The Girl With the Golden Eyes

by Honoré de Balzac

  “Never ask me about that,” she replied, undoing the young man’s cravat with an incredible tenderness, no doubt the better to see his neck.

  “Yes, there is the neck I love so well!” she said. “Do you want to please me?”

  This question, almost lascivious in its tone, raised de Marsay out of the reverie into which he had been plunged by the despotic reply with which Paquita had forbidden him any research into the unknown being who was floating like a shade above them.

  “And what if I wanted to know who rules here?”

  Paquita looked at him, trembling.

  “It isn’t me, then,” he said, standing up and ridding himself of the girl, who fell head backwards. “I want to be the only one, wherever I am.”

  “Just like! Just like!” the poor slave cried, prey to terror.

  “Who do you take me for, then? Will you answer?”

  Paquita slowly got up, her eyes full of tears, went over to one of the two ebony cupboards and took out a dagger, which she held out to Henri with a gesture of submission that would have softened a tiger.

  “Give me a feast such as only people who love each other can give,” she said, “and then when I am asleep, kill me, for I cannot answer you. Listen: I am bound like a poor animal to its stake; I am astonished that I’ve been able to throw a bridge over the abyss that separates us. Make me drunk, then kill me. Oh! No, no,” she said clasping her hands, “don’t kill me! I love life! Life is so beautiful to me! If I am a slave, I am a queen too. I could deceive you with words, tell you I love no one but you, prove it to you, take advantage of my momentary power to say to you: ‘Take me the way one tastes in passing the perfume of a flower in the garden of a king.’ Then, after using the clever eloquence of woman and the wings of pleasure, after quenching my thirst, I could have you thrown into a pit where no one would find you, one which was constructed to satisfy revenge without having to fear that of justice, a pit full of quicklime that would burn you and consume you without a morsel of your body ever being found. You would remain in my heart, mine forever.”

  Henri looked at this girl without trembling, and his fearless gaze overwhelmed her with joy.

  “No, I won’t do it! You haven’t fallen into a trap here, but into the heart of a woman who adores you, and I am the one who will be thrown into the pit.”

  “All that seems immensely strange to me,” de Marsay said as he gazed at her. “But you seem a good girl to me, though one with a strange nature; you are, upon my word, a living riddle, the answer to which seems to me difficult to find indeed.”

  Paquita understood none of what the young man was saying; she looked at him gently, opening eyes that could never be dull, so much voluptuousness was portrayed there.

  “Listen, my love,” she said, returning to her first idea, “do you want to please me?”

  “I will do whatever you like, and even some things that you don’t,” de Marsay replied laughing, resuming his usual conceited nonchalance and resolving to let himself be led by this affair without looking back or forward. And he might also have been counting on his power, and on the adroitness of a man favored by fortune, to dominate this girl a few hours later, and learn all her secrets.

  “Well,” she said, “let me arrange you to my taste.”

  “Make me look however you like, then,” Henri said.

  Delighted, Paquita went over to one of the two wardrobes and took out a red velvet dress, in which she dressed de Marsay; then she put a woman’s hat on him and wrapped him in a shawl. As she gave herself up to these mad fancies, performed with a child’s innocence, she laughed convulsively, and looked like a bird beating her wings; but she saw nothing beyond the present.

  If it is impossible to portray the extraordinary delights that these two handsome creatures, fashioned by heaven one time when it was full of joy, experienced, it might perhaps be necessary to convey metaphysically the extraordinary, almost fantastic impressions of the young man. What people who find themselves in the social situation de Marsay occupied, and who live as he lived, can recognize best, is the innocence of a girl. But, strange thing! If the Girl with the Golden Eyes was a virgin, she was certainly not innocent. The strange union of the mysterious and the actual, shadow and light, the horrible and the beautiful, pleasure and danger, Paradise and Hell, which had already been encountered in this adventure, was sustained by this capricious, sublime being de Marsay was enjoying. The most knowing and most refined voluptuousness—whatever Henri could comprehend of that poetry of the senses they call ‘love’—was surpassed by the treasures that poured from this girl whose brimming eyes didn’t lie about any of the promises they made. It was an Oriental poem where the sun shone that Saadi, or Hafiz, put into their vivacious verses. But neither Saadi’s rhythm nor Pindar’s could have expressed the ecstasy full of confusion and intoxication with which this delicious girl was seized when the illusion dissolved in which an iron hand had been compelling her to live.

  “Dead!” she said, “I am dead! Adolphe, take me away to the ends of the earth, to an island where no one knows us. Make sure our flight leaves no traces! We would be followed down into Hell. Oh God! The day is dawning. Save yourself. Will I ever see you again? Yes, tomorrow, I want to see you again, even if, to have that happiness, I had to put all my guardians to death. Till tomorrow.”

  She clasped him in her arms in an embrace that was full of the terror of death. Then she touched a spring that must have been attached to a bell, and begged de Marsay to let himself be blindfolded.

  “What if I refused, what if I wanted to stay here?”

  “You would cause my death more quickly,” she said; “for now I am sure I will die for you.”

  Henri let himself be blindfolded. There sometimes occurs in a man who has just feasted on pleasure a slope into oblivion, a strange kind of ingratitude, a desire for freedom, a wish just to go outside for a walk, a tinge of scorn and perhaps disgust for his idol—inexplicable sentiments arise that render him loathsome and base. The certainty of this confused but real emotion in souls that are neither enlightened by that heavenly light nor perfumed by that holy balm whence pertinacity of sentiment comes to us, no doubt dictated to Rousseau the adventures of Milord Édouard with which the letters of La Nouvelle Héloïse conclude. (If Rousseau was obviously inspired by the work of Richardson, he strayed from it in a thousand details that leave his monument magnificently original; he has commended it to posterity by great ideas difficult to explicate by analysis, when, in one’s youth, one reads this work with the aim of finding in it the warm portrayal of the most physical of our emotions, while serious writers and philosophers never use its images except as the consequence or necessity of profound thought; and the adventures of Milord Édouard are one of the most European, delicate ideas in this work.)

  Henri found himself, then, under the power of this confused feeling that true love does not experience. For Henri to be drawn back to a woman, the persuasive power of comparisons had to cease, while the attractions of memories had somehow to exert their irresistible influence. True love rules, above all, through memory. Can the woman who has not been engraved in the soul by either excess of pleasure or force of feeling ever be loved? Without Henri’s being aware of it, Paquita had become established in him by these two means. But at this moment, wholly absorbed by the fatigue of happiness, that delicious melancholy of the body, he could hardly analyze his heart by trying again on his lips the taste of the liveliest sensual delights he had ever plucked. He found himself on the Boulevard Montmartre at daybreak, stupidly watched the departing carriage, took two cigars out of his pocket, lit one from the lamp of a woman who sold brandy and coffee to workmen, children, market farmers—to all the Parisian population that starts its life before daybreak. Then he went his way, smoking his cigar, shoving his hands in his pants pockets with a truly dishonorable insouciance.

  “What a good thing a cigar is! Here’s something a man will never tire of,” he said to himself.

  He scarcely thought o
f that Girl with the Golden Eyes who was all the rage then among the elegant young men of Paris. The idea of death that ran through their pleasures, the fear of death that had several times darkened the brow of that beautiful creature who was linked to the houris of Asia by her mother, to Europe by her education, to the Tropics by her birth, seemed to him one of those ruses by which all women try to make themselves interesting.

  “She is from Havana, from the most Spanish country there is in the New World; so she preferred to play on themes of terror rather than throw in my face suffering and arduousness, coquetry or duty, as Parisian ladies do. By those golden eyes of hers, I’d love to get some sleep!”

  He saw a cabriolet stationed on the corner of Frascati’s, waiting for some gamblers; he woke the coachman up, had him drive him home, went to bed, and slept the sleep of bad citizens, which, by an odd coincidence that no songwriter has yet turned to his advantage, also happens to be as profound as the sleep of innocence. Perhaps this is an effect of that proverbial axiom, extremes meet.

  Around noon de Marsay stretched his arms as he woke up, and felt the attacks of one of those bouts of canine hunger that all old soldiers can remember experiencing the day after victory. In front of him he saw Paul de Manerville; he was happy at this, for there is nothing more agreeable than eating in company.

  “So here you are,” his friend said to him, “we were all imagining that you had locked yourself up for ten days with the Girl with the Golden Eyes.”

  “The Girl with the Golden Eyes! I don’t think about her anymore. I have lots of other fish to fry.”

  “Oh! You’re the soul of discretion.”

  “Why not?” de Marsay said, laughing. “My dear man, discretion is the cleverest kind of self-interest. Listen.… No, I won’t breathe a word to you. You never teach me anything, so I’m not inclined to give away the treasures of my policies, getting nothing in return. Life is a river that serves to create business. By all that is most sacred on Earth, by cigars, I’m not a professor of social economy at the service of simpletons. Let’s have lunch. It costs less to give you a tuna omelet than to pour out my brain to you.”

  “You keep tabs with your friends?”

  “My dear man,” said Henri, who could rarely pass up an ironic statement, “since you’re just as likely as anyone else to have need of discretion someday, and since I like you very much.… Yes, I like you! My word of honor, if all that was necessary to keep you from blowing your brains out was a thousand-franc note, you’d find it here, since we haven’t put that at risk yet, have we, Paul? If you were duelling tomorrow, I’d measure the distance and load the pistols, so that you’d be killed according to the rules. Finally, if anybody besides me dared to badmouth you in your absence, he’d have to stand up to the tough fellow he’d find in my skin—that’s what I call a staunch friendship. Well then, when you need discretion, my little one, know that there exist two kinds: active discretion and negative discretion. Negative discretion is the kind idiots have—they use silence, negation, scowls, the discretion of closed doors, veritable impotence! Active discretion proceeds by affirmation. If tonight, at the club, I said, ‘Dammit, the Girl with the Golden Eyes wasn’t worth what she cost me!’, everyone, after I left, would cry out: ‘Did you hear that fop de Marsay try to get us to believe that he’s already had the Girl with the Golden Eyes? He wanted to get rid of his rivals that way, the cunning man.’ But that trick is vulgar, and dangerous. However coarse the stupid remark is that escapes us, there are always simpletons who might believe it. The best kind of discretion is the one that clever women use when they want to put their husbands off the track. It consists in compromising a woman to whom we are not attached, or whom we do not love, or whom we do not possess, to preserve the honor of the woman we love enough to respect her. That is what I call the screen-woman.—Aha! Here is Laurent. What are you bringing us?”

  “Oysters from Ostend, Monsieur le Comte.…”

  “Someday you’ll learn, Paul, how amusing it is to take people in by concealing from them the secret of our emotions. I feel immense pleasure in escaping the stupid jurisdiction of the masses, who never know what they want, or what they are made to want, who mistake the means for the result, who by turns adore and condemn, raise up and destroy! What happiness there is in imposing emotions on them and receiving none from them, of mastering them, never obeying them! If you can be proud of something, wouldn’t that be of a power you yourself have acquired, for which we are at once the cause, the effect, the principle and the result? Well then, no one knows whom I love, or what I want. They might someday know whom I loved, what I would have liked, what I would have wanted, the way you know how a play ends; but would I ever let my hand be seen …? That would be weakness, or being duped. I know of nothing more despicable than force tricked by cunning. I am initiating myself, laughing all the way, into the role of ambassador, if diplomacy is as difficult as life, that is! I doubt it. Do you have any ambition? Do you want to become anything?”

  “But, Henri, you’re making fun of me, as if I weren’t mediocre enough to succeed at everything.”

  “Very good, Paul! If you keep mocking yourself, you might soon be able to mock everyone else.”

  At lunch, after he had started smoking his cigars, de Marsay began to see the events of his night in a singular light. Like many great minds, his insight was not spontaneous; he didn’t get to the bottom of things right away. As in all natures gifted with the faculty of living very much in the present, squeezing out its juice, so to speak, and devouring it, his second sight needed a kind of sleep before it could recognize causes. Cardinal de Richelieu was like that, who also did not lack the gift of foresight necessary for the conception of great things. De Marsay found himself with all these qualities, but he made use of his weapons only for the benefit of his pleasures, which are the first things a young man thinks of when he has gold and power. That is how a man becomes weathered: He uses women so that women cannot use him.

  At that instant, then, de Marsay realized he had been tricked by the Girl with the Golden Eyes. Now he saw in its entirety that night whose pleasures had only gradually started streaming forth, to end by pouring forth in torrents. Now he could read into this page so dazzling in its effect, and guess its hidden meaning. The purely physical innocence of Paquita, the astonishment of her joy, a few words that were obscure at first but clear now, that she let escape at the height of her pleasure—all this proved that he had actually stood in for someone else. Since none of the behavioral corruptions were unknown to him, since he professed complete indifference to all the caprices of desire, and thought them justified for the very reason that they could be satisfied, he was not shocked by vice. He knew vice as one knows a friend, but he was wounded at having served as food for it. If his presumptions were correct, he had been outraged in the living core of his being. The suspicion alone made him furious; he gave vent to the roar of a tiger mocked by a gazelle, the cry of a tiger that united a demonic intelligence with animal strength.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Paul asked him.

  “Nothing!”

  “I hope, if anyone ever asks you if you have anything against me, you wouldn’t respond with a ‘nothing’ like that—we’d probably have to fight a duel the next day.”

  “I don’t fight anymore,” de Marsay said.

  “That seems even more tragic. You assassinate, then?”

  “You misuse words. I execute.”

  “My dear friend,” Paul said, “your jokes are certainly dark, this morning.”

  “What would you expect? Sensuality leads to ferocity. Why? I don’t know, and I’m not curious enough to find out why.—These cigars are excellent. Give your friend some tea.—Do you realize, Paul, that I lead the life of a brute? It’s high time I chose a fate for myself, and used my strength for something worth the trouble of living. Life is a strange comedy. I am frightened; the inconsequence of our social order is ludicrous to me. The government has the heads chopped off poor devils who have kill
ed one man, and it licenses creatures who, medically speaking, polish off a dozen young men every winter. Morality is powerless before a dozen vices that destroy society, and that nothing can punish. –Another cup?—My word of honor! Man is a buffoon dancing on a precipice. They preach to us about immorality in Dangerous Liaisons, and that other book with a housemaid’s name for a title; but there exists a horrible, dirty, appalling, corrupt book, always open, which will never be closed: the great book of the world, not counting another book a thousand times more dangerous, which is composed of everything that is whispered into the ear, one man to another, or beneath a fan between women, at night, at a dance.”

  “Henri, there must be something extraordinary happening inside you; that’s obvious, despite your active discretion.”

  “Yes! Listen, I have to eat up the time till tonight. Let’s go play cards. Maybe I’ll have the good fortune to lose.”

  De Marsay got up, took a handful of banknotes, rolled them up in his cigar case, got dressed, and used Paul’s carriage to go to the Salon des Étrangers club, where he used up the time till evening in those moving alternatives of losing and winning that are the last resource of strong constitutions, when they are forced to exercise themselves in the void. When night came, he went to the meeting-place, and quietly let himself be blindfolded. Then, with that firm will to concentrate that only truly strong men have, he focused his attention and applied his intelligence to guessing what streets the carriage was traveling. He was almost certain he was being led to the Rue Saint-Lazare, and stopping at the little gate of the San-Réal garden. When he had gone through this gate, just as the first time, and was placed on a stretcher carried no doubt by the mulatto and the coachman, he understood, as he heard the sand crunch beneath their feet, why they were taking such careful precautions. If he had been unbound, or if he were walking, he could have plucked a branch from a shrub, studied the kind of sand stuck to his boots … whereas, transported so to speak through the air to an inaccessible mansion, his love affair went on being what it had been all along, a dream. But, to man’s great despair, he can do nothing perfectly, either good or bad. All his intellectual or physical works are signed by a mark of destruction. It had rained a little; the ground was moist. During the night certain vegetable odors are much stronger than during the day; thus Henri could smell the fragrance of the mignonette flowers along the lane down which he was conveyed. This sign would enlighten him in the researches he promised himself he would carry out to recognize the mansion that held Paquita’s boudoir. Likewise he paid close attention to the turns his bearers took in the house, and thought he could remember them. He saw he was on the ottoman like the night before, in front of Paquita who was undoing his scarf; but he saw she was pale and changed. She had been crying. Kneeling like an angel at prayer, but like a sad, profoundly melancholic angel, the poor girl no longer resembled the curious, urgent, leaping creature who had taken de Marsay on her wings to carry him up to the seventh heaven of love. There was something so real in this despair veiled by pleasure, that the terrible de Marsay felt in himself an admiration for this new masterpiece of nature, and temporarily forgot the main point of this meeting.