The Magic Skin by Honoré de Balzac (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📖

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

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

"'You are in trouble?' Pauline said, dipping her brush into the coloring.

"'It is in your power to do me a great service, my dear child,' I answered.

"The gladness in her eyes frightened me.

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

"'Do you love me?' I asked.

"'A little,--passionately--not a bit!' she cried.

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

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

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

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

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

"'Oh, Pauline!' I cried, as I pressed her hand, 'how I wish that I were rich!'

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

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

"In her exclamation there was something like belief in her mother's absurd superstitions.

"'You are very credulous, Pauline!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"'M. de Rastignac is a man with whom it is better not to quarrel,' said the countess, laughing.

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

"'One of your friends is not clever, so you speak of his integrity and his candor. Another's work is heavy; you introduce it as a piece of conscientious labor; and if the book is ill written, you extol the ideas it contains. Such an one is treacherous and fickle, slips through your fingers every moment; bah! he is attractive, bewitching, he is delightful! Suppose they are enemies, you fling every one, dead or alive, in their teeth. You reverse your