Works of Honore De Balzac, page 1113
“At my first debt all my virtues came to life; slowly and despairingly they seemed to pace towards me; but I could compound with them — they were like aged aunts that begin with a scolding and end by bestowing tears and money upon you.
“Imagination was less yielding; I saw my name bandied about through every city in Europe. ‘One’s name is oneself’ says Eusebe Salverte. After these excursions I returned to the room I had never quitted, like a doppelganger in a German tale, and came to myself with a start.
“I used to see with indifference a banker’s messenger going on his errands through the streets of Paris, like a commercial Nemesis, wearing his master’s livery — a gray coat and a silver badge; but now I hated the species in advance. One of them came one morning to ask me to meet some eleven bills that I had scrawled my name upon. My signature was worth three thousand francs! Taking me altogether, I myself was not worth that amount. Sheriff’s deputies rose up before me, turning their callous faces upon my despair, as the hangman regards the criminal to whom he says, ‘It has just struck half-past three.’ I was in the power of their clerks; they could scribble my name, drag it through the mire, and jeer at it. I was a defaulter. Has a debtor any right to himself? Could not other men call me to account for my way of living? Why had I eaten puddings a la chipolata? Why had I iced my wine? Why had I slept, or walked, or thought, or amused myself when I had not paid them?
“At any moment, in the middle of a poem, during some train of thought, or while I was gaily breakfasting in the pleasant company of my friends, I might look to see a gentleman enter in a coat of chestnut-brown, with a shabby hat in his hand. This gentleman’s appearance would signify my debt, the bill I had drawn; the spectre would compel me to leave the table to speak to him, blight my spirits, despoil me of my cheerfulness, of my mistress, of all I possessed, down to my very bedstead.
“Remorse itself is more easily endured. Remorse does not drive us into the street nor into the prison of Sainte-Pelagie; it does not force us into the detestable sink of vice. Remorse only brings us to the scaffold, where the executioner invests us with a certain dignity; as we pay the extreme penalty, everybody believes in our innocence; but people will not credit a penniless prodigal with a single virtue.
“My debts had other incarnations. There is the kind that goes about on two feet, in a green cloth coat, and blue spectacles, carrying umbrellas of various hues; you come face to face with him at the corner of some street, in the midst of your mirth. These have the detestable prerogative of saying, ‘M. de Valentin owes me something, and does not pay. I have a hold on him. He had better not show me any offensive airs!’ You must bow to your creditors, and moreover bow politely. ‘When are you going to pay me?’ say they. And you must lie, and beg money of another man, and cringe to a fool seated on his strong-box, and receive sour looks in return from these horse-leeches; a blow would be less hateful; you must put up with their crass ignorance and calculating morality. A debt is a feat of the imaginative that they cannot appreciate. A borrower is often carried away and over-mastered by generous impulses; nothing great, nothing magnanimous can move or dominate those who live for money, and recognize nothing but money. I myself held money in abhorrence.
“Or a bill may undergo a final transformation into some meritorious old man with a family dependent upon him. My creditor might be a living picture for Greuze, a paralytic with his children round him, a soldier’s widow, holding out beseeching hands to me. Terrible creditors are these with whom we are forced to sympathize, and when their claims are satisfied we owe them a further debt of assistance.
“The night before the bills fell due, I lay down with the false calm of those who sleep before their approaching execution, or with a duel in prospect, rocked as they are by delusive hopes. But when I woke, when I was cool and collected, when I found myself imprisoned in a banker’s portfolio, and floundering in statements covered with red ink — then my debts sprang up everywhere, like grasshoppers, before my eyes. There were my debts, my clock, my armchairs; my debts were inlaid in the very furniture which I liked best to use. These gentle inanimate slaves were to fall prey to the harpies of the Chatelet, were to be carried off by the broker’s men, and brutally thrown on the market. Ah, my property was a part of myself!
“The sound of the door-bell rang through my heart; while it seemed to strike at me, where kings should be struck at — in the head. Mine was a martyrdom, without heaven for its reward. For a magnanimous nature, debt is a hell, and a hell, moreover, with sheriff’s officers and brokers in it. An undischarged debt is something mean and sordid; it is a beginning of knavery; it is something worse, it is a lie; it prepares the way for crime, and brings together the planks for the scaffold. My bills were protested. Three days afterwards I met them, and this is how it happened.
“A speculator came, offering to buy the island in the Loire belonging to me, where my mother lay buried. I closed with him. When I went to his solicitor to sign the deeds, I felt a cavern-like chill in the dark office that made me shudder; it was the same cold dampness that had laid hold upon me at the brink of my father’s grave. I looked upon this as an evil omen. I seemed to see the shade of my mother, and to hear her voice. What power was it that made my own name ring vaguely in my ears, in spite of the clamor of bells?
“The money paid down for my island, when all my debts were discharged, left me in possession of two thousand francs. I could now have returned to the scholar’s tranquil life, it is true; I could have gone back to my garret after having gained an experience of life, with my head filled with the results of extensive observation, and with a certain sort of reputation attaching to me. But Foedora’s hold upon her victim was not relaxed. We often met. I compelled her admirers to sound my name in her ears, by dint of astonishing them with my cleverness and success, with my horses and equipages. It all found her impassive and uninterested; so did an ugly phrase of Rastignac’s, ‘He is killing himself for you.’
“I charged the world at large with my revenge, but I was not happy. While I was fathoming the miry depths of life, I only recognized the more keenly at all times the happiness of reciprocal affection; it was a shadow that I followed through all that befell me in my extravagance, and in my wildest moments. It was my misfortune to be deceived in my fairest beliefs, to be punished by ingratitude for benefiting others, and to receive uncounted pleasures as the reward of my errors — a sinister doctrine, but a true one for the prodigal!
“The contagious leprosy of Foedora’s vanity had taken hold of me at last. I probed my soul, and found it cankered and rotten. I bore the marks of the devil’s claw upon my forehead. It was impossible to me thenceforward to do without the incessant agitation of a life fraught with danger at every moment, or to dispense with the execrable refinements of luxury. If I had possessed millions, I should still have gambled, reveled, and racketed about. I wished never to be alone with myself, and I must have false friends and courtesans, wine and good cheer to distract me. The ties that attach a man to family life had been permanently broken for me. I had become a galley-slave of pleasure, and must accomplish my destiny of suicide. During the last days of my prosperity, I spent every night in the most incredible excesses; but every morning death cast me back upon life again. I would have taken a conflagration with as little concern as any man with a life annuity. However, I at last found myself alone with a twenty-franc piece; I bethought me then of Rastignac’s luck — —
“Eh, eh! — — ” Raphael exclaimed, interrupting himself, as he remembered the talisman and drew it from his pocket. Perhaps he was wearied by the long day’s strain, and had no more strength left wherewith to pilot his head through the seas of wine and punch; or perhaps, exasperated by this symbol of his own existence, the torrent of his own eloquence gradually overwhelmed him. Raphael became excited and elated and like one completely deprived of reason.
“The devil take death!” he shouted, brandishing the skin; “I mean to live! I am rich, I have every virtue; nothing will withstand me. Who would not be generous, when everything is in his power? Aha! Aha! I wished for two hundred thousand livres a year, and I shall have them. Bow down before me, all of you, wallowing on the carpets like swine in the mire! You all belong to me — a precious property truly! I am rich; I could buy you all, even the deputy snoring over there. Scum of society, give me your benediction! I am the Pope.”
Raphael’s vociferations had been hitherto drowned by a thorough-bass of snores, but now they became suddenly audible. Most of the sleepers started up with a cry, saw the cause of the disturbance on his feet, tottering uncertainly, and cursed him in concert for a drunken brawler.
“Silence!” shouted Raphael. “Back to your kennels, you dogs! Emile, I have riches, I will give you Havana cigars!”
“I am listening,” the poet replied. “Death or Foedora! On with you! That silky Foedora deceived you. Women are all daughters of Eve. There is nothing dramatic about that rigmarole of yours.”
“Ah, but you were sleeping, slyboots.”
“No — ’Death or Foedora!’ — I have it!”
“Wake up!” Raphael shouted, beating Emile with the piece of shagreen as if he meant to draw electric fluid out of it.
“Tonnerre!” said Emile, springing up and flinging his arms round Raphael; “my friend, remember the sort of women you are with.”
“I am a millionaire!”
“If you are not a millionaire, you are most certainly drunk.”
“Drunk with power. I can kill you! — Silence! I am Nero! I am Nebuchadnezzar!”
“But, Raphael, we are in queer company, and you ought to keep quiet for the sake of your own dignity.”
“My life has been silent too long. I mean to have my revenge now on the world at large. I will not amuse myself by squandering paltry five-franc pieces; I will reproduce and sum up my epoch by absorbing human lives, human minds, and human souls. There are the treasures of pestilence — that is no paltry kind of wealth, is it? I will wrestle with fevers — yellow, blue, or green — with whole armies, with gibbets. I can possess Foedora — Yet no, I do not want Foedora; she is a disease; I am dying of Foedora. I want to forget Foedora.”
“If you keep on calling out like this, I shall take you into the dining-room.”
“Do you see this skin? It is Solomon’s will. Solomon belongs to me — a little varlet of a king! Arabia is mine, Arabia Petraea to boot; and the universe, and you too, if I choose. If I choose — Ah! be careful. I can buy up all our journalist’s shop; you shall be my valet. You shall be my valet, you shall manage my newspaper. Valet! valet, that is to say, free from aches and pains, because he has no brains.”
At the word, Emile carried Raphael off into the dining-room.
“All right,” he remarked; “yes, my friend, I am your valet. But you are about to be editor-in-chief of a newspaper; so be quiet, and behave properly, for my sake. Have you no regard for me?”
“Regard for you! You shall have Havana cigars, with this bit of shagreen: always with this skin, this supreme bit of shagreen. It is a cure for corns, and efficacious remedy. Do you suffer? I will remove them.”
“Never have I known you so senseless — — ”
“Senseless, my friend? Not at all. This skin contracts whenever I form a wish — ’tis a paradox. There is a Brahmin underneath it! The Brahmin must be a droll fellow, for our desires, look you, are bound to expand — — ”
“Yes, yes — — ”
“I tell you — — ”
“Yes, yes, very true, I am quite of your opinion — our desires expand — — ”
“The skin, I tell you.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t believe me. I know you, my friend; you are as full of lies as a new-made king.”
“How can you expect me to follow your drunken maunderings?”
“I will bet you I can prove it. Let us measure it — — ”
“Goodness! he will never get off to sleep,” exclaimed Emile, as he watched Raphael rummaging busily in the dining-room.
Thanks to the peculiar clearness with which external objects are sometimes projected on an inebriated brain, in sharp contrast to its own obscure imaginings, Valentin found an inkstand and a table-napkin, with the quickness of a monkey, repeating all the time:
“Let us measure it! Let us measure it!”
“All right,” said Emile; “let us measure it!”
The two friends spread out the table-napkin and laid the Magic Skin upon it. As Emile’s hand appeared to be steadier than Raphael’s, he drew a line with pen and ink round the talisman, while his friend said:
“I wished for an income of two hundred thousand livres, didn’t I? Well, when that comes, you will observe a mighty diminution of my chagrin.”
“Yes — now go to sleep. Shall I make you comfortable on that sofa? Now then, are you all right?”
“Yes, my nursling of the press. You shall amuse me; you shall drive the flies away from me. The friend of adversity should be the friend of prosperity. So I will give you some Hava — na — cig — — ”
“Come, now, sleep. Sleep off your gold, you millionaire!”
“You! sleep off your paragraphs! Good-night! Say good-night to Nebuchadnezzar! — Love! Wine! France! — glory and tr — treas — — ”
Very soon the snorings of the two friends were added to the music with which the rooms resounded — an ineffectual concert! The lights went out one by one, their crystal sconces cracking in the final flare. Night threw dark shadows over this prolonged revelry, in which Raphael’s narrative had been a second orgy of speech, of words without ideas, of ideas for which words had often been lacking.
Towards noon, next day, the fair Aquilina bestirred herself. She yawned wearily. She had slept with her head upon a painted velvet footstool, and her cheeks were mottled over by contact with the surface. Her movement awoke Euphrasia, who suddenly sprang up with a hoarse cry; her pretty face, that had been so fresh and fair in the evening, was sallow now and pallid; she looked like a candidate for the hospital. The rest awoke also by degrees, with portentous groanings, to feel themselves over in every stiffened limb, and to experience the infinite varieties of weariness that weighed upon them.
A servant came in to throw back the shutters and open the windows. There they all stood, brought back to consciousness by the warm rays of sunlight that shone upon the sleepers’ heads. Their movements during slumber had disordered the elaborately arranged hair and toilettes of the women. They presented a ghastly spectacle in the bright daylight. Their hair fell ungracefully about them; their eyes, lately so brilliant, were heavy and dim; the expression of their faces was entirely changed. The sickly hues, which daylight brings out so strongly, were frightful. An olive tint had crept over the lymphatic faces, so fair and soft when in repose; the dainty red lips were grown pale and dry, and bore tokens of the degradation of excess. Each disowned his mistress of the night before; the women looked wan and discolored, like flowers trampled under foot by a passing procession.
The men who scorned them looked even more horrible. Those human faces would have made you shudder. The hollow eyes with the dark circles round them seemed to see nothing; they were dull with wine and stupefied with heavy slumbers that had been exhausting rather than refreshing. There was an indescribable ferocious and stolid bestiality about these haggard faces, where bare physical appetite appeared shorn of all the poetical illusion with which the intellect invests it. Even these fearless champions, accustomed to measure themselves with excess, were struck with horror at this awakening of vice, stripped of its disguises, at being confronted thus with sin, the skeleton in rags, lifeless and hollow, bereft of the sophistries of the intellect and the enchantments of luxury. Artists and courtesans scrutinized in silence and with haggard glances the surrounding disorder, the rooms where everything had been laid waste, at the havoc wrought by heated passions.
Demoniac laughter broke out when Taillefer, catching the smothered murmurs of his guests, tried to greet them with a grin. His darkly flushed, perspiring countenance loomed upon this pandemonium, like the image of a crime that knows no remorse (see L’Auberge rouge). The picture was complete. A picture of a foul life in the midst of luxury, a hideous mixture of the pomp and squalor of humanity; an awakening after the frenzy of Debauch has crushed and squeezed all the fruits of life in her strong hands, till nothing but unsightly refuse is left to her, and lies in which she believes no longer. You might have thought of Death gloating over a family stricken with the plague.
The sweet scents and dazzling lights, the mirth and the excitement were all no more; disgust with its nauseous sensations and searching philosophy was there instead. The sun shone in like truth, the pure outer air was like virtue; in contrast with the heated atmosphere, heavy with the fumes of the previous night of revelry.
Accustomed as they were to their life, many of the girls thought of other days and other wakings; pure and innocent days when they looked out and saw the roses and honeysuckle about the casement, and the fresh countryside without enraptured by the glad music of the skylark; while earth lay in mists, lighted by the dawn, and in all the glittering radiance of dew. Others imagined the family breakfast, the father and children round the table, the innocent laughter, the unspeakable charm that pervaded it all, the simple hearts and their meal as simple.
An artist mused upon his quiet studio, on his statue in its severe beauty, and the graceful model who was waiting for him. A young man recollected a lawsuit on which the fortunes of a family hung, and an important transaction that needed his presence. The scholar regretted his study and that noble work that called for him. Emile appeared just then as smiling, blooming, and fresh as the smartest assistant in a fashionable shop.
