Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  “‘How?’

  “‘Purely, with no mingling of vulgar passion. I abhor men even more, perhaps than I hate women. I need to take refuge in friendship. The world is a desert to me. I am an accursed creature, doomed to understand happiness, to feel it, to desire it, and like many, many others, compelled to see it always fly from me. Remember, signor, that I have not deceived you. I forbid you to love me. I can be a devoted friend to you, for I admire your strength of will and your character. I need a brother, a protector. Be both of these to me, but nothing more.’

  “‘And not love you!’ cried Sarrasine; ‘but you are my life, my happiness, dear angel!’

  “‘If I should say a word, you would spurn me with horror.’

  “‘Coquette! nothing can frighten me. Tell me that you will cost me my whole future, that I shall die two months hence, that I shall be damned for having kissed you but once — — ’

  “And he kissed her, despite La Zambinella’s efforts to avoid that passionate caress.

  “‘Tell me that you are a demon, that I must give you my fortune, my name, all my renown! Would you have me cease to be a sculptor? Speak.’

  “‘Suppose I were not a woman?’ queried La Zambinella, timidly, in a sweet, silvery voice.

  “‘A merry jest!’ cried Sarrasine. ‘Think you that you can deceive an artist’s eye? Have I not, for ten days past, admired, examined, devoured, thy perfections? None but a woman can have this soft and beautifully rounded arm, these graceful outlines. Ah! you seek compliments!’

  “She smiled sadly, and murmured:

  “‘Fatal beauty!’

  “She raised her eyes to the sky. At that moment, there was in her eyes an indefinable expression of horror, so startling, so intense, that Sarrasine shuddered.

  “‘Signor Frenchman,’ she continued, ‘forget forever a moment’s madness. I esteem you, but as for love, do not ask me for that; that sentiment is suffocated in my heart. I have no heart!’ she cried, weeping bitterly. ‘The stage on which you saw me, the applause, the music, the renown to which I am condemned — those are my life; I have no other. A few hours hence you will no longer look upon me with the same eyes, the woman you love will be dead.’

  “The sculptor did not reply. He was seized with a dull rage which contracted his heart. He could do nothing but gaze at that extraordinary woman, with inflamed, burning eyes. That feeble voice, La Zambinella’s attitude, manners, and gestures, instinct with dejection, melancholy, and discouragement, reawakened in his soul all the treasures of passion. Each word was a spur. At that moment, they arrived at Frascati. When the artist held out his arms to help his mistress to alight, he felt that she trembled from head to foot.

  “‘What is the matter? You would kill me,’ he cried, seeing that she turned pale, ‘if you should suffer the slightest pain of which I am, even innocently, the cause.’

  “‘A snake!’ she said, pointing to a reptile which was gliding along the edge of a ditch. ‘I am afraid of the disgusting creatures.’

  “Sarrasine crushed the snake’s head with a blow of his foot.

  “‘How could you dare to do it?’ said La Zambinella, gazing at the dead reptile with visible terror.

  “‘Aha!’ said the artist, with a smile, ‘would you venture to say now that you are not a woman?’

  “They joined their companions and walked through the woods of Villa Ludovisi, which at that time belonged to Cardinal Cicognara. The morning passed all too swiftly for the amorous sculptor, but it was crowded with incidents which laid bare to him the coquetry, the weakness, the daintiness, of that pliant, inert soul. She was a true woman with her sudden terrors, her unreasoning caprices, her instinctive worries, her causeless audacity, her bravado, and her fascinating delicacy of feeling. At one time, as the merry little party of singers ventured out into the open country, they saw at some distance a number of men armed to the teeth, whose costume was by no means reassuring. At the words, ‘Those are brigands!’ they all quickened their pace in order to reach the shelter of the wall enclosing the cardinal’s villa. At that critical moment Sarrasine saw from La Zambinella’s manner that she no longer had strength to walk; he took her in his arms and carried her for some distance, running. When he was within call of a vineyard near by, he set his mistress down.

  “‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘why it is that this extreme weakness which in another woman would be hideous, would disgust me, so that the slightest indication of it would be enough to destroy my love, — why is it that in you it pleases me, fascinates me? Oh, how I love you!’ he continued. ‘All your faults, your frights, your petty foibles, add an indescribable charm to your character. I feel that I should detest a Sappho, a strong, courageous woman, overflowing with energy and passion. O sweet and fragile creature! how couldst thou be otherwise? That angel’s voice, that refined voice, would have been an anachronism coming from any other breast than thine.’

  “‘I can give you no hope,’ she said. ‘Cease to speak thus to me, for people would make sport of you. It is impossible for me to shut the door of the theatre to you; but if you love me, or if you are wise, you will come there no more. Listen to me, monsieur,’ she continued in a grave voice.

  “‘Oh, hush!’ said the excited artist. ‘Obstacles inflame the love in my heart.’

  “La Zambinella maintained a graceful and modest attitude; but she held her peace, as if a terrible thought had suddenly revealed some catastrophe. When it was time to return to Rome she entered a berlin with four seats, bidding the sculptor, with a cruelly imperious air, to return alone in the phaeton. On the road, Sarrasine determined to carry off La Zambinella. He passed the whole day forming plans, each more extravagant than the last. At nightfall, as he was going out to inquire of somebody where his mistress lived, he met one of his fellow-artists at the door.

  “‘My dear fellow,’ he said, I am sent by our ambassador to invite you to come to the embassy this evening. He gives a magnificent concert, and when I tell you that La Zambinella will be there — ’

  “‘Zambinella!’ cried Sarrasine, thrown into delirium by that name; ‘I am mad with love of her.’

  “‘You are like everybody else,’ replied his comrade.

  “‘But if you are friends of mine, you and Vien and Lauterbourg and Allegrain, you will lend me your assistance for a coup de main, after the entertainment, will you not?’ asked Sarrasine.

  “‘There’s no cardinal to be killed? no — ?’

  “‘No, no!’ said Sarrasine, ‘I ask nothing of you that men of honor may not do.’

  “In a few moments the sculptor laid all his plans to assure the success of his enterprise. He was one of the last to arrive at the ambassador’s, but he went thither in a traveling carriage drawn by four stout horses and driven by one of the most skilful vetturini in Rome. The ambassador’s palace was full of people; not without difficulty did the sculptor, whom nobody knew, make his way to the salon where La Zambinella was singing at that moment.

  “‘It must be in deference to all the cardinals, bishops, and abbes who are here,’ said Sarrasine, ‘that she is dressed as a man, that she has curly hair which she wears in a bag, and that she has a sword at her side?’

  “‘She! what she?’ rejoined the old nobleman whom Sarrasine addressed.

  “‘La Zambinella.’

  “‘La Zambinella!’ echoed the Roman prince. ‘Are you jesting? Whence have you come? Did a woman ever appear in a Roman theatre? And do you not know what sort of creatures play female parts within the domains of the Pope? It was I, monsieur, who endowed Zambinella with his voice. I paid all the knave’s expenses, even his teacher in singing. And he has so little gratitude for the service I have done him that he has never been willing to step inside my house. And yet, if he makes his fortune, he will owe it all to me.’

  “Prince Chigi might have talked on forever, Sarrasine did not listen to him. A ghastly truth had found its way into his mind. He was stricken as if by a thunderbolt. He stood like a statue, his eyes fastened on
the singer. His flaming glance exerted a sort of magnetic influence on Zambinella, for he turned his eyes at last in Sarrasine’s direction, and his divine voice faltered. He trembled! An involuntary murmur escaped the audience, which he held fast as if fastened to his lips; and that completely disconcerted him; he stopped in the middle of the aria he was singing and sat down. Cardinal Cicognara, who had watched from the corner of his eye the direction of his protege’s glance, saw the Frenchman; he leaned toward one of his ecclesiastical aides-de-camp, and apparently asked the sculptor’s name. When he had obtained the reply he desired he scrutinized the artist with great attention and gave orders to an abbe, who instantly disappeared. Meanwhile Zambinella, having recovered his self-possession, resumed the aria he had so capriciously broken off; but he sang badly, and refused, despite all the persistent appeals showered upon him, to sing anything else. It was the first time he had exhibited that humorsome tyranny, which, at a later date, contributed no less to his celebrity than his talent and his vast fortune, which was said to be due to his beauty as much as to his voice.

  “‘It’s a woman,’ said Sarrasine, thinking that no one could overhear him. ‘There’s some secret intrigue beneath all this. Cardinal Cicognara is hoodwinking the Pope and the whole city of Rome!’

  “The sculptor at once left the salon, assembled his friends, and lay in wait in the courtyard of the palace. When Zambinella was assured of Sarrasine’s departure he seemed to recover his tranquillity in some measure. About midnight after wandering through the salons like a man looking for an enemy, the musico left the party. As he passed through the palace gate he was seized by men who deftly gagged him with a handkerchief and placed him in the carriage hired by Sarrasine. Frozen with terror, Zambinella lay back in a corner, not daring to move a muscle. He saw before him the terrible face of the artist, who maintained a deathlike silence. The journey was a short one. Zambinella, kidnaped by Sarrasine, soon found himself in a dark, bare studio. He sat, half dead, upon a chair, hardly daring to glance at a statue of a woman, in which he recognized his own features. He did not utter a word, but his teeth were chattering; he was paralyzed with fear. Sarrasine was striding up and down the studio. Suddenly he halted in front of Zambinella.

  “‘Tell me the truth,’ he said, in a changed and hollow voice. ‘Are you not a woman? Cardinal Cicognara — — ’

  “Zambinella fell on his knees, and replied only by hanging his head.

  “‘Ah! you are a woman!’ cried the artist in a frenzy; ‘for even a — ’

  “He did not finish the sentence.

  “‘No,’ he continued, ‘even he could not be so utterly base.’

  “‘Oh, do not kill me!’ cried Zambinella, bursting into tears. ‘I consented to deceive you only to gratify my comrades, who wanted an opportunity to laugh.’

  “‘Laugh!’ echoed the sculptor, in a voice in which there was a ring of infernal ferocity. ‘Laugh! laugh! You dared to make sport of a man’s passion — you?’

  “‘Oh, mercy!’ cried Zambinella.

  “‘I ought to kill you!’ shouted Sarrasine, drawing his sword in an outburst of rage. ‘But,’ he continued, with cold disdain, ‘if I searched your whole being with this blade, should I find there any sentiment to blot out, anything with which to satisfy my thirst for vengeance? You are nothing! If you were a man or a woman, I would kill you, but — ’

  “Sarrasine made a gesture of disgust, and turned his face away; thereupon he noticed the statue.

  “‘And that is a delusion!’ he cried.

  “Then, turning to Zambinella once more, he continued:

  “‘A woman’s heart was to me a place of refuge, a fatherland. Have you sisters who resemble you? No. Then die! But no, you shall live. To leave you your life is to doom you to a fate worse than death. I regret neither my blood nor my life, but my future and the fortune of my heart. Your weak hand has overturned my happiness. What hope can I extort from you in place of all those you have destroyed? You have brought me down to your level. To love, to be loved! are henceforth meaningless words to me, as to you. I shall never cease to think of that imaginary woman when I see a real woman.’

  “He pointed to the statue with a gesture of despair.

  “‘I shall always have in my memory a divine harpy who will bury her talons in all my manly sentiments, and who will stamp all other women with a seal of imperfection. Monster! you, who can give life to nothing, have swept all women off the face of the earth.’

  “Sarrasine seated himself in front of the terrified singer. Two great tears came from his dry eyes, rolled down his swarthy cheeks, and fell to the floor — two tears of rage, two scalding, burning tears.

  “‘An end of love! I am dead to all pleasure, to all human emotions!’

  “As he spoke, he seized a hammer and hurled it at the statue with such excessive force that he missed it. He thought that he had destroyed that monument of his madness, and thereupon he drew his sword again, and raised it to kill the singer. Zambinella uttered shriek after shriek. Three men burst into the studio at that moment, and the sculptor fell, pieced by three daggers.

  “‘From Cardinal Cicognara,’ said one of the men.

  “‘A benefaction worthy of a Christian,’ retorted the Frenchman, as he breathed his last.

  “These ominous emissaries told Zambinella of the anxiety of his patron, who was waiting at the door in a closed carriage in order to take him away as soon as he was set at liberty.”

  “But,” said Madame de Rochefide, “what connection is there between this story and the little old man we saw at the Lantys’?”

  “Madame, Cardinal Cicognara took possession of Zambinella’s statue and had it reproduced in marble; it is in the Albani Museum to-day. In 1794 the Lanty family discovered it there, and asked Vien to copy it. The portrait which showed you Zambinella at twenty, a moment after you had seen him as a centenarian, afterward figured in Girodet’s Endymion; you yourself recognized the type in Adonis.”

  “But this Zambinella, male or female — ”

  “Must be, madame, Marianina’s maternal great uncle. You can conceive now Madame de Lanty’s interest in concealing the source of a fortune which comes — ”

  “Enough!” said she, with an imperious gesture.

  We remained for a moment in the most profound silence.

  “Well?” I said at last.

  “Ah!” she cried, rising and pacing the floor.

  She came and looked me in the face, and said in an altered voice:

  “You have disgusted me with life and passion for a long time to come. Leaving monstrosities aside, are not all human sentiments dissolved thus, by ghastly disillusionment? Children torture mothers by their bad conduct, or their lack of affection. Wives are betrayed. Mistresses are cast aside, abandoned. Talk of friendship! Is there such a thing! I would turn pious to-morrow if I did not know that I can remain like the inaccessible summit of a cliff amid the tempests of life. If the future of the Christian is an illusion too, at all events it is not destroyed until after death. Leave me to myself.”

  “Ah!” said I, “you know how to punish.”

  “Am I in the wrong?”

  “Yes,” I replied, with a sort of desperate courage. “By finishing this story, which is well known in Italy, I can give you an excellent idea of the progress made by the civilization of the present day. There are none of those wretched creatures now.”

  “Paris,” said she, “is an exceedingly hospitable place; it welcomes one and all, fortunes stained with shame, and fortunes stained with blood. Crime and infamy have a right of asylum here; virtue alone is without altars. But pure hearts have a fatherland in heaven! No one will have known me! I am proud of it.”

  And the marchioness was lost in thought.

  PIERRE GRASSOU

  Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

  Originally published in 1840, this short story introduces the character Grassou, an artist of little merit, in spite of being tutored by skilled masters. In the s
tory, Grassou is exploited by a dealer who encourages him to copy the style of the masters and sells these pictures at a profit. Very little of this comes to Grassou, but by living frugally, he avoids penury and is even able to make himself a good match.

  DEDICATION

  To The Lieutenant-Colonel of Artillery, Periollas,

  As a Testimony of the Affectionate Esteem of the Author,

  De Balzac

  PIERRE GRASSOU

  Whenever you have gone to take a serious look at the exhibition of works of sculpture and painting, such as it has been since the revolution of 1830, have you not been seized by a sense of uneasiness, weariness, sadness, at the sight of those long and over-crowded galleries? Since 1830, the true Salon no longer exists. The Louvre has again been taken by assault, — this time by a populace of artists who have maintained themselves in it.

  In other days, when the Salon presented only the choicest works of art, it conferred the highest honor on the creations there exhibited. Among the two hundred selected paintings, the public could still choose: a crown was awarded to the masterpiece by hands unseen. Eager, impassioned discussions arose about some picture. The abuse showered on Delacroix, on Ingres, contributed no less to their fame than the praises and fanaticism of their adherents. To-day, neither the crowd nor the criticism grows impassioned about the products of that bazaar. Forced to make the selection for itself, which in former days the examining jury made for it, the attention of the public is soon wearied and the exhibition closes. Before the year 1817 the pictures admitted never went beyond the first two columns of the long gallery of the old masters; but in that year, to the great astonishment of the public, they filled the whole space. Historical, high-art, genre paintings, easel pictures, landscapes, flowers, animals, and water-colors, — these eight specialties could surely not offer more than twenty pictures in one year worthy of the eyes of the public, which, indeed, cannot give its attention to a greater number of such works. The more the number of artists increases, the more careful and exacting the jury of admission ought to be.