UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO 
 
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 SAN DIEeO
 
 UNIVFRSITY OF f.AI If-OflNIA SAN DIEGO 
 
 3 1822 00809 4849 
 
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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 !' 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 — 
 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. 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. 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.
 
 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 
 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;"!'^,, 
 
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