The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

by Honoré de Balzac

He returned home and threw himself into one of those paroxysms of activity that reveal the presence of a new order in our existence. Rapt in that first surge of love, as much pleasure as pain, he tried to quell his impatience and agitation by drawing La Zambinella from memory. It was a sort of material meditation. On one sheet La Zambinella appeared in that seemingly cold, placid pose so beloved of Raphael, of Giorgione, of all the great painters. On another, she held her head delicately turned to one side, as if listening to herself as she finished a trill. Sarrasine sketched his mistress in every possible attitude: He depicted her unveiled, sitting, standing, lying, both chaste and amorous, his pencil’s frenzied fantasies materializing all the impulsive ideas that vie for our imagination’s attention when we think intensely of a mistress. But his untamable thoughts did not stop at drawing. He saw La Zambinella, he talked to her, he entreated her, he ran through a thousand years of life and happiness with her, placing her in every situation imaginable, trying on, so to speak, a shared future. The next day he sent a footman to rent a private box beside the stage for the remainder of the season. Then, like every young man with a powerful soul, he inflated in his mind the difficulties of his undertaking, and as a prelude to better things, he offered his passion the opportunity to gaze on his mistress without hindrance. This golden age of love, in which we delight in our own emotion and are made happy almost by ourselves, was not to last long for Sarrasine. Nevertheless, events overtook him when he was still under the spell of that budding hallucination, as innocent as it is sensual. Over some eight days, he lived an entire life. In the morning he kneaded the clay from which he would fashion a superb likeness of La Zambinella, despite all the veils, skirts, corsets, and knotted ribbons that distanced her from him. In the evening, settling early into his box, alone, outstretched on a sofa, he invented for himself, like a Turk in the embrace of opium, a happiness as rich and unsparing as he wished. First he gradually inured himself to the overpowering emotions inspired by his mistress’s singing; then he trained his eyes to look on her, and soon found himself able to contemplate her with no fear of the muted explosion of fury that had shaken him that first evening. His passion grew more profound as it grew more pacific. On top of all this, the unsociable sculptor guarded his solitude—peopled with imaginings, decorated with the caprices of desire, full of happiness—against any intrusion by his comrades. So powerful was his love, and so naïve, that he fell prey to all the youthful uncertainties that besiege us in our first amorous experience. Realizing that he would soon have to take action, bestir himself, learn where La Zambinella lived, determine if she had a mother, an uncle, a guardian, a family—musing, in short, on the measures required to see her, to speak with her—he felt his heart swelling so powerfully at such ambitious ideas that he postponed these considerations until the next day, happy in his physical torment no less than in his mental delight.”

  “But,” said Madame de Rochefide, interrupting me, “I have yet to see any sign of Marianina or her little old man.”

  “You’ve seen nothing but him,” I cried, cross as any author whose startling twist has been spoiled. “For several days,” I went on after a pause, “Sarrasine so faithfully appeared in his box, and gazed so lovingly at La Zambinella, that his passion for her voice would have been the talk of all Paris had this adventure happened there; but in Italy, madame, at the theater, everyone attends for his own sake, with his own passions, with a heartfelt interest that precludes opera-glass espionage. Nevertheless, the sculptor’s frenzy would not long escape the other singers’ notice. One evening, the Frenchman saw them laughing at him in the wings. Who knows where that might have led, had La Zambinella not then made her entrance. She cast Sarrasine one of those eloquent glances that often say more than women wish. That look was nothing short of a revelation. Sarrasine was loved! ‘If this is some mere passing fancy,’ he thought, already accusing his mistress of exaggerated ardor, ‘she has no idea of the tyranny she is about to fall prey to. I hope to see that fancy last as long as I live.’ At that moment, the artist was wrested from his reverie by three light raps outside his box. He opened the door. An old woman entered, with a mysterious air. ‘Young man,’ she said, ‘if you wish to find joy, then take care, wrap yourself in a cape, pull a large hat down low over your eyes, and come to Via del Corso, in front of the Hotel di Spagna, at around ten o’clock this evening.’ ‘I’ll be there,’ he answered, dropping two louis into the duenna’s wrinkled hand. He slipped out of his box after nodding to La Zambinella, who timidly lowered her sensuous eyelids like a woman happy to have made herself understood at long last. He ran home to rifle his wardrobe and dressing table for all the charms they could offer him. As he was leaving the theater, a stranger had held him back by one arm. ‘Take care, Frenchman,’ he murmured into Sarrasine’s ear. ‘This is a matter of life and death. Cardinal Cicognara is her protector, and he’s not a man for half measures.’ Had a demon opened the gaping abyss of hell between Sarrasine and La Zambinella, he would at that moment have crossed it with one single stride. Like the horses of the immortals depicted by Homer, the sculptor’s love had taken a mighty leap, flying over vast expanses in a second. ‘If Death itself were awaiting me outside the house, I’d go all the faster,’ he answered. ‘Poverino!’ cried the stranger, vanishing. For one in love, are words of warning not merely a fresh offering of pleasure? Never had Sarrasine’s footman seen his master tend so fastidiously to his appearance. His best sword (a gift from Bouchardon), the cravat given him by Clotilde, his sequined morning coat, his silver satin vest, his gold snuffbox, his precious watches—everything was pulled from his coffers, and he adorned himself like a girl about to parade past her first lover. At the appointed hour, drunk with love and boiling over with impatience, Sarrasine ran to the meeting place named by the old woman, his nose buried in a cloak. The duenna was waiting. ‘You took your sweet time!’ she said. ‘Come.’ She hurried the Frenchman through several small streets, then stopped before a rather opulent palace. She knocked. The door opened. She led Sarrasine through a labyrinth of stairways, corridors, salons lit only by the tenuous glow of the moon, and soon arrived at a door with bright lights and a joyous clamor of voices streaming through the cracks. On a word from the old woman, Sarrasine was admitted into these mysterious digs, dazzled to find himself in a salon as brilliantly lit as it was sumptuously furnished, amid which stood a nicely laid table, laden with august bottles, with merry decanters, their red-tinged facets gleaming. He recognized the singers from the theater, interspersed with a number of charming women, all of them ready to begin an artists’ orgy that lacked only him. Sarrasine fought back a surge of disappointment and put on a festive face. He was hoping for a dimly lit boudoir, his mistress close by a coal fire, a jealous rival two steps away, love and death, confidences exchanged in low tones, heart to heart, perilous kisses, faces so close that La Zambinella’s hair would caress his brow, burdened with desire and burning with joy. ‘Long live folly!’ he cried. ‘Signori e belle donne, you will allow me to take my vengeance later; for the moment, let me simply express my gratitude for the welcome you offer a poor sculptor.’ Once he had received the affectionate compliments of most of those present, whom he knew by sight, he tried to approach the bergère in which La Zambinella nonchalantly lolled. Oh, how his heart beat on spying a delicate foot, shod with those mules that, may I say, madame, once gave women’s feet a form so enticing and voluptuous that I don’t see how men could resist it. The clinging white stockings with green clocks, the short skirts, the pointed, high-heeled mules of the reign of Louis XV might well have played some small part in the moral undoing of Europe and the clergy.”

  “Just a small part?” said the marquise. “Have you read nothing?”

  “La Zambinella,” I resumed, smiling, “had boldly crossed her legs, and as she bantered she swayed the topmost one this way and that, a duchess’s pose, ideally suited to her airy, provocatively languid sort of beauty. She had changed out of her costume and wore a bodice that girdled a slender waist, th
e effect heightened by panniers and a satin dress embroidered with blue flowers. Its treasures teasingly concealed beneath a lace drape, her breast was purest white. Coiffed rather like Madame du Barry, her face, although enveloped in a large bonnet, seemed only the more charming, and her powder suited her perfectly. To see her this way was to adore her. She smiled graciously at the sculptor. Deeply unhappy that his first words to her must have witnesses, Sarrasine sat down politely beside her and engaged her in a conversation on music, extolling her prodigious talent; but his voice was shaking with love, fear, and hope. ‘What are you afraid of?’ asked Vitagliani, the most celebrated singer in the troupe. ‘Fear not, you’ve no rivals here.’ The tenor smiled in silence. That smile repeated itself on the lips of all the guests, whose attention had a hidden slyness that a lover was not likely to notice. This public airing of his love was like a dagger plunged into Sarrasine’s heart. Although endowed with a certain force of character, and although no circumstance could ever alter his feelings, it might not yet have occurred to him that Zambinella was almost a courtesan, and that he could not have both the pure raptures that make a young girl’s love so delicious and the fiery transports that a woman of the theater requires in payment for her passion’s delights. He reflected, and resigned himself. Supper was served. Sarrasine and La Zambinella sat down side by side, without ceremony. In the first half of the feast, the artists observed some restraint, and the sculptor was able to chat with the soprano. He found in her wit and finesse, but she was surprisingly ignorant, as well as fragile and superstitious. Her intellect was as slight as her physique. When Vitagliani uncorked the first bottle of champagne, Sarrasine read in his neighbor’s eyes a distinct fright at the little explosion of escaping gases. The love-struck sculptor interpreted that involuntary feminine flinch as a sign of excessive sensitivity. The Frenchman was charmed by this weakness. How protective is a man in love! ‘My strength will be yours, like a shield!’ Is that sentence not written deep beneath every amorous declaration? Too overcome with passion to whisper sweet trifles into her perfect ear, Sarrasine was, like all lovers, by turns earnest, merry, and meditative. Although seeming to listen to the other guests, he heard not a word that they spoke, so engrossed was he in the pleasure of sitting beside her, of brushing her hand with his, of serving her. He was lost in a secret joy.

  Notwithstanding the eloquence of several shared glances, he was bewildered by La Zambinella’s reserve. To be sure, it was she who first pressed her foot against his, teasing him with all the wiles of a besotted, uninhibited woman, but on hearing Sarrasine utter a quip that revealed the excessive impetuosity of his nature, she suddenly draped herself in a girlish modesty. Before long their supper gave way to unbridled revelry; inspired by the Peralta and Pedro Ximenez, the tablemates broke into song. Delightful duos ensued, Calabrian airs, Spanish seguidillas, Neapolitan canzonettas. There was intoxication in every eye, in the music, in their hearts and their voices. The room was suffused with an enchanting exuberance, a convivial abandon, an Italian good humor unimaginable to those who know only the soirees of Paris, the routs of London, or the clubs of Vienna. Japes and words of love flew back and forth like bullets in battle, through the laughter, the impieties, the invocations addressed to the Holy Virgin or al Bambino. One guest lay down on a sofa and slept. A young girl listened to a declaration of love, unaware that she was pouring sherry onto the tablecloth. Amid this chaos, La Zambinella sat mute, as if gripped by apprehension. She refused to drink, ate perhaps a little too much, but a healthy appetite can be an adorable thing in a woman. Admiring his mistress’s demureness, Sarrasine began to think seriously of the future. ‘No doubt she wants to be married,’ he told himself. And then he reveled with all his heart in the joys of that marriage. His entire lifetime did not seem enough to exhaust the wellspring of happiness he found deep in his soul. His neighbor Vitagliani refilled his glass so many times that, toward three in the morning, though not thoroughly drunk, Sarrasine found his ardor getting the better of him. In a moment of intense desire, he swept the woman away from the others and into a sort of adjoining boudoir, toward whose door he had cast more than one longing glance. She was armed with a dagger. ‘If you come one step closer,’ she said, ‘I will have no choice but to sink this blade into your heart. Don’t you see, you would soon despise me. I have come to respect your character too highly to simply abandon myself to you. I don’t want to fall from the grace of the sentiments you are so good as to feel for me.’ ‘Ah! Ah,’ said Sarrasine, ‘arousing a passion is no way to extinguish it. Are you then already so corrupted that, though an old woman in your heart, you behave like a young courtesan, stoking the emotions that bring her business?’ ‘But today is Friday,’ she answered, quivering at the Frenchman’s insistence. Sarrasine, who was not a churchgoer, let out a laugh. Leaping like a young roebuck, La Zambinella bounded into the other room, where the party was still raging. When Sarrasine burst in after her, he was greeted by an infernal laugh. He saw La Zambinella unconscious on a sofa. She was pale, as if utterly drained by the extraordinary effort she had just expended. Although Sarrasine knew little Italian, he heard his mistress whispering to Vitagliani, ‘But he’ll kill me!’ This strange scene left the sculptor mortified. His reason came flooding back. At first he simply stood motionless; then, finding his tongue, he sat down beside her to pledge his respect. He summoned the strength to cast off his desire, even as he spoke to her in the most exalted of discourses, and to convey his love, he pressed into service all the treasures of eloquence, that worker of wonders, that obliging spokesman whom women so rarely refuse to believe.

  Soon the revelers were surprised by the first gleams of morning; with this, one of the women suggested an outing to Frascati. The idea of a day at Villa Ludovisi was hailed with spirited hurrahs. Vitagliani went off to hire carriages. Sarrasine had the pleasure of driving La Zambinella in a phaeton. Once out of Rome, the revelers’ gaiety, subdued for a moment by their battle with sleep, abruptly returned. They all seemed entirely at ease in this curious existence, these unending pleasures, this artistic vivacity that made of life a perpetual party, in which laughter was never troubled by serious thoughts. Only the sculptor’s companion seemed defeated by exhaustion. ‘Are you ill?’ Sarrasine asked her. ‘Would you rather go home?’ ‘I haven’t the strength to withstand all these excesses,’ she answered. ‘I need to be treated with special care, but with you beside me, I feel so happy, so fine! If not for you, I would never have stayed at that supper; a night without sleep robs me of all my freshness.’ ‘How delicate you are!’ Sarrasine replied, staring at the charming creature’s delightful little features. ‘Orgies do harm to my voice.’ ‘Now that we’re alone,’ cried the artist, ‘and you need no longer fear the vehemence of my passion, tell me you love me.’ ‘Why?’ she answered. ‘What purpose would that serve? You thought me pretty. But you are French, and your feelings will pass. Oh! You would never love me as I want to be loved.’ ‘And how is that?’ ‘Not for the sake of vulgar passion but purely. I abhor men perhaps even more than I loathe women. My only refuge is friendship. The world is empty for me. I am a cursed creature, condemned to understand felicity, to feel it, to desire it, and yet, like so many others, to see it flee me at every turn. Please, signore, in times to come, remember: I never deceived you. I forbid you to love me. I can be a devoted friend, for I admire your force and your character. I need a brother, a protector. Be all that for me, but nothing more.’ ‘Not love you!’ cried Sarrasine. ‘But, dear angel, you are my life, my joy!’ ‘One word from me and you would push me away in horror.’ ‘Coquette! Nothing can frighten me. Tell me you will rob me of my future, tell me I’ll be dead in two months, tell me one single kiss will mean my damnation.’ And with this he kissed her, La Zambinella struggling to extract herself from his fervent embrace. ‘Tell me you’re a demon, tell me I must sign away my fortune, my name, my renown! Would you have me not be a sculptor? You need only speak the word.’ ‘And if I was not a woman?’ La Zambinella asked timidly, in a
sweet, crystalline voice. ‘A fine joke that is!’ cried Sarrasine. ‘Do you truly believe you can fool the eye of an artist? Have I not spent ten days devouring, studying, wondering at your perfections? Only a woman can have that rounded, yielding arm, those elegant curves. Ah! You’re fishing for compliments!’ She smiled sadly. ‘Cursed beauty!’ she murmured, raising her eyes to the heavens. There was in her gaze a despair so profound and so poignant that a shudder ran through Sarrasine. ‘Oh, French signore,’ she said, ‘forget forever a moment of folly. I have only the highest regard for you, but do not ask me for love; that emotion has been forever snuffed out in my heart. I have no heart!” she cried, weeping. ‘The stage where you first saw me, the applause, the music, the great fame to which I have been condemned, that is my life, I have no other. A few hours from now you will not look on me with the same eyes; the woman you love will be dead.’ The sculptor made no reply. A mute fury had overtaken him, constricting his heart. He could only stare at this extraordinary woman, his eyes afire. That fragile voice, La Zambinella’s attitude, her manners, her gestures so full of sadness, melancholy, and despair, all this reawoke the urgent passion in his soul. Every word was a goad. They had now arrived in Frascati. Clasping his mistress to help her alight, he found her trembling from head to toe. ‘What’s the matter?’ he cried as she paled. ‘It would kill me if you were suffering any pain that I might have caused, however innocently.’ ‘A serpent!’ she said, pointing at a garter snake gliding by, alongside a ditch. ‘I’m terrified of those hateful beasts.’ Sarrasine crushed the snake’s head with one stamp of his foot. ‘Where can you possibly find the courage?’ asked La Zambinella, contemplating the dead reptile with visible horror. ‘Well now,’ said the artist with a smile, ‘dare you still claim you are not a woman?’ They rejoined their companions and strolled through the woods of Villa Ludovisi, which then figured among the properties of Cardinal Cicognara. The day went by too fast for the smitten sculptor, but it was filled with a host of incidents that revealed all the vanity, all the frailty, all the preciousness of that feeble, languorous soul. She was in every way a woman, with her sudden frights, her unreasoning caprices, her instinctive emotions, her abrupt bursts of daring, her bravado, the delicious refinement of her sentiments. At one moment, as the merry little band of singers ventured out into the countryside, they caught sight of a distant knot of men, heavily armed and disreputably dressed. On the word ‘Those men are brigands,’ they turned hurriedly back toward the shelter of the grounds of the cardinal’s villa. In that tense moment, Sarrasine noted La Zambinella’s extreme pallor and realized that she lacked the strength to walk any farther; he took her in his arms and carried her for some time at a run. Nearing a neighboring vineyard, he set his mistress down. ‘Explain to me,’ he said to her, ‘how this extraordinary frailty, which in any other woman would be tiresome and repellent, any sign of which would almost suffice to extinguish my love, why in you it so charms and delights me?’ He paused, then went on: ‘Oh! How I love you! Your weakness, your terror, your pettiness, they all add some mysterious sort of grace to your soul. I think I would despise a strong woman, a Sappho, courageous, full of passion and energy. O fragile, gentle creature! How could you be otherwise? That angelic voice, that tender voice would have been the very height of incongruity had it come from any body but yours.’ ‘I can give you no hope,’ she answered. ‘Stop this talk, lest you be mocked. I cannot forbid you to enter the theater, but if you love me, or if you are wise, you will come there no more. Listen to me, monsieur,’ she said, gravely. ‘Oh! Be silent,’ the infatuated artist answered. ‘Obstacles only fan the flames of love in my heart.’ La Zambinella stood in a pose as exquisite and modest as ever, but she said nothing, as if some awful thought had shown her a terrible imminent sorrow.