice made
up my mind to ask papa for the money, and both times my
courage failed. You do not know what has happened. All
the wine in the cellar and the pictures in the gallery have
been sold "
*'Ho has not said a word about it to me !" cried Mme.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 113
Olaes. *'God is taking me to Himself in time, but, oh! my
poor children, what will become of you ?"
She spent a few moments in fervent prayer; remorse
seemed to glow in her eyes.
"Marguerite," she went on, drawing the sealed envelope
from its hiding-place, "if, when I am dead, you should ever
be brought to misery, that is to say, if you should want bread,
ihen open this letter and read it. Marguerite dear, love your
father, but take care of your sister and brothers. In a few
days, perhaps in a few hours, you will be the head of the
house ! Be very careful ; and. Marguerite, it may very likely
happen that you will have to appose your father's wishes;
for he has spent large sums already on this effort to learn a
secret which, if discovered, will make him famous and bring
him enormous wealth, and he is sure to want money again:
perhaps he will ask you for money; and then, while you must
remember that you are the sole guardian of those whose in-
terests are committed to your care, you must never forget
what is due to your father, to a great man. who is spending
himself, his wealtli, and his whole life in a task which will
make his family illustrious, and you must give him all a
daughter's tenderness. He would never wrong his children in-
tentionally ; he has such a noble heart ; he is so good, so full
of love for you; you, who are left, will see him a kind and
affectionate father once more. These things must be said.
Marguerite, now that I am on the brink of the grave. Promise
me, my child, that you will fill my place, if you would make
it easier for me to die; promise that you will never add to
your father's troubles by a single reproach, that you will
never judge him harshly! In short, you must be a gentle
and indulgent mediator until your task is finished, until
your father once more takes his place as head of the family."
"I understand, dearest mother," said Marguerite, as she
kissed the dying woman's red eyelids. "I will do as you
wish."
^'And you must not marry, darling, until Gabriel is old
enough to take your place," Mme. Claes went on. "If you
1
114 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
were married, your husband very likely would not share yout
feelings; he might make trouble in the family, and harasj--
your father:"
Marguerite looked into her mother's eyes and said, "Have
you no other counsels to give me with regard to my mar-
riage
?'»
'Do you hesitate, dear child?" asked the dying mother ii
alarm.
"No," she answered ; "I promise to obey you."
"Poor child!" said her mother, as she shed hot tears, "T.
could not bring myself to sacrifice myself for you, and now
I am asking you to sacrifice yourself for them all. Happi-
ness makes us selfish. Yes, Marguerite, I was weak, because
I was happy. You must be strong; you must think for the
rest, and so act that your brothers and your sister shall never
reproach me. Love your father, and do not thwart him
. . . more than you can help."
Her head fell back on the pillow, her strength had failed
her, she could not say another word. The struggle between
the wife and the mother had exhausted her. A few moments
later the Abbe de Solis and his assistants entered the parlor,
and the servants crowded in. The Abbe's presence recalled
Mme. Claes to herself, and as the rite began she looked about
her, seeking Balthazar among the faces about her bed.
"AVhere is the master?" she asked in a piteous tone, which
sent a thrill of horror through those assembled; her whole
life and death seemed to be summed up in that cry. Martha
hurried from the room, and, old as she was, ran up to the
laboratory, and knocked loudly at the door.
"Monsieur," she cried, in angry indignation, "madame is
iying ! They are going to administer the sacrament, and are
waiting for you."
"I am coming down directly," said Balthazar.
Lemulquinier appeared a moment later, and said that his
master was about to follow. Mme. Claes never took her eyes
from the door all through the ceremony, but it was over be-
fore Balthazar came. The Abbe de Solis and the children
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTB 115
vrere standing beside the bed, a flush came over the dying
woman's face at the sight of her husband, the tears rolled
down her cheeks.
"Were you on the point of decomposing nitrogen?" she
asked with angelic sweetness, that sent a thrill through those
about her.
"I have done it !" he cried triumphantly. "Nitrogen is
partly composed of oxygen, partly of some imponderable sub-
stance which to all appearance is the essential principle
of "
He suddenly stopped, interrupted by a murmur of horror,
which brought him to his senses.
"What was it that they told me?" he began. "Are you
really worse ? . . . What has happened ?"
"This," said the Abbe de Solis indignantly in Balthazar's
ear, "this — your wife is dying, and you have killed her !" and
without waiting for an answer, the Abbe took Emmanuel's
arm and left the room, the children went with him across the
courtyard. Balthazar stood for awhile as if thunderstruck;
he gazed at his wife with tears in his eyes.'
"You are dying, and I have killed you?" he cried. "What
does he mean?"
"Dear," she answered, "your love was my life, an^ when
all unconsciously you ceased to love me, my life ceased too.''
The children had come back again ; Claes sent them away,
and sat down by his wife's pillow. "Have I ever ceased to
love you for one single moment ?" he asked, taking her hand,
and pressing it to his lips.
"I have no reproaches to make, dearest. You have made
me very happy, too happy indeed; for the contrast between
the early days of our marriage, which were so full of joy, and
these last years, when you have no longer been yourself, and
the days have been so empty, has been more than I could
bear. Our inner life, like our physical life, has its vital
springs. For the past six years you have been dead to love,
to your family, to all that makes the happiness of life. I am
not thinking of the joy and bliss which are the appanage of
116 THE QDEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
youth, and must cease with youth, but which leaves behind
them the fruits on which the soul lives afterwards, an un-
bounded confidence and sweet established uses; you have de--
prived me of all these solaces of the after time. Ah ! well, it
is time for me to go ; this is not a life together m any sense :
you have hidden your thoughts and your actions from me.
How can you have come to feel afraid of me? Have I ever
reproached you by gesture, or word, or deed? "Well, and you
have sold your remaining pictures, you have even sold the
wine in the cellar, and you have begun to borrow money again
on your property, without a word of all this to me ! Oh, I
am about to take leave of life, and I am sick of life ! If you
make mistakes, if in striving after the impossible you lose
sight of everything else, have I not shown that there was
enough love in m}^ heart to find it sweet to- share your errors, to
be always by your side, even, if need be, in the paths of crime ?
You have loved me only too well, therein lies my glory and
my misery. This illness began long ago, Balthazar; it dates
from the day when you first made it clear to me, here in this
room where I am about to die, that the claims of science were
stronger than family ties. And now your wife is dead, and
you have run through your fortune. Your fortune and your
wife were your own to dispose of ; but when I shall be no more,
all my property will pass to your children, and you will not
be able to touch it. What will become of you? I must tell
you the truth, and dying eyes see far. Now that I am gone,
what will counterbalance this accursed passion, which is as
strong in you as life itself? If I have been sacrificed to it,
your children will count for ver}^ little ; for, in justice to you,
I must allow that I came first with you. Two millions and
six years of toil have been thrown into that bottomless pit,
and you have discovered nothing "
Claes' M^hite head sank; he hid his face with his hand.
"You will discover nothing but shame for yourself and
misery for your children," continued the dying woman. "Al-
ready they call you 'Clncs the Alchemist;' a little later, and
it will be 'Claes the Madman I' As for me, I believe in you;
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 111
I know how great and learned you are ; I know that you have
genius, but ordinary minds draw no distinction between
genius and madness. Glory is the sun of the dead ; yours will
be the fate of all greatness here on earth; you will know no
happiness as long as you live. I am going now; I have had
no joy of your fame, which would have consoled me for my
lost happiness ; and so, to sweeten the bitterness of death, let
me feel certain that my children's bread is secure, my dear
Balthazar. Nothing can give me peace of mind, not even
your "
'I swear," said Claes, "to-
"No, dear, do not swear, lest you should fail to keep your
word," she said, interrupting him. "It was your duty to pro-
tect us, and for nearly seven years you have failed to do so.
Science is your life. Great men should have neither wife nor
children; they should tread the paths of misery alone; their
virtues are not those of commonplace people, such men as
you belong to the whole world, not to one woman and a single
family. You are like those great trees which exhaust the
soil round about them, and I am the poor field-plant beside
it that can never rear its head so high ; I must die before half
your life is spent. I have waited till my last hour to tell
you these horrible truths, which have been revealed to me in
anguish and despair. Have pity on our children ! Again and
again, until my last sigh, I entreat you to have pity on our
children, that so my words may find an echo in your heart.
This wife of yours is dead, you see. Slowly and gradually
she has starved for lack of affection and happiness. Alas !
but for the cruel kindness which you have involuntarily
shown me, could I have lived so long? But the poor chil-
dren ! They have never failed me ; they have grown with the
growth of my sorrows, and the mother has outlived the wife.
Have pity, have pity on our children !"
"Leniulquinier !" Balthazar thundered.
The old servant hurried into the room.
"Go up and break everything to pieces, all the machinery,
and everything else. Be careful how you do it, but do it
118 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
thoroughly! ... I will have nothing more to do with
science !'' he said, turning to his wife.
"It is too late," she said with a glance at Lemulquinier,--
"Marguerite !" she moaned, feeling that death was near. Mar-
guerite stood in the doorway, and gave a sharp cry as she
met her mother's eyes and saw the ghastly pallor of her face.
"Marguerite !" the dying woman cried again. This last
word she ever spoke, uttered with a wild vehemence, seemed
like a solemn summons to her daughter to take her place.
The rest of the family hurried in alarm to the bedside, in
time to see her die. Mme. Claes' life had ebbed away in the
final effort she had made. Balthazar and Marguerite sat mo-
tionless, she at the head, and he at the foot of the bed. The
two who had best known her goodness and inexhaustible kind-
ness could not believe that she was really dead. The glance
exchanged between father and daughter was freighted with
many thoughts; she judged her father, and her father
trembled already lest his daughter should be the instrument
of vengeance. Memories crowded upon him, memories of the
love that had filled his life, and of her whose last words
seemed to carry an almost sacred authority which had so
stamped them on his soul tliat it seemed as if he must for
ever hear them ringing in his ears ; but Balthazar mistrusted
himself, he doubted whether he could resist the spirit which
possessed him, he felt that the impulses of remorse had grown
weaker already at the first menaces of a return of his pas-
sion, and he was afraid of himself.
When Mme. Claes was gone, every one felt that she had
been the life and soul of the Maison Claes, and that now that
soul was no more. And in the house itself, where her loss
was felt to the full, the parlor where the noble Josephine still
seemed to live was kept shut; nobody had the heart to enter
it.
Society does not feel called upon to practise the virtues
which it preaches to individuals; it offends hourly (though
only in words) against its own canons; a jest prepares the
way for base actions, a jest brings down anything beautiful
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 119
or lofty to the ordinary level. If a son sheds too many tears
for his father's loss, he is ridiculous; if too few, he is held
up to execration ; and then society, having said its say, diverts
itself by weighing the dead, scarcely yet cold, in its balance.
On the evening of the day when Mme. Claes died her
friends discussed her over their whist, dropped flowers on her
tomb in a pause while the cards were dealing, and paid their
tribute to her noble character while sorting hearts and spades.
Then, after the usual lugubrious commonplaces, which are
a kind of preliminary vocal exercise in social lamentation,
and which are uttered with the same intonations and exactly
the same amount of feeling all over France at every hour of
the day, the whole chorus proceeded to calculate the amount
of Mme. Claes' property.
Pierquin opened the discussion by pointing out that the
lamented lady's husband had made her life so wretched that
death was a happy release for her, and that it was a still
greater blessing for her children. She would never have had
sufficient firmness to oppose the wishes of the husband whom
she adored, but now her fortune had passed out of Claes'
hands. One and all began forthwith to reckon the probable
amount of poor Mme. Claes' fortune, to calculate her savings
(had she, or had she not, managed to put anything by?), and
made out inventories of her jewels, and ransacked her draw-
ers and her wardrobe, while her bereaved family were yet
kneeling in prayer and tears by her bed of death.
With the experienced eye of a sworn valuer, Pierquin took
in the situation at a glance. He was of the opinion that all
Mme. Claes' property might be "got together again" (to use
his own expression), and should amount to something like
fifteen hundred thousand francs. A large part of this was
represented by the forests of Waignies ; that property had
risen enormously in value in the last twelve years, and he
made a rapid computation of the probable value of the trees
of all ages from the oldest to the youngest. If that was not
sufficient, Balthazar bad probably enough to "cover" the chil-
dren's claims. Mile. Claes was. therefore, still, in his peculiar
phraseology, a girl "worth four hundred thousand francs/*
120 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
"But if she does not marry pretty soon," he added, "M.
Claes will ruin his children; he is just the man to do it. If
she were married she would be emancipated from her father's
control, and could compel him to sell the forest of Waignies,
to divide it among them, and to invest the shares of the
minors in such a way that their father could not touch them."
Every one began to suggest the names of various young men
of the province who might aspire to the hand of Mile. Claes,
but no one flattered the notary so far as to include him in the
list. Pierquin raised so many objections to all the proposed
suitors, and considered none of them worthy of Marguerite,
that the company exchanged significant smiles, and amused
themselves by teasing the notary, prolonging the process in
provincial fashion. To Pierquin it seemed that Mme. Claes'
death was likely to assist his cause, and he already began to
cut up the dead for his own benefit.
"That good lady yonder," said he to himself, as he went
home that night, "was as proud as a peacock ; she would never
have allowed me to marry a daughter of hers. Eh ! eh ! but
if I play my cards well now, why should I not marry the girl ?
Old Claes has carbon on the brain, and does not care what
becomes of his children ; if I ask him for his daughter, as soon
as I have convinced Marguerite that she must marry for her
brothers' and sister's sake, he will be glad enough to be rid
of a girl who may give him a good deal of trouble."
He fell asleep in the midst of his meditations on the ad-
vantages of this match, so attractive to him on so many
grounds, a marriage which bade fair to secure his complete
happiness. It would have been hard to find a more delicately
lovely or a better bred girl in the province. Marguerite was
as modest and graceful as the fair flower which Emmanuel
had not dared to mention before her, lest he should reveal
the secret wishes of his heart. She had religious principles
and instinctive pride; his honor would be safe in her keeping.
This marriage would not only gratify the vanity which enters
more or less into every man's choice of a wife, but the notan-'s
pride would be satisfied; an alliance with a twice-ennobled
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 121
family, which bore one of the most distinguished names in
Flanders, would reflect lustre upon him.
The very next morning Pierquin went to his strong box, and
thence drew several notes of a thousand francs each, which
he pressed on Balthazar, in order to spare his cousin any
petty pecuniary annoyances in his grief. Balthazar would no
doubt feel touched by the delicate attention, and speak of it
to his daughter with an accompanying panegyric on the good
qualities of the notary and his kindness of heart. But Bal-
thazar did nothing of the kind. Neither M. Claes nor his
daughter saw anything extraordinary in this action; they
were so taken up with their grief that they scarcely gave a
thought to Pierquin. Indeed, Balthazar's despair was so
great that those who had been disposed to blame his previous
conduct now relented and forgave him, not on the score of his
devotion to science, but because of the tardy remorse which
would never repair the evil. The world is quite satisfied with
grimaces; it takes current coin without inquiring too
curiously whether or no the metal is base; the sight of pain
has a certain dramatic interest, it is a sort of enjoyment in
consideration of which the world is prepared to pardon every-
thing, even to a criminal. The world craves sensation so
eagerly that it absolves with equal readiness those who move
it to laughter or to tears, without demanding a strict account
of the means employed in either case.
Marguerite had just completed her nineteenth year when
her father intrusted the management of the household into
her hands; her brothers and sister rem.embered that their
mother in the last moments of her life had bidden them obey
their oldest sister, and her authority was dutifully recognized.
Her delicate, pale face looked paler still by contrast with her
mourning, as its sweet and patient expression was enhanced
by sadness. From the very first it was abundantly evident
that she possessed the womanly courage, the fortitude, and
constant serenity which ministering angels surely bring to
their task of healing, as they lay their green palm branches
on aching hearts. But although she had early understood the
122 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
duties laid upon her, and had accustomed herself to hide her
sorrow, it was none the less deep ; and the serenity of her face
was little in keeping with the vehemence of her grief. It
was to be a part of her early experience to know the pain of
repressing the sorrow and love with which the heart over-
flows; henceforward the generous instincts of youth were to
he curbed continually at th^ bidding of tyrannous necessity.
After her mother's death she found herself involved at once
in intricate problems where serious interests were at stake,
and this at an age when a girl usually thinks of nothing but
pleasure. The hard discipline of pain has never been lacking
for angelic natures.
A love which has vanity and greed for its twin supporters
is the most stubborn of passions. Pierquin meant to lose no
time in surrounding the heiress. The family had scarcely
put on mourning when he found an opportunity of speaking
to Marguerite ; and began his operations with such skill, that
she might well have been deceived by his tactics. But love
had brought a faculty of clairvoyance, and Marguerite was
not to be deceived, although Pierquin's good-nature, the
good-nature of a notary who shows his affection by saving
his client's money, gave some appearance of truth to his
specious sentimentalities. The notary felt strong in his hazy
relationship, in his acquaintance, with family secrets and
business affairs, in the esteem and friendship of Marguerite's
father. The very abstractedness of that father, who was not
likely to form any projects for his daughter's settlement in
life, made for Pierquin's cause. He thought it quit^ impos-
sible that Marguerite could have any predilection, and sub-
mitted his suit to her, though he was not clever enough to
disguise beneath the flimsy veil of feigned passion the in-
terested motives that had led him to scheme for this alliance,
which are always hateful to young souls. In fact, they had
changed places; the notary's revelation of selfishness was
artless, and Marguerite was on her guard; for he thought
that he had to do with a rlefenceless girl, and had no regard
for the privileges of weakness.
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 123
'"'My dear cousin," be began, as be walked up and down
the paths in the little garden, ''you know my heart, and you
know also how I shrink from intruding on your grief at such
a moment. I ought not to be a notary, I am far too sensi-
tive ; I have such a feeling heart ; but I am always forced to
dwell on prosaic questions of interest when I would fain
yield to the softer emotions which make life happy. It is
very painful to me to be compelled to speak to you of matters
which must jar upon your present feelings ; but it cannot be
helped. You have constantly been in my thoughts for the
past few days. I have just discovered, by a curious chance,
that your brothers' and your sister's fortunes, and even your
own, are imperiled. It rests with you to save your family
from utter ruin."
"What ought we to do?" she asked, somewhat alarmed at
these remarks.
"You should marry," answered Pierquin.
"I shall do nothing of the kind," she exclaimed.
"You will marr}%" returned the notary, "after mature re-
flection on the critical condition of your affairs."
"How can my marriage save us from ?"
"That was what I was waiting to hear, cousin," he broke
in. "Marriage emancipates a girl."
"Why should I be emancipated?" asked Marguerite.
"To put you in possession of your rights, my dear little
cousin," replied the notary, with an air of triumph. "In that
event you would take your share of your mother's fortune;
and before you can take your share, her property must be
liquidated, and that would mean a forced sale of the forest
of Waignies. That once settled, all the capital would be
realized, and your father would be bound, as guardian, to
invest your sister's share and your brothers' in such a way
that chemistry could not touch it."
"And suppose that none of these things happen — what
then?" asked she.
"Why, in that case," said the notary, "your father would
administer the estate. If he takes it into his head again to
124 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
make gold, there is nothing to prevent him from selling the
forest of Waignies, and leaving you all as bare as shorn
lambs. The forest of Waignies is worth about fourteen hun-
Ired thousand francs at this moment, but your father may
nt down every stick of timber any day, and the thirteen hun-
red acres of land will not fetch three hundred thousand
-xancs. This is almost sure to happen; and would it not
be wiser to prevent it by raising the question at once, by
emancipating yourself and demanding your share of the in-
heritance ? You would save in other ways ; your father would
not fell the timber as he otherwise would do from time to
time, to your prejudice. Just now chemistry is dormant, and
of course he would invest the money realized by the sale in
consols. The funds are at fifty-nine,, so the dear children would
have very nearly five thousand livres of interest on fifty
thousand francs. Besides, as it is illegal to spend a minor's
capital, your brothers and sister would find their fortune
doubled by the time they came of age. Now, on the other
hand, my word ! . . . There you have tlie whole posi-
tion ! . . . Not only so, but your father has dipped
pretty heavily into your mother's property ; and when the in-
ventory is made out, we shall see what the deficit amounts to.
If there is a balance owing, you can take a mortgage on his
lands, and save something in that way."
"For shame!" said Marguerite; "that would be an insult
to my father. It is not so long since my mother's last words
were uttered, that I should have forgotten them already. My
father is incapable of robbing his children," she added, with
bitter tears in her eyes. "You do not know him, M. Pier-
quin."
"But suppose, my dear cousin, that your father betakes
himself to chemistrj^ again "
"We should be ruined, should we not ?"
"Oh! utterly ruined! Believe me. Marguerite," he said,
taking her hand and pressing it to his heart; "believe me.
I should fail in my duty if I did not urge this course upon
you. Your interests alone "
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 125
"Monsieur," returned Marguerite coolly, as she withdrew
her hand, "the real interests of my family demand that I
should not marry. That was my mother's decision."
"Cousin !" he cried, with the conviction of a man of busi-
ness who sees a fortune squandered, "you are rushing on your
own destruction ; you might as well fling your mother's money
into the water. . . . Well, for you I will show the devo-
tion of the warm friendship I feel for you. You do not know
how much I love you ; I have adored you ever since I saw you
on the day of the last ball that your father gave. You were
charming ! You may trust the voice of the heart when it
speaks of your interests, dear Marguerite. . . ."
There was a moment's silence; then he went on, "Yes, we
will summon a family council, and emancipate you without
consulting you about it."
"But what does 'emancipation' mean ?"
"It means that you will come into possession of your
rights."
"Then, if I can be emancipated in this way, why would
you have me marry ? . . . And to whom?"
Pierquin did his best to look tenderly at his cousin, but the
expression of his face was so at variance with the hard eyes
that usually only grow eloquent over money, that Marguerite
fancied she saw an interested motive in this affectionate im-
promptu.
"You should marry a man whom you cared for . . .
in your own circle. . . ." he got out. "You must have
a husband, if it were only to manage your business affairs.
You will be left face to face with your father; and can you
hold your own against him, all by yourself?"
"Yes, monsieur; I shall find means to defend my brothers
and sister when the time comes."
"Plague take the girl !" thought Pierquin to himself. Aloud
he said, "No; you will never be able to stand out against
him."
"Let us say no more about it," she replied.
"Good-bye, cousin. I shall do my best to serve you in spite
126 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
of yourself; I shall show j'ou how much I love 3'ou by pre-
venting a misfortune which every one in the town foresees."
"Thank you for the interest you take in me, but I beg oi
you neither to say nor do anything that can give my father
the slightest annoyance."
Marguerite thoughtfully watched Pierquin's retreating
figure, and could not help comparing his metallic voice, his
manners, supple as steel springs, his glances, which expressed
servility rather than gentleness, with the mute revelation
of Emmanuel's feelings towards her, which impressed her
as music or poetry might.
In every word we speak, in every action of our lives, there
is a strange magnetic power which malces itself felt, and
which never deceives. The glances, the tones of the voice,
the lover's impassioned gestures, can be imitated; a clever
actor may perhaps deceive an inexperienced girl, but to be
successful he should have the field to himself. If there is
another soul which vibrates in unison with every feeling that
stirs her own, will she not soon find out the difference between
love and its semblance? Emmanuel at this moment, like
Marguerite herself, was under the influence of the clouds
which had gathered about them ever since that first meeting
in the picture gallery; the blue heaven of love was hidden
from their eyes. He had singled her out for a worship which,
from its very hopelessness, was tender, mysterious, and rev-
erent in its manifestations. Socially he was too far beneath
Mile. Claes to hope to be accepted as her husband; he was
poor, and had nothing but a noble name to offer her. Then
he had waited and waited for some slight encouragement,
which Marguerite would not give him beneath the eyes of a
dying mother.
Equally pure, they had not as yet spoken a word of love.
Their Joys had been the secret joys which unhappy souls must
perforce linger over alone. The same hope had, indeed,
thrilled them both, but they had trembled and remained
apart ; they seemed to fear themselves, conscious that each
belonged too surely to the other. Emmanuel, therefore, feared
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 127
to touch with his lips the hand of the sovereign lady whom
he had enshrined in his heart. The slightest careless contact
would have brought such an intoxication of delight that his
senses would have been beyond his control ; he would no
longer have been master of himself. But if they had never
exchanged the slight yet significant, the innocent and solemn
tokens of love which even the most timid lovers permit them-
selves, each dwelt no less in the other's heart, and both knew
that they were ready to make the greatest sacrifices, the only
pleasures that they could know. Ever since Mme. Claes'
death the love in the depths of their hearts had been shrouded
in mourning. The gloom in which they lived had deepened
into night, and every ray of hope was quenched in tears.
Marguerite's reserve had changed to something like coldness,
for she felt bound to keep the vow which her mother had
demanded of her; and now that she had more liberty than
formerly, she became more distant. Emmanuel had shared
in her mourning, feeling with his beloved that the least word
or wish of love at such a time would be treason against the
sovereign laws of the heart. So this passionate love was hid-
den away more closely than ever. The two souls were in
unison, but sorrow had come between them and separated
them as effectually as the timidity of youth and respect for
the sufferings of her who was now dead; yet there was still
left to them the magnificent language of the eyes, the mute
eloquence of self-sacrifice, the knowledge that one thought
always possessed them both — sublime harmonies of youth,
the first steps of love in its infancy.
Emmanuel came every morning for news of Claes and of
Marguerite, but he never came into the dining-room, where
the family now sat, unless he brought a letter from Gabriel,
or Balthazar invited him to enter. Numberless sympathetic
thoughts were revealed in his first glance at the girl before
him; the reserve that compelled him to assume a conven-
tional demeanor harassed him; but he respected it, and
shared the sorrow which caused it, and all the dew of his
tears was shed on the heart of his beloved in a glance un-
128 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
spoiled by any after-thought. He lived so evidently in the
present moment, he set such high value on a happiness which
he thought so fleeting, that Marguerite's heart sometimes
gmote her, and she told herself that she was ungenerous
not to hold out her hand and say, "Let us be friends."
Pierquin still continued his importunities with the obsti-
nacy which is the patience of dulness, possessed by one idea.
He judged Marguerite by the ordinary rules of the multitude
when judging of women. He imagined that when the words
"marriage," "liberty," and "fortune" had been let fall in her
hearing they would take root in her mind, and spring up and
blossom into wishes which he could turn to his own advan^
tage, and he chose to think that her coldness was nothing
but dissimulation. But in spite of all his polite attentions,
he was an awkward actor; he sometimes forgot his part, and
assumed the despotic tone of a man who is accustomed to
make the final decision in all serious questions relating to
family life. For her benefit he repeated consoling platitudes,
the professional commonplaces which creep like snails over
a sorrow, and leave behind them a track of barren words
that profane the sanctity of grief. His tenderness was simply
cajolery ; he dropped his feigned melancholy at the door when
he put on his overshoes and took up his umbrella. He took
advantage of the privileges which his long intimacy with the
Maison Claes had given him, using them as a means of ingra-
tiating himself with the rest of the family to bring Mar-
guerite to make a marriage which was already talked of in
the town. So, in strong contrast to a true-hearted, devoted,
and respectful love was opposed its selfish and calculating
semblance. The characters of both men were in harmony
;vith their manner. The one feigned a passion which he did
not feel, and seized on every least advantage that gave him a
hold on Marguerite; the other concealed his love, and trem-
bled lest his devotion should be too apparent.
Some time after her mother's death, and, as it happened,
In one day, Marguerite had an opportunity of comparing the
two men whom she was in a position to judge, for she was
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 129
compelled to live in a social solitude which made her inac-
cessible to any who might have thought of asking her in
marriage.
One day, after breakfast, on one of the sunniest mornings
of early April, Emmanuel chanced to call just as M. Claes
was going out. Balthazar found his own house almost un-
endurable, and spent a large part of the day in walking about
the ramparts. Emmanuel turned, as though he meant to
follow Balthazar, hesitated, seemed to gather up his courage,
glanced at Marguerite, and stayed. Marguerite felt sure
that he wished to speak with her, and asked him to go into
the garden; she sent Felicie to sit with Martha, who was
sewing in the ante-chamber on an upper floor, and then seated
herself on a garden seat in full view of her sister and the old
duenna.
"M. Claes is as much absorbed by his grief as he used to be
by science," said the young man as he watched Balthazar
pacing slowly across the court. "Every one in Douai is sorry
for him; he goes about like a man who has not got his wits
about him; he suddenly stops short without a reason, and
gazes about him and sees nothing "
"Every one expresses sorrow in a different way," said
Marguerite, keeping back the tears. "What did you wish to
say to me ?" she added, with cold dignity, after a pause.
"Mademoiselle," Emmanuel replied in an unsteady voice,
^'I scarcely know if I have a right to speak to you as I am
about to do. Please, think only of my desire to serve you,
and believe that a schoolmaster may be so much interested in
his pupils as to feel anxious about their future. Your brother
Gabriel is over fifteen now; he is in the second class; it is
surely time to think about his probable career, and to arrange
his course of study accordingly. The decision rests of course
with your father, but if he gives it no thought, it may be a
serious matter for Gabriel. And yet it would be a mortifica-
tion to your father, would it not, if you pointed out to him
that he was neglecting his son ? So, as things are, could you
not yourself consult Gabriel as to his inclinations, anri help
130 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
him to choose a course of study, so that if your father at a
later day should wish him to enter the civil service or to
make a soldier of him, Gabriel will be prepared for his post
by a special training? I am sure that neither you nor M.
Claes would wish to bring up Gabriel in idleness "
"Oh, no !" said Marguerite. "Thank you, M. Emmanuel,
you are quite right. When our mother had us taught how
to make lace, and took such pains with our drawing, sewing.^
music, and embroidery, she often said that we could not tell
what might happen, and that we must be prepared for every-
thing. Gabriel ought to have resources within himself, so he
must have a thorough education. But what is the best career
for a man to choose?"
Emmanuel trembled with happiness. "Mademoiselle," he
said, "Gabriel is at the head of his class in mathematics;
if he were to enter the Illcole polytechnique, I feel sure that
he would acquire practical knowledge there which would be
useful to him afterwards all through his life. He would be
free to choose a career after his own inclinations after he left
the Ecole, and you would have gained time without binding
him down to any programme. Men who distinguish them-
selves there are always sought after. Diplomatists, scholars,
administrators, engineers, generals, sailors, magistrates,
manufacturers, and bankers are all educated at the Ecole.
So it is nothing at all extraordinary that a young man be-
longing to a great or wealthy family should study to qualify
for admission. If Gabriel should make up his mind to this,
I would ask you . . . will you grant me my request?
Say, Yes."
'^hat isit?"
"Let me be his tutor?" he said nervously.
Marguerite looked at M. de Solis, then she took his hand
and said, "Yes."
She was silent for a moment, then she added in an unsteady
voice :
"ITow much I value the delicacy which has led you to offer
something that I can accept from you. In all that you have
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 131
just said I can see how much you have thought for us. Thank
you."
Simply as these words were said, Emmanuel turned his
head away lest Marguerite should see the tears of happiness
in his eyes; he was overcome by the delight of being useful
to her.
"I will bring them both to see you," he went on when he
had recovered his self-possession. "To-morrow is a holiday."
He rose and took leave of Marguerite, who shortly followed
him to the house; as he crossed the court he still saw her
standing by the dining-room door, and received a last friendly
sign of farewell.
After dinner the notary came to call on M. Claes. Mar-
guerite and her father were out in the garden, and Pierquin
took up his position between them on the very bench where
Emmanuel had sat that morning.
"My dear cousin," he said, addressing Balthazar, "I have
come to talk about business to-night. Forty-two days have now
elapsed since your lamented wife's demise "
"I have not noticed how the time went," said Claes, brush-
ing away a tear that rose at the technical term demise.
"Oh! monsieur," cried Marguerite, with a glance at the
lawyer, 'laow can you ?"
"But, my dear Marguerite, we lawyers are obliged to con-
sider the limits of the time prescribed by law. This matter
more particularly concerns you and your co-heirs. All M.
Claes' children are under age, so within forty-five days of
his wife's demise he is bound to have an inventory made out,
so as to ascertain the value of the estate they held in common.
How are we to find out if it is solvent or no, and whether
there is enough to satisfy the minors' claims ?"
Marguerite rose.
"Do not go away, cousin," said Pierquin ; "this matter con-
cerns you as well as your father. You know how deeply I
feel your grief, but you must give your attention at once to
these requirements of the law, otherwise you may both get into
serious trouble. I am simply doing my duty as legal adviser
to the family/*
132 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
"He is quite right/' said Claes.
''The time expires in two days," Pierquin continued, "had
I must set to work to-morrow to make out the inventory, if it
is only to postpone the payment of legacy duty which the
Treasury will demand very shortly. The Treasury is not
disturbed by compunction, and has no heart ; it sets its claws
in us at all seasons. So my clerk and I will come here ever}^
day from ten to four with M. Eaparlier the valuer. As soon
as we have finished here in the town, we will go into the
country. We can talk about the forest of "Waignies by and
by. So that is settled, and now let us turn our attention
to another point. We must call a family council, and appoint
a guardian. M. Conyncks of Bruges is your nearest living
relative, but he unluckily has become a Belgian citizen. You
ought to write to him, cousin, and find out whether the old
gentleman has any notion of settling in France; he has a
fine property on this side of the frontier; and you might
perhaps induce him and his daughter to move into French
Flanders. If he declines to make a change, I will see about
arranging for a council of some of the nearer remaining rela-
tions."
'^hat is the use of an inventory ?" asked Marguerite.
"To find out how the property stands, and ascertain the
assets and debts. When it is all clearly scheduled, the family
council takes such steps as it deems necessary on behalf of
the minors "
"Pierquin," said Claes, as he rose from the garden-seat,
"do anything that you think necessary to protect my chil-
dren's interests, but spare us the distress of selling anything
that belonged to my dear wife "
He did not finish the sentence, but he spoke with so much
dignity, there was such deep feeling in his tones, that Mar-
giTcrite took her father's hand in hers and kissed it.
"I will return to-morrow, then," said Pierquin.
"Come and breakfast with us," said Balthazar. He seemed
to be collecting scattered memories together, for in a moment
he exclaimed: "But in my marriage contract, whicn was
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 133
drawn up according to the custom of ITainault, I released
my wife from the obligation of making an inventory, in
order to spare her the worry and annoyance, and it is quite
probable that I was likewise released "
"Oh ! how fortunate !" cried Marguerite. "It would have
given us so much trouble "
"Very well," said Pierquin, who was rather put out; "we
will look into your marriage contract to-morrow."
"Then you did not know of this?" said Marguerite, an
inquiry which put an end to the interview, for the notary
was so much embarrassed by his cousin's home-thrust that
he was glad to abandon the discussion.
"The devil is in it !" said he to himself as he crossed the
courtyard. "That man, for all his abstractedness, can find
his wandering wits in the nick of time, and put a stop to
our precautions against him. He will squander his children's
money, it is as plain as that two and two make four. Talk
of business to a girl of nineteen, and she gets sentimental
over it ! Here am I racking my brains to save the property
of those children by regular means, by coming to an under-
standing with old Conyncks, and this is the end of it! I
have thrown away all my chances with Marguerite; she is
sure to ask her father why I wanted an inventory of the
property, which she now fancies to be quite unnecessary, and
Claes, of course, will tell her that lawyers have a craze for
drawing up documents ; that we are notaries first, and cousins
and friends, and what not, afterwards, all sorts of rubbish in
fact. . . ."
He slammed the door, storming inwardly at clients who
Ifet their sentimentality ruin them.
Balthazar was right. The inventory did not take place.
So nothing was done to limit or define the father's powers
over his children's property.
Several months went by, and brought no changes to the
Maison Claes. Gabriel, under the able tuition of M. de Solis.
studied hard, learned the necessary foreign languages, and
prepared to pass the entrance examination at the Ecolc poly-
134 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
technique. Felicie and Marguerite lived in absolute retire-
ment; but, nevertheless, they spent the summer at their
father's country house, in ordet to economize. M. Claes was
much occupied by his business affairs; he paid his debts,
raising the money on his own property, and went to visit the
forest of Waignies.
By the middle of the year 1817 his grief had gradually
abated, and he began to feel depressed by the dulness and
sameness of the life he led. At first he resisted temptation
bravely, and would not allow himself to think of chemistry;
but the love of science was only dormant, and in spite of
himself his thoughts turned towards his old pursuits. Then
he thought he would not begin his experiments ; he would not
take up his science practically, he would confine himself to
theory ; but the longer he dwelt with these theories, the
stronger his passion grew, and he began to equivocate with
himself. He asked himself whether he was really bound
not to prosecute his researches, and remembered how his
wife had refused his oath. He had certainly vowed to himself
that he would make no further attempt to solve the great
Problem, but the road to success had never been so certain
and so plain ; was he not surely free to change his mind now
that the way was clear? He was then fifty-nine years of age,
and his idea possessed him now with the dogged fixity which
slowly develops into monomania. Outward circumstances
also combined to shake his wavering loyalty.
Europe was at peace. Men of science of various nationali-
ties, cut off from all communication with each other by
twenty years of wars, were now free to correspond and to
communicate their discoveries and theories to each other.
Science was making great strides. Claes found that modern
discoveries had a bearing, which his fellow-chemists did not
suspect, upon the Problem of the Absolute. Learned men
who were devoting their lives to the solution of other scien-
tific enigmas began to think, as he did, that light and heat,
and galvanism and electricity, were only different effects of
the same cause, and that all the various substances which
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 135
had hitherto been regarded as different elements were merely
allotropic forms of the same unknown element. The fear
that some other chemist might effect the reduction of metals,
and find the principle of electricity (two discoveries which
would lead to the solution of the Problem of the Absolute),
raised the enthusiasm, which the people of Douai called a
mania, to the highest pitch; only those who have felt a like
passionate love of science, or who have known the tyranny
of ideas, can imagine the force of the paroxysm. Balthazar's
frenzy was but the more violent because it had been so long
subdued, and now broke out afresh.
Marguerite, who had been watching her father very closely,
divined this crisis, and opened the long-closed parlor. She
thought that if they sat in that room once more, old painful
memories of her mother's death would be awakened, and
would act as a restraint, and she was to some extent success-
ful. For a little while her father's grief was reawakened,
and the inevitable plunge into the abyss was deferred, but it
was only for a little while. She determined to go into society
once more, and so to distract Balthazar's attention from these
thoughts. Several good marriages were proposed for her,
over which Claes deliberated, but Marguerite said that until
she was twenty-five she would not marry. In spite of all his
daughter's endeavors, in spite of remorseful inner struggles,
Balthazar began his experiments again in the early days of
the winter. At first they were conducted secretl}', but it was
not easy to hide such occupations as his from the inquisitive
eyes of the maid-servants.
One day, therefore, while Marguerite was dressing, Martha
said to her, "Mademoiselle, it is all over with us ! That
wretch of a Mulquinier (who is the devil himself in human
shape, for I have never seen him cross himself) has gone
up into the attic again. There is the master on the highroad
to hell ! Heaven send that he may not be the death of you
all, as he was the death of the poor dear mistress !"
"Impossible !" said Marguerite.
"Come and see their goings-on for yourself."
136 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
Mile. Claes sprang to the window, and saw, in fact, a thin
streak of smoke rising from the laboratory chimney.
"I shall be twenty-one in a few months' time," she thought,
"and then our property must be squandered no longer; I
must find a way to prevent it."
When Balthazar finally gave way to his passion, his respect
for his children's interests was, of course, less of a restraint
than his affection for his wife had been. Such barriers were
easily overleapt, his conscience was more elastic, his passion
had grown stronger. Glory, and hard work, and hope, and
misery lay before him; he set out on his way with the energy
of full and entire conviction. He felt so sure of the outcome
of it all that he worked day and night, flinging himself into
his pursuits with a zeal that alarmed his daughters ; they
did not know that a man's health seldom suffers from the
work that he loves and does for its own sake.
As soon as her father began his experiments. Marguerite
reduced the expenses of housekeeping, and became almost
as parsimonious as a miser. Josette and Martha entered
into her plans, and seconded her loyally. As for Claes, he was
scarcely aware of these retrenchments ; he did not notice that
they had been reduced to the bare necessaries of life. He
began by staying away from the family breakfast; then the
whole day was spent in the laboratory, and he only came
down to dinner, and sat for a few silent hours afterwards
in the evening in the parlor with the two girls. He never
spoke to them; he did not seem to hear them when they
wished him good-night; he mechanically let them kiss him
on both cheeks. Such neglect as this might have brought
about serious consequences if Marguerite had not wielded
a mother's authority, if the love in her heart had not been
a safeguard.
Pierquin had discontinued his visits entirely ; in his opinion
nothing could save his cousins from utter ruin. Balthazar's
estates, which were worth about two hundred thousand
crowns, and brought in sixteen thousand francs, were already
incumbered with mortgages to the amount of three hundred
I
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 137
thousand francs. Claes had inaugurated his second epoch
of scientific enthusiasm by a lieavy loan. At that moment
ills income just sufiiced to pay the interest on his debts; and
as, with the improvidence characteristic of men who live for
an idea, he had made over all the rents of his farms to Mar-
guerite to defray the expenses of the housekeeping, the notary
calculated that the end must come in three years' time, when
everything would go to rack and ruin, and the sheriff's officers
would eat up all that Balthazar had left. Under the influence
of Marguerite's coldness, Pierquin's indifference had almost
become hostility. He meant to secure his retreat in case
his cousin should grow so poor that he might no longer wish
to marry her, and spoke of the Claes everywhere in a pitying
tone.
"Poor things, they are in a fair way to be ruined," said he.
•'I did everything I could to save them ; but, would you believe
it? Mile. Claes herself set her face against every plan by
which the law could step in to secure those children from
starvation."
Emmanuel, through his uncle's influence, had been ap-
pointed headmaster of the College de Douai, his own personal
qualifications having eminently fitted him for the post. He
came almost every evening to see the two girls, who sum-
moned their old duenna to the parlor so soon as their father
left them for the night. Always at the same hour they heard
the knock at the door: j^oung de Soils was never late. For
the past three months Marguerite's mute gratitude and gra-
ciousness had given him confidence; he had developed, and
was himself. His purity of soul shone like a flawless dia-
mond, and Marguerite learned to know the full value
of his steadfast strength of character, when she saw that it
had its source in the depths of his nature. She saw the blos-
soms open out one by one; hitherto she had only known of
them by their fragrance. Every day Emmanuel realized
some hope of hers, new splendors lighted up the enchanted
country of love, the clouds vanished, the sky grew clear and
serene, unsuspected treasures which had been hidden in the
138 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
gloom shone forth. For Emmanuel was more at his ease;
he could display the winning grace of the heart, the infec-
tious gaiety of youth, the simplicity that comes of a life of
study, the treasures of a fastidious mind and unsophisticated
nature, the innocent merriment that suits so well with youth-
ful love. Marguerite and Emmanuel understood each other
better ; together they had explored the depths of their hearts,
and had found the same thoughts, pearls of the same lustre,
blended notes of harmon}^, as clear and sweet as the magic
music which holds the divers spellbound under the sea. They
had come to know each other through -the interchange of
ideas in the course of those evening talks, studying each other
with a curiosity that grew to be a delicate imaginative sym-
pathy. There was no bashfulness on either side, but perhaps
some coquetry. The hours which Emmanuel spent with the
two girls under Martha's eyes reconciled Marguerite to her
life of anguish and resignation; the love that grew uncon-
sciously was her support in her troubles. Emmanuel's affec-
tion expressed itself with the natural grace that is irresistible,
with the delicate and delightful wit that reveals fresh phases
of deep feeling, as the facets of a precious stone set free all
its hidden fires; the wonderful devices that love teaches
lovers, which render a woman loyally responsive to the hand
of the artist who sets new life into the old forms, to the tones
of the voice which gave a new significance to a phrase each
time it is repeated. Love is not merely a sentiment, it is an
art. A bare word, a hesitation, a nothing, reveals to a woman
the presence of the great and sublime artist who can touch her
heart without withering it. The further Emmanuel went,
the more charming were the ways in which his love expressed
itself.
"I have outstripped Pierquin," he said one evening; "I am
the bearer of l)ad tidings that he is going to bring, but I
thought I would ratlier tell them myself. Your father has
sold your forest to some speculators, who have taken the
timber as it stands to sell again in smaller quantities; the
trees have been cut down already, and all the trunks have
THE QUEST OF TflE ABSOLUTE 139
been taken away. Three hundred thousand francs were paid
down at once, and this was sent to Paris to discharge ]\L
Claes' debts there; but in order to clear his debts entirely,
he has been forced to assign to his creditors a hundred thou-
sand francs out of the hundred thousand crowns still due to
him on the purchase money."
Just at that point Pierquin came in.
''Well, my dear cousin," he said, "you are ruined, you sec !
I told you how it would be, but you would not listen tc me.
Your father has a good appetite; he only made one bite of
your forest. Your guardian, M. Conyncks, is away at Am-
sterdam, where he is negotiating the sale of his Belgian es-
tates, and while his back is turned Claes seizes the opportunity
to do this stroke of business. It is hardly fair. I have just
written to old Conyncks, but it will be all up with you by the
time he gets here. You will be obliged to take proceedings
against your father. It will not take very long to settle the
aif air in a court of law, but Claes will not come out of it very
well; M. Conyncks will be compelled to take action, the law
requires it in such cases. And all this has come of your
wilfulness ! Do you see now how prudent I was, and how
devoted to your interests ?"
"I have some good news for you, mademoiselle," said young
de Solis in his gentle voice : "Gabriel has been admitted as
a pupil at the l^cole polytechnique ; the difficulties which
were raised at first have been cleared away."
Marguerite thanked him by a smile, and said, "Then I
shall find a use for my savings. — Martha," she added, speak-
ing to the old servant, "we must begin at once to make ready
Gabriel's outfit. Poor Felicie, we both must work hard,"
she said, with a kiss on her sister's forehead.
"He will return home to-morrow, and you will have him
here for about ten days; on the 15th of November he must
be in Paris."
"Cousin Gabriel is well advised," said the notary, as he
scanned the headmaster; "he will have to make his way in
the world. But now, my dear Marguerite, the honor of the
family is at stake; will you listen to me this time?"
140 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
"Not if it is a question of marriage."
"But what will you do ?"
"Nothing, cousin. . . . What should I do?"
'TTou are of age."
"I shall be of age in a few days' time. Is there any course:
which you can suggest that will reconcile our interests witli
our duty to our father and with the honor of the family ?"
"You can do nothing, cousin, without your uncle. Thai: :l
clear. When he comes back to Douai I will call again."
"Good-evening, monsieur," said Marguerite.
"The poorer she grows, the more airs she gives herself,"'
thought the notary. Aloud he said, "Good-evening, made-
moiselle.— M. de Soils, I have the honor to wish you good-
day," and he went away without paying any attention to
Felicie or to Martha.
When the door closed on him, Emmanuel spoke, with hesi-
tation in his voice. "I have been studying the Code for the
past two days," he said, "and I have taken counsel with an
old lawyer, one of my uncle's friends. If you will allow me,
I will go to Amsterdam to-morrow. . . . Listen, dear
Marguerite . . ."
He had spoken her name for the first time. She thanked
him by a glance and a gentle inclination of the head, and lis-
tened smiling, though her eyes were full of tears.
"You can speak before my sister," said Marguerite; "she
has no need to learn resignation to a life of hardship and toil,
she is so brave and sweet, but from this discussion she will
learn how much we need our courage."
The two si-step^ clasped each other's hands, as if to renew
the pledge of tho closer union brought about by a common
trouble.
"Leave us, Martha."
"Dear Marguerite," Emmanuel began, and something of
the happiness that he felt at thus acquiring one of the least
privileges of affection could be felt in his voice, "I have tho
names and addresses of tho purchasers, who have not yet paid
the balance of two hundred thousand francs for the felle(]
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 141
timber. To-morrow, if you give your consent, a lawyer acting
in M. Conyncks' name shall serve a writ of attachment on
them. Your great-uncle will return in a week's time. He
will call a family council and emancipate Gabriel, who is now
eighteen. When that has been done, you and your brother
will be in a position to demand your rights, and you can re-
quire your share of the proceeds of this sale of the wood. M.
Claes could not refuse you the two hundred thousand francs
which have been attached; as for the remaining hundred
thousand francs, they could be secured to you by a mortgage
on this house that you are living in. M. Conyncks will de-
mand securities for the three hundred thousand francs which
belong to Mademoiselle Felicie and to Jean, and your father
will be obliged to mortgage his property in the plains of
Orchies, which are already encumbered with a debt of a hun-
dred thousand crowns. The law regards mortgages for the
benefit of minors as a first charge, so everything will be saved.
M. Claes' hands will be tied for the future ; your landed prop-
erty is inalienable; he will be unable to borrow any more
money on his own, which will be mortgaged beyond their
value, and the whole arrangement will be a family aifair;
there will be no lawsuits and no scandal. Your father will
perforce set about his investigations less recklessly, if, indeed,
he does not give them up altogether."
"Yes," said Marguerite, "but how shall we live? There
will be no interest paid on the hundred thousand francs
secured to us on this house so long as we continue to live in it.
The farms in the plains of Orchies will bring in just enough
to pay interest on the mortgages. What shall we do?"
"Well, in the first place," said Emmanuel, "if you invest
Gabriel's remaining fifty thousand francs in the funds, at
present prices it will bring in four thousand livres ; that will
be sufficient to pay all his expenses at the Ecole in Paris,
G«.briel cannot touch the principal nor the money secured to
him on this house until he comes of age, so you need not
fear that he will squander a penny of it, and you will have
on3 expense the less. In the second place, is there not your
oxm share, a hundred and fifty thousand francs?"
242 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
"My father will be sure to ask me for them," she cried in
dismay, "and I could not refuse him."
"Well, then, dear Marguerite, you can secure the money
by robbing yourself. Invest it in the funds in your brother's
name; it would bring you in twelve or thirteen thousand
livres, and you could manage to live on that. An emanci-
pated minor cannot touch his principal without the consent
of the family council, so you will gain three years of freedom
from anxiety. In three years' time your father will either
have solved his problem, or, as is more probable, he will have
given it up as hopeless; and when Gabriel comes of age he
can transfer the stock into your name, and the accounts can
be finally settled among the four of you."
Marguerite asked for an explanation of the provisions of
the law which she could not understand at first, and again
they went over every point. It was certainly a novel situation
— two lovers poring over a copy of the Code, which Emman-
uel had brought with him in order to make the position of
minors clear to Marguerite. Love's penetration came to the
aid of her woman's quick-wittedness, and she soon grasped
the gist of the matter.
The next day Gabriel returned home. M. de Solis came
also, and from him Balthazar heard the news of his son's
admission to the Ecole polytechnique. Claes expressed his
acknowledgments by a wave of the hand. "I am very glad
to hear it," he said; "so Gabriel is to be a scientific man, is
he?" and the head of the house returned to his laboratory.
"Gabriel," said Marguerite, as Balthazar went, "you must
work hard, and you must not be extravagant. Do as others
do, but be very careful; and while you are in Paris spend
your holidays with our friends and relations there, and do
not contract the expensive habits which ruin young men.
Your necessary expenses will amount to nearly a thousand
crowns, so you will have a thousand francs left for pocket
money. That should be enough."
"I will answer for him," said Emmanuel de Solis, laying
his hand on his pupil's shoulder.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 143
A month later M. do Conyneks and Marguerite had ob-
tvjned all the required guarantee from M. Claes. Emman-
uel's prudent advice had been approved and carried out to
the letter. Balthazar felt ashamed of the sale of the forest.
His creditors had harassed him, until he had been driven to
take this rash step to escape from them ; and now, when he was
confronted with the consequences of his deeds, when he was
face to face, moreover, with his stern cousin, who was inflex-
iWe where honor was concerned, he did all that was required
of him. He was, in fact, not ill pleased to repair so easily the
mischief he had half unconsciously wrought. He put his
signature to the various papers laid before him with the pre-
occupied air of a man for whom science was the one reality,
and all things else of no moment. He had no more foresight
than the negro who sells his wife in the morning for a drop
of brandy, and sheds tears over her loss in the evening. Ap-
parently he could not look forward : even the immediate
future was beyond his ken; he never stopped to ask himself
what must happen when his last ducat had been thrown into
the furnace, and prosecuted his researches as recklessly as
before. He neither knew nor cared to know that the house
in which he lived was his only in name, and, like his estates,
had passed into other hands ; he did not realize the fact that
(thanks to the stringent regulations of the law) he could
not raise another penny on the property of which he was in
a manner the legal guardian.
The year 1818 went by, and no untoward event occurred.
The two girls just managed to defray the necessary expenses
of the housekeeping and of Jean's education with the interest
of the money invested in Gabriel's name, which he punctually
remitted every quarter. M. de Solis lost his uncle in the
December of that year.
One morning Marguerite heard from Martha that her
father had sold his collection of tulips, the furniture of the
state apartments, and all their remaining plate. She was
compelled to repurchase the necessary silver for daily use her-
self, and to have it marked with Jber own initials. Hitherto
144 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
she had watched Balthazar's depredations in bilence ; hut after
dinner that evening she asked Felicie to leave her alone with
her father, and when he had seated himself by the fireside
as usual, Marguerite spoke.
"Yau are the master here, dear father," she said; '^you
can sell everything, even your children. We will all obey you
without a murmur ; but I must point out to you that we have
no money left, that we have scarcely enough to live upon
this year, and that Felicie and I have to work night and day
to earn the money to pay for Jean's school expenses by the
lace dress which we are making. Father dear, give up your
researches, I implore you."
"You are right, dear child; in six weeks they will
come to an end. I shall have discovered the Absolute, or the
Absolute will be proved to be undiscoverable. You will have
millions "
"But leave us bread to eat meanwhile," pleaded Marguerite.
"Bread? Is there no bread in the house?" said Claes in
blank dismay. "No bread in the house of a Claes ! What
has become of all our property?"
"You have cut down the forest of Waignies. The ground
has not been cleared as yet, so it brings in nothing, and the
rents of the farms at Orchies are not sufficient to pay interest
on the mortgages."
"Then how do we live?" he asked.
Marguerite held up her needle.
"The interest on Gabriel's money helps us," she added,
"but it is not enough. I shall just make both ends meet at
the end of the year if you do not overwhelm me with bills
that I did not expect, for you say nothing about 3'^our pur-
chases. I feel quite sure that I have enough to meet my
quarterly expenses, it is all planned out so carefully, — and
then a bill is sent in for soda or potash, or zinc or sulphur,
and all sorts of things."
"Have patience and wait another six weeks, dear child,
and then I will be very prudent. You shall see wonders, my
little Marguerite."
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 145
"It is quite time to think of your own affairs. Yol have
sold everything; pictures, tulips, silver-plate — nothing is left
to us; but at any rate you will not run into debt again?"
"I am determined to make no more debts."
"No more debts !" she cried. "Then there are debts ?"
"Oh! nothing, nothing, mere trifles," he said reddening,
as he lowered his eyes.
For the first time in her life Marguerite felt humiliated
by her father's humiliation; it was so painful to her, that
she could not bring herself to inquire into the matter; but a
month later a messenger came from a Douai bank with a
bill of exchange for ten thousand francs, which bore Claes'
signature. When Marguerite asked for a day's delay, and
expressed her regret that she had not received any notice and
so was unprepared to meet the bill, the messenger informed
her that Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville held nine others,
each for a like amount, which would fall due in consecutive
months.
"It is all over with us !" cried Marguerite, "the time has
come." *
She sent for her father, and walked restlessly up and down
the parlor speaking to herself, "A hundred thousand francs,
or our father must go to prison ! . . . What shall I do ?
Oh ! what shall I do?"
Balthazar did not come. Marguerite grew tired of waiting,
and went up to the laboratory. She paused in the doorway,
and saw her father standing in a brilliant patch of sunlight
in the middle of a vast room filled with machinery and dusty
glass vessels ; the tables that stood here and there were loaded
with books and numbered and ticketed specimens of various
Fubstances; yet other specimens were heaped on the shelves,
along the walls, or flung down beside the furnaces. There
was something repugnant to orderly Flemish prejudices in all
this confused litter. Balthazar's tall figure rose above a col-
lection of flasks and retorts; he had thrown off his coat and
rolled back his sleeves above the elbows like a workman, his
shirt was unfastened, exposing his chest, covered with white
146 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
hair. He was gazing with frightful intentness on an air
pump, from which he never took his eyes. The receiver of
the instrument was covered by a lens constructed of two
convex glasses, the space between them being filled with
alcohol; the sunlight that entered the room through one of
the panes of the rose window (the rest had been careful] s
blocked up) was thus focused on the contents of the receiver.
The plate of the receiver was insulated, and communicated
with the wire of a huge voltaic battery. Lemulquinier was
busy at the moment in shifting the plate of the receiver, so
that the lens might be maintained in a position perpendicular
to the rays of the sun; he raised his face, which was black
with dust, and shouted, "Ah ! mademoiselle, keep away !"
She looked at her father, who knelt on one knee before his
apparatus, perfectly indifferent to the rays of sunlight that
shone full on his face and lit up his hair till it gleamed like
silver; his brows were knotted, every muscle of his face was
tense vvith painful expectation. The strange things strewn
around him, the mysterious machinery dimly visible in the
semi-darkness of the rest of the attic, everything about her
combined to alarm Marguerite.
"Our father is mad," she said to herself in her dismay.
Then she went up to him and whispered in his ear, "Send
away Lemulquinier."
"No, no, child, I want him ; I am waiting to see the result
of an experiment which has never been tried before. For
the last three days we have been on the watch for a ray of
sunlight; everything is ready, I am about to concentrate the
solar rays on these metals in a perfect vacuum, submitting
them simultaneously to the action of a current of electricity.
In another moment, you see, I shall employ the most power-
ful agents known to chemistry, and I alone "
"Oh, father ! instead of reducing metal to gas, you should
keep it to pay your bills of exchange "
"Wait ! wait !"
"But M. Mersktus is here, father ; he must have ten thou-
sand francs by four o'clock."
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 147
^TTes, yes, presently. It is quite right ; I did sign a bill for
some small amount which would fall due this month. I
thought I should have discovered the Absolute before this.
Good heavens ! if I only had a July sun, the experiment would
be over by this time."
He ran his fingers through his hair, the tears came into his
eyes, and he dropped into an old cane-seatcd chair.
"That is quite right, sir," said Lemulquinier. "It is all
the fault of that rascally sun that won't shine enough, the
la^y beggar."
Neither master nor man seemed to remember Marguerite's
presence.
"Leave us, Mulquinier," she said.
"Ah !" cried Claes, "I have it ! We will try a new experi-
ment."
"Father, never mind the experiments now," said the young
girl when they were alone. "Here is a demand for a hundred
thousand francs, and we have not a farthing. Your honor is
involved; you must come down and leave the laboratory.
What will become of you if you are imprisoned ? Shall your
white hair and the name of Claes be soiled with the disgrace of
bankruptcy? It shall not be, I will not have it, I will find
strength to combat your madness; it would be dreadful to
see you wanting bread in your old age. Open your eyes to
our position; come to your senses at last !"
"Madness !" cried Balthazar, rising to his feet. A light
shone in the eyes he fixed on his daughter's face, "Madness!"
There was something so majestic in his manner as he re-
peated the word that his daughter trembled. He folded his
arms. "Ah! your mother would never have uttered that
word," he went on. "She did not shut her eyes to the im-
portance of my researches ; she studied science that she might
understand me; she saw that I was working for humanity,
that there was nothing selfish nor sordid in me. I see that
a wife's love rises far above a daughter's affection; yes, love
is the loftiest of all feelings. Come to my senses !" he went
on, striking his breast. "When did I take leave of them?
148 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
Am I not myself? We are poor, are we? Very well, my
daughter, I choose to be poor; do you understand? I am
your father, and you must obey me. ^Tou shall be rich
again when I wish it. As for your fortune, it is a mere noth-
ing. When I find a solvent of carbon, I will fill the parlor
downstairs with diamonds, but even that is a pitiful trifle
compared with the wonders for which I am seeking. Surely
you can wait when I am doing my utmost, and spending my
life in superhuman efforts to "
"Father, I have no right to ask an account of the four
millions which have melted away in this garret. I vsdll say
nothing of my mother, but your science killed her. If 1
were married, I should no doubt love my husband as my
mother loved you; I would sacrifice ever5?thing for him, just
as my mother sacrificed everything for you. I am doing as
she bade me, I have given you all I had to give; you have
had proof of it, I would not marry lest you should be com-
pelled to render an account of jout guardianship. But let us
say no more about the past, let us think of the present. You
have brought things to a crisis, and I have come here to put
it before you. We must have money to meet these bills; do
you understand me? There is absolutely nothing left but
the portrait of our ancestor Van Claes. I have come in my
mother's name; my mother, whose heart failed her when
she had to struggle for her children's sake against their
father's will, bade me resist you ; I have come in my brothers'
name and my sister's; father, I have come in the name of
all the Claes to bid 3^ou cease your experiments, and to re-
trieve j'^our losses before you turn to chemistry again. If you
steel yourself against me, if you use your authority over
us only to kill us, — your ancestors, and your own honor plead
for me, and what can chemistry urge against the voices of
your family ? I have been your daughter but too well."
"And now you mean to be my executioner," he said in a
feeble voice.
Marguerite turned and fled. She could not trust herself to
play her part any Ioniser ; her mother's voice rang in her ears.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 149
"Love your father, and do not cross him — more than you can
help!"
"Here is a pretty piece of work of mademoiselle's," said
Lemulquinier, as he came down into the kitchen for his break-
fast. "We had just about put our finger on the Secret; we
only wanted a blink of July sunlight, and the master — ah!
what a man that is ! he stands in the shoes of Providence, as
you may say. There was not that" he said to Josette, click-
ing his thumb nail against his front teeth, "between us and
the secret, when, presto ! up she comes and makes a fuss
about some nonsensical bills "
"Good, then," cried Martha, "pay them yourself out of
your wages
'Am I to eat dry bread ? Where is the butter ?" demanded
Lemulquinier, turning to Josette.
"And where is the money to buy it with?" the cook an-
swered tartly. "What, you old villain, if you can make gold
in your devil's kitchen, why don't you make butter ? It is not
near so hard to make, and it would fetch something in the
market, and go some way towards making the pot boil. All
the rest of us are eating dry bread. The young ladies
are living on dry bread and walnuts, and you want
to be better fed than your betters? Mademoiselle has only
a hundred francs a month to spend for the whole household ;
there is only one dinner for us all. If you want luxuries, you
have your furnaces upstairs, where you fritter away pearls,
till they talk of nothing else all over the town. Just look for
your roast fowls up there !"
Lemulquinier took up his bread and left the kitchen.
"He will buy something with his own money," said Martha ;
"all the better, it is so much saved. Isn't he a stingy old
heathen ?"
"We must starve him, that is the only way," said Josette.
"He has not waxed a single floor this week, that he hasn't;
he is always up above, and I am doing his work ; he may just
as well pay me for it by treating us to a few herrings: if he
brings any home I shall look after them,"
150 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
"Ah!" said Martha, "there is Mile. Marguerite crying.
Her old wizard of a father would gobble down the house
without sa^dng grace. In my countiy they would have burned
him alive for a sorcerer long before this; but they have no
more religion here than Moorish infidels."
In spite of herself, Mile. Claes was sobbing as she came
through the gallery. She reached her room, sought for her
mother's letter, and read as follows : —
"My Child, — If God so wills, my spirit will be with you
as you read these lines, the last that I shall ever write ; they
are full of love for my dear little ones, left to the mercy of a
fiend who was too strong for me, a fiend who will
have devoured your last morsel of bread, as he gnawed
my life and my love! You knew, my darling, if I
loved your father, and my love for him is failing now as I
die, for I am taking precautions against him : I am doing
that which I cannot bring myself to confess in my lifetime.
Yes, in the depths of my grave I treasure a last resource for
you, until the day comes when you will know the last ex-
tremity of misfortune. If he has brought you to absolute
want, my child; if the honor of our house is at stake, you
must ask M. de Solis, if he is still living, or if not, his
nephew, our good Emmanuel, for a hundred and seventy
thousand francs, which are yours, and which will enable you
to live. And if at last you find that nothing can check this
passion, if the thought of his children's welfare proves no
stronger a restraint than did a regard for my happiness, and
he should wrong you still further, then leave your father, for
your lives at any rate must not be sacrificed to his. I could
not desert him; my place was at his side. It rests with you.
Marguerite, to save the family; you must protect Gabriel,
Jean, and Felicie at all costs. Take courage, be the guardian
angel of the Claes ; and you must be firm. Marguerite, I dare
not say be ruthless; but if the evil that has been already
wrought is to be even partially repaired, you must save soiue-
thing, you must think of yourself as being on the brink of
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 151
dire poverty, for nothing can stem the course of the passion
which took all I had in the world from me. So, my child,
out of the fulness of affection you must refuse to listen to
the promptings of affection; you may have to deceive your
father, but the deceptions will be a glory to you, there will be
hard things to say and do, and you will feel guilty, but they
will be heroic deeds if they are done to protect your defence-
less brothers and sister. Our good and upright M. de Solis
assured me of this, and never was there a clearer and more
scrupulous conscience than his. I could never have brought
myself to speak the words I have written, not even at the
point of death. And yet — be tender and reverent in this
hideous struggle ; soften your refusals, and resist him on your
knees. Not even death will have put an end to my sorrow and
my tears . . . Kiss my dear children for me now that
you are to become their sole guardian, and may God and all
the saints be with you, Josephine."
A receipt was enclosed from the Messieurs de Solis, uncle
and nephew, for the amount deposited in their hands by Mme.
Claes, which they undertook to refund to her children if her
family should present the document.
Marguerite called the old duenna, and Martha hurried
upstairs to her mistress, who bade her go to ask M. Em-
manuel de Solis to come to the Maison Claes.
"How noble and honorable he is !" she thought ; "^Tie never
breathed a word of this to me, and he has made all my trou-
bles and uifficultics his."
Emmanuel came before Martha had returned from her
errand.
"You have kept a secret which concerned me," she said,
HS she held out the paper.
Emmanuel bent his head.
"Marguerite, this means that you are in great distress?"
he asked, and tears came to his eyes.
"Ah! yes. You will help me, you whom my mother calls
'our good Emmanuel,' " she said, as she gave him the letter;'
152 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
and, in spite of her trouble, she felt a sudden thrill of joji
that her mother approved her choice.
"I have been ready to live or die for you ever since I saw
you in the picture gallery," he answered, with tears of happi-
ness and sorrow in his eyes; "but I did not know, and I
waited, I did not even dare to hope that one day you would
let me die for you. If you really know me, you know that
my word is sacred, so you must forgive me for keeping my
word to 3'-our mother; I could only obey her wishes to the
letter, I had no right to ezercise my own judgment "
"You have saved us !" she broke in, as she took his arm,
and they went down together to the parlor.
When Marguerite had learned the history of the trust fund
she told him the whole miserable story of the straits to which
they were reduced.
"We must meet the bills at once," said Emmanuel, "if
they have been deposited with Mersktus, you will save in-
terest on them. Then I will send you the remaining seventy
thousand francs. My poor uncle left me that amount in gold
ducats, so it will be easy to bring them here, and no one
will know about it."
"Yes," she said, "bring them at night; our father will be
asleep, and we can hide them somewhere. If he knew that
I had any money, he might take it from me by force. Oh !
Emmanuel, to be suspicious of one's own father!" she said,
and burst into tears as she leant her forehead against his
breast.
It was in this piteous and gracious entreaty for protection
that Marguerite's love spoke for the first time ; love had been
surrounded from its first beginnings by sorrow, and had
grown familiar with pain, but her heart was too full, and at
this last trouble it overflowed.
"What is to be done? What will become of us? He sees
nothing of all this; he has not a thought for us nor for him-
self, for I cannot think liow he can live in the garret, it is
like a furnace."
"But what can you expect of a man who at every moment
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTS 153
of his life cries, like Richard III., 'My kingdom for a
horse ?' " answered Emmanuel. "He will be inexorable, and
you must be equally unyielding. You can pay his bills, and
let him have your fortune if you will, but your brothers' and
sister's money is neither yours nor his."
"Let him have my fortune!" she repeated, grasping Em-
manuel's hand in hers, and looking at him with sparkling
eyes. "This is your advice to me? And Pierquin told me
lies without end, for fear I should part with it."
"Alas !" he said, "perhaps I too am selfish after my own
fashion. Sometimes I would have you without a penny, for
it seems to me that so you would be nearer to me ; sometimes
I would have you rich and happy, and then I feel how poor
and petty it is to think that the empty pomp of wealth could
keep us apart."
"Dear, let us talk no more about ourselves "
"Ourselves !" he exclaimed in ecstasy ; then after a moment
he went on, "The evil is great, no doubt, but it is not irrep-
arable."
"It lies with us to repair it; the family has no longer a
head. He has utterly forgotten all that he owes to himself
and his children, and has lost all sense of right and wrong —
for he who was so high-minded, so generous, and so upright,
who should have been his children's protector, has squandered
their property in defiance of the law. To what depths he
must have fallen ! Good God ! what can he think to find ?'*
'TJnluckily, dear Marguerite, however culpable he may be
as the head of a family, he is quite right from a scientific
point of view to act as he does. Some score of men perhaps in
all Europe are capable of understanding him and admire him,
though every one else says that he is mad. Still, you are
perfectly justified in refusing to surrender the children's
money. There is an element of chance in every great dis-
covery. If your father still persists in working out his
problem, he will discover the solution without this reckless
expenditure, and very possibly just at the moment when hs
gives it up as hopeless/'
154 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
"It is well for my poor mother that she died !'*' said Mar-
guerite, "She would have suffered a martyrdom a thousand
times worse than death. The first shock of her collision
with science killed her, and there seems to be no end to the
struggle "
"There will be an end to it," said Emmanuel, "when you
have absolutely nothing left. There will be an end to M.
Claes' credit, and then he will be forced to stop."
"Then he may as well stop at once," said Marguerite, "for
we have nothing left."
M. de Soils bought up the bills and gave them to Mar-
guerite. Balthazar came down to dinner a few minutes
earlier than usual. For the first time in two years his daugh-
ter saw traces of emotion on his face, and his distress was
painful to see. He was once more a father; reason had put
science to flight. He gave a glance into the courtyard, and
then into the garden; and when he was sure that they were
alone, he turned to his daughter with sadness and kindness
in his face.
"Dear child," he said, taking her hand and pressing it with
earnest tenderness, "forgive your old father. Yes, Margue-
rite, I was in the wrong, and you were altogether right. I
have not discovered the Secret, so there is no excuse for me. I
will go away from here. I cannot look on and see Van Claes
sold," he went on, and his eyes turned to the martyr's por-
trait. "He died for the cause of freedom, and I shall die
for science ; he is revered, I am hated "
"Hated, father ? Oh ! no," she cried, throwing her arms
about him; "we all adore you, do we not, Felicie?" she
asked of her sister, who came into the room at that mo-
ment.
"What is it, father dear?" asked the little girl, slipping her
hand into his.
"I have ruined you all. . . ."
"Eh !" cried Felicie, "the boys will make a fortune for us.
Jean is always at the head of his class."
"Wait a moment, dear father," Marguerite added, and with
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 155
a charming caressing gesture the daughter led her father
to the chimneypiece, and drew several papers from beneath
the clock ; "here are your drafts, but you must not sign your
name to any more bills, for there will be nothing left to pay
them with another time "
"Then you have some money ?" Balthazar said in his daugh-
ter's ear, as soon as he had recovered from his surprise; and
with all her heroism. Marguerite's heart sank at the words.
There was such frenzy of joy, and hope, and expectation in
her father's face: his eyes were wandering round the room
as if in search of the money.
"Yes, father," she said sadly, "I have my fortune."
"Give it to me !" he cried, with an eagerness which he could
not control ; "I will give you back an hundred-fold."
"Yes, I will give it to you," said Marguerite, looking at her
father, who did not understand the meaning that lay beneath
his daughter's words.
"Ah ! my dear child," he said, "you have saved my life ! I
had thought out a final experiment, the one thing that remains
to be tried. If I do not succeed this time, I must renounce the
Quest of the Absolute altogether. Come here, darling, give
me your arm; if I can compass it, you shall be the happiest
woman in the world ; you have given me fresh hopes of happi-
ness and fame; you have given me power; I will heap riches
upon you, and wealth, and jewels."
He clasped both her hands in his and kissed her forehead,
giving expression to his joy in caresses that seemed almost
like abject gratitude to Marguerite. Balthazar had no eyes for
any one else during the dinner; he watched her with some-
thing like a lover's fondness and alert attention; she could
not move but he tried to read her thoughts and to guess her
wishes, and waited on her with an assiduity which embar-
rassed her ; there was a youthf ulness in his manner which con-
trasted strangely with his premature old age. But in reply
to his caresses and attentions. Marguerite could only draw his
attention to their present distress, either by giving expression
to her doubts, or by a glance at the empty tiers of shelves
along the walls.
156 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
"Pshaw!" he said, "in six months' time we will fill thera
with gold plate and wonders. You shall live like a queen in
state. All the earth will be under our feet; everything will
be ours. And all through you, my Marguerite. . . .
Margarita!" he mused smilingly, "the name was prophetic.
j\Iarguerite means a pearl. Sterne said that somewhere or
other. Have you read Sterne? Would you care to read
Sterne? It would amuse you."
"They say that pearls are the result of some disease," she
said bitterly, "and we have already suffered much."
"Do not be sad; you will make the fortune of those you
love; you will be rich and great "
"Mademoiselle has such a good heart," said Lemulquinier,
and his colander countenance was distorted by a smile.
The rest of the evening Balthazar spent with his daughters,
and for them exerted all his powers of conversation and the
charm of his personality. There was something magnetic in
his looks and tones, a fascination like that of the serpent;
the genius and the kindly wit that had attracted Josephine
were called into play; he seemed, as it were, to take his
daughters to his heart. When Emmanuel de Soils came,
he found a family group ; the father and children were talk-
ing as they had not done for a long time. In spite of him-
self, the young headmaster fell under the spell of the scene;
it was impossible to resist Balthazar's manner, de Solis was
carried away by it. Men of science, however deeply absorbed
in watching quite other phenomena, bring highly trained
powers of perception to the least details of daily life. Noth-
ing escapes their observation in their own sphere; they are
not oblivious, but they keep to their own times and seasons,
and are seldom in touch with the world that lies beyond that
sphere; they know ever}^thing, and forthwith forget it all;
they make forecasts of the future for their own sole benefit,
foresee the events that take others by surprise, and keep their
own counsel. If, while to all appearance they are uncon-
scious of what is passing, they make use of their special gift
of obsprvatiion and deduction, they see and understand, and
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 157
draw their own inferences, and there ivS an end of it; work
claims them again, and they seldom make any but a blunder-
ing use of their laiowledge of the things of life. At times
when they are roused from their social apathy, o if they
happen to drop from the world of ideas to the worla ^f men
and women, they bring with them a well-stored memory, and
are by no means strangers to what is happening there. So
it was with Balthazar. He had quick sympathies as well as
keen-sightedness, and knew the whole of his daughters life;
he had guessed or learned in some way the almost imper-
ceptible events of the course of the mysterious love that
bound her to Emmanuel; he let the lovers feel that he had
guessed their secret, and sanctioned their affection by shar-
ing in it. From Marguerite's father this was the sweetest
form of flattery, and they could not resist it. The evening
thus spent was delightful after the troubled and anxious life
the poor girls had led of late. When Balthazar at last left
them, after they had basked, as it were, for awhile in the
sunlight of his presence, and bathed in his tenderness, Em-
manuel de Solis' constrained manner changed; he emptied
his pockets of three thousand ducats, of wliich he had been
uneasily conscious. He set them down on Marguerite's work-
table, and she covered them with some house-linen which
she was mending. Then he went back for the remainder.
When he returned, Felicie had gone to bed. It was past
eleven o'clock, and Martha, who was sitting up for her mis-
tress, was still busy in Felicie's room.
'^^here shall I hide it?" asked Marguerite; she could not
resist the temptation of passing the coins through her fin-
gers, a childish freak, a moment's delay, which cost her dear !
"Those pedestals are hollow," said Emmanuel ; "I will raise
the column off its base, and we will slip the gold inside it:
no one would think of looking there for it."
But just as Marguerite was making the last journey but
one between the work-table and the pedestal, she gave a shrill
cry and let the piles of ducats fall, the paper in which they
were wrapped gave way, and the gold coins rolled in all
158 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
directions over the floor; her father was standing in the
doorway : his eager look terrified her.
"AVhat ever are you doing?" he asked, looking from his
daughter, who stood transfixed with terror, to the startled
de Solis, who had hastily risen to his feet — too late, his
kneeling position at the foot of the pedestal had been suffi-
cient to betray him.
The din of the falling gold rang hideously in their ears;
the coins lay scattered abroad on the floor, a sinister augury
of the future.
"I thought so," said Balthazar; "I felt sure that I heard
the rattle of gold . . ."
He was almost as excited as the other two; one thought
possessed them both, and made their hearts beat so violently
that the sounds could be heard in the great silence which
suddenly fell in the parlor.
"Thank you, M. de Solis," said Marguerite, with a glance
of intelligence, which said : "Play your part ; help me to save
the money."
"What !" cried Balthazar, with a clairvoyant glance at his
daughter and Emmanuel, "then this gold ?"
"Belongs to this gentleman, who has been so good as to
lend it to me that we may fulfil our engagements," she an-
swered.
M. de Solis reddened, and turned as if to go.
"Monsieur," said Balthazar, laying a hand on his arm,
"do not slip away from my grateful thanks."
"You owe me no thanks, M. Claes. The money belongs to
Mile. Marguerite; she has borrowed it of me on security,"
he answered, looking at Marguerite, who thanked him by an
almost imperceptible movement of her eyelids.
"I cannot allow that," said Claes, taking up a pen and a
slieet of paper from the table where Felicie had been writing.
He turned to the two bewildered young people.
"How much is there?" he asked.
Balthazar's ruling passion had made him craftier than the
m^ t cunning of deliberate scoundrels; he meant to have
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 159
the money in his own hands. Marguerite and Emmanuel
de Sol is hesitated.
'Let us count it," said Balthazar.
"There are six Miousand ducats," Emmanuel said.
"Seventy thousand francs," returned Claes.
Marguerite and Emmanuel exchanged glances, and Em-
manuel took courage.
"]\I. Claes," he said respectfully, "your note of hand is
worth nothing — pardon the technical expression. This morn-
ing I lent mademoiselle a hundred thousand francs to buy up
the bills which you were unable to meet, so evidently you
are not in a position to give me any security. This money
belongs to your daughter, who can dispose of it as seems
good to her; but I have only lent it with the understand-
ing that she will sign a document giving me a claim on her
share of the land at Waignies, on which the forest once
stood."
Marguerite turned her head away to hide the tears that
filled her eyes. She knew Emmanuel's purity of heart. He
had been brought up by his uncle in the most scrupulous
practice of the virtues prescribed by religion; she knew that
he held lies in special abhorrence; he had laid his life and
his heart at her feet, and now he was sacrificing his con-
science for her.
"Good-night, M. de Soils," said Balthazar; "I had not
looked for suspicion in one whom I regard almost with a
lather's eyes."
Emmanuel gave Marguerite a piteous glance, and then
crossed the courtyard with Martha, who closed and bolted
the house door after the visitor had gone.
As soon as the father and daughter were alone together,
Claes said :
"You love him, do you not ?"
"Father, let us go straight to the point," she said. 'TTou
want this money ? You shall never have any of it," and she
began to gather up the scattered ducats, her father helping
her in silence. Together they counted it over, Marguerite
160 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
showing not a trace of distrust. When the gold was once
more arranged in piles, Claes spoke in the tone of a desperate
man:
"Marguerite, I must have the gold !"
"If you take it from me, it will be theft," she said coolly.
"Listen to me, father; it would be far kinder to kill us out-
right than to make us daily endure a thousand deaths. You
see, one of us must give way "
"So you would murder your father," he said.
''We shall have avenged our mother's death," she said,
pointing to the spot where Mme. Claes had died.
"My child, if you only knew what is at stake, you would
not say such things as these to me. Listen ! I will explain
what the problem is. . . . But you would not under-
stand I" he cried in despair. "After all, give it to me ; be-
lieve in your father for once. . . . Yes, I know that I
gave your mother pain; I know that I have squandered (for
that is how ignorant people put it) my own fortune and
made great inroads into yours ; I know that you are all work-
ing for what you call madness . . . but, my angel, my
darling, my love, my Marguerite, just listen to me ! If I
do not succeed this time, I will put myself in your hands;
all that you desire I will do ; I will give to you the obedience
that you owe to me; I will do your bidding, and administer
my affairs as you shall direct; I will be my children's
guardian no longer; I will lay down my authority. I swear
it by your mother !" he said, shedding tears as he spoke.
Marguerite turned her head away; she could not bear to
see his tears; and Claes, thinking that this was a sign of
yielding, flung himself on his knees before her.
"Marguerite ! Marguerite ! give me the gold ! Give it to
me to save yourself from eternal remorse. What are twenty
thousand francs? You see, I shall die; this will kill
me. . . , Listen to me, Marguerite! My promise shall
be religiously kept. I will give up my experiments if I fail ;
I will go away; I will leave Flanders, and even France, if you
wish it. I will begin again a& a mechanic, and build up my
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 161
fortune sou by sou, so that my children may recover at last
ail that science will have taken from them."
Marguerite tried to persuade her father to rise, but he still
knelt to her, and continued, with tears in his eyes:
"Be tender and devoted this once; it is the last time. If
I do not succeed, I myself will acquiesce in your harsh judg-
ment. You can call me a madman, a bad father ; you can say
that I am a fool, and I will kiss your hands ; beat me if you
will; I will bless you as the best of daughters, remembering
that you have given me your very life-blood."
"Ah !" she cried, "if it were only my life-blood, you should
have it ; but how can I look on and see my brothers and sister
murdered in cold blood for science ? I cannot ! Let it end !"
she cried, drying her tears, and putting away her father's
caressing hand from her.
"Seventy thousand francs and two months !" he said, rising
in anger ; "I want no more than that ! and my daughter bars
my way to fame, my daughter stands between wealth and
me. My curse upon you !" he went on, after a moment's
pause. "You have neither a daughter's nor a woman's heart !
You will never be a wife nor a mother! . . . Let me
have it ! Say the Word, my dear little one, my precious
child. I will adore you !" and he stretched out his hands
with horrible eagerness towards the gold.
"I cannot help myself if you take it by force, but God and
the great Claes look down upon us now," said Marguerite,
pointing to the portrait.
"Then live, if you can, when your father's blood will be
on your head !" cried Balthazar, looking at her with abhor-
rence.
He rose, looked round the parlor, and slowly left it; when
he reached the door, he turned and came back as a beggar
might, with an imploring gesture, a look of entreaty, but
Marguerite only shook her head in reply.
"Farewell, my daughter !" he said gently ; "try to live
happily.".
When he had gone, Marguerite stood for awliile in dull
162 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
bewilderment; it seemed as if her whole world had slipped
from her. She was no longer in the familiar parlor; she
was no longer conscious of her physical existence; her soul
had taken wings and soared to a world where thought an-
nihilates time and space, where the veil drawn across the
future is lifted by some divine power. It seemed to her that
she lived through whole days between each sound of her
father's footsteps on the staircase; and when she heard him
moving above in his room, a cold shudder went through her.
A sudden warning vision flashed like lightning through her
brain; she fled noiselessly up the dark staircase with the
speed of an arrow, and saw her father pointing a pistol at
his head.
"Take it all !" she cried, as she sprang towards him.
She fell into a chair. At the sight of her white face, Bal-
thazar began to weep — such tears as old meii shed; he was
like a child; he kissed her forehead, speaking incoherent,
meaningless words; he almost danced for joy, and tried to
play with her as a lover plays with the mistress who has
made him happy.
"Enough of this, father !" she said ; "remember youi
promise ! If you do not succeed, will you obey my wishes ?"
"Yes."
"Oh, mother!" she cried, turning to the door of Mme.
Claes' room, "you would have given it all to him, would you
not?"
"Sleep in peace," said Balthazar ; "you are a good girl."
"Sleep!" she cried; "the nights that brought sleep are gone
with my youth. You have made me old, father, just as you
gradually blighted my mother's life."
"Poor little one! If I could only give you confidenee, by
explaining the results I hope to obtain from a grand experi-
ment that I have just planned, you would see then "
"I see nothing but our ruin," she said, rising to go.
The next day was a holiday at the College de Douai. Em-
manuel de Solis came with Jean to see them.
"Well ?" he asked anxiously, as he went up to Marguerite,
"I gave way," she said.
Shu saw her fatlier pointing a pistol at iiis head
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 163
"My dear life," he answered, half sorrowfully, half gladly,
"if you had not yielded, I should have admired you, but I
adore you for your weakness."
"Poor, poor Emmanuel ! what remains for us ?"
"Leave everything to me," he cried, with a radiant glance.
"We love each other ; it will be well with us."
Several months went by in unbroken peace. M. de Solis
made Marguerite see that her retrenchments and petty
economies were absolutely useless, and advised her to live
comfortably, and to use the remainder of the money which
Mme. Claes had deposited with him for the expenses of the
household. All through those months Marguerite was
harassed by the anxiety which had proved too heavy a burden
for her mother; for, little as she was disposed to believe in
her father's promises, she was driven to hope in his genius.
It is a strange and inexplicable thing that we so often con-
tinue to hope when we have no faith left. Hope is the flower
of Desire, and Faith is the fruit of Certainty.
"If my father succeeds, we shall be happy," Marguerite
told herself ; Claes and Lemulquinier said, "We shall suc-
ceed !" but Claes and Lemulquinier were alone in their belief.
Unluckily, Balthazar grew more and more depressed day by
day. Sometimes he did not dare to meet his daughter's eyes
at dinner; sometimes, on the other hand, he looked at her in
.triumph. Marguerite spent her evenings in seeking ex-
planations of legal difficulties, with young de Solis as her
tutor; she was always asking her father about their compli-
cated family relationships. At last her masculine education
was complete; she was ready with plans to put into execu-
tion if her father should once more be worsted in the duel
with his antagonist — the Unknown X.
About the beginning of July, Balthazar spent a whole day
on a bench in the garden, absorbed in sad thoughts. Once
and again he looked about him, at the bare garden beds,
which had once been gay with tulips, at the windows of his
wife's room, and shuddered, doubtless at the recollection of
all that this Quest had cost him. He stirred from time to
164 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
time, and it was plain that he thought of other things than
science. Just before dinner, Marguerite took up her needle-
work, and came out to sit beside him for a few minutes.
"Well, father, you have not succeeded ?'*
"No, my child."
"Ah !" Marguerite said gently, "I am not going to utter a
word of reproach ; indeed, we are both equally to blame ; but
I must claim the fulfilment of your promise; your promise
is surely sacred — you are a Claes. Your children will never
show you anything but love and respect; but from to-
day you are in my hands, and must do as I wish. Do not be
anxious ; my rule will be mild, and I will do my best to bring
it quickly to an end. I am going to leave you for a month —
Martha is going with me — so that I may see after your af-
fairs," she added, with a kiss, "for you are my child now,
you know. So Felicie will be left in charge. Poor child!
she is barely seventeen ; how can she resist you ? Be generous,
and do not ask her for a penny, for she has nothing beyond
what is strictly necessary for the housekeeping expenses.
Take courage; give up your investigations and your theories
for two or three years, your ideas will mature, and by that
time I shall have saved the necessary money, and the problem
shall be solved. Now, then, tell me, is not your queen a
merciful sovereign ?"
"So all is not yet lost !" the old man answered.
"No, if you will only keep your word."
"I will obey you. Marguerite," said Claes, deeply moved.
Next morning M. Conyncks came from Cambrai for his
grand-niece. He had come in his traveling carriage, and
only staj^ed in his cousin's house until Marguerite and Mar-
tha could complete the preparations for their journey. M.
Claes made his cousin welcome, but he was evidently down-
cast and humiliated. Old M. Conyncks guessed Balthazar's
thoughts; and as they sat at breakfast, he said, with clumsy
frankness :
"I have a few of your pictures, cousin ; I have a liking for
a good picture; it is a ruinous mania, but we all have our
weaknesses "
THE QTTIOST OP THE ABSOLUTE 165
"Dear uncle!" remonstrated Marguerite.
"They say you are ruined, cousin; but a Claes always has
treasures here/' he said, tapping his forehead, "and here too,
has he not?" he added, laying his hand on his heart. "I
believe in you, moreover, and having a few spare crowns in
my purse, I am using them in your service."
"Ah !" cried Balthazar, "I will repay you with treasures."
"The only treasures we have in Flanders, cousin, are pa
tience and hard work," said Conyncks sternly. "Our an-
cestor there has the two words graven on his forehead," he
added, as he pointed to the portrait of Van Claes.
Marguerite kissed her father and bade him good-bye, gave
her last parting directions to Josette and Pelicie, and set
out for Paris with her great-uncle. He was a widower with
one daughter, a girl of twelve, and the owner of an immense
fortune ; it was not impossible that he might think of marry-
ing again, and the good people of Douai believed that Mar-
guerite was destined to be his second wife. Eumors of this
great match for Marguerite reached Pierquin's ears, and
brought him back to the Maison Claes. Considerable changes
had been wrought in the views of that wide-awake worthy.
Society in Douai had been divided for the past two years
into two hostile camps. The noblesse formed one group,
and the bourgeoisie the other; and, not unnaturally, the lat-
ter cordially hated the former. This sharp division, in fact,
was not confined to Douai ; it suddenly split France into two
rival nations, small jealous squabbles assumed serious pro-
portions, and contributed not a little to the widespread ac-
ceptance of the Revolution of July 1830. There was a third
party occupying an intermediate position between the ultra-
Monarchical and ultra-Liberal camps, to wit, the officials who
belonged socially to one or other circle, but who, on the down-
fall of the Bourbons from power, immediatel}'' became
neutral. At the outset of the struggle between the noblesse
and the bourgeoisie the most unheard-of splendor was dis-
played at coffee-parties. The Eoyalists made such brilliantly
successful efforts to eclipse their Liberal rivals that these
166 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
epicurean festivities were said to have cost some enthusiastic
politicians tlieir lives; like ill-cast cannon, they could not
stand such practice. Naturally the two circles became more
and more restricted and fanatical.
Pierqui.n, though a very wealthy man as provincial for-
tunes go, found himself excluded from the aristocratic circle
and driven back upon the bourgeoisie. His self-love had suf-
fered considerably in the process; he had received rebuff
upon rebuff; gradually the men with whom he had formerly
rubbed shoulders dropped his acquaintance. He was forty
years of age, the limit of time when a man who contemplates
marriage can tliink of taking a young wife. The matches
to which he might aspire were among the bourgeoisie, but
his ambition looked longingly back towards the aristocratic
world from which he had been thrust, and he cast about for
a creditable alliance which should reinstate him there. The
Claes family lived so much out of the world that they knew
nothing of all these social changes. Claes, indeed, belonged
by birth to the old aristocracy of the province, but it seemed
not at all likely that, absorbed as he was by scientific inter-
ests, he would share in the recently introduced class preju-
dices. However poor she might be, a daughter of the house
of Claes would bring with her the dower of gratified vanity,
which is eagerly coveted by all parvenus.
Pierquin, therefore, renewed his visits to the Maison Claes.
He had made up his mind to this marriage, and to attain his
social ambitions at all costs. He bestowed his company on
Balthazar and Felicie in Marguerite's absence, and discov-
ered, rather late in the day, that he had a formidable rival in
Emmanuel de Solis. Emmanuel's late uncle the Abbe had
left his nephew no inconsiderable amount of property, it
was said ; and in the eyes of the notar}% who looked at every-
thing from an undisguisedly material standpoint, Emmanuel
in the character of his uncle's heir was a rival to be dreaded :
Pierquin was more disquieted by Emmanuel's money than by
his attractive personality. Wealth restored all its lustre to
the name of de Solis. Gold and noble birth were twin glories
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 167
that reflected splendor upon each other. The notary saw
that the young headmaster treated Felicie as a sister, and
he became jealous of this sincere affection. He tried to
eclipse Emmanuel, mingling conventional phrases of gal-
lantry with the small talk of the day, and the airs of a man
of fashion with the dreamy, pensive melancholy which was
not ill-suited to his face. He had lost all his illusions, he
said, and turned his eyes on Felicie as if to let her know
that she, and she alone, could reconcile him with life. And
Felicie, to whom compliments and flattery were a novelty,
listened to the language which is always sweet to hear, even
when it is insincere ; she mistook his emptiness for depth ; she
had nothing to occupy her mind, and her cousin became the
object of the vague sentiments that filled her heart. Pos-
sibly, though she herself was not conscious of the fact, she
was jealous of the attentions which Emmanuel showed her
sister, and she wished to be likewise some man's first thought.
Pierquin soon saw that Felicie showed more attention to him
than to Emmanuel, and this encouraged him to persist in his
attempt, until he went further than he had intended. Em-
manuel looked on, watching the beginning of this passion,
simulated in the lawyer, artlessly sincere in Felicie, whose
future was at stake. Whispered phrases were exchanged be-
tween the cousins when Emmanuel's back was turned, little
colloquies, trifling deceptions, which gave to the stolen words
and glances a treacherous sweetness that might give rise to
innocent errors, *
Pierquin hoped and intended to turn his intimacy with
Felicie to his own account, and to discover Marguerite's
reasons for taking the journey to Paris; he wanted to know
whether there was any question of her marriage, and whether
he must renounce his pretensions; but, in spite of his trans-
parent manoeuvres, neither Balthazar nor Felicie could throw
any light on the subject, for the very sufficient reason that
they themselves knew nothing of Marguerite's plans; on
her accession to power she seemed to have adopted the max-
ims of statecraft, and had kept her own counsel.
168 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
Balthazar's brooding melancholy and depression made the
evenings tedious. Emmanuel had succeeded in persuading
him to play at backgammon, but Balthazar's thoughts were
elsewhere all the while; and, as a rule, the great chemist,
with all his intellectual powers, seemed positively stupid.
His expectations had come to nothing; his humiliation was
great; he had squandered three fortunes; he was a penniless
gambler; he was crushed beneath the ruins of his house, be-
neath the burden of hopes that were disappointed but not ex-
tinct. The man of genius, curbed by necessity, acquiescing
in his own condemnation, was a tragic spectacle which would
have touched the most unfeeling nature. Pierquin himself
could not but feel an involuntary respect for this caged lion
with the look of baffled power in the eyes which were calm
by reason of despair, and faded from excess of light; there
was a mute entreaty for charity in them which the lips did
not dare to frame. Sometimes his face suddenly lighted up
as he devised a new experiment; and then Balthazar's eyes
would travel round the room to the spot where his wife had
died, and tears like burning grains of sand would cross the
arid pupils of liis eyes, grown over-large with thought, and
his head would drop on his breast. He had lifted the world
like a Titan, and the world had rolled back heavily on his
breast. This giant sorrow, controlled so manfully, had its
effect on Pierquin and Emmanuel, who at times felt so much
moved by it that they were ready to offer him a sum of money
sufficient for another Series of experiments — so infectious are
the convictions of genius ! Both young men began to under-
stand how Mme. Claes and Marguerite could have flung
millions into the abyss; but reflection checked the impulses
of their hearts, and their goodwill manifested itself in at-
tempts at consolation which increased the anguish of the
fallen and stricken Titan.
Claes never mentioned his oldest daughter, showed no un-
easiness at her prolonged absence, and did not appear to
notice her silence, for she wrote neither to him nor to
Felicie. He seemed to be displeased if Soils or Pierquin
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 169
asked him for news of her. Did he suspect that Marguerite
was plotting against him? Did ho feel himself lowered in
his own eyes now that he had abdicated and made over his
rights as a father to his child ? Had he come to love her less
because they had changed places? Perhaps all these things
counted for something, and mingled with other and vaguer
feelings which overclouded his soul; he chose to say noth-
ing of Marguerite, as though she were in some sort in dis-
grace.
Great men, however great, known or unknown, lucky or
unlucky in their endeavors, are still human, and have their
weaknesses. Unluckily, too, they are condemned to suffer
doubly, for their qualities as well as for their defects ; and per-
haps Balthazar was as yet unused to the pangs of a wounded
vanity. The days, the evenings which all four spent to-
gether, were full of melancholy, and overshadowed by vague,
uneasy apprehensions, while Marguerite was away. They
were days like a barren waste; they were not utterly without
consolations, a few flowers bloomed here and there for them
to pluck, but the house seemed to be shrouded in gloom in
the absence of the oldest daughter, who had come to be its
life and hope and strength. In this way two months went
by, and Balthazar patiently awaited his daughter's return.
Marguerite came back to Douai with her uncle, who did
not immediately return to Cambrai. Doubtless he meant to
give support to his niece in an impending crisis. Mar-
guerite's return was the occasion of a small family rejoicing.
The notary and M. de Solis had been invited to dinner by
Felicie and Balthazar; and when the traveling carriage
stopped before the door of the house, all four appeared to
receive the travelers with great demonstrations of joy. Mar-
guerite seemed glad to be at home in her father's house
again; tears filled her eyes as she crossed the courtyard and
went to the parlor. As she put her arms round her father's
neck, other thoughts had mingled with the girl's kiss, and
she blushed like a guilty wife who cannot dissemble; but
when she saw Emmanuel, the troubled look died out of her
170 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
eyes, the sight of him seemed to give her courage for the
task she had secretly set herself. In spite of the cheerfulness
on every face and the gaiety of the talk at dinner, father and
daughter studied each other with distrust and curiosity.
Balthazar did not ask Marguerite a single question as to her
stay in Paris, paternal dignity doubtless prevented him ;
Erajnanuel de Solis was equally discreet; but Pierquin, who
had so long been acquainted with all the secrets of the fam-
ily, did not avoid the subject, and concealed his inquisitive-
ness under an assumption of geniality.
"Well, dear cousin," he said, "did jovl see Paris, and the
theatres ?"'
^'I saw nothing of Paris," she answered ; ""I only went out
when I was obliged to go. The days went by very tediousl}!
for me ; I was longing to see Douai again."
"If I had not made a fuss, she would not have gone to
the opera ; and when she did, she found it tiresome !" said
M. Cony neks.
None of them felt at their ease that evening, the smiles
were constrained, a painful anxiety lurked beneath the forced
gaiety; it was a trying occasion. Marguerite and Balthazar
were both tortured by doubts and fears, and the others
seemed to feel this. As the evening went on the faces of the
father and daughter betrayed their agitation more plainly;
and though Marguerite did her best to smile, her nervous
movements, her glances, the tones of her voice betrayed her.
M. Conyncks and Emmanuel de Solis seemed to understand
the noble girl's agitation, and to bid her take courage by ex-
pressive glances ; and Balthazar, hurt at not being taken into
confidence while steps were taken and matters decided which
concerned him, gradually became more and more reserved,
and at last sat silent among his children and friends.
Shortly, no doubt. Marguerite would inform him of her de-
cisions. For a great man and a father the situation was in-
tolerable.
Balthazar had reached the time of life when things are
usually freely discussed with the children of the family.
i
THF QOEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 171
when capacity for feeling is increased by wider experience
of life; his face grew graver, more thoughtful and troubled
as the time of his extinction as a citizen drew nearer.
A crisis in the family life was impending, a crisis of which
some idea can only be given by a metaphor. The clouds that
bore a thunderbolt in their midst had gathered and darkened
the sky, while they laughed below in the fields; every one
felt the heat and the coming storm, looked up at the heavens,
and hurried on his way.
M. Conyncks was the first to go, Balthazar went with him
to his room, and Pierquin and Emmanuel took their leave in
his absence. Marguerite bade the notary a friendly good-
night; she said nothing to Emmanuel, but she clasped his
hand tightly, and the tears stood in her eyes as she looked
at him. She sent Felicie away, and when Claes came back
to the parlor she was sitting there alone.
"My kind father," she said in a tremulous voice, "I could
not have brought myself to leave home but for the
gravity of our position; but now, after agonies of hope and
fear, and in spite of unheard-of difficulties, I have brought
back with me some chance of salvation for us all. Thanks
partly to your name, partly to our uncle's influence, and the
interest of M. de Solis, we have obtained the post of Eeceiver
of Taxes in Brittany for you ; it is worth eighteen to twenty
thousand francs a 3'ear, they say. Our uncle has undertaken
to be security for you. Here is your appointment,"- she
added, drawing a paper from her reticule. "For the next
few years we must retrench and be content with bare necessa-
ries; you would find it intolerable to live on here in the
house; our father ought at least to live as he has alwa^'s
been accustomed to live. I shall not ask you to spare any
of your income for us ; you will spend it as seems good to you.
But 1 entreat you to remember that we have no income, not
a penny except from the amount invested in the funds for
Gabriel — he always sends the interest to us. We will live as
if the house were a convent; no one in the town shall hear
anything about our economies. If you lived on here in
172 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
Douai, you would be a positive hindrance to us in our efforts
to restore comfort. Am I abusing the authority you gave
to me when I put you in a position to re-establish your for-
tune yourself ? In a few years' time, if you choose, you will
be Eeceiver-General."
"So, Marguerite/' Balthazar said in a low voice, "you are
driving me out of my house "
"I did not deserve such a bitter reproach," said Marguerite,
controlling the emotions that surged up in her heart. "You
will come back again among us as soon as you can live in
your native town in a manner befitting your name. Besides,
did you not give me your promise, father?" she went on
coldly. "You must do what I ask of you. Our uncle is
waiting to go with you to Brittany, so that you may not
have to travel alone."
"I shall not go !" cried Balthazar, rising to his feet ; "I
stand in need of no one's assistance to re-establish my for-
tune and to pay all that is owing to my children."
"You had better go," said Marguerite, with no sign of
agitation in her manner. "I ask you simply to think over
our respective positions. I can put the case before you in
a very few words; if you stay in the house, your children
will go out of it, that you may be the master."
"Marguerite !" cried Balthazar.
"And the next thing to do," she went on, without heeding
her father's anger, "will be to inform the minister of your
refusal to accept a lucrative and honorable post. We should
never have obtained it, in spite of interest and influence, if
our uncle had not adroitly slipped several notes for a thou-
sand francs into a certain lady's glove "
"All of you will leave me !"
"Yes. If you do not leave us, we must leave you," she
answered "If I were your only child, I would follow my
mother's example; I would not murmur at my fate, whatever
you might bring upon me. But my brothers and sister shall
not die of hunger and despair under your eyes; I promised
this to her who died there," she said, pointing to her mother's
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 173
bed. ''We have hidden our troubles from you, and endured
them in silence, but our strength fails us now. We are not
on the brink of a precipice; we are in its lowest depths,
father ! And if we are to extricate ourselves, we want some-
thing besides courage ; all our efforts must not be continually
thwarted by the freaks of a passion "
"My dear children !'' cried Balthazar, seizing Marguerite's
hand, "I will help you ; I will work with you ; I "
"This is the way," she answered, holding out the minister's
letter.
"But, my darling, it would take too long to restore my
fortune in this way that you are pointing out to me. The
results of ten years of work will be lost, as well as the enor-
mous sums of money which the laboratory represents. Our
resources are up there," he said, indicating the garret.
Marguerite went towards the door, saying, "Choose for
yourself, father !"
"Ah! my daughter, 3^ou are very hard!" he answered, as
he sat down in an armchair; but he let her go.
Next morning Marguerite learned from Lemulquinier that
M. Claes had gone out. She turned pale at this simple an-
nouncement, and her face spoke so eloquently of cruel
anxiety, that the old servant said, "Do not alarm yourself,
mademoiselle; the master said he would come back again at
eleven o'clock for breakfast. He never went to bed at all last
night. At two o'clock this morning he was standing by one
of the windows in the parlor looking out at the roof of the
laboratory. I was sitting up, waiting in the kitchen; I saw
him, he was crying, he is in trouble ; and here is the famous
month of July again, when the sun has power enough to make
us all rich, and if you only "
"That is enough !" said Marguerite. She knew now what
the thoughts were that had harassed her father.
As a matter of fact, it had come to pass with Balthazar, as
with all homekeeping people, that his life was inseparable,
as it were, from the places which had become a part of it.
His thoughts were wedded to his house and laboratory; he
174 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
did not know how to do without the familiar surroundings;
he was like a speculator, who is at a loss to know what to do
with himself on public holidays when he cannot go on
'Change. All his hopes dwelt there in his laboratory; it was
the one spot under heaven where he could breathe vital air.
This clinging to familiar things and places, so strong an in-
stinct in weak natures, becomes almost tyrannous in men of
science and learning. Balthazar Claes was to leave his house ;
for him this meant that he must renounce his science and his
problem, or in other words, that he must die.
Marguerite was in the last extremity of anxiety and fear
until breakfast time. The thought of Balthazar's attempt
to take his life after a similar scene came to her memory,
and she feared that her father had found a tragic solution
of his difficulties; she walked up and down in the parlor,
and shuddered every time the bell rang at the door. Bal-
thazar at last came back. Marguerite watched him cross the
court, and, gazing anxiously at his face, could read nothing
but the traces of all that storm of grief in its expression.
When he came into the parlor she went up to him to wish
him good-morning; he put his arms affectionately about her
waist, drew her to his breast, kissed her forehead, and said
in her ear:
"I have been to see about my passport."
The tones of her father's voice, his resignation, his caress
almost broke poor Marguerite's heart; she turned her head
away to hide the tears which she could not keep back, fled
into the garden, and only came back when she had wept at
her ease. During breakfast Balthazar was in great spirits,
like a man who has decided on his course.
"So we are to start for Brittany, uncle, are we?" he said
to M. Conyncks. "I have always thought I should like to
sec Brittany."
"Living is cheap there," the old uncle remarked.
"Is father going to leave us ?" cried Felicie.
M dc Solis came in with Jean at that moment.
"You will let him spend the day with us," said Balthazar,
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 175
as Jean came to sit beside him ; "I am going away to-morrow,
and I want to bid him good-bye."
Emmanuel looked across at Marguerite, who hung her
head. It was a melanclioly day; every one felt sad; eveiy one
tried not to give way to painful thoughts or to tears. This was
no ordinary parting; it was an exile. And then, every one
instinctively felt how humiliating it was for a father thus
to proclaim his losses by leaving his family and accepting
the post of a paid official at Balthazar's time of life; but he
was as magnanimous as Marguerite was firm, and submitted
with dignity to the penance imposed on him for the errors
which he had committed when carried away by his genius.
When the evening was over, and the father and daughter
were alone, Balthazar held out his hand to Marguerite. He
had been as gentle and affectionate all through the day as in
the happiest days of the past ; and with a strange tenderness,
in which despair was mingled, he asked, "Are you satisfied
with your father?"
"You are worthy of him!" answered Marguerite, turning
to the portrait of Van Claes.
Next morning Balthazar, followed by Lemulquinier, went
into his laboratory to take leave of his cherished hopes. Mas-
ter and man exchanged melancholy glances as they stood on
the threshold of the garret. Everything was in working
order, as though those hopes had not yet perished, and they
were about to leave it all, perhaps for ever. Balthazar looked
round at the apparatus about which his thoughts had hovered
for so long; there was nothing there but had its associations
for him, and had borne a part in his experiments or his in-
vestigations. Dejectedly he bade Lemulquinier set free the
gases, evaporate the more noxious acids, and take precautions
against possible explosions. As he saw to all these details,
bitter regrets broke from him, as from a man condemned to
death when they are about to lead him to the scaffold.
"Just look !" he said, stopping before a capsule in which
the two wires of a voltaic battery were immersed; "we ought
to wait to see the result of this experiment. If it were to sue-
176 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
ceed my children would not drive their father from his house
when he could fling diamonds at their feet. Hideous
thought ! . . . Here is a combination of carbon and sul-
phur, in which the carbon plays the part of an electro-posi-
tive body; crystallization should commence at the negative
pole, and in the case of decomposition the carbon would be
deposited there in a crystalline form."
"Ah ! that is what it will do !" said Lemulquinier, looking
admiringly at his master.
"But," Balthazar went on after a moment of silence, "the
combination is submitted to the influence of that battery
which might act "
"If monsieur desires it, I will soon increase-
"N"o, no; it must be left just as it is. That sort of crys-
tallization requires time, and must be left undisturbed."
"Confound it ! the crystallization is long enough about it !"
cried the man-servant.
"If the temperature were to fall, the sulphide of carbon
would crystallize," said Balthazar, letting fall stray links of
a chain of ideas which was complete in his own mind; "but
suppose the action of the batter}' is brought to bear on it
under certain conditions which I do not know how to set up.
. . . This ought to be carefully watched . . . it is
possible. . . . But what am I thinking of? There is to
be no more chemistry for us, my friend ; we must keep books
in a receiver's office somewhere in Brittany. . . ."
Claes hurried away and went downstairs to breakfast in
his own house for the last time. Pierquin and M. de Solis
had joined them. Balthazar was anxious to put an end to
the death-agony of science, said farewell to his children,
and stepped into the carriage after his uncle; all the family
came with him to the threshold of the door. There, as Mar-
guerite clung to her father in despair, he answered her mute
appeal, saying in her ear, "You are a good child; I bear you
no ill-will, Marguerite."
Marguerite crossed the courtyard, and took refuge in the
parlor ; kneeling on the spot where her mother died, she made
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 171
a fervent prayer to God to give her strength to bring
the heavy task of her new life to a successful end. She felt
stronger already, for an inner voice echoed the applause of
angels through her heart, and with it mingled the thanks of
her mother, her sister, and brothers. Emmanuel and Pier-
quin came in ; they had watched the traveling carriage till it
was out of sight.
"Now, mademoiselle, what will you do next?" inquired
Pierquin.
"Save the family," she said simply. "We have about thir-
teen hundred acres of land at Waignies. I mean to have it
cleared, and to divide it up into three farms, to erect the
necessary farm buildings, and then to let them. I feel sure
that in a few years' time, with plenty of patience and pru-
dence, each of us three," she said, turning to her brother
and sister, "will possess a farm of about four hundred acres,
which some day or other will bring in fifteen thousand francs
yearly. My brother Gabriel's share must be this house and
the consols that stand in his name. Then we will pay off
our father's debts by degrees, and give him back his estates
when the time comes."
"But, dear cousin," said Pierquin, amazed at Marguerite's
clear-headedness and calm summing-up of the situation,
"you will want more than two hundred thousand francs if
you are going to clear the land and build steadings and buy
cattle. Where is the money to come from ?"
"That is just where the difficulty comes in," she said, look-
ing from the lawyer to Emmanuel de Solis ; "I cannot venture
to ask any more of my uncle ; he has already become security
for our father.'"
"You have friends !" cried Pierquin. It suddenly struck
him that even yet the Claes girls were worth more than five
hundred thousand francs apiece.
Emmanuel looked at Marguerite tenderly; but Pierquin,
unluckily for him, was still a notary in the midst of his en-
thusiasm. He answered accordingly, "I can let you have the
two hundred thousand francs P
1 78 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
Emmamiel and Marguerite sought counsel of each otbei
by a glance, a glance that sent a ray of light through Pier-
quin's brain. Felicie blushed up to the eyes; she was so glad
that her cousin had proved as generous as she had wished.
Marguerite looked at her sister, and guessed the truth at once ;
during her absence the poor cliild's heart had been won hy
Pierquin's meaningless gallantr3^
"You shall only pay me five per cent," he added, "and re-
pay me when you like; you can give me a mortgage on your
farms. But do not trouble yourself about it; you shall have
nothing to do but to pay the money when all the contracts
are completed; I will find you some good tenants, and look
after everything for you. I will do it all for nothing, and
stand by you like a trusty kinsman."
Emmanuel made a sign to Marguerite, beseeching her to
refuse this offer, but she was too much absorbed in watching
the shades of expression that crossed her sister's face to notice
him. After a moment's silence she turned to the lawyer with
an ironical glance, and answered of her own accord, to M.
de Soils' great joy.
"You have stood by us, cousin," she said; "1 should have
expected no less of you; but we want to free the estates as
quickly as possible, and the five per cent interest would
hamper us ; I shall wait till my brother comes of age, and we
will sell his stock."
Pierquin bit his lips, Emmanuel began to smile gently.
"Felicie, dear child, take Jean back to school," said Mar-
guerite, glancing at her brother. "Take Martha with you.
Be very good, Jean, my darling, and do not tear your clothes ;
we are not rich enough now to buy new ones for you as often
as we used to do. There, run away little man, and work hard
at your lessons."
Felicie went out with her brother.
"Cousin," said Marguerite to Pierquin, "and you, mon-
sieur," she added, turning to M. de Solis, "you have doubtless
come to visit my father while I was away? I am grateful to
you for this proof of your friendship, and I am sure that
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 179
you will do no less for two poor girls who will stand in need
of your advice. Let us understand each other clearly. When
I am in Douai I shall always see you with the greatest pleas-
ure ; but when Felicie will be left here with no one but Josette
and Martha, I need not tell you that she can receive no vis-
itors, not even an old friend and a cousin so devoted to our
interests. In our position we must not give the slightest
occasion for gossip. We must give our minds to our work
for a long time to come and live in solitude."
For several moments no one spoke. Emmanuel, deeply
absorbed in watching Marguerite's face, was dumb ; Pierquin
was at a loss what to say, and took leave of his cousin. He
felt furious with himself; he suddenly perceived that Mar-
guerite loved Emmanuel, and that he had acted like the
veriest fool.
"Look here, Pierquin, my friend," said he to himself, as he
went along the street, "any one who called you an ass would
say nothing but truth. What a stupid dolt I am ! I
have twelve thousand livres a year besides my professional
income, to say nothing of my uncle Des Eaquets; all his
money will come to me some of these days, and I shall have
as much again then (after all, I don't want him to die, he
is thrifty), and I was graceless enough to ask Mlla Claes
for interest ! ISTo ! After all, Felicie is a sweet and good
little thing, who will suit me better. Marguerite has a will
like iron; she would want to rule me, and — she would rule
me! Come, let us show ourselves generous, Pierquin, let us
have less of the notary. I cannot shake off old habits.
Bless me ! I will fall in love with Felicie, those are my senti-
ments, and I mean to stick to them. Goodness, yes ! She
will have a farm of her own — four hundred and thirty acres
of good land, for the soil at Waignies is rich, and before long
it will bring in from fifteen to twenty thousand livres yearly.
My uncle Des Eaquets dies (poor old gentleman!), I sell
my practice, and I am a" man of leisure worth fifty thousand
livres a year, — fif — ty thou — sand livres! My wife is a
Claes; I am connected with several families of distinction.
180 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
Diantre! Then we shall see if Savaron de Savarus, the
Courtevilles, and Magalhens will decline to visit a Pierquin-
Claes-Molina-Xoiirho ! I will be ma3'or of Douai ; I shall
have the Cross of the Legion of Honor; I can be a deputy,
nothing will be beyond my reach. ... So look out,
Pierquin, my boy, and let us have no more nonsense, inas-
nmeli as, upon my honor, Felicie — Mademoiselle Felicie Van
Claes is in love with you.''
When the two lovers were alone, Emmanuel held out his
hand, and- Marguerite could not help laying her right hand
in his. The same impulse made them both rise to their
feet, and turn to go towards their bench in the garden; but
in the middle of the parlor her lover could not control his
joy, and in a voice that trembled with emotion, he said to
Marguerite :
"I have three hundred thousand francs that belong to
you "^
"How is that ?" she cried ; "did my poor mother leave other
sums for us in your keeping ? . . . No ? . . . Then
how is this?"
"Oh! my Marguerite, what is mine is yours, is it not?
Were you not the first to say we f
"Dear Emmanuel !" she said, pressing the hand that she
still held, and instead of going into the garden, she sat down
in a low chair.
"It is I who should thank you," he said, with love in his
voice, "since you accept it from me."
"Dear love," she said, "this moment atones for many sor-
rows, and brings us nearer to a happy future ! Yes, I will
accept your fortune," she continued, and an angelic smile
hovered about her mouth ; "I know of a way to make it mine."
She looked over at Van Claes' portrait, as if calling on her
ancestor to be a witness. Emmanuel de Solis had followed
the direction of her eyes; he did not see her draw a little
ring from her finger; he did not notice that she had done so
until he heard the words :
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 181
•*Out of the depths of onr sorrow one comfort has arisen;
my father's indifference leaves me free to dispose of myself,"
she said, holding out the ring. "Take it, Emmanuel; my
mother loved you, she would have chosen you."
Tears came to Emmanuel's eyes; he turned pale, fell on
his knees, and said to Marguerite, as he gave her the ring
Uiat he always wore :
"Here is my mother's wedding ring. My Marguerite"
(and he kissed the little golden hoop), "shall I have no pledge
but this?"
She bent forward, and Emmanuel's lips touched her fore-
head.
"Alas! poor love, are we not doing wrong?" she said in a
trembling voice. "We shall have to wait for a long while."
"My uncle used to say that adoration was the daily bread
of patience; he spoke of the Christian's love of God; but in
this way I can love you. Marguerite; — for a long while the
thought of you has mingled with the thought of God so that
I cannot separate them; I am yours, as I am His."
For a few moments they remained rapt in the sweetest
ecstasy. Their feelings were poured out as quietly and nat-
urally as a spring wells up and overflows in little waves that
never cease. The fate which kept the two lovers apart was
a source of melancholy, which gave to their happiness some-
thing of the poignancy of grief. Felicie came back again,
all too soon for them. Emmanuel, taught by the charming
tact of love, which instinctively divines everything, left the
two sisters together, with a glance in which Marguerite
could read how much this consideration cost him — a glance
that told her how long and ardently he had desired this hap-
piness which had just been consecrated by the betrothal of
their hearts.
"Come here, little sister," said Marguerite, putting her arm
round Felicie's neck. They went together out into the gar-
den, and sat down on the bench to which one generation after
another had confided their love and grief, their plans and
musings. In spite of her sister's gay tones and shrewd, kindly
y82 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
smiie, Felicie felt something ver}^ like a tremor of fear.
Marguerite took her hand, and felt that she was trembling.
"Mademoiselle Felicie," her older sister said in her ear,
"I am reading your heart. Pierquin has been here ver\'' often
while I was away; he came every evening, he has whispered
sweet words, a.nd you have listened to him."
Felicie blushed.
*TDo not defend yourself, my angel," Marguerite answered ;
"it is so natural to love ! Perhaps our cousin's character
may alter under the influence of your dear soul ; he is selfish,
and thinks only of his own interests, but he is kind-hearted,
and his very faults will no doubt conduce to your happiness,
for he will love you as the fairest of his possessions, you will
be a part of his business affairs. Forgive me for that word,
darling! You will cure him of the bad habit of thinking
of nothing but material interests by teaching him to occupy
himself with the affairs of the heart."
Felicie could onl}'' put her arms round her sister.
"Besides," Marguerite went on, "he is well-to-do. He be-
longs to one of the most distinguished and oldest bourgeois
families. And you cannot think that I would put obstacles
in the way of your happiness, if you choose to find it in a
sphere somewhat beneath you ?"
"Dear sister !" broke from Felicie.
"Oh, yes; you may trust me!" cried Marguerite. ''What
more natural than that we should tell each other our secrets ?"
These words, so heartily spoken, opened the way for one
of those delightful talks in which young girls confide ever}''-
thing to each other. Love had made Marguerite quick to
read her sister's heart, and she said at last to Felicie:
"Well, dear little one, we must make sure that the cousin
really loves 3'^ou, and then "
"Leave it to me," said Felicie, laughing; "I have an ex-
ample here before me."
"Little goose !" said Marguerite, kissing her forehead.
Pierquin belonged to the class of men who regard marriage
as a business contract, a fulfilment of social duties, and a
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE5 183
way of transmitting property; it was to him a matter of
indiiTerence whether he married Marguerite or Felicie, so
long as both bore the same family name and possessed the
same amount of dower ; j^et he was quite acute enough to see
that both of them, to use his own expression, were "romantic
and sentimental girls," two adjectives employed by common-
place people to ridicule the gifts which nature sows with a
grudging hand in the furrows of the human field. Doubtless
the lawyer concluded that he had best do at Rome as the
Romans do; for the next day he came to see Marguerite, and
with a mysterious air took her out into the little garden
and began to talk "sentiment," since this was a necessary
preliminary, according to social usages, to the usual formal
contract drawn up by a lawyer.
"Dear cousin," said he, "we have not always been of one
mind as to the best means of bringing you out of your diffi-
culties, but you must acknowledge that I have always been
prompted by a strong desire to serve you. Well, then, yes-
terday my offer of help was completely spoiled by an unlucky
trick of speaking, due simply to a lawyer's habit of mind.
Do you understand ? My heart is not to blame for the absurd
piece of folly. I have eared very much about you, and we
lawyers have a certain quick-sightedness ; I saw that you did
not like what I said. It is my own fault ! Some one else
has been cleverer th^ii I was. Well, I have come to tell you
out and out that I love your sister Felicie. So you can treat
me as a brother, dip in my purse, take what you will ; the more
you take, the better you will prove your regard far me. I
am wholly at your service, without interest — do you under-
stand?— of any sort or description. If only I may be thought
worthy of Felicie, that is all I ask. Forgive me for my mis-
takes, they are due to business habits; my heart is right
enough, and I would throw myself into the Scarpe rather
than not make my wife happy."
"This is very satisfactory, cousin ; but the matter does not
rest with me. it rests with my sister and father," said Mar-
guerite.
184 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
"I know that, dear cousin," the notar}' answered, '^hut
you are like a mother to them all; besides, I have nothing
more nearly at heart than that you should judge of mine
correctly."
This way of speaking was characteristic of the honest
notary. Later in life, Pierquin's reply to an invitation from
the commanding officer at Saint Omer became famous; the
latter had asked him to some military festivity, and Pier-
quin's response was worded thus: "Monsieur Pierquin-Claes
de Molina-Nourho, Mayor of the city of Douai, Chevalier of
the Legion of Honor, will have that of being present," etc.
Marguerite accepted his offer only in so far as it related to
his professional advice, fearing to compromise her dignity
as a woman, her sister's future, or her father's authority.
The same day she confided her sister to the care of Josette
and Martha, who were devoted body and soul to their young
mistress, and entered into all her plans of retrenchment;
and Marguerite set out at once for Waignies, where she began
to put her schemes into execution at once, benefited by Pier-
quin's experience.
The notary reckoned up the time and trouble expended,
.and regarded it as an excellent investment; he was putting
them out to interest, as it were, and, with such a prospect
before him, he had no mind to grudge the outlay.
In the first place, he endeavored to spare Marguerite the
trouble of clearing the land and getting it ready for cultiva-
tion. He found three sons of wealthy farmers, young men
who were anxious to settle themselves; to them he pointed
out the attractive possibilities offered by such a fertile soil,
and succeeded in letting the land to them just as it was, on
a long lease. For the first three years they were to pay no
rent at all, in the fourth they undertook to pay six thousand
francs, twelve thousand in the sixth, and after that, fifteen
thousand francs yearly till the expiration of the lease. The>
also undertook to drain the Innd, to make plantations, and
purchase cattle. While the steadings were in course of erec-
tion they began to clear the ground.
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 185
Four years after Balthazar's departure, Marguerite had
almost retrieved the fortunes of her brother and sister. Two
hundred thousand francs, lent by Emmanuel de Solis, had
covered the expenses of the farm buildings. Advice and
more substantial help had been readily given to the brave
girl, for every one admired Marguerite's courage. She per-
sonally superintended the building operations, and looked
after her contracts and leases with the good sense, energy,
and perseverance which a woman can display when she is
sustained by strong feeling.
After the fifth year Marguerite could devote thirty thou-
sand francs of her income to paying off the mortgages on
her father's property, and to repairing the havoc wrought by
Balthazar's passion in the old house. Besides the rent from
their own farms, they had the interest on the capital invested
in her brother's name, and the proceeds of her father's prop-
erty. The process of extinction of the debt was bound to be
more and more rapid as the amount of interest decreased.
Emmanuel de Solis, moreover, had persuaded Marguerite to
take the remaining hundred thousand francs of his uncle's
bequest, as well as some twenty thousand francs which he
himself had saved, so that in the third year of her adminis-
tration she could pay off a fairly large amount of debt. This
life of courage, self-denial, and self-sacrifice lasted for five
years, but it ended at last, thanks to Marguerite's influence
and supervision, in complete success.
Gabriel had become a civil engineer, and with his great-
uncle's help had made a rapid fortune by the construction
of a canal. He found favor in the e3^es of his cousin, Mile.
Conyncks, whom her father idolized, one of the richest heir-
esses in all Flanders. In 1824 Claes' property was free, and
the house in the Rue de Paris had repaired its losses. Pier-
quin made a formal application to Balthazar for Felicie's
hand, and M. de Solis asked for Marguerite.
At the beginning of the month of January 1825, Mar-
guerite and M. Conyncks set out for Brittany to bring back
the exiled father, whom every one longed to see in his home
186 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
again. He had resigned his post that he might spend the
rest of his days among his children, and his presence should
sanction their happiness. Marguerite had often bewailed the
empty spaces on the walls of the picture-gallery and the
state apartments, which must meet their father's eyes on
his return, so that while she was away Pierquin and M. de
Solis plotted with Felicie to prepare a surprise for her; the
younger sister should also have a share in the restoration
of the Maison Claes. Both gentlemen had bought several
fine pictures, which they presented to Felicie, so that the
gallery might be adorned as of old. The same thought had
occurred to M. Conyncks, who wished to show his appreciation
of Marguerite's noble conduct, and of the way in which she
had devoted herself to fulfilling her dying mother's request.
He arranged that fifty of his finest pictures, together with
some of those that Balthazar had previously sold, should be
sent to fill the picture-gallery, where there were now no more
blank spaces.
Marguerite had visited her father several times, Jean or
her sister accompanying her on each journey; but, since her
last visit, old age seemed to have gained on Balthazar. He
lived extremely penuriously, for nearly all his income was
spent on the experiment which brought nothing but disap-
pointment, and probably the alarming symptoms were due
to his manner of life. He was only sixty-five years of age,
but he looked like a man of eighty. His eyes were deeply
sunk in his face, his eyebrows were white, his hair hung in a
scanty fringe round his head, he allowed his beard to grow,
cutting it with a pair of scissors when its length annoyed
him, he stooped like an old vine-dresser, his neglected dress
suggested a degree of wretchedness that was frightful when
combined with his look of decrepitude. Sometimes his face
looked noble still when a great thought lighted it up, but
'the outlines of his features were obliterated by wrinkles; his
fixed gaze, the desperate look in his eyes, and his restless un-
easiness seemed to be symptoms of insanity, or rather of many
forms of insanity. A sudden gleam of hope would give him
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 187
the look of a monomaniac; an access of impatience, that ho
could not guess this secret which flitted before him and
ehided his grasp Hke a will-o'-the-wisp, would blaze out into
impotent anger like madness, to be followed by a burst of
laughter at his own folly; but as a rule he lived in a state
of the deepest dejection, and every phase of frenzy was merged
in the dull melancholy of the idiot. However fleeting and
imperceptible these changes of expression might be to
strangers, they were unhappily only too obvious for those
who had known the once noble face, the Claes of former years,
so sublime in goodness and so great-hearted, of whom, scarcely
a trace could now be recognized.
Lemulquinier, like his master, was old and worn by in-
cessant toil, but he had not borne the same burden, nor en-
dured the constant strain of thought; a curious mixture of
anxiety and admiration in the way in which he looked at his
master might easily have misled a casual observer; he listened
respectfully to Claes' slightest word, and watched his move-
ments with a kind of tenderness; he looked after his great
and learned master with a care like a mother's; he even
seemed to protect him, and, in some ways, actually did
protect him, for Balthazar never took any thought for
the needs of physical existence. It was touching and
painful to see the two old men, both wrapped in the same
thought, both so sure of the reality of their hope, inspired
by the same restless longing; it was as if they had but one
life between them — the one was the soul, and the other
the body. When Marguerite and M. Conyncks arrived they
found M. Claes living in an inn ; his successor had taken his
place at once.
Through all the preoccupation of science, Balthazar had
felt stirrings of the desire to see his country, his home, and
children once more; his daughter's letter had brought good
news ; he had begun to dream of a crowning series of experi-
ments, which should surely yield at last the secret of the
Absolute, and he awaited Marguerite's coming with great
impatience.
188 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
The young girl shed tears of joy as she flung herself into
his arms. This time she had come to receive her reward,
the reward of a painful and difficult task, and to ask pardon
for her brilliant success in it. But as she looked more closely
at her father, she was shocked at the changes wrought in
him since the previous visit; she felt as if she had committed
a crime, like some great man who violates the liberties of his
country to save its national existence. M. Conyncks shared
his niece's misgivings; he insisted that his cousin must be
moved at once, that the air of his native Douai might restore
him to health, as the life by his own hearth should restore his
reason.
After the first outpourings of affection, which were much
warmer on Balthazar's part than Marguerite had expected,
he was strangely attentive to her wishes; he expressed his
regret at receiving her in such a poor place ; he consulted her
tastes in the ordering of their meals, and was as sedulously
watchful as a lover. But in his manner also there was some-
thing of the uneasiness and anxiety of the culprit who wishes
to secure a favorable hearing from a judge. Marguerite
knew her father so well that she guessed the motives under-
lying this affectionate solicitude; she thought that he must
have incurred debts in the town, which he was anxious to pay
before he went. She watched her father narrowly for a while,
and a human heart was laid bare to her gaze. Balthazar
seemed to have grown little. The consciousness of his hu-
miliation, the enforced isolation resulting from his scientific
pursuits, had made him shy and almost like a child, save when
the subject under discussion was connected with his beloved
science. He stood in awe of his oldest daughter; he remem-
bered her devotion in the past, the power of mind and char-
actor that she had shown, the authority with which he himself
had invested her, the fortune which she had administered so
ably; and the indefinable feeling of dread which had taken
possession of him on the day when he resigned the authority
which he had abused had no doubt grown stronger with time.
Conyncks seemed to be as nothing in Balthazar's eyes; he
THE QUEST OF THE ^BSOLUTE 181)
saw no one but his daughter, and thought of no one else ; he
even seemed to dread her, as a weak-minded man is overawed
by the wife whose will is stronger than his own. Marguerite's,
heart smote her when she detected a look of terror in his eyes,
an expression like that of some little child who has been doing
wrong. The noble girl could not understand the contradic-
tion between the magnificent stern outlines of the head, the
features worn by scientific labors and strenuous thought, and
the weak smile on Balthazar's lips, the expression of artless
servility in his face. This sharp contrast between greatness
and littleness was very painful to her; she resolved to use
her influence to restore her father's self-respect before the
great day which was to restore him to his family. When
they were left together for a moment, she began at once,
seizing the opportunity to say in his ear:
"Have you any debts here, father?"
Balthazar reddened uneasily, and answered, "I do not
know, but Lemulquinier will tell you ; he is a good fellow,
and knows more about my affairs than I do myself "
Marguerite rang for the servant, and when he came she
could not help studying the faces of the two old men.
"Is something wanted, monsieur?" asked Lemulquinier.
Personal pride and family pride were two of Marguerite's
strongest instincts ; something in the servant's tone and man-
ner told of an unseemly familiarity between her father and
the companion of his labors which gave her a pang.
"It seems that my father is unable to reckon up what he
owes here without your memory to aid him, Lemulquinier,"
said Marguerite.
"Monsieur owes , , ." Lemulquinier began, but checked
himself at a sign from Balthazar, which did not escape Mar-
guerite. She felt surprised and humiliated.
"Tell me exactly how much my father owes," she ex-
claimed.
"Monsieur owes five thousand francs here in the town to
a druggist and wholesale grocer who has supplied us with
caustic potash, lead and zinc, and reagents."
190 THE QUEST OB THE ABSOLUTE
"Is that all?" asked Marguerite.
Balthazar made an affirmative sign to Lemulquinier. who
answered like a man under a spell, "Yes, mademoiselle.''
"Yery well," she said, "I will give you the money."
Balthazar kissed his daughter in his joy. "You are m;-'
guardian angel, my child," he said.
He breathed more freely after that. There was less sadness
in his eyes as he looked at her; but, in spite of his joy. Mar- •
guerite could see that in the depths of his heart he was still
troubled, and she guessed that the five thousand francs merely
represented the most pressing of the debts contracted for
the expenses of the laboratory.
"Be frank with me, father," she said, as she let him draw
her towards him, and sat on his knees, "do you owe more
than this? Tell me everything; come back to your home
without any lurking fear in your mind in the midst of the
rejoicing."
"My dear Marguerite," he answered, taking her hands and
kissing them with a grace that seemed like a memory of his
youth, "shall you scold me?" . . .
"Xo," she said.
"Eeally?" he asked, with an involuntary start of childish
joy. "Can I really tell you everything? and will you
pay "
'TTes," she said, trying to keep back the tears that came to
her eyes.
"Very well, then, I owe . . . Oh ! I dare not ! . . ."
"Father, do tell me !"
"But it is a great deal," he went on.
She clasped her hands in despair.
"I owe thirty thousand francs to MM. Protez and Chiffre-
ville."
"Thirty thousand francs — all my savings," she said, %ut
I am glad that I can give them to you," she added, with a rev-
erent kiss on his forehead.
He sprang to his feet, caught his daughter in his arms,
and spun round the room with her, lifting her off her feet
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 191
as though she had been a child; then he set her down in the
armchair where she had been sitting, exclaiming, "My dear
child, my treasure of love ! There was no life left in me.
Protez and Chiffreville have written three times; they
threaten proceedings — proceedings against me, when I have
made their fortunes "
"Then you are still trying to find the solution of your
problem, father ?" said Marguerite sadly.
"Yes, still," he said, with a frenzied smile, "and I shall
find it, never fear ! ... If you only knew where we
are !"
"We, who?"
"I mean Mulquinier; he understands me at last; he is a
great help to me. . . . Poor fellow, he is so faithful !"
Conyncks came in at that moment, and put an end to
their conversation. Marguerite made a sign to her father to
say no more ; she dreaded lest he should lower himself in their
uncle's eyes.
It shocked her to see the havoc wrought in that great intel-
lect by incessant preoccupation with a problem perhaps after
all insoluble. Balthazar, doubtless, could see nothing beyond
his crucibles and furnaces; it never even crossed his mind
that his affairs were no longer embarrassed.
They set out for Flanders next day; the journey was a
sufficiently long one, and Marguerite had time to see many
things on the way that threw gleams of light on the relative
positions of Lemulquinier and his master. Had the servant
gained the ascendency, which uneducated minds can acquire
over the greatest thinkers if they feel that they are indis-
pensable to their betters? Such natures use concession after
concession as stepping stones to complete dominion, and attain
their end at last by dint of dogged persistence. Or, on the other
hand, was it the master who had come to feel for the servant
the sort of affection that springs from use and wont, not unlike-
fne fondness which a craftsman feels for his tool which
■jxecutes his will, or the krah for the horse to which he owe?
iiis freedom? Little things that passed under Marguerite's
192 THE QUEST OF THE ABS0LUT3
watchful eyes decided her to put this affection to the test, by
proposing to free Balthazar from what perhaps was a galling
yoke.
They spent but a few days in Paris on their way back.
Marguerite paid her father's debts, and besought the firm of
chemists to send nothing to Douai without first giving her
notice of Claes' orders. She persuaded her father to make
some changes in his costume, and to dress as became a man
of his rank. This external transformation gave Balthazar
a sort of physical dignity, which augured well for a change
in his ideas. Marguerite already felt something of the happi-
ness which she looked for when her father should find the
surprises that awaited him in his own house; and their de-
parture for Douai was not long delayed.
Felicie, accompanied by her two brothers, Emmanuel, Pier-
quin, and the most intimate friends of the three families,
rode out three leagues from the town to meet Balthazar. The
long journe}^ had given other directions to the chemist's
thoughts, the sight of the Flemish landscape had stirred his
heart, so that at the sight of the joyous cortege of children
and friends he felt so deeply touched that tears filled his
eyes, his voice shook, and his e3felids reddened; he took his
children in his arms, and seemed as if he could not let them
go, showing such a passionate affection for them that the
onlookers were moved to tears.
He turned pale when he saw his house once more, and
sprang out of the carriage with the quickness of a young
man ; it seemed to be a pleasure to him to breathe the air in
the courtyard once more, to see every trifling detail again;
his happiness was plainly visible in every gesture that he
made; he held himself erect, his face grew young again.
Tears came to his eyes as he stood in the doorway of the
parlor, and saw how accurately his daughter had reproduced
the old-fashioned silver sconces which he had sold, and how
completely every trace of their misfortunes had disappeared.
A magnificent breakfast awaited them in the dining-room ;
the shelves above the sideboards had been filled with curiosi-
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 193
ties and silver-plate at least as valuable as the heirlooms
which formerly had stood there. Long as the family break-
fast lasted, Balthazar scarcely heard all that he wished to
hear from each of his children. His return had brought
about a sort of reaction in him; he thought of nothing but
family happiness; he was a father before all things. There
was the old courtliness in his manner. In the joy of that
first moment of possession he did not ask by what means
all that he had squandered had been recovered, and his happi-
ness was complete and entire.
Breakfast over, the father and his four children, and Pier-
quin the notary, went into the parlor, and Balthazar saw,
not without uneasiness, the stamped papers which a clerk had
arranged on the table by which he stood, as if awaiting fur-
ther instructions from his employer. Balthazar stood in
amazement before the hearth as his family seated themselves.
"This," said Pierquin, "is an account of his guardianship
rendered by M. Claes to his children. It is not very amusing
of course," he added, laughing, after the manner of notaries,
who are wont to adopt a jesting tone over the gravest matters
of business, "but it is absolutely necessary that you should
hear it read."
Although the circumstances of the case might justify the
use of this phrase, M. Claes, with an uneasy conscience, must
needs think it a reproach, and he frowned. The clerk began
to read; the further he, read, the greater grew Balthazar's
astonishment. In the first place, it was ascertained that at
the time of his wife's death her fortune had amounted to
about sixteen hundred thousand francs, and at the conclusion
of the statement of accounts each child's share was paid in
full, everything was clear and straightforward, as if the most
prudent father of a family had administered the estate. It
was shown incidentally that Gabriel's mortgage on the house
had been paid off, that Balthazar's dwelling was his own,
and that his estates were free from all liabilities. He had
recovered his honor as a mnn, his position as a citizen, his
existence as a father all at once; he sank into an armchair,
194 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
and looked round for Marguerite, but with a woman's ex-
quisite delicacy of feeling, she had stolen away during th*^
reading, to make sure that all her arrangements for the fete
liad been fully carried out. Every one of Claes' children
understood what was passing in his mind when through a
film of tears his eyes sought for his daughter; she seemed
to their inner vision like a strong, bright angel. Galjriel
"\rent to find Marguerite, Balthazar heard her footstep, hur-
ried towards her, met her at the foot of the staircase, and
clasped her in his arms.
"Father," she said, as the old man held her tightly, "do
notJling, I implore you, to lessen your sacred authority. You
must thank me, before them all, for carrying out your wishes
so well ; you, and you alone, must be the author of the changes
for the better which may have been effected here."
Balthazar raised his eyes to heaven, looked at his daughtei
and folded his arms; his face wore a look which none of his
children had seen for ten years, as he said, "Why are you
not here, Pepita, to admire our child ?"
He could say no more. He held his daughter in a tight
embrace for a moment, and went back to the parlor.
"Children," he said, with the noble bearing which had so
pre-eminently distinguished him in former j^ears, "we all
owe a debt of thanks and gratitude to my daughter Mar-
guerite for the courage and prudence with which she has car-
ried out my plans, while I, too much absorbed by scientific
research, left the administration of our affairs and the reins
of authority in her hands."
"Ah ! now we will read the marriage contracts," said Pier-
quin, glancing at the clock. "But I have nothing to do with
that, inasmuch as the law forbids me to draw up documents
for myself and my relations; so M. Eaparlier's uncle is com-
ing."
The friends who had been invited to the dinner given to
celebrate M. Claes' return and the signing of the contracts
now began to arrive, and the servants brought the wedding
presents. The assemblage, which rapidly grew, was brilliaiic
THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE 195
by reason of the rank of the visitors and the splendor of their
toilettes. The three families thus brought together to witness
their children's happiness had striven to outshine each other.
The parlor was filled almost at once with splendid gifts for
the betrothed couples. Gold flowed in on them and sparkled
there, stuffs lay unfolded, cashmere shawls lay among neck-
laces and jewels. Givers and receivers alike felt heartfelt
joy; an almost childish delight shone visibly in all faces, so
that the magnificence and costliness of the gifts were for-
gotten by those less nearly concerned, who, as a rule, are suf-
ficiently ready to amuse themselves by counting up the cost.
The ceremony soon began. After the manner traditional
in the family of Claes, the parents alone were seated; every-
one else who was present remained standing about them at
a little distance. On the side of the parlor nearest the garden
stood Gabriel Claes and Mile. Con3rncks, next to them M. de
Solis and Marguerite, her sister Felicie and Pierquin. Bal-
thazar and M. Conyncks (the only two who were seated) took
up their position on either side of the notary who had suc-
ceeded Pierquin. Jean stood behind his father's armchair;
and on the opposite side of the room, nearest the courtyard,
stood an imposing circle, composed of a score of well-dressed
women and several men, near relations of Pierquin, Conyncks,
or of the Claes, the mayor of Douai, before whom the mar-
riages were to take place, and a dozen of the most devoted
friends of the three families, including the First President
of the Court-Eoyal of Douai, and the cure of Saint-Pierre.
The homage paid by such an assemblage to the fathers, who
seemed for a moment to be invested with regal dignity, gave
an almost patriarchal color to the scene. For the first time,
during sixteen years, Balthazar forgot the Quest of the Abso-
lute for a moment.
All the persons who had been invited to the signing of the
contract and to the dinner were now present. M. Eaparlier,
having ascertained this from Marguerite and her sister, had
returned to his place and taken up the contract of marriage
between Marguerite and Emmanuel de Solis, which was to
196 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
be read first, when the door suddenly flew open, and Lemul-
qiiinier's face appeared beaming with joy and excitement.
"Monsieur ! monsieur !" he cried.
Balthazar gave .Marguerite a despairing glance, beckoned
to her, and they went out into the garden together. A pre-
sentiment of impending trouble fell on those assembled.
"I did not dare to tell you, dear child," the father said to
his daughter, "but you have done so much for me that you will
surely help me out of this new trouble. Lemulquinier lent me
his savings for my last experiment, which was unsuccessful ;
he lent me twenty thousand francs, and doubtless the
wretched fellow has found out that I am rich again, and wants
to have his money ; let him have it at once. Oh ! my angel,
you owe your father's life to him, for he was my sole support
and comfort through all my failures; he alone still hafl faith
in me. Without him I must have died "
"Monsieur, monsieur !" cried Lemulquinier.
"Well?" said Balthazar, turning towards him.
"A diamond !"
At the sight of the diamond in the old servant's hand,
Claes rushed to the parlor. Lemulquinier began in a whisper:
"I went up to the laboratory "
The chemist, completely forgetful of his surroundings,
gave the old Fleming a look which can only be rendered by
the words :
"You were the first to go up to the laboratory!"
"And I found this diamond there," the servant went on,
"in the capsule which communicated with that battery which
we left to its own devices — and it has done the trick, sir!"
he added, holding up a white diamond of octahedral form,
so brilliant that the eyes of all those assembled were attracted
by it.
"My children and friends," said Balthazar, "forgive my old
servant, forgive me. . . . This will drive me mad ! At
some time during the past seven years chance has brought
about in my laboratory this result that I have sought in vain
to compass for sixteen years — and I was not there ! How has
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 197
it come about ? I have no idea. Oh, yes ; I know that I snb-
mitfed a combination of sulphur and carbon to the influence
of a voltaic battery, but the process should have been watched
from day to day. And now, during my absence, the power
of God has been manifested in my laboratory, and I have
been unable to watch its workings, for this has been brought
about graduall}^ of course ! It is overwhelming, is it not ?
Accursed exile ! accursed fatality ! Ah ! if only I had watched
this long, this slow, this sudden — I know not what to call it —
crystallization, transformation, miracle in fact, my children
would be — well, richer still. Perhaps the Problem would still
remain to be solved, but at least the first rays of the dawn
of my glorj' would have shone upon my country; and this
moment, when the longings of affection are satisfied, though
it glows with our happiness, would have been gladdened yet
more by the sunlight of science."
Every one kept silence; the disconnected phrases wrung
from him by agony were too sincere not to be sublime. All
at once Balthazar recovered himself, forced back his despair
into some inner depth, and gave the assembly a majestic
glance. Other souls caught something of his enthusiasm.
He took the diamond and held it out to Marguerite, saying :
"It belongs to you, my angel."
He dismissed Lemulquinier by a sign, and spoke to the
notary :
"Let us go on," he said.
The words produced a sensation among those who heard
them, a responsive thrill such as Talma, in some of his parts,
could awaken in a vast listening audience that hung on his
words. Balthazar sat down, saying to himself, "To-day I
must be a father only." He spoke in a low voice; but Mar-
guerite, who overheard him, went over to her father, and
reverently kissed his hand.
"Never was there a man so great !" said Emmanuel, when
his betrothed returned to his side ; "never was there so strong.
a will ; any other would have gone mad."
As soon as the three contracts had been read and sioned.
198 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
every one crowded about Balthazar to ask how the diamond
had been made, but he could throw no light on the mysterious
event. He looked out at the attic, and pointed to it in a kind
of frenzy.
"Yes, the awful power which results from the vibrations of
glowing matter, which doubtless produces metals and dia-
monds, manifested itself there," he said, "for one moment —
by chance."
"A chance that came about quite naturally," said one of
those people who like to account for everything ; "the old gen-
tleman left a real diamond lying about. It is so much saved
out of all that he has burned up."
"Let us forget this," said Balthazar to the friends who
stood about him ; "I beg you will not speak of it again to me
to-day."
Marguerite took her father's arm to lead him to the state
apartments, where a banquet had been prepared. As he fol-
lowed his guests along the gallery, he saw that it was filled
with rare flowers, and that the walls were covered with pic-
tures.
"Pictures !" he cried, "pictures ! — and some of the old
ones !"
He stopped; for a moment he looked gloomy and sad; he
knew by the extent of his own humiliation how grec^t had been
the wrong that he had done his children.
"All this is yours, father," said Marguerite, gii.essing Bal-
thazar's trouble.
"Angel, over whom the angels in heaven miist surely re-
joice," he cried, "how many times you have given life to your
father."
"Let there be no cloud on your brow, and not the least
sad thought left in your heart," she answered, "and 3'-ou will
have rewarded me beyond my hopes. I have just been think-
ing about Lemulquinier, dearest father; little things you have
said of him now and then have made me esteem him, and I
confess I have been unjust to him ; he ouf;ht t.> live here as
a humble friend of yours. Never mind abcr.j. your debt to
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 199
him; Emmanuel has saved nearly sixty thousand francs, and
Lemulquinier shall have the money. After he has served you
so faithfully, he ought to spend the rest of his days in com-
fort. And do not be troubled on our account. M. de Soils
and I mean to live simply and quietly — without luxury; we
can spare the money until you are able to return it."
*'0h, my child ! you must never leave me ! you must always
be your father's providence !"
When he reached the state apartments, Balthazar saw that
they had been restored and furnished as splendidly as before.
The guests presently went down to the dining-room on the
ground floor, flowering shrubs stood on every step of the great
staircase. A service of silver plate of marvelous workman-
ship, Gabriel's gift to his father, attracted all .eyes by its splen-
dor; it was a surprise even to the proudest burghers of Douai,
who are accustomed to a lavish display of silver. The guests
were waited upon by the servants of the three households of
Claes, Conyncks, and Pierquin; Lemulquinier stood behind
his master's chair. Balthazar, in the midst of his kinsfolk
at the head of the table, read heartfelt joy in the happy faces
that encircled it, and felt so deeply moved that every one was
silent, as men are silent in the presence of a great joy or
sorrow.
"Dear children !" he said, '^you have killed the fatted calf
for the return of the prodigal father."
The phrase in which the chemist summed up his position,
and which perhaps anticipated harsher criticism, was spoken
so generously that every one present was moved to tears ; but
with the tears the last trace of sadness vanished, and happi-
ness found its expression in the blithe merriment character-
istic of family festivals. After the dinner the principal
families of Douai began to arrive for the ball, and in its res-
toration the Maison Claes more than equaled its traditional
splendor.
' The three weddings shortly followed; the ensuing rejoic-
ings, balls, and banquets drew Claes into the vortex of social
life for several months. His oldest son went to live near
200 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
Cambrai on an estate belonging to his father-in-law, for M.
Conyncks could not bear to be separated from his daughter
Mme. Pierquin likewise left her father's roof to preside over
a mansion which Pierquin had built, where he meant to live
in all the dignity befitting his rank, for he had sold his prac-
tice, and his uncle Des Eaquets had recently died and left
him all the wealth which he had slowly amassed. Jean went
to Paris to finish his education; so of all his children, only
M. and Mme. de Solis remained with Balthazar in the old
house. He had given up the family home at the back to them,
and lived himself on the second story of the front building
So Marguerite still watched over Balthazar's comfort, and
Emmanuel helped her in the congenial task.
The noble girl received from the hands of love the crowr
most eagerly desired of all — the wreath that is woven by hap
piness and kept fresh by constancy. Indeed, no more perfect
picture of the pure, complete, and acknowledged happiness,
of which all women fondly dream, could be found. The unity
of heart between two beings who had faced the trials of life
so bravely, and who felt for each other such a sacred affection,
called forth the admiration and respect of those who knew
them.
M. de Solis, who for some time had held an appointment
as Inspector-General of the University, resigned his post to
enjoy his happiness at his leisure, and remained in Douai,
where his character and talents were held in such high esteem
that his election as a deputy when the time came was already
spoken of as certain.
Marguerite, who had been so strong in adversity, became
a sweet and tender woman in prosperity. Through the rest
of that year Claes was certainly deeply absorbed in his stud-
ies; but though he made a few experiments, involving but
little expense, his ordinary income was sufficient for his re-
quirements, and he seemed to neglect his laboratory work.
Marguerite had adopted the old tradition of the house, gave
a family dinner every month, to M^hich her father, the Pier-
quins, and the Conyncks came, and received her own circle
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 207
of acquaintances one day in the week. Her cafes had a great
vogue. Claes was usually present on these occasions, though
he sometimes seemed to be scarcely conscious of his surround-
ings, but he went into society again so cheerfully to please his
daughter that his children might well imagine that he had
given up the attempt to solve his Problem. In this way three
years went by.
In 1828 a piece of good fortune which befell Emmanuel
took him to Spain. Although three numerous families,
branches of the house of Solis, stood between him and the
family estates, yellow fever, old age, and various freaks of for-
tune combined to leave them all childless, and the titles and
entail passed to Emmanuel, who was the last of his family.
By one of those chances which seem less improbable in real
life than in books, the lands and titles of the Counts of
Nourho had been acquired by the house of Solis. Marguerite
would not be separated from her husband, who would be
forced to stay long enough in Spain to settle his affairs;
moreover, she looked forward to seeing the chateau of Casa-
Real, where her mother had passed her childhood, and the
city of Granada, the cradle of the de Solis family. So she
went with her husband, leaving the household to Martha,
Josette, and Leraulquinier, who were accustomed to its man-
agement. Marguerite had proposed to Balthazar that he
should go with them, and he had declined on the score of his
great age; but the fact was that he had long meditated cer-
tain experiments, which should realize his hopes at last, and
this was the true reason of his refusal.
The Comte and Comtesse de Solis y ISTourho stayed longer
in Spain than they had intended, and a child was born
to them there. It was not until the middle of the year 1830
that they reached Cadiz, intending to return to France by
way of Italy ; but at Cadiz, a letter came from Felicie bringing
evil tidings. In eighteen months their father had completely
ruined himself. Gabriel and Pierquin were obliged to allow
him a fixed sum every month to pay for necessary expenses,
and the money was paid to Lemulquinier. The old servant
202 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
had sacrificed his savings a second time to his master, Bal'
thazar saw no one, not even his own children were admitted
into the house. Josette and Martha were both dead; the
coachman, the cook, and the rest of the servants had been
dismissed one after another, and the horses and carriages
had been sold. Although ' Lemulquinier was discreet and
taciturn, there was too good ground for believing that the
money which Gabriel Claes and Pierquin allowed him for
necessaries was spent on his experiments. Indeed, Gabriel
and Pierquin were paying the interest of a mortgage on the
Maison Claes, effected without their knowledge, lest the house
should be sold above his head. Xone of his children had
any influence with the old man of seventy, who still pos-
sessed such extraordinary energy and determination even in
trifles. It was just possible that Marguerite might regain
her old ascendency over him, and Felicie begged her sister
to come home at once ; she was in terror lest her father should
have put his name to bills once more. Gabriel, Conyncks, and
Pierquin had taken alarm at this persistent madness which
had spent seven millions of francs without result, and had
decided not to pay M. Claes' debts. This letter changed
Marguerite's traveling plans ; she took the shortest way home
to Douai. With her past savings and newly acquired wealth
it would be easy to pay her father's debts once more ; but she
determined to do more than this, she would fulfil her mother's
wishes; Balthazar Claes should not sink into a dishonored
grave. Clearly she alone had sufficient influence with him
to prevent him from carrying out his ruinous career to its
natural end, at a time of life when great results could
scarcely be expected from his enfeebled powers; but she
wished to persuade him, and not to wound his susceptibilities,
fearing to imitate the children of Sophocles; possibly her
father, after all, was nearing the solution of the scientific
problem to which he had sacrificed so much.
M. and Mme. do Solis reached Flanders in 1831, and ar-
rived in Douai one morning toAvards the end of September.
Marguerite ordered the coachman to drive to her house in the
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 203
Rue de Paris, and found it shut up; a violent ring av, the
door bell produced no answer. A shopkeeper, who lived
opposite, left his doorstep, whither he had been brought by
the noise of the carriages; many of the neighbors were a^
their windows, partly because they were glad to see the return
of a family so much beloved in the town, partly stirred by
a vague feeling of curiosity as to what might happen when
Marguerite came back to the Maison Claes. The shopkeeper
told the Comte de Solis' man that old M. Claes had left the
house about an hour before. Lemulquinier had doubtless
taken him to walk upon the ramparts.
Marguerite sent for a locksmith to force open the door,
so as to avoid a scene with her father, if (as Felicie's letter
had led her to expect) he should refuse to allow her to enter
the house. Emmanuel himself, meanwhile, went in search
of the old man to bring him the news of his daughter's
arrival, and despatched his man with a message to M. and
Mme. Pierquin.
It did not take long to force open the door. Marguerite
went to the parlor to give directions about their baggage.
A shiver of horror went through her as she entered — the
walls were as bare as if a fire had swept over them. Van
Huysium's wonderful carvings and the portrait of the. great
Claes had been sold to Lord Spencer, so some one said. The
dining-room was empty; there was nothing there but two
straw-bottomed chairs, and a M'retched table, on which Mar-
guerite saw, with dreadful misgivings, a couple of bowls and
plates, two silver spoons and forks, and, on a dish, the re-
mains of a herring, the meal, doubtless, of which Claes and
his servant had just partaken. As she hurried through the
state apartments, she saw that every room was as bare and
forlorn as the parlor and the dining-room; the idea of the
Absolute seemed to have passed through the whole house like
a fire.
For all furniture in her father's room, there was a bed,
a chair, and a table; a tallow candle burned down to
the socket stood in a battered copper candlestick. The
204 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
house had been stripped so completely that there were
no curtains in the windows; everything that could bring in
a few pence, even the kitchen utensils, had been sold. Drawn
by the feeling of curiosity that survives in us even in the
deepest misfortune, Marguerite looked into Lemulquinier's
room; it was as bare and empty as his master's. The drawer
in the table stood half open, and Marguerite caught a glimpse
of a pawn-ticket, the servant had pledged his watch a'fov.-
daj'S previously. She hastened to the attic; the laboratory
was as well replenished as it used to be; finally, she had the
door of her own room forced open : everything was as she had
left it, her father had respected her apartment.
Marguerite glanced round her, burst into tears, and in her
heart forgave her father. Even in the frenzy of enthusiasm,
which spared nothing else, he had been checked by fatherly
love and a feeling of gratitude towards her. This proof of
tenderness, received in the depths of her despair, wrought in
Marguerite one of those revulsions which prove too strong for
the coldest hearts. She went down to the parlor, and waited
for her father's coming, with an anxiety which was increased
by horrible fears; she was about to see him, would he be
changed? Should she see a decrepit, ailing wreck, emaci-
ated by fastings endured through pride? Suppose his reason
had failed? Her tears flowed fast in the profaned sanctuary.
Scenes of her past life rose up before her. She remembered
her struggles, her vain attempts to save her father from
himself, her childish days, the mother who had been so happy
and so unhappy; everything about her, even the face of her
little Joseph who smiled on the desolation, seemed to form
part of some unreal, mournful tragedy.
But for all her sad forebodings, she did not foresee the
catastrophe of the drama of her father's life, a life so magnifi-
cent and so wretched. Claes' affairs were no secret. To the
shame of humanity, there were no generous natures to be found
in Douai who could reverence the passionate persistence of
the man of genius. Balthazar was put under the ban of
society; he was a bad father, who had run through half -a
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 205
dozen fortunes, who had spent millions of francs on the search
of the Philosopher's Stone in this enlightened nineteenth
century, the century of incredulity, the century of, etc. . . .
He was maligned and calumniated; he was branded with the
contemptuous epithet of "The Alchemist." "He wants to
make gold !" they scoffed, and cast it in his teeth.
Has this much-belauded century of ours shown itself so
different from all other centuries? It has left genius to die
with the brutal indifference of past ages that beheld the
deaths of Dante, Cervantes, Tasso, e tiitti quanti; and sov-
ereign peoples recognize the work of genius even more slowly
than kings.
So these opinions concerning Claes had gradually filtered
downwards from the aristocratic section to the bourgeoisie,
and from the bourgeoisie to the people. Profound compassion
was felt for the aged chemist by people of his own rank, and
the populace looked on him with a sort of amused curiosity;
both ways of regarding him implied the scornful Vae victis
with which the crowd closes over fallen greatness.
People, as the}^ went past the house, used to point out the
rose-window of the attic where so much gold and coal had
been wasted. When Balthazar went along the street, they
pointed the finger at him ; his appearance was often the signal
for a joke or a pitying word from the children or workpeople ;
but Lemulquinier, ever on the watch, translated the whisper-
ings into a murmur of admiration for his master, who never
suspected the real truth.
Balthazar's eyes still preserved the wonderful clearness
which an inward vision of great ideas had given to them, but
he had grown deaf. For the peasants, and for vulgar or
superstitious minds, the old man was a wizard. The old
and splendid home of the Claes was spoken of in narrow
streets and country cottages as the "Devil's House;" nothing
was lacking to give color to these absurd tales ; even Lemul-
quinier's appearance gave rise to some of the lying legends
about his master. When, therefore, the poor, faithful old
servant went out to buy their scanty supply of necessaries
206 THE QUEST OP THE ABSOLUTE
in the market, he not only paid higher prices than any one
else for his meagre purchases, but he could buy nothing with-
out receiving insults thrown in as a sort of m-ike-weight ;
he even thought himself lucky if the superstitious market-
women did not refuse to supply him with his miserable pit-
tance of food, for it too often happened that they were afraid
CO endanger their souls by dealing with a tool of Satan.
The general feeling of the town was hostile to the old great
man and the companion of his labors. They were not the
better thought of because they were ill-clad and wore the
shabby clothing of decent poverty that shrinks from begging.
Open insult was sure to be offered them sooner or later; and
Pierquin, for the sake of his family, always took the precau-
tion of sending two or three of his servants to follow the old
men at a distance, and to interfere, if necessary, to protect
them, for the influence of the Revolution of Jul}^ had not
improved the manners of the populace.
By some inexplicable chance Claes and Lemulquinier had
gone out early this morning, and M. and Mme. Pierquin's
secret vigilance was for once at fault; the two old men were
out alone in the town. On their way home they sat down
to rest in the Place Saint-Jacques, on a bench in the sun.
Boys and children were continually passing by on their way
to school, and when they looked across the square and saw
the two helpless old men, whose faces brightened as they
basked in the sunlight, the children made little groups, and
began to talk. Children's chatter usually ends in laughter,
and laughter leads to mischief, which has no cruel intention.
Seven or eight of the first-comers stood at a little distance,
and stared at the strange old faces; Lemulquinier heard
their smothered laughter.
"There," cried one, "do you see that one with the forehead
like a knee ?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, he is a born Wise Man."
"Papa says he makes gold," put in another.
"Gold? What way does he make it?" asked a third, with
a contemptuous gesture.
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 207
The smallest of the children, who carried a basket full of
provisions, and was munching a slice of bread and butter,
went artlessly up to the bench, and said to Lemulquinier :
"Is it true that you make pearls and diamonds, sir?"
"Yes, little man," said Lemulquinier, smiling, and patting
his cheeks; "learn your lessons, and grow very wise, and we
will give you some."
"Oh, sir ! give me some too !" was the general cry.
All the children scampered up and crowded about the two
chemists like a flock of birds; their cries roused Balthazar
from his musings ; he gave a start that made them laugh.
"Ah ! you little rascals, respect a great man !" said Lemul-
quinier.
"A harlequin !" shouted the children ; "you are sorcerers !
. . . yes, sorcerers ! old sorcerers ! sorcerers, ah !"
Lemulquinier sprang, to his feet, raised his cane, and
threatened the children, who promptly fled, and picked up
stones and mud. A workman who was eating his breakfast
not far away looked up and saw Lemulquinier take his cane
to drive the children away, thought that he had beaten them,
and came to their aid with the formidable cry, "Down with
the sorcerers !"
Thus encouraged, the children were pelting the two old men
with ston.es as the Comte de Solis, followed by Pierquin's
servants, came into the square. They were too late to stop
the shower of mud with which the children bespattered the
great man and his servant; the mischief was done. Bal-
thazar had hitherto preserved the full force of his faculties
by the monastic habits and temperate life of a man of
science, in whom one all-absorbing passion had extinguished
all others. In the course of his ruminations the meaning of
this scene suddenly dawned on him. The sudden revulsion of
feeling, the contrast between the ideal world in which he lived
and the real world about him, was too great a shock ; he fell
into Lemulquinier's arms, struck down by paralysis. He was
carried home on a stretcher, his two sons-in-law and the ser-
vants going with him. Nothing could prevent the crowd that
2<« THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
gathered from following the old man to his house. Felicie
and her children were there already, and Gabriel and his
wife had come from Cambrai, hearing through their sister of
Marguerite's return.
The old man's return to his house was piteous to see.
Even as he lay between life and death his chief terror seemed
to be the thought that his children would discover the
wretchedness in which he had been living. As soon as a bed
could be made up in the parlor, every care was bestowed on
Balthazar, and towards the end of the day some hopes of
his recovery were entertained. But in spite of all that skill
could do, the paralysis had left him in an almost childish
condition. After the other symptoms had abated, his speech
was still affected, jjerhaps because anger had taken all power
to speak from him when he attempted to remonstrate with
the children.
General indignation was felt in the town when the news
of the affair became known. Some mysterious law working
in the minds of men had wrought a revulsion of feeling, and
M. Claes regained his popularity. He suddenly became a
great man. All the admiration and esteem which had been
so long withdrawn was his again. Every one praised his pa-
tient toil, his courage, his strength of will, his genius. The
magistrates were disposed to treat the small delinquents very
harshly; but the evil was done, and Claes' own family were
the first to ask that the affair should be smoothed over.
The parlor was refurnished by Marguerite's directions,
silken hangings covered the bare walls where the carved
panels once had been ; and when, a few days after his seizure,
Claes recovered the use of his faculties, he found himself
among luxurious surroundings ; nothing that could contribute
to his comfort had been forgotten. Marguerite came into the
parlor just as he tried to say that surely she must have come
back, A flush came over Balthazar's face at the sight of her;
his eyes were full of tears that did not fall ; he was still able
to grasp his daughter's hand in his cold fingers, and in this
pressure he put all the feelings and the thoughts that he
THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE 209
could not utter. There was something very sacred and sol-
emn in this farewell, from a d3dng brain and a heart to which
gratitude had brought back some of the glow of the warmth
of life.
Exhausted by all his fruitless labors, worn out by his wres-
tlings with a giant problem, seeing, perhaps, with despair
in his heart, the oblivion that waited for his memory, the
Titan neared the end of his life. Everything about him
spoke of his children's reverent affection. There were signs
of wealth and plenty, if these things could have rejoiced his
eyes ; the fair picture of their faces to gladden his heart. He
could now only express his affection for them by looks, and
his eyes were always full of tenderness ; it was as if they had
suddenly acquired a strange and varied power of speech, and
the light that shone in them was a language easy to under-
stand.
Marguerite paid her father's debts ; and though the ancient
glories of the house of Claes had departed, it was shortly
refurnished with a magnificence that effaced all memories
of its forlorn condition. She was never absent from Bal-
thazar's bedside, and strove to guess his thoughts, and to
anticipate his slightest wish.
Several months went by in alternations of hope and de-
spair that marked the progress of the final struggle between
life and death in an aged frame. His children came to see
him every morning, and spent the day in his room; they
dined there in the parlor by his bedside, and only left him
while he slept. The newspapers seemed to be his principal
resource; he took a great interest- in the political events of
the time, listening attentively to M. de Solis, who read them
aloud to him, and sat close beside him that he might hear
every word.
One night towards the end of the year 1832 Balthazar's
condition grew critical; the nurse, alarmed by a sudden
change in the patient, sent for Dr. Pierquin, and when he
came, he decided to remain; Claes' convulsions seemed so
210 THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE
like the agony of death that the doctor feared any moment
might be his last.
The old man was struggling against the paralysis that
bound his limbs. He made incredible efforts to speak; h\>
lips moved, but no sound came from them; his thoughts
seemed to blaze from his eyes; his face was drawn with un-
heard-of anguish; great drops of perspiration broke out on
his forehead; his fingers twitched nervously in his despair.
That morning when his children came and embraced him
with the affection that grew more intense and more clinging
with the near approach of death, he showed none of the hap-
piness that he always felt in their tenderness.
Emmanuel, at a warning glance from Pierquin, hastily
tore the newspaper from its wrapper, thinking that perhaps
the reading might divert Balthazar's mind from his physical
sufferings. As he unfolded the sheet the words Discovery
OF THE Absolute caught his eyes and startled him, and he
read the paragraph to Marguerite under his breath. It told
of a bargain concluded by a celebrated Polish mathematician
for the secret of the Absolute, which he had discovered. At
the conclusion of the paragraph Marguerite asked her hus-
band for the paper, but, low as the tones of his voice had been,
Balthazar had heard him.
Suddenly the dying man raised himself on his elbows ; his
glance seemed like lightning to his terror-stricken children,
the hair that fringed his temples rose, every wrinkle in his
face quivered with excitement, a breath of inspiration passed
over his face and made it sublime. He raised a hand,
clenched in frenzy, with the cry of Archimedes — EUREKA !
(7 have found it!) he called in piercing tones, then he fell
heavily back like a dead body, and died with an awful moan.
His despair could be read in the frenzied expression of his
eyes until the doctor closed them. He could not leave to
Science the solution of the Great .Enigma revealed to him
too late, as the veil was torn asunder by the fleshless fingers
of Death.
THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
To a Lord
1845
I. GILLETTE
On a cold December morning in the year 1612, a young man^
whose clothing was somewhat of the thinnest, was walking t«
and fro before a gateway in the Rue des Grands-Augustins
in Paris. He went up and down the street before this house
with the irresolution of a gallant who dares not venture into
the presence of the mistress whom he loves for the first time,
eas}' of access though she may be ; but after a sufficiently long
interval of hesitation, he at last crossed the threshold and
inquired of an old woman, who was sweeping out a large
room on the ground floor, whether Master Porbus was within.
Receiving a reply in the affirmative, the young man went
slowly up the staircase, like a gentleman but newly come to
court, and doubtful as to his reception by the king. He came
to a stand once more on the landing at the head of the stairs,
and again he hesitated before raising his hand to the gro-
tesque knocker on the door of the studio, where doubtless the
painter was at work — Master Porbus, sometime painter in
ordinary to Henri IV. till Mary de' Medici took Rubens into
favor.
The young man felt deeply stirred by an emotion that must
thrill the hearts of all great artists when, in the pride of their
youth and their first love of art, they come into the presence
of a master or stand before a masterpiece. For all human
sentiments there is a time of early blossoming, a day of gen-
C211)
212 ' THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
erous enthusiasm that gradually fades until nothing is left
of happiness but a memory, and glory is known for a delusion.
Of all these delicate and short-lived emotions, none so resem-
ble love as the passion of a young artist for his art, as he is
about to enter on the blissful martyrdom of his career of
glory and disaster, of vague expectations and real disappoint-
ments.
Those who have missed this experience in the early days
of light purses; who have not, in the dawn of their genius,
stood in the presence of a master and felt the throbbing of
their hearts, will always carry in their inmost souls a chord
that has never been touched, and in their work an indejfinable
quality will be lacking, a something in the stroke of the brush,
a mysterious element that we call poetry. The swaggerers, so
puffed up by self-conceit that they are confident oversoon of
their success, can never be taken for men of talent save by
fools. From this point of view, if youthful modesty is the
measure of youthful genius, the stranger on the staircase
might be allowed to have something in him; for he seemed
to possess the indescribable diffidence, the early timidity that
artists are bound to lose in the course of a great career, even
as pretty women lose it as they make progress in the arts of
coquetry. Self-distrust vanishes as triumph succeeds to tri-
umph, and modesty is, perhaps, distrust of self.
The poor neophyte was so overcome by the consciousness
of his own presumption and insignificance, that it began to
look as if he was hardly likely to penetrate into the studio
of the painter, to whom we owe the wonderful portrait of
Henri IV. But fate was propitious; an old man came up the
staircase. From the quaint costume of this newcomer, his
collar of magnificent lace, and a certain serene gravity in his
bearing, the first arrival thought that this personage must be
either a patron or a friend of the court painter. He stood
aside therefore upon the landing to allow the visitor to pass>
scrutinizing him curiously the while. Perhaps he might hope
to find the good nature of an artist or to receive the good
offices of an amateur not unfriendly to the arts ; but besides
'iiiu oilier man
knocked lliriee at tlic door
THE UNKNO^TN MASTERPIECE 213
an almost diabolical expression in the face that met his gaze,
there was that indescribable something which has an irre-
sistible attraction for artists.
Picture that face. A bald high forehead and rugged jut-
ting brows above a small flat nose turned up at the end, as
in the portraits of Socrates and Rabelais, deep lines about
the mocking mouth; a short chin, carried proudty, covered
with a grizzled pointed beard ; sea-green eyes that age m ight
seem to have dimmed were it not for the contrast between the
iris and the surrounding mother-of-pearl tints, so that it
seemed as if under the stress of anger or enthusiasm there
would be a magnetic power to quell or kindle in their glances.
The face was withered beyond wont by the fatigue of years,
yet it seemed aged still more by the thoughts that had worn
away both soul and body. There were no lashes to the deep-
set eyes, and scarcely a trace of the arching lines of the eye-
brows above them. Set this head on a spare and feeble frame,
place it in a frame of lace wrought like an engraved silver
fish-slice, imagine a heavy gold chain over the old man's black
doublet, and you will have some dim idea of this strange per-
sonage, who seemed still more fantastic in the sombre twi-
light of the staircase. One of Eembrandt's portraits might
have stepped down from its frame to walk in an appropriate
atmosphere of gloom, such as the great painter loved. The
older man gave the younger a shrewd glance, and knocked
thrice at the door. It was opened by a man of forty or there-
abouts, who seemed to be an invalid.
"Good-day, master."
Porbus bowed respectfully, and held the door open for the
younger man to enter, thinking that the latter accompanied
his visitor; and when he saw that the neophyte stood awhile
as if spellbound, feeling, as every artist-nature must feel, the
fascinating influence of the first sight of a studio in which
the material processes of art are revealed, Porbus troubled
himself no more about this secona comer.
All the light in the studio came from a window in the roof,
and was concentrated upon an easel, where a canvas stood
214 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
untouched as yet save for three or four outlines in chalk.
The daylight scarcely reached the remoter angles and comers
of the vast room ; they were as dark as night ; but the silver
ornamented breastplate of a Reiter's corselet, that hung upon
the wall, attracted a stray gleam to its dim abiding-place
among the brown shadows ; or a shaft of light shot across the
carved and glistening surface of an antique sideboard covered
with curious silver-plate, or struck out a line of glittering
dots among the raised threads of the golden warp of some old
brocaded curtains, where the lines of the stiff heavy folds
vvere broken, as the stuff had been flung carelessly down to
serve as a model.
Plaster ecorches stood about the room; and here and there,
on shelves and tables, lay fragments of classical sculpture —
torsos of antique goddesses, worn smooth as though all the
years of the centuries that had passed over them had been
lovers' kisses. The walls were covered, from floor to ceiling,
vvith countless sketches in charcoal, red chalk, or pen-and-ink.
Amid the litter and confusion of color boxes, overturned
stools, flasks of oil, and essences, there was just room to move
so as to reach the illuminated circular space where the easel
stood. The light from the window in the roof fell full upon
Porbus' pale face and on the ivory-tinted forehead of his
strange visitor. But in another moment the younger man
heeded nothing but a picture that had already become famous
even in those stormy days of political and religious revolution,
a picture that a few of the zealous worshipers, who have so
often kept the sacred fire of art alive in evil days, were wont to
go on pilgrimage to see. The beautiful panel represented
a Saint Mary of Egypt about to pay her passage across the
seas. It was a master}3iece destined for Mary de' Medici,
who sold it in later years of poverty.
"I like your saint," the old man remarked, addressing Por-
bus. "I would give you ten golden crowns for her over and
above the price the Queen is paying; but as for putting a
spoke in that wheel . . . the devil take it !"
"It is good then?"
THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 215
"Hey ! hey !" said the old man ; "good, say you ? — Yes and
no. Your good woman is not badly done, but she is not alive.
You artists fancy that when a figure is correctly drawn, and
everything in its place according to the rules of anatomy,
there is nothing more to be done. You make up the flesh tints
beforehand on your palettes according to your formulae, and
fill in the outlines with due care that one side of the face shall
be darker than the other; and because j^ou look from time
to time at a naked woman who stands on the platform be'fore
you, you fondly imagine that you have copied nature, think
yourselves to be painters, believe that you have wrested His
secret from God. Pshaw ! You may know your syntax thor-
oughly and make no blunders in your grammar, but it takes
that and something more to make a great poet. Look at your
saint, Porbus ! At a first glance she is admirable ; look at her
again, and you see at once that she is glued to the background,
and that you could not walk round her. She is a silhouette
that turns but one side of her face to all beholders, a figure cut
out of canvas, an image with no power to move nor change
her position. I feel as if there were no air between that arm
and the background, no space, no sense of distance in your
canvas. The perspective is perfectly correct, the strength of
the coloring is accurately diminished with the distance; but,
in spite of these praiseworthy efforts, I could never bring my-
self to believe that the warm breath of life comes and goes in
that beautiful body. It seems to me that if I laid my hand
on the firm rounded throat, it would be cold as marble to
the touch. No, my friend, the blood does not flow beneath
that ivory skin, the tide of life does not flush those delicate
fibres, the purple veins that trace a network beneath the
transparent amber of her brow and breast. Here the pulse
seems to beat, there it is motionless, life and death are at
strife in every detail; here you see a woman, there a statue,
there again a corpse. Your creation is incomplete. You had
only power to breathe a portion of your soul into your beloved
work. The fire of Prometheus died out again and again in
your hands ; many a spot in your picture has not been touched
by the divine flame."
216 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
''But how is it, dear master?" Porbus asked respectfully,
while the young man v/ith difficulty repressed his strong de-
sire to beat the critic.
*'Ah !" said the old man, "it is this ! You have halted be-
tween two manners. You have hesitated between drawing
and color, between the dogged attention to detail, the stiff
precision of the German masters and the dazzling glow, the
joyous exuberance of Italian painters. You have set yourself
to imitate Hans Holbein and Titian, Albrecht Diirer and
Paul Veronese in a single picture. A magnificent ambition
truly, but what has come of it? Your work has neither the
severe charm of a dry execution nor the magical illusion of
Italian chiaroscuro. Titian's rich golden coloring poured into
Albrecht Diirer's austere outlines has shattered them, like
molten bronze bursting through the mould that is not strong
enough to hold it. In other places the outlines have held firm,
imprisoning and obscuring the magnificent glowing flood of
Venetian color. The drawing of the face is not perfect, the
coloring is not perfect; traces of that unlucky indecision
are to be seen everywhere. Unless you felt strong enough
to fuse the two opposed manners in the fire of your own
genius, you should have cast in your lot boldly with the one
or the other, and so have obtained the unity which simulates
one of the conditions of life itself. Your work is only true
in the centres; your outlines are false, they project nothing,
there is no hint of anything behind them. There is truth
here," said the old man, pointing to the breast of the Saint,
"and again here," he went on, indicating the rounded
shoulder. "But there," once more returning to the column
of the throat, "everything is false. Let us go no further into
detail ; you would be disheartened."
The old man sat down on a stool, and remained a while
without speaking, with his face buried in his hands.
"Yet I studied tbat throat from the life, dear master," Por-
bus began; "it happens sometimes, for our misfortune, that
real effects in nature look improbable when transferred to
canvas "
THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 217
"The aim of art is not to copy nature, but to express it,
You are not a servile copyist, but a poet !" cried the old man
sharply, cutting Porbus short with an imperious gesture.
"Otherwise a sculptor might make a plaster cast of a living
woman and save himself all further trouble. Well, try to
make a cast of your mistress' hand, and set up the thing
before you. You will see a monstrosity, a dead mass, bearing
no resemblance to the living hand; you would be compelled
to have recourse to the chisel of a sculptor who, without mak-
ing an exact copy, would represent for you its movement and
its life. We must detect the spirit, the informing soul in the
appearances of things and beings. Effects ! What are effects
but the accidents of life, not life itself ? A hand, since I have
taken that example, is not only a part of a body, it is the ex-
pression and extension of a thought that must be grasped and
rendered. Keither painter nor poet nor sculptor may separate
the effect from the cause, which are inevitably contained the
one in the other. There begins the real struggle ! Many a
painter achieves success instinctively, unconscious of the task
that is set before art. You draw a woman, yet you do not see
her ! Not so do you succeed in wresting nature's secrets from
her ! You are reproducing mechanically the model that you
copied in your master's studio. You do not penetrate far enough
into the inmost secrets of the mystery of form; you do not
seek with love enough and perseverance enough after the form
that baffles and eludes you. Beauty is a thing severe and un-
approachable, never to be won by a languid lover. You must
lie in wait for her coming and take her unawares, press her
hard and clasp her in a tight embrace, and force her to yield.
Form is a Proteus more intangible and more manifold than
the Proteus of the legend; compelled, only after long wres-
tling, to stand forth manifest in his true aspect. Some of you
are satisfied with the first shape, or at most by the second
or the third that appears. Not thus wrestle the victors, the
unvanquished painters who never suffer themselves to be de-
luded by all those treacherous shadow-shapes ; they persevere
till nature at the last stands bare to their gaze, and her very
soul is revealed.
218 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
''In this manner worked Eaphael," said the old man, taking
off his cap to express his reverence for the King of Art. "His
transcendent greatness came from the intimate sense that, in
him, seems as if it would shatter external form. Form in his
figures (as with us) is a symbol, a means of communicating
sensations, ideas, the vast imaginings of a poet. Ever}' face
is a whole world. The subject of the portrait appeared for
him bathed in the light of a divine vision ; it was revealed by
an inner voice, the finger of God laid bare the sources of ex-
pression in the past of a whole life.
"You clothe your women in fair raiment of flesh, in gra-
cious veiling of hair ; but where is the blood, the source of pas-
sion and of calm, the cause of the particular effect? Why,
this brown Egyptian of yours, my good Porbus, is a colorless
creature ! These figures that you set before us are painted
bloodless phantoms ; and you call that painting, you call that
art!
"Because you have made something more like a woman than
a house, you think that you have set your fingers on the goal ;
you are quite proud that you need not to write currus venustus
or pulcher homo beside your figures, as early painters were
wont to do, and you fancy that you have done wonders. Ah !
my good friend, there is still something more to learn, and
you will use up a great deal of chalk and cover many a canvas
before you will learn it. Yes, truly, a woman carries her head
in just such a way, so she holds her garments gathered into
her hand ; her eyes grow dreamy and soft with that expression
of meek sweetness, and even so the quivering shadow of the
lashes hovers upon her cheeks. It is all there, and yet it is
not there. What is lacking? A nothing, but that nothing
is everything.
"There you have the semblance of life, but you do not ex-
press its fulness and effluence, that indescribable something,
perhaps the soul itself, that envelops the outlines of the body
Jiko a haze; that flower of life, in short, that Titian and Ra-
phael caught. Your utmost achievement hitherto has only
brought you to the starting-point. You might now perhaps
THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 219
begin to do excellent work, but you grow weary all too soon;
and the crowd admires, and those who know smile.
"Oh, Mabuse ! oh, my master !" cried the strange speaker,
"thou art a thief ! Thou hast carried away the secret of life
with thee !
"Nevertheless," he began again, "this picture of yours is
worth more than all the paintings of that rascal Eubens, with
his mountains of Flemish flesh raddled with vermilion, his
torrents of red hair, his riot of color. You, at least, have
color there, and feeling and drawing — the three essentials in
art."
The young man roused himself from his deep musings.
"Why, my good man, the Saint is sublime !" he cried.
"There is a subtlety of imagination about those two figures,
the Saint Mary and the Shipman, that cannot be found among
Italian masters; I do not know a single one of them capable
of imagining the Shipman's hesitation."
"Did that little malapert come with you ?" asked Porbus of
the older man.
"Alas ! master, pardon my boldness," cried the neophyte,
and the color mounted to his face. "I am unknown — a dauber
by instinct, and but lately come to this city — the fountain-
head of all learning."
"Set to work," said Porbus, handing him a bit of red chalk
and a sheet of paper.
The newcomer quickly sketched the Saint Mary line for
line.
"Aha !" exclaimed the old man. "Your name ?" he added.
The young man wrote "Nicolas Poussin" below the sketch.
"Not bad that for a beginning," said the strange speaker,
who had discoursed so wildly. "I see that we can talk art in
your presence. I do not blame you for admiring Porbus' saint.
In the eyes of the world she is a masterpiece, and those alone
who have been initiated into the inmost mysteries of art can
discover her shortcomings. But it is worth while to give you
the lesson, for you are able to understand it, so I will show
you how little it needs to complete this picture. You must be
220 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
all eyes, all attention, for it may be that such a chance of
learning will never come in your way again. — Porbus ! your
palette."
Porbus went in search of palette and brushes. The little
old man turned back his sleeves with impatient energy, seized
the palette, covered with many hues, that Porbus handed to
him, and snatched rather than took a handful of brushes of
various sizes from the hands of his acquaintance. His pointed
beard suddenly bristled — a menacing movement that ex-
pressed the prick of a lover's fancy. As he loaded his brush,
he muttered between his teeth, "These paints are only fit
to fling out of the window, together with the fellow who
ground them, their crudeness and falseness are disgusting!
How can one paint with this ?"
He dipped the tip of the brush with feverish eagerness in
the different pigments, making the circuit of the palette sev-
eral times more quickly than the organist of a cathedral
sweeps the octaves on the keyboard of his clavier for the 0
Filii at Easter.
Porbus and Poussin, on either side of the easel, stood stock-
still, watching with intense interest.
"Look, young man," he began again, "see how three or four
strokes of the brush and a thin glaze of blue let in the free
air to play about the head of the poor Saint, who must have
felt stifled and, oppressed by the close atmosphere ! See how
the drapery begins to flutter ; 3'ou feel that it is lifted by the
breeze ! A moment ago it hung as heavily and stiffly as if it
were held out by pins. ■ Do you see how the satin sheen that I
have just given to the breast rends the pliant, silken softness
of a young girl's skin, and how the brown red, blended with
burnt ochre, brings warmth into the cold gray of the deep
shadow where the blood lay congealed instead of coursing
through the veins ? Young man, young man, no master could
teach you how to do this that I am doing before your eyes.
Mabuse alone possessed the secret of giving life to his figures ;
Mabuse had but one pupil — that was I. I have none, and I
am old. You have sufficient intelligence to imagine the rest
from the glimpses that I am giving you."
THE I'NKNOWN MASTERPIECE 221
While the old man was speaking, he gave a touch here and
there ; sometimes two strokes of the brush, sometimes a single
one; but every stroke told so well, that the whole picture
seemed transfigured — the painting was flooded with light.
He worked with such passionate fervor, that beads of sweat
gathered upon his bare forehead; he worked so quickly, in
brief, impatient jerks, that it seemed to young Poussin as if
some familiar spirit inhabiting the body of this strange being
took a grotesque pleasure in making use of the man's hands
against his own will. The unearthly glitter of his eyes, the
convulsive movements that seemed like struggles, gave to this
fancy a semblance of truth which could not but stir a young
jjnagination. The old man continued, saying as he did so :
"Paf ! paf ! that is how to lay it on, young man ! — Little
touches ! come and bring a glow into those icy cold tones for
me ! Just so ! Pon ! pon ! pon !" and those parts of the pic-
ture that he had pointed out as cold and lifeless flushed with
warmer hues, a few bold strokes of color brought all the tones
of the picture into the required harmony with the glowing
tints of the Egyptian, and the differences in temperament
vanished.
"Look you, youngster, the last touches make the picture.
Porbus has given it a hundred strokes for every one of mine.
No one thanks us for what lies beneath. Bear that in mind."
At last the restless spirit stopped, and turning to Porbus
and Poussin, who were speechless with admiration, he spoke :
"This is not as good as my Belle Noiseuse; still one might
put one's name to such a thing as this. — Yes, I would put my
name to it," he added, rising to reach for a mirror, in which
he looked at the picture. — "And now," he said, "will you both
come and breakfast with me ? T have a smoked ham and some
very fair wine ! . . . Eh ! eh ! the times may be bad, but
we can still have some talk about art ! We can talk like
equals. . . . Here is a little fellow who has aptitude," he
added, laying a hand on Nicolas Poussin's shoulder.
In this way the stranger became aware of the threadbare
condition of the Norman's doublet. He drew a leather purse
222 THE UNKNOWN MASTEItllECE
from his girdle, felt in it, found two gold coins, and held
them out.
"I will buy your sketch," he said.
"Take it," said Porbus, as he saw the other start and flush
with embarrassment, for Poussin had the pride of poverty.
'^■Pray take it; he has a couple of king's ransoms in hli
pouch !"
The three came down together from the studio, and, talking
of art by the way, reached a picturesque wooden house hard
by the Pont Saint-Michel. Poussin wondered a moment at
its ornament, at the knocker, at the frames of the casements,
at the scroll work designs, and in the next he stood in a vast
low-ceiled room. A table, covered with tempting dishes, stood
near the blazing j&re, and (luck unhoped for) he was in the
company of two great artists full of genial good humor.
"Do not look too long at that canvas, young man," said
Porbus, when he saw that Poussin was standing, struck with
wonder, before a painting. "You would fall a victim to de-
spair."
It was the Adam painted by Mabuse to purchase his release
from the prison where his creditors had so long kept him.
And as a matter of fact, the figure stood out so boldly and
convincingly, that Nicolas Poussin began to understand the
real meaning of the words poured out by the old artist, who
was himself looking at the picture with apparent satisfaction,
but without enthusiasm. "I have done better than that!"
he seemed to be saying to himself.
"There is life in it," he said aloud ; "in that respect my poor
master here surpassed himself, but there is some lack of truth
in the background. The man lives indeed; he is rising, and
will come towards us; but the atmosphere, the sky, the air,
the breath of the breeze — -you look and feci for them, but they
are not there. And then the man himself is, after all, only a
man ! Ah ! but the one man in the world who came direct
from the hands of God must have had a something divine
about liim that is wanting here. Mabuse himself would grind
his teeth and say so when he was not drunk."
THE UNKNOWN MASTEllPIECB 223
Poussin looked from the speaker to Porbus, and from Por-
bus to the speaker, with restless curiosity. He went up to the
latter to ask for the name of their host ; but the painter laid
a finger on his lips with an air of mystery. The young man's
interest was excited; he kept silence, but hoped that sooner
or later some word might be let fall that would reveal the
name of his entertainer. It was evident that he was a man
of talent and very wealthy, for Porbus listened to him respect-
fully, and the vast room was crowded with marvels of art.
A magnificent portrait of a woman, hung against the dark
oak panels of the wall, next caught Poussin's attention,
"What a glorious Giorgione !" he cried.
"No,'' said his host, "it is an early daub of mine "
"Gramercy ! I am in the abode of the god of painting, it
seems !" cried Poussin ingenuously.
The old man smiled as if he had long grown familiar with
such praise.
"Master Frenhofer !" said Porbus, "do you think you could
send me a little of your capital Rhine wine ?"
"A couple of pipes !" answered his host ; "one to discharge
a debt, for the pleasure of seeing your pretty sinner, the other
as a present from a friend."
"Ah! if I had my health," returned Porbus, "and if you
would but let me see your Belle Noiseuse, I would paint some
great picture, with breadth in it and depth ; the figures should
be life-size."
"Let you see my work!" cried the painter in agitation.
"No, no ! it is not perfect yet ; something still remains for me
to do. Yesterday, in the dusk," he said, "I thought I had
reached the end. Her eyes seemed moist, the flesh quivered,
something stirred the tresses of her hair. She breathed I But
though I have succeeded in reproducing Nature's roundness
and relief on the flat surface ^f the canvas, this morning, by
daylight, I found out my mistake. Ah ! to achieve that glori-
ous result I have studied the works of the great masters of
color, stripping off coat after coat of color from Titian's can-
vas, analyzing the pigments of the king of light. Like that
224 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
sovereign painter, I began the face in a slight tone with a
supple and fat paste — for shadow is but an accident ; bear that
in mind, youngster ! — Then I began afresh, and by half-tone8
and thin glazes of color less and less transparent, I gradually
deepened the tints to the deepest black of the strongest shad-
ows. An ordinary painter makes his shadows something en-
tirely different in nature from the high lights ; they are wood
or brass, or what you will, anything but flesh in shadow.
You feel that even if those figures were to alter their position,
those shadow stains would never be cleansed away, those parts
of the picture would never glow with light.
"I have escaped one mistake, into which the most famous
painters have sometimes fallen; in my canvas the whiteness
shines through the densest and most persistent shadow. I
have not marked out the limits of my figure in hard, dry out-
lines, and brought every least anatomical detail into promi-
nence (like a host of dunces, who fancy that they can draw
because they can trace a line elaborately smooth and clean),
for the human body is not contained within the limits of line.
In this the sculptor can approach the truth more nearly than
we painters. Nature's way is a complicated succession of
curve within curve. Strictly speaking, there is no such tiling
as drawing.~Do not laugh, young man; strange as that
speech may seem to you, you will understand the truth
in it some day. — A line is a method of expressing the
effect of light upon an object; but there are no lines in
nature, eveiything is solid. We draw by modeling, that is
to say, that we disengage an object from its setting; the dis-
tribution ot the light alone gives to a body the appearance
by which we know it. So I have not defined the outlines; I
have suffused them with a haze of half-tints warm or golden,
in such a sort that you cannot lay your finger on the exact
spot where background and contours meet. Seen from near,
the picture looks a blur; it seems to lack definition; but
step back two paces, and the whole thing becomes clear, dis-
tinct, and solid ; the body stands out, the rounded form comes
into relief; you feel that the air plays round it. And yet — 1
THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 225
am not satisfied; I have misgivings. Perhaps one ought not
to draw a single line ; perhaps it would be better to attack the
face from the centre, taking the highest prominences first,
proceeding from them through the whole range of shadows to
the heaviest of all. Is not this the method of the sun, the
divine painter of the world ? Oh, Nature, Nature ! who has
surprised thee, fugitive ? But, after all, too much knowledge,
like ignorance, brings you to a negation. I have doubts about
my work."
There was a pause. Then the old man spoke again. "I
have been at work upon it for ten years, young man; but
what are ten short years in a struggle with Nature? Do we
know how long Sir Pygmalion wrought at the one statue that
came to life ?"
The old man fell into deep musings, and gazed before him
with wide unseeing eyes, while he played unheedingly with his
knife.
"Look, he is in converse with his dcBmon!" murmured Por-
bus.
At the word, Nicolas Poussin felt himself carried away by
an unaccountable accession of artist's curiosity. For him the
old m.an, at once intent and inert, the seer with the unseeing
eyes, became something more than a man — a fantastic spirit
living in a mysterious world, and countless vague thoughts
awoke within his soul. The efi'ect of this species of fascina-
tion upon his mind can no more be described in words than
the passionate longing awakened in an exile's heart by the
Bong that recalls his home. He thought of the scorn that the
old man affected to display for the noblest efforts of art, of
his wealth, his manners, of the deference paid to him by Por-
bus. The mysterious picture, the work of patience on which
he had wrought so long in secret, was doubtless a work of
genius, for the head of the Virgin which young Poiissin had
admired so frankly was beautiful even beside Mabuse's Adam
■ — there was no mistaking the imperial manner of one of the
princes of art. Everything combined to set the old man be-
yond the limits of human nature.
226 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
Out of the wealth of fancies in Nicolas Poussin's brain
an idea grew, and gathered shape and clearness. He saw in
this supernatural being a complete type of the artist's nature,
a nature mocking and kindly, barren and prolific, an erratic
spirit intrusted with great and manifold powers which she
too often abuses, leading sober reason, the Philistine, and
sometimes even the amateur forth into a stony wildernes;^
where they see nothing ; but the white-winged maiden herself,
wild as her fancies may be, finds epics there and castles and
works of art. For Poussin, the enthusiast, the old man, was
suddenly transfigured, and became Art incarnate. Art with
its mysteries, its vehement passion and its dreams. •
"Yes, my dear Porbus," Frenhofer continued, 'Tiitherto I
have never found a flawless model, a body with outlines of
perfect beauty, the carnations — Ah ! where does she live ?" he
cried, breaking in upon himself, "the undiscoverable Venus
of the older time, for whom we have sought so often, only to
find the scattered gleams of her beauty here and there ? Oh !
to behold once and for one moment, Nature grown perfect and
divine, the Ideal at last, I would give all that I possess. . . .
Nay, Beauty divine, I would go to seek thee in the dim land
of the dead ; like Orpheus, I would go down into the Hades of
Art to bring back the life of art from among the shadows of
death."
'^e can go now," said Porbus to Poussin. "He neither
hears nor sees us any longer."
*Tjet us go to his studio," said young Poussin, wondering
greatly.
"Oh ! the old fox takes care that no one shall enter it. His
treasures are so carefully guarded that it is impossible for us
to come at them. I have not waited for your suggestion and
your fancy to attempt to lay hands on this mystery by force."
"3o there is a mystery?"
"Yes," answered Porbus. "Old Frenhofer is the only pupil
Mabusc would take. Frenhofer became the painter's friend,
deliverer, and father; he sacrificed the greater part of his for-
tune to enable Mabusc to indulge in riotous extravagance, and
THE UNKNOWN MASTEHriECE 227
in return Mabuse bequeathed to him the secret of relief, the
power of giving to figures the wonderful life, the flower of
iSTature, the eternal despair of art, the secret which Mabuse
knew so well that one da}'^ when he had sold the flowered bro-
cade suit in which he should have appeared at the Entry of
Charles V., he accompanied his master in a suit of paper
painted to resemble the brocade. The peculiar richness and
splendor of the stuff struck the Emperor; he complimented
the old drunkard's patron on the artist's appearance, and so
the trick was brought to light. Frenhofer is a passionate en-
thusiast, who sees above and beyond other painters. He has
meditated profoundly on color, and the absolute truth of line ;
but by the way of much research he has come to doubt the very
existence of the objects of his search. He says, in moments of
despondency, that there is no such thing as drawing, and that
by means of lines we can only reproduce geometrical figures ;
but that is overshooting the mark, for by outline and shadow
you can reproduce form without any color at all, which shows
that our art, like Nature, is composed of an infinite number
of elements. Drawing gives you the skeleton, the anatomical
framework, and color puts the life into it; but life without
the skeleton is even more incomplete than a skeleton without
lif'p. But there is something else truer still, and it is this —
for painters, practice and observation are everything; and
when theories and poetical ideas begin to quarrel with the
brushes, the end is doubt, as has happened with our good
friend, who is half crack-brained enthusiast, half painter.
A sublime painter! but, unluckily for him, he was bom to
riches, and so he has leisure to follow his fancies. Do not
you follow his example ! Work ! painters have no business to
think, except brush in hand."
"We will find a way into his studio !" cried Poussin confi-
dently. He had ceased to heed Porbus' remarks. The other
smiled at the young painter's enthusiasm, asked him to come
to see him again, and they parted.
Nicolas Poussin went slowly back to the Eue de la Harpe,
and passed the modest hostelry where he was lodging without
828 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
noticing it. A feeling of uneasiness prompted him to hurry
up the crazy staircase till he reached a room at the top, a
quaint, airy recess under the steep, high-pitched roof common
among houses in old Paris. In the one dingy window of the
place sat a young girl, who sprang up at once when she heard,
some one at the door; it was the prompting of love; she had
recognized the painter's touch on the latch.
"What is the matter with you ?" she asked.
"The matter is ... is ... Oh ! I have felt that
I am a painter ! Until to-day I have had doubts, but now I
believe in myself! There is the making of a great man in
me ! Never mind, Gillette, we shall be rich and happy ! There
is gold at the tips of those brushes "
He broke off suddenly. The joy faded from his powerful
and earnest face as he compared his vast hopes with his slen-
der resources. The walls were covered with sketches in chalk
on sheets of common paper. There were but four canvases in
the room. Colors were very costly, and the j'^oung painter's
palette was almost bare. Yet in the midst of his poverty he
possessed and was conscious of the possession of inexhaustible
treasures of the heart, of a devouring genius equal to all the
tasks that lay before him.
He had been brought to Paris by a nobleman among his
friends, or perchance by the consciousness of his powers ; and
in Paris he had found a mistress, one of those noble and gen-
erous souls who choose to suffer by a great man's side, who
share his struggles and strive to understand his fancies, ac-
cepting their lot of poverty and love as bravely and daunt-
lessly as other women will set themselves to bear the burden
of riches and make a parade of their insensibility. The smile
that stole over Gillette's lips filled the garret with golden
light, and rivaled the brightness of the sun in heaven. The
sun, moreover, docs not always shine in heaven, whereas Gil-
lette was always in the garret, absorbed in her passion, occu-
pied by Poussin's happiness and sorrow, consoling the genius
which found an outlet in love before art engrossed it.
"Listen, Gillette. Come here."
THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 229
The girl obeyed joyously, and sprang upon the painter's
knee. Hers was perfect grace and beauty, and the loveliness
of spring ; she was adorned with all luxuriant fairness of out-
ward form, lighted up by the glow of a fair soul within.
"Oh ! God," he cried; "I shall never dare to tell her '"'
"A secret ?" she cried ; "I must know it I"
Poussin was absorbed in his dreams.
"Do tell it me !"
"Gillette, . . . poor beloved heart ! . . /'
"Oh ! do you want something of me ?"
"Yes."
"If you wish me to sit once more for you as I did the other
day," she continued with playful petulance, "I will never con-
sent to do such a thing again, for your eyes say nothing all
the while. You do not think of me at all, and yet you look
at me "
"Would you rather have me draw another woman ?"
"Perhaps — if she were very ugly," she said.
"Well," said Poussin gravely, "and if, for the sake of my
fame to come, if to make me a great painter, you must sit to
some one else ?"
"You may try me," she said; "^you know quite well that I
would not."
Poussin's head sank on her breast; he seemed to be over-
powered by some intolerable joy or sorrow.
"Listen," she cried, plucking at the sleeve of Poussin's
threadbare doublet. "I told you, Nick, that I would lay down
my life for you ; but I never promised you that I in my life-
time would lay down my love."
"Your love ?" cried the young artist.
"If I showed myself thus to another, you would love me no
longer, and I should feel myself unworthy of you. Obedience
to your fancies was a natural and simple thing, was it not?
Even against my own will, I am glad and even proud to do
thy dear will. But for another, out upon it !"
"Forgive me, my Gillette," said the painter, falling upon
230 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
bis knees ; "I would rather be beloved than famous. You are
fairer than success and honors. There ; fling the pencils away,
and burn these sketches ! I have made a mistake. I was
meant to love and not to paint. Perish art and all its secrets !"
Gillette looked admiringly at him, in an ecstasy of happi-
ness ! She was triumphant ; she felt instinctively that art
was laid aside for her saJie, and flung like a grain of incense
at her feet.
"Yet he is only an old man," Poussin continued; "for him
you would be a woman, and nothing more. You — so perfect !"
"I must love you indeed !" she cried, ready to sacrifice even
love's scruples to the lover who had given up so much for her
sake ; "but I should bring about my own ruin. Ah ! to ruin
myself, to lose everything for you ! . . . It is a very glori-
ous thought ! Ah ! but you will forget me. Oh ! what evil
thought is this that has come to you ?"
"I love you, and yet I thought of it," he said, with some-
thing like remorse. "Am I so base a wretch ?"
"Let us consult Pere Hardouin," she said.
"No, no ! let it be a secret between us."
"Very well; I will do it. But you must not be there," she
said. "Stay at the door with j^our dagger in your hand; and
if I call, rush in and kill the painter."
Poussin forgot everjihing but art. He held Gillette tightly
in his arms.
"He loves me no longer!" thought Gillette when she was
alone. She repented of her resolution already.
But to these misgivings there soon succeeded a sharper
pain, and she strove to banish a hideous thought that arose
in her own heart. It seemed to her that her own love had
grown less already, with a vague suspicion that the painter
had fallen somewhat in her eyes.
THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 231
11. CATHEEINE LESCAULT
Three months after Poussin and Porbus met, the latter
went to see Master Frenhofer. The old man had fallen a
victim to one of those profound and spontaneous fits of dis-
couragement that are caused, according to medical logicians,
by indigestion, flatulence, fever, or enlargement of the spleen ;
or, if you take the opinion of the Spiritualists, by the imper-
fections of our moral nature. The good man had simply
overworked himself in putting the finishing touches to his
mysterious picture. He was lounging in a huge carved oak
chair, covered with black leather, and did not change his list-
less attitude, but glanced at Porbus like a man who has set-
tled down into low spirits.
^^Well, master," said Porbus, "was the ultramarine bad that
you sent for to Bruges ? Is the new white difficult to grind ?
Is the oil poor, or are the brushes recalcitrant ?"
"Alas !" cried the old man, "for a moment I thought that
my work was finished; but I am sure that I am mistaken in
certain details, and I cannot rest until I have cleared my
doubts. I am thinking of traveling. I am going to Turkey,
to Greece, to Asia, in quest of a model, so as to compare my
picture with the different living forms of Nature. Perhaps,"
and a smile of contentment stole over his face, "perhaps I
have Nature herself up there. At times I am half afraid that
a breath may waken her, and that she will escape me."
He rose to his feet as if to set out at once.
"Aha !" said Porbus, "I have come just ip t^me to save you
the trouble and expense of a journey."
"What ?" asked Frenhofer in amazement.
"Young Poussin is loved by a woman of incomparable and
flawless beauty. But, dear master, if he consents to lend her
to you, at the least you ought to let us see your work."
The old man stood motionless and complete^ dazed.
**What !" he cried piteously at last, "show you my creation,
my bride ? Eend the veil that has kept my happiness sacred ?
232 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
It would be an infamous profanation. For ten years I have
lived with her; she is mine, mine alone; she loves me. Has
she not smiled at me, at each stroke of the brush upon the
canvas ? She has a soul — the soul that I have given her. She
would blush if any eyes but mine should rest on her. To ex-
hibit her ! Where is the husband, the lover so vile as to bring
the woman he loves to dishonor? When you paint a picture
for the court, you do not put your whole soul into it ; to cour-
tiers you sell lay figures duly colored. My painting is no
painting, it is a sentiment, a passion. She was born in my
studio, there she must dwell in maiden solitude, and only
when clad can she issue thence. Poetry and women only lay
the last veil aside for their lovers. Have we Raphael's model,
Ariosto's Angelica, Dante's Beatrice? ISTay, only their form
and semblance. But this picture, locked away above in my
studio, is an exception in our art. It is not a canvas, it is
a woman — a woman with whom I talk. I share her thoughts,
her tears, her laughter. Would you have me fling aside these
ten years of happiness like a cloak ? Would you have me cease
at once to be father, lover, and creator ? She is not a creature,
but a creation.
"Bring 3'our young painter here. I will give him my treas-
ures ; I will give him pictures by Correggio and Michael Angelo
and Titian ; I will kiss his footprints in the dust ; but — make
him my rival ! Shame on me. Ah ! ah ! I am a lover first, and
then a painter. Yes, with my latest sigh I could find strength
to burn my Belle Noiseuse; but — compel her to endure the
gaze of a stranger, a young man and a painter ! — Ah ! no, no !
I would kill him on the morrow who should sully her with a
glance ! Nay, you, my friend, I would kill you with my own
hands in a moment if you did not kneel in reverence before
her! Now, will you have me submit my idol to the careless
eyes and senseless criticisms of fools? Ah! love is a mystery;
it can only live hidden in the depths of the heart. You say,
even to your friend, 'Behold her whom I love,' and there is an
end of love."
The old man seemed to have grown young again; there was
THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 233
light and life in his eyes, and a faint flush of red in his pale
face. His hands shook. Porbus was so amazed by the pas-
sionate vehemence of Frenhofer's words that he knew not what
to reply to this utterance of an emotion as strange as it was
profound. Was Frenhofer sane or mad? Had he fallen a
victim to some freak of the artist's fancy? or were these ideas
of his produced by that strange lightheadedness which comes
over us during the long travail of a work of art. Would it be
possible to come to terms with this singular passion?
Harassed by all these doubts, Porbus spoke — "Is it not wo-
man for woman?" he said. "Does not Poussin submit his
mistress to your gaze?"
"What is she?" retorted the other. "A mistress who will
be false to him sooner or later. Mine will be faithful to me
for ever."
"Well, well," said Porbus, "let us say no more about it.
But you may die before you will find such flawless beauty as
hers, even in Asia, and then vour picture will be left unfin-
ished."
"Oh! it is finished," said Frenhofer. "Standing before it
you would think that it was a living woman lying on the vel-
vet couch beneath the shadow of the curtains. Perfumes are
burning on a golden tripod by her side. You would be
tempted to lay your hand upon the tassel of the cord that
holds back the curtains ; it would seem to you that you saw her
breast rise and fall as she breathed ; that you beheld the living-
Catherine Lescault, the beautiful courtesan whom men called
La Belle Noiseuse. And yet — if I could but be sure "
"Then go to Asia," returned Porbus, noticing a certain in-
decision in Frenhofer's face. And with that Porbus made
a few steps towards the door.
By t^ time Gillette and Nicolas Poussin had reached
Frenhofer's house. The girl drew away her arm from her
lover's as she stood on the threshold, and shrank back as if
some presentiment flashed through her mind.
"Oh ! what have I come to do here ?" she asked of her lover
in low vibrating tones, with her eyes fixed on his.
234 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
"Gillette, I have left you to decide ; I am ready to obey you
in everything. You are my conscience and my glory. Go
home again ; I shall be happier, perhaps, if you do not "
"Am I my own when you speak to me like that ? No, no ;
I am like a child. — Come,'' she added, seemingly with a vio-
lent effort; "if our love dies, if I plant a long regret in my
heart, your fame will be the reward of my obedience to your
wishes, will it not ? Let us go in. I shall still live on as a
memory on your palette ; that shall be life for me afterwards."
The door opened, and the two lovers encountered Porbus,
who was surprised by the beauty of Gillette, whose eyes were
full of tears. He hurried her, trembling from head to foot,
into the presence of the old painter.
"Here !" he cried, "is she not worth all the masterpieces
in the world ?"
Frenhofer trembled. There stood Gillette in the artless and
childlike attitude of some timid and innocent Georgian, car-
ried off by brigands, and confronted with a slave merchant.
A shamefaced red flushed her face, her eyes dropped, her
hands hung by her side, her strength seemed to have failed
her, her tears protested against this outrage. Poussin cursed
himself in despair that he should have brought this fair treas-
ure from its hiding-place. The lover overcame the artist, and
countless doubts assailed Poussin's heart when he saw youth
dawn in the old man's eyes, as, like a painter, he discerned
every line of the form hidden beneath the young girl's vesture.
Then the lover's savage jealousy awoke.
"Gillette !" he cried, "let us go."
The girl turned joyously at the cry and the tone in which
it was uttered, raised her eyes to his, looked at him, and fled
to his arms.
"Ah ! then you love me," she cried ; "you love me !" and
she burst into tears.
She had spirit enough to suffer in silence, but she had no
strength to hide her joy.
"Oh ! leave her with me for one moment," said the old
painter, "and you shall compare her with my Catherine
. . . Yes — I consent."
THE UNKNOWN MASTERrifiCE 235
Frenhofer's words likewise came from him like a lover's
cry. His vanity seemed to be engaged for his semblance of
womanhood; he anticipated the triumph of the beauty of his
own creation over the beauty of the living girl.
"Do not give him time to change his mind !'' cried Porbus,
striking Poussin on the shoulder. "The flower of love soon
fades, but the flower of art is immortal."
"Then am I only a woman now for him?" said Gillette.
She was watching Poussin and Porbus closely.
She raised her head proudly; she glanced at Frenhofer, and
her eyes flashed; then as she saw how her lover had fallen
again to gazing at the portrait which he had taken at first
for a Giorgione —
"Ah!" she cried; "let us go up to the studio. He never
gave me such a look."
The sound of her voice recalled Poussin from his dreams.
"Old man," he said, "do you see this blade ? I will plunge
it into your heart at the first cry from this young girl; I will
set fire to your house, and no one shall leave it alive. Do
you understand?"
Nicolas Poussin scowled, every word was a menace. Gil-
lette took comfort from the young painter's bearing, and yet
more from that gesture, and almost forgave him for sacri-
ficing her to his art and his glorious future.
Porbus and Poussin stood at the door of the studio and
looked at each other in silence. At first the painter of the
Saint Mary of Egypt hazarded some exclamations : "Ah !
she has taken off her clothes; he told her to come into the
light — he is comparing the two !" but the sight of the deep
distress in Poussin's face suddenly silenced him; and though
old painters no longer feel these scruples, so petty in the
presence of art, he admired them because they were so natural
and gracious in the lover. The young man kept his hand on
the hilt of his dagger, and his ear was almost glued to the
door. The two men standing in the shadow might have been
conspirators waiting for the hour when they might strike
down a tyrant.
236 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
"Come in, come in," cried the old man. He was radiant
with delight. "My work is perfect. I can show her now with
pride. Never shall painter, brushes, colors, light, and can-
vas produce a rival for Catherine Lescault, the beautiful
courtesan !"
Porbus and Poussin, burning with eager curiosity, hurried
into a vast studio. Everything was in disorder and covered
with dust, but they saw a few pictures here and there upon
the wall. They stopped first of all in admiration before the
life-sized figure of a woman partially draped.
"Oh! never mind that,'' said Frenhofer; "that is a rough
daub that I made, a study, a pose, it is nothing. These are
my failures," he went on, indicating the enchanting composi-
tions upon the walls of the studio.
This scorn for such works of art struck Porbus and
Poussin dumb with amazement. They looked round for the
picture of which he had spoken, and could not discover it.
"Look here !" said the old man. His hair was disordered,
his face aglow with a more than human exaltation, his eyes
glittered, he breathed hard like a young lover frenzied by
love.
"Aha !" he cried, "you did not expect to see such perfec-
tion! You are looking for a picture, and you see a woman
before you. There is such depth in that canvas, the atmos-
phere is so true that you cannot distinguish it from the air
that surrounds us. Where is art ? Art has vanished, it is in-
visible ! It is the form of a living girl that you see before
you. Have I not caught the very hues of life, the spirit of the
living line that defines the figure? Is there not the effect
produced there like that which all natural objects present in
the atmosphere about them, or fishes in the water? Do you
see how the figure stands out against the background ? Does
it not seem to you that you could pass your hand along the
back? But tlien for seven years I studied and watched hovv-
the daylight blends with the objects on which it falls. And
the hair, the light pours over it like a flood, does it not?
, . . Ah ! she breathed, I am sure that she brer.thed ! Hei
THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 237
breast — ah, see ! Who would not fall on his knees before her?
Her pulses throb. She will rise to her feet. Wait !"
"Do you see anything ?" Poussin asked of Porbus.
"No . . . do you?"
"I see nothing."
The two painters left the old man to his ecstasy, and tried
to ascertain whether the light that fell full upon the canvas
had in some way neutralized all the effect for them. They
moved to the right and left of the picture ; then they came in
front, bending down and standing upright by turns.
"Yes, yes, it is really canvas," said Frenhofer, who mistook
the nature of this minute investigation.
"Look ! the canvas is on a stretcher, here is the easel ; in-
deed, here are my colors, my brushes," and he took up a
brush and held it out to them, all unsuspicious of their
thought.
"The old lansquenet is laughing at us," said Poussin, com-
ing once more towards the supposed picture. "I can see
nothing there but confused masses of color and a multitude
of fantastical lines that go to make a dead wall of paint."
"We are mistaken, look !" said Porbus.
In a corner of the canvas as they came nearer, they dis-
tinguished a bare foot emerging from the chaos of color, half-
tints and vague shadows that made up a dim formless fog.
Its living delicate beauty held them spellbound. This frag-
ment that had escaped an incomprehensible, slow, and gradual
destruction seemed to them like the Parian marble torso of
some Venus emerging from the ashes of a ruined town.
"There is a wom-an beneath," exclaimed Porbus, calling
Poussin's attention to the coats of paint with which the old
artist had overlaid and concealed his work in the quest of
perfection.
Both artists turned involuntarily to Frenhofer. They
began to have some understanding, vague though it was, of
the ecstasy in which he lived.
"'He believes it in all good faith," said Porbus.
'TTes, my friend," said the old man,, rousing himself from
238 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
his dreams, "it needs faith, faith in art, and you must live
for long with your work to produce such a creation. What
toil some of those shadows have cost me. Look ! there is a
faint shadow there upon the cheek beneath the eyes — if you
saw that on a human face, it would seem to you that you could
never render it with paint. Do you think that that effect
has not cost unheard-of toil ?
"But not only so, dear Porbus. Look closely at my work,
and you will understand more clearly what I was saying as to
methods of modeling and outline. Look at the high lights
on the bosom, and see how by touch on touch, thickly laid on,
I have raised the surface so* that it catches the light itself
and blends it with the lustrous whiteness of the high lights,
and how by an opposite process, by flattening the surface
of the paint, and leaving no trace of the passage of the brush,
I have succeeded in softening the contours of my figure an(?.
enveloping them in half-tints until the very idea of drawing,
of the means by which the effect is produced, fades away,
and the picture has the roundness and relief of nature. Come
closer. You will see the manner of working better ; at a little
distance it cannot be seen. There ! Just there, it is, I think,
very plainly to be seen," and with the tip of his brush he
pointed out a patch of transparent color to the two painters.
Porbus, laying a hand on the old artist's shoulder, turned
to Poussin with a "Do you know that in him we see a very
great painter ?"
"He is even more of a poet than a painter," Poussin an-
swered gravely.
"There," Porbus continued, as he touched the canvas, "lies
the utmost limit of our art on earth."
"Beyond that point it loses itself in the skies," said Pous-
sin.
"What joys lie there on that piece of canvas!" exclaimed
Porbus.
The old man, deep in his own musings, smiled at the
woman he alone beheld, and did not hear.
"But sooner or later he will find out that there is nothing
there !" cried Poussin,
THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 239
'^Nothing on my canvas !" said Frenhofei, looking in turn
at either painter and at his picture.
"What have you done?" muttered Porbus, turning to
Poussin.
The old man clutched the young painter's arm and said,
"Do you see nothing ? clodpate ! Huguenot ! varlet ! scullion !
What brought 3'ou here into my studio? — My good Porbus,"
he went on, as he turned to the painter, "are you also making
a fool of me ? Answer ! I am your friend. Tell me, have I
ruined my picture after all ?"
Porbus hesitated and said nothing, but there was such in-
tolerable anxiety in the old man's white face that he pointed
to the easel.
"Look !" he said.
Frenhofer looked for a moment at his picture, and stag-
gered back.
"Nothing ! nothing ! After ten years of work . . ."
He sat down and wept.
"So I am a dotard, a madman, I have neither talent nor
power ! I am only a rich man, who works for his own pleas-
ure, and makes no progress. I have done nothing after all !"
He looked through his tears at his picture. Suddenly he
rose and stood proudly before the two painters.
"By the body and blood of Christ," he cried, with flashing
eyes, "you are jealous ! You would have me think that my
picture is a failure because you want to steal her from me !
Ah ! I see her, I see her," he cried, "she is marvelously beauti-
ful . . ."
At that moment Poussin heard the sound of weeping ; Gil-
lette was crouching forgotten in a corner. All at once the
painter once more became the lover. "What is it, my angel ?"
he asked her.
"Kill me !" she sobbed. "I must be a vile thing if I love
you still, for I despise you. ... I admire you, and I
loathe you! I love you, and I feel that I hate you even
now."
While Gillette's words sounded in Poussin's ears, Fren-
240 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
hofer drew a green serge covering over his Catherine with
the sober deliberation of a jeweler who locks his drawers when
he suspects his visitors to be expert thieves. He gave the
two painters a profoundly astute glance that expressed to
the full his suspicions and his contempt for them, saw them
out of his studio with impetuous haste and in silence, until
from the threshold of his house he bade them "Good-bye, my
young friends !"
That farewell struck a chill of dread into the two painters.
Porbus, in anxiety, went again on the morrow to see Fren-
hofer, and learned that he had died in the night after burn-
ing his canvases.
Pabis, February 1832.
THE MARANAS
To Madame la Comtesse Merlin
In spite of the discipline enforced by Marshal Suchet in the
division he commanded in the Peninsular War, all his ef-
forts could not restrain an outbreak of license and tumult
at the taking of Taragona. Indeed, according to trustworthy
military authorities, the intoxication of victory resulted in
something very like a sack of the town. Pillage was promptly
put down by the Marshal ; and as soon as order was restored,
a commandant appointed, the military administrators ap-
peared upon the scene, and the town began to wear a nonde-
script aspect — ^the organization was French, but the Spanish
population was left free to follow in petto its own national
customs. It would be a task of no little difficulty to deter-
mine the exact duration of the pillage, but its cause (like
that of most sublunary events) is sufficiently easy to dis-
cover.
In the Marshal's division of the army there was a regiment
composed almost entirely of Italians, commanded by a cer-
tain Colonel Eugene, a man of extraordinary valor, a second
Murat, who, having come to the trade of war too late, had
gained no Grand Duchy of Berg, no Kingdom of Naples, nor
a ball through the heart at Pizzo. But if he had received no
crown, his chances of receiving bullets were admirably good ;
and it would have been in no wise astonishing if he had had
more than one of them. This regiment was made up from
the wrecks of the Italian Legion, which is in Italy very much
what the colonial battalions are in France. Stationed in the
Isle of Elba, it had provided an honorable way out of the
difficulty experienced by families with regard to the future
of unmanageable sons, as well as a career for those great men
242 THE MARAN.^
spoiled in the making, whom society is too ready to brand
as mauvais sujets. All of them were men misunderstood,
for the most part — men who may become heroes if a woman's
smile raises them out of the beaten track of glory; or ter-
rible after an orgy, when some ugly suggestion, dropped by a
boon companion, has gained possession of their minds.
Napoleon had enrolled these men of energy in the Sixth
Eegiment of the line, hoping to metamorphose them into
generals, with due allowance for the gaps to be made in their
ranks by bullets; but the Emperor's estimate of the ravages
of death proved more correct than the rest of his calcula-
tions. It was often decimated, but its character remained the
same; and the Sixth acquired a name for splendid bravery
in the field, and the very worst reputation in private life.
These Italians had lost their captain during the siege of
Taragona. He was the famous Bianclii who laid a wager
during the campaign that he would eat a Spanish sentinel's
heart — and won his bet. The story of this pleasantry of
the camp is told elsewhere in the Scenes de la Vie Parisienne;
therein will be found certain details which corroborate what
has been said here concerning the legion. Bianchi, the prince
of those fiends incarnate who had earned the double reputa-
tion of the regiment, possessed the chivalrous sense of honor
which, in the army, covers a multitude of the wildest ex-
cesses. In a word, had he lived a few centuries earlier, he
would have made a gallant buccaneer. Only a few days be-
fore he fell, he had distinguished himself by such conspicuous
courage in action, that the Marshal sought to recognize it.
Bianchi had refused promotion, pension, or a fresh decora-
tion, and asked as a favor to be allowed to mount the first
scaling-ladder at the assault of Taragona as his sole reward.
The Marshal granted the request, and forgot his promise;
but Bianchi himself put him in mind of it and of Bianchi,
for the berserker Captain was the first to plant the flag of
France upon the wall ; and there he fell, killed by a monk.
This historical digression is necessary to explain how it
came to pass that the Sixth tiegiment of the line was the first
THE MARANAS 243
to enter Taragona, and how the tumult, sufficiently natural
after a town has been carried by storm, degenerated so quickly
into an attempt to sack it. Moreover, among these men of
iron, there were two officers, otherwise but little remarkable,
who were destined by force of circumstances to play an im-
portant part in this story.
The first of these, a captain on the clothing establishment
— half civilian, half officer — was generally said, in soldierly
language, to ''take good care of number one."
Outside his regiment he was wont to swagger and brag of
his connection with it ; he would curl his moustache and look
a terrible fellow, but his mess had no great opinion of him.
His money was the secret of his valorous discretion. For
a double reason, moreover, he had been nicknamed Captain of
the Ravens; because, in the first place, he scented the powder a
league away; and, in the second, scurried out of range like a
bird on the wing; the nickname was likewise a harmless sol-
dier's joke, a personality of which another might have been
proud. Captain Montefiore, of the illustrious family of the
Montefiore of Milan (though by the law of the kingdom of
Italy he might not bear his title), was one of the prettiest
fellows in the army. Possibly his beauty may secretly have
been an additional cause of his prudence on the field of
battle. A wound in the face by spoiling his profile, scarring
his forehead, or seaming his cheeks, would have spoiled one of
the finest heads in Italy, and destroyed the delicate propor-
tions of a countenance such as no woman ever pictured in
dreams. In Girodet's picture of the Revolt of Cairo there is
a young dying Turk who has the same type of face, the same
melancholy expression, of which women are nearly always
the dupes. The Marchese di Montefiore had property of his
own, hu'i it was entailed, and he had anticipated his income
for several years in order to pay for escapades peculiarly
Itatian and inconceivable in Paris. He had ruined himself
by running a theatre in Milan for the special purpose of foist-
ing upon the public a cantatrice wlio could not sing, but who
loved him (so he said) to distraction.
244 THE MARANAS
So Montefiore the captain had good prospects, and was in
no hurry to risk them for a paltry scrap of red ribbon. If
he was no hero, he was at any rate a philosopher ; besides,
precedents (if it is allowable to make nse of parliamentary
expressions in this connection), precedents are forthcoming.
Did not Philip II. swear during the battle of Saint-Quentin
that he would never go under fire again, nor near it, save
the faggots of the Inquisition? Did not the Duke of Alva ap-
prove the notion that the involuntary exchange of a crown
for a cannon-ball was the worst kind of trade in the world?
Montefiore, therefore, as a Marquis, was of Philip II.'s way
of thinking; he was a Philippist in his quality of gay young
bachelor, and in other respects quite as astute a politician
as Philip II. himself. He comforted himself for his nick-
name, and for the slight esteem in which he was held by his
regiment, with the thought that his comrades were sorry
scamps; and even if they should survive this war of ex-
termination, their opinion of him was not likely to gain much
credence hereafter. Was not his face as good as a certificate
of merit? He saw himself a colonel through some accident
of feminine favor; or, by a skilfully effected transition, the
captain on the clothing establishment would become an or-
derly, and the orderly would in turn become the aide-de-
camp of some good-natured marshal. The bravery of the
uniform and the bravery of the man were all as one to the
captain on the clothing establishment. So some broad sheet
or other would one day call him *^the brave Colonel Monte-
fiore," and so forth. Then he would have a hundred thousand
scudi a 3'ear, he would marry the daughter of a noble house,
and no one would dare breathe a word against his courage, nor
to seek to verify his wounds. Finally, it should be stated that
Taptain Montefiore had a friend in the person of the quarter-
master, a Provengal, bom in the Nice district, Diard by
name.
A friend, be it in the convict's prison or in an artist's garret,
is a compensation for many troubles; and Montefiore and
Diafd, being a pair of philoso^ihers, found compensations fo*
THE MARANAS 245
their hard life in companionship in vice, much as two artists
will lull the consciousness of their hardships to sleep by
hopes of future fame. Both looked at war as a means to an
end, and not as an end in itself, and frankly called those who
fell, fools for their pains. Chance had made soldiers of both,
when they should have been by rights deliberating in a con-
gress round a table covered with a green cloth. Nature had
cast Montefiore in the mould of Kizzio, and Diard in the
crucible whence she turns out diplomatists. Both possessed
the excitable, nervous, half-feminine temperament, which is
always energetic, be it in good or evil; always at the mercy
of the caprices of the moment, and swayed by an impulse
equally unaccountable to commit a crime or to do a generous
deed, to act as a hero or as a craven coward. The fate of such
natures as these depends at every moment of their lives upon
the intensity of the impressions produced upon the nervous
system by vehement and short-lived passions.
Diard was a very fair accountant, but not one of the men
would have trusted him with his purse, or made him his ex-
ecutor, possibly by reason of the suspicion that the soldier
feels of officialdom. The quartermaster's character was not
wanting in dash, nor in a certain boyish enthusiasm, which
is apt to wear off as a man grows older and reasons and makes
forecasts. And for the rest, his humor was variable as the
beauty of a blond can sometimes be. He was a great talker
on every subject. He called himself an artist ; and, in imita-
tion of two celebrated generals, collected works of art, simply,
he asserted, to secure them for posterity. His comrades
would have been hard put to it to say what they really thought
of him. Many of them, who were wont to borrow of him at
need, fancied that he was rich; but he was a gambler, and
a gambler's property cannot be called his own. He played
heavily, so did Montefiore, and all the officers played with
them ; for to man's shame, be it said, plenty of men will meet
on terms of equality round a gaming table with others whom
they do not respect and will not recognize if they meet them
elsewhere. It was Montefiore who had made that bet with
Bianchi ahout the Spaniard's heart.
246 THE MARANAS
Montefiore and Diard were among the last to advance to
the assault of the place, but they were the first to go forward
into the town itself when it was taken. Such things happen
in a melee^ and the two friends were old hands. Mutually
supported, therefore, they plunged boldly into a labyrinth
of narrow dark little streets, each bent upon his own private
affairs; the one in search of Madonnas on canvas, and the
other of living originals.
In some quarter of Taragona, Diajd espied a piece of ec-
clesiastical architecture, saw that it was the porch of a con-
vent, and that the doors liad been forced, and rushed in to
restrain the fury of the soldiery. He was not a moment too
soon. Two Parisians were about to riddle one of Albani's
Virgins with shot, and of these light infantrymen he bought
the picture, undismayed by the moustaches with which the
zealous iconoclasts had adorned it.
Montefiore, left outside, contemplated the front of a cloth
merchant's house opposite the convent. He was looking it up
and down, when a corner of a blind was raised, a girl's head
peered forth, a glance like a lightning flash answered his, and
— a shot was fired at him from the building. Taragona carried
by assault, Taragona roused to fury, firing from every window,
Taragona outraged, disheveled, and half naked, with French
soldiers pouring through her blazing streets, slaying there and
being slain, was surely worth a glance from fearless Spanish
eyes. What was it but a bull-fight on a grander scale ? Monte-
fiore forgot the pillaging soldiers, and for a moment heard
neither the shrieks, nor the rattle of musketry, nor the dull
thunder of the cannon. He, the Italian libertine, tired of Ital-
ian beauties, weary of all women, dreaming of an impossible
woman because the possible had ceased to have any attrac-
tion for him, had never beheld so exquisitely lovely a profile
as that of this Spanish girl. The jaded voluptuary, who had
squandered his fortune on follies innumerable and on the
gratification of a young man's endless desires; the most
abominable monstrosity that our society can produce, could
still tremble. The bright idea of setting fire to the house
THE MARANAS 247
instantly flashed throngli his mind, sugc^ested, douhtless, by
the shot from the patriotic cloth merchant's window; but
he was alone, and the means of doing it were to seek, fighting
was going forward in the market-place, where a few des-
perate men still defended themselves.
He thought better of it. Diard came out of the convent,
Montefiore kept his discovery to himself, and the pair made
several excursions through the town together ; but on the mor
row the Italian was quartered in the cloth merchant's house,
a very appropriate arrangement for a captain on the clothing
establishment.
The first floor of the worthy Spaniard's abode consisted of
a vast dimly-lighted shop; protected in front, as the old
houses in the Eue des Lombards in Paris used to be, by heavy
iron bars. Behind the shop lay the parlor, lighted by windows
that looked out into an inner yard. It was a large room, redo-
lent of the spirit of the Middle Ages, with its old dark pic-
tures, old tapestr}', and antique hrazero. A broad-plumed
hat hung from a nail upon the wall above a matchlock used
in guerilla warfare, and a heavy brigand cloak. The kitchen
lay immediately beyond this parlor, or living-room, where
meals were served and cigars smoked ; and Spaniards, talking
round the smoldering brazier, would nurse hot wrath and
hatred of the French in their hearts.
Silver jugs and valuable plate stood on the antique buffet,
but the room was fitfully and scantily illuminated, so that
the daylight scarcely did more than bring out faint sparkles
from the brightest objects in the room ; all the rest of it, and
even the faces of its occupants, were as dark as a Dutch
interior. Between the shop itself and this apartment, with
its rich subdued tones and old-world aspect, a sufficiently
ill-lit staircase led to a warehouse, where it was possible to ex-
amine the stuffs by the light from some ingeniously^ contrived
windows. The merchant and his wife occupied the floor above
this warehouse, and the apprentice and the maid-servant were
lodged still higher in the attics immediately beneath the roof.
This highest story overhung the street, and was supported b)^
248 THE MARANAS
brackets, which gave a quaint look to the house front. On
the coming of the officer, the merchant and his wife resigned
their rooms to him and went up to these attics, doubtless to
avoid friction.
Montefiore gave himself out to be a Spanish subject by
birth, a victim to the tyranny of ISTapoleon, whr'^ he was
forced to serve against his will. These half-lies produced the
intended effect. He was asked to join the family at mea'i&,
as befitted his birth and rank and the name he bore. He had
his private reasons for wishing to conciliate the merchant's
family. He felt the presence of his Madonna, much as the
Ogre in the fairy tale smelt the tender flesh of little Thumb-
kin and his brothers ; but though he succeeded in winning his
host's confidence, the latter kept the secret of the Madonna
so well that the captain not only saw no sign of the girl's ex-
istence during the first day spent beneath the honest Span-
iard's roof, but heard no sound that could betray her presence
in any part of the dwelling. The old house was, however,
almost entirely built of wood; every noise above or below
could be heard through the walls and ceilings, and Montefiore
hoped during the silence of the early hours of night to guess
the young girl's whereabouts. She was the only daughter
of his host and hostess, he thought, probably they had shut
her up in the attics, whither they themselves had retired
during the military occupation of the town. No indications,
however, betrayed the hiding-place of the treasure. The of-
ficer might stand with his face glued to the small leaded
diamond-shaped panes of the window, looking out into the
darkness of the yard below and the grim walls that rose up
around it, but no light gleamed from any window save from
those of the room overhead, where he could hear the old mer-
chant and his wife talking, coughing, coming, and going.
There was not so much as a shadow of a girl to be seen.
Montefiore was too cunning to risk the future of his pas-
sion by prowling about the house of a night, by knocking
softly at all the floors, or by other hazardous expedients. His
host was a hot patriot, a Spanish father, and an owner of
THE MARANAS 249
bales of cloth ; bound, therefore, in each character to be sus-
picious. Discovery would be utter ruin, so Montefiore re-
solved to bide his time patiently, hoping everything from the
carelessness of human nature; for if rogues, with the bes+ of
reasons for being cautious, will forget themselves in the long
run, so still more will honest men.
Next day he discovered a kind of hammock slung in the
kitchen — evidently the servant slept there. The apprentice,
it seemed, spent the night on the coimter in the shop.
At supper-time, on the second day, Montefiore cursed
Napoleon till he saw his host's sombre face relax somewhat.
The man was a typical swarthy Spaniard, with a head such
as used to be carved on the head of a rebec. A smile of
gleeful hatred lurked among the wrinkles about his wife's
mouth. The lamplight and fitful gleams from the brazier
filled the stately room with capricious answering reflections.
The hostess was just offering a cigarette to their semi-com-
patriot, when Montefiore heard the rustle of a dress, and a
chair was overturned behind the tapestr}' hangings.
"There !" cried the merchant's wife, turning pale, "may
all the saints send that no misfortune has befallen us !"
"So you have some one in there, have you?" asked the
Italian, who betrayed no sign of emotion.
The merchant let fall some injurious remarks as to girls.
His wife, in alarm, opened a secret door, and brought in the
Italian's Madonna, half dead with fear. The delighted lover
scarcely seemed to notice the girl; but, lest he might overdo
the affectation of indifference, he glanced at her, and turn-
ing to his host, asked in his mother tongue :
"Is she your daughter, seiior?"
Perez de Lagounia (for that was the merchant's name) had
had extensive business connections in Genoa, Florence, and
Leghorn; he knew Italian, and replied in that language.
"No. If she had been my own daughter, I should have taken
fewer precautions, but the child was put into our charge, and
I would die sooner than allow the slightest harm to befal:
her. But what sense can you expect of a girl of eighteen ?"
250 THE MARANAS
"She is very beautiful," Mantefiore said carelessly. He
did not look at her again.
"The mother is sufficiently famonis for her beauty," an-
swered the merchant. And they continued to smoke and to
watch each other,
Montefiore had imposed upon himself the hard task of
avoiding the least look that might compromise his attitude
of indifference; but as Perez turned his head aside to spit,
the Italian stole a glance at the girl, and again those spark-
ling eyes met his. In that one glance, with the experienced
vision that gives to a voluptuar}^ or a sculptor the power of
discerning the outlines of the form beneath the draperies,
he beheld a masterpiece created to know all the happiness of
love. He saw a delicately fair face, which the sun of Spain
had slightly tinged with a warm brown, that added to a
seraphically calm expression a flush of pride, a suffused glow
beneath the translucent fairness, due, perhaps, to the pure
Moorish blood that brought animation and color into it. Her
hair, knotted on the crown of her head, fell in thick curls
about transparent ears like a child's, surrounding them with
dark shadows that made a framework for the white throat
with its faint blue veins, in strong contrast with the fiery eyes
and the red finely-curved mouth. The basquina of her country
displayed the curving outlines of a figure as pliant as a branch
of willow. This was no Madonna of Italian painters, but the
Madonna of Spanish art, the Virgin of Murillo, the only
artist daring enough to depict the rapture of the Conception,
a delirious flight of the fervid imagination of the boldest and
most sensuous of painters. Three qualities were blended in
this young girl; any one of them would have sufficed to ex-
alt a wo-man into a divinity — the purity of the pearl in the
depths of the sea, the sublime exaltation of a Saint Theresa,
and a voluptuous charm of which she was herself unconscit)us.
Her presence had the power of a talisman. Everything in the
ancient room seemed to have grown young to Montefiore's
eyes since she entered it. But if the apparition was exquisite,
the stay was brief; she was taken back to her mysterious
THE MARANAS 251
abiding-place, and thither, shortly afterwards, the servant
took a light and her supper, without any attempt at conceal-
ment.
"You do very wisely to keep her out of sight," said Monte-
fiore in Italian. ""I will keep your secret. The deuce ! some of
our generals would be quite capable of carrying her off by
force."
Montefiore, in his intoxication, went so far as to think of
marrying the fair unknown. With this idea in his mind, he
put some questions to his host. Perez willingly told him the
strange chance that had given him Ms ward ; indeed, the pru-
dent Spaniard, knowing Montefiore's rank and name, of
which he had heard in Italy, was anxious to confide the story
to his guest, to show how strong were the barriers raised be-
tween the young girl and seduction. Although in the good
man's talk there was a certain homely eloquence and force in
keeping with his simple manner of life, and with that carbine
shot at Montefiore from the window, his story will be better
given in an abbreviated form.
When the French Eepublic revolutionized the manners of
the inhabitants of the countries which served as the theatre
of its wars, a jUle-de-joie, driven from Venice after the fall of
Venice, came to Taragona. Her life had been a tissue of ro-
mantic adventure and strange vicissitudes. On no woman
belonging to her class had gold been showered so often; so
often the caprice of some great lord, struck with her extraor-
dinary beauty, had heaped jewels upon her, and all the lux-
uries of wealth, for a time. For her this meant flowers and
carriages, pages and tire-women, palaces and pictures, insolent
pride, journeys like a progress of Catherine II., the life of an
absolute queen, in fact, whose caprices were law, and whose
whims were more than obeyed ; and then — suddenly the gold
would utterly vanish — how, neither she nor any one else, man
of science^ physicist, or chemist could tell, and she has returned
again to the streets and to poverty, with nothing in the world
save her all-powerful beauty. Yet through it all she lived with-
out taking any thought for the past, the present, or the future.
25'i THE MARANAS
Thrown upon the world, and maintained in her extremity by
some poor officer, a gambler, adored for his moustache, she
would attach herself to him like a dog ta his master, and
console him for the hardships of a soldier's life, in all of
inch she shared, sleeping as lightly under the roof of a garret
s beneath the richest of silk canopies. Whether she was in
.Spain or Itaty, she punctually adhered to religious observ-
ances. More than once she had bidden love "return to-mor-
row, to-day I am God's."
But this clay in which gold and spices were mingled, this
utter recklessness, these storms of passion, the religious faith
lying in the heart like a diamond in the mud, the life begun
and ended in the hospital, the continual game of hazard
played with the soul and body as its stake; this Alchemy of
Life, in short, with vice fanning the ilame beneath the cruci-
ble in which great careers and fair inheritances and fortune
and the honor of illustrious names were melted away, — all
these were the products of a peculiar genius, faithfully trans-
mitted from mother to daughter from the times of the Middle
Ages. The woman was called La Marana. In her family,
whose descent since the thirteenth century was reckoned ex-
clusively on the spindle side — the idea, person, authority, nay,
the very name of a father, had been absolutely unknown. The
name of Marana was for her what the dignity of Stuart was to
the illustrious race of kings of Scotland, a title of honor sub-
stituted for the patronymic, when the office became hereditary
in their family.
In former times, when France, Spain, and Italy possessed
common interests, which at times bound them closely to-
gether, and at least as frequently embroiled all three in wars,
the word Marana, in its widest acceptation, meant a courtesan.
In those ages these women had a definite status of which no
mcmor}'' now exists. In France, Ninon de Lenelos and Marion
Delorme alone played such a part as the Imperias, the Cata-
linas, and Maranas who in the preceding centuries exercised
the powers of the cassock, the robe, and the sword. There is
a church somewhere in Rome built by an Imperia in a fit of
THE MARANAS 253
penitence, as Rhodope of old once built a pyramid in Egypt.
The epithet by which this family of outcasts once was
branded became at last their name in earnest, and even some-
thing like a patent of nobility for vice, by establishing its
antiquity beyond cavil.
But for the La Marana of the nineteenth century there
came a day, whether it was a day of splendor or of misery,
no man knows, for the problem is a secret between her soul
and God; but it was surely in an hour of melancholy, when
religion made its voice heard, that with her head in the skies
she became conscious of the slough in which her feet were set.
Then she cursed the blood in her veins; she cursed herself;
she trembled to think that she should bear a daughter; and
vowed, as these women vow, with the honor and resolution
of the convict, that is to say, with the strongest resolution,
the most scrupulous honor to be found under the sun ; making
her vow, therefore, before an altar, and consecrating it there-
by, that her daughter should lead a virtuous and holy life,
that of this long race of lost and sinful women there should
co2ne at last one angel who should appear for them in heaven.
That vow made, the blood of the Marana regained its sway,
and again the courtesan plunged into her life of adventure,
with one more thought in her heart. At length she loved, with
the violent love of the prostitute, as Henrietta Wilson loved
Lord Ponsonby, as Mademoiselle Dupuis loved Bolingbroke, as
the Marchesa di Pescara loved her husband ; nay, she did not
love, she adored a fair-haired half-feminine creature, investing
him with all the virtues that she had not, and taking all his
vices upon herself. Of this mad union with a weakling, a union
blessed neither of God nor man, only to be excused by the
happiness it brings, but never absolved by happiness ; a union
for which the most brazen front must one day blush, a daugh-
ter was bom, a daughter to be saved, a daughter for whom
La Marana desired a stainless life, and, above all things, the
instincts of womanliness which she herself had not. Thence-
forward, in poverty or prosperity. La Marana bore within
her heart a pure affection, the fairest of all human sentiments.
•J54 THE MARANAS
because it is the least selfish. Love has its own tinge of
egoism, but there is no trace of it in a mother's affection.
And La Marana's motherhood meant more for her than
to other women. It was perhaps her hope of salvation, a
planlv to cling to in the shipwreck of her eternity. Was she
not accomplishing part of her sacred task on earth by sending
one more angel to heaven ? Was not this a better thing than a
tardy repentance? Was there any other way now left to her
of sending up prayers from a pure heart to God?
When her daughter was given to her, hei' Maria-Juana-
Pepita (the little one should have had the whole calendar
for patron saints if the mother could have had her will), then
La Marana set before herself so high an ideal of the dignity
of motherhood that she sought a truce from her life of sin.
She would live virtuously and alone. There should be no
more midnight revels nor wanton days. All her fortunes, all
her happiness lay in the child's fragile cradle. The sound of
the little voice made an oasis for her amid the burning sands
of her life. How should this love be compared with any
other ? Were not all human affections blended in it with every
hope of heaven ?
La Marana determined that no stain should rest upon her
daughters life, save that of the original sin of her birth,
which she strove to cleanse by a baptism in all social virtues ;
so she asked of the child's young father a sufficient fortune,
and the name he bore. The child was no longer Juana Ma-
rana, but Juana dei Mancini.
At last, after seven years of joy and kisses, of rapture and
bliss, the poor Marana must part with her darling, lest she
also should be branded with her hereditary shame. The
mother had force of soul sufficient to give up her child for
her child's sake ; and sought out, not without dreadful pangs,
another mother for her, a family whose manners she might
learn, where good examples would be set before her. A
mother's abdication is an act either atrocious or sublime; in
this case, was it not sublime?
At Taragona, therefore, a lucky accident brought the La-
THE MARANAS 255
gounias in her way, and in a manner that brought out all the
honorable integrity of the Spaniard and the nobleness of his
wife. For these two, La Marana appeared like an angel that
unlocks the doors of a prison. The merchant's fortune and
honor were in peril at the moment, and he needed prompt and
secret help ; La Marana handed over to him the sura of money
intended for Juana's dowry, asking neither for gratitude nor
for interest. According to her peculiar notions of jurispru-
dence, a contract was a matter of the heart, a stiletto the rem-
edy in the hands of the weak, and God the Supreme Court
of Appeal.
She told Doiia Lagounia the story of her miserable situa-
tion, and confided her child and her child's fortune to the
honor of old Spain, and the untarnished integrity that per-
vaded the old house. Doha Lagounia had no children of her
own, and was delighted to have an adopted daughter to bring
up. The courtesan took leave of her darling, feeling that
the child's future was secure, and that she had found a mother
for Juana, a mother who would train her up to be a Maucini,
and not a Marana.
Poor Marana, poor bereaved mother, she went away from
the merchant's quiet and humble home, the abode of domestic
and family virtue ; and felt comforted in her grief as she pic-
tured Juana growing up in that atmosphere of religion, piety,
and honor, a maiden, a wife, and a mother, a happy mother,
not for a few brief years, but all through a long lifetime.
The tears that fell upon the threshold were tears that angels
bear to heaven. Since that day of mourning and of hope La
Marana had thrice returned to see her daughter, an irresist-
ible presentiment each time bringing her back. The first
time Juana had fallen dangerously ill.
"I knew it !" she said to Perez, as she entered his house.
Far away, and as she slept, she had dreamed that Juana
was dying.
She watched over her daughter and tended her, and then
one morning, when the danger was over, she kissed the sleep-
ing girl's forehead, and went v;ithout revealing herself. The
mother within her bade the courtesan depart.
256 THE MARANAS
A second time La Marana came;, — this time to the church
where Juana dei Mancini made her first Communion. The
exiled mother, very plainly dressed, stood in the shadow be-
hind a pillar, and saw her past self in her daughter, saw a
divinely fair face like an angel's, pure as the newly fallen
snow on the heights of the hills. Even in La Marana's love
for her child there was a trace of the courtesan ; a feeling of
jealousy stronger than all love that she had known awoke
in her heart, and she left the church; she could no longer
control a wild desire to stab Doila Lagounia, who stood there
Tvath that look of happiness upon her face, too really a mother
to her child.
The last meeting between the two had taken place at Milan,
whither the merchant and his wife had gone. La Marana,
sweeping along the Corso in almost queenly state, flashed
like lightning upon her daughters sight, and was not recog-
nized. Her anguish was terrible. This Marana on whom
kisses were showered must hunger for one kiss in vain, one
for which she would have given all the others, the girlish glad
caress a daughter gives her mother, her honored mother, her
mother in whom all womanly virtues shine. Juana as long
as she lived was dead for her.
'^hat is it, love ?" asked the Due de Lina, and at the words
a thought revived the courtesan's failing heart, a thought that
gave her delicious happiness — Juana was safe henceforward !
She might perhaps be one of the humblest of women, but not
a shameless courtesan to whom any man might say, "What is
it, love?"
Indeed, the merchant and his wife had done their duty
with scrupulous fidelity. Juana's fortune in their hands had
been doubled. Perez de Lagounia had become the richest
merchant in the province, and in his feeling towards the
young girl there was a trace of superstition. Her coming
had saved the old house from ruin and dishonor, and had not
the presence of this angel brought unlooked-for prosperity?
TTis wife, a soul of gold, a refined and gentle nature, had
brought up her charge devoutly; the girl was as pure as she
THE MARANAS 257
was beautiful. Juana was equally fitted to be the wife of a
rich merchant or of a noble; she had every qualification for
a brilliant destiny. But for the war that had broken out,
Perez, who dreamed of living in Madrid, would ere now have
given her in marriage to some Spanish grandee.
"I do not know where La Marana is at this moment," he
concluded; "but wherever she may be, if she hears that our
province ife occupied by your armies, and that Taragona has
been besieged, she is sure to be on her way liither to watch
over her daughter."
This story wrought a change in the captain's intentions;
he no longer thought of making a Marchesa di Montefiore
of Juana dei Maucini. He recognized the Marana blood in
that swift glance the girl had exchanged with him from her
shelter behind the blind, in the stratagem by which she had
satisfied her curiosity, in that last look she had given him;
and the libertine meant to marry a virtuous wife.
This would be a dangerous escapade, no doubt, but the
perils were of the kind that never sinks the courage of the
most pusillanimous, for love and its pleasures would reward
them. There were obstacles everj'where: there was the ap-
prentice who slept on the counter, and the servant-maid on
the makeshift couch in the kitchen; Perez and his wife, who
kept a dragon's watch by day, were old, and doubtless slept
lightly; every sound echoed through the house, everything
seemed to put the adventure beyond the range of possibilities.
But as a set-off against these things, Montefiore had an ally —
the blood of the Marana, which throbbed feverishly in the
heart of the lovely Italian girl brought up as a Spaniard, the
maiden athirst for love. Passion, the girl's nature, and
Montefiore was a combination that might defy the whole
world.
Prompted quite as strongly by the instincts of a chartered
libertine as by the vague inexplicable hopes to which we give
the name of presentiments, a word that describes them with
such startling aptness — Montefiore took up his stand at his
window, and spent the early hours of the night there, looking
258 THE MARANAS
down in the presumed direction of the secret hiding-place,
where the old couple had enshrined their darling, the joy of
their old age.
The warehouse on the entresol (to make use t)f a French
word that will perhaps make the disposition of the house
clearer to the reader) separated the two young people, so it
was idle for the captain to try to convey a message hy means
of tapping upon the floor, a shift for speech that all lovers
can devise under such circumstances. Chance, however, came
to his assistance, or was it the young girl herself? Just as
he took his stand at the window he saw a circle of light that
fell upon the grim opposite wall of the yard, and in the midst
of it a dark silhouette, the form of Juana. Everything that
she did was shadowed there ; from her attitude and the move-
ment of her arms, she seemed to be arranging her hair for the
night.
"Is she alone?" Montefiore asked himself. "If I weight
a letter with a few coins, will it be safe to dangle it by a
thread against the round window that no doubt lights her
cell?"
He wrote a note forthwith, a note characteristic of the of-
ficer, of the soldier sent for reasons of family expediency to
the isle of Elba, of the former dilettante Marquis, fallen from
his high estate, and become a captain on the clothing estab-
lishment. He wrapped some coins in the note, devised a
string out of various odds and ends, tied up the packet and
let it down, without a sound, into the very centre of that
round brightness.
"If her mother or the servant is with her," Montefiore
thought, "I shall see the shadows on the wall ; and if she is not
alone, I will draw up the cord at once."
But when, after pains innumerable, which can readily be
imagined, the weighted packet tapped at the glass, only one
shadow appeared, and it was the slender figure of Juana that
flitted across the wall. Noiselessly the young girl opened the
circular window, saw the packet, took it in, and stood for a
while reading it.
THE MARANAS 250
Montefiore Had written in his own name and entreated an
interview. He offered, in the style of old romances, his heart
and hand to Juana dei Mancini — a base and commonplace
stratagem that nearly always succeeds ! At Juana's age, is
not nobility of soul an added danger? A poet of our own
days has gracefully said that "only in her strength does wo-
man yield." Let a lover, when he is most beloved, feign
doubts of the love that he inspires, and in her pride and her
trust in him, a girl would invent sacrifices for his sake, know-
ing neither the world nor man's nature well enough to retain
her self-command when passion stirs within her, and to over-
whelm with her scorn the lover who can accept a whole life
offered to him to turn away a groundless reproach.
In our sublimely constituted society a young girl is placed
in a painful dilemma between the forecasts of prudent virtue
on the one hand, and the consequences of error upon the
other. If she resists, it not seldom happens that she loses a
lover and the first love, that is the most attractive of all;
and if she is imprudent, she loses a marriage. Cast an eye
over the vicissitudes of social life in Paris, and it is impos-
sible to doubt the necessity of a religion that shall ensure
that there are no more young girls seduced daily. And Paris
is situated in the forty-eighth degree of latitude, while Tar-
agona lies below the forty-first. The old question of climate
is still useful to the novelist seeking an excuse for the sud-
denness of his catastrophe, and is made to explain the im-
prudence or the dilatoriness of a pair of lovers.
Montefiore's eyes were fixed meanwhile on the charming
silhouette in the midst of the bright circle. Neither he nor
Juana could see each other; an unlucky archway above her
casement, with perverse malignity, cut off all chances of com-
munication by signs, such as two lovers can contrive by lean-
ing out of their windows. So the captain concentrated his
whole mind and attention upon the round patch on the wall.
Perhaps all unwittingly the girl's movements might betray
her thoughts. Here again he was foiled. Juana's strange
proceedings gave Montefiore no room for the faintest hope:
she was amusing herself by cutting up the billei
260 THE MARANAS
It often happens that virtue and discretion, in distrust,
adopt shifts familiar to the jealous Bartholos of comedy.
Juana, having neither paper, pen, nor ink, was scratching an
answer with the point of a pair of scissors. In another mo-
ment she tied the scrap of paper to the string, the officer
drew it in, opened it, held it up against the lamp, and read
the perforated characters — "Come," it said.
" 'Come ?' " said he to himself. "Poison, and carbine, and
Perez's dagger ! And how about the apprentice hardly asleep
on the counter by this time, and the servant in her hammock,
and the house booming like a bass viol with every sound?
why, I can hear old Perez snoring away upstairs ! 'Come !'
. . . Then, has she nothing to lose ?"
Acute reflection ! Libertines alone can reason thus logic-
ally, and punish a woman for her devotion. The imagination
of man has created Satan and Lovelace, but a maiden is an
angelic being to whom he can lend nothing but his vices; so
lofty, so fair is she, that he cannot set her liigher nor add to
her beauty ; he has but the fatal power of blighting this crea-
tion by dragging it down to his miry level.
Montefiore waited till the drowsiest hour of the night, then
in spite of his sober second thoughts, he crept downstairs.
He had taken off his shoes, and carried his pistols with him,
and now he groped his way step by step, stopping to listen
in the silence; trying each separate stair, straining his eyes
till he almost saw in the darkness, and ready to turn back
at any moment if the least thing befell him. He wore his
handsomest uniform; he had perfumed his dark hair, and
taken pains with the toilette that set off his natural good
looks. On occasions like these, most men are as much a
woman as any woman.
Montefiore managed to reach the door of the girl's secret
hiding-place without difficulty. It was a little cabinet con-
trived in a corner which projected into another dwelling, a
not unusual freak of the builder where ground-rents are bigh,
and houses in consequence packed very tightly together. Here
J nana lived alone, day and night, out of sight of all eyes
THE MARANAS 261
Hitherto she had slept near her adopted mother; but when
Perez and his wife removed to the top of the house, the ar-
rangements of the attics did not permit of their taking their
ward thither also. So Doiia Lagounia had left the girl to
the guardianship of the lock of the secret door, to the protec-
tion of religious ideas, but so much the more powerful because
they had become superstitions; and with the further safe-
guards of a natural pride, and the shrinking delicacy of the
sensitive plant, which made Juana an exception among her
sex, for to the most pathetic innocence Juana Mancini united
no less the most passionate aspirations. It had needed a re-
tared life and devout training to quiet and to cool the hot
blood of the Maranas that glowed in her veins, the impulses
that her adopted mother called temptations of the Evil One.
A faint gleam of light beneath the door in the panels dis-
covered its whereabouts for Montefiore. He tapped softly
with the tips of his finger-nails, and Juana let him in. Quiv-
ering from head to foot with excitement, he met the young
girl's look of naive curiosity, and read the most complete ig-
norance of her peril, and a sort of childlike admiration in her
eyes. He stood, awed for a moment by the picture of the
sanctuary before him.
The walls were hung with gray tapestry, covered with
violet flowers. A small ebony chest, an antique mirror, a
huge old-fashioned armchair, also made of ebony, and covered
with tapestry; another chair beside the spindle-legged table,
a pretty carpet on the floor — that was all. But there were
flowers on the table beside some embroidery work, and at the
other end of the room stood the little narrow bed on which
Juana dreamed ; three pictures hung on the wall above it, and
at the head stood a crucifix above a little holy water stoup,
and a prayer framed and illuminated in gold. The room
was full of the faint perfume of the flowers, of the soft light
of the tapers; it all seemed so quiet, pure, and sacred. The
subtle charm of Juana's dreamy fancies, nay, of Juana her-
self, seemed to pervade everything; her soul was revealed by
her surroundings ; the pearl lay there in its shell.
262 THE MARANAS
Juana, clad in white, with no ornament save her own loveli-
ness, letting fall her rosary to call on the name of Love, would
have inspired even Montefiore with reverence if it had not
been for the night about them and the silence, if Juana had
welcomed love less eager!}', if the little white bed had not dis-
played the turned-down coverlet — the pillow, confidante of
innumerable vague longings. Montefiore stood there for long,
intoxicated by joy hitherto unknown; such joy as Satan, it
may be, would know at a glimpse of paradise if the cloud-veil
that envelops heaven was rent away for a moment.
"I loved you the first moment that I saw you," he said,
speaking pure Tuscan in the tones of his musical Italian
voice. "In you my soul and my life are set; if you so will
it, they shall be yours for ever."
To Juana listening, the air she breathed seemed to vibrate
with the words grown magical upon her lover's tongue.
"Poor little girl ! how have you breathed the atmosphere
of this gloomy place so long, and lived ? You, meant to reign
like a queen in the world, to dwell in the palace of a prince,
to pass from festival to festival, to feel in your own heart the
joys that 3'^ou create, to see the world at your feet, to make the
fairest splendors pale before the glorious beauty that shall
never be rivaled, — you have lived here in seclusion with this
old tradesman and his wife !"
There was a purpose in his exclamation ; he wanted to find
out whether or no Juana had ever had a lover.
"Yes," she answered. "But who can have told you my in-
most thoughts? For these twelve months past I have been
weary to death of it. Yes, I would die rather than stay any
longer in this house. Do you see this embroidery? I have
set countless dreadful thoughts into every stitch of it. How
often I have longed to run away and fling myself into the
sea ! Do you ask why ? I have forgotten already. . . .
Childish troubles, but very keenly felt in spite of their child-
ishness. . . . Often at night when I kissed my mother,
I have given her such a kiss as one gives for a last farewell,
saying in my heart, 'I will kill myself to-morrow.' After all.
THE MARANAS 263
I did not die. Suicides go to hell, and I was so much afraid
of that, that I made up my mind to endure my life, to get
up and go to bed, and do the same things hour after hour
of every day. My life was not irksome, it was painful. — And
yet, my father and mother worship me. Oh ! I am wicked !
indeed, I tell my confessor so."
"Then have you always lived here without amusements,
without pleasures?"
"Oh! I have not always felt like this. Until I was fifteen
years old, I enjoyed seeing the festivals of the Church; I
loved the singing and the music. I was so happy, because I
felt that, like the angels, I was sinless, so glad that I might
take the sacrament every week, in short, I loved God then.
But in these three years I have changed utterly, day by day.
It began when I wanted flowers here in the house, and they
gave me very beautiful ones; then I wanted . . . But
now I want nothing any longer," she added, after a pause,
and she smiled at Montefiore.
"Did you not tell me just now in your letter that you would
love me for ever?"
"Yes, my Juana," murmured Montefiore. He put his arm
round the waist of this adorable girl, and pressed her closely
to his heart. "Yes. But let me speak to you as you pray
to God. Are you not fairer than Our Lady in heaven ? Hear
me," and he set a kiss in her hair, "for me that forehead of
yours is the fairest altar on earth; I swear to worship you,
my idol, to pour out all the wealth of the world upon you.
My carriages are yours, my palace in Milan is yours, yours
all the jewels and the diamonds, the heirlooms of my anciexit
house ; new ornaments and dresses every day, and all the
countless pleasures and delights of the world."
"Yes," she said, "I should like it all very much ; but in my
soul I feel that I should love my dear husband more than
all things else in the world."
Mio caro sposo! Italian was Juana's native speech, and
it is impossible to put into two words of another language
the wonderful tenderness, the winning grace with which that
264 THE MARANAS
brief delicious phrase is invested b}^ the a-ccents of an Italian
tongue. "I shall find," she said, and the purity of a seraph
shone in her eyes, "I shall find my beloved religion again in
him. His and God's, God's and his ! . . . But you are
he, are you not ?" she cried after a pause. "Surely, surely you
are he ! Ah ! come and see the picture that my father brought
me from Italy."
She took up a candle, beckoned to Montefiore, and showed
him a picture that hung at the foot of the bed — Saint Michael
trampling Satan underfoot.
"Look !" she cried, "has he not your eyes ? That made
me think, as soon as I saw you in the street, that in the meet-
ing I saw the finger of heaven. So often I have lain awake in
the morning before my mother came to call me to prayer,
thinking about that picture, looking at the angel, until at last
I came to think that he was my husband. Mon Dieu! I am
talking as I think to myself. What wild nonsense it must
seem to you ! but if you only knew how a poor recluse longs
to pour out the thoughts that oppress her ! I used to talk
to these flowers and the woven garlands on the tapestry when
I was alone; they understood me better, I think, than my
father and mother — always so serious "
"Juana," said Montefiore, and as he took her hands and
kissed them, passion shone in his eyes and overflowed in his
gestures and in the sound of his voice, "talk to me as if I
were your husband, talk to me as you talk to yourself. I have
suffered all that you have suffered. Few words will be needed,
when we talk together, to bring back the whole past of either
life before we met; but there are not words enough in lan-
guage to tell of the bliss that lies before us. Lay 3'our hand
on my heart. Do you feel how it beats? Let us vow, before
God, who sees and hears us, to be faithful to each other all
our lives. Stay, take this ring. — Give me yours."
"Give away my ring?" she cried, startled.
"Why not?" asked Montefiore, dismayed by so much sim-
plicity.
"Why, it came to me from our Holy Father the Pope.
THE MARANAS 265
When I was a little girl a beautiful lady set it on my finger ;
she took care of me, and brought me here, and she told me to
Keep it always."
"Then you do not love me, Juana ?"
"Ah! here it is," she cried. "Are you not more myself
than I ?"
She held out the ring, trembling as she did so, keeping her
fingers tightly clasped upon it as she looked at Montefiore
with clear, questioning eyes. That ring meant her whole
self : she gave it to him.
"Oh! my Juana!" said Montefiore as he held her closely
in his arms, "only a monster could be false to you. ... I
will love you for ever . . ."
Juana grew dreamy. Montefiore, thinking within himself
that, in his first interview, he must not run the slightest
risk of startling a girl so innocent, whose imprudence sprang
rather from virtue than from desire, was fain to content
himself with thinking of the future, of her beauty now that
he had known its power, and of the innocent marriage of the
ring, that most sublime of betrothals, the simplest and most
binding of all ceremonies, the betrothal of the heart.
For the rest of the night, and all day long on the morrow,
Juana's imagination would surely become the accomplice of
his desires. So he put constraint upon himself, and tried to
be as respectful as he was tender. With these thoughts pres-
ent in his mind, prompted by his passion, and yet more by
the desires that Juana inspired in him, his words were in-
sinuating and fervent. He led the innocent child to plan
out the new life before them, painted the world for her in
the most glowing colors, dwelt on the household details that
possess such a delightful interest for young girls, and made
with her the compacts over which lovers dispute, the agree-
ments that give rights and reality to love. Then, when they
had decided the hour for their nightly tryst, he went, leaving
a happy but a changed Juana. The simple and innocent
Jua.na no longer existed, already there was more passion than
a girl should reveaJ in the last glance that she gave him.
266 THE MARANAS
in the charming way that she held up her forehead for the
touch of her lover's lips. It was all the result of solitude and
irksome tasks upon this nature ; if she was to be prudent and
virtuous, the knowledge of the world should either have come
to her gradually, or have been liidden from her for ever.
"How slowly the day will go to-morrow!" she said, as an-
other kiss, still respectfully given, was pressed upon her fore-
head.
"But you will sit in the dining-room, will you not? and
raise your voice a little when you talk, so that I may heax
you, and the sound may fill my heart."
Montefiore, beginning to understand the life that Juana
led, was but the better pleased that he had managed to re-
strain his desires that he might the better secure his end.
He returned to his room without mishap.
Ten days went by, and nothing occurred to disturb the
peace and quiet of the house. Montefiore, with the persuasive
manners of an Italian, had gained the good graces of old
Perez and Dona Lagounia; indeed, he was popular with the
whole household — with the apprentice and the maid-servant;
but in spite of the confidence that he had succeeded in in-
spiring in them, he never attempted to take advantage of it
to ask to see Juana, or to open the door of that little sealed
paradise. The Italian girl, in her longing to see her lover,
had often besought him to do this, but from motives of pru-
dence he had always refused. On the contrary, he had used
the character he had gained and all his skill to lull the sus-
picions of the old couple; he had accustomed them to his
habit of never rising till mid-day, soldier as he was. The
captain gave cut that his health was bad. So the two lovers
only lived at night when all the household was asleep.
If Montefiore had not been a libertine to whom a long ex-
perience of pleasure had given presence of mind under all
conditions, they would have been lost half a score of times
in those ten days. A young lover, with the single-hearted-
ness of first love, would have been tempted in his rapture
into imprudences that were veiy hard to resist; but the Ital-
THE MARANAS 267
ian was proof even against Jnana, against her pouting lips,
her wild spirits, against a Juana who wound the long plaits
of her hair about his throat to keep him by her side. The
keenest observer would have been sorely puzzled to detect
those midnight meetings. It may well be believed that the
Italian, sure of his ultimate success, enjoyed prolonging the
ineffable pleasure of this intrigue in which he made progress
step by step, in fanning the flame that gradually waxed
hotter, till everything must yield to it at last.
On the eleventh day, as they sat at dinner, he deemed it
expedient to confide to Perez (under the seal of secrecy) the
history of the disgrace into which he had fallen among his
family. It was a mesalliance, he said.
There was something revolting in this lie, told as a con-
fidence, while that midnight drama was in progress beneath
the old man's roof. Montefiore, an experienced actor, was
leading up to a catastrophe planned by himself; and, like
an artist who loves his art, he enjoyed the thought of it. He
meant very shortly to take leave of the house and of his lady-
love without regret. And when Juana, risking her life it
might be to ask the question, should inquire of Perez what
had become of her guest, Perez would tell her, all unwit-
tingly, that '^the Marchese di Montefiore had been reconciled
with his family ; they have consented to receive his wife, and
he has taken her to them."
And Juana? . . . The Italian never inquired of him-
self what would become of her ; he had had ample opportunity
of knowing her nobleness, her innocence, and her goodness,
and felt sure that Juana would keep silence.
He obtained a message to carry for some general or other.
Three days afterwards, on the night before he must start,
Montefiore went straight to Juana's room instead of going
first to his own. The same instinct that bids the tiger leave
no morsel of his prey, prompted the Italian to lengthen the
night of farewells. Juana, the true daughter of two southern
lands, with the passion of Spain and of Italy in her heart,
was enraptured by the boldness that brought her lover to
268 THE MARANAS
her and revealed the ardor of his love. To know the delicious
torment of an illicit passion under the sanction of marriage,
to conceal her husband behind the bed-curtains, half deceiv-
ing the adopted father and mother, to whom she could say
in case of discovery, "I am the Marchesa di Montefiore," was
not this a festival for the young and romantic girl who, for
three years past, had dreamed of lovc' — love always beset with
perils? The curtains of the door fell, drawing about their
madness and their happiness a veil which it is useless to raise.
It was nearly nine o'clock, the merchant and his wife were
reading the evening prayer, when suddenly the sound of a
carriage, drawn by several horses, came from the narrow
street without. Some one knocked hastily and loudly at
the door of the shop. The servant ran to open it, and in a
moment a woman sprang into the quaint old room — a woman
magnificently dressed, though her traveling carriage was be-
splashed by the luire of many roads, for she had crossed
Italy and France and Spain. It was La Marana! La
Marana, in spite of her thirty-six years and her riotous life,
in the full pride of her helta folgorante, to record the superb
epithet invented for her in Milan by her enraptured adorers,
La Marana, the openly avowed mistress of a King, had left
Naples and its festivals and sunny skies, at the very height
and summit of her strange career — had left gold and madri-
gals and silk and perfumes, and her royal lover, when she
learned from him what was passing in Spain, and how that
Taragona was besieged.
"Taragona !" she cried, "and before the city is taken ! 1
must be in Taragona in tpn days !" And without another
thought for courts or crowned heads, she had reached Tar-
agona, provided with a passport that gave her something like
the powers of an empress, and with gold that enabled her
to cross the French empire with the speed and splendor of
a rocket. There is no such thing as distance for a mother;
she who is a mother, indeed, sees her child, and knows by
instinct how he fares though they are as far as the poles
apart.
THE MARANAS 269
"My daughter? my daughter?" cried La Marana.
At that cry, at this swift invasion of their house, and
apparition of a queen traveling incognito, Perez and his wife
let the prayer-book fall; that voice rang in their ears like a
thunder-clap, and La Marana's eyes flashed lightnings.
"She is in there," the merchant answered quietly, after a
brief pause, during which they recovered from the shock of
surprise caused by La Marana's sudden appearance, and by
her look and tone. "She is in there," he said again, indicat-
ing the little hiding-place.
"Yes, but has she not been ill? Is she quite "
"Perfectly well," said Doiia Lagounia.
"Oh, God !" cried La Marana, "plunge me now in hell for
all eternity, if it be Thy pleasure," and she sank down utterly
exhausted into a chair.
The flush that anxiety had brought to her face faded sud-
denly; her cheeks grew white; she who had borne up bravely
under the strain, had no strength left when it was over. The
joy was too intolerable, a joy more intense than her previous
distress, for she was still vibrating with dread, when bliss
keen as anguish came upon her.
■^T^ut how have you done?" she asked. "Taragona was
taken by assault."
"Yes," answered Perez. "But when you saw that I was
alive, how could you ask such a question ? How should any
one reach Juana but over my dead body ?"
The courtesan grasped Perez's horny hand on receiving this
answer; tears gathered in her eyes and fell upon his fingers
«s she kissed them — the costliest of all things under the sun
for her, who never wept.
"Brave Perez !" she said at last ; "hut surely there are sol-
diers billeted upon you, are there not ?"
"Only one," answered the Spaniard. 'Tjuckily, we have
one of the most honorable of men, an Italian by nationality,
a Spaniard by birth, a hater of Bonaparte, a married man,
a steady character. He rises late, and goes to bed early.
He is in bad health, too, just now."
270 THE MARANAS
"An Italian! What is his name?"
"Captain Montefiore, he "
"Why, lie is not the Marchese di Montefiore, is he ?"
"Yes, seiiora, the very same."
"Has he seen Juana?"
"No," said Dona Lagounia.
"You are mistaken, wife," said Perez. "The Marquis must
have seen Juana once, only for a moment, it is true, but I
think he must have seen her that day when she came in at
supper-time."
"All ! — I should like to see my daughter."
"Nothing is easier," said Perez. "She is asleep. Though
if she has left the key in the lock, we shall have to wake her."
As the merchant rose to take down the duplicate key from
its place, he happened to glance up through the tall window.
The light from the large round pane-opening of Juana's cell
fell upon the dark wall on the opposite side of the yard, trac-
'ng a gleaming circle there, and in the midst of the lighted
space he saw two shadowy figures such as no sculptor till the
time of the gifted Canova could have dreamed of. The Span-
iard turned to the room again.
"I do not know," he said to La Marana, "where we have
put the key "
"You look very pale !" she exclaimed.
"I will soon tell you why," he answered, as he sprang to-
wards his dagger, caught it up, and heat violently on the door
in the paneling. "Open the door !" he shouted. "Juana !
open the door!"
There was an appalling despair in his tones that struck
terror into the two women who heard him.
Juana did not open, because there was some delay in hiding
Montefiore. She knew nothing of what had passed in the
room without. The tapestry hangings on either side of the
door deadened all sounds.
"Madame," said Perez, turning to La Marana, "I told you
just now that I did not know where the key was. That was a
lie. Here it is," and he took it from the sideboard, 'Taut it is
THE MAR AN AS 271
useless. Juana's key is in the lock, and her door is barri-
caded.— We are deceived, wife ! There is a man in Juana's
room."
"By my hopes of salvation, the thing is impossible!" said
Dona Lagounia.
"Do not perjure yourself. Dona Lagounia. Our honor is
slain; and she" (he turned to La Marana, who had risen to
her feet, and stood motionless as if thunderstruck by his
words), "she may well scorn us. She saved our lives, our
fortune, and our honor, and we have barely guarded her
money for her. — Juana, open the door !" he shouted, "or I
will break it down !"
The whole house rang with the cry; his voice grew louder
and angrier; but he was cool and self-possessed. He held
Montefiore's life in his hands, in another moment he would
wash away his remorse in every drop of the Italian's blood.
"Go out ! go out ! go out ! all of you !" cried La Marana,
and springing upon the dagger like a tigress, she snatched
it from the hands of the astonished Perez. "Go out of this
room, Perez," she went on, speaking quite quietly now. "Go
out, you and your wife, and the maid and the apprentice.
There will be a murder here directly, and you might all be shot
down by the French for it. Do not you mix yourself up in it,
it is my affair entirely. When my daughter and I meet, God
alone should be present. As for the man, he is mine. The
whole world should not snatch him out of my hands. There,
there, go ! I forgive you. I see it all. The girl is a Marana.
My blood flows in her veins, and you, your religion, and your
honor have been powerless against it."
Her groan was dreadful to hear. She turned dry eyes upon
them. She had lost everything, but she was accustomed to
suffering ; she was a courtesan. The door opened. La Marana
henceforth heeded nothing else, and Perez, making a sign
to his wife, could remain at his post. The old Spaniard, im-
placable where honor was concerned, determined to assist
the wronged mother's vengeance. Juana, in her white dra-
peries, stood <|uictly there in her room in the soft lamplight.
'"What do you want with me?" she asked
272 THE MARANAS
In spite of herself, a light shudder ran through La Marana,
"Perez," she asked, "is there any other way out of this
closet?"
Perez shook his head; and on that the courtesan went into
the room.
"Juana," she said, "I am your mother, your judge— you
have put yourself in the one situation in which I can reveal
myself to you. You have come to my level, jou whom I had
thought to raise to heaven. Oh! you have fallen very low!
. . , You have a lover in your room."
"Madame, no one but my husband should or could be
there," she answered. "I am the Marchesa di Montefiore."
"Then are there two of them?" asked old Perez sternly.
"He told me that he was married."
"Montefiore ! my love !" cried the girl, rending the cur-
tains, and discovering the officer; "come forward, these peo-
ple are slandering you."
The Italian's face was haggard and pale; he saw the dag-
ger in La Marana's hand, and he knew La Marana. At one
bound he sprang out of the chamber, and with a voice of
thunder shouted, "Help ! help ! murder ! they are killing a
Frenchman ! — Soldiers of the Sixth of the line, run for Cap-
tain Diard ! . . . Help !"
Perez had secured the Marquis, and was about to gag him
by putting his large hand over the soldier's mouth, when the
courtesan stopped him.
"Hold him fast," she said, "but let him call. Throw open
the doors, and leave them open; and now go out, all of you,
I tell you ! — As for you," she continued, addressing Monte-
fiore, "shout, and call for help. ... As soon as there is
a sound of your men's footsteps, this blade will be in your
heart. . . . Are you married? Answer me."
Montefiore, lying across the threshold of the door, two
paces from Juana, heard nothing, and saw nothing, for the
blinding gleam of the dagger blade.
"Then he meant to deceive me;" the words Gaxn& slowly
from Juana. "He told me that he was free."
THE MARANAS 273
"He told me that he was a married man," said Perez, in
the same stem tones as before.
"Holy Virgin!" exclaimed Dona Lagounia. La Marana
stooped to mutter in the ear of the Marquis, "Answer me,
will you, soul of mud?"
"Your daughter . . ." Montefiore began.
"The daughter I onee had is dead, or she soon will be," said
La Marana. "I have no daughter now. Do not use that word
again. Answer me, are you married ?"
"No, madame," Montefiore said at last (he wished to gain
time) ; "I mean to marry your daughter."
"My noble Montefiore !" cried Juana, with a deep breath.
"Then what made you fly and call for help?" demanded
Perez.
Terrible perspicacity !
Juana said nothing, but she wrung her hands, went over to
her armchair, and sat down. Even at that moment there was
an uproar in the street, and in the deep silence that fell upon
the parlor it was sufficiently easy to catch sounds. A private
soldier of the Sixth, who had chanced to pass along the street
when Montefiore cried out for help, had gone to call up Diard.
Luckily, the quartermaster was in his lodging, and came at
once with several comrades.
"Why did I fly?" repeated Montefiore, who heard the
sound of his friend's voice. "Because I had told you the
truth. — Diard ! Diard !" he shrieked aloud.
But at a word from Perez, who meant that all in his house
should share in the murder, the apprentice made the door
fast, and the men were obliged to force it open. La Marana,
therefore, could stab the guilty creature at her feet before
they made an entrance; but her hand shook with pent-up
wrath, and the blade slipped aside upon Montefiore's epau-
lette. Yet so heavy had -been the blow, that the Italian rolled
over almost at Juana's feet. The girl did not see him, but
La Marana sprang upon her prey, and, lest she should fail
this time, she held his throat in an iron grasp, and pointed
the dagger at his heart.
274 THE MARANAS
"I am free!" he gasped. "I will marry her! I sweai
it by God I by my mother ! by all that is most sacred in thip
world. . . o I am not married ! I will marry her 1 Upor
my word of honor, I will !" and he set his teeth in the courte-
san's arm.
"That is enough, mother," said Juana ; "kill him I I would
not have such a coward for my husband if he were ten times
more beautiful."
"Ah ! that is my daughter 1" cried La Marana.
"What is going on here?" asked the quartermaster, look-
ing about him.
"This," shouted Montefiore; "they are murdering me on
that girl's account ; she says that I am her lover ; she trapped
me, and now thev want to force me to marry her against my
will "
"Against your will ?" cried Diard, struck with the sublime
beauty that indignation, scorn, and hate had lent to Juana's
face, already so fair. "You are very hard to please ! If she
must have a husband, here am I. Put up your dagger."
La Marana grasped the Italian, pulled him to his feet,
brought him to the bedside, and said in his ear:
"If I spare your life, you may thank that last speech of
yours for it. But keep it in mind. If you say a word against
my daughter, we shall see each other again — What will her
dowry amount to?" she asked of Perez.
"Two hundred thousand piastres down "
"That will not be all, monsieur," said the courtesan, ad-
dressing Diard. "Who are you? — You can go," she added,
turning to Montefiore.
But when the ]\Iarquis heard mention of two hundred thou-
sand piastres down, he came forward, saying, "I am really
quite free "
"You are really quite free to go," said La Marana, and the
Italian went.
"Alas! monsieur," the girl spoke, addressing Diard; "I
thank you, and 1 admire you. But my bridegroom is in
THE MARANAS 275
heaven ; T shall be the bride of Christ. To-morrow I shall
enter the convent of "
"Oh, hush ! hnsh ! Juana, my Juana !" cried her mother,
holding the girl tightly in her arms. Then she whispered,
"You must take another bridegroom."
Juana turned pale.
"Who are you, monsieur ?'' asked the mother of the Proven-
gal.
"I am nothing as yet but a quartermaster in the Sixth
Eegiment of the line," said he; "but for such a wife, a man
would feel that it lay in him to be a Marshal' of France some
day. My name is Pierre-Francois Diard. My father was a
guild magistrate, so I am not a "
"Eh! you are an honest man, are you not?" cried La
Marana. "If the Signorina Juana dei Mancini cares for you,
you may both be happy. — Juana," she went on gravely,
"when you are the wife of a good and worthy man, remember
that you will be a mother. I have sworn that you shall set a
kiss upon your child's forehead without a blush . .
(Here her tone changed somewhat.) I have sworn that you
shall be a virtuous wife. So in this life, though many trou-
bles aw^t you, whatever happens to you, be a chaste and
faithful wife to your husband ; sacrifice everything to him ;
he will be the father of your children. ... A father to
your children ! . . . Stay, between you and a lover your
mother always will stand; I shall be your mother only when
danger threatens. ... Do you see Perez's dagger?
That is part of your dower," and she flung the weapon down
on the bed. "There I leave it as a guarantee of your honor,
so long as I have eyes to see and hands that can strike a blow.
— Farewell," she said, keeping back the tears; *Tieaven send
that we never meet again," and at that her tears flowed fast.
"Poor child ! you have been very happy in this little cell,
happier than you know. — Act in such a sort that she may
never look back on it with regret/' she added, looking at her
future son-in-law.
276 THE MARANAS
The story, which has been given simply by way of intro-
duction, is not by any means the subject of the following
study; it has been told to explain, in the first place, how
Montefiore and Diard became acquainted, how Captain Diard
came to marry Juana dei Mancini, and to make known what
passions filled Mme. Diard's heart, what blood flowed in her
veins.
By the time that the quartermaster had been through the
slow and tedious formalities indispensable for a French sol-
dier who is obtaining leave to marry, he had fallen passion-
ately in love with Juana dei Mancini, and Juana dei Mancini
had had time to reflect on her fate. An appalling fate !
Juana, who neither loved nor esteemed this Diard, was none
the less bound to him by a promise, a rash promise no doubt,
but there had been no help for it. The Provengal was neither
handsome nor well made. His manners were totally lacking
in distinction, and savored of the camp, of his provincial
bringing up and imperfect education. How should the young
girl love Diard? With her perfect elegance and grace, her
unconquerable instinct for luxury and refinement, her natural
drawings were towards the higher spheres of society; and as
for esteem, she could not bring herself to feel so much as
esteem for this Diard who was to marry her, and precisely for
that very reason.
The repugnance was ver}' natural. Woman is a sacred and
gracious being, almost always misunderstood; the judgments
passed upon her are almost always unjust, because she is not
understood. If Juana had loved Diard, she would have es-
teemed him. Love creates a new self within a woman; the
old self passes away with the dawn of love, and in the wed-
ding-robe of a passion that shall last as long as life itself, her
life is invested with whiteness and purity. After this new
birth, this revival of modesty and virtue, she has no longer
a past; it is utterly forgotten; slie turns wholly to the future
that she may learn all tilings afresh. Tn this sense, the
words of the famous line that a modern uoet has put into the
THE MARANAS 277
month of Marion Delorme, a line moreover that Corueille
might well have written, are steeped in truth:
And Liove gives back my maidenliood to me.
Does it not read like a reminiscence of some tragedy of
Comeille's? The style of the father of French drama, so
forceful, owing so little to epithet, seems to be revived again
in the words. And yet the writer, the poet of our own day,
has been compelled to sacrifice it to the taste of a public
only capable of appreciating vaudevilles.
So Juana, loveless, was still the same Juana, betrayed,
humiliated, brought very low. How should this Juana respect
a man who could talce her thus? With the high-minded
purity of youth, she felt the force of a distinction, subtle
in appearance, but real and immutable, a binding law upon
the heart, which even the least thoughtful women in-
stinctively apply to all their sentiments. Life had opened
out before Juana, and the prospect saddened her inmost
soul.
Often she looked at Perez and Doha Lagounia, her eyes
full of the tears she was too proud to let fall; they under-
stood the bitter thoughts contained in those tears, but they
said no word. Were not reproaches useless? And why
should they seek to comfort her? The keener the sympathy,
the wider the pent-up sorrow would spread.
One evening, as Juana sat in her little cell in a dull stupor
of wretchedness, she heard the husband and wife talking
together. They thought that the door was shut, and a wail
broke from her adopted mother.
"The poor child will die of grief !"
"Yes," answered Perez in a faltering voice; ^Hbut what
can we do? Can I go now to boast of my ward's chaste
beauty to the Comte d'Arcos, to whom I hoped to marry
her?"
"There is a difference between one slip and vice," said
the old woman, indulgent as an angel could have been.
278 THE MARANAS
"Her mother gave her to him," objected Perez.
"All in a minute, and without consulting her!" cried
Doiia Lagounia.
"She knew quite well what she was doing "
"Into what hands our pearl will pass !"
"Not a word more, or I will go and pick a quarrel with
that Diard !"
"And then there would be one more misfortune."
Juana, listening to these terrible words, knew at last the
value of the happy life that had flowed on untroubled until
her error ended it. So the innocent hours in her peaceful
retreat were to have been crowned by a brilliant and splendid
existence; the delights so often dreamed of would have been
hers. Those dreams had caused her ruin. She had fallen
from the heights of social greatness to the feet of Monsieur
Diard ! Juana wept ; her thoughts almost drove her mad.
For several seconds she hesitated between a life of vice and
religion. Vice offered a prompt solution; religion, a life
made up of suffering. The inward debate was stormy and
solemn. To-morrow was the fatal day, the day fixed for this
marriage. It was not too late; Juana might be Juana still.
If she remained free, she knew the utmost extent of her
calamities; but when married, she could not tell what might
lie in store for her. Eeligion gained the day. Doha La-
gounia came to watch and pray by her daughter's side, as she
might have done by a dying woman's bed.
"It is the will of God," she said to Juana. ISTature gives
to a woman a power peculiarly her own, that enables her to
endure suffering, a power succeeded in turn by weakness that
counsels resignation. Juana submitted without an after-
thought. She determined to fulfil her mother's vow, to cross
the desert of life, and so reach heaven, knowing that no
flowers could spring in the thorny paths that lay before her.
She married Diard.
As for the quartermaster, though Juana judged him piti-
lessly, who else Avould not have forgiven him? He was in-
toxicated with love. La Mai'ana, with the quick instinct
THE MARANAS 279
natural to her, had felt passion in the tones of his voice, and
seen in him the abrupt temper, the impulsive generosity of
the South. In the })aroxysm of her great anger, she had
seen Diard's good qualities, and these only, and thought that
these were sufficient guarantees for her daughter's happi-
ness.
And to all appearance the early days of this marriage
were happy. But to lay bare the underlying facts of the case,
the miserable secrets that women bury in the depths of their
souls, Juana had determined that she would not overcloud
her husband's joy. All women who are victims of an ill-
assorted marriage, come sooner or later to play a double part
— a part terrible to play, and Juana had already taken up
her role. Of such a life, a man can only record the facts;
and women's hearts alone can divine the inner life of senti-
ments. Is it not a story imipossible to relate in all its truth ?
Juana, struggling every hour against her own nature, half
Spanish, half Italian; Juana, shedding tears in secret till
she had no tears left to shed, was a typical creation, a living
symbol, destined to represent the uttermost extent of woman's
misfortunes. The minute detail required to depict that life
of restless pain would be without interest for those who crave
melodramatic sensation. And would not an analysis, in
which every wife would discover some of her own experience,
require an entire volume if it were to be given in full ? Such
a book, by its very nature, would be impossible to write, for
its merits must consist in half-tones and in subtle shades
of color that critics would consider vague and indistinct.
And besides, who that does not bear another heart within his
heart can touch on the pathetic, deeply-hidden tragedies that
some women take with them to their graves ; the heartache,
understood of none — not even of those who cause it; the
sighs in vain ; the devotion that, here on ea.rth at least, meets
with no return; unappreciated magnanimities of silence and
scorn of vengeance; unfailing generosity, lavished in vain;
longings for happiness destined to be unfulfilled; angelic
charity that blesses in secret; all the beliefs held sacred, all
280 THE MARANAS
the mextinguishable love? This life Jnana knew; fate
spared her in nothing. Hers was to be in all things the lot
of a wronged and unhappy wife, always forgiving her wrongs ;
a woman pure as a flawless diamond, though through her
beauty, as flawless and as dazzling as the diamond, a way
of revenge lay open to her. Of a truth, she need not dread
the dagger in her dower.
But at first, under the influence of Icve, of a passion that
for awhile at least can work a change in the most depraved
nature, and bring to light all that is noblest in a human
soul, Diard behaved like a man of honor. He compelled
Montefiore to go out of the regiment, and even out of that
division of the army, that his wife might not be compelled
to meet the Marquis during the short time that she was to
remain in Spain. Then the quartermaster asked to change
his regiment, and managed to exchange into the Imperial
Guard. He meant at all costs to gain a title ; he would have
honors and a great position to match his great fortune. With
this thought in his mind, he displayed great courage in one of
our bloodiest battles in Germany, and was so badly wounded
that he could no longer stay in the service. For a time it
was feared that he might have to lose his leg, and he was
forced to retire, with his pension indeed, but without the
title of baron or any of the rewards which he had hoped for,
and very likely would have won, if his name had not been
Diard.
These events, together with his wound and his disap-
pointed hopes, made a changed man of the late quartermas-
ter. The Provencal's energy, wrought for a time to a fever
pitch, suddenly deserted him. At first, however, his wife
sustained his courage; his efforts, his bravery, and his am-
bition had given her some belief in her husband ; and surely
it behooved her, of all women, to play a woman's part, to be
a tender consoler for the troubles of life.
Juana's words put fresh heart into the Major. He went to
live in Paris, determined to make a high position for him-
self in the Administration; the quartermaster of the Sixth
THE MARANAS 281
Line Eegiment should be forgotten, and some day Madame
Diard should wear a splendid title. His passion for his
charming wife had made him quick to guess her inmost
wishes. Juana did uot speak of them, but he understood
her; he was not loved as a man dreams of being loved — he
knew it, and longed to be looked up to and loved and caressed.
The luckless man anticipated happiness with a wife who
was at all times so submissive and so gentle-; but her gentle-
ness and her submission meant nothing but that resignation
to her fate which had given Juana to him. Eesignation and
religion, were these love? Diard could often have wished
for a refusal instead of that wifely obedience; often he would
have given his soul if Juana would but have deigned to weep
upon his breast, and ceased to conceal her feelings with the
smile that she wore proudly as a mask upon her face.
Many a man in his youth (for after a certain time we give
up struggling) strives to triumph over an evil destiny that
brings the thunder-clouds from time to time above the
horizon of his life ; and when he falls into the depths of mis-
fortune, those unrequited struggles should be taken into ac-
count. Like many another, Diard tried all ways, and found
all ways barred against him. His wealth enabled him to sur-
round his wife with all the luxuries that can be enjoyed in
Paris. She had a great mansion and vast drawing-rooms,
and presided over one of those houses frequented by some
few artists who are uncritical by nature, by a great many
schemers, by the frivolous folk who are ready to go anywhere
to be amused, and by certain men of fashion, attracted by
Juana's beauty. Those who make themselves conspicuous
in Paris must either conquer Paris or fall victims. Diard's
character was not strong enough, nor compact enough, nor
persistent enough, to impress itself upon the society of a
time when every one else was likewise bent upon reaching
a high position. Eeady-made social classifications are not
improbably a great blessing, even for the people. Napoleon's
Memoirs have informed us of the pains he was at to impose
social conventions upon a Court composed for the most part
282 THE MARANaS
of subjects wlio had once been his equals. But Napoleon was
a Corsican, Diard was a Provengal.
If the two men had been mentally equal — an islander is
always a more complete human being than a man born and
bred on the mainland; and though Provence and Corsica lie
between the same degrees of latitude, the narrow stretch of
sea that keeps them apart is, in spite of man's inventions,
a whole ocean that makes two different countries of them
both.
From this false position, which Diard falsified yet further,
grave misfortunes arose. Perhaps there is a useful lesson
to be learned by tracing the chain of independent facts that
imperceptibly brought about the catastrophe of the story.
In the first place, Parisian scoffers could not see the pic-
tures that adorned the late quartermaster's mansion without
a significant smile. The recently purchased masterpieces
were all condemned by the unspoken slur cast upon the pic-
tures that had been the spoils of war in Spain ; by this slur,
self-love avenged itself for the involuntary ofi'ence of Diard's
wealth. Juana understood the meaning of some of the am-
biguous compliments in which the French excel. Acting
upon her advice, therefore, her husband sent the Spanish
pictures back to Taragona. But the world of Paris, deter-
mined to put the worst construction on the matter, said,
"That fellow Diard is shrewd ; he has sold his pictures," and
the good folk continued to believe that the paintings which
still hung on the walls had not been honestly come by. Then
some ill-natured women inquired how a Diard had come to
marry a young wife so rich and so beautiful. Comments
followed, endless absurdities were retailed, after the manner
of Paris. If Juana rose above it all, even above the scandal
and met with nothing l)ut the respect due to her pure and de-
vout life, that respect ended with her, and was not accorded
to her husband. Her shining eyes glanced over her rooms,
and her woman's clear-sightedness brought her nothing but
pain. And yet — the disparagement was quite explicable.
Military men, for all the virtues with which romance endows
THE MARANAS 28^'
them, could not forgive the quondam quartermaster for his
wealth and his determination to cut a figure in Paris, and
for that very reason.
There is a world in Paris that lies between the furthest
house in the Faubourg Saint-Germain on the one hand, and
the last mansion in the Hue Saint-Lazare on the other; be-
tween the rising ground of the Luxembourg and the heights
of Montmartre; a world that dresses and gossips, dresses to
go out, and goes out to gossip; a world of petty and great
airs; a world of mean and poor ambitions, masquerading in
insolence; a world of envy and of fawning arts. I^, is made
up of gilded rank, and rank that has lost its gilding, of young
and old, of nobility of the fourth century and titles of yester-
day, of those who laugh at the expense of a parvenu, and
others who fear to be contaminated by him, of men eager
for the downfall of a power, though none the less they will
bow the knee to it if it holds its own; and all these ears
hear, and all these tongues repeat, and all these minds are
informed in the course of an evening of the birth-place, edu-
cation, and previous history of each new aspirant for its high
places. If there is no High Court of Justice in this exalted
sphere, it boasts the most ruthless of procureurs-generaux,
an intangible public opinion that dooms the victim and car-
ries out the sentence, that accuses and brands the delinquent.
Do not hope to hide anything from this tribunal, tell every-
thing at once yourself, for it is determined to go to the bot-
tom of everything, and knows everything. Do not seek to
understand the mysterious operation by which intelligence
is flashed from place to place, so that a story, a scandal, or a
piece of news is known everywhere simultaneously in the
twinkling of an eye. Do not ask who set the machiner}^ in
motion ; it is a social mystery, no observer can do more than
watch its phenomena, and its working is rapid beyond belief.
A single example shall suffice. The murder of the Due de
Berri, at the Opera, was known in the furthest part of the
He Saint-Louis ten minutes after the crime was committed.
The opinion of the Sixth Kegiment of the Line concerning
284 THE MARANAS
Diard permeated this world of Paris on the very evening
of his first ball.
So Diard himself could accomplish nothing. Hencefor-
ward his wife, and his wife alone, might make a way for him.
Strange portent of a strange civilization ! If a man can
do nothing by himself in Paris, he has still some chance of
rising in the world if his wife is young and clever. There
are women, weak to all appearance, invalids who, without
rising from their sofas or leaving their rooms, make their
influence felt in society; and by bringing countless secret
springs into play, gain for their husbands the position which
their own vanity desires. But Juana, whose girlhood had
been spent in the quaint simplicity of the narrow house in
Taragona, knew nothing of the corruption, the baseness, or
the opportunities afforded by life in Paris; she looked out
upon it with girlish curiosity, and learned from it no worldly
wisdom save the lessons taught her by her wounded pride
and susceptibilities. Juans, moreover, possessed the quick
instinct of a maiden heart, and was as swift to anticipate
an impression as a sensitive plant. The lonely girl had be-
come a woman all at once. She saw that if she endeavored
to compel society to honor he?' husband, it must be after the
Spanish fashion, of telling a h'e, carbine in hand. Did not
her own constant watchfulness tell her how necessary her
manifold precautions were? A gulf yawned for Diard be-
tween the failure to make himself respected and the opposite
danger of being respected but too much. Then as suddenly
as before, when she had foreseen her life, there came a revela-
tion of the world to her; she beheld on all sides the vast
extent of an irreparable misfortune. Then came the tard^y
recognition of her husband's peculiar weaknesses, his total
unfitness to play the parts he had assigned to himself, the
incoherency of his ideas, the mental incapacity to grasp this
society as a whole, or to comprehend the ^subt]eties that are
all-important there. Would not tact effect more for a man
in his position than force of eharncter? But the tact that
never fails is perhaps the greatest of all forces-
THE MARANAS 285
So far from effacing the blot iipoiv the Diard scutcheon,
die Major was at no little pains to make matters worse. For
instance, as it had not occurred to him that the Empire was
passing through a phase that required careful study, he tried,
though he was only a major, to obtain an appointment as
prefect. At that time almost every one believed iru Napoleon;
his favor had increased the importance of every post. The
prefectures, those empires on a small scale, could only be
filled by men with great names, by the gentlemen of the
household of His Majesty the Emperor and King. The pre-
fects by this time were Grand Viziers. These minions of the
great man laughed at Major Diard's artless ambitions, and
he was fain to solicit a sub-prefecture. His modest pre-
tentions were ludicrously disproportioned to his vast wealth.
After this ostentatious display of luxury, how could the
millionaire leave the royal splendors of his house in Paris
for Issoudun or Savenay? Would it not be a descent un-
worthy of his fortunes? Juana, who all too late had come
to understand our laws, and the manners and customs of our
administration, too late enlightened her husband. Diard, in
his desperation, went begging to all the powers that be; but
Diard met with nothing but rebuffs, no way was open to
him. Then people judged him as the Government had judged
him, and passed his own verdict upon himself. Diard had
been badly wounded on the field of battle, and Diard had not
been decorated. The quartermaster, who had gained wealth,
but no esteem, found no place under the government, and
society quite logically refused him the social position to
which he had aspired. In short, in his own house the un-
fortunate man continually felt that his wife was his superior.
He had come to feel it in spite of the "velvet glove" (if the
metaphor is not too bold) that disguised from her husband
the supremacy that astonished her herself, while she felt
humiliated by it. It produced its effect upon Diard at last.
A man who plays a losing game like this is bound to lose
heart, and to grow either a greater or a worse man for it;
Diard's courage, or his passion, was sure to diminish, after
286 THE MARANAS
repeated blows dealt to his self-love, and he made mistake
upon mistake. From the first everything had been against
him, even his own habits and his own character. The vices
and virtues of the impulsive Provengal were equally patent.
The fibres of his nature were like harp-strings, and every
old friend had a place in his heart. He was as prompt t(,
relieve a comrade in abject poverty as the distress of another
of high rank; in short, he never forgot a friend, and filled hii'
gilded rooms with poor wretches down on their luck. Behold-
ing which things, the general of the old stamp (a species
that will soon be extinct) was apt to greet Diard in an off-
hand fashion, and address him with a patronizing, "Well,
my dear fellow!" when they met. If the generals of the
Empire concealed their insolence beneath an assumption of
a soldier's bluff familiarity, the few people of fashion whom
Diard met showed him the polite and well-bred contempt
against which a self-made man is nearly always powerless.
Diard's behavior and speech, like his half-Italian accent, his
dress, and everything about him, combined to lower-him in the
eyes of ordinary minds ; far the unwritten code of good man-
ners and good taste is a binding tradition that only the
greatest power can shake off. Such is the way of the world.
These details give a very imperfect idea of Juana's mar-
tyrdom. The pangs were endured one by one. Every social
species contributed its pin-prick, and hers was a soul that
would have welcomed dagger-thrusts in preference. It was
intolerably painful to watch Diard receiving insults that he
did not feel, insults that Juana must feel, though they were
not meant for her. A final and dreadful illumination came
at last for her ; it cast a light upon the future, and she knew
all the sorrows that it held in store. She had seen already
that her husband was quite incapable of mounting to the
highest rungs of the social ladder, but now she saw the in-
evitable depths to which he must fall when he should lo.-i
heart; and, then a feeling of pity for Diard came over her.
The future that lay before her was ven^ dark. Juana had
never ceased to feel an overhanging dread of some evil,
THE MAKANAS 287
though whence it should come she knew not. This presenti-
ment haunted her inmost soul, as contagion hovers in the
air; but she was able to hide her anguish with smiles. She
had reached the point when she no longer thought of herself.
Juana used her influence to persuade Diard to renounce
his social ambitions, pointing out to him as a refuge the
peaceful and gracious life of the domestic hearth. All their
troubles came fro^m without; why should they not shut out
the world ? In his own home Diard would find peace and re-
spect; he should reign there. She felt that she bad courage
enough to undertake the trying task of making him happy,
this man dissatisfied with himself. Her energy had in-
creased with the difficulties of her life; she had within her
the heroic spirit needed by a woman in her position, and
felt the stirrings of those religious aspirations which are
cherished by the guardian angel appointed to watch over a
Christian soul, for this poetic superstitious fancy is an al-
legory that expresses the idea of the two natures within us.
Diard renounced his ambitions, closed his house, and
literally shut himself up in it, if it is allowable to make use
of so familiar a phrase. But therein lay the danger. Diard
was one of those centrifugal souls who must always be moving
about. The luckless soldier's turn of mind was such that no
sooner had he arrived in a place than this reckless instinct
forthwith drove him to depart. ISTatures of this kind have
but one end in life; they must come and go unceasingly like
the wheels spoken of in the Scriptures. It may have been
that Daird would fain have escaped from himself. He was
not weary of Juana; she had given him no cause to blame
her, but with possession his passion for her had grown less
absorbing, and his character asserted itself again.
Thenceforward his moments of despondency came more
frequently; he gave way more often to his quick southern
temper. The more virtuous and irreproachable a woman is,
the more a man delights to find her in fault, if only to
demonstrate his titular superiority ; but if by chance she
compels his respect, he must needs fabricate faults, and so
288 THE MARANAS
between the husband and wife nothings are exaggerated, and
trifles become mountains. But Juana's meek patience and
gentleness, nntinged with the bitterness that women can in-
fuse into their submission, gave no handle to this fault-
finding of set purpose, the most unkind of all. Hers was,
moreover, one of those noble natures for whom it is impos-
sible to fail in duty; her pure and holy life shone in those
eyes with the martyr's expression in them that haunted the
imagination. Diard first grew weary, then he chafed, and
ended by finding this lofty virtue an intolerable yoke. His
wife's discretion left him no room for violent sensations,
and he craved excitement. Thousands of such dramas lie
hidden away in the souls of men and women, beneath the
uninteresting surface of apparently simple and commonplace
lives. It is difficult to choose an example from among the
many scenes that last for so short a time, and leave such
ineffaceable traces in a life ; scenes that are almost always
precursors of the calamity that is written in the destiny of
most marriages. Still one scene may be described, because
it sharply marks the first beginnings of a misunderstanding
between these two, and may in some degree explain the catas-
trophe of the story.
Juana had two children; luckily for her, they were both
boys. The oldest was born seven months after her marriage ;
he was named Juan, and was like his mother. Two years
after they came to Paris her second son was bom; he re-
sembled Diard and Juana, but he was more like Diard,
whose names he bore. Juana had given the most tender care
to little Francisco. For the five years of his life, his
mother was absorbed in this child ; he had more than his
share of kisses and caresses and playthings; and besides and
bcA'ond all this, his mother's penetrating eyes watched him
continually. Juana studied his character even in the cradle,
'noticing hecdfully his cries ar.d movements, that she might
direct his education. Juana seemed to have but that one
child. The Provencal, seeing that Juan was almost neglected,
began to take notice of the older boy. He would not ask
THE MARANAS 289
himself whether tiio little one was the offspring of the short-
lived love affair to which he owed Juana, and by a piece of
rare flattery made of Juan his Benjamin. Of all the race in-
heritance of passions which preyed upon her, Mme. Diard
gave way but to one — a mother's love; she loved her children
with the same vehemence and intensity that La Marana
had shown for her child in the first part of this story ; but to
this love she added a gracious delicacy of feeling, a quick
and keen comprehension of the social virtues that it had
been her pride to practise, in which she had found her recom-
pense. The secret thought of the conscientious fulfilment
of the duties of motherhood had been a crude element of
poetry that left its impress on La Marana's life; but Juana
could be a mother openly, it was her hourly consolation.
Her own mother had been virtuous as other women are crim-
inal, by stealth; she had stolen her illicit happiness, she had
not known all the sweetness of secure possession. But Juana,
whose life of virtue was as dreary as her mother's life of
sin, knew every hour the ineffable joys for which that mother
had longed in vain. For her, as for La Marana, motherhood
summed up all earthly affection, and both the Maranas from
opposite causes had but this one comfort in their desolation.
Perhaps Juana's love was the stronger, because, shut out
from all other love, her children became all in all to her,
and because a noble passion has this in common with vice:
it grows by what it feeds upon. The mother and the gambler
are alike insatiable.
Juana was touched by the generous pardon extended over
Juan's head by Diard's fatherly affection, and thencefor-
ward the relations between husband and wife were changed;
the interest which Diard's Spanish wife had taken in him
from a sense of duty only, became a deep and sincere feeling.
Had he been less inconsequent in his life, if fickleness and
spasmodic changes of feeling on his part had not quenched
that flicker of timid but real sympathy, Juana must surely
have loved him ; but, unluckily, Diard's character belonged
to the quick-witted southern type, that has no continuity in
290 THE MARANAS
its ideas; such men will be capable of heroic actions ovei-
night, and sink into nonentities on the morrow; often thej
are made to suffer for their virtues, often their worst de-
fects contribute to their success; and for the rest, they are
great when their good qualities are pressed into the service
of an unflagging will. For two years Diard had been a pris-
oner in his home, a prisoner bound by the sweetest of all
chains. He lived, almost against his will, beneath the in-
fluence of a wife who kept him amused, and was always
bright and cheerful for him, a wife who devoted all her
powers of coquetry to beguiling him into the ways of virtue ;
and yet all her ingenuity could not deceive him, and he
knew this was not love.
Just about that time a murder caused a great sensation
in Paris. A captain of the armies of the Republic had killed
a woman in a paroxysm of debauchery. Diard told the
story to Juana when he came home to dine. The officer, he
said, had taken his ovv^n life to avoid the ignominy of a trial
and the infamous death of a criminal. Ac first Juana could
not understand the reason for his conduct, and her husband
was obliged to explain to her the admirable provision of
the French law, which takes no proceedings against the dead.
''But, papa, didn't you tell us the other day that the King
can pardon anybody?" asked Francisco.
"The King can only grant life" said Juan, nettled.
Diard and Juana watched this little scene with very dif-
ferent feelings. The tears of happiness in Juana's eyes as
she glanced at her oldest boy let her husband see with fatal
clearness into the real secrets of that hitherto inscrutable
heart. Her older boy was Juana's own child", Juana knew
his nature; she was sure of him and of his future; she wor-
shiped him, and her great love was a secret known only to
her child and to God. Juan, in his secret heart, gladly en-
dured his mother's sharp speeches. What if she seemed to
frown upon him in the presence of his father and brother,
when she showered passionate kisses upon him when they
were alone? Francisco was Diard's child, and Juana's oare
THE MARANAS 291
meant that she wished to check the growth of his father's
faults in him, and to develop his good qualities.
Juana, unconscious that she had spoken too plainly in that
glance, took little Francisco on her knee; and, her sweet
voice faltering somewhat with the gladness that Juan's an-
swer had caused her, gave the younger boy the teaching suited
to his childish mind.
"His training requires great care," the father said, speak-
ing to Juana.
"But Juan!"
The tone in which the two words were uttered startled
Mme. Diard. She looked up at her husband.
"Juan was born perfection," he added, and having thus
delivered himself, he sat down, and looked gloomily at his
wife. She was silent, so he went on, "You love one of your
children more than the other."
"You know it quite well," she said.
"N"o!" returned Diard. "Until this moment T did not
know which of them you loved the most."
"But neither of them has as yet caused me any sorrow,"
sne answered quickly.
"No, but which of them has given you more joys?" he
asked still more quickly.
"I have not kept any reckoning of them."
*Women are very deceitful !" cried Diard. "Do you dare
to tell me that Juan is not the darling of your heart ?"
"And if he were," she said, with gentle dignity, "do you
mean that it would be a misfortune?"
"You have never loved me ! If you had chosen, I might
have won kingdoms for you with my sword. You know all
that I have tried to do. sustained by one thought — a longing
that you might care for me. Ah! if you had but loved
me "
"A woman who loves," said Juana, 'lives in solitude fai
from the world. Is not that what we are doing?"
"Oh ! T know, Juana, that you are never in the wrong."
2a2 THE MARANAS
The words, spoken with such intense bitterness, bronght
about a coldness between them that lasted the rest of their
lives.
On the morrow of that fatal day, Diard sought out one
of his old cronies, and with him sought distraction at the
gammg-table. Unluckily, he won a great deal of money,
and he began to play regularly. Little by little he slipped
back into his old dissipated life. After a short time he nc
longer dined at home. A few months were spent in the en-
joyment of tHe first pleasures of freedom; he made up his
mind that he would not part with it, left the large apart-
ments ot the house to his wife, and took up his abode sepa-
rately on the entresol. By the end of the year Diard and
Juana only met once a day — at breakfast time.
In a few words, like all gamblers, he had runs of good
and bad luck; but as he was reluctant to touch his capital,
he wished to have entire control of their income, and his
wife accordingly ceased to take any part in the management
of the household economy. Mistrust had succeeded to the
boundless confidence that he had once placed in her. As to
money matters, which had formerly been arranged by both
husband and wife, he adopted the plan of a monthly allow-
ance for her own expenses; they settled the amount of it
together in the last of the confidential talks that form one
of the most attractive charms of marriage.
The barrier of silence between two hearts is a real divorce,
accomplished on the day when husband and wife say we no
longer. When that day came, Juana knew that she was no
longer a wife, but a mother; she was not unhappy, and did
not seek to guess the reason of the misfortune. It was a
great pity. Children consolidate, as it M^ere, the lives of
their parents, and the life that her husband led apart was
to weave sadness and anguish for others as well as for Juana,
Diard lost no time in making use of his newly regained
liberty; he played high, and lost and won enormous sums.
He was a good and bold player, and gained a great reputa-
tion. The respect which he had failed to win in society io
THE MAR AN AS 293
the days of the Empire was accorded now to the wealth that
was risked upon a green table, to a talent for all and any
of the games of chance of that period. Ambassadors,
financiers, men with large fortunes, jaded pleasure-seekers
in quest of excitement and extreme sensations, admired
Diard's play at their clubs ; they rarely asked him to their
houses, but they all plaATd with him. Diard became the
fashion. Once or twice during the winter his independent
spirit led him to give a fete to return the courtesies that he
\iad received, and by glimpses -Juana saw something of society
again; there was a brief return of balls and banquets, of
luxury and brilliantly-lighted rooms ; but all these things she
regarded as a sort of duty levied wpon her happiness and
solitude.
The queen of these high festivals appeared in them like
some creature fallen from an unknown world. Her sim-
plicity that nothing had spoiled, a certain maidenliness of
soul with which the changed conditions of her life had in-
vested her, her beauty, her unaffected modesty, won sincere
admiration. But Juana saw few women among her guests;
and it was plain to her mind that if her husband had ordered
his life differently without taking her into his confidence,
he had not risen in the esteem of the world.
Diard was not always lucky. In three years he had squan-
dered three-fourths of his fortune; but he drew from his
passion for gambling sufficient energy to satisfy it. He had a
large circle of acquaintance, and was hand-and-glove Mith
certain swindlers on the Stock Exchange — gentry who, since
the Eevolution, have established the principle that robbery
on a large scale is a mere peccadillo, transferring to the lan-
guage of the counting-house the brazen epithets of the license
of the eighteenth century.
Diard became a speculator, engaged in the peculiar kinds
of business described as "shady" in the slang of the Palais.
He managed to get hold of poor wretches ignorant of com-
mercial red-tape, and weary of everlasting proceedings in
liquidation; he would buy up their claims on the debtor's
294 THE MAKANAS
estate for a small sum, arrange the matter with the aS'
signees in the course of an evening, and divide the spoil with
the latter. When liquefiable debts were not to be found,
he looked out for floating debts; he unearthed and revived
claims in abeyance in Europe and America and uncivilized
countries. When at the Eestoration the debts incurred by the
princes, the Eepublic, and the Empire were all paid, he took
commissions on loans, on contracts for public works and en-
terprises of all kinds. In short, he committed legal robbery,
like many another carefully masked delinquent beliind the
scenes in the theatre of politics. Such thefts, if perpetrated
by the light of a street lamp, would send the luckless of-
fender to the hulks; but there is a virtue in the glitter of
chandeliers and gilded ceilings that absolves the crimes com-
mitted beneath them.
Diard forestalled and regrated sugars; he sold places; to
him belongs the credit of the invention of the warming-pan;
he installed lay-figures in lucrative posts that must be held
for a time to secure still better positions. Then he fell to
meditating on bounties ; he studied the loop-holes of the law,
and carried on contraband trades against which no provision
had been made. This traffic in high places may be briefly
described as a sort of commission agency ; he received "so
much per cent" on the purchase of fifteen votes which passed
in a single night from the benches on the left to the benches
on the right of the legislative chamber. In these days such
things are neither misdemeanors nor felony; exploiting in-
dustry, the art of government, financial genius — ^these are
the names by which they are called.
Public opinion put Diard in the pillory, where more than
one clever man stood already to keep him company; there, in-
deed, you will find the aristocracy of this kind of talent—-
the Upper Chamber of civilized rascality.
Diard, therefore, was no commonplace gambler, no vulgar
spendthrift who ends his career, in melodramas, as a beggar.
Above a certain social altitude that kind of gambler is not
CO be found In these days a bold scoundrel of this kind wil/
THE MARANAS 295
die gloriously in the harness of vice in all the trappings of
success: he will blow out his brains in a coach and six, and
all that has been intrusted to him vanishes with him.
Diard's talent determined him not to buy remorse too cheaply,
and he joined this privileged class. He learned all the springs
of government, made himself acquainted with all the secrets
and the weaknesses of men in office, and held his own in the
fiery furnace into which he had cast himself.
Mme. Diard knew nothing of the infernal life that her hus-
band led. She was well content to be neglected, and did
not ponder overmuch the reasons for his neglect. Her time
was too well filled. She devoted all the money that she had
to the education of her children; a very clever tutor was
engaged for them, besides various masters. She meant to
make men of her boys, to develop in them the faculty of
reasoning clearly, but not at the expense of their imaginative
powers. Nothing affected her now save through her children,
and her own colorless life depressed her no longer. Juan
and Francisco were for her what children are for a time for
many mothers — a sort of expansion of her own existence.
Diard had come to be a mere accident in her life. Since
Diard had ceased to be a father and the head of the family,
nothing bound Juana to her husband any longer, save a regard
for appearances demanded by social conventions; yet she
brought up her children to respect their father, shadowy and
unreal as that fatherhood had become ; indeed, her husband's
continual absence from home helped her to maintain the
fiction of his high character. If Diard had lived in the house,
all Juana's efforts must have been in vain. Her children
were too quick and bright not to judge their father, and this
process is a moral parricide.
At length, however, Juana's indifference changed to a feel-
ing of dread. She felt that sooner or later her husband's
manner of life must affect the children's future. Day by
day that old presentiment of coming evil gathered definiteness
and strength. On the rare occasions when Juana saw her
husband, she would glance at his hollow cheeks, at his face
296 THE MABANAg
grown haggard with the vigils he kept, and wrinkled with
violent emotions; and Diard almost trembled before the
clear, penetrating eyes. At such times her husband's assumed
gaiety alarmed her even more than the dark look that his
face wore in repose, when for a moment he happened to for-
get the part that he was playing. He feared his wife as the
criminal fears the headsman. Juana saw in him a disgrace
on her children's name; and Diard dreaded her, she was like
some passionless A^engeance, a Justice with unchanging
brows, with the arm that should one day strike always sus-
pended above him.
One day, about fifteen years after his marriage, Diard
found himself without resources. He owed a hundred thou-
sand crowns^ and was possessed of a bare hundred thousand
francs. His mansion (all that he possessed beside ready
money) was mortgaged beyond its value. A few more days,
and the prestige of enormous wealth must fade; and when
those days of grace had expired, no helping hand would be
stretched out, no purse would be open for him. Nothing but
unlooked-for luck could save him now from the slough into
which he must fall; and he would but sink the deeper in it,
men would scorn him the more because for awhile they had
estimated him at more than his just value.
Very opportunely, therefore, he learned that with the be-
ginning of the season diplomatists and foreigners of distinc-
tion flocked to watering-places in the Pyrenees, that play ran
high at these resorts, and that the visitors were doubtless well
able to pay their losings. So he determined to set out at once
for the Pyrenees. He had no mind to leave his wife in Paris ;
some of his creditors might enlighten her as to his awkward
position, and ho wished to keep it secret, so he took Juana
and the two children. He would not allow the tutor to go
7/ith them, and made some difficulties about Juana's maid,
who, with a single man-servant, composed their traveling
3uite. His tone was curt and peremptory; his energy seemed
to have returned to him. This hasty jonrney sent a shivef
of dread to Juana's soul; her penetiation was at fault, she
THE MARANAS 2d7
?oul(i not imagine the why and wherefore of their leaving
l*aris. Her husband seemed to be in higli spirits on the way;
and during the time spent together perforce in the traveling
e.irriage, he took more and more notice of the children, and
was m.ore kindly to the children's mother. And yet — every
day brought new and dark forebodings to Juana, the forebod-
ings of a mother's heart. These inward warnings, even when
there is no apparent reason for them, are seldom vain, and
the veil that hides the future grows thin for a mother's eyes.
Diard took a house, not large, but very nicely furnished,
situated in one of the quietest parts of Bordeaux. It hap-
pened to be a corner house with a large garden, surrounded
on three sides by streets, and on the fourth by the wall of
a neighboring dwelling. Diard paid the rent in advance,
and installed his wife and family, leaving Juana. fifty louis,
a sum barely sufficient to ineet the housekeeping expenses
for three months. Mme. Diard made no comment on this
unwonted niggardliness. When her husband told her that
he was about to go to the Baths, and that she was to remain
in Bordeaux, she made up her mind that the children should
learn the Spanish and Italian languages thoroughly, and
that they should read with her the great masterpieces of
either tongue.
With this object in view, Ju ana's life should be retired
and simple, and in consequence her expenses would be few.
Her own woman waited upon them; and, to simplify the
housekeeping, she arranged on the morrow of Diard's de-
parture to have their meals sent in from a restaurant. Every-
thing was provided for until her husband's return, and she
had no money left. Her amusements must consist in occa-
sional walks with the children. She was now a woman of
thirty-three; her beauty had developed to its fullest extent,
she was in the full splendor of her maturity. Scarcely had
she appeared in Bordeaux before people talked of nothing
but the lovely Spanish lady. She received a first love-letter,
and thenceforth confined her walks to her own garden.
At first Diard had a run of luck at the Baths. He won
298 THE MARANAg
three hundred thousand francs in two months; but it nevet
occurred to him to send any money to his wife, he meant to
keep as large a sum as possible by him, and to play for yet
higher stakes. Towards the end of the last month a Marchese
di Montefiore came to the Baths, preceded by a reputation for
a fine figure, and great wealth, for the match that he had
made with an English lady of family, and most of all for a
passion for gaming. Diard waited for his old comrade in
arms, to add the spoils to his winnings. A gambler with
something like four hundred thousand francs at his back can
command most things; Diard felt confident in his luck, and
renewed his acquaintance with Montefiore. That gentleman
received him coldl}^, but they played together, and Diard
lost everything.
"Montefiore, my dear fellow," said the sometime quarter-
master, after a turn round the room in which he had ruined
himself, "I owe you a hundred thousand francs; but I have
left my money at Bordeaux, where my wife is staying."
As a matter of fact, Diard had notes for the amount in his
pockets at that moment, but, with the self-possession of a
man accustomed to take in all the possibilities of a situa-
tion at a glance, he still hoped something from the incal-
culable chances of the gaming-table. Montefiore had ex-
pressed a desire to see something of Bordeaux; and if Diard
were to settle at once with him, he would have nothing left,
and could not have his "revenge." A "revenge" will some-
times more than make good all previous losses. All these
burning hopes depended on the answer that the Marquis
might give.
"Let it stand, my dear fellow," said Montefiore; "we will
go to Bordeaux together. I am rich enough now in all con-
science; why should I take an old comrade's money?"
Three days later, Diard and the Italian were at Bordeaux.
Montefiore offered the Provencal his revenge. In the course
of an evening, which Diard began by paying down the hun-
dred thousand francs, lie lost two huudred thousand more
upon parole. He was as light-hearted over his losses as if he
THE MARANAS 299
could swim in gold. It was eleven o'clock, and a glorious
night, surely Montefiore must wish to breathe the fresh air
under the open sky, and to take a walk to cool down a little
after the excitement of play; Diard suggested that the Italian
should accompany him to his house and take a cup of te.
there when the money was paid over.
"But Mme. Diard !" queried Montefiore.
"Pshaw !'' answered the Provencal.
They went downstairs together; but before leaving the
house, Diard went into the dining-room, asked for a glass of
water, and walked about the room as he waited for it. In this
way he managed to secrete a tiny steel knife with a handle
of mother-of-pearl, such as is used at dessert for fruit; the
thing had not yet been put away in its place.
"Where do you live ?" asked Montefiore, as they crossed the
court; "I must leave word, so as to have the carriage sent
round for me."
Diard gave minute directions.
"Of course, I am perfectly safe as long as I am with you,
you see," said Montefiore in a low voice, as he took Diard's
arm; "but if I came back by myself, and some scamp were
to follow me, I should be worth killing."
"Then have you money about you ?"
"Oh! next to nothing," said the cautious Italian, "only
my winnings. But they would make a pretty fortune for
a penniless rascal; he might take brevet rank as an honest
man afterwards for the rest of his life, that I know."
Diard took the Italian into a deserted street. He had no-
ticed the gateway of a single house in it at the end of a sort
of avenue of trees, and that there were high dark walls on
either side. Just as they reached the end of this road he
had the audacity to ask his friend, in soldierly fashion, to
walk on. Montefiore understood Diard's meaning, and turned
to go with him. Scarcely had they set foot in the shadow,
when Diard sprang like a tiger upon the Marquis, tripped
him up, boldly set his foot on his victim's throat, and plunged
the knife again and again into his heart, till the blade snapped
300 THE MARANAS
off short in his body. Then he searched Montefiore, took
his money, his pocket-book, and everything that tlie Marquis
had.
But though Diard had set about his work in a frenzy that
left him perfectly clear-headed, and completed it with tlio
deftness of a pickpocket; though he had taken his victim
adroitly by surprise, Montefiore had had time to shriek "Mur-
der !" once or twice, a shrill, far-reaching cry that must have
sent a thrill of horror through many sleepers, and his dyinj
groans were fearful to hear.
Diard did not know that even as they turned into tlie
avenue a crowd of people returning home from the theatre
had reached the upper end of the street. They had heard
Montefiore's dying cries, though the Provengal had tried to
stifle the sounds, never relaxing the pressure of his foot upon
the murdered man's throat, until at last they ceased.
The high walls still echoed with dying groans which guided
the crowd to the spot whence they came. The sound of many
feet filled the avenue and rang through Diard's brain. The
murderer did not lose his head ; he came out from under the
trees, and walked very quietl}'' along the street, as if he had
been drawn thither by curiosity, and saw that he had come too
late to be of any use. He even turned to make sure of the
distance that separated him from the newcomers, and saw
them all rush into the avenue, save one man, who not un-
naturally stood still to watch Diard's movements.
"There he lies ! There he lies !" shouted voices from the
avenue. They had caught sight of Montefiore's dead body
in front of the great house. The gateway was shut fast,
and after diligent search they could not find the murderer
in the alley.
As soon as he heard the shout, Diard knew that he had
got the start; he seemed to have the strength of a lion in
him and the fleetness of a stag; he began to run, nay, he
flew. IIo saw, or fancied that he saw, a second crowd at
the other end of the road, and darted down a side street.
But even as he fled, windows were opened, and rows of hcad.«;
THE MARANAS 301
were thrust out, lights and shouting issued from every door ;
to Diard, running for dear life, it seemed as if he were rush-
ing through a tumult of cries and swaying lights. As he
fled straight along the road before him, his legs stood hira
in such good stead that he left the crowd behind; but he
could not keep out of sight of the windows, nor avoid the
watchful eyes that traversed the length and breadth of a
street faster than he could fly.
In the twinkling of an eye, soldiers, gendarmes, and house-
holders were all astir. Some in their zeal had gone to wake
up Commissaries of Police, others stood by the dead body.
The alarm spread out into the suburbs in the direction of the
fugitive (whom it followed like a conflagration from street
to street) and into the heart of the town, where it reached
the authorities. Diard heard as in a dream the hurrying
feet, the yells of a whole horror-stricken city. But his ideas
were still clear; he still preserved his presence of mind, and
he rubbed his hands against the walls as he ran.
At last he reached the garden-wall of his own house. He
thought that he had thrown his pursuers off the scent. The
place was perfectly silent save for the far-off murmur of the
city, scarcely louder there than the sound of the sea. He
dipped his hands into a runnel of clear water and drank.
Then, looking about him, he saw a heap of loose stones by the
roadside, and hastened to bury his spoils beneath it, acting
on some dim notion such as crosses a criminal's mind when
he has not yet found a consistent tale to account for his
actions, and hopes to establish his innocence by lack of proofs
against him. When this was accomplished, he tried to look
serene and calm, forced a smile, and knocked gently at his
own door, hoping that no one had seen him. He looked up
at the house front and saw a light in his wife's windows.
And then in his agitation of spirit visions of Juana's peaceful
life rose before him; he saw her sitting there in the candle-
light with her children on either side of her, and the vision
smote his brain like a blow from a hammer. The waiting-
302 T'HE MARANAS
woman opened the door, Diard entered, and hastily shut it to
again. He dared to breathe more freely, but he remembered
that he was covered with perspiration, and sent the maid up to
Juana, while he stayed below in the darkness. He wiped his
face with a handkerchief and set his clothes in order, as a cox-
comb smoothes his coat before calling upon a pretty woman;
then for a moment he stood in the moonlight examining his
hands; he passed them over his face, and with unspeakable
joy found that there was no trace of blood upon him, doubt-
less his victim's wounds had bled internally.
He went up to Juana's room, and his manner was as quiet
and composed as if he had come home after the theatre, to
sleep. As he climbed the stairs, he could think over his
position, and summed it up in a phrase — he must leave the
house and reach the harbor. These ideas did not cross his
brain in words; he saw them written in letters of fire upon
the darkness. Once down at the harbor, he could lie in
hiding during the day, and return at night for his treasure;
then he would creep with it like a rat into the hold of some
vessel, and leave the port, no one suspecting that he was on
board. For all these things money was wanted in the first
place. And he had nothing. The waiting-woman came with
a light.
"Felicie," he said, "do you not hear that noise? people are
shouting in the street. Go and find out what it is and let
me know "
His wife in her white dressing-gown was sitting at a table,
reading Cervantes in Spanish with Francisco and Juan; the
two children's eyes followed the text while their mother read
aloud. All three of them stopped and looked up at Diard,
who stood with his hands in his pockets, surprised perhaps
by the surroundings, the peaceful scene, the fair faces of
the woman and the children in the softly-lit room. It was
like a living picture of a ]\Iadonna with her son and the little
Saint John on either side.
"Juana, I have something to say to you."
"What is it?" she asked. In her husband's wan and sallo\?
THE MARANAS 303
face she read the news of tliis calamity that she had expected
daily; it had come at last.
"Nothing, but I should like to speak to you — to you, quite
alone," and he fixed his eyes on the two little boys.
"Go to your room, my darlings, and go to bed," said Juana.
"Say your prayers without me."
The two boys went away in silence, with the uninquisitive
obedience of children who have been well brought up.
"Dear Juana," Diard began in coaxing tones, "I left you
very little money, and I am very sorry for it now. Listen,
since I relieved you of the cares of your household by giving
you an allowance, perhaps you may have saved a little money,
as all women do ?"
"No," answered Juana, "I have nothing. You did not
allow anything for the expenses of the children's education.
I am not reproaching you at all, dear; I only remind you
that you forgot about it, to explain how it is that I have no
money. All that you gave me I spent on lessons and mas-
ters "
"That will do !" Diard broke in. "Sacre tonnerre ! time is
precious. Have you no jewels?"
"You know quite w^ell that I never wear them."
"Then there is not a sou in the house !" cried Diard, like
a man bereft of his senses.
"Why do you cry out ?" she asked.
"Juana," he began, "I have just killed a man !"
Juana rushed to the children's room, and returned, shut-
ting all the dcors after her.
"Your sons must not hear a word of this," she said; "but
whom can you have fought with ?"
"Montefiore," he answered.
"Ah!" she said, and a sigh broke from her; "he is the
one man whom you had a right to kill "
"There were plenty of reasons why he should die by my
hand. But let us lose no time. Money, I want money, in
God's name ! They may be on my track. We did not fight,
Juana, I — I killed him."
304 THE MARANAS
"Killed him I" she cried. "But how-
"Why, how does one kill a man? He had robbed me oi
all I had at pla}' ; and I have taken it back again. Juana,
since we have no money, you might go now, while everything
is quiet, and look for my money under the heap of stones at
the end of the road ; you know the place."
"Then," said Juana, "3^ou have robbed him."
"What business is it of yours? Fly I must, mustn't I?
Have you anv money ? . . . They are after me !"
"Who?"
"The authorities."
Juana left the room, and came back suddenly.
"Here," she cried, holding out a trinket, but standing at
a distance from him; "this is Doha Lagounia's cross. There
are four rubies in it, . and the stones are very valuable ; so
I have been told. Be quick, fly, fl}^ why don't you go?"
"Felicie has not come back," he said, in dull amazement.
*'Can they have arrested her ?"
Juana dropped the cross on the edge of the table, and
sprang towards the windows that looked out upon the street.
Outside in the moonlight he saw a row of soldiers taking
their places in absolute silence along the walls. She came
back again; to all appearance she was perfectly calm.
"You have not a minute to lose," she said to her husband ;
"you must escape through the garden. Here is the key of
the little door."
A last counsel of prudence led her, however, to give a
glance over the garden. In the shadows under the trees she
saw the silvery gleam, of the metal rims of the gendarmes'
caps. She even heard a vague murmur of a not far-distant
crowd; sentinels were keeping back the people gathered to-
gether by curiosity at the further ends of the streets by
which the house was approached.
As a matter of fact, Diard had been seen from the win-
dows of the houses; the maid-servant had been frightened,
and afterwards arrested; and. acting on this information, the
military and the crowd had soon blocked the ends of the
THE MARANAS 305
streets that lay on two sides of the house. A dozen gen-
darmes, coming oil' duty at the theatres, were posted outside;
others had climbed the wall, and were searching the garden,
a proceeding authorized by the serious nature of the crime.
"Monsieur," said Juana, "it is too late. The whole town
is aroused."
Diard rushed from window to window with the wild reck-
lessness of a bird that dashes frantically against every pane.
Juana stood absorbed in her thoughts.
"Where can I hide ?" he asked.
He looked at the chimney, and Juana stared at the two
empty chairs. To her it seemed only a moment since her
children were sitting there. Just at that moment the gate
opened, and the courtyard echoed with the sound of many
footsteps.
"Juana, d^ar Juana, for pity's sake, tell me what to
do?"
"I will tell you," she said; "I will save you."
"Ah ! you will be my good angel !"
Again Juana returned with one of Diard's pistols; she
held it out to him, and turned her head away. Diard did
not take it. Juana heard sounds from the courtyard; they
had brought in the dead body of the Marquis to confront
the murderer. She came away from the window and looked
at Diard ; he was white and haggard ; his strength failed him ;
he made as if he would sink into a chair.
"For your children's sake," she said, thrusting the weapon
into his hands.
"But, my dear Juana, my little Juana, do you really be-
lieve that . . . ? Juana, is there such need of haste?
. . . I would like to kiss you before . . ."
The gendarmes were on the stairs. Then Juana took up
the pistol, held it at Diard's head; with a firm grasp on his
throat, she held him tightly in spite of his cries, fired, and
let tiie weapon fall to the ground.
The door was suddenly flung open at that moment. The
public prosecutor, followed by a magistrate and his clerk, a
306 THE MARANAS
doctor, and the gendarmes, all the instruments of man's
justice, appeared upon the scene.
'^Yhat do you want?" she asked.
"Is that M. Diard?" answered the puhlic prosecutor,
pointing to the body lying bent double upon the floor.
*'Yes, monsieur."
"Your dress is covered with blood, madame "
"Do you not understand how it is ?" asked Juana.
She went over to the little table and sat down there, and
took up the volume of Cervantes ; her face was colorless ; she
strove to control her inward nervous agitation.
"Leave the room," said the public prosecutor to the gen-
darmes. He made a sign to the magistrate and the doctor,
and they remained.
"Madame, under the circumstances, we can only congratu-
late you on your husband's death. If he was carried away by
passion, at any rate he has died like a soldier, and it is
vain for justice to pursue him now. Yet little as we may
desire to intrude upon you at such a time, the law obliges
us to inquire into a death by violence. Permit us to do our
duty."
"May I change my dress?" she asked, laying d^wn the
volume.
"Yes, madame, but you must bring it here. The doctor
will doubtless require it "
"It would be too painful to Mme. Diard to be present while
I go through my task," said the doctor, understanding the
public prosecutor's suspicions. "Will you permit her, gen-
tlemen, to remain in the adjoining room ?"
The two functionaries approved the kindly doctor's sug-
gestion, aiid Felicie went to her mistress. Then the magis-
trate and the public prosecutor spoke together for awhile in
a low voice. It is the unhappy lot of administrators of jus-
tice to be in duty bound to suspect everybody and everything.
By dint of imagining evil motives, and every possible com-
bination that they may bring about, so as to discover the
truth that lurks beneath the most inconsistent actions, it
THE MAEANAS 301
h impossible bnt that their dreadful office should in course
of time dr}' up the source of the generous impulses to which
they may never yield. If the sensibilities of the surgeon
who explores the mysteries of the body are blunted by de-
grees, what becomes of the inner sensibility of the judge
who is compelled to probe the intricate recesses of the human
conscience? Magistrates are the first victims of their pro-
fession; their progress is one perpetual mourning for their
lost illusions, and the crimes that hang so heavily about the
necks of criminals weigh no less upon their judges. An old
man seated in the tribunal of justice is sublime; but do we
not shudder to see a young face there? In this case the
magistrate was a young man, and it was his duty to say to the
public prosecutor, "Was the woman her husband's accom-
plice, do you think ? Must we take proceedings ? Ought she,
in your opinion, to be examined ?"
By way of reply, the public prosecutor shrugged his shoul-
ders ; apparently it was a matter of indifference.
"Montefiore and Diard," he remarked, "were a pair of
notorious scamps. The servant-girl knew nothing about the
crime. We need not go any further."
The doctor was making his examination of Diard's body,
and dictating his report to the clerk. Suddenly he rushed
into Juana's room.
"Madame "
Juana, who had changed her blood-stained dress, con-
fronted the doctor.
"You shot your husband, did you not ?" he asked, bending
to say the words in her ear.
"Yes, monsieur," the Spaniard answered.
"And from circumstantial evidence" (the doctor went on
dictating) "we conclude that the said Diard has taJcen his
life by his oivn, act. — Have you finished?" he asked the cierk
after a pause.
"Yes," answered the scribe.
The doctor put his signature to the document. Juana
o-laneed at him, aud could scarcely keep back the tears that
'Or ii inoir,?ut. filled her eyes.
308 THE MARANAS
'^Gentlemen/' she said, as she turned to the puhlic prose-
cutor, "I am a stranger, a Spaniard. I do not know the law,
I know no one in Bordeaux. I entreat you to dcf me this
kindness, will you procure me a passport for Spain ?"
"One moment !" exclaimed the magistrate. "Madame,
what has become of the sum of money that was stolen from
the Marquis di Montefiore?"
"M. Diard said something about a heap of stones beneath
which he had hidden it," she answered.
"Where?"
"In the street."
The two functionaries exchanged glances. Juana's m-
Toluntary start was sublime. She appealed to the doctor.
"Can they suspect me?" she said in his ear; "suspect me
of some villainy ? The heap of stones is sure to be somewhere
at the end of the garden. Go yourself, I beg of you, and
look for it and find the money."
The doctor went, accompanied by the magistrate, and
found Montefiore's pocket-book.
Two days later Juana sold her golden cross to meet the ex-
penses of the journey. As she went with her two children
to the diligence in which they were about to travel to the
Spanish frontier, some one called her name in the street.
It was her dying mother, who was being taken to the hos-
pital; she had caught a glimpse of her daughter through a
slit in the curtains of the stretcher on which she lay. Juana
bade them carry the stretcher into a gateway, and there for
the last time the mother and daughter met. Low as their
voices were while they spoke together, Juan overheard these
words of farewell:
"Mother, die in peace; I have suffered for you all."
Pakis. November VSS2.
EL VERDUGO
To Martinez de la Ros-i
Midnight had just sounded from the belfry tower of the
little town of Menda. A young Frenclt. officer, leaning over
the parapet of the long terrace at the further end of the
castle gardens, seemed to be unusually absorbed in deep
thought for one who led the reckless life of a soldier; but it
must be admitted that never was the hour, the scene, and the
night more favorable to meditation.
The blue dome of the cloudless sky of Spain was overhead ;
he was looking out over the coy windings of a lovely valley
lit by the uncertain starlight and the soft radiance of the
moon. The officer, leaning against an orange-tree in blos-
som, could also see, a hundred feet below him, the town of
Menda, which seemed to nestle for shelter from the north
wind at the foot of the crags on which the castle itself was
built. He turned his head and caught sight of the sea;
the moonlit waves made a broad frame of silver for the land-
scape.
There were lights in the castle windows. The mirth and
movement of a ball, the sounds of the violins, the laughter
of the officers and their partners in the dance was borne to-
wards him, and blended with the far-off murmur of the
waves. The cool night had a certain bracing effect upon his
frame, wearied as he had been by the heat of the day. He
seemed to bathe in the air, made fragrant by the strong,
sweet scent of flowers and of aromatic trees in the gardens.
The castle of Menda belonged to a Spanish grandee, who
was living in it at that time with his family. All through
the evening the oldest daughter of the house had watched
the officer with such a wistful interest that the Spanish lady's
810 EL VERDUGO
compassionate ej'es might well have set the 3^oiing Frencli'
man dreaming. Clara was beautiful; and although she had
three brothers and a sister, the broad lands of the Marques
de Leganes appeared to be sufficient warrant for Victor
Marchand's belief that the young lady would have a splen-
did dowr}^ But how could he dare to imagine that the most
fanatical believer in blue blood in all Spain would give his
daughter to the son of a grocer in Paris? Moreover, the
French were hated. It was because the Marquis had been
suspected of an attempt to raise the country in favor of
Ferdinand VII. that General G , who governed the prov-
ince, had stationed Victor Marchand's battalion in the little
town of Menda to overawe the neighboring districts which
received the Marques de Leganes' word as law. A recent
despatch from Marshal Ney had given ground for fear that
the English might ere long effect a landing on the coast,
and had indicated the Marquis as being in correspondence
with the Cabinet in London.
In spite, therefore, of the welcome with which the Span-
iards had received Victor Marchand and his soldiers, that
^officer was always on his guard. As he went towards the
terrace, where he had just surveyed the town and the dis-
tricts confided to his charge, he had been asking himself
what construction he ought to put upon the friendliness
which the Marquis had invariably shown him, and how to
reconcile the apparent tranquillity of the country with his
General's uneasiness. But a moment later these thoughts
were driven from his mind by the instinct of caution and
very legitimate curiosity. It had just struck him that there
was a very fair number of lights in the town below. Al-
though it was the Feast of Saint James, he himself had is-
sued orders that very morning that all lights must be pui
out in the town at the hour prescribed by military regula-
tions. The castle alone had been excepted in this order.
Plainly here and there he saw the gleam of bayonets, where,
his own men were at their accustomed posts; but in the town
there was a solemn silence, and pot a sign that the Spaniar(''s
I
EL VERDUGO 311
had given themselves np to the intoxication of a festival.
He tried vainly for awhile to explain this breach of the
regulations on the part of the inhabitants; the mystery
seemed but so much the more obscure because he had left
instructions with some of his officers to do police duty that
night, and make the rounds of the town.
With the impetuosity of youth, he was about to spring
through a gap in the wall preparatory to a rapid scramble
down the rocks, thinking to reach a small guard-house at the
nearest entrance into the town more quickly than by the
beaten track, when a faint sound stopped him. He fancied
that he could hear the light footstep of a woman along the
graveled garden walk. He turned his head and saw no one;
for one moment his e3^es were dazzled by the wonderful
brightness of the sea, the next he saw a sight so ominous
that he stood stock-still with amazement, thinking that his
senses must be deceiving him. The white moonbeams
lighted the horizon, so that he could distinguish the sails of
s^ips still a considerable distance out at sea. A shudder ran
through him ; he tried to persuade himself that this was some
optical illusion brought about by chance effects of moon-
light on the waves ; and even as he made the attempt, a hoarse
voice called to him by name. The officer glanced at the gap
m the wall; saw a soldier's head slowly emerge from it, and
knew the grenadier whom he had ordered to accompany him
to the castle.
"Is that you, Commandant?"
'Tes. What is it?" returned the young officer in a lovd.
voice. A kind of presentiment warned him to act cautiously.
"Those beggars down there are creeping about like worms ;
and, by your leave, I came as quickly as I could to report my
little reconnoitering expedition."
"Go on," answered Victor Marchand.
"I have just been following a man from the castle who
came round this way with a lantern in his hand. A lantern
is a suspicious matter with a vengeance! T don't imagine
that there was any need for that good Christian to be lighting
312 EL VERDUGO
tapers at this time of night. Says I to myself, 'They mean
to gobble us up !' and I set myself to dogging his heels ; and
that is how I found out that there is a pile of faggots, sir,
two or three steps away from here."
Suddenly a dreadful shriek rang through the town below,
and cut the man short. A light flashed in the Commandant's
face, and the poor grenadier dropped down with a bullet
through his head. Ten paces away a bonfire flared up like
a conflagration. The sounds of music and laughter ceased
all at once in the ballroom ; the silence of death, broken only
by groans, succeeded to the rhythmical murmur of the fes-
tival. Then the roar of cannon sounded from across the
white plain of the sea.
A cold sweat broke out on the young officer's forehead. He
had left his sword behind. He knew that his men had been
murdered, and that the English were about to land. He
knew that if he lived he would be dishonored ; he saw himself
summoned before a court-martial. For a moment his eyes
measured the depth of the valley; the next, Just as he was
about to spring down, Clara's hand caught his. *"
"Fly!" she cried. "My brothers are coming after me to
kill you. Down yonder at the foot of the cliff you will find
Juanito's Andalusian. Go !"
She thrust him away. The young man gazed at her in
dull bewilderment ; but obeying the instinct of self-preserva-
tion, which never deserts even the bravest, he rushed across
the park in the direction pointed out to him, springing from
rock to rock in places unknown to any save the goats. He
heard Clara calling to her brothers to pursue him; he heard
their balls whistling about his ears; but he reached the foot
of the cliff, found the horse, mounted, and fled with lightning
speed.
A few hours later the young officer reached General
G 's quarters, and found iiim at dinner with the staff.
"I put my life in your bands !" cried the haggard and ex-
hausted Commandant of Menda.
EL VERDUGO 313
He sank into a seat, and told his horrible story. It was re-
ceived with an appall mg silence.
"It seems to me that you are more to be pitied than to
blame," the terrible General said at last. "You are not an-
swerable for the Spaniard's crimes, and unless the Marshal
decides otherwise, I acquit you."
These words brought but cold comfort to the unfortunate
officer.
"When the Emperor comes to hear about it !" he cried.
"Oh, he will be for having you shot," said the General,
'TDut we shall see. Now we will say no more about this,"
he added severely, "except to plan a revenge that shall strike
a salutary terror into this country, where they carry on war
like savages."
An hour later a whole regiment, a detachment of cavalry,
and a convoy of artillery were upon the road. The General
and Victor marched at the head of the column. The soldiers
had been told of the fate of their comrades, and their rage
knew no bounds. The distance between headquarters and
the town of Menda was crossed at a well-nigh miraculous
speed. Whole villages by the way were found to be under
arms; every one of the wretched hamlets was surrounded,
and their inhabitants decimated.
It so chanced that the English vessels still lay out at sea,
and were no nearer the shore, a fact inexplicable until it
was known afterwards that they were artillery transports
which had outsailed the rest of the fleet. So the townsmen
of Menda, left without the assistance on which they had
reckoned when the sails of the English appeared, were sur-
rounded by French troops almost before they had had time
to strike a blow. This struck such terror into them that
they offered to surrender at discretion. An impulse of de
votion, no isolated instance in the history of the Peninsula,
led the actual slayers of the French to offer to give them-
selves up; seeking in this way to save the town, for from the
General's reputation for cruelty it was feared that he would
give Menda over to the flames, and put the whole popula-
814 EL VERDUGO
tion to the sword. General G took their offer, stipulat-
ing that every soul in the castle, from the lowest servant to
the Marquis, should likewise be given up to him. These
terms being accepted, the General promised to spare the lives
of the rest of the townsmen, and to prohibit his soldiers
from pillaging or setting fire to the to\^Ti. A heavy con-
tribution was levied, and the wealthiest inhabitants were
taken as hostages to guarantee payment within twenty-four
hours.
The General took every necessary precaution for the safety
of his troops, provided for the defence of the place, and re-
fused to billet his men in the houses of the town. After they
had bivouacked, he went up to the castle and entered it as
a conqueror. The whole family of the Legahes and their
household were gagged, shut up in the great ballroom, and
closely watched. From the windows it was easy to see the
whole length of the terrace above the town.
The staff was established -in an adjoining gallery, where
the General forthwith held a council as to the best means
of preventing the landing of the English. An aide-de-camp
was despatched to Marshal Ney, orders were issued to plant
batteries along the coast, and then the General and his staff
turned their attention to their prisoners. The two hundred
Spaniards given up by the townsfolk were shot down then
and there upon the terrace. And after this military execu-
tion, the General gave orders to erect gibbets to the number
of the prisoners in the ballroom in the same place, and to
send for the hangman out of the town. Victor took advan-
tage of the interval before dinner to pay a visit to the prison-
ers. He soon came back to the General.
"I am come in haste," he faltered out, *^to ask a favor."
"You!" efxclaimed the General, with bitter irony in his
tones.
"Alas!" answered Victor, "it is a sorry favor. The Mar-
quis has seen them erecting the gallows, and hopes that you
will commute the punishment for his family; he entreats you
to have the nobles beheaded."
EL VERDUGO BIC
"Granted/' said the General.
"He further asks that they may bo allowed the consolations
of religion, and that they may be unbound; they give you
their word that they will not attempt to escape."
"That I permit/' said the General, "but you are answer-
able for them."
"The old noble offers you all that he has if you will pardon
his youngest son."
"EeallyP cried the Commander. "His property is forfeit
already to King Joseph." He paused; a contemptuous
thought set wrinkles in his forehead, as he added, "I will do
better than they ask. I understand what he means by that
last request of his. Very good. Let him hand down his
name to posterity; but whenever it is mentioned, all Spain
shall remember his treason and its punishment ! I will give
the fortune and his life to any one of the sons who will do
the executioner's office. . . . TherC;, don't talk any more
about them to me."
Dinner was ready. The officers sat down to satisfy an
appetite whetted by hunger. Only one among them was
absent from the table — that one was Victor Marchand. After
long hesitation, he went to the ballroom, and heard the last
sighs of the proud house of Legaiies. He looked sadly at
the scene before him. Only last night, in this very room,
lie had seen their faces whirled past him in the waltz, and
he shuddered to think that those girlish heads with those of
the three young brothers must fall in a brief space by the
executioner's sword. There sat the father and mother, their
three sons and two daughters, perfectly motionless, bound to
their gilded chairs. Eight serving men stood with their
hands tied behind them. These fifteen prisoners, under sen-
tence of death, exchanged grave glances; it was difficult to
read the thoughts that filled them from their eyes, but pro-
found resignation and regret that their enterprise should
have failed so completely was written on more than one
brow.
The impassive soldiers who guarded them respected the
316 EL VERDUGO
^rief of their bitter enemies. A gleam of curiosity lighted
up all faces when Victor came in. He gave orders that the
condemned prisoners should be unbound, and himself un-
astened the cords that held Clara a prisoner. She smiled
'ournfully at him. The officer could not refrain from
iuhtly touching the young girl's arm; he could not help
admiring her dark hair, her slender waist. She was a true
daughter of Spain, with a Spanish complexion, a Spaniard's
eyes, blacker than the raven's wing beneath their long curv-
ing lashes.
"Did you succeed?" she asked, with a mournful smile, in
which a certain girlish charm still lingered.
Victor could not repress a groan. He looked from the
faces of the three brothers to Clara, and again at the three
young Spaniards. The first, the oldest of the family, was
a man of thirty. He was short, and somewhat ill-made; he
looked haughty and proud, but a certain distinction was not
lacking in his bearing, and he was apparently no stranger
to the delicacy of feeling for which in olden times the chiv-
alry of Spain was famous. His name was Juanito. The
second son, Felipe, was about twenty years of age; he was
like his sister Clara ; and the youngest was a child of eight.
In the features of the little Manuel a painter would have
discerned something of that Eoman steadfastness which
David has given to the children's faces in his Eepublican
genre pictures. The old Marquis, with his white hair, might
have come down from some canvas of Murillo's. Victor
threw back his head in despair after this survey ; how should
one of these accept the General's offer ! Nevertheless he ven-
j,ured to intrust it to Clara. A shudder ran through the
Spanish girl, but she recovered herself almost instantly, and
knelt before her father.
"Father," she said, 'Tjid Juanito swear to obey the com-
mands that you shall give him, and we shall be content."
The Marquesa trembled with hope, but as she leant to-
wards her husband and learned Clara's hideous secret, the
mother fainted away. Juanito understood it all and leact
EL VERDUGO 317
up like a caged lion. Victor took it upon himself to dismiss
the soldiers, after receiving an assurance of entire submission
from the Marquis. The servants were led away and given
over to the hangman and their fate. When only Victor re-
mained on guard in the room, the old Marques de Leganes
rose to his feet.
"Juanito," he said. For all answer Juanito howed his head
in a way that meant refusal ; he sank down into his chair, and,
fixed tearless eyes upon his father and mother in an intol-
erable gaze. Clara went over to him and sat on his knee ; she
put her arms about him, and pressed kisses on his eyelids,
saying gaily:
"Dear Juanito, if you bnt knew how sweet death at your
hands will be to me ! I shall not be compelled to submit
to the hateful touch of the hangman's fingers. You will
snatch me away from the evils to come and . . . Dear,
kind Juanito, you could not bear the thought of my belonging
to any one — well, then?"
The velvet eyes gave Victor a burning glance; she seemed
to try to awaken in Juanito's heart his hatred for the French.
"Take courage," said his brother Felipe, "or our well-nigh
royal line will be extinct."
Suddenly Clara sprang to her feet. The group round
Juanito fell back, and the son who had rebelled with such
good reason was confronted with his aged father.
"Juanito, I command you !" said the Marquis solemnly.
The young Count gave no sign, and his father fell on his
knees; Clara, Manuel, and Felipe unconsciously followed
his example, stretching out suppliant hands to him who must
save their family from oblivion, and seeming to echo their
father's words.
"Can it be that you lack the fortitude of a Spaniard and
true sensibility, my son? Do you mean to keep me on my
knees? What right have you to think of your own life and
of your own sufferings? — Is this my son, madame?" the old
Marquis added, turning to his wife.
"He will consent to it," cried the mother in agony of soul
318 EL VERDDGO
She had seen a slight contraction of Juanito's brows which
she, his mother, alone understood.
Mariquita, the second daughter, knelt, with her slender
clinging arms about her mother; the hot tears fell from her
eyes, and her little brother Manuel upbraided her for weep-
ing. Just at that moment the castle chaplain came in; th;
whole family surrounded him and led him up to Juanito.
•Victor felt that he could endure the sight no longer, and with
a sign to Clara he hurried from the room to make one last
effort for them. He found the General in boisterous spirits ;
the officers were still sitting over their dinner and drinking
together; the wine had loosened their tongues.
An hour later, a hundred of the principal citizens of Menda
were summoned to the terrace by the General's orders to
witness the execution of the family of Legaiies. A detach-
ment had been told off to keep order among the Spanish
townsfolk, who were marshaled beneath the gallows whereon
the Marquis' servants hung ; the feet of those martyrs of their
cause all but touched the citizens' heads. Thirty paces away
stood the block ; the blade of a scimitar glittered upon it, and
the executioner stood by in case Juanito should refuse at the
last.
The deepest silence prevailed, but before long it was broken
by the sound of many footsteps, the measured tramp of a
picket of soldiers, and the jingling of their weapons. Min-
gled with these came other noises — loud talk and laughter
from the dinner-table where the officers were sitting; just
as the music and the sound of the dancers' feet had drowned
the preparations for last night's treacherous butchery.
All eyes turned to the castle, and beheld the family of
nobles coming forth with incredible composure to their death.
Every brow was serene and calm. One alone among them,
haggard and overcome, leant on the arm of the priest, who
poured forth all the Consolations of religion for the one mai.
who was condemned to live. Then the executioner, like tlic
spectators, knew that Juanito had consented to perform his
office for a day. The old Marquis and his wife, Clara and
BL VERDUGO 819
llariqnita, and their two brothers knelt a few paces from the
fatal spot. Juanito reached it, guided by the priest. As he
stood at the block the executioner plucked him by the sleeve,
and took him aside, probably to give him certain instructions.
The confessor so placed the victims that they could not wit-
ness the executions, but one and all stood upright and fear-
less, like Spaniards, as they were.
Clara sprang to her brother's side before the others.
"Juanito," she said to him, "be merciful to my lack of
courage. Take me first !"
As she spoke, the footsteps of a man running at full speed
echoed from the walls, and Victor appeared upon the scene.
Clara was kneeling before the block ; her white neck seemed to
appeal to the blade to fall. The officer turned faint, but he
found strength to rush to her side.
"The General grants you your life if you will consent to
marry me," he murmured.
The Spanish girl gave the officer a glance full of proud
disdain.
"Now, Juanito !" she said in her deep-toned voice.
Her head fell at Victor's feet. A shudder ran through the
Marquesa de Leganes, a convulsive tremor that she could not
control, but she gave no other sign of her anguish.
"Is this where I ought to be, dear Juanito? Is it all
right ?" little Manuel asked his brother.
"Oh, Mariquita, you are weeping !" Juanito said when his
sister came.
"Yes," said the girl ; "I am thinking of you, poor Juanito ;
how unhappy you will be when we are gone."
Then the Marquis' tall figure approached. He looked at
the block where his children's blood had been shed, turned to
the mute and motionless crowd, and said in. a loud voice as
he stretched out his hands to Juanito:
"Spaniards ! I give my son a father's blessing. — Now,
Marquis, strike 'without fear;' thou art Vithout reproach.'"
But when his mother came near, leaning on the confessor's
arm — "She fed me from her breast !" Juanito cried, in tones
320 EL VERDUGO
that drew a cry of horror from the crowd. The uproarious
mirth of the officers over their wine died away before that
terrible cry. The Marquesa knew that Juanito's courage was
exhausted; at one bound she sprang to the balustrade, leapt
forth, and was dashed to pieces on the rocks below. A cry
of admiration broke from the spectators. Juanito swooned.
"General," said an officer, half drunk by this time, "Mar-
chand has just been telling me something about this execu-
tion ; I will wager that it was not by your orders "
"Are you forgetting, gentlemen, that in a month's time
five hundred families in France will be in mourning, and that
we are still in Spain?" cried General G . "Do you want
us to leave our bones here?"
But not a man at the table, not even a subaltern, dared to
empty his glass after that speech.
In spite of the respect in which all men hold the Marques
de Legaiies, in spite of the title of El Verdugo (the execu-
tioner) conferred upon him as a patent of nobility by the
King of Spain, the great noble is consumed by a gnawing
grief. He lives a retired life, and seldom appears in public.
The burden of his heroic crime weighs heavily upon him,
and he seems to wait impatiently till the birth of a second son
shall release him, and he may go to join the Shades that never
cease to haunt hinx,
Pabis, October 1830.
FAREWELL
To Prince Friedrich von Schwarzenherg
"Come, Deputy of the Centre, come along! We shall have
to mend our pace if we mean to sit down to dinner when
every one else does, and that's a fact ! Hurry up ! Jump,
Marquis ! That's it ! Well done ! You are bounding over
the furrows just like a stag !"
These words were uttered by a sportsman seated much at
his ease on the outskirts of the Foret de I'lsle-Adam ; he had
just finished a Havana cigar, which he had smoked while
he waited for his companion, who had evidently been straying
about for some time among the forest undergrowth. Four
panting dogs by the speaker's side likewise watched the prog-
ress of the personage for whose benefit the remarks were
made. To make their sarcastic import fuJly clear, it should
be added that the second sportsman was both short and stout ;
his ample girth indicated a truly magisterial corpulence, and
in consequence his progress across the furrows was by no
means easy. He was striding over a vast field of stubble ; the
dried corn-stalks underfoot added not a little to the difficul-
ties of his passage, and to add to his discomforts, the genial
influence of the sun that slanted into his eyes brought great
drops of perspiration into his face. The uppermost thought
in his mind being a strong desire to keep his balance, he
lurched to and fro much lilje a coach jolted over an atrocious
foad.
It was one of those September days of almost tropical
heat that finishes the work of summer and ripens the grapes.
Such heat forebodes a coming storm ; and though as yet there
were wide patches of blue between the dark rain-clouds low
down on the horizon, pale golden masses were rising and
322 FAREWELL
scattering with ominous swiftness from west to east, and
drawing a shadowy veil across the sky The wind was still,
save in the upper regions of the air, so that the weight of the
atmosphere seem^ed to compress the steamy heat of the earth
into the forest glades. The tall forest trees shut out every
breath of air so completely that the little valley across which
the sportsman was making his way was as hot as a furnace ;
the silent forest seemed parched with the fiery heat. Birds
and insects were mute ; the topmost twigs of the trees swayed
with scarcely perceptible motion. Any one who retains some
recollection of the summer of 1819 must surely compassionate
the plight of the hapless supporter of the ministry who toiled
and sweated over the stuhble to rejoin his satirical comrade.
That gentleman, as he smoked his cigar, had arrived, by a
process of calculation based on the altitude of the sun, to the
conclusion that it must be about five o'clock.
"Where the devil are we ?" asked the stout sportsman. He
wiped his brow as he spoke, and propped himself against a
tree in the field opposite his companion, feeling quite unequal
to clearing the broad ditch that lay between them.
"And you ask that question of me!" retorted the other,
laughing from his bed of tall brown grasses on the top of the
hank. He flung the end of his cigar into the ditch, exclaim-
ing, "I swear by . Saint Hubert that no one shall catch me
risking myself again in a country that I don't know with a
magistrate, even if, like you, my dear d'Albon, he happens to
be an old schoolfellow."
*^hy, Philip, have you really forgotten your own lan-
guage? You surely must have left 3'our wits behind you in
Siberia," said the stouter of the two, with a glance half-comic,
half-pathetic at a guide-post distant about a hundred paces
from them.
"I understand," replied the one addressed as Philip. He
snatched up his rifle, suddenly sprang to his feet, made but
one jump of it into the field, and rushed off to the guide-post.
"This way, d'Albon, here you are ! left about !" he shouted,
gesticulating in the direction of the highroad. "To Baillet
FAREWELL 323
and VIsle-Adam!" he went on; "so if we go along here, we
shall be sure to come upon the cross-road to Cassan."
"Quite right, Colonel," said M. d'Albon, putting the cap
with which he had been fanning himself back on his head.
"Then forward! highly respected Councillor," returned
Colonel Philip, whistling to the dogs, that seemed already
to obey him rather than the magistrate their master.
"Are you aware, my lord Marquis, that two leagues yet
remain before us?" inquired the malicious soldier. "That
village down yonder must be Baillet."
"Great heavens !" cried the Marquis d'Albon. "Go on to
Cassan by all means, if you like; but if you do, you will go
alone. I prefer to wait here, storm or no storm; you can
send a horse for me from the chateau. You have been mak-
ing game of me, Sucy. We were to have a nice day's sport by
ourselves; we were not to go very far from Cassan, and go
over ground that I knew. Pooh ! instead of a day's fun,
you have kept me running like a greyhound since four o'clock
this morning, and nothing but a cup or two of milk by way
of breakfast. Oh! if ever you find yourself in a court of
law, I will take care that the day goes against you if you
were in the right a hundred times over."
The dejected sportsman sat himself down on one of the
stumps at the foot of the guide-post, disencumbered himself
of his rifle and empty game-bag, and heaved a prolonged
sigh.
"Oh, France, behold thy Deputies !" laughed Colonel de
Sucy. "Poor old d'Albon ; if you had spent six months at
the other end of Siberia as T did . . ."
He broke off, and his eyes sought the sky, as if the story
of his troubles was a secret between himself and God.
"Come, march !" he added. "If you once sit down, it is all
over with you."
"I can't help it, Philip ! It is such an old habit in a
magistrate ! I am dead beat, upon my honor. If I had only
bagged one hare though !"
Two men more different are seldom seen together. The
324 FAREWELL
civilian, a man of forty-two, seemed scarcely more than
thirty; while the soldier, at thirty years of age, looked to be
forty at the least. Both wore the red rosette that proclaimed
them to be officers of the Legion of Honor. A few locks of
hair, mingled white and black, like a magpie's wing, had
strayed from beneath the Colonel's cap; while thick, fair
curls clustered about the magistrate's temples. The Colonel
was tall, spare, dried up, but muscular; the lines in his pale
face told a tale of vehement passions or of terrible sorrows;
but his comrade's jolly countenance beamed with health, and
would have done credit to an Epicurean. Both men were
deeply sunburnt. Their high gaiters of brown leather car-
ried souvenirs of every ditch and swamp that they, crossed
that day.
"Come, come," cried M. de Sucy, "forward ! One short
hour's march, and we shall be at Cassan with a good dinner
before us."
"You never were in love, that is positive," returned the
Councillor, with a comically piteous expression. "You are as
inexorable as x^rticle 304 of the Penal Code !"
Philip de Sucy shuddered violently. Deep lines appeared
in his broad forehead, his face was overcast like the sky
above them ; but though his features seemed to contract with
the pain of an intolerably bitter meraor}^, no tears came to
his eyes. Like all men of strong character, he possessed the
power of forcing his emotions down into some inner depth,
and, perhaps, like many reserved natures, he shrank from
laying bare a wound too deep for any words of human
speech, and winced at the thought of ridicule from those who
do not care to understand. M. d'Albon was one of those who
are keenly sensitive by nature to the distress of others, whc
feel at once the pain they have unwittingly given by some
blunder. He respected his friend's mood, rose to his feet, for-
got his weariness, and followed in silence, thoroughly an-
noyed with himself for having touched on a wound that
seemed not yet healed.
"Some day I will tell you my story," Philip said at last,
FAREWELI. 325
WTinging his friend's hand, while he acknowledged his dumb
repentance with a heart-rending glance. "To-day I cannot."
They walked on in silence. As the Colonel's distress passed
off the Councillor's fatigue returned. Instinctively, or rather
urged by weariness, his eyes explored the depths of the forest
around them; he looked high and low among the trees, and
gazed along the avenues, hoping to discover some dwelling
where he might ask for hospitality. They reached a place
where several roads met ; and the Councillor, fancying that he
saw a thin film of smoke rising through the trees, made a
stand and looked sharply about him. He caught a glimpse
of the dark green branches of some firs among the other
forest trees, and finally, "A house ! a house !" he shouted.
No sailor could have raised a cry of "Land ahead !" more
joyfully than he.
He plunged at once into undergrowth, somewhat of the
thickest; and the Colonel, who had fallen into deep musings,
followed him unheedingly.
"I would rather have an omelette here and home-made
bread, and a chair to sit down in, than go further for a sofa,
truffles, and Bordeaux wine at Cassan."
This outburst of enthusiasm on the Councillor's part was
caused by the sight of the whitened wall of a house in the
distance, standing out in strong contrast against the brown
masses of knotted tree-trunks in the forest.
"Aha ! This used to be a priory, I should say," the Mar-
quis d'Albon cried once more, as they stood before a grim
old gateway. Through the grating they could see the house
itself standing in the midst of some considerable extent of
park land; from the style of the architecture it appeared to
have been a monastery once upon a time.
"Those knowing rascals of monks knew how to choose a
site !"
This last exclamation was caused by the magistrate's
amazement at the romantic hermitage before his eyes. The
house had been built on a spot half-way up the hillside on
the slope below the village of Nerville, which crowned the
B26 FAREWELL
summit. A huge circle of great oak-trees, Tnindreds of years
old, guarded the solitary place from intrusion. There ap-
peared to be about forty acres of the park. The main build-
ing of the monastery faced the south, and stood in a space of
green meadow, picturesquely intersected by several tiny clear
streams, and by larger sheets of water so di£posed as to have
a natural effect. Shapely trees with contrasting foliage grew
here and there. Grottos had been ingeniously contrived ; and
broad terraced walks, now in ruin, though the steps were
broken and the balustrades eaten through with rust, gave to
this sylvan Thebaid a certain character of its own. The art
of man and the picturesqueness of nature had wrought to-
gether to produce a charming effect. Human passions surely
could not cross that boundary of tall oak-trees which shut
out the sounds of the outer world, and screened the fierce
heat of the sun from this forest sanctuary.
"What neglect !" said M. d'Albon to himself, after the first
sense of delight in the melancholy aspect of the ruins in the
landscape, which seemed blighted by a curse.
It was like some haunted spot, shunned of men. The
twisted ivy stems clambered everywhere, hiding everything
away beneath a luxuriant green mantle. Moss and lichens,
brown and gray, yellow and red, covered the trees with fan-
tastic patches of color, grew upon the benches in the garden,
overran the roof and the walls of the house. The window-
sashes were weather-worn and warped with age, the balconies
were dropping to pieces, the terraces in ruins. Here and there
the folding shutters hung by a single hinge. The crazy doors
would have given way at the first attempt to force an en-
trance.
Out in the orchard the neglected fruit-trees were running
to woox}. the rambling branches bore no fruit save the glisten-
ing mi;;ti-Hoe berries, and tall plants were growing in the
garden walks. All this forlornness shed a charm across the
picture that wrought on the spectator's mind Avith an influ-
ence like that of some enchajiting poem, filling his soul with
dreamy fancies. A poet must have lingered there in deep
FAREWELL 327
and melancholy musings, marveling at the harmony of this
wilderness, where decay had a certain grace of its own.
In a moment a few gleams of sunlight struggled through
a rift in the clouds, and a shower of colored light fell over the
wild garden. The brown tiles of the roof glowed in the
light, the mosses took bright hues, strange shadows played
over the grass beneath the trees; the dead autumn tints grew
vivid, bright unexpected contrasts were evoked by the light,
every leaf stood out sharply in the clear, thin air. Then all
at once the sunlight died away, and the landscape that seemed
to have spoken grew silent and gloomy again, or rather, it
took gray soft tones like the tenderest hues of autumn dusk.
"It is the palace of the Sleeping Beauty,'.' the Councillor
said to himself (he had already begun to look at the place
from the point of view of an owner of property). "Whom
can the place belong to, I wonder. He must be a great fool
not to live on such a charming little estate !"
Just at that moment, a woman sprang out from under
a walnut tree on the right-hand side of the gateway, and
passed before the Councillor as noiselessly and swiftly as the
shadow of a cloud. This apparition struck him dumb with
amazement.
"Hallo, d'Albon, what is the matter?" asked the Colonel.
"I am rubbing my eyes to find out whether I am awake
or asleep," answered the magistrate, whose countenance was
pressed against the grating in the hope of catching a second
glimpse of the ghost.
"In all probability she is under that fig-tree," he went on,
indicating, for Philip's benefit, some branches that over-
topped the wall on the left-hand side of the gateway.
"She? Who?"
"Eh ! how should I know ?" answered M. d'Albon. "A
strange-looking woman sprang up there under my very eyes
just now," he added, in a low voice; "she looked to me more
like a ghost than a living being. She was so slender, light,
and shadowy that she might be transparent. Her face waa
as white as milk, her hair, her eyes, and her dress were black.
328 FAREWELL
She gave me a glance as she flitted by. I am not easily fright-
ened, but that cold stony stare of hers froze the blood in my
veins.''
*^Vas she pretty?" inquired Philip.
"I don't know. I saw nothing but those eyes in her head.*'
"The devil take dinner at Cassan !" exclaimed the Colonel;
"let us stay here. I am as eager as a boy to see the inside
of this queer place. The window-sashes are painted red, do
you see? There is a red line roimd the panels of the doors
and the edges of the shutters. It might be the devil's own
dwelling; perhaps he took it over when the monks went out.
Now, then, let us give chase to the black and white lady;
come along !" cried Philip, with forced gaiety.
He had scarcely finished speaking when the two sportsmen
heard a cry as if some bird had been taken in a snare. They
listened. There was a sound like the murmur of rippling
water, as something forced its way through the bushes; but
diligently as they lent their ears, there was no footfall on the
path, the earth kept the secret of the mysterious woman's
passage, if indeed she had moved from her hiding-place.
"This is very strange V cried Philip.
Following the wall of the path, the two friends reached
before long a forest road leading to the village of Chauvry;
they went along this track in the direction of the highway
to Paris, and reached another large gateway. Through the
railings they had a complete view of the fagade of the mys-
terious house. From this point of view, the dilapidation was
still more apparent. Huge cracks had riven the walls of
the main body of the house built round three sides of a square.
Evidently the place was allowed to fall to ruin; there were
holes in the roof, broken slates and tiles lay about below.
Fallen fruit from the orchard trees was left to rot on the
oTound ; a cow was grazing over the bowling-green and tram-
pling the flowers in the garden beds; a goat browsed on the
green grapes and young vine-shoots on the trellis.
"It is all of a piece," remarked the Colonel. "The neglect
is in a fashion systematic." He laid his hand on the chain
FAREWELL 329
of the bell-pull, but the bell had lost its clapper. The two
friends heard no sound save the peculiar grating creak of
the rusty spring. A little door in the wall beside the gateway,
though ruinous, held good against all their efforts to force it
open.
"Oho ! all this is growing very interesting," Philip said to
his companion.
"If I were not a magistrate," returned M. d'Albon, "I
should think that the woman in black is a witch.
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the cow
came up to the railings and held out her warm damp nose,
as if she were glad of human society. Then a woman, if so
indescribable a being could be called a woman, sprang up
from the bushes, and pulled at the cord about the cow's neck.
From beneath the crimson handkerchief about the woman's
head, fair matted hair escaped, something as tow hangs about
a spindle. She wore no kerchief at the throat. A coarse
black-and-gray striped woolen petticoat, too short by several
inches, left her legs bare. She might have belonged to some
tribe of Eedskins in Fenimore Cooper's novels ; for her neck,
arms, and ankles looked as if they had been painted brick-red.
There was no spark of intelligence in her featureless face;
her pale, bluish eyes looked out dull and expressionless from
beneath the eyebrows with one or two straggling white hairs
on them. Her teeth were prominent and uneven, but wliite
as a dog's.
"Hallo, good woman," called M. de Sucy.
She came slowly up to the railing, and stared at the two
sportsmen with a contorted smile painful to see.
"Where ar^ we ? What is the name of the house yonder ?
Whom does it belong to ? Who are you ? Do you come from
hereabouts ?"
To these questions, and to a host of others poured out in
succession upon her by the two friends, she made no answer
save gurgling sounds in the throat, more like animal sounds
than anything uttered by a human voice.
"Don't you see that she is deaf and dumb?" said M.
d'Albon.
330 FAREWELL
"Minorites!" the peasant woman said at last.
"Ah ! she is right. The house looks as though it might
once have been a Minorite convent," he west on.
Again they plied the peasant woman with questions, but,
like a wayward child, she colored up, fidgeted with her sabot,
twisted the rope by which she held the cow that had fallen
to grazing again, stared at the sportsmen, and scrutinized
every article of clothing upon them; she gibbered, grunted,
and clucked, but no articulate word did she utter.
''Your name?" asked Philip, fixing her with his eyes as if
he were trying to bewitch the woman.
"Genevieve," she answered, with an empty laugh.
"The cow is the most intelligent creature we have seen
so far," exclaimed the magistrate. "I shall fire a shot, that
ought to bring somebody out."
D'Albon had just taken up his rifle when the Colonel put.
out a hand to stop him, and pointed out the mysterious wo-
man who had aroused such lively curiosity in them. She
seemed to be absorbed in deep thought, as she went along
a green alley some little distance away, so slowly that
the friends had time to take a good look at her. She wore
a threadbare black satin gown, her long hair curled thickly
over her forehead, and fell like a shawl about her shoulders
below her waist. Doubtless she was accustomed to the di-
shevel ment of her locks, for she seldom put back the hair on
either side of her brows; but when she did so, she shook her
head with a sudden jerk that had not to be repeated to shalce
away the thick veil from her eyes or forehead. In every-
thing that she did, moreover, there was a wonderful certainty
in the working of the mechanism, an unerring swiftness and
precision, like that of an animal, well-night marvelous in a
woman.
The two sportsmen were amazed to see her spring up into
an apple-tree and cling to a bough lightly as a bird. She
snatched at the fruit, ate it, and dropped to the ground with
the same sup[)le grace that charms us in a squirrel. The elas-
ticity of her limbs took all appearance of awkwardness or
FAREWELL 331
effort from her movements. She played about upon the
grass, rolling in it as a young child might have done; then,
on a sudden, she lay still and stretched out her feet and hands,
with the languid natural grace of a kitten dozing in the sun.
There was a threatening growl of thunder far away, and at
this she started up on all fours and listened, like a dog who
hears a strange footstep. One result of this strange attitude
was to separate her thick black hair into two masses, that
fell away on either side of her face and left her shoulders
bare; the two witnesses of this singular scene wondered at
the whiteness of the skin that shone like a meadow daisy, and
at the neck that indicated the perfection of the rest of her
form.
A wailirg cry broke from her; she rose to her feet, and
stood upright. Every successive movement was made so
lightly, so gracefully, so easily, that she seemed to be no hu-
man being, but one of Ossian's maids of the mist. She went
across the grass to one of the pools of water, deftly shook
off her shoe, and seemed to enjoy dipping her foot, white as
marble, in the spring; doubtless it pleased her to make the
circling ripples, and watch them glitter like gems. She knelt
down by the brink, and played there like a child, dabbling
her long tresses in the water, and flinging them loose again
to see the water drip from the ends, like a string of pearls
in the sunless light.
"She is mad !" cried the Councillor.
A hoarse cry rang through the air; it came from Gene-
vieve, and seemed to be meant for the mysterious woman
She rose to her feet in a moment, flinging back the hair from
her face, and then the Colonel and d'Albon could see her
features distinctly. As soon as she saw the two friends she
bounded to the railings with the swiftness of a fawn.
"Farewell!" she said in low, musical tones, but they could
not discover the least trace of feeling, the least idea in the
sweet sounds that they had awaited impatiently.
M. d'Albon admired the long lashes, the thick, dark eye-
brows, the dazzling fairness of a skin untinged by any trace
332 FAREWELL
of red. Only the delicate blue veins contrasted with that uni-
form Avhiteness.
But when the Marquis turned to communicate his surprise
at the sight of so strange an apparition, he saw the Colonel
stretched on the grass like one dead. M. d'Albon fired his
gun into the air, shouted for help, and tried to raise his
friend. At the sound of the shot, the strange lady, who had
stood motionless by the gate, fled away, crying out like r
wounded wild creature, circling round and round in the
meadow, with every sign of unspeakable terror.
M. d'Albon heard a carriage rolling along the road to
risle-Adam, and waved his handkerchief to implore help.
The carriage immediately came towards the Minorite convent,
and M. d'Albon recognized neighbors, M. and Mme. de
Grandville, who hastened to alight and put their carriage
at his disposal. Colonel de Sucy inhaled the salts which
Mme. de Grandville happened to have with her; he opened
his eyes, looked towards the mysterious figure that still fled
wailing through the meadow, and a faint cry of horror broke
from him; he closed his eyes again, with a dumb gesture of
entreaty to his friends to take him away from this scene. M.
and Mme. de Grandville begged the Councillor to make use
of their carriage, adding very obligingly that they themselves
would walk.
"Who can the lady be?" inquired the magistrate, looking
towards the strange figure.
"People think that she comes from Moulins," answered M.
de Grandville. "She is a Comtesse de Vandieres; she is said
to be mad; but as she has only been here for two months, I
cannot vouch for the truth of all this hearsay talk."
M. d'Albon thanked M. and Mme. de Grandville, and they
set out for Cassan.
"It is she !" cried Philip, coming to himself.
"She? who?" asked d'Albon.
"Stephanie. . . . Ah! dead and yet living still; still
alive, but her mind is gone ! I thought the sight would kill
me."
FAREWELL 333
The prudent magistrate, recognizing the gravity of the
crisis through which his friend was passing, refrained from
asking questions or exciting him further, and grew impatient
of the length of the way to tlie cliateau, for the change
wrought in the Colonel's face alarmed him. He feared lest
the Countess' terrible disease had communicated itself to
Philip's brain. When they reached the avenue at I'lslc-
Adam, d'Albon sent the servant for the local doctor, so that
the Colonel had scarcely been laid in bed before the surgeon
.vas beside him.
"If Monsieur le Colonel had not been fasting, the shock
must have killed him," pronounced the leech. "He was over-
tired, and that saved him," and with a few directions as to
the patient's treatment, he went to prepare a composing
draught himself. M. de Sucy was better the next morn-
ing, but the doctor had insisted ou sitting up all night with
him.
"I confess. Monsieur le Marquis," the surgeon said, "that
I feared for the brain. M. de Sucy has had some very violent
shock ; he is a man of strong passions, but, with his tempera-
ment, the first shock decides everything. He will very likely
be out of danger to-morrow."
The doctor was perfectly right. The next day the patient
was allowed to see liis friend.
"I want you to do something for me, dear d'Albon," Philip
said, grasping his friend's hand. "Hasten at once to the
Minorite convent, find out everything about the lady whom
we saw there^ and come back as soon as you can ; I shall coimt
the minutes till I see you again."
M. d'Albon called for his horse, and galloped over to the
old monastery. When we reached the gateway he found some
one standing there, a tall, spare man with a kindly face, who
answered in the affirmative when he was asked if he lived in
the ruined house. M. d'Albon explained his errand.
'^hy, then, it must have been you, sir, who fired that un-
lucky shot ! You all but killed my poor invalid."
"Eh ! I fired into the air !"
334 FAREWELL
'^If yiyu had actually hit Madame la Comtesse, you would
have done less harm to her."
"Well, well, then, we can neither of us complain, for the
sight of the Countess all but killed my friend, M. de Sucy."
''The Baron de Sucy, is it possible?" cried the doctor,
clasping his hands. "Has he been in Eussia? was he in the
Beresina ?"
"Yes," Einswered d'Albon. "He was taken prisoner by the
Cossacks and sent to Siberia. He has not been back in this
country a twelvemonth."
"Come in, monsieur," said the other, and he led the way to
a drawing-room on the ground-floor. Everything in the
room showed signs of capricious destruction.
Valuable china jars lay in fragments on either side of a
clock beneath a glass shade, which had escaped. The silk
hangings about the windows were torn to rags, while the
muslin curtains were untouched.
"You see about joii the liavoc wrought by a charming being
to whom I have dedicated my life. She is my niece; and
though medical science is powerless in her case, I hope to re-
store her to reason, though the method which I am trying
is, unluckily, only possible to the wealthy."
Then, like all who live much alone and daily bear the
burden of a heavy trouble, he fell to talk with the magis-
trate. This is the story that he told, set in order, and with
the many digressions made by both teller and hearer omitted.
When, at nine o'clock at night, on the 28th of November
1812, Marshal Victor abandoned the heights of Studzianka,
which he had held through the day, he left a thousand men
behind with instructions to protect, till the last possible mo-
ment, the two pontoon bridges over the Beresina that still
held good. This rear guard was to save if possible an appall-
ing number of stragglers, so numbed with the cold, that they
obstinately refused to leave the baggage-wagons. The hero-
ism of the generous band was doomed to fail ; for, unluckily,
the men who poured dowTi to the eastern bank of the Beresina
FAREWELL 335
found carriages, caissons, and all kinds of property which
the Army had been forced to abandon during its passage on
the 27th and 28th days of November. The poor, half-frozen
wretches, sunk almost to the level of brutes, finding such
unhoped-for riches, bivouacked in the deserted space, laid
hands on the military stores, improvised huts out of the
material, lighted fires with anything that would burn, cut
up the carcasses of the horses for food, tore out the linings
of the carriages, wrapped themselves in them, and lay down
to sleep instead of crossing the Beresina in peace under
cover of night — the Beresina that even then had proved, by
an incredible fatality, so disastrous to the Army. Such
apathy on the part of the poor fellows can only be understood
by those who remember tramping across those vast deserts
of snow, with nothing to quench their thirst but snow, snow
for their bed, snow as far as the horizon on every side, and
no food but snow, a little frozen beetroot, horseflesh, or a
handful of meal.
The miserable creatures were dropping down, overcome
by hunger, thirst, weariness, and sleep, when they reached
the shores of the Beresina and found fuel and fire and vict-
uals, countless wagons and tents, a whole improvised town,
in short. The whole village of Studzianka had been removed
piecemeal from the heights to the plain, and the very perils
and miseries of this dangerous and doleful habitation smiled
invitingly to the wayfarers, who beheld no prospect beyond
it but the awful Russian deserts. A huge hospice, in short,
was erected for twenty hours of existence. Only one thought
— the thought of rest — appealed to men weary of life or re-
joicing in unlooked-for comfort.
They lay right in the line of fire from the cannon of the
Russian left; but to that vast mass of human creatures, a
patch upon the snow, sometimes dark, sometimes breaking
into flame, the indefatigable grape-shot was but one discom-
fort the more. For them it was only a storm, and they paid
the less attention to the bolts that fell among them because
there were none to strike down there save dying men, the
336 FAREWELL
wounded, or perhaps the dead. Stragglers came up in little
bands at every moment. These walking corpses instantly
separated, and wandered begging from fire to fire ; and meet-
ing, for the most part, with refusals, banded themselves to-
gether again, and took by force what they could not other-
wise obtain. The}^ were deaf to the voices of their officers
prophesying death on the morrow, and spent the energy re-
quired to cross the swamp in building shelters for the night
and preparing a meal that often proved fatal. The coming
death no longer seemed an* evil, for it gave them an hour of
slumber before it came. Hunger and thirst and cold — these
were evils, but not death.
At last wood and fuel and canvas and shelters failed, and
hideous brawls began between destitute late comers and the
rich already in possession of a lodging. The weaker were
driven away, until a few last fugitives before the Eussian ad-
vance were obliged to make their bed in the snow, and lay
down to rise no more.
Little by little the mass of half-dead humanity became so
dense, so deaf, so torpid, — or perhaps it should be said so
happy — that Marshal Victor, their heroic defender against
twenty thousand Kussians under Wittgenstein, was actually
compelled to cut his way by force through this forest of men,
so as to cross the Beresina with the five thousand heroes whom
he was leading to the Emperor. The miserable creatures
preferred to be trampled and crushed to death rather than
stir from their places, and died without a sound, smiling at
the dead ashes of their fires, forgetful of France.
Not before ten o'clock that night did the Due de Belluno
reach the other side of the river. Before committing his
men to the pontoon bridges that led to Zembin, he left the
rp.te of the rearguard at Studzianka in Eble's hands, and to
fJble the survivors of the calamities of the Beresina owed
their lives.
About midnight, the great General, followed by a courage-
ous officer, came out of his little hut by the bridge, and gazed
at the spectacle of this camp between the bank of the Bere-
FAREWELL 337
sina and the Borizof road to Studzianka. The thunder of
*the Russian, cannonade had ceased. Here and there faces
that had nothing human about them were lighted up by
countless fires that seemed to grow pale in the glare of the
snowfields, and to give no light. Nearly thirty thousand
wretches, belonging to every nation that Napoleon had hurled
upon Eussia, lay there hazarding their lives with the indiffer-
ence of brute beasts.
"^Ye have all these to save," the General said to his sub-
ordinate. "To-morrow morning the Russians will be in
Studzianka. The moment they come up we shall have to set
fire to the bridge ; so pluck up heart, my boy ! Make your
way out and up yonder through them, and tell General Four-
nier that he has barely time to evacuate his post and cut his
way through to the bridge. As soon as you have seen him
set out, follow him down, take some able-bodied men, and set
fire to the tents, wagons, caissons, carriages, anything and
everything, without pity, and drive these fellows on to the
bridge. Compel everything that walks on two legs to take
refuge on the other bank. We must set fire to the camp;
it is our last resource. If Berthier had let me burn those
d d wagons sooner, no lives need have been lost in the
river except my poor pontooners, my fifty heroes, who saved
the Army, and will be forgotten."
The General passed his hand over his forehead and said
no more. He felt that Poland would be his tomb, and fore-
saw that afterwards no voice would be raised to speak for
the noble fellows who had plunged into the stream — into the
waters of the Beresina ! — to drive in the piles for the bridges.
And, indeed, only one of them is living now, or, to be more
accurate, starving, utterly forgotten in a country village !
The brave officer had scarcely gone a hundred paces towards
Studzianka, when General Eble roused some of his patient
pontooners, and began his work of mercy by setting fire to
the camp on the side nearest the bridge, so compelling the
sleepers to rise and cross the Beresina. Meanwhile the young
338 FAREWELL
aide-de-camp, not without difficulty, reached the one wooden
house yet left standing in Studzianka. *
"So the box is pretty full, is it, messmate?" he said to a
man whom he found outside.
''T'ou will be a knowing fellow if you manage to get inside,"
the officer returned, without turning round or stopping his
occupation of hacking at the woodwork of the house with his
sabre.
"Philip, is that you?" cried the aide-de-camp, recognizing
the voice of one of his friends.
"Yes. Aha ! is it you, old fellow ?" returned M. de Sucy,
looking round at the aide-de-camp, who like himself was not
more than twenty-three years old. "I fancied you were on
the other side of this confounded river. Do j^ou come to bring
us sweetmeats for dessert? You will get a warm welcome,"
he added, as he tore away a strip of bark from the wood and
gave it to his horse by way of fodder.
"I am looking for your commandant. General Eble has
sent me to tell him to file off to Zembin. You have only just
time to cut your way through that mass of dead men ; as soon
as you get through, I am going to set fire to the place to
make them move "
"You almost make me feel warm ! Your news has put me
in a fever; I have two friends to bring through. Ah ! but for
those marmots, I should have been dead before now, old
fellow. On their account I am taking care of my horse in-
stead of eating him. But have you a crust about you, for
pity's sake? It is thirty hours since I have stowed any vict-
uals. I have been fighting like a madman to keep up a little
warmth in my body and what courage I have left."
"Poor Philip ! I have nothing — not a scrap ! — But is your
General in there ?"
"Don't attempt to go in. The bam is full of our wounded.
Go up a bit higher, and you will see a sort of pig-sty to the
right — that is where the General is. Good-bye, my dear fel-
low. If ever we meet again in a quadrille in a ballroom in
Paris "
FAREWELL 339
He did not finish the sentence, for the treachery of the
northeast wind that whistled about them froze Major PhiHp's
lips, and the aide-de-camp kept moving for fear of being
frost-bitten. Silence soon prevailed, scarcely broken by the
groans of the wounded in the bam, or the stifled sounds made
by M. de Sucy's horse crunching the frozen bark with fam-
ished eagerness. Philip thrust his sabre into the sheath,
caught at the bridle of the precious animal that he had man-
aged to keep for so long, and drew her away from the mis-
erable fodder that she was bolting with apparent relish.
"Come along, Bichette ! come along ! It lies with you now,
my beauty, to save Stephanie's life. There, wait a little
longer, and they will let us lie down and die, no doubt ;" and
Philip, wrapped in a pelisse, to which doubtless he owed his
life and energies, began to run, stamping his feet on the
frozen snow to keep them warm. He was scarce five hundred
paces away before he saw a great fire blazing on the spot
where he had left his carriage that morning with an old sol-
dier to guard it. A dreadful misgiving seized upon him.
Many a man under the infiuence of a powerful feeling during
the Eetreat summoned up energy for his friend's sake when
he would not have exerted himself to save his own life ; so it
was with Philip. He soon neared a hollow, where he had left
a carriage sheltered from the cannonade, a carriage that held
a young woman, his playmate in childhood, dearer to him
than any one else on earth.
Some thirty stragglers were sitting round a tremendous
blaze, which they kept up with logs of wood, planks wrenched
from the floors of the caissons, and wheels, and panels from
carriage bodies. These had been, doubtless, among the last
to Join the sea of fires, huts, and hum.an faces that filled the
great furrow in the land between Studzianka and the fatal
river, a restless living sea of almost imperceptibly moving
figures, that sent up a smothered hum of sound blended with
frightful shrieks. It seemed that hunger and despair had
driven these forlorn creatures to t-ike forcible possession of
the carriage, for the old General and his young wife, whom
340 FAREWELL
they had found warmly wrapped in pelisses and traveling
cloaks, were now crouching on the earth beside the fire, and
one of the carriage doors was broken.
As soon as the group of stragglers round the fire heard the
footfall of the Major's horse, a frenzied yell of hunger went
up from them. "A horse !" they cried. "A horse \"
All the voices went up as one voice.
"Back ! back ! Look out !" shouted two or three of them,
leveling their muskets at the animal.
"I will pitch you neck and crop into your fire, you black-
guards !" cried Philip, springing in front of the mare.
"There are dead horses lying up yonder; go and look for
them !"
*^hat a rum customer the officer is ! — Once, twice, will
you get out of the way?" returned a giant grenadier. 'TTou
won't ? All right then, just as you please."
A woman's shriek rang out above the report. Luckily, none
of the bullets hit Philip; but poor Bichette lay in the
agony of death. Three of the men came up and put an end
to her with thrusts of the bayonet,
"Cannibals ! leave me the rug and my pistols," cried Philip
in desperation.
"Oh ! the pistols if you like ; but as for the rug, there is a
fellow yonder who has had nothing to wet his whistle these
two days, and is shivering in his coat of cobwebs, and that's
our General."
Philip looked up and saw a man with worn-out shoes and
a dozen rents in his trousers ; the only covering for his head
was a ragged foraging cap, white with rime. He said ho
more after that, but snatched up his pistols.
Five of the men dragged the mare to the fire, and began to
cut up the carcass as dexterously as any journeymen
butchers in Paris. The scraps of meat were distributed
and flung upon the coals, and the whole process was magic-
ally swift. Philip went over to the woman who had given
the cry of terror when she recognized his danger, and sat
down by her side. She sat motionless upon a cushion taken
FAREWELL. 841
from the carriage, warming herself at the blaze; she said
no word, and gazed at him without a smile. He saw beside
her the soldier whom he had left mounting guard over the
carriage; the poor fellow had been wounded; he had been
overpowered by numbers, and forced to surrender to the
stragglers who had set upon him, and, like a dog who defends
his master's dinner till the last m.oment, he had taken his
share of the spoil, and had made a sort of cloak for himself
out of a sheet. At that particular moment he was busy toast-
ing a piece of horseflesh, and in his face the major saw a
gleeful anticipation of the coming feast.
The Comte de Vandieres, who seemed to have grown quite
childish in the last few days, sat on a cushion close to his wife,
and stared into the fire. He was only just beginning to shake
off his torpor under the influence of the warmth. He had
been no more affected by Philip's arrival and danger than by
the fight and subsequent pillaging of his traveling carriage.
At first Sucy caught the young Countess' hand in his, try-
ing to express his affection for her, and the pain that it gave
him to see her reduced like this to the last extremity of
misery; but he said nothing as he sat by her side on the
thawing heap of snow, he gave himself up to the pleasure
of the sensation of warmth, forgetful of danger, forgetful
of all things else in the world. In spite of himself his face
expanded with an almost fatuous expression of satisfaction,
and he waited impatiently till the scrap of horseflesh that
had fallen to his soldier's share should be cooked. The smell
of the charred flesh stimulated his hunger. Hunger clamored
within him and silenced his heart, his courage, and his love.
He coolly looked round on the results of the spoliation of his
carriage. Not a man seated round the fire but had shared
the booty, the rugs, cushions, pelisses, dresses, — articles of
clothing that belonged to the Count and Countess or to him-
self. Philip turned to see if anything worth taking was left
in the berline. He saw by the light of the flames, gold,
and diamonds, and silver lying scattered about; no one had
cared to appropriate the least yiivriiV'lp. There was something
342 FAREWELL
hideous in the silence among those human creatures round
the fire; none of them spoke, none of them stirred, save to
do such things as each considered necessary for his own com-
fort.
It was a grotesque misery. The men's faces were warped
and disfigured with the cold, and plastered over with a layer
of mud; you could see the thickness of the mask by the
channel traced down their cheeks by the tears that ran from
their eyes, and their long slovenly-kept beards added to tht
hideousness of their appearance. Some were wrapped round
in women's shawls, others in horse-cloths, dirty blankets,
rags stiffened with melting hoar-frost ; here and there a man
wore a boot on one foot and a shoe on the other, in fact,
there was not one of them but wore some ludicrously odd cos-
tume. But the men themselves with such matter for jest
about them were gloomy and taciturn.
The silence was unbroken save by the crackling of the
wood, the roaring of the flames, the far-off hum of the camp,
and the sound of sabres hacking at the carcass of the mare.
Some of the hungriest of the men were still cutting tid-bits
for themselves. A few miserable creatures, more weary than
the others, slept outright; and if they happened to roll into
the fire, no one pulled them back. With cut-and-dried logic
their fellows argued that if they were not dead, a scorching
ought to be sufficient warning to quit and seek out more
comfortable quarters. If the poor wretch woke to find him-
self on fire, he was burned to death, and robody pitied him.
Here and there the men exchanged glances, as if to excuse
their indifference by the carelessness of the rest; the thing
happened twice under the young Countess' eyes, and she ut-
tered no sound. When all the scraps of horseflesh had been
broiled upon the coals, they were devoured with a ravenous
greediness that would have been disgusting in wild beasts.
"And now we have seen thirty infantrymen on one horse
for the first time in our lives !" cried the grenadier who had
Bhot the mare, tbe one soli hay Joke that sustained the
Frenchmen's reputation for writ.
FAREWELL 343
Before lonj^ tlie poor fellows hiirlrllcd themselves up in
their clothes, and lay down on planks of timber, on anything
but the bare snow, and slept — heedless of the morrow. Major
de Sncy having warmed himself and satisfied his hunger,
fought in vain against the drowsiness that weighed upon his
syes. During this brief struggle he gazed at the sleeping
girl who had turned her face to the fire, so that he could
see her closed eyelids and part of her forehead. She was
wrapped round in a furred pelisse and a coarse horseman's
cloak, her head lay on a blood-stained cushion ; a tall
astrakhan cap tied over her head by a handkerchief knotted
under the chin protected her face as much as possible from
the cold, and she had tucked up her feet in the cloak. As
she lay curled up in this fashion, she bore no likeness to any
creature.
Was this the lowest of camp-followers? Was this the
charming woman, the pride of her lover's heart, the queen
of many a Parisian ballroom? Alas! even for the eyes of
this most devoted friend, there was no discernible trace of
womanhood in that bundle of rags and linen, and the cold
was mightier than the love in a woman's heart.
Then for the major the husband and wife came to be like
two distant dots seen through the thick veil that the most
irresistible kind of slumber spread over his eyes. It all
seemed to be part of a dream — the leaping flames, the re-
cumbent figures, the awful cold that lay in wait for them thre^
paces away from the warmth of the fire that glowed for a
little while. One thought that could not be stifled haunted
Philip^ — "If I go to sleep, we shall all die; I will not sleep,"
he said to himself.
Ho slept. After an hour's slumber M. de Sucy was
awakened by a hideous uproar and the sound of an explosion.
The remembrance of his duty, of the danger of his beloved,
rushed upon his mind with a sudden shock. He uttered a
cry like the growl of a wild beast. He and his servant stood
upright above the rest. They saw a sea of fire in the dark-
ness, and against it moving masses of human figures. Flames
344- FAREWELL
were devouring the hnts and tents. Despairing shrieks an'\
yelling cries reached their ears; they saw thousands upon
thousands of wild and desperate faces; and through this in-
ferno a column of soldiers was cutting its way to the bridge,
between two hedges of dead bodies.
"Our rearguard is in full retreat/' cried the major. "There
is no hope left !"
"I have spared your traveling carriage, Philip," said a
friendly voice.
Sucy turned and saw the young aide-de-camp by the light
of the flames.
"Oh, it is all over with us," he answered. "They have
eaten my horse. And how am I to make this sleepy general
and his wife stir a step?"
"Take a brand, Philip, and threaten them."
"Threaten the' Countess ? . . ."
"Good-bye," cried the aide-de-camp ; "I have only just time
to get across that unlucky river, and go I must, there is my
mother in France ! . . . What a night ! This herd of
wretches would rather lie here in the snow, and most of them
would sooner be burned alive than get up. . . . It is
four o'clock, Philip ! In two hours the Russians will begin
to move, and you will see the Beresina covered with corpses
a second time, I can tell you. You haven't a horse, and you
cannot carry the Countess, so come along with me," he went
on, taking his friend by the arm.
"My dear fellow, how am I to leave Stephanie ?"
Major de Sucy grasped the Countess, set her on her feet,
and shook her roughly; he was in despair. He compelled
her to wake, and she stared at him with dull fixed eyes.
"Stephanie, we must go, or we shall die here !"
For all answer, the Countess tried to sink down again anr^
sleep on the on rib. The aide-de-camp snatched a brand from
the fire and shook it in her face.
"We must save her in spite of herself," cried Philip, and
he carried her in his arms to the carriage. He came back to
entreat his friend to help him, and the two young men took
FAREWELL 345
the old general and put him beside his wife, without knowing
whether he were alive or dead. The major rolled the men
over as they crouched on the earth, took away the plundered
clothing, and heaped it upon the husband and wife, then
he fiuug some of the broiled fragments of horseflesh into
a comer of the carriage.
"Now, what do you mean to do ?" asked the aide-de-camp,
"Drag them along!" answered Sucy.
"You are mad !"
"You are right!" exclaimed Philip, folding his arms on
his breast.
Suddenly a desperate plan occurred to him.
"Look you here !" he said, grasping his sentinel by the
unwounded arm, "I leave her in your care for one hour.
Bear in mind that you must die sooner than let any one, no
matter whom, come near the carriage !"
The major seized a handful of the lady's diamonds, drew
his sabre, and violently battered those who seemed to him to
be the bravest among the sleepers. By this means he suc-
ceeded in rousing the gigantic grenadier and a couple of
men whose rank and regiment were undiscoverable.
"It is all up with us !" he cried.
"Of course it is," returned the grenadier; "but that is all
one to me."
"Very well then, if die you must, isn't it better to sell your
life for a pretty woman, and stand a chance of going back to
France again?"
"I would rather go to sleep," said one of the men, drop-
ping down into the snow ; "and if you worry me again, major,
I shall stick my toasting-iron into your belly !"
"What is it all about, sir?" asked the grenadier. "The
man's drunk. He is a Parisian, and likes to lie in the lap of
luxury."
"You shall have these, good fellow," said the major, hold-
ing out a riviere of diamonds, "if you Mall follow me and
fight like a madman. The Eussians are not ten minutes
346 FAREWELL
away ; they have horses ; we will inarch up to the liearest bat-
tery and carry off two stout ones."
*'How about the sentinels, major?"
"One of us three " he began; then he turned from the
soldier and looked at the aide-de-camp. — "You are coming,
aren't you, Hippolyte?"
Hippolyte nodded assent.
"One of us," the major went on, "will look after the
sentry. Besides, perhaps those blessed Eussians are also fast
asleep."
"All right, major ; you are a good sort ! But will you take
me in your carriage?" asked the grenadier.
'TTes, if you don't leave your bones up yonder.-^If I come
to grief, promise me, you two, that you will do everything
in your power to save the Countess."
"All right," said the grenadier.
They set out for the Eussian lines, taking the direction
of the batteries that had so cruelly raked the mass of miser-
able creatures huddled together by the river bank. A few
minutes later the hoofs of two galloping horses rang on the
frozen snow, and the awakened battery fired a volley that
passed over the heads of the sleepers; the hoof -beats
rattled so fast on the iron ground that they sounded like the
hammering in a smithy. The generous aide-de-camp had
fallen; the stalwart grenadier had come off safe and sound;
and Pliilip himself had received a bayonet thrust in the
shoulder while defending his friend. Notwithstanding his
wound, he clung to his horse's mane, and gripped him with
his knees so tightly that the animal was held as in a vise.
"God be praised !" cried the major, when he saw his sol-
dier still on the spot, and the carriage standing where he had
left it.
"If you do the right thing by me, sir, you will get me the
cross for this. We have treated them to a sword dance to a
pretty tune from the rifle, eh ?"
"We have done nothing yet! Let us put the horses in.
Take hold of these cords."
FAREWELL 347
"They are not long enough."
"All right, grenadier, just go and overhaul those fellows
sleeping there ; take their shawls, sheets, anything "
"I say 1 the rascal is dead," cried the grenadier, as he plun-
dered the first man who came to hand. "Why, they are all
dead ! how queer !"
"All of them?"
"Yes, every one. It looks as though horseflesh a la neige
was indigestible."
Philip shuddered at the words. The night had grown twice
as cold as before.
"Great heaven! to lose her when I have saved her life a
score of times already."
He shook the Countess, "Stephanie ! Stephanie 1" he
cried.
She opened her eyes.
"We are saved, madame !"
"Saved !" she echoed, and fell back again.
The horses were harnessed after a fashion at last. The
major held his sabre in his unwounded hand, took the reins
in the other, saw to his pistols, and sprang on one of the
horses, while the grenadier mounted the other. The old
sentinel had been pushed into the carriage, and lay across
the knees of the general and the Countess; his feet were
frozen. Urged on by blows from the flat of the sabre, the
horses dragged the carriage at a mad gallop down to the
plain, where endless diiflculties awaited them. Before long
it became almost impossible to advance without crushing
sleeping men, women, and even children at every step, all
of whom declined to stir when the grenadier awakened them.
In vain M. de Sucy looked for the track that the rearguard
had cut through this dense crowd of human beings; there
was no more sign of their passage than of the wake of a ship
in the sea. The horses could only move at a foot-pace, and
were stopped most frequently by soldiers, who threatened to
kill them.
"Do you mean to get there ?" asked the grenadier.
348 FAREWELL
"Yes, if it costs every drop of blood in my body ! if it (Josts
the whole world !" the major answered.
"Forward, then! . . . Yon can't have the omelette
without breaking eggs." And the grenadier of the Garde
urged on the horses over the prostrate bodies, and upset
the bivouacs ; the blood-stained wheels ploughing that field of
faces left a double furrow of dead. But in justice it should
be said that he never ceased to thunder out his warning cry,
"Carrion ! look out !"
"Poor wretches !" exclaimed the major.
"Bah! That way, or the cold, or the cannon!" said the
grenadier, goading on the horses with the point of his
sword.
Then came the catastrophe, which must have happened
sooner but for miraculous good fortune; the carriage was
overturned, and all further progress was stopped at once.
"I expected as much !" exclaimed the imperturbable grena-
dier. "Oho ! he is dead I'' he added, looking at his comrade.
"Poor Laurent 1" said the major.
"Laurent ! Wasn't he in the Fifth Chasseurs ?"
'^es."
"My own cousin. — Pshaw ! this beastly life is not so pleas-
ant that one need be sorry for him as things go."
But all this time the carriage lay overturned, and the
horses were only released after great and irreparable loss of
time. The shock had been so violent that the Countess had
been awakened by it, and the subsequent commotion aroused
her from her stupor. She shook off the rugs and rose.
"Where are we, Philip?" she asked in musical tones, as
she looked about her.
"About five hundred paces from the bridge. We are just
about to cross the Beresina. When we are on the other side,
Stephanie, I will not tease you any more; I will let you go
to sleep; we shall be in safety, we can go on to Wilna in peace.
God grant that yon may never know what your life has cost I"
"You arc wounded !"
"A mere trifle."
FAREWELL 341)
The hour of doom had come. The Russian cannon an-
nounced the day. The Eussians were in possession of Stud-
zianka, and thence were raking the plain with grapeshot ; and
by the first dim light of the dawn the major saw two columns
moving and forming above on the heights. Then a cr}' of
horror went up from the crowd, and in a moment every one
sprang to his feet. Each instinctively felt his danger, and
all made a rush for the bridge, surging towards it like a
wave.
Then the Russians came down upon them, swift as a con-
flagration. Men, women, children, and horses all crowded
towards the river. Luckily for the major and the Countess,
they were still at some distance from the banlc. General
Eble had just set fire to the bridge on the other side; but
in spite of all the warnings given to those who rushed to-
wards the chance of salvation, not one among them could or
would draw back. The overladen bridge gave way, and not
only so, the impetus of the frantic living wave towards that
fatal bank was such that a dense crowd of human beings was
thrust into the water as if by an avalanche. The sound of
a single human cry could not be distinguished; there was a
dull crash as if an enormous stone had fallen into the water
— and the Beresina was covered with corpses.
The violent recoil of those in front, striving to escape
this death, brought them into hideous collision with those
behind them, who were pressing towards the bank, and many
were suffocated and crushed. The Comte and Comtesse de
Vandieres owed their lives to the carriage. The horses that
had trampled and crushed so many dying men were crushed
and trampled to death in their turn by the human maelstrom
which eddied from the bank. Sheer physical strength saved
the major and the grenadier. They killed others in self-de-
fence. That wild sea of human faces and living bodies,
surging to and fro as by one impulse, left the bank of the
Beresina clear for a few moments. The multitude had hurled
themselves back on the plain. Some few men sprang down
from the banks toward the river, noi: f^ much with any hope
350 FAREWELL
of reaching the opposite shore, which for them meant France,
as from dread of the wastes of Siberia. For some bold spirits
despair became a panoply. An officer leaped from hummock
to hummock of ice, and reached the other shore; one of the
soldiers scrambled over miraculously on the piles of dead
bodies and drift ice. But the immense multitude left behind
saw at last that the Russians would not slaughter twenty
thousand unarmed men, too numb with the cold to attempt
to resist them, and each awaited his fate with dreadful
apathy. By this time the major and his grenadier, the old
general and his wife, were left to themselves not very far
from the place where the bridge had been. All four stood
dry-eyed and silent among the heaps of dead. A few able-
bodied men and one or two officers, who had recovered all
their energy at this crisis, gathered about them. The group
was sufficiently large; there were about fifty men all told.
A couple of hundred paces from them stood the wreck of the
artillery bridge, which had broken down the day before; the
major saw this, and "Let us make a raft !" be cried.
The words were scarcely out of his mouth before the whole
group hurried to the ruins of the bridge. A crowd of men
began to pick up iron clamps and to hunt for planks and
ropes — for all the materials for a raft, in short. A score of
armed men and officers, under command of the major, stood
on guard to protect the workers from any desperate attempt
on the part of the multitude if they should guess their de-
sign. The longing for freedom, which inspires prisoners to
accomplish impossibilities, cannot be compared with the hope
which lent energy at that moment to these forlorn French-
men.
"The Russians are upon us ! Here are the Russians !" the
guard shouted to the workers.
The timbers creaked, the raft grew larger, stronger, ann
more substantial. Generals, colonels, and common soldiers
all alike bent beneath the weight of wagon-wheels, chains,
coils of rope, and planks of timber; it was a modern rea]iz;a-
tion of the building of Noah's ark. The young Countess, sit
FAREWELL 351
ting by her husband's side, looked on, regretful that she could
do nothing to aid the workers, though she helped to knot the
lengths of rope together.
At last the raft was finished. Forty men launched it out
into the river, while ten of the soldiers held the ropes that
must keep it moored to the shore. The moment that they
saw their handiwork floating on the Beresina, they sprang
down onto it from the bank with callous selfishness. The
major, dreading the frenzy of the first rush, held back
Stephanie and the general; but a shudder ran through him
w^hen he saw the landing place black with people, and men
crowding down like playgoers into the pit of a theatre.
"It was I who thought of the raft, you savages !" he cried.
"I have saved your lives, and you will not make room for
me!"
A confused murmur was the only answer. The men at
the edge took up stout poles, thrust them against the bank
with all their might, so as to shove the raft out and gain
an impetus at its starting upon a journey across a sea of
floating ice and dead bodies towards the other shore.
"Tonnerre de Dieu! I will knock some of you off into
the water if you don't make room for the major and his two
companions," shouted the grenadier. He raised his sabre
threateningly, delayed the departure, and made the men
stand closer together, in spite of threatening yells.
"I shall fall in ! ... I shall go overboard ! . . ." his
fellows shouted.
"Let us start ! Put off !"
The major gazed with tearless eyes at the woman he loved :
an impulse of sublime resignation raised her eyes to heaven.
"To die with you F' she said.
In the situation of the folk upon the raft there was a cer-
tain comic element. They might utter hideous yells, but
not one of them dared to oppose the grenadier, for they were
packed together so tightly that if one man were knocked
down, the whole raft might capsize. At this delicate crisis,
a captain tried to rid himself of one of his neighbors; the
352 FAREWELL
man saw the hostile intention of his officer, collared him,
and pitched him overboard. "Aha ! The duck has a mind to
drink. . . . Over with you ! — There is room for two
now !" he shouted. "Quick, major ! throw your little woman
over, and come ! Never mind that old dotard ! he will drop
off to-morrow !"
"Be quick !" cried a voice, made up of a hundred voices.
"Come, major ! Those fellows are making a fuss, and well
they may !"
The Comte de Vandieres Hung off his ragged blankets, and
stood before them in his general's uniform.
"Let us save the Count," said Philip.
Stephanie grasped his hand tightly in hers, flung her arms
about, and clasped him close in an agonized embrace.
"Farewell!" she said.
Then each knew the other's thoughts. The Comte de Van-
dieres recovered his energies and presence of mind sufficiently
to jump on to the raft, whither Stephanie followed him after
one last look at Philip.
"Major, won't you take my ph^ce? I do not care a straw
for life ; I have neither wife, nor child, nor mother belonging
to me "
"I give them into your charge," cried the major, indicating
the Count and his wife.
"Be easy ; I will take as much care of them as of the apple
of my eye."
Philip stood stock-still on the bank. The raft sped so vio-
lently towards the opposite shore that it ran aground with a
violent shock to all on board. The Count, standing on the
very edge, was shaken into the stream ; and as he fell, a mass
of ice swept by and struck off his head, and sent it flying like
a ball.
"Iley! major!" shouted the grenadier.
"Farewell !" a woman's voice called aloud.
An icy shiver of dread ran through Philip de Suey, and
he dropped down where he stood, overcome with cold and
sorrow and weariness.
FAREWELL 353
"My poor niece went out of her mind," the doctor added
after a brief pause. "Ah! monsieur," he went on, grasping
M. d'Albon's hand, "what a fearful life for the poor little
thing, so 3'oung, so delicate ! An unheard-of misfortune sep-
arated her from that grenadier of the Garde (Fleuriot by
name), and for two years she was dragged on after the army,
the laughing-stock of a rabble of outcasts. She went barefoot,
I heard, ill-clad, neglected, and starved for months at a time ;
sometimes confined in a hospital, sometimes living like a
hunted animal. God alone knows all the misery which she
endured, and yet she lives. She was shut up in a madhouse
in a little German town, while her relations, believing her
to be dead, were dividing her property here in France.
"In 1816 the grenadier Fleuriot recognized her in an inn
in Strasbourg. She had just managed to escape from cap-
tivity. Some peasants told him that the Countess had lived
for a whole month in a forest, and how that they had tracked
her and tried to catch her without success.
"I was at that time not many leagues from Strasbourg;
and hearing the talk about this girl in the wood, I wished
to verify the strange facts that had given rise to absurd
stories. What was my feeling when I beheld the Countess?
Fleuriot told me all that he knew of the piteous story. I
took the poor fellow with my niece into Auvergne, and there
I had the misfortune to lose him. He had some ascendency
over Mme. de Vandieres. He alone succeeded in persuading
her to wear clothes ; and in those days her one word of human
speech — Fareivell — she seldom uttered. Fleuriot set himself
to the task of awakening certain associations; but there he
failed completely; he drew that one sorrowful word from her
a little more frequently, that was all. But the old grenadier
could amuse her, and devoted himself to playing with her,
and through him I hoped; but " here Stephanie's uncle
broke off. After a moment he went on again.
"Here she has found another creature with whom she seems
to have an understanding — an idiot peasant girl, who once,
in spite of her plainness and imbecility, fell in love with a
354 FAREWELL
mason. The mason thought of marrying her because she
had a little bit of land, and for a whole year poor Genevieve
was the happiest of living creatures. She dressed in her best,
and danced on Sundays with Dallot; she understood love;
there was room for love in her heart and brain. But Dallot
thought better of it. He found another girl who had all her
senses and rather more land than Genevieve, and he forsook
Genevieve for her. Then the poor thing lost the little in-
telligence that love had developed in her ; she can do nothing
now but cut grass and look after the cattle. My niece and
the poor girl are in some sort bound to each other by the
invisible chain of their common destiny, and by their mad-
ness due to the same cause. Just come here a moment ; look !"
and Stephanie's uncle led the Marquis d'Albon to the window.
There, in fact, the magistrate beheld the pretty Countess
sitting on the ground at Genevieve's knee, while the peasant
girl was wholly absorbed in combing out Stephanie's long,
black hair with a huge comb. The Countess enbmitted her-
self to tliis, uttering low smothered cries that expressed her
enjoyment of the sensation of physical comfort. A shudder
ran through M. d'Albon as he saw her attitude of languid
abandonment, the animal supineness that revealed an utter
lack' of intelligence.
"Oh ! Philip, Philip !" he cried, "past troubles are as noth-
ing. Is it quite hopeless ?" he asked.
The doctor raised liis eyes to heaven.
"Good-bye, monsieur," said M. d'Albon, pressing the old
man's hand. "My friend is expecting me; you will see him
here before long."
"Then it is Stephanie herself?" cried Sucy when the Mar-
quis had spoken the first few words. "Ah ! until now I did
not feel sure !" he added. Tears filled the dark eyes that were
wont to wear a stern expression.
"Yes; she is the Comtesse de Vandieres," his friend re-
plied.
The colonel started up, and hurriedly began to dress.
FAREWELL 355
'^hy, Philip !" cried the horrified magistrate. "Are you
going mad?"
"I am quite well now," said the colonel simply. "This
news has soothed all my bitterest grief; what pain could hurt
me while I think of Stephanie? I am going over to the
Minorite convent, to see her and speak to her, to restore her
to health again. She is free; ah, surely, surely, happiness
will smile on us, or there is no Providence above. How can
you think that she could hear my voice, poor Stephanie, and
not recover her reason?"
"She has seen you once already, and she did not recognize
you," the magistrate answered gently, trying to suggest some
wholesome fears to this friend, whose hopes were visibly too
high.
The colonel shuddered, but he began to smile again, with
a slight involuntary gesture of incredulity. Nobody ventured
to oppose his plans, and a few hours later he had taken up
his abode in the old priory, to be near the doctor and the
Comtesse de Vandieres.
"Where is she?" he cried at once.
"Hush !" answered M. Fanjat, Stephanie's uncle. "She
is sleeping. Stay ; here she is."
Philip saw the poor distraught sleeper crouching on a stone
bench in the sun. Her thick hair, straggling over her face,
screened it from the glare and heat; her arms dropped lan-
guidly to the earth; she lay at ease as gracefully as a fawn,
her feet tucked up beneath her; her bosom rose and fell with
her even breathing ; there was the same transparent whiteness
as of porcelain in her skin and complexion that we so often
admire in children's faces. Genevieve sat there motionless,
holding a spray that Stephanie doubtless had brought down
from the top of one of the tallest poplars; the idiot girl was
waving the green branch above her, driving away the flies
from her sleeping companion, and gently fanning her.
She stared at M. Fanjat and the colonel as they came up ;
then, like a dumb animal that recognizes its master, she
slowly turned her face towards the countess, and watched over
356 FAREWELL
her as before, showing not the slightest sign of intelligence
or of astonishment. The air was scorching. The glittering
particles of the stone bench shone like sparks of fire; the
meadow sent up the quivering vapors that hover above the
grass and gleam like golden dust when they catch the light,
but Genevieve did not seem to feel the raging heat.
The colonel wrung M. Fanjat's hands ; the tears that gath-
ered in the soldier's eyes stole down his cheeks, and fell on the
grass at Stephanie's feet.
"Sir," said her uncle, "for these two years my heart has
been broken daily. Before very long you will be as I am ; it
you do not weep, you will not feel your anguish the less."
"You have taken care of her !" said the colonel, and jeal-
ousy no less than gratitude could be read in his eyes.
The two men understood one another. They grasped each
other by the hand again, and stood motionless, gazing in
admiration at the serenity that slumber had brought into
the lovely face before them. Stephanie heaved a sigh from
time to time, and this sigh, that had all the appearance of
sensibility, made the unhappy colonel tremble with gladness.
"Alas !" M. Fanjat said gently, "do not deceive yourself,
monsieur; as you see her now, she is in full possession of
such reason as she has."
Those who have sat for whole hours absorbed in the delight
of watching over the slumber of some tenderly-beloved one,
whose waking eyes will smile for them, will doubtless under-
stand the bliss and anguish that shook the colonel. For him
this slumber was an illusion, the waking must be a kind of
death, the most dreadful of all deaths.
Suddenly a kid frisked in two or three bounds towards the
bench, and snuifed at Stephanie. The sound awakened her;
sbe sprang lightly to her feet without scaring away the capri-
cious creature ; but as soon as she saw Philip she fled, followed
by her four-footed playmate, to a thicket of elder-trees ; then
.she uttered a little cry like the note of a startled wild bird,
the same sound that the colonel had hoard once before near
the grating, when the Countess appeared to M. d'Albon for
FAREWELL. 357
the first time. At length she climbed into a laburnnm-tree,
ensconced herself in the feather}' greenery, and peered out
at the strange man with as much interest as the most inquisi-
tive nightingale in the forest.
"Farewell, farewell, farewell," she said, but the soul sent
no trace of expression of feeling through the words, spoken
with the careless intonation of a bird's notes.
"She does not know me !" the colonel exclaimed in despair.
"Stephanie ! Here is Philip, your Philip ! . . . Philip !"
and the poor soldier went towards the labumum-tree ; but
when he stood three paces away, the Countess eyed him
almost defiantly, though there was timidity in her eyes ; then
at a bound she sprang from the laburnum to an acacia, and
thence to a spruce-fir, swinging from bough to bough with
marvelous dexterity.
"Do not follow her," said M. Fanjat, addressing the colo-
nel. "You would arouse a feeling of aversion in her which
might become insurmountable; I will help you to make her
acquaintance and to tame her. Sit down on the bench. If
you pay no heed whatever to her, poor child, it will not be
long before you will see her come nearer by degrees to look
at you."
"That she should not know me; that she should fly from
me !" the colonel repeated, sitting down on a rustic bench
and leaning his back against a tree that overshadowed it.
He bowed his head. The doctor remained silent. Before
very long the Countess stole softly down from her high refuge
in the spruce-fir, flitting like a will-o'-the-wisp; for as the
wind stirred the boughs, she lent herself at times to the
swaying movements of the trees. At each branch she stopped
and peered at the stranger; but as she saw him sitting mo-
tionless, she at length jumped down to the grass, stood a
while, and came slowly across the meadow. When she took
up her position by a tree about ten paces from the bench,
M. Fanjat spoke to the colonel in a low voice.
"Feel in my pocket for some lumps of sugar," he said, "and
let her see them, she will come; I willingly give up to you
358 FAREWELL
the pleasure of giving her sweetmeats. She is passionately
fond of sugar, and by that means you will accustom her to
come to you and to know you."
"She never cared for sweet things when she was a woman,"
Philip answered sadly.
When he held out the lump of sugar between his thumb
and finger, and shook it, Stephanie uttered the wild note
again, and sprang quickly towards him; then she stopped
short, there was a conflict between longing for the sweet
morsel and instinctive fear of him; she looked at the sugar,
turned her head away, and looked again like an unfortunate
dog forbidden to touch some scrap of food, while his master
slowly recites the greater part of the alphabet until he reaches
the letter that gives permission. At length animal appetite
conquered fear; Stephanie rushed to Philip, held out a dainty
brown hand to pounce upon the coveted morsel, touched her
lover's fingers, snatched the piece of sugar, and vanished with
it into a thicket. This painful scene was too much for the
colonel ; he burst into tears, and took refuge in the drawing-
room.
"Then has love less courage than aifection?" M. Fanjat
asked him. "I have hope. Monsieur le Baron. My poor niece
was once in a far more pitiable state than at present."
"Is it possible?" cried Philip.
"She would not wear clothes," answered the doctor.
The colonel shuddered, and his face grew pale. To the
doctor's mind this pallor was an unhealthy symptom ; he went
over to him and felt his pulse, M. de Sucy was in a high fever;
by dint of persuasion, he succeeded in putting the patient
in bed, and gave him a few drops of laudanum to gain repose
and sleep.
The Baron de Sucy spent nearly a week, in a constant
struggle with a deadly anguish, and before long he had no
tears left to shed. He was often well-nigh heartbroken; he
could not grow accustomed to the sight of the Countess' mad-
ness; but he made terms for himself, as it were, in this cruel
position, and sought alleviations in his pain. His heroism
FAREWELL 869
was boundless. He found courage to overcome Stephanie's
wild shyness by choosing sweetmeats for her, and devoted all
his thoughts to this, bringing these dainties, and following
up the little victories that he set himself to gain over
Stephanie's instincts (the last gleam of intelligence in her),
until he succeeded to some extent — she grew tamer than ever
before. Every morning the colonel went into the park; and
if, after a long search for the Countess, he could not discover
'the tree in which she was rocking herself gently, nor the nook
where she lay crouching at play with some bird, nor the roof
where she had perched herself, he would whistle the well-
known air Partant pour la Syrie, which recalled old memories
of their love, and Stephanie would run towards him lightly as
a fawn. Slip saw the colonel so often that she was no longer
afraid of him; before very long she would sit on his knee
with her thin, lithe arms about him. And while thus they sat
as lovers love to do, Philip doled out sweetmeats one by one
to the eager Countess. When they were all finished, the
fancy often took Stephanie to search through her lover's
pockets with a monkey's quick instinctive dexterity, till she
had assured herself that there was nothing left, and then she
gazed at Philip with vacant eyes; there was no thought, no
gratitude in their clear depths. Then she would play with
him. She tried to take off his boots to see his foot; she tore
his gloves to shreds, and put on his hat; and she would let
him pass his hands through her hair, and take her in his arms,
and submit passively to his passionate kisses, and at last, if he
shed tears, she would gaze silently at him.
She quite understood the signal when he whistled Partant
pour la Syrie, but he could never succeed in inducing her to
pronounce her own name — Stephanie. Philip persevered in
his heart-rending task, sustained by a hope that never loft
him. If on some bright autumn morning he saw her sitting
quietly on a bench nnder a poplar tree, grown brown now
as the season wore, the unhappy lover would lie at her feet
and gaze into her eyes as long as she would let him gaze,
hoping that some spark of intelligence might gleam from
360 J'AREWELL
them. At times he lent himself to an illusion ; he would Im-
agine that he saw the hard, changeless light in them falter,
that there was a new life and softness in them, and he would
cry, "Stephanie ! oh, Stephanie ! you hear me, you see me, do
you not?"
But for her the sound of his voice was like any other sound,
the stirring of the wind in the trees, or the lowing of the cow
on which she scrambled ; and the colonel wrung his hands in
a despair that lost none of its bitterness ; nay, time and these
vain efforts only added to his anguish.
One evening, under the quiet sky, in the midst of the silence
and peace of the forest hermitage, M. Fanjat saw from a dis-
tance that the Baron was busy loading a pistol, and knew
that the lover had given up all hope. The blood surged to the
old doctor's heart; and if he overcame the dizzy sensation
that seized on him, it was because he would rather see his
niece live with a disordered brain than lose her for ever. He
hurried to the place.
"What are you doing?" he cried.
"That is for me," the colonel answered, pointing to a
loaded pistol on the bench, "and this is for her !" he added,
as he rammed down the wad into the pistol that he held in
his hands.
The Countess lay stretched out on the ground, playing
with the balls.
"Then you do not know that last night, as she slept, she
murmured 'Philip ?' " said the doctor quietly, dissembling his
alarm.
"She called my name ?" cried the Baron, letting his weapon
fall. Stephanie picked it up, but he snatched it out of her
hands, caught the other pistol from the bench, and fled.
"Poor little one !" exclaimed the doctor, rejoicing that
his stratagem had succeeded so well. He held her tightly
to his heart as he went on. "He would have killed you, selfish
ihat he is ! He wants you to die because he is unhappy. He
cannot learn to love you for your own sake, little one! We
forgive him, do we not? He is senseless; you are only mad.
IFAREWELL Sei
Kever mind; God alone shall take you to Himself. We look
upon you as unhappy because you no longer share our mis-
eries, fools that we are ! . . . Why, she is happy," he
said, taking her on his knee; "nothing troubles her; she lives
like the birds, like the deer "
Stephanie sprang upon a young blackbird that was hopping
about, caught it with a little shriek of glee, twisted its neck,
looked at the dead bird, and dropped it at the foot of a tree
without giving it another thought.
The next morning at daybreak the colonel went out into
the garden to look for Stephanie; hope was very strong in
him. He did not see her, and whistled; and when she came,
he took her arm, and for the first time they walked together
along an alley beneath the trees, while the fresh morning
wind shook down the dead leaves about them. The colonel sat
down, and Stephanie, of her own accord, lit upon his knee.
Philip trembled with gladness.
"Love!" he cried, covering her hands with passionate
kisses, "I am Philip . . ."
She looked curiously at him.
"Come close," he added, as he held her tightly. "Do you
feel the beating of my heart ? It has beat for you, for you
only. I love you always. Philip is not dead. He is here.
You are sitting on his knee. You are my Stephanie, I am
your Philip !"
"Earewell !" she said, "farewell !"
The colonel shivered. He thought that some vibration of
his highly wrought feeling had surely reached his beloved;
that the heart-rending cry, drawn from him by hope, the ut-
most effort of a love that must last for ever, of passion in its
ecstasy, striving to reach the soul of the woman he loved, must
awaken her.
"Oh, Stephanie ! we shall be happy yet !"
A cry of satisfaction broke from her, a dim light of intelli-
gence gleamed in her eyes.
"She knows me ! . . . Stephanie ! . . ."
The colonel felt his heart swell, and tears gathered under
362 FAREWELL
his e3^elids. But all at once the Countess held up a bit of sugar
for him to see; she had discovered it by searching diligently
for it while he spoke. What he had mistaken for a human
thought was a degree of reason required for a monkey's mis-
chievous trick !
Philip fainted. M. Fanjat found the Countess sitting on
his prostrate body. She was nibbling her bit of sugar, giving
expression to her enjoyment by little grimaces and gestures
that would have been thought clever in a woman in full pos-
session of her senses if she tried to mimic her paroquet or her
cat.
"Oh, my friend!" cried Philip, when he came to himself.
"This is like death every moment of the day ! I love her too
much! I could bear anything if only through her madness
she had kept some little trace of womanhood. But, day after
day, to see her like a wild animal, not even a sense of modesty
left, to see her "
"So you must have a theatrical m'adness, must you?" said
the doctor sharply, "and your prejudices are stronger than
your lover's devotion ? What, monsieur ! I resign to you the
sad pleasure of giving my niece her food, and the enjoyment
of her playtime ; I have kept for myself nothing but the most
burdensome cares. I watch over her while you are asleep,
I Go, monsieur, and give up the task. Leave this dreary
hermitage; I can live with my little darling; I understand her
disease; I study her movements; I know her secrets. Some
day you shall thank me."
The colonel left the Minorite convent, that he was destined
to see only once again. The doctor was alarmed by the effect
that his words made upon his guest ; his niece's lover became
as dear to him as his niece. If either of them deserved to be
pitied, that one was certainly Philip; did he not bear alone
the burden of an appalling sorrow?
The doctor made iiupiiries, and learned that the hapless
colonel had retired to a country house of his near Saint-
Cormain. A dream had suggested to him a plan for restoring
the Countess to reason, and the doctor did not know that he
FAREWELL 3^3
was spending the rest of the autumn in carrying out a vast
scheme. A small stream ran through his park, and in winter'
time flooded a low-lying land, something like the plain on
the eastern side of the Beresina. The village of Satout, on
the slope of a ridge above it, bounded the horizon of a picture
of desolation, something as Studzianka lay on the heights
that shut in the swamp of the Beresina. The colonel set
laborers to work to make a channel to resemble the greedy
river that had swallowed up the treasures of France and Na-
poleon's army. By the help of his memories, Philip recon-
structed on his own lands the bank where General Eble had
built his bridges. He drove in piles, and then. -set fire to
them, so as to reproduce the charred and blackened balks of
timber that on either side of the river told the stragglers that
their retreat to France had been cut off. He had materials
collected like the fragments out of which his comrades in
misfortune had made the raft; his park was laid waste to
complete the illusion on which his last hopes were founded.
He ordered ragged uniforms and clothing for several hundred
peasants. Huts and bivouacs and batteries were raised and
burned down. In short, he omitted no device that could re-
produce that most hideous of all scenes. He succeeded.
When, in the earliest days of December, snow covered the
earth with a thick white mantle, it seemed to him that he saw
the Beresina itself. The mimic Eussia was so startlingly
real, that several of his old comrades recognized the scene of
their past sufferings. M. de Sucy kept the secret of the
drama to be enacted with this tragical background, but it was
looked upon as a mad freak in several circles of society in
Paris.
In the early days of the month of January 1830, the colonel
drove over to the Forest of I'lsle-Adam in a carriage like
the one in which M. and Mme. de Vandieres had driven from
Moscow to Studzianka. The horses closely resembled that
other pair that he had risked his life to bring from the Eus-
sian lines. He himself wore the grotesque and soiled clothes,
accoutrements, and cap that he had worn on the 39th of
364 FAREWELL
November 1812. He had even allowed his hair and beard to
grow, and neglected his appearance, that no detail might be
lacking to recall the scene in all its horror.
"I guessed what you meant to do," cried M. Fanjat, when
he saw the colonel dismount. "If you mean your plan to
succeed, do not let her see you in that carriage. This even-
ing I will give my niece a little laudanum, and while she
sleeps, we will dress her in such clothes as she wore at Stiul-
zianka, and put her in your traveling-carriage. I will follow
you in a berliue."
Soon after two o'clock in the morning, the young Countess
was lifted -into the carriage, laid on the cushions, and wrapped
in a coarse blanket. A few peasants held torches while this
strange elopement was arranged.
A sudden cry rang through the silence of night, and Philip
and the doctor, turning, saw Genevieve. She had come out
half-dressed from the low room where she slept.
"Farewell, farewell; it is all over, farewell!" she called,
crying bitterly.
"Why, Genevieve, what is it ?" asked M. Fanjat.
Genevieve shook her head despairingly, raised her arm to
heaven, looked at the carriage, uttered a long snarling sound,
and with evident signs of profound terror, slunk in again.
" 'Tis a good omen," cried the colonel. "The girl is sorry
to lose her companion. Ver^' likely she sees that Stephanie
is about to recover her reason."
"God grant it may be so !" answered M. Fanjat, who seemed
to be affected by this incident. Since insanity had interested
him, he had known several cases in which a spirit of prophecy
and the gift of second sight had been accorded to a disordered
brain — two faculties which many travelers tell ns are also
found among savage tribes.
So it happened that, as the colonel had foreseen and ar-
ranged, Stephanie traveled across the mimic Beresina about
nine o'clock in the morning, and was awakened by an explo-
sion of rockets about a hnnflrcd paces from the scene of
action. It was a signal. Hundreds of peasant? raised a ter-
FAREWELL 86B
rible clamor, like the despairing shouts that startled the "Rus-
sians when twenty thousand stragglers learned that by their
own fault they were delivered over to death or to slavery.
When the Countess heard the report and the cries that
followed, she sprang out of the carriage, and rushed in fren-
zied anguish over the snow-covered plain ; she saw the burned
bivouacs and the fatal raft about to bo launched on a frozen
Beresina. She saw Major Philip brandishing hi? sabre
among the crowd. The cry that broke from Mme. de Van-
dieres made the blood run cold in the veins of all who heard
it. She stood face to face with the colonel, who watched her
with a beating heart. At first she stared blankly at the
strange scene about her, then she reflected. For an instant,
brief as a lightning flash, there was the same quick gaze and
total lack of comprehension that we see in the bright eyes
of a bird ; then she passed her hand across her forehead with
the intelligent expression of a thinking being; she looked
round on the memories that had taken substantial form, into
the past life that had been transported into her present; she
turned her face to Philip — and saw him ! An awed silence
fell upon the crowd. The colonel breathed hard, but dared
not speak; tears filled the doctor's eyes. A faint color over-
spread Stephanie's beautiful face, deepening slowly, till at
■last she glowed like a girl radiant with youth. Still the bright
flush grew. Life and joy, kindled within her at the blaze of
intelligence, swept through her like leaping flames. A con-
vulsive tremor ran from her feet to her heart. But all these
tokens, which flashed on the sight in a moment, gathered and
gained consistence, as it were, when Stephanie's eyes gleamed
with heavenly radiance, the light of a soul within. She
lived, she thought ! She shuddered — was it with fear ? God
Himself unloosed a second time the tongue that had been
bound by death, and set His fire anew in the extinguished
soul. The electric torrent of the human will vivified the body
whence it had so long been absent.
"Stephanie !" the colonel cried.
*^0h ! it is Philip !" said the poor Countess.
366 FAREWELL
She fled to the trembling arms held out towards her, and
the embrace of the two lovers frightened tliose who beheld it.
Stephanie burst into tears.
Suddenly the tears ceased to flow; she lay in his arms a
dead weight, as if stricken by a thunderbolt, and said
faintly :
"Farewell, Philip ! . . , I love you. . . . f are-
weU r
"She is dead !" cried the colonel, unclasping his arms.
The old doctor received the lifeless body of his niece in
his arms as a young man might have done; he carried her
to a stack of wood and set her down. He looked at her face,
and laid a feeble hand, tremulous with agitation, upon her
heart — it beat no longer.
"Can it really be so?" he said, looking from the colonel,
who stood there motionless, to Stephanie's face. Death had
invested it with a radiant beaut}^ a transient aureole, the
pledge, it may be, of a glorious life to come.
"Yes, she is dead."
"Oh, but that smile!" cried Philip; "only see that smile.
Is it possible ?"
"She has grown cold already," answered M. Fanjat.
M. de Sucy made a few strides to tear himself from the
sight; then he stopped, and whistled the air that the mad
Stephanie had understood ; and when he saw that she did not
rise and hasten to him, he walked away, staggering like a
drunken man, still whistling, but he did not turn again.
In society General de Sucy is looked upon as very agree-
able, and above all things, as very lively and amusing. Not
very long ago a lady complimented him upon his good humor
and equable temper.
"Ah ! madame," he answered, "I pay very dearly for my
merriment in the evening if I am alone."
"Then, you are never alone, I suppose."
"No," he answorcfl. smiling.
If a keen observer of human nature could have seen the
FAREWELL 367
look that Suey's face wore at that moment, he would, without
doubt, have shuddered.
"Why do you not marry?" the lady asked (she had several
daughters of her own at a boarding-school). "You are
wealthy; you belong to an old and noble house; you are
clever ; you have a future before you ; everything smiles upon
you."
"Yes," he answered; "one smile is killing me "
On the morrow the lady heard with amazement that M. de
Sucy had shot himself through the head that night.
The fashionable world discussed the extraordinary news
in divers ways, and each had a theory to account for it ; play,
love, ambition, irregularities in private life, according to the
taste of the speaker, explained the last act of the tragedy
begun in 1812. Two men alone, a magistrate and an old
doctor, knew that Monsieur le Comte de Sucy was one of those
souls unhappy in the strength God gives to them to enable
them to triumph daily in a ghastly struggle with a mysterious
horror. If for a moment God withdraws His sustaining hand,
they succumb.
Paris, UtarchlSSO,
THE CONSCRIPT
[The inner self] ... by a phenomenon of vision or of
locomotion has been linown at times to abolish Space in its two
modes of Time and Distance— the one intellectual, the other
physical.
—History of Louis L-ajibert.
On a November evening in the year 1793 the principal citi-
zens of Carentan were assembled in Mme. de Dey's drawing-
room. Mme. de Dey held this reception every night of the
week, but an unwonted interest attached to this evening's
gathering, owing to certain circumstances which would have
passed altogether unnoticed in a great city, though in a
small country town they -excited the greatest curiosity. For
two days before Mme. de Dey had not been at home to her
visitors, and on the previous evening her door had been shut,
on the ground of indisposition. Two such events at any
ordinary time would have produced in Carentan the same sen-
sation that Paris knows on nights when there is no per-
formance at the theatres — existence is in some sort incom-
plete; but in those times when the least indiscretion on the
part of an aristocrat might be a matter of life and death,
this conduct of Mme. de Dey's was likely to bring about the
most disastrous consequences for her. Her position in Ca-
rentan ought to be made clear, if the reader is to appreciate
the expression of keen curiosity and cunning fanaticism on
the countenances of these Norman citizens, and, what is of
most importance, the part that the lady played among them.
Many a one during the days of the Eevolution has doubtless
passed through a crisis as difficult as hers at that moment,
and the sympathies of more than one reader will fill in all
the coloring of the picture.
370 THE CONSCRIPT
Mme. de Dey was the widow of a Lieutenant-General, a
Knight of the Orders of Saint Michael and of tlie Hoi}'
Ghost. She had left the Court when the Emigration began,
and taken refnge in the neighborhood of Carentan, where
she had large estates, hoping that the influence of the Eeign
"of Terror would be but little felt there. Her calculations,
based on a thorough knowledge of the district, proved cor-
rect. The Eevolution made little disturbance in Lower Nor-
mandy. Formerly, when Mme. de Dey had spent any time
in the country, her circle of acquaintance had been confined
to the noble families of the district; but now, from politic
motives, she opened her house to the principal citizens and
to the Eevolutionary authorities of the town, endeavoring to
touch and gratify their social pride without arousing either
hatred or jealousy. Gracious and kindly, possessed of the in-
describable charm that wins goodwill without loss of dignity
or effort to pay court to any, she had succeeded in gaining
universal esteem; the discreet warnings of exquisite tact en-
abled her to steer a difficult course among the exacting claims
of this mixed society, without wounding the overweening
self-love of parvenus on the one hand, or the susceptibilities
of her old friends on the other.
She was about thirty-eight years of age, and still preserved,
not the fresh, high-colored beauty of the Basse-jSTormandes,
but a fragile loveliness of what may be called an aristocratic
type. Her figure was lissome and slender, her features deli-
cate and clearly cut; the pale face seemed to light up and
live when she spoke; but there was a quiet and devout look
in the great dark eyes, for all their graciousness of expres-
sion— a look that seemed to say that the springs of her life
lay without her own existence.
In her early girlhood she had been married to an elderly
and jealous soldier. Tier false position in the midst of a gay
Court had doubtless done something to bring a veil of sadness
over a face that must once have been bright with the charms
of quick-pulsed life aud love. She had been compelled to
Bet r^nstant restraint uuon her frank impulses and emotions
THE CONSCRIPT 371
at an age when a woman feels rather than thinks, and the
depths of pa.ssion in her heart liad never been stirred. In this
lay the secret of her greatest charm, a youthfulness of the in-
most soul, betrayed at times by her face, and a certain tinge
of innocent wistfulness in her ideas. She was reserved in
her demeanor, but in her bearing and in the tones of her
voice there was still something that told of girlish longings
directed toward a vague future. Before very long the least
susceptible fell in love with her, and yet stood somewhat in
awe of her dignity and high-bred manner. Her great soul,
strengthened by the cruel ordeals through which she had
passed, seemed to set her too far above the ordinary level,
and these men weighed themselves, and instinctively felt that
they were found wanting. Such a nature demanded an ex-
alted passion.
Moreover, Mme. de Dey's affections were concentrated in
one sentiment — a mother's love for her son. All the happi-
ness and joy that she had not known as a wife, she had found
later in her boundless love for him. The coquetry of a mis-
tress, the jealousy of a wife mingled with the pure and deep
affection of a mother. She was miserable when they were
apart, and nervous about him while he was away; she could
never see enough of him, and lived through and for him
alone. Some idea of the strength of this tie may be con-
veyed to the masculine understanding by adding that this
was not only Mme. de Dey's only son, but all she had of kith
or kin in the world, the one human being on earth bound to
her by all the fears and hopes and joys of her life.
The late Comte de Dey was the last of his race, and she,
his wife, was the sole heiress and descendant of her house.
So worldly ambitions and family considerations as well as
the noblest cravings of the soul, combined to heighten in
the Countess a sentiment that is strong in every woman's
heart. The child was all the dearer, because only with in-
finite care had she succeeded in rearing him to man's estate;
medical science had predicted his death a score of times,
but she had held fast to her presentiments and her hopes,
ST2 THE CONSCKIFT
iind had known the inexpressible joy of vratching him pass
safely through the perils of infancy, of seeing his constitution
strengthen in spite of the decrees of the Faculty.
Thanks to her constant care, the boy had grown up and de-
veloped so favorably, that at twenty years of age he was re-
'zarded as one of the most accomplished gentlemen at the
Court of Versailles. One final happiness that does not always
crown a mother's efforts was hers — her son worshiped her;
and between these two there was the deep sympathy of kin-
dred souls. If they had not been bound to each other already
by a natural and sacred tie, they would instinctively have felt
for each other a friendship that is rarely met with between
two men.
At the age of eighteen, the young Count had received an
appointment as sub-lieutenant in a regiment of dragoons, and
had made it a point of honor to follow the emigrant Princes
into exile.
Then Mme. de Dey faced the dangers of her cruel position.
She was rich, noble, and the mother of an Emigrant, With
the one desire to look after her son's great fortune, she had
denied herself the happiness of being with him ; and when she
read the rigorous laws in virtue of which the Eepublic was
daily confiscating the property of Emigrants at Carentan, she
congratulated herself on the courageous course that she had
taken. Was she not keeping watch over the wealth of her son
at the risk of her life? Later, when news came of the
horrible executions ordered by the Convention, she slept,
happy in the knowledge that her own treasure was in safety,
out of reach of peril, far from the scaffolds of the Revolution.
She loved to think that she had followed the best course, that
she had saved her darling and her darling's fortunes ; and to
this secret thought she made such concessions as the mis-
fortunes of the times demanded, without compromising her
dignity or her aristocratic tenets, and enveloped her sorrows
m reserve and myster}% She had foreseen the difficulties
that would beset her at Carentan. Did she not tempt the
scaffold by the very fact of going thither to take a prominent
THE CONSCRIPT 373
place? Yet, sustained by a mother's courage, she succeeded
ill winning the alfection of the poor, ministering without dis-
tinction to every one in trouble; and made herself necessary
to the well-to-do, by providing amusements for them.
The procureur of the commune might be seen at her
house, the mayor, the president of the "district," and the
public prosecutor, and even the Judges of the Eevolutionary
tribunals went there. The four first-named gentlemen were
none of them married, and each paid court to her, in the hope
that Mme. de Dey would take him for her husband, either
from fear of making an enemy or from a desire to find a pro-
tector.
The public prosecutor, once an attorney at Caen, and the
Countess' man of business, did what he could to inspire love
by a system of devotion and generosity, a dangerous game of
cunning ! He was the most formidable of all her suitors. He
alone knew the amount of the large fortune of his sometime
client, and his fervor was inevitably increased by the cupidity
of greed, and by the consciousness that he wielded an enor-
mous power, the power of life and death in the district. He
was still a young man, and, owing to the generosity of his be-
havior, Mrae. de Dey was unable as yet to estimate him truly.
But, in despite of the danger of matching herself against
Norman cunning, she used all the craft and inventiveness
that Nature has bestowed on women to play off the rival
suitors one against another. She hoped, by gaining time, to
emerge safe and sound from her difficulties at last; for at
that time Eoyalists in the provinces flattered themselves with
a hope, daily renewed, that the morrow would see the end
of the Eevolution — a conviction that proved fatal to many of
them.
In spite of difficulties, the Countess had maintained her in-
dependence with considerable skill until the day, when, by
an inexplicable want of prudence, she took occasion to close
her salon. So deep and sincere was the interest that she in-
spired, that those who usually filled her drawing-room felt a
lively anxiety when the news -was spread ; then, with the frank
?:*.■> :-*"" ' '
374 THE CONSCRIPT
curiosity characteristic of provincial manners, the)' went to
inquire into the misfortune, grief, or illness that had befallen
Mme. de Dey.
To all thes(^ questions, Brigitte, the housekeeper, answered
with the same formula: her mistress was keeping her room,
and would see no one, not even her own servants. The almost
claustral lives of dwellers in small towns fosters a habit of
analysis and conjectural explanation of the business of everv^-
body else ; so strong is it, that when every one had exclaimed
over poor Mme. de Dey (without knowing whether the lady
was overcome by joy or sorrow), each one began to inquire
into the causes of her sudden seclusion.
"If she were ill, she would have sent for the doctor," said
gossij) number one; "now the doctor has been playing chess
in my house all day. He said to me, laughing, that in these
days there is only one disease, and that, unluckily, it is in-
curable."
The joke was hazarded discreetly. Women and men, el-
derly folk and young girls, forthwith betook themselves to
the vast fields of conjecture. Every one imagined that there
was some secret in it, and every head was busy with the secret.
Next day the suspicions became malignant. Every one lives
in public in a small town, and the womenlvind were the first
to find out that Brigitte had laid in an extra stock of pro-
visions. The thing could not be disputed. Brigitte had been
seen in the market-place betimes that morning, and, wonder-
ful to relate, she had bought the one hare to be had. The
whole town knew that Mme. de Dey did not care for game.
The hare became a starting-point for endless conjectures.
Elderly gentlemen, taking their constitutional, noticed a
sort of suppressed bustle in the Countess' house; the symp-
toms were the more apparent because the servants were at
evident pains to conceal them. The man-servant was beating
a carpet in the garden. Only yesterday no one would have,
remarked the fact, but to-day everybody began to build ro-
mances upon that harmless piece of household stuff Every
one had a version.
THE CONSCRIPT 875
On the following day, that on which Mme. de Dey gave out
that she was not well, the magnates of Carentan went to
spend the evening at the mayor's brother's house. He was
a retired merchant, a married man, a strictly honorable soul ;
every one respected him, and the Countess held him in high
regard. There all the rich widow's suitors were fain to invent
more or less probable fictions, each one thinking the while
how to turn to lus own advantage the secret that compelled
her to compromise herself in such a manner.
The public prosecutor spun out a whole drama to bring
Mme. de Dey's son to her house of a night. The mayor had
a belief in a priest who had refused the oath, a refugee from
La Vendee ; but this left him not a little embarrassed how to
account for the purchase of a hare on a Friday. The president
of the district had strong leanings towards a Chouan chief,
or a Vendean leader hotly pursued. Others voted for a noble
escaped from the prisons of Paris. In short, one and all
suspected that the Countess had been guilty of some piece
of generosity that the law of those days defined as a crime,
an offence that was like to bring her to the scaffold. The
public prosecutor, moreover, said, in a low voice, that they
must hush the matter up, and try to save the unfortunate
lady from the abyss towards which she was hastening.
"If you spread reports about," he added, "I shall be obliged
to take cognizance of the matter, and to search the house,
and then ! . . ."
He said no more, but every one understood what was left
unsaid.
The Countess' real friends were so much alarmed for her,
that on the morning of the third day the Procureur Syndic
of the commune made his wife write a few lines to persuade
Mme. de Dey to hold her reception as usual that evening.
The old merchant took a bolder step. He called that morning
upon the lady. Strong in the thought of the service he
meant to do her, he insisted that he must see Mme. de Dey,
and was amazed beyond expression to find her out in the gar-
den, busy gathering the last autumn flowers in her borders to
fill the vases.
376 THE CONSCRIPT
"She has given refuge to her lover, no doubt/' thought the
old man, struck with pity for the charming woman before
him.
The Countess' face wore a strange look, that confirmed
his suspicions. Deeply moved by the devotion so natural to
women, but that ahvays touches us, because all men are flat-
tered by the sacrifices that any woman makes for any one
of them, the merchant told the Countess of the gossip that
was circulating in the town, and showed her the danger that
she was running. He wound up at last with saying that "if
there are some of our public functionaries who are sufficiently
read}'' to pardon a piece of heroism on your part so long as it
is a priest that you wish to save, no one will show you any
mercy if it is discovered that you are sacrificing yourself to
the dictates of your heart."
At these words Mme. de Dey gazed at her visitor with a
wild excitement in her manner that made him tremble, old
though he was.
"Come in," she said, taking him by the hand to bring him
to her room, and as soon as she had assured herself that they
were alone, she drew a soiled, torn letter from her bodice. —
"Read it !" she cried, with a violent effort to pronounce the
words.
She dropped as if exhausted into her armchair. While the
old merchant looked for his spectacles and wiped them, she
raised her eyes, and for the firet time looked at him with
curiosity; then, in an uncertain voice, "I trust in you," she
said softly.
'^''hy did I come but to share in your crime?" the old
merchant said simply.
She trembled. For the first time since she had come to
the little town her soul found sympathy in another soul. A
sudden liglit rlawned meantime on the old merchant; he un-
derstood the Countess' joy and her prostration.
Her son had taken part in the Granville expedition; he
wrote to his mother from liis prison, and the letter brought
her a sad, sweet hope. Feeling no doubts as co his means of
THE CONSCRIPT 377
escape, he wrote that within three days he was sure to reach
her, disguised. The same letter that brought these weighty
tidings was full of heart-rending farewells in case the writer
should not be in Carentan by the evening of the third day,
and he implored his mother to send a considerable sum of
money by the bearer, who had gone through dangers innu-
merable to deliver it. The paper shook in the old man's
hands.
"And to-day is the third day !" cried Mme. de Dey. She
sprang to her feet, took back the letter, and walked up and
down.
"You have set to work imprudently," the merchant re-
marked, addressing her. "Why did you buy provisions?"
"Why^ he may come in dying of hunger, worn out with
fatigue, and " She broke off.
"I am sure of my brother," the old merchant went on ; "I
will engage him in your interests." , -
The merchant in this crisis recovered his old business
shrewdness, and the advice that he gave Mme.. de Dey was
full of prudence and wisdom. After the two had agreed to-
gether as to what they were to do and say, the old merchant
went on various ingenious pretexts to pay visits to the prin-
cipal houses of Carentan, announcing wherever he went that
he had just been to see Mme. de Dey, and that, in spite of her
indisposition, she would receive that evening. Matching his
shrewdness against Norman wits in the cross-examination
he underwent in every family as to the Countess' complaint,
he succeeded in putting almost every one who took an interest
in the mysterious affair upon the wrong scent.
His veiy first call worked wonders. He told, in the hearing
of a gouty old lad}^ how that Mme. de Dey had all but died
of an attack of gout in the stomach ; how that the illustrious
Tronchin had recommended her in such a case to put the
skin from a live hare on her chest, to stop in bed, and keep
perfectly still. The Countess, he said, had lain in danger
of her life for the past two days ; but after carefully following
out Tronehin's singular prescription, she was now suincicntly
recovered to receive visitors that evening.
378 THE CONSCRIPT
This tale had an immense success in Carentan. The local
doctor, a Eoyalist in petto, added to its effect by gravely dis-
cussing the specific. Suspicion, nevertheless, had taken too
deep root in a few perverse or philosophical minds to he en-
tirely dissipated ; so it fell out that those who had the right of
entry into Mme. de Dey's drawing-room hurried thither
at an early hour, some to watch her face, some out of friend-
ship, but the more part attracted by the fame of the marvel-
ous cure.
They found the Countess seated in a corner of the great
chimney-piece in her room, which was almost as modestly fur-
nished as similar apartments in Carentan; for she had given
up the enjoyment of luxuries to which she had formerly been
accustomed, for fear of offending the narrow prejudices of
her guests, and she had made no changes in her house. The
floor was not even polished. She had left the old sombre
hangings on the walls, had kept the old-fashioned country
furniture, burned tallow candles, had fallen in with the ways
of the place and adopted provincial life without flinching
before its cast-iron narrowness, its most disagreeable hard-
ships ; but knowing that her guests would forgive her for any
prodigality that conduced to their comfort, she left nothing
undone where their personal enjoyment was concerned; her
dinners, for instance, were excellent. She even went so far
as to affect avarice to recommend herself to these sordid na-
tures; and had the ingenuity to make it appear that certain
concessions to luxury had been made at the instance of others,
to whom she had graciously yielded.
Towards seven o'clock that evening, therefore, the nearest
approach to polite society that Carentan could boast was as-
sembled in Mme. de Dey's drawing-room, in a wide circle,
about the fire. The old merchant's sympathetic glances sus-
tained the mistress of the house through this ordeal; with
wonderful strength of mind, she underwent the curious scru-
tiny of her guests, and bore with their trivial prosings. Every
time there was a knock at the door, at every sound of foot-
steps in the street, she hid her agitation by raising questions
THE CONSCRIPT 379
of absorbing mterest to the countrj'sidc. She led the con-
versatioii on to the burning topic of the quality of various
ciders, and was so well seconded by her friend who shared
her secret, that her guests almost forgot to watch her, and
her face wore its wonted look; her self-possession was un-
shaken. The public prosecutor and one of the judges of the
Revolutionary Tribunal kept silence, however; noting the
slightest change that flickered over her features, listening
through the noisy talk to every sound in the house. Several
times they put awkward questions, which the Countess an-
swered with wonderful presence of mind. So brave is a
mother's heart !
Mme. de Dey had drawn her visitoi"s into little groups,
had made parties of whist, boston, or reversis, and sat talking
with some of the j^oung people ; she seemed to be living com-
pletely in the present moment, and played her part like a
consummate actress. She elicited a suggestion of loto, and
saying that no one else knew where to find the game, she left
the room.
"My good Brigitte, I cannot breathe down there !" she
cried, brushing away the tears that sprang to her eyes that
glittered with fever, sorrow, and impatience. — She had gone
up to her son's room, and was looking round it. "He does
not come," she said. "Here I can breathe and live. A few
minutes more and he will be here, for he is alive, I am sure
that he is alive ! my heart tells me so. Do you hear nothing,
Brigitte? Oh! I would give the rest of my life to know
whether he is still in prison or tramping across the country.
I would rather not think."
Once more she looked to see that everything was in order.
A bright fire blazed on the hearth, the shutters were carefully
closed, the furniture shone with cleanliness, the bed had been
made after a fashion that showed that Brigitte and the
Countess had given their minds to every trifling detail. It
was impossible not to read her hopes in the dainty and
thoughtful preparations about the room ; love and a mother's
tenderest caresses seemed to pervade the air in the scent of
380 THE CONSCRIPT
flowers. Kone but a mother could have foreseen the require-
ments of a soldier and arranged so comf)letely for their sat-
isfaction. A daint}^ meal, the best of wine, clean linen, slip-
pers— no necessary, no comfort, was lacking for the weary
traveler, and all the delights of home heaped upon him should
reveal his mother's love.
"Oh, Brigitte ! . . ." cried the Countess, with a heart-
rending inflection in her voice. She drew a chair to the table
as if to strengthen her illusions and realize her longings.
"Ah, madame, he is coming. He is not far off. . . .
I haven't a doubt that he is living and on his way," Brigitte
answered. "I put a key in the Bible and held it on my
fingers while Cottin read the Gospel of St. John, and the key
did not turn, madame."
"Is that a certain sign?" the Countess asked.
"Why, yes, madame ! everybod}^ knows that. He is still
alive ; I would stake my salvation on it ; God cannot be mis-
taken."
"If only I could see him here in the house, in spite of the
danger."
"Poor Monsieur Auguste !" cried Brigitte ; "I expect he is
tramping along the lanes !"
"And that is eight o'clock striking now !" cried the Count-
ess in terror.
She was afraid that she had been too long in the room where
she felt sure that her son was alive; all those preparations
made for him meant that he was alive. She went down, but
she lingered a moment in the peristyle for any sound that
might waken the sleeping echoes of the town. She smiled
at Brigitte's husband, who was stand in r; there on guard;
the man's eyes looked stupid with the strain of listening to
the faint sounds of the night. She stared into the darkness,
seeing her son in every shadow everywhere ; but it was only
for a moment. Then sbe went back to the drawing-room
with an assumption of high spirits, and began to play at lotn
with the little girls. But from time to time she complaine,]
of feeling unwell, and went to sit in her great chair by tlvo
THE CONSCRIPT 331
fireside. So things went in Mme. de Dey's house and in the
minds of those beneath her roof.
Meanwhile, on the road from Paris to Cherbourg, a young
man, dressed in the inevitable brown carmagnole of those
days, was plodding his way towards Carentau: When the first
levies were made, there was little or no discipline kept up.
The exigencies of the moment scarcely admitted of soldiers
being equipped at once, and it was no uncommon thing to
see the roads thronged with conscripts in their ordinary
clothes. The young fellows went ahead of their company to
the next halting-place, or lagged behind it ; it depended upon
their fitness to bear the fatigues of a long march. This par-
ticular wayfarer was some considerable way in advance of a
company of conscripts on the way to Cherbourg, whom the
mayor was expecting to arrive every hour, for it was his duty
to distribute their billets. The young man's footsteps were
still firm as he trudged along, and his bearing seemed to in-
dicate that he was no stranger to the rough life of a soldier.
The moon shone on the pasture-land about Carentan, but he
had noticed great masses of white cloud that were about to
scatter showers of snow over the country, and doubtless the
fear of being overtaken by a storm had quickened his pace
in spite of his weariness.
The wallet on his back was almost empty, and he carried a
stick in his hand, cut from one of the high, thick box-hedges
that surround most of the farms in Lower Normandy. As
the solitary wayfarer came into Carentan, the gleaming moon-
lit outlines of the towers stood out for a moment with ghostly
effect against the sky. He met no one in the silent streets
that rang with the echoes of his own footsteps, and was
obliged to ask the way to the mayor's house of a weaver who
was working late. The magistrate was not far to seek, and in
a few minutes the conscript was sitting on a stone bench in
the mayor's porch waiting for his billet. He was sent for,
however, and confronted with that functionar}'-, who scru-
tinized him closely. The foot-soldier was a good-looking
young man, who appeared to be of gentle birth. There was
382 THE CONSCRIPT
soinething aristocratic in his bearing, and signs in his face
of intelligence developed by a good education.
"What is your name?" asked the mayor, eyeing him
shrewdly.
"Julien Jussieu," answered the conscript.
"From ? " queried the official, and an incredulous smile
stole over his features.
"From Paris."
"Your comrades must be a good way behind?" remarked
the Norman in sarcastic tones.
"I am three leagues ahead of the battalion."
"Some sentiment attracts you to Carentan, of course,
citizen-conscript," said the mayor astutely. "All right, all
right!" he added, wdth a wave of the hand, seeing that the
young man was about to speak. "We know where to send
you. There, off with you. Citizen Jussieu/^ and he handed
over the billet.
There W8,s a tinge of irony in the stress the magistrate laid
on the last two words while he held out a billet on Mme. de
Dey. The conscript read the direction curiously.
"He knows quite well that he has not far to go, and when
he gets outside he will very soon cross the market-place,"
said the mayor to himself, as the other went out. "He is
uncommonly bold ! God guide him ! . . . He has an
answer ready for everything. Yes, but if somebody else had
asked to see his papers it would have been all up with him !"
The clocks in Carentan struck half-past nine as he spoke.
Lanterns were being lit in Mme. de Dey's ante-chamber, ser-
vants were helping their masters and mistresses into sabots,
greatcoats, and calashes. The card-players settled their ac-
counts, and everybody went out together, after the fashion
of all little country towns.
"It looks as if the prosecutor meant to stop," said a lady,
v.-ho noticed that that important personage was not in the
group in the market-place, where they all took leave of one
another before going their separate ways home. And, as s
THE OONSCHIPT 5J83
matter ot fact, that redoubtable functionary was alone with
the Countess, who waited trembling till he should go. There
was something appalling in their long silence.
"Citoyenne/' said he at last, "I am here to see that the laws
of the llepublic are carried out "
Mme. de Dey shuddered.
"Have you nothing to tell me ?"
"Nothing !" she answered, in amazement.
"Ah! madame," cried the prosecutor, sitting down beside
her and changing his tone. "At this moment, for lack of a
word, one of us — ^you or I — may carry our heads to the
scaffold. I have watched your character, your soul, your man-
ner, too closely to share the error into which you have man-
aged to lead your visitors to-night. You are expecting your
son, I could not doubt it.''
The Countess made an involuntary sign of denial, but her
face had grown white and drawn with the struggle to main-
tain the composure that she did not feel, and no tremor was
lost on the merciless prosecutor.
"YeTj well," the Eevolutionary official went on, "receive
him; but do not let him stay under your roof after seven
o'clock to-morrow morning; for to-morrow, as soon as it is
light, I shall come with a denunciation that I will have made
out, and "
She looked at him, and the dull misery in her eyes would
have softened a tiger.
"I will make it clear that the denunciation was false by
making a thorough search," he went on in a gentle voice;
"my report shall be such that you will be safe from an}^ subse-
quent suspicion. I shall mxake mention of your patriotic
gifts, your civisra, and all of us will be safe."
Mme. de Dey, fearful of a trap, sat motionless, her face
afire, her tongue frozen. A knock at the door rang through
the house.
"Oh ! . . ." cried the terrified mother, falling upon her
knees ; "save him ! save him I"
384 THE CONSCRIPT
'^es, let us save him !" returned the public prosecutor, and
his eyes grew bright as he looked at her, ''if it costs lis our
lives !"
"Lost !" she wailed. The prosecutor raised her politely.
"Madame," said he with a flourish of eloquence, "to your
own free will alone would I owe "
"Madame, he is " cried Brigitte, thinking that her mis-
tress was alone. At the sight of the public prosecutor, the
old servant's joy-flushed countenance became haggard and
impassive.
"Wlio is it, Brigitte ?" the prosecutor asked kindly, as if he
too were in the secret of the household.
"A conscript that the mayor has sent here for a night's
lodging," the woman replied, holding out the billet.
"So it is," said the proseciitor, when he had read the slip
of paper. "A battalion is coming here to-night/*
And he went.
The Countess' need to believe in the faith of her sometime
attorney was so great, that she dared not entertain any sus-
picion of him. She fled upstairs; she felt scarcely strength
enough to stand ; she opened the door, and sprang, half-dead
with fear, into her son's arms.
"Oh ! my child ! my child !" she sobbed, covering him with
almost frenzied kisses.
"Madame ! . . ." said a stranger's voice.
"Oh! it is not he!" she cried, shrinking away in terror,
and she stood face to face with the conscript, gazing at him
with haggard eyes.
"0 saint hon Dieu! how like he is !" cried Brigitte.
There was silence for a moment; even the stranger trem-
bled at the sight of Mme, de Dey's face.
"Ah I monsieur," she said, leaning on the arm of Brigitte's
husband, feeling for the flrst time the full extent of a sorrow
that had all but killed her at its first threatening; "ah! mon-
sieur, I cannot stay to see you any longer . . . permit
my servants to supply my place, and to see that you have all
that you want.**
mE CONSCillPT 3S5
She went {[own to her ovm room, Brigitte and the old
serving-man half carrying her between them. The house-
keeper set her mistress in a chair, and broke out :
'*What, madame! is that man to sleep in Monsieur Au-
gnste's bed, and wear Monsieur Auguste's slippers, and eat
the pasty that I made for Monsieur Augusta? Why, if
they were to guillotine me for it, I "
''Brigitte !" cried Mme. de Dey.
Brigitte said no more.
"Hold your tongue, chatterbox," said her husband, in a
low voice ; "do you want to kill madame ?"
A sound came from the conscript's room as he drew his
chair to the table.
"I shall not stay here,'' cried Mme. de Dey; "I shall go
into the conservatory; I shall hear better there if any one
passes in the night."
She still wavered between the fear that she had lost her son
and the hope of seeing him once more. That night was
hideously silent. Once, for the Countess, there was an awful
interval, when the battalion of conscripts entered the town,
and the men went by, one by one, to their lodgings. Every
footfall, ever}'- sound in the street, raised hopes to be disap-
pointed ; but it was not for long, the dreadful quiet succeeded
again. Towards morning the Countess was forced to return
to her room. Brigitte, ever keeping watch over her mis-
tress' movements, did not see her come out again ; and when
she went, she found the Countess lying there dead.
"I expect she heard that conscript," cried Brigitte, "walk-
ing about Monsieur Auguste's room, whistling that accursed
Marseillaise of theirs while he dressed, as if he had been in
a stable! That must have killed her."
But it was a deeper and a more solemn emotion, and doubt-
less some dreadful vision, that had caused ]\Ime. de Dey's
death ; for at the very tiour when she died at Carentan, her
son was shot in le Morbihan.
386 THE CONSCRIPT
This tragical story may be added to all the instances on
record of the workings of sympathies uncontrolled by the
laws of time and space. These observations, collected with
scientific curiosity by a few isolated individuals, will one day
serve as documents on which to base the foundations of a nevi
science which hitherto has lacked its man of genius,
pABis, February 1831.
lliHAHYlW;"!'^,,
AA 000 906 bM 1
CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
University of California, San Diego
DATE DUE
^f^^ 03 1973
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