The Girl With the Golden Eyes

by Honoré de Balzac

  When, after an excellent meal, the two young men had paced up and down the Feuillants terrace and the wide lane in the Tuileries, they didn’t meet the sublime Paquita Valdès anywhere, on whose account fifty of the most elegant young men in Paris were there, all perfumed with musk, wearing cravats, boots, spurs, using their riding crops, walking, talking, laughing, telling everyone to go to the devil.

  “Bullseye!” Henri said, “the most excellent idea in the world has just come to me. This girl gets letters from London, so we have to buy or bribe the mailman, open a letter, read it of course, then slip a little billet doux into it, and seal it back up. The old tyrant, crudel tiranno, must know the person who writes the letters that come from London, and doesn’t distrust them.”

  The next day, de Marsay came again to stroll in the sun on the Feuillants terrace, and saw Paquita Valdès there: Already passion had made her grow even more beautiful to him. He completely lost his head over those eyes whose rays seemed to have the nature of the sun’s, and whose ardor epitomized that of her perfect body, seat of voluptuous delight. De Marsay was burning to brush against the dress of this seductive girl when they met in their walk; but his attempts were always in vain. When he had passed the duenna and Paquita in order to be able to be next to the Girl with the Golden Eyes when they turned back, Paquita, no less impatient, quickly came forward, and de Marsay felt his hand pressed by her in a way that was both so quick and so passionately significant that he thought he had received the shock of an electric spark. In an instant all the emotions of his youth welled up in his heart. When the two lovers looked at each other, Paquita seemed ashamed; she lowered her eyes so as not to see Henri’s again, but her gaze slipped down to look at the feet and figure of the one whom women before the revolution used to call ‘their conqueror.’

  “I will definitely have this woman as my mistress,” Henri said to himself.

  Following her to the end of the terrace, on the edge of the Place Louis-XV, he saw the old Marquis de San-Réal who was advancing, propped on the arm of his valet, walking with all the precaution of a gouty, doddering old man. Doña Concha, who mistrusted Henri, made Paquita go between her and the old man.

  “Oh! You,” de Marsay said to himself, aiming a scornful look at the duenna, “if we can’t make you give in, with a little opium we’ll put you to sleep. We know our mythology, and the fable of Argus.”

  Before she climbed into the carriage, the Girl with the Golden Eyes exchanged some glances with her lover about whose meaning there could be no doubt, and which delighted Henri; but the duenna caught one of them, and spoke some words brusquely to Paquita, who threw herself into the carriage with a despairing air. For some days Paquita didn’t come to the Tuileries. Laurent, who, by order of his master, went to keep watch by her mansion, learned from the neighbors that neither the two women nor the old Marquis had gone out since the day when the duenna had surprised a look between the young lady under her guard and Henri. The link that united the two lovers, so weak, was already broken, then.

  A few days later, without anyone knowing how, de Marsay had succeeded at his plan: He had a seal and some wax that were completely similar to the seal and wax that sealed the letters sent from London to Mlle. Valdès, paper similar to the kind the correspondent used, and all the utensils and blocking stamps necessary to put English and French stamps and postmarks on it. He had written the following letter, upon which he set all the marks of a letter sent from London.

  Dear Paquita, I will not attempt to portray for you, in words, the passion you have inspired in me. If, to my great joy, you share it, know that I have found the means to correspond with you. My name is Adolphe de Gouges, and I live on the Rue de l’Université, No. 54. If you are too well-guarded to write to me, if you have no paper or pens, I will know by your silence. Therefore, if tomorrow, from eight in the morning till ten at night, you haven’t thrown a letter over the wall of your garden into that of the Baron de Nucingen, where someone will wait all day, a man who is completely devoted to me will slip over the wall to you, attached to a rope, two flasks, at ten in the morning the next day—be sure to go out for a stroll around that time. One of the flasks will contain opium to put your Argus to sleep, you just need to give her six drops. The other will contain ink. The ink flask is cut-glass, the other is plain. Both are flat enough for you to be able to hide them in your bodice. All that I’ve done already to be able to correspond with you must tell you how much I love you. If you doubt me, I swear to you that, to obtain an hour’s meeting with you, I would give my life.

  “They actually believe that, the poor creatures!” de Marsay said to himself; “but they are right to. What would we think of a woman who wouldn’t let herself be seduced by a love letter accompanied by such convincing circumstances?”

  This letter was delivered by Master Moinot, the mailman, the next day, around eight in the morning, to the concierge of the San-Réal mansion.

  To get closer to the battlefield, de Marsay had come to lunch at Paul’s house, on the Rue de la Pépinière. At two o’clock, when the two friends were laughingly regaling each other with the discomfiture of a young man who had wanted to live elegantly without any well-established wealth, and as they were trying to think of a good end to the story, Henri’s coachman came looking for his master at Paul’s, and presented him with a mysterious individual who wanted urgently to speak with him. This character was a mulatto from whom Talma, the great actor, could certainly have drawn inspiration to play Othello, if he had met him. Never did an African face more eloquently express grandeur in vengeance, rapidity of suspicion, promptitude in the execution of a thought, the strength of the Moor and his childish impulsiveness. His black eyes had the fixed look of the eyes of a bird of prey, and they were set, like a vulture’s, beneath a dusky membrane void of eyelashes. There was something menacing about his small, low forehead. Obviously this man was under the yoke of one single thought. The sinews of his arm didn’t belong to him. He was followed in by a man that any sort of consciousness, whether of those shivering in Greenland or those sweating in New England, would describe with this phrase: He was an unhappy man. With this phrase, anyone can imagine his appearance, can represent him for themselves according to the ideas particular to each country. But who can imagine his pale, wrinkled face, reddened at nose and ears, and his long beard? Who can see his yellowish whipcord cravat, his thick collar, his battered hat, his greenish frock coat, his pitiful trousers, his shriveled waistcoat, his fake gold tiepin, his muddy shoes, the laces of which had been mired in muck? Who will understand him in all the immensity of his present and past misery? Who? Only the Parisian. The unhappy man of Paris is the complete unhappy man, for he encounters enough joy to know just how unhappy he is. The mulatto seemed to be an executioner under Louis XI leading a man to be hanged.

  “Who has fished up these two characters for us?” Henri asked.

  “Good Lord! One of them really gives me the shivers,” Paul replied.

  “You—the one who looks most Christian of you two—who are you?” Henri said, looking at the unhappy man.

  The mulatto stayed with his eyes fixed on these two young men, like a man who heard nothing, but who was still trying to guess something from gestures and lip movements.

  “I am a public letter-writer and an interpreter. I live by the Law Courts, and my name is Poincet.”

  “Fine! And that one?” Henri said to Poincet, pointing at the mulatto.

  “I don’t know; he only speaks a kind of Spanish dialect, and he brought me here to be able to communicate with you.”

  The mulatto took out of his pocket the letter Henri had written to Paquita, and gave it to Henri, who threw it in the fire.

  “Well, now something’s starting to take shape,” Henri said to himself. “Paul, leave us alone for a moment.”

  “I translated this letter for him, the interpreter continued when they were alone. “When it was translated, he went somewhere, I don’t know where. Then he came back looking for me, to
bring me here, promising me two louis.”

  “What do you have to say to me, Chinaman?” Henri asked.

  “I didn’t mention the Chinese part,” the interpreter said as he waited for the mulatto’s reply.

  “He says, Monsieur,” the interpreter continued after listening to the unknown man, “that you have to be on Boulevard Montmartre, near the café, at 10:30 tomorrow night. You’ll see a carriage there, which you will climb into, saying to the one who will be ready to open the door the password cortejo—a Spanish word that means lover,” Poincet added, directing a congratulatory look at Henri.

  “Very well!”

  The mulatto wanted to give Poincet two louis; but de Marsay wouldn’t allow this and paid the interpreter himself; as he was paying him, the mulatto said something.

  “What is he saying?”

  “He is warning me,” the unhappy man replied, “that, if I commit one single indiscretion, he will strangle me. He looks kind enough, and he looks quite capable of doing so.”

  “I’m sure he is,” Henri replied. “He would do just what he says.”

  “He adds,” the interpreter continued, “that the person whose messenger he is begs you, for you and for her, to act with the greatest prudence, because the daggers raised over your heads would fall into your hearts, and no human agency could save you from them.”

  “He said that! All the better, it will be more amusing. –You can come back in, Paul!” he shouted to his friend.

  The mulatto, who hadn’t stopped looking at Paquita Valdès’ lover with magnetic attention, went out, followed by the interpreter.

  “Finally, here is a truly romantic adventure,” Henri said to himself when Paul returned. “After taking part in a few, I’ve finally encountered in this Paris of ours an intrigue accompanied by dangerous circumstances, major perils. By Jove, how bold danger makes woman! To annoy a woman, to try to constrain her, doesn’t that give her the right and the courage to leap barriers in an instant that she would have taken years to climb over? Sweet creature, go on, jump! Die? Poor child! Daggers? The fancies of women! They all feel the need to give gravity to their little escapade. But we’ll keep them in mind, Paquita! We’ll keep them in mind, my girl! Devil take me, now that I know that this beautiful girl, this masterpiece of nature, is mine, the adventure has lost its edge.”

  Despite this flippant speech, the boy had resurfaced in Henri. To wait till the next day without suffering, he had recourse to exorbitant pleasures: He gambled, dined, supped with his friends; he drank like a coachman, ate like a German, and won ten or twelve thousand francs. At two in the morning he left the Rocher de Cancale, slept like a child, woke up the next day fresh and pink, and got dressed to go to the Tuileries, deciding to go riding on horseback after seeing Paquita so as to work up an appetite and dine better, in order to be able to pass the time more quickly.

  At the appointed hour, Henri was on the boulevard, saw the carriage, and gave the password to a man who looked to him like the mulatto. When he heard this word, the man opened the door and quickly unfolded the step. Henri was carried so rapidly through Paris, and his thoughts left him with so little ability to pay attention to the streets through which they were passing, that he didn’t notice where the carriage stopped. The mulatto led him into a house where the steps were close to the carriage entrance. This stairway was dark, as was the landing, on which Henri was obliged to wait while the mulatto set about opening the door of a dank, foul-smelling apartment with no light, the rooms of which, barely illumined by the candle his guide found in the antechamber, seemed to him empty and sparsely furnished, like the rooms of a house whose inhabitants are away traveling. He recognized that sensation he got when he read one of those novels by Ann Radcliffe where the hero passes through the cold, dark, uninhabited rooms of some sad and deserted place. Finally the mulatto opened the door of a drawing room. The condition of the old furniture and faded draperies with which this room was decorated made it resemble the salon of a bordello. Here there was the same pretension to elegance and the same assemblage of things in poor taste, the dust, the grime. On a sofa covered in velvet of Utrecht red, in the corner of a smoking hearth, whose fire was buried in ashes, a poorly dressed old woman was sitting, wearing one of those turbans that English women know how to devise when they reach a certain age, and which would meet with an infinite success in China, where the ideal beauty of artists is monstrosity. This salon, this old woman, this cold hearth, all this would have chilled his love, if Paquita herself had not been there, on a love seat, in a voluptuous dressing gown, free to aim her glances of gold and flame, free to show her curved foot, free with her luminous movements. This first interview was like all first encounters that passionate people grant each other: They have rapidly traveled long distances, and desire each other ardently, but they don’t know each other yet. It is impossible for there not to be some disharmony at first in this situation, bothersome only till the moment when their souls have found the same level. If desire makes a man bold and inclines him not to plan anything, so as not to seem feminine, the mistress, however extreme her love is, is terrified at finding herself so quickly reaching her goal, face to face with the necessity of giving herself, which for many women is like falling into an abyss and not knowing what they’ll find at the bottom. The involuntary coldness of this woman contrasts with her avowed passion, and necessarily reacts on even the most smitten lover. These ideas, which often float like vapors around souls, establish a kind of transient sickness there. In the sweet journey that two people undertake through the beautiful countries of love, this moment is like a moorland to cross, a moor without heather, humid and hot by turns, or full of burning sands, cut off by swamps, leading to joyous groves clothed in roses where love and its processions of pleasures unfurl onto carpets of fine greensward. Often a witty man finds himself endowed with an idiotic laugh that serves as his reply to everything; his mind is dulled beneath the glacial compression of his desires. It would not be impossible for two equally handsome, spiritual, and passionate beings to start out by saying the most idiotic commonplaces, until chance, a word, the trembling of a certain look, the communication of an electric spark, makes them come to the happy transition that leads them onto the flowery path where you don’t walk, but where you glide along without ever descending. This state of the soul always comes from the very violence of the emotions. Two beings who love each other feebly experience nothing like it. The effect of this crisis can also be compared to the effect produced by the glare of an unclouded sky. At first glance nature seems to be covered with gauze, the azure of the firmament looks black, extreme light looks like darkness. In Henri, as well as in the Spanish girl, a similar violence was present; and that law of physics by virtue of which two identical forces cancel each other out when they meet could also be true in the moral realm. Furthermore, the embarrassment of this moment was notably increased by the presence of the old mummy.

  Love can be frightened or stimulated by anything. To it, everything has meaning, everything is a happy or foreboding omen. This decrepit woman was there as a possible outcome, and represented the horrid fish tail with which the geniuses of symbolism in Ancient Greece equipped the Chimeras and the Sirens, so seductive, so deceptive from the waist up, as all passions are in the beginning. Henri, though not a hardy spirit—that phrase is always mocking—but a man of extraordinary power, a man as great as you can be without belief, was struck by the totality of all these circumstances. Moreover the strongest men are naturally the most impressionable, and consequently the most superstitious, if you can still call “superstition” the prejudice of the first impulse, which no doubt is actually insight into the results of causes hidden from other eyes, but perceptible to their own.

  The Spanish girl took advantage of this moment of astonishment to succumb to that ecstasy of infinite adoration that seizes a woman’s heart when she truly loves someone, and when she finds herself in the presence of a vainly desired idol. Her eyes were full of joy and happiness, and gleam
s of light came from them. She was under his spell, and was intoxicated by a long dreamed-of bliss, without fear. She seemed wonderfully beautiful then to Henri, so that all this phantasmagoria of tattered cloth, decay, frayed red draperies, green mats before the armchairs, worn red tile floor—all this distressed, diseased luxury—immediately disappeared. The drawing room was lit up; he could see the terrible, motionless harpy, silent on her red sofa, only through a cloud. Her yellow eyes betrayed the servile emotions aroused by misfortune or caused by a vice under whose slavery one has fallen, as if under a tyrant who exhausts you beneath the flagellations of his despotism. Her eyes had the cold brilliance of the eyes of a caged tiger aware of its powerlessness, who finds it is forced to devour its own destructive desires.