The Wild Ass's Skin

by Honoré de Balzac

  With his fork Émile described a crown in the air above Raphael’s head. The notary thought for a moment and began to drink again, with a shrug as if to say he couldn’t add the towns of Valence and Constantinople, Mahmoud, the emperor Valens, and the house of the Valentinois to his professional list.

  ‘Is not the destruction of those anthills called Babylon, Tyre, Carthage, and Venice, constantly crushed beneath the feet of a giant, a warning given to man by a baleful power?’ asked Claude Vignon, a kind of hack hired to declaim like Bossuet,* at so much a line.

  ‘Moses, Sulla, Louis XI, Richelieu, Robespierre, and Napoleon are perhaps one and the same man that recurs throughout the generations, like a comet in the heavens!’ replied a disciple of Ballanche.*

  ‘Why seek to fathom the ways of Providence?’ said Canalis, the maker of ballads.

  ‘Why bring Providence into it?’ broke in the critic. ‘I know nothing on earth that is more elastic.’

  ‘But my good man, Louis XIV caused the death of more men digging out the aqueducts of Maintenon than the Convention did allocating the taxes fairly, making the law consistent, nationalizing France, and dividing inheritance equitably,’ said Massol, a young man who had become a republican because he did not have a syllable in front of his name.*

  ‘Sir,’ answered Moreau from the Oise, a worthy landowner, ‘you for whom blood flows like wine, this time will you allow every man to keep his head upon his shoulders?’

  ‘What would be the point of that, sir? Are the principles of social order not worth a few sacrifices?’

  ‘Hey Bixiou! The republican chap claims that chopping off this landowner’s head would be a sacrifice,’ said a young man to his neighbour.

  ‘Man and events are as nothing,’ said the republican, continuing to expound his theory in between hiccups. ‘In politics and philosophy only principles and ideas matter.’

  ‘How horrible! You would have no compunction in killing your friends for the sake of an if…’

  ‘Oh sir, the man who feels remorse is the true criminal, for he has an idea of what virtue is. Whereas Peter the Great, the Duke of Alba, they were systems, and the pirate Montbard,* an organization.’

  ‘But cannot society do without your systems and your organizations?’ said Canalis.

  ‘Oh, indeed!’ cried the republican.

  ‘What? Your stupid republic makes me sick! We shouldn’t be able to cut up a capon without finding the agrarian law inside it.’

  ‘Your principles are excellent, my little Brutus stuffed with truffles. But you are like my valet, the funny chap is so obsessed by ideas of cleanliness, that if I let him brush my clothes as much as he wishes, I should have to go naked.’

  ‘You idiots! You want to clean up a whole nation with a toothpick,’ replied the republican. ‘According to you, justice would be more dangerous than robbers.’

  ‘Come now!’ exclaimed Desroches, the solicitor.

  ‘They are so boring with their politics!’ said Cardot the notary. ‘Shut the door. There is no science or virtue that is worth a single drop of blood. If we asked Truth to settle her accounts, we should probably find her bankrupt.’

  ‘Ah, it would no doubt have cost us less to enjoy ourselves being wicked than to argue about doing good. For my part, I should swap all the speeches made in parliament over the last forty years for a trout, a story by Perrault, or a sketch by Charlet.’*

  ‘You are right! Pass me the asparagus. For after all, liberty gives birth to anarchy, anarchy leads to despotism, and despotism brings us back to liberty again. Millions of people have perished without any single one of these systems prevailing. Is that not the vicious circle in which the moral world will always turn? When man thinks he has reached perfection, all he has done is move the pieces around.’

  ‘Oho!’ cried Cursy the vaudevilliste. ‘In that case, gentlemen, I raise my glass to Charles X, the father of liberty!’

  ‘Why not?’ said Émile. ‘When despotism resides in the law, liberty is embodied in our customs and manners, and vice versa.’

  ‘Let’s drink then to the foolishness of power which gives us so much power over fools,’ said the banker.

  ‘Well, my friend, at least Napoleon gave us glory,’ cried a naval officer, who had never ventured farther than Brest.

  ‘Ah, glory, now there’s a desperate thing. You pay dearly for it and it doesn’t last. Is glory not the egotism of great men, as happiness is the egotism of fools?’

  ‘Sir, you are indeed a happy man.’

  ‘The man who invented ditches was undoubtedly a weak man, for organized society is an advantage only to the weak. Placed at the two extremes of the moral world, the savage and the philosopher have both of them a horror of property.’

  ‘Ridiculous!’ cried Cardot. ‘If there weren’t any property how could we ever draw up any deeds?’

  ‘These are absolutely delicious little peas!’

  ‘And the priest was found dead in bed the next day …’

  ‘Who’s talking about death? It’s no joking matter! I have an uncle!’

  ‘No doubt you could manage without him?’

  ‘No question of it.’

  ‘Listen to me, gentlemen! WAYS OF KILLING ONE’S UNCLE. Hush! (Listen, listen!) First take a big fat uncle, at least seventy years old, they are the best kind to have. (Sensation.) Make him eat, on some pretext or other, a pâté de foie gras…’

  ‘Ah, my uncle is tall and thin, sober and careful with his money.’

  ‘Is that so? Uncles like that are monsters, abusers of life.’

  ‘And’, continued the man with the uncles, ‘while he is digesting his meal, announce to him that his bank has collapsed.’

  ‘What if he resists?’

  ‘Set a pretty young girl on to him!’

  ‘What if he is …’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘Well then he is not an uncle. An uncle is essentially a ladies’ man.’

  ‘Malibran’s* voice has lost two of its notes.’

  ‘No, you are wrong.’

  ‘Yes it has.’

  ‘Hoho! Yes and no, isn’t that the story of all religious, political, and literary dissertations? Man is a clown who walks a tightrope across precipices!’

  ‘Do I understand you to say I am an ass?’

  ‘On the contrary. You are an ass because you are not understanding what I say.’

  ‘Education, what a nonsense! Monsieur Heineffettermach reckons the number of printed volumes is more than a billion, and a man’s life only allows him to read five hundred thousand of them. So explain to me the meaning of the word education? For some it means knowing the names of Alexander’s horse, the mastiff Berecillo, the Lord of the Rhymes,* and not knowing the name of the man who first thought of floating logs or making porcelain. For others, education means being liked and respected in society after burning someone’s will, instead of carrying on stealing watches even after you have been cautioned, with the five aggravating circumstances and dying on the Place de Grève, hated and dishonoured.’

  ‘Will Nathan last?’

  ‘We’ll see! He has some very clever ghost-writers!’

  ‘What about Canalis?’

  ‘He is a great man, let’s leave it at that.’

  ‘You’re drunk!’

  ‘The immediate consequence of parliamentary democracy is the levelling-out of intellects. Everything—art, science, architecture—is corroded by that disease of our modern age, a fearful egotism. Your three hundred bourgeois legislators think only about planting poplar trees. Despotism achieves great things illegally; democracy doesn’t even take the trouble to achieve small things legally.’

  ‘Your system of mutual education* churns out worthless coins in flesh and blood,’ interrupted an absolutist. ‘All individuality vanishes when people are levelled by education.’

  ‘But is not the aim of society to provide the best life for everybody?’ enquired the Saint-Simonian.

  ‘If you had fifty thousand francs a year
you wouldn’t be bothering yourself about the people. If you are passionate about humanitarian causes, go to Madagascar. There you will find a nice little race ripe for Saint-Simonizing, labelling, and putting into a jar. But here everyone fits quite naturally into his own little cell, like a peg in its hole. Porters are porters, and idiots are stupid people who don’t need pushing through the council of Fathers. Ha!’

  ‘Are you for Charles?’*

  ‘Why not? I love despotism, it proclaims a certain disdain for the human race. I don’t hate royalty. They are so amusing! Isn’t there something to be said for sitting on a throne in your chamber, thirty thousand leagues from the sun?’

  ‘But let’s sum up this wide-ranging view of civilization,’ said the scientist who, for the enlightenment of the inattentive sculptor, had begun a discussion about the beginnings of societies and primitive peoples. ‘In the beginning strength was rather material, unified, crude. Then with the increase in centres of population, governments proceeded, more or less skilfully, to break this original power down, into smaller units. So in far-off antiquity strength resided in the theocracy. The priest held both sword and censer. Later on there were two priesthoods: the pontiff and the king. Today, our society having reached the highest point of civilization, it has allotted control to various sectors, and so we arrive at the powers we call industry, thought, money, speech. Power being thus no longer unified proceeds inevitably towards a social dissolution, against which the only barrier is self-interest. So let us not lean on religion, or material strength, but on intelligence. Is the book as good as the sword? Is the argument worth the action? That is the question.’

  ‘Intelligence has killed everything,’ cried the supporter of Charles. ‘Absolute freedom leads nations to suicide, they get bored, like an English millionaire, when there is nothing left to conquer.’

  ‘What can you tell us that’s new? Today you have ridiculed all systems of government and it is even become normal practice to deny the existence of God! You have no beliefs any more. So the century is like an old sultan lost in debauchery, which ends with your Lord Byron writing poems in utter desperation about criminal passions.’

  ‘Do you know,’ answered Bianchon, who was completely drunk, ‘that one measure of phosphorus more or less can create either a man of genius or a man of evil, a man of intelligence or an idiot, a virtuous man or a criminal?’

  ‘How can you talk of virtue in that way?’ cried Cursy. ‘Virtue, subject of all plays, the last scene in any tragedy, the basis of all courts of law.’

  ‘Hey, quiet you young dog. Your virtue is Achilles without his heel!’

  ‘More wine!’

  ‘What do you bet I can drink a bottle of Champagne in one go?’

  ‘He’s champing at the bit,’ cried Bixiou.

  ‘They are drunk as newts,’ said a young man who was spilling quantities of wine on his waistcoat.

  ‘Yes sir, the present government is the art of making public opinion prevail.’

  ‘Public opinion? Oh she’s the most dissolute of all whores. To hear you talk, you philosophers and politicians, you’d think we should always favour your laws over nature, your opinions above conscience. Come now, it’s all true, and it’s all untrue! If society has given us goosedown pillows, it has certainly made up for its benefits by giving us gout, just as it has put into place legal representations for the moderation of justice, and colds in the head after first creating cashmere shawls.’

  ‘You monster,’ said Émile, interrupting the misanthropist, ‘how can you speak ill of civilization when we have wine all around us, delicious food, and a groaning table? Attack this stag by the feet and by its golden horns, but don’t bite the hand that feeds you.’

  ‘Is it my fault if catholicism has come to the sorry pass of putting a million gods into a bag of flour, if the republic always ends up with a Napoleon, if monarchy exists in between the murder of Henri IV and the sentencing of Louis XV, if liberalism leads to La Fayette?’*

  ‘Did you embrace him in July?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well then, hold your tongue, you sceptic.’

  ‘Sceptics are the most conscientious of men.’

  ‘They are devoid of conscience.’

  ‘What are you saying? They’ve got at least two.’

  ‘Taking out an insurance policy for heaven! That, my dear sir, is a commercial idea worthy of our age. Ancient religions were just a happy extension of physical pleasures; but we have developed the soul as well as hope; we’ve made progress.’

  ‘Well, my friends, what can you expect from a century that has had its fill of politics?’ said Nathan. ‘Look at the fate of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles,* the most charming of books …’

  ‘As to “charming”,’ cried the critic from one end of the table to the other, ‘that’s a word pulled out of a hat. If truth be told, it’s a book written for lunatics.’

  ‘You are an idiot!’

  ‘You are a fool!’

  ‘Oho!’

  ‘Haha!’

  ‘They’ll come to blows.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, sir.’

  ‘Now, this instant,’ replied Nathan.

  ‘Come on now, stop it, the pair of you.’

  ‘You stop too,’ said the one who had provoked it.

  ‘They can’t even stand up.’

  ‘Oh, so I can’t stand up?’ insisted Nathan, getting out of his seat like a kite uncertainly taking off.

  He threw a bleary look round the table then, as if exhausted by the effort, fell back into his chair, bowed his head, and remained silent.

  ‘It would be rather amusing if I picked a fight over a book I’ve never even seen or read,’ said the critic to his neighbour.

  ‘Émile, mind your coat, your neighbour is turning white,’ said Bixiou.

  ‘Kant, monsieur. Yet another balloon sent up to amuse fools. Materialism and spiritualism are two pretty battledores with which begowned charlatans bat the same shuttlecock to and fro. Whether God is in everything, as Spinoza claims, or everything comes from God, as St Paul would have us believe … Fools, is not opening and closing a door one and the same movement? Is it the chicken or the egg? (Pass me the duck!) That’s the whole of knowledge in a nutshell.’

  ‘Dolt,’ cried the scholar, ‘the question you pose is resolved by one fact.’

  ‘Namely?’

  ‘University chairs weren’t created for philosophy, philosophy was created for the chairs. Put on your spectacles and study the budget.’

  ‘Thieves!’

  ‘Fools!’

  ‘Rascals!

  ‘Dupes!’

  ‘Where but in Paris would you find an exchange of ideas as lively, as rapid as that?’ cried Bixiou, in a low voice.

  ‘Come now, Bixiou, give us one of your classic sketches! There’s a job for you!’

  ‘Do you want me to do the nineteenth century?’

  ‘Listen!’

  ‘Silence!’

  ‘Pipe down everyone.’

  ‘Pipe down yourself, pipsqueak!’

  ‘Give him some wine and shut that boy up.’

  ‘Go on Bixiou!’

  The artist buttoned up his black suit to the neck, put on his yellow gloves, and pulled a face and squinted so as to mimic the Revue des Deux Mondes,* but the noise drowned out his satire and it was impossible to hear a single word. He may not have represented the nineteenth century, but at least he did represent the Revue, because he himself didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Dessert arrived as if by magic. The table was laid with a huge surtout in gilded bronze, which had been produced by Thomire’s workshops.* Tall figures, endowed by a famous artist with representations of what was generally agreed in Europe to be the ideal of beauty, held up handfuls of strawberries, pineapples, fresh dates, yellow grapes, white peaches, oranges arrived from Setubal by packet-boat, pomegranates, fruits from China, all kinds of luxury to surprise and delight the palate:
miracles of petits fours, the most mouthwatering of delicacies, the most luscious of sweetmeats. The colours of these images of gastronomic delights were enhanced by the shining porcelain, the sparkling gold lines, the cut of the vases. Graceful, green and light as the flowing fringes of the ocean, the foam porcelain of Sevres rose above landscapes by Poussin. All the lands of a German prince could not have bought such conspicuous wealth. Silver, mother-of-pearl, gold, crystal were fashioned into new and astonishing shapes; but with their dulled eyes and in their garrulous drunken fever the guests had scarcely even a vague sense of this magical world, that was worthy of a fairytale from the Orient. The dessert wines brought with them their bouquet and their fire, their powerful potions and magical vapours which engender a sort of intellectual mirage; whilst their powerful bonds put chains on feet and made hands heavy. The pyramids of fruit were pillaged, voices became coarser, noise increased. Then no distinct words could be heard, glasses flew into the air and smashed into pieces, there were explosions of atrocious laughter across the table. Cursy seized hold of a French horn and began to play a fanfare. It was like a signal from the devil. This delirious assembly roared, whistled, sang, shouted, bawled, groaned. You would have laughed to see people who were naturally cheerful become as gloomy as the last scenes of Crébillon’s plays,* or as contemplative as sailors in a longboat.

  Men who were normally discreet told their secrets to the inquisitive—who did not listen. Melancholics smiled like ballet-dancers who have just completed a pirouette. Claude Vignon lunged around like a bear in a cage. Close friends came to blows. The likeness to animals inscribed on the human face, so curiously demonstrated by physiologists, could be seen faintly in their gestures and bodily postures. There would have been a ready-made book there for someone like Bichat,* had he been present, sober, and not taking part in the feast. The master of the house, aware he was drunk, did not dare stand up, but with a fixed expression gave his blessing to the extravagant behaviour of his guests, while at the same time trying to retain a respectable and hospitable countenance. His broad face, which had turned red and blue, almost violet, terrible to behold, kept time with the general swaying in movements that resembled the pitching and tossing of a ship on the sea.