2. A Woman Without a Heart - Part 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"'And writes Memoirs,' put in the countess, who seemed to object to the deep silence that prevailed.

"'Memoirs of a sham countess, madame,' replied Rastignac. 'Another sort of courage is needed to write that sort of thing.'

"'I give him credit for plenty of courage,' she answered; 'he is faithful to me.'

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

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

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

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

"He went away.

"'Ah!' she yawned; 'how very tiresome they all are!'

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

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

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

"'This is her real self,' I thought.

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

"'Did madame ring?'

"'Yes, twice,' answered Foedora; 'are you really growing deaf nowadays?'

"'I was preparing madame's milk of almonds.'

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

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

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

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

"'You ought to marry, madame, and have children.'

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

"'Not particularly.'

"'You are a fool!'

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

"'Really?'

"'Yes, really, madame; that wavy style only looks nice in fair hair.'

"'Marriage? never, never! Marriage is a commercial arrangement, for which I was never made.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"'If I do not speak,' I thought to myself, 'I must smash my head against the corner of the mantelpiece.'

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

"'You are exceedingly amusing,' said she.

"'Ah, madame, if you could but understand me!' I answered.

"'What is the matter with you?' she asked. 'You are turning pale.'

"'I am hesitating to ask a favor of you.'

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

"'Willingly,' she answered' 'but why will you not speak to me now?'

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

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

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

"'Do you know that you have piqued my curiosity?' she said, laughing.

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

"'You have never heard me sing!' she exclaimed, starting involuntarily with surprise.

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

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

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

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

"She nodded.

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

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

"'If I had known----' she said.

"'Do not finish the sentence,' I broke in. 'Even now I love you well enough to murder you----'

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

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

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

"'You must have been very cold.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

"'And in two hours' time you will cry to yourself, _Ah, mon Dieu_!'

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

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

"'Would you marry a peer of France?' I demanded abruptly.

"'If he were a duke, I might.'

"I seized my hat and made her a bow.

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

"'Madame----'

"'Monsieur?'

"'I shall never see you again.'

"'I hope not,' and she insolently inclined her head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"One evening Pauline found her way into my room.

"'You are killing yourself,' she said imploringly; 'you should go out and see your friends----'

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

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

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

"'What hospital have you been discharged from?' he asked.

"'That woman is killing me,' I answered; 'I can neither despise her nor forget her.'

"'You had much better kill her, then perhaps you would think no more of her,' he said, laughing.

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

"'She is like every woman who is beyond our reach,' Rastignac interrupted.

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

"'Pshaw! horrid agonies,' said Rastignac.

"'Or charcoal fumes?'

"'A low dodge.'

"'Or the Seine?'

"'The drag-nets, and the Morgue too, are filthy.'

"'A pistol-shot?'

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

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

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

"'How about money?' I said.

"'Haven't you four hundred and fifty francs?'

"'Yes, but debts to my landlady and the tailor----'

"'You would pay your tailor? You will never be anything whatever, not so much as a minister.'

"'But what can one do with twenty louis?'

"'Go to the gaming-table.'

"I shuddered.

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

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

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

"'Why, what is the matter with you?' she asked.

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

"'I am going to leave you, dear Pauline.'

"'I knew it!' she exclaimed.

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

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

"'I shall have no more lessons,' she said, pointing to the piano.

"I did not answer that.

"'Will you write to me?'

"'Good-bye, Pauline.'

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

"'I have embroidered this purse for you,' Pauline said; 'will you refuse even that?'

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

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

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

"'Victory! Now we can take our time about dying.'

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

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

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

"'We won't go to sleep,' cried Rastignac. 'Joseph! some punch!'

"He threw gold to his faithful attendant.

"'There is your share,' he said; 'go and bury yourself if you can.' _

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