 section 4 of The Girl with the Golden Eyes. De Marseille was not impulsive. Any other young man would have obeyed his impulse to obtain at once some information about a girl who realised so fully the most luminous ideas ever expressed upon women in the poetry of the East. But too experienced to compromise his good fortune, he had told his coachman to continue along the rue Saint-Lazare and carry him back to his house. The next day his confidential valet, Laurent by name, as cunning a fellow as the frontal of the old comedy, waited in the vicinity of the house inhabited by the unknown for the hour at which letters were distributed. In order to be able to spy at his ease and hang about the house, he had followed the example of those police officers who seek a good disguise, and bought up cast-off clothes of an oeuvre-nière, the appearance of whom he sought to imitate. When the postman who went the round of the rue Saint-Lazare that morning passed by, Laurent feigned to be a porter unable to remember the name of a person to whom he had to deliver a parcel, and consulted the postman. Deceived at first by appearances, this personage, so picturesque in the midst of Parisian civilisation, informed him that the house in which the girl with the golden eyes dwelt, belonged to Don Ijos, Marquis de San Real, Grandie of Spain. Naturally it was not with the marquis that the oeuvre-nière was concerned. My parcel, he said, is for the marquis. She is away, replied the postman, her letters are forwarded to London. Then the marquis is not a young girl, who, ha! said the postman, interrupting the valet de chambre, and observing him attentively. You are as much a porter as I'm! Laurent chinked some pieces of gold before the functionary, who began to smile. Come, here's the name of your quarry, he said, taking from his leather wallet a letter bearing a London stamp, upon which the address to Mademoiselle Paquita Valdes, rue Saint-Lazare, Hotel Saint-Réal, Paris, was written in long fine characters, which spoke of a woman's hand. Could you tap a bottle of chablis, with a few dozen oysters, and a pilet sauté, with mushrooms to follow it? said Laurent, who wished to win the postman's valuable friendship. At half-past nine, when my round is finished, where? At the corner of the rue de la chaussée d'antin, and the rue neuve des maturins, at the puissant vin, said Laurent. Hark ye, my friend, said the postman, when he rejoined the valet an hour after this encounter. If your master is in love with the girl, he's in for a famous task. I doubt you'll not succeed in seeing her. In the ten years that I've been postman in Paris, I have seen plenty of different kinds of doors. But I can tell you, and no fear of being called a liar by any of my comrades. There never was a door so mysterious as Monsieur de Saint-Réal's. No one can get into the house without the Lord knows what counter-word. And notice, it has been selected on purpose between a courtyard and a garden, to avoid any communication with other houses. The porter is an old Spaniard, who never speaks a word of French, but peers at people as vedoc might, to see if they are not thieves. If a lover, a thief, or you, I make no comparisons, could get the better of this first wicket. Well, in the first hall, which is shut by a glazed door, you would run across a butler surrounded by lackeys. An old choker, more savage and surly even than the porter. If anyone gets past the porter's lodge, my butler comes out, waits for you at the entrance, and puts you through a cross-examination like a criminal. That has happened to me, a mere postman. He took me for an eavesdropper in disguise, he said, laughing at his nonsense. As for the servants, don't hope to get ought out of them. I think they are mutes. No one in the neighbourhood knows the colour of their speech. I don't know what wages they can pay them to keep them from talk and drink. The fact is, they are not to be got at, whether because they are afraid of being shot, or that they have some enormous sum to lose in the case of an indiscretion. If your master is fond enough of Mademoiselle Paquita Valdez to surmount all these obstacles, he certainly won't triumph over Donia Concha Malialva, the duena who accompanies her, and would put her under her petticoat sooner than leave her. The two women look as if they were sewn to one another. All that you say, worthy postman, went on Laurent after having drunk off his wine, confirms me in what I have learnt before. Upon my word I thought they were making fun of me. The fruiterer opposite told me that of knights they let loose dogs whose food is hung up on steaks just out of their reach. These cursed animals think, therefore, that anyone likely to come in has designs on their vitals, and would tear one to pieces. You will tell me one might throw them down pieces, but it seems they have been trained to touch nothing except from the hand of the porter. The porter of the Baron de Nussange, whose garden joins at the top that of the Hotel Saint-Réal, tell me the same thing, replied the postman. God, my master knows him, said Laurent to himself. Do you know, he went on leering at the postman, I serve a master who is a rare man, and if he took it into his head to kiss the soul of the foot of an empress, she would have to give in to him. If he had need of you, which is what I wish for you, for he is generous, could one count on you? Lord Monsieur Laurent, my name is Mouaneau. My name is written exactly like Mouaneau, magpie, M-O-I-N-O-T, Mouaneau. Exactly, said Laurent. I live at number eleven, Rue des Trois Frères, on the fifth floor, went on Mouaneau. I have a wife and four children. If what you want of me doesn't transgress the limits of my conscience and my official duties, you understand, I am your man. You are an honest fellow, said Laurent, shaking his hand. Paquita Valdez is no doubt the mistress of the Marquidas Saint-Réal, the friend of King Ferdinand. Only an old Spanish mummy of eighty years is capable of taking such precautions, said Henri, when his valet de chambre had related the result of his researches. Monsieur, said Laurent, unless he takes a balloon, no one can get into that hotel. You are a fool! Is it necessary to get into the hotel to have Paquita, when Paquita can get out of it? But sir, the duena, we will shut her up for a day or two, your duena. So we shall have Paquita, said Laurent, rubbing his hands. Rascals, answered Henri, I shall condemn you to the concha, if you carry your impudence so far as to speak so of a woman before she has become mine. Turn your thoughts to dressing me, I am going out. Henri remained for a moment plunged in joyous reflections. Let us say it to the praise of women. He obtained all those whom he deigned to desire. And what could one think of a woman having no lover, who should have known how to resist a young man armed with beauty, which is the intelligence of the body, with intelligence which is a grace of the soul, armed with moral force and fortune, which are the only two real powers. Yet, in triumphing with such ease, de Marseille was bound to grow weary of his triumphs. Thus for about two years he had grown very weary indeed. And diving deep into the sea of pleasures, he brought back more grit than pearls. Thus had he come, like potentates, to implore of chance some obstacle to surmount, some enterprise which should ask the employment of his dormant moral and physical strength. Although Paquita Valdez presented him with a marvellous concentration of perfections, which he had only yet enjoyed in detail, the attraction of passion was almost nil with him. Constant satiety had weakened in his heart the sentiment of love, like old men and people disillusioned. He had no longer anything but extravagant caprices, ruinous tastes, fantasies, which once satisfied left no pleasant memory in his heart. Amongst young people, love is the finest of the emotions. It makes the life of the soul blossom. It nourishes by its solar power the finest inspirations and their great thoughts. The first fruits in all things have a delicious savour. Amongst men love becomes a passion. Strength leads to abuse. Amongst old men it turns to vice. Impotence tends to extremes. Henri was at once an old man, a man and a youth. To afford him the feelings of a real love, he needed, like loveless, a Clarissa Harlow. Without the magic luster of that unattainable pearl, he could only have either passions rendered acute by some Parisian vanity, or set determinations with himself to bring such and such a woman to such and such a point of corruption, or else adventures which stimulated his curiosity. The report of Laurent, his valet de chambre, had just given an enormous value to the girl with the golden eyes. It was a question of doing battle with some secret enemy who seemed as dangerous as he was cunning, and to carry off the victory all the forces which Henri could dispose of would be useful. He was about to play in that eternal old comedy which will be always fresh, and the characters in which are an old man, a young girl and a lover, Don Ichos Paquita de Marseille. If Laurent was the equal of Figaro, the duena seemed incorruptible. Thus the living play was supplied by chance with a stronger plot than it had ever been by dramatic author. But there is not chance to a man of genius. It must be a cautious game, said Henri to himself. Well, said Paul de Manerville as he entered the room, how are we getting on? I have come to breakfast with you. So be it, said Henri. You won't be shocked if I make my toilette before you. How absurd! We take so many things from the English just now that we might well become as great prudes and hypocrites as themselves, said Henri. Laurent had set before his master such a quantity of utensils, so many different articles of such elegance that Paul could not refrain from saying, But you will take a couple of hours over that. No, said Henri, two hours and a half. Well then, since we are by ourselves and can say what we like, explain to me why a man as superior as yourself, for you are superior, should effect to exaggerate a robbery which cannot be natural. Why spend two hours and a half in adorning yourself, when it is sufficient to spend a quarter of an hour in your bath, to do your hair in two minutes, and to dress? There, tell me your system. I must be very fond of you, my good dunce, to confide such high thoughts to you," said the young man, who was at that moment having his feet rubbed with a soft brush, lathered with English soap. Have I not the most devoted attachment to you? replied Paul de Manerville. And do I not like you because I know your superiority? You must have noticed, if you are in the least capable of observing any moral fact, that women love fobs, went on de Marseille, without replying in any way to Paul's declaration except by a look. Do you know why women love fobs? My friend, fobs are the only men who take care of themselves. Now, to take excessive care of oneself, does it not imply that one takes care in oneself of what belongs to another? The man who does not belong to himself is precisely the man on whom women are keen. Love is essentially a thief. I say nothing about that excess of niceness to which they are so devoted. Do you know of any woman who has had a passion for a sloven, even if he were a remarkable man? If such a fact has occurred, we must put it to the account of those morbid affections of the breeding woman, mad fancies which float through the minds of everybody. On the other hand, I have seen most remarkable people left in the lurch because of their carelessness. A fob, who is concerned about his person, is concerned with folly, with petty things. And what is a woman, a petty thing, a bundle of follies? With two words said to the winds, can you not make her busy for four hours? She is sure that the fob will be occupied with her, seeing that he has no mind for great things. She will never be neglected for glory, ambition, politics, art. Those prostitutes whom for her are rivals. Then fobs have the courage to cover themselves with ridicule in order to please a woman, and her heart is full of gratitude towards the man who is ridiculous for love. In fine a fob can be no fob unless he is right in being one. It is women who bestow that rank, the fob his love's kernel. He has his victories, his regiment of women at his command. My dear fellow, in Paris everything is known, and a man cannot be a fob there, gratis. You who have only one woman, and who perhaps are right to have but one, try to act the fob. You will not even become ridiculous, you will be dead. You will become a foregone conclusion. One of those men condemned inevitably to do one and the same thing. You will come to signify folly, as inseparably as Monsieur de Lafayette signifies America. Monsieur de Télérand, diplomacy, des ogiers, song, Monsieur de Segure, romance. If they once forsake their own line, people no longer attach any value to what they do. So, Vopperie, my friend Paul, is the sign of an incontestable power over the female folk. A man who is loved by many women passes for having superior qualities. And then, poor fellow, it is a question who shall have him. But do you think it is nothing to have the right of going into a drawing-room, of looking down at people from over your cravat, or through your eyeglass, and of despising the most superior of men, should he wear an old-fashioned waistcoat? Loin, you are hurting me. After breakfast, Paul, we will go to the Tuileries and see the adorable girl with the golden eyes. Recording by Martin Giesen The girl with the golden eyes, by Honoré de Balzac Translated by Ellen Marrige Section 5 When, after making an excellent meal, the two young men had traversed the Terras de Feuillon and the broad walk of the Tuileries, they nowhere discovered the sublime Paquita Valdez, on whose account some fifty of the most elegant young men in Paris were to be seen, all scented with their high scarfs, spurred and booted, riding, walking, talking, laughing, and damning themselves mightily. It's a white mass, said Henri, but I have the most excellent idea in the world. This girl receives letters from London. The postman must be bought or made drunk, a letter opened, read, of course, and a love letter slipped in before it is sealed up again. The old tyrant, Crudel Tiranno, is certain to know the person who writes the letters from London and has ceased to be suspicious of them. The day after, de Marseille came again to walk on the Terras de Feuillon and saw Paquita Valdez. Already passion had embellished her for him. Seriously he was wild for those eyes whose rays seemed akin to those which the sun emits and whose ardour set the seal upon that of her perfect body in which all was delight. De Marseille was on fire to brush the dress of this enchanting girl as they passed one another in their walk, but his attempts were always vain. But at one moment, when he had re-passed Paquita and the duena, in order to find himself on the same side as the girl of the golden eyes, when he returned, Paquita, no less impatient, came forward hurriedly and de Marseille felt his hand pressed by her in a fashion at once so swift and so passionately significant that it was as though he had received the emotions surged up in his heart. When the two lovers glanced at one another, Paquita seemed ashamed. She dropped her eyes lest she should meet the eyes of Henri, but her gaze sank lower to fasten on the feet and form of him whom women before the Revolution called their conqueror. I am determined to make this girl my mistress, c'est Henri to himself. As he followed her along the terrace in the direction of the place Louis XV, he caught sight of the aged Marquis de Saint-Réal who was walking on the arm of his valet, stepping with all the precautions due to gout and decrepitude. Donia Concha, who distrusted Henri, made Paquita pass between herself and the old man. Oh, for you! said de Marseille to himself, casting a glance of disdain upon the duena, if one cannot make you capitulate, with a little opium one can make you sleep. We know mythology and the fable of Argus. Before entering the carriage, the golden-eyed girl exchanged certain glances with her lover, of which the meaning was unmistakable, and which enchanted Henri. But one of them was surprised by the duena. She said a few rapid words to Paquita, who threw herself into the coupe with an air of desperation. For some days Paquita did not appear in the tuileries. Laurent, whom by his master's orders was on watch by the hotel, learned from the neighbours that neither the two women nor the aged Marquis had been abroad since the day upon which the duena had surprised a glance between the young girl in her charge and Henri. The bond so flimsy with all which united the two lovers was already severed. Some days later none knew by what means de Marseille had attained his end. He had a seal and wax exactly resembling the seal and wax affixed to the letters sent to Mademoiselle Valdez from London, paper similar to that which her correspondent used. Moreover, all the implements and stamps necessary to affix the French and English postmarks. He wrote the following letter to which he gave all the appearances of a letter sent from London. My dear Paquita, I shall not try to paint to you in words the passion with which you have inspired me. If to my happiness you reciprocate it, understand that I have found a means of corresponding with you. My name is Adolf de Gouges, and I live at number 54 Rue de l'Université. If you are too closely watched to be able to write to me, if you have neither pen nor paper, I shall understand it by your silence. If then tomorrow you have not between eight o'clock in the morning and ten o'clock in the evening, then a letter over the wall of your garden into that of the Baron de Nussaint-Jean, where it will be waited for during the whole of the day. A man who is entirely devoted to me will let down two flasks by a string over your wall at ten o'clock the next morning. Be walking there at that hour. One of the two flasks will contain opium to send your argous to sleep. It will be sufficient to employ six drops. The other will contain ink. The flask of ink is of cut glass. The other is plain. Both are of such a size as can easily be concealed within your bosom. All that I have already done, in order to be able to correspond with you, should tell you how greatly I love you. Should you have any doubt of it, I will confess to you that to obtain an interview of one hour with you I would give my life. At least they believe that, poor creatures, they said de Marseille, but they are right. What should we think of a woman who refused to be beguiled by a love letter accompanied by such convincing accessories? This letter was delivered by Master Moineau, postman, on the following day, about eight o'clock in the morning to the porter of the Hotel Saint-Réal. In order to be nearer to the field of action, de Marseille went and breakfasted with Paul, who lived in the Rue de la Pépinière. At two o'clock, just as the two friends were laughingly discussing the discomforture of a young man who had attempted to lead the life of fashion without a settled income, and were devising an end for him. Henri's coachman came to seek his master at Paul's house and presented to him a mysterious personage who insisted on speaking himself with his master. This individual was a mulatto, who would assuredly have given Talma a model for the part of Othello if he had come across him. Never did any African face better express the grand vengefulness, the ready suspicion, the promptitude in the execution of a thought, the strength of the Moore, and his childish lack of reflection. His black eyes had the fixity of the eyes of a bird of prey, and they were framed like a vultures by a bluish membrane devoid of lashes. His forehead, low and narrow, had something menacing. Evidently this man was under the yoke of some single and unique thought. His sinewy arm did not belong to him. He was followed by a man whom the imaginations of all folk from those who shiver in Greenland to those who sweat in the tropics would paint in the single phrase he was an unfortunate man. From this phrase everybody will conceive him according to the special ideas of each country. But who can best imagine his face white and wrinkled, red at the extremities, and his long beard? Who will see his lean and yellow scarf, his greasy shirt collar, his battered hat, his green frock coat, his deplorable trousers, his dilapidated waistcoat, his imitation gold pin, and battered shoes, the strings of which were plastered in mud? Who will see all that but the Parisian? The unfortunate man of Paris is the unfortunate man in Toto, for he has still enough mirth to know the extent of his misfortune. The mulatto was like an executioner of Louis-Anne's leading a man to the gallows. Who has hunted us out these two extraordinary creatures, c'est d'enri? Faith there is one of them who makes me shudder, replied Paul. Who are you? You fellow who look the most like a Christian of the two. C'est d'enri, looking at the unfortunate man. The mulatto stood with his eyes fixed upon the two young men, like a man who understood nothing and who sought no less to divine something from the gestures and movements of the lips. I am a public scribe and interpreter. I live at the palais de justice and I am named Poincé. Good, and this one, said Henri to Poincé, looking towards the mulatto. I do not know. He only speaks a sort of Spanish patois and he has brought me here to make himself understood by you. The mulatto drew from his pocket the letter which Henri had written to Paquita and handed it to him. Henri threw it in the fire. Ah, so the game is beginning. C'est d'enri to himself. Paul, leave us alone for a moment. I translated this letter for him, went on the interpreter when they were alone. When it was translated he was in some place which I don't remember. Then he came back to look for me and promised me to Louis to fetch him here. What of you to say to me, nigger? asked Henri. I did not translate nigger, said the interpreter, waiting for the mulatto's reply. He said, sir, went on the interpreter having listened to the unknown, that you must be at half past ten tomorrow night on the boulevard Montmartre, near the café. You will see a carriage there in which you must take your place saying to the man who will wait to open the door for you the word cortejo, a Spanish word which means lava, added Poincé, casting a glance of congratulation upon Henri. Good! The mulatto was about to bestow the two Louis, but de Marseille would not permit it and himself rewarded the interpreter. As he was paying him the mulatto began to speak. What is he saying? He is warning me, replied the unfortunate, that if I commit a single indiscretion he will strangle me. He speaks fair and he looks remarkably as if he were capable of carrying out his threat. I am sure of it, answered Henri. He would keep his word. He says as well, replied the interpreter, that the person from whom he is sent implores you for your sake and for hers to act with the greatest prudence because the daggers which are raised above your head would strike your heart before any human power could save you from them. He said that so much the better it will be more amusing. You can come in now, Paul, he cried to his friend, the mulatto who had not ceased to gaze at the lover of Paquita Valdez with magnetic attention went away, followed by the interpreter. Well, at last I have an adventure which is entirely romantic, said Henri when Paul returned. After having shared in a certain number I have finished by finding in Paris an intrigue accompanied by serious accidents by grave perils, deduce what courage danger gives a woman. To torment a woman, to try and contradict her, doesn't it give her the right courage to scale in one moment obstacles which it would take her years to surmount of herself? Pretty creature, jump then! To die, poor child, daggers! Oh, the imagination of women! They cannot help trying to find authority for their little jests. Besides, can one think of it, Paquita? Can one think of it, my child? The devil take me! Now that I know this beautiful girl, this masterpiece of nature is mine, the adventure has lost its charm. For all his light words the youths in Henri had reappeared. In order to live until the morrow without too much pain he had recourse to exorbitant pleasure. He played, dined, supped with his friends. He drank like a fish, ate like a German, and won ten or twelve thousand francs. He left the Rocher de Comcal at two o'clock in the morning, slept like a child, awoke the next morning fresh and rosy and dressed to go to the Tuileries with the intention of taking a ride after having seen Paquita in order to get himself an appetite and dine the better and so kill the time. In Hazelmere Surrey Section 6 Of the Girl with the Golden Eyes This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Giesen The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honoré de Balzac translated by Ellen Marridge Section 6 At the hour mentioned, Henri was on the boulevard, saw the carriage and gave the counter-word to a man who looked to him like the mulatto. Hearing the word, the man opened the door and quickly let down the step. Henri was so rapidly carried through Paris and his thoughts left him so little capacity to pay attention to the streets through which he passed that he did not know where the carriage stopped. The mulatto let him into a house, the staircase of which was quite close to the entrance. This staircase was dark as was also the landing upon which Henri was obliged to wait while the mulatto was opening the door of a damp apartment, fetid and unlit. The chambers of which, barely illuminated by the candle which his guide found in the antechamber, seemed to him empty and ill-furnished like those of a house the inhabitants of which are away. He recognised the sensation which he had experienced from the perusal of one of those romances of Anne Radcliffe in which the hero traverses the cold somber and uninhabited saloons of some sad and desert spot. At last the mulatto opened the door of a salon, the condition of the old furniture and the dilapidated curtains with which the room was adorned gave it the air of the reception room of a house of ill-fame. There was the same pretension to elegance and the same collection of things in bad taste, of dust and dirt. Upon a sofa covered with red ytrecht velvet by the side of a smoking hearth the fire of which was buried in ashes sat an old poorly dressed woman, her head capped by one of those turbans which English women of a certain age have invented and which would have a mighty success in China where the artist's ideal is the monstrous. The room, the old woman, the cold hearth, all would have chilled love to death had not Paquita been there, upon an ottoman in a loose voluptuous wrapper free to scatter her gaze of gold and flame, free to show her arched foot, free of her luminous movements. This first interview was what every rendezvous must be between persons of passionate disposition who have stepped over a wide distance quickly, who desire each other ardently, and who nevertheless do not know each other. It is impossible that at first there should not occur certain discordant notes in the situation which is embarrassing until the moment when two souls find themselves in unison. If desire gives a man boldness and disposes him to lay restraint aside, the mistress under pain of ceasing to be woman, however great may be her love, is afraid of arriving at the end so promptly and face to face with the necessity of giving herself which to many women is equivalent to a fall into an abyss at the bottom of which they know not what they shall find. The involuntary coldness of the woman contrasts with her confessed passion and necessarily reacts upon the most passionate lover. Thus ideas which often float around souls like vapours determining them a sort of temporary malady. In the sweet journey which two beings undertake through the fair domains of love, this moment is like a wasteland to be traversed, a land without a tree alternatively damp and warm, full of scorching sand traversed by marshes which leads to smiling groves clad with roses where love and his retinue of pleasures desport themselves on carpets of soft verdure. Often the witty man finds himself afflicted with a foolish laugh which is his only answer to everything. His wit is, as it were, suffocated beneath the icy pressure of his desires. It would not be impossible for two beings of equal beauty, intelligence and passion to utter at first nothing but the most silly common places, until chance, a word, the tremor of a certain glance, the communication of a spark, should have brought them to the happy transition which leads to that flowery way in which one does not walk, but where one sways and at the same time does not lapse. Such a state of mind is always in proportion with the violence of the feeling. Two creatures who love one another weakly feel nothing similar. The effect of this crisis can even be compared with that which is produced by the glow of a clear sky. Nature, at the first view, appears to be covered with a gore's veil. The azure of the firmament seems black. The intensity of light is like darkness. With Henri, as with the Spanish girl, there was an equal intensity of feeling and that law of statics, in virtue of which two identical forces cancel each other, might have been true also in the moral order. And the embarrassment of the moment was singularly increased by the presence of the old hag. Love takes pleasure or fright at all. All has meaning for it. Everything is an omen of happiness or sorrow for it. This decrepit woman was there like a suggestion of catastrophe and represented the horrid fish's tail with which the allegorical geniuses of Greece have terminated their chimeras and sirens whose figures, like all passions, are so seductive, so deceptive. Although Henri was not a free thinker, the phrase is always a mockery. But a man of extraordinary power, a man as great as a man can be without faith, the conjunctions struck him. Moreover, the strongest men are naturally the most impressionable and consequently the most superstitious. If indeed one may call superstition the prejudice of the first thoughts, which without doubt is the appreciation of the result in causes hidden to other eyes but perceptible to their own. The Spanish girl, profited by this moment of stupid faction, to let herself fall into the ecstasy of that infinite adoration which seizes the heart of a woman when she truly loves and finds herself in the presence of an idol for whom she has vainly longed. Her eyes were all joy, all happiness and sparks flew from them. She was under the charm and fearlessly intoxicated herself with a felicity of which she had dreamed long. She seemed then so marvellously beautiful to Henri, that all this phantasmagoria of rags and old age, of worn red drapery and of the green mats in front of the armchairs, the ill-washed red tiles, all this sick and dilapidated luxury, disappeared. The room seemed lit up and it was only through a cloud that one could see the fearful harpy, fixed and dumb on her red sofa, her yellow eyes betraying the servile sentiments inspired by misfortune or caused by some vice beneath whose servitude one has fallen as beneath a tyrant who brutalizes one with the flagellations of his despotism. Her eyes had the cold glitter of a caged tiger knowing his impotence and being compelled to swallow his rage of destruction. Who is that woman? said Henri to Paquita. But Paquita did not answer. She made a sign that she understood no French and asked Henri if he spoke English. De Marseille repeated his question in English. She is the only woman in whom I can confide although she has sold me already, said Paquita tranquilly. My dear Adolphe, she is my mother, a slave bought in Georgia for her rare beauty, little enough of which remains to-day. She only speaks her native tongue. The attitude of this woman and her eagerness to guess from the gestures of her daughter and Henri what was passing between them was suddenly explained to the young man and this explanation put him at his ease. Paquita, he said, are we never to be free then? Never, she said, with an air of sadness. Even now we have but a few days before us. She lowered her eyes, looked at and counted with her right hand on the fingers of her left, revealing so the most beautiful hands which Henri had ever seen. One, two, three. She counted up to twelve. Yes, she said, we have twelve days. And after. After, she said, showing the absorption of a weak woman before the executioner's axe and slain in advance, as it were, by a fear which stripped her of that magnificent energy which nature seemed to have bestowed upon her only to a grand eyes pleasure and convert the most vulgar delights into endless poems. After, she repeated, her eyes took a fixed stare. She seemed to contemplate a threatening object far away. I do not know, she said. This girl is mad, said Henri to himself, falling into strange reflections. Paquita appeared to him occupied by something which was not himself, like a woman constrained equally by remorse and passion. Perhaps she had in her heart another love which she alternately remembered and forgot. In a moment Henri was assailed by a thousand contradictory thoughts. This girl became a mystery for him, but as he contemplated her with the scientific attention of the blasé man, famished for new pleasures, like that eastern king who asked that a pleasure should be created for him, a horrible thirst with which great souls are seized. Henri recognized in Paquita the richest organization that nature had ever deigned to compose for love. The presumptive play of this machinery, setting aside the soul, would have frightened any other man than Henri. But he was fascinated by that rich harvest of promised pleasures, by that constant variety in happiness, the dream of every man and the desire of every loving woman, too. He was infuriated by the infinite, rendered palpable and transported into the most excessive raptures of which the creature is capable. All that he saw in this girl more distinctly than he had yet seen it, for she let herself be viewed complacently, happy to be admired. The admiration of de Marseille became a secret fiori, and he unveiled her completely, throwing a glance at her which the Spaniard understood as though she had been used to receive such. If you are not to be mine, mine only, I will kill you, he cried. Hearing this speech, Paquita covered her face in her hands and cried naively, Holy Virgin, what have I brought upon myself? She rose, flung herself down upon the red sofa, and buried her head in the rags which covered the bosom of her mother, and wept there. The old woman received her daughter without issuing from the state of immobility or displaying any emotion. The mother possessed in the highest degree that gravity of savage races, the impassiveness of a statue upon which all remarks are lost. Did she or did she not love her daughter? Beneath that mask every human emotion might brood good and evil, and from this creature all might be expected. Her gaze passed slowly from her daughter's beautiful hair which covered her like a mantle to the face of Henri which she considered with an indescribable curiosity. She seemed to ask by what fatality he was there, from what caprice nature had made so seductive a man. These women are making sport of me, said Henri to himself. At that moment Paquita raised her head, cast at him one of those looks which reach the very soul and consume it. So beautiful seemed she that he swore he would possess such a treasure of beauty. My Paquita, be mine! Wouldst thou kill me? she said fearfully, palpitating and anxious, but drawn towards him by an inexplicable force. Kill thee, I, he said, smiling. Paquita uttered a cry of alarm, said a word to the old woman who authoritatively seized Henri's hand and that of her daughter. She gazed at them for a long time and then released them, wagging her head in a fashion horribly significant. Be mine this evening, this moment. Follow me, do not leave me. It must be, Paquita. Dust thou love me? Come! In a moment he had poured out a thousand foolish words to her with the rapidity of a torrent coursing between the rocks and repeating the same sound in a thousand different forms. It is the same voice, said Paquita, in a melancholy voice which de Marseille could not overhear and the same ardour, she added. So be it. Yes, she said, with an abandonment of passion which no words can describe. Yes, but not to-night. To-night, Adolf, I gave too little opium to la concha. She might wake up and I should be lost. At this moment the whole household believes me to be asleep in my room. In two days, be at the same spot. Say the same word to the same man. That man is my foster-father. Christemio worships me and would die in torments for me before they could extract one word against me from him. Farewell, she said, seizing Henri by the waist and twining round him like a serpent. She pressed him on every side at once, lifted her head to his and offered him her lips, then snatched a kiss which filled them both with such a dizziness that it seemed to Henri as though the earth opened. And Paquita cried, enough, depart, in a voice which told how little she was mistress of herself. But she clung to him still, still crying, depart, and brought him slowly to the staircase. There the mulatto, whose white eyes lit up at the sight of Paquita, took the torch from the hands of his idol and conducted Henri to the street. He left the light under the arch, opened the door, put Henri into the carriage, and set him down on the boulevard des Italiens with marvellous rapidity. It was as though the horses had hell-fire in their veins. The scene was like a dream to de Marseille, but one of those dreams which, even when they fade away, leave a feeling of supernatural voluptuousness, which a man runs after for the remainder of his life. A single kiss had been enough, never had rendezvous been spent in a manner more decorous or chaste, or perhaps more coldly, in a spot of which the surroundings were more gruesome, in presence of a more hideous divinity. For the mother had remained in Henri's imagination like some infernal, cowering thing, cadaverous, monstrous, savagely ferocious, which the imagination of poets and painters had not yet conceived. In effect, no rendezvous had ever irritated his senses more, revealed more audacious pleasures, or better aroused love from its centre to shed itself around him like an atmosphere. There was something sombre, mysterious, sweet, tender, constrained and expansive, an intermingling of the awful and the celestial of paradise and hell, which made de Marseille like a drunken man. He was no longer himself, and he was with all great enough to be able to resist the intoxication of pleasure. In order to render his conduct intelligible in the catastrophe of this story, it is needful to explain how his soul had broadened at an age when young men generally belittled themselves in their relations with women, or in too much occupation with them. Its growth was due to a concurrence of secret circumstances which invested him with a vast and unsuspected power. This young man held in his hand a scepter more powerful than that of modern kings, almost all of whom are curbed in their least wishes by the laws. De Marseille exercised the autocratic power of an oriental despot. But this power, so stupidly put into execution in Asia by brutish men, was increased tenfold by its conjunction with European intelligence, with French wit, the most subtle, the keenest of all intellectual instruments. Henri could do what he would in the interests of his pleasures and vanities. This invisible action upon the social world had invested him with a real but secret majesty, without emphasis and deriving from himself. He had not the opinion which Louis Catois could have of himself, but that which the proudest of the caliphs, the pharaohs, the Xerxes, who held themselves to be of divine origin, had of themselves when they imitated God, and veiled themselves from their subjects under the pretext that their looks dealt forth death. Thus, without any remorse at being at once the judge and the accuser, de Marseille coldly condemned to death the man or the woman who had seriously offended him. Although often pronounced almost lightly, the verdict was irrevocable. An error was a misfortune similar to that which a thunderbolt causes when it falls upon a smiling Parisienne in some hackney coach, instead of crushing the old coachman who is driving her to Heradevou. Thus the bitter and profound sarcasm which distinguished the young man's conversation usually tended to frighten people. No one was anxious to put him out. Women are prodigiously fond of those persons who call themselves pashers, and who are, as it were, accompanied by lions and executioners, and who walk in a panoply of terror. The result, in the case of such men, is a security of action, a certitude of power, a pride of gaze, a leonine consciousness which makes women realize the type of strength of which they all dream. Such was de Marseille. Happy for the moment with his future, he grew young and pliable and thought of nothing but love as he went to bed. He dreamed of the girl with the golden eyes as the young and passionate can dream. His dreams were monstrous images, unattainable extravagances, full of light, revealing invisible worlds, yet in a manner always incomplete, for an intervening veil changes the conditions of vision. End of section 6 Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey Section 7 of The Girl with the Golden Eyes This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Giesen The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honoré de Balzac Translated by Ellen Marrige Section 7 For the next and succeeding day Henri disappeared and no one knew what had become of him. His power only belonged to him under certain conditions and happily for him during those two days he was a private soldier in the service of the demon to whom he owed his talismanic existence. But at the appointed time in the evening he was waiting and he had not long to wait for the carriage. The mulatto approached Henri in order to repeat to him in French the ways which he seemed to have learned by heart. If you wish to come, she told me you must consent to have your eyes bandaged. And Christiane produced a white silk handkerchief. No! said Henri, whose omnipotence revolted suddenly. He tried to leap in. The mulatto made a sign and the carriage drove off. Yes! cried de Marseille, furious at the thought of losing a piece of good fortune which had been promised him. He saw moreover the impossibility of making terms with a slave whose obedience was as blind as the hangman's. Nor was it this passive instrument upon whom his anger could fall. The mulatto whistled. The carriage returned. Henri got in hastily. Already a few curious onlookers had assembled like sheep on the boulevard. Henri was strong. He tried to play the mulatto. When the carriage started at a gallop he seized his hands in order to master him and retain by subduing his attendant the possession of his faculties so that he might know wither he was going. It was a vain attempt. The eyes of the mulatto flashed from the darkness. The fellow uttered a cry which his fury stifled in his throat, released himself through back de Marseille with a hand like iron and nailed him, so to speak, to the bottom of the carriage. Then with his free hand he drew a triangular dagger and whistled. The coachman heard the whistle and stopped. Henri was unarmed. He was forced to yield. He moved his head towards the handkerchief. The gesture of submission calmed Christemio and he bound his eyes with the respect and care which manifested a sort of veneration for the person of the man whom his idol loved. But before taking this course he had placed his dagger distrustfully in his side pocket and buttoned himself up to the chin. That nigger would have killed me, said de Marseille to himself. Once more the carriage moved on rapidly. There was one resource still open to a young man who knew Paris as well as Henri. To know whether he was going he had but to collect himself and count by the number of gutters crossed the streets leading from the boulevard by which the carriage passed so long as it continued straight along. He could thus discover into which lateral street it would turn either towards the Seine or towards the heights of Montmartre and guess the name or position of the street in which his guide should bring him to a halt. But the violent emotion which his struggle had caused him the rage into which his compromised dignity had thrown him the ideas of vengeance to which he abandoned himself and the supposition suggested to him by the circumstantial care which this girl had taken in order to bring him to her. All hindered him from the attention which the blind have necessary for the concentration of his intelligence and the perfect lucidity of his recollection. The journey lasted half an hour. When the carriage stopped it was no longer on the street. The mulatto and the coachman took Henri in their arms, lifted him out and putting him into a sort of litter conveyed him across a garden. He could smell its flowers and the perfume peculiar to trees and grass. The silence which reigned there was so profound that he could distinguish the noise made by the drops of water falling from the moist leaves. The two men took him to a staircase set him on his feet, led him by his hands through several apartments and left him in a room whose atmosphere was perfumed and the thick carpet of which was all beneath his feet. A woman's hand pushed him on to a divan and untied the handkerchief for him. Henri saw Paquita before him but Paquita in all her womanly and voluptuous glory. The section of the boudoir in which Henri found himself was a circular line softly gracious which was faced opposite by the other perfectly square half in the midst of which a chimney-piece shone of gold and white marble. He had entered by a door on one side hidden by a rich tapestry screen opposite which was a window. The semicircular portion was adorned with a real Turkish divan that is to say a mattress thrown on the ground but a mattress as broad as a bed a divan fifty feet in circumference made of white cashmere relieved by bows of black and scarlet silk arranged in panels. The top of this huge bed was raised several inches by numerous cushions which further enriched it by their tasteful comfort. The boudoir was lined with some red stuff over which an Indian muslin was stretched fluted after the fashion of Corinthian columns in plaques going in and out and bound at the top and bottom by bands of poppy-coloured stuff on which were designs in black arabesque. Below the muslin the poppy turned to rose that amorous colour which was matched by the window-curtains which were of Indian muslin lined with rose-coloured taffeta set off with a fringe of poppy-colour and black. Six silver gilt arms each supporting two candles were attached to the tapestry at an equal distance to illuminate the divan. The ceiling from the middle of which a luster of unpolished silver hung was of a brilliant whiteness and the cornice was gilded. The carpet was like an oriental shawl. It had the designs and recalled the poetry of Persia where the hands of slaves had worked on it. The furniture was covered in white cashmere relieved by black and poppy-coloured ornaments. The clock, the candelabra all were in white marble and gold. The only table there had a cloth of cashmere. Elegant flower-pots held roses of every kind flowers white or red. In fine, the least detail seemed to have been the object of loving thought. Never had richness hidden itself more coquettishly to become more beautiful to express grace to inspire pleasure. Everything there would have warmed the coldest of beings the caresses of the tapestry of which the colour changed according to the direction of one's gaze becoming either all white or all rose harmonised with the effects of the light shed upon the diaphanous tissues of the muslin which produced an appearance of mistiness. The soul has by no not what attraction towards white. Love delights in red and the passions are flattered by gold which has the power of realising their caprices. Thus all that man possesses within him a vague and mysterious all his inexplicable affinities were caressed in their involuntary sympathies. There was in this perfect harmony a concert of colour to which the soul responded vague and voluptuous and fluctuating ideas. It was out of a misty atmosphere laden with exquisite perfumes that Paquita clad in a white wrapper, her feet bare orange blossoms in her black hair appeared to Henri knelt before him adoring him as the god of this temple whether he had deigned to come. Although de Marseille was accustomed to seeing the utmost efforts of Parisian luxury he was surprised at the aspect of this shell like that from which Venus rose out of the sea. Whether from an effect of contrast between the darkness from which he issued and the light which bathed his soul whether from a comparison which he swiftly made between this scene and that of their thirst interview he experienced one of those delicate sensations which true poetry gives. Perceiving in the midst of this retreat opened to him as by a fairy's magic wand the masterpiece of creation this girl whose warmly coloured tints whose soft skin soft but slightly gilded by the shadows by I know not what vaporous effusion of love gleamed as though it reflected the rays of colour and light his anger his desire for vengeance his wounded vanity all were lost like an eagle darting on his prey he took her utterly to him set her on his knees and felt with an indescribable intoxication the voluptuous pressure of this girl whose richly developed beauties softly enveloped him come to me Paquita he said in a low voice speak, speak without fear she said this retreat was built for love no sound can escape from it so greatly was it desired to guard avariciously the accents and music of the beloved voice however loud should be the cries they would not be heard without these walls a person might be murdered and his moans would be as vain as if he were in the midst of the great desert who has understood jealousy and its needs so well never question me as to that she answered, untying with a gesture of wonderful sweetness the young man's scarf doubtless in order the better to behold his neck yes, there is the neck I love so well she said, wouldst thou please me this interrogation rendered by the accent almost lascivious drew de Marseille from the reverie in which he had been plunged by Paquita's authoritative refusal to allow him any research as to the unknown being who hovered like a shadow about them and if I wished to know who reigns here Paquita looked at him trembling it is not I then, he said rising and freeing himself from the girl whose head fell backwards where I am I would be alone strike, strike, said the poor slave a prey to terror for what do you take me then will you answer Paquita got up gently her eyes full of tears took a poneyard from one of the two ebony pieces of furniture and presented it to Henri with a gesture of submission which would have moved a tiger give me a feast such as men give when they love she said and whilst I sleep slay me for I know not how to answer thee Harken, I am bound like some poor beast to a stake I am amazed that I have been able to throw a bridge over the abyss which divides us intoxicate me then kill me ah, no, no she cried joining her hands do not kill me, I love life life is fair to me if I am a slave I am a queen too I could beguile you with words tell you that I love you alone prove it to you profit by my momentary empire to say to you take me as one tastes the perfume of a flower when one passes it in a king's garden then after having used the cunning eloquence of woman and the sword on the wings of pleasure after having quenched my thirst I could have you cast into a pit where none could find you which has been made to gratify vengeance without having to fear that of the law a pit full of lime which would kindle and consume you until no particle of you were left you would stay in my heart mine forever Henri looked at the girl without trembling and this fearless gaze filled her with joy no, I shall not do it you have fallen into no trap here but upon the heart of a woman who adores you and it is I who will be cast into the pit all this appears to me prodigiously strange said de Marseille considering her but you seem to me a good girl a strange nature you are upon my word of honour a living riddle the answer to which is very difficult to find Paquita understood nothing of what the young man said she looked at him gently opening wide eyes which could never be stupid so much was pleasure written in them come then my love she said returning to her first idea wouldst thou please me I would do all that thou wouldst and even that thou wouldst not answered de Marseille with a laugh he had recovered his foppish ease as he took the resolve to let himself go to the climax of his good fortune looking neither before nor after perhaps he counted moreover on his power and his capacity of a man used to adventures to dominate this girl a few hours later and learn all her secrets well said she let me arrange you as I would like Paquita went joyously and took from one of the two chests a robe of red velvet in which she dressed de Marseille then adorned his head with a woman's bonnet and wrapped a shawl round him abandoning herself to these follies with a child's innocence she laughed a convulsive laugh and resembled some bird flapping its wings but he saw nothing beyond end of section seven recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey section eight of The Girl with the Golden Eyes this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Martin Giesen The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honoré de Balzac translated by Ellen Marridge section eight if it be impossible to paint the unheard of delights which these two creatures made by heaven in a joyous moment found it is perhaps necessary to translate metaphysically the extraordinary and almost fantastic impressions of the young man that which persons in the social position of de Marseille living as he lived are best able to recognize is a girl's innocence but strange phenomenon the girl of the golden eyes might be virgin but innocent she was certainly not the fantastic union of the mysterious and the real of darkness and light horror and beauty pleasure and danger paradise and hell which had already been met with in this adventure was resumed in the capricious and sublime being with which de Marseille dalled all the utmost science or the most refined pleasure all that Henri could know of that poetry of the senses which is called love was excelled by the treasures poured forth by this girl whose radiant eyes gave the lie to none of the promises which they made she was an oriental poem in which shone the sun that Saadi that Hafiz have set in their pulsing strophes only neither the rhythm of Saadi nor that of Pindar could have expressed the ecstasy full of confusion and stupid faction which seized the delicious girl when the error in which an iron hand had caused her to live was at an end dead she said I am dead Adolphe take me to the world's end to an island where no one knows us let there be no traces of our flight we should be followed to the gates of hell God here is the day escape shall I ever see you again yes tomorrow I will see you if I have to deal death to all my waters to have that joy till tomorrow she pressed him in her arms with an embrace in which the terror of death mingled then she touched a spring which must have been in connection with a bell and implored de Marseille to permit his eyes to be bandaged and if I would not and if I wished to stay here you would be the death of me more speedily she said for now I know I am certain to die on your account Henri submitted in the man who has just gorged himself with pleasure there occurs a propensity to forgetfulness I know not what ingratitude a desire for liberty a whim to go elsewhere a tinge of contempt and perhaps a disgust for his idol in fine indescribable sentiments which render him ignoble and ashamed the certainty of this confused but real feeling in souls who are not illuminated by that celestial light nor perfumed with that holy essence from which the performance of sentiment springs doubtless suggested to Housseau the adventures of Lord Edward which conclude the letters of the Nouvelle Eloise if Housseau is obviously inspired by the work of Richardson he departs from it in a thousand details which leave his achievement magnificently original he has recommended it to posterity by great ideas which it is difficult to liberate by analysis when in one's youth one reads this work with the object of finding in it the lurid representation of the most physical of our feelings whereas serious and philosophical writers never employ its images except as the consequence or the corollary of a vast thought and the adventures of Lord Edward are one of the most europeanly delicate ideas of the whole work Henri therefore found himself beneath the domination of that confused sentiment which is unknown to true love there was needful in some sort the persuasive grip of comparisons and the irresistible attraction of memories to lead him back to a woman true love rules above all through recollection a woman who is not engraven upon the soul by excess of pleasure or by strength of emotion how can she ever be loved? in Henri's case Paquita had established herself by both of these reasons but at this moment seized as he was by the satiety of his happiness that delicious melancholy of the body he could hardly analyse his heart even by recalling to his lips the taste of the lifeliest gratifications that he had ever grasped he found himself on the boulevard Montmartre at the break of day gazed stupidly at the retreating carriage produced two cigars from his pocket lit one from the lantern of a good woman who sold brandy and coffee to workmen and street Arabs and chestnut vendors to all the Parisian populace which begins its work before daybreak then he went off smoking his cigar and putting his hands in his trousers pocket with a devil-may-care air which did him small honour what a good thing a cigar is that's one thing a man will never tire of he said to himself of the girl with the golden eyes for whom at that time all the elegant youth of Paris was mad he hardly thought the idea of death expressed in the midst of their pleasure and the fear of which had more than once darkened the brow of that beautiful creature who held to the uries of Asia by her mother to Europe by her education to the tropics by her birth seemed to him merely one of those deceptions by which women seek to make themselves interesting she is from Havana the most Spanish region to be found in the new world so she preferred to feign terror rather than cast in my teeth in disposition or difficulty cocketry or duty like a Parisian woman by her golden eyes how glad I shall be to sleep he saw a hackney coach standing at the corner of Trascati's waiting for some gambler he awoke the driver was driven home went to bed and slept the sleep of the dissipated which for some queer reason of which no rhyme has yet taken advantage is as profound as that of innocence perhaps it is an instance of the proverbial axiom extremes meet about noon Dumasse awoke and stretched himself he felt the grip of that sort of voracious hunger which old soldiers can remember having experienced on the morrow of victory he was delighted therefore to see Paul de Manerville standing in front of him for at such a time nothing is more agreeable than to eat in company well his friend remarked we all imagined you had been shut up for the last ten days with the girl of the golden eyes the girl of the golden eyes I have forgotten her faith I have other fish to fry ah you are playing at discretion why not asked Dumasse with a laugh my dear fellow discretion is the best form of calculation listen however no I will not say a word you never teach me anything I am not disposed to make you a gratuitous present of the treasures of my policy life is a river which is of use for the promotion of commerce in the name of all that is most sacred in life of cigars I am no professor of social economy for the instruction of fools let us breakfast it costs less to give you a tiny omelet than to lavish the resources of my brain on you do you bargain with your friends my dear fellow said Henri who rarely denied himself a sarcasm since all the same you may someday need like anybody else to use discretion and since I have much love for you yes I like you upon my word if you only wanted a thousand frank notes to keep you from blowing your brains out you would find it here for we haven't yet done any business of that sort if you had to fight tomorrow I would measure the ground and load the pistols so that you might be killed according to rule in short if anybody besides myself took it into his head to say ill of you in your absence he would have to deal with the somewhat nasty gentleman who walks in my shoes that's what I call a friendship beyond question well my good fellow if you should ever have need of discretion understand that there are two sorts of discretion the active and the negative negative discretion is that of fools who make use of silence negation an air of refusal the discretion of locked doors mere impotence active discretion proceeds by affirmation suppose at the club this evening I were to say upon my word of honour the golden-eyed was not worth all she cost me everybody would exclaim when I was gone did you hear that fob de Marseille who tried to make us believe that he has already had the girl of the golden eyes it's his way of trying to disembarrass himself of his rivals he's no simpleton but such a ruse is vulgar and dangerous however gross a folly one utters there are always idiots to be found who will believe it the best form of discretion is that of women when they want to take the change out of their husbands it consists in compromising a woman with whom we are not concerned or whom we do not love in order to save the honour of the one whom we love well enough to respect it is what is called the woman's screen here is long what have you got for us some Ostend oysters, Monsieur Le Comte you will know some day, Paul how amusing it is to make a fool of the world by depriving it of the secret of one's affections I derive an immense pleasure in escaping from the stupid jurisdiction of the crowd which knows neither what it wants nor what one wants of it which takes the means for the end and by turns curses and adores elevates and destroys what a delight to impose emotions on it and receive none from it to tame it, never to obey it if one may ever be proud of anything is it not a self acquired power of which one is at once the cause and effect the principle and the result well, no man knows what I love nor what I wish perhaps what I have loved or what I may have wished will be known as a drama which is accomplished is known but to let my game be seen weakness, mistake I know nothing more despicable than strength outwitted by cunning can I initiate myself with a laugh into the ambassadors part if indeed diplomacy is as difficult as life I doubt it have you any ambition would you like to become something but Henri, you are laughing at me as though I were not sufficiently mediocre to arrive at anything good Paul if you go on laughing at yourself you will soon be able to laugh at everybody else End of Section 8 Recording by Martin Geeson in Hazelmere, Surrey