The Wild Ass's Skin

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘Just now I was not brave enough to teach these two creatures any morals,’ he said, indicating Euphrasie and Aquilina. ‘Were they not my story personified, an image of my life! I could scarcely condemn them, they seemed to me like my judges. In the middle of this living poem, in the midst of this bewildering malady, I nevertheless experienced two crises that produced bitter sorrows. In the first, a few days after throwing myself on to my pyre, like Sardanapalus,* I met Foedora under the colonnade of the Bouffons. We were waiting for our carriages.

  ‘“Oh, I see you are still alive.”

  ‘This remark was the translation of the smiling, mischievous words uttered under her breath to her fawning attendant, to whom she had no doubt recounted my story and told him the love I bore her was nothing out of the ordinary. She congratulated herself wrongly on her perspicacity. Oh, that I should still be dying for her, still worshipping her, seeing her in my excesses, in my drunkenness, in the beds of harlots, and still feel I was a victim of her mockery! If only I could have torn my heart out of my breast and thrown it at her feet.

  ‘Secondly, I very soon exhausted my funds. But three years of a meagre diet had made me extremely robust, and the day I found myself without any money I was in excellent health.

  ‘To continue my process of dying, I signed short-term notes and the day of payment duly arrived. Such cruel emotions, and so keenly felt by a young man like me! I was not supposed to grow old yet. My soul was still young, hardy, and green. My first debt revived all my virtues, which approached me sadly with dragging footsteps. I was able to come to terms with them, as you do with those old aunts who begin by telling us off and finish by showering us with sympathy and money. But my imagination, more severe with me, showed me my name travelling from town to town across the squares of Europe. “Our names, our selves,” said Eusebius Salverte.* After much wandering, it would return, like a German doppelgänger,* to my lodgings which I had never left, and I would wake with a start.

  ‘In the old days, when I saw the men from the bank, those grey consciences of commerce bearing the silver insignia of their masters on the streets of Paris, I viewed them with indifference; but now I hated them in advance. One morning one of them would surely arrive and call me to account for the eleven IOU notes I had scribbled. My signature was worth three thousand francs, more than I was worth myself. The stony-faced bailiffs, unmoved by despair, unmoved even by death, rose up before me like executioners who say to a condemned man, “It is striking half-past three.” Their clerks had the right to seize hold of me, scrawl my name, spit on it, mock it. I owed them money! So did that mean I belonged to them? Were strangers permitted to ask me for an account of my life? Why had I eaten chipolata pudding,* why did I take my drinks with ice? Why was I sleeping, walking, thinking, enjoying myself, but not paying them? In the midst of poetry, in the bosom of an idea, or at lunch, surrounded by friends, merriment, good-humoured badinage, I might see a man in a maroon suit enter, holding a battered hat in his hand. That man will be my debt, my promissory note, a ghost who will blight my joy, force me to leave the table and speak to him. He will rob me of my jollity, my mistress, everything, even my bed.

  ‘Remorse is more bearable, it does not put us either on the street or into Sainte-Pélagie;* it does not drown us in this execrable sewer of vice. It only throws us to the scaffold, where the executioner ennobles us. At the instant our head is chopped off everyone believes in our innocence, whereas society does not allow one virtue to the penniless debauchee. Then these two-legged debts, clothed in green, wearing blue spectacles or carrying multicoloured umbrellas; these debts incarnate, with which we find ourselves face to face on a street corner, just when we are feeling cheerful, these people would have the horrible privilege of saying: “Monsieur de Valentin owes me money but is not paying me. I’ve got him! Oh, he’d better not glare at me!” We have to welcome our debtors, greet them graciously. “When will you pay me?” they say. And we are obliged to lie to them and beg money from someone else, bow and scrape to fools sitting on a cashbox, and put up with their icy looks, those bloodsucker looks more odious than a slap across the face, suffer their mathematical and crass ignorance. A debt is a work of the imagination that people don’t understand. Often a borrower is subject to and carried away by noble impulses, while nothing great or generous governs or guides those people who live for money and know only that. I myself had a horror of money.

  ‘Worst of all, the IOU note may metamorphose into an old man burdened with a family and imbued with virtues. I could perhaps be in debt to a tableau vivant by Greuze,* a paralytic surrounded by his children, the widow of a soldier, all holding out beseeching hands to me; terrible creditors with whom one must sympathize and to whom we still owe charity even after we have paid them. The night before the bill was due I had gone to sleep in the false calm of people who sleep before their execution, before a duel; they allow themselves to be cradled always by a false hope. But when I awoke, in cold blood, I felt that my soul was held prisoner in a banker’s wallet, lying there on statements written in red ink, my debts springing up all over the place like grasshoppers; they were in my clock, on my armchairs, or encrusted in my favourite pieces of furniture.

  ‘In bondage to the harpies at Châtelet,* these sweet material slaves were going to be carried off by bailiff’s men and brutally thrown out on to the street. Oh, what remained of my possessions was still part of myself. The bell to my apartment rang also in my heart, it hit me where one strikes kings—on the head. I suffered martyrdom, but without heaven as my reward. Yes, for a generous man, debt is hell, but a hell peopled with bailiffs and agents. An unpaid debt is an ignoble thing, the beginnings of a life of crime, and worse than all that, a lie! It is the blueprint for crime, it nails together the planks for the scaffold.

  ‘My promissory notes were challenged. Three days later I paid them. This is how it came about. A speculator came to propose that I sell him the island in the Loire where my mother’s grave was. I agreed. As I signed the contract at my buyer’s solicitor’s office, I felt at the back of the dark room a chill like that of a vault. I shivered as I recognized the same damp cold which had taken hold of me on the edge of the grave where my father lay. I took this chance event as a deadly premonition. I thought I could hear my mother’s voice and see her shade. Some strange power was making my own name resound in my ear in the midst of the ringing of bells! When I had settled all my debts the sale of my island left me with two thousand francs. Of course I could have returned to the peaceful life of the scholar, coming back to my garret after experiencing life, with my head full of great observations and already enjoying some reputation. But Foedora had not relinquished her prey.

  ‘We had often found ourselves thrown together. I ensured she heard my name frequently repeated by her suitors, who expressed surprise at my wit, my horses, my success, my carriages. She remained cold and unfeeling about everything, even when Rastignac uttered the terrible words: “He is killing himself because of you!”

  ‘I made the whole world share my desire for revenge, but I was no happier! Though plunging down into the mire of my life, I had always felt a love shared must be a joy, and I pursued that chimera through chance meetings in my dissipation, amid the orgies. Unfortunately, I was disappointed in my fine beliefs, I was punished for my good deeds by ingratitude, and rewarded for my wickedness by a thousand pleasures. A sinister philosophy, but a true one for the debauchee! In short, Foedora had infected me with the leprosy of her vanity. When I looked deep into my soul, I found it was gangrenous, rotten. The devil had imprinted his cloven hoof on my brow. Impossible for me in future to do without the continuous excitation of a life that risked danger each moment, and the execrable refinements of wealth. Had I had millions I would still have gambled, feasted, womanized. I did not want to remain on my own. I needed women, so-called friends, wine and good food to deaden me. The bonds that tie a man to his family were broken for ever in my life. A galley-slave to pleasure, I had to accomplish my destiny of suic
ide. During the last days of my dwindling fortune I plunged each evening into unbelievable excesses. But each new morning death threw me back into life. Like someone living off an annuity for life, I could have walked calmly through a fire.

  ‘Finally I found myself left with a twenty-franc coin, and then I remembered Rastignac’s stroke of luck …’

  ‘Oh yes!’ cried Raphael, suddenly remembering his talisman and taking it from his pocket.

  Either because he was tired by the long day’s struggle and didn’t have the strength to think clearly amid the excesses of wine and punch; or because, maddened by the picture he had conjured up of his life, he had gradually intoxicated himself with the torrent of his own words, Raphael came back to life again, became manically enthusiastic like a man completely deprived of reason.

  ‘Let death go to hell,’ he cried, brandishing the skin. ‘I want to live now! I am wealthy, I have all the virtues. Nothing can stand in my way. Who would not be kind when he can do anything he wants? Aha! Oh yes! I have wished for two hundred thousand francs a year, and I shall have them. Salute me, you swine wallowing here on a carpet as if it were a dungheap! You belong to me—and what a possession you would be! I am rich, I can buy you all, even that deputy snoring away over there. Come, you rabble of high society and bless me! I am your pope.’

  At that moment Raphael’s shouting, until then smothered by the basso continuo of the snorers, became suddenly audible. Most of the sleepers awoke with a cry, saw this disturber of the peace staggering about, and cursed his noisy drunkenness with a chorus of swearing.

  ‘Be quiet!’ shouted Raphael. ‘You curs, get back to your kennels! Émile, I am rich, I’ll give you some Havanas.’

  ‘I heard you,’ replied the poet. ‘Foedora or death! Go ahead! That sweet little Foedora has deceived you. All women are daughters of Eve. Your story is by no means a thing to make a song and dance about.’

  ‘Ah, so you were sleeping, you sly dog?’

  ‘No! Foedora or death, I’m with you.’

  ‘Wake up,’ cried Raphael, striking Émile with the wild ass’s skin as if he wanted to bring electric sparks forth from it.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ said Émile, getting up and seizing Raphael by the waist, ‘just remember you are in the company of women of ill repute.’

  ‘I’m a millionaire.’

  ‘You may or may not be a millionaire, but you are most certainly drunk.’

  ‘Drunk with power. I can kill you! Silence, I am Nero. I am Nebuchadnezzar!’

  ‘But Raphael, we are in bad company, for the sake of your dignity you should hold your tongue.’

  ‘My life has been quiet for too long. Now I am going to take my revenge on the whole world. I won’t waste time squandering dirty money, I shall imitate and epitomize our epoch and consume human lives, minds, souls. That is no mean luxury, wouldn’t you say? The opulence of the plague. I shall exterminate everyone with yellow fever, blue, green fever, with armies, with scaffolds. I can have Foedora. But no, I don’t want Foedora, she’s my disease. I am dying because of Foedora, I want to forget Foedora.’

  ‘If you carry on shouting I shall carry you into the dining-room.’

  ‘Do you see this skin? It’s the testament of Solomon. King Solomon is mine, that little pedant! I own Arabia, Petra* too! The universe is mine. You are mine, if I wish it. Oh, if I wish it, beware! I can buy out all your board of journalists, you will be my valet. You will write me some couplets, you will run my paper. Valet! Valet. That means, “He is in good health because he never does any thinking.”’

  At this, Émile bore Raphael off into the dining-room.

  ‘All right then, my friend,’ he said, ‘I’ll be your valet. But you are going to be editor-in-chief of a newspaper, so be quiet! Behave yourself out of consideration for me. Are we friends?’

  ‘Of course we are! You will have Havana cigars with this skin. Always the skin, my friend, the skin above all! It’s an excellent cure for corns. Do you have corns? I’ll remove them.’

  ‘I’ve never seen you so stupid.’

  ‘Stupid, my friend? No. This skin shrinks when I make a wish … It’s an antiphrasis. The brahmin … there’s a brahmin underneath it! The brahmin then was a joker, because desires, you see, must expand …’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘I tell you …’

  ‘Yes, that’s very true, I agree with you. Desire expands …’

  ‘I tell you, the skin …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t believe me. I know you, my friend, you are a liar, like a new king.’

  ‘How do you expect me to go along with your drunken ravings?’

  ‘I bet you I can prove it. Let’s measure it.’

  ‘Oh dear, he’s never going to sleep,’ cried Émile, seeing Raphael busily poking round the dining-room.

  Valentin, inspired with the skill of a monkey, thanks to the strange lucidity which at times in a drunken man coexists with the dull visions of his intoxication, managed to find a desk and a table napkin, as he repeated over and over again, ‘Let’s measure it! Let’s measure it.’

  ‘Yes all right,’ said Émile. ‘Let’s measure it.’

  The two friends spread out the napkin and placed the ass’s skin over it. Émile, whose hand seemed steadier than Raphael’s, drew a line with his pen round the edge of the talisman, while his friend was saying:

  ‘I wished for two hundred thousand francs a year, did I not? Well, when I have them you will see how all my chagrin has shrunk.’

  ‘Yes, now go to sleep. Do you want me to make you comfortable on this sofa? Now then, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, my little journalist friend. You can amuse me, chase away the flies. The friend of misfortune has every right to be the friend of a man in power. So I’ll give you Hav—a—na cigars.’

  ‘Come now, sleep off your gold, millionaire.’

  ‘You sleep off your articles. Goodnight. Say goodnight to Nebuchadnezzar! Love! Let’s drink to that! France … glory and riches … rich …’

  Soon the two friends added their snores to the music that was echoing through the salons. A concert without an audience! The candles went out one by one, shattering their glass sockets as they did so. Night wrapped its black crepe around this long orgy in which Raphael’s narrative had been like an orgy of words, of words without ideas and ideas which had often lacked for expression.

  * * *

  The next day about midday the beautiful Aquilina got up, yawning, tired, and with the marks on her cheeks of the painted velvet stool on which her head had been resting. Euphrasie, woken by her companion’s movements, suddenly started up with a hoarse cry. Her pretty face that had been so fair and fresh the day before was yellow and pale, like that of a girl on her way to the hospital.* Gradually the guests stirred, uttering awful groans as they felt the stiffness in their arms and legs, and were overcome by a thousand different forms of fatigue as they woke. A footman came to open the shutters and the windows of the salons. The assembled company was now on its feet, recalled to life by the warm rays of sunshine playing on the heads of the sleepers.

  The women, whose elegantly structured hairstyles had become dishevelled by them tossing and turning in their sleep, and with their faded face-powder, presented a hideous sight in the harsh light of day: their hair was lank, their faces had changed, their eyes which had shone so brightly were dulled with fatigue. Their bilious colour, that had been so radiant under the artificial light, made you shudder; lymphatic faces, so soft and white when in repose, had turned green. The mouths once delightfully red, but now dry and ashen, carried the shameful stigmata of drunkenness.

  The men disowned their mistresses of the night before when they saw them in that condition, so pale and cadaverous, like flowers crushed on the street after the processions have passed by. These disdainful men were still more horrible to behold. You would have shuddered to see these human faces with their sunken, dark-ringed eyes too blurred to see anything, dulled by the win
e they had drunk and by a broken sleep that was more exhausting than refreshing. These drawn faces in which physical appetites appeared in all their nakedness, without the poetry that our imagination clothes them in, had something fierce and coldly bestial about them. This reawakening of naked, unadorned vice, this skeleton of evil stripped to the bone, cold, empty and deprived of the sophistries of the intellect or the enchantments of luxury, frightened even these intrepid athletes who were used to combat with debauchery. Artists and courtesans silently surveyed, wild-eyed, the disorder in the rooms where everything had been laid waste, ravaged by the fires of passion.

  They broke out suddenly in demonic laughter when Taillefer, hearing the muffled groans of his guests, made to greet them with a forced smile. His red, sweaty face presided over this scene like the image of unrepentant crime. (See ‘The Red Inn’.)* The picture was complete. Life at its most sordid in the midst of luxury, a dreadful mixture of the pomp and poverty of human beings, the awakening of debauchery when it has squeezed out with its strong hands all the fruits of life, leaving around it only the ignoble debris or lies in which it no longer believes. You would have said it was Death smiling in the midst of a family with the plague. Gone the perfumes, the dazzling lights, the gaiety and desire. Nothing remained but the sickly odour of disgust and its poignant philosophy; the sunshine, sparkling like truth, an air pure like virtue, shone forth in sharp contrast to the steamy, fetid atmosphere heavy with the vapours of an orgy!