The Wild Ass's Skin

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘You are my only glory.’

  ‘How unhappy you must have been when you made those little blots on the paper,’ she said, riffling through the papers.

  ‘My Pauline …’

  ‘Oh yes, I am your Pauline. So…?’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Rue Saint-Lazare.* And you?’

  ‘Rue de Varenne.’

  ‘How far away we shall be from one another until …’ She stopped and looked at her lover with a coquettish, playful expression.

  ‘But’, replied Raphael, ‘we have at the most two weeks when we shall be apart.’

  ‘That’s true. In two weeks* we shall be married!’ And she jumped up and down like a child.

  ‘Oh what an unnatural daughter I am,’ she went on. ‘I have forgotten my father, my mother, and everything in the world! You hadn’t heard, my poor darling? My father is very ill. He came back very poorly from India. He nearly died in Le Havre, where we went to meet him. Oh God,’ she cried, looking at the time on her watch, ‘it’s already three o’clock. I must be there when he wakes up at four. I am mistress of the house. My mother does everything I wish, my father adores me, but I don’t want to abuse their good-will, that would be too bad of me. My poor father, he is responsible for sending me to the Italiens yesterday. You’ll come and see him tomorrow, won’t you?’

  ‘Will Madame la Marquise de Valentin do me the honour of accepting my arm?’

  ‘Oh, I shall carry away the key to this room,’ she went on. ‘Is this not a palace, our treasure?’

  ‘Pauline, one more kiss?’

  ‘A thousand! My goodness,’ she said, looking at Raphael. ‘It will always be like this. I believe I am dreaming.’

  They went slowly down the staircase. Then arm in arm, keeping time with their steps, both trembling under the weight of an identical love, holding each other like two turtle doves, they arrived at the Place de la Sorbonne, where Pauline’s carriage was waiting.

  ‘I want to go to your home,’ she cried. ‘I want to see your room, your study, and sit at the table where you work. It will be just like the old days,’ she added, blushing.

  ‘Joseph,’ she said to a footman, ‘I am going to the Rue de Varenne before I return home. It’s three-fifteen and I must be back by four. Georges will make the horses gallop.’

  And in a few minutes the two lovers were borne to Valentin’s mansion.

  ‘Oh how happy I am to have seen all this,’ cried Pauline as she crumpled up the silk of the curtains draped over Raphael’s bed. ‘When I fall asleep I shall be there in my thoughts. I shall imagine your dear head on my pillow. Tell me, Raphael, did you not consult anybody about the furnishings for your house?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Truly? Was there not a woman who …’

  ‘Pauline!’

  ‘Oh, I am terribly jealous. You have good taste. Tomorrow I want a bed just like yours.’

  Raphael, drunk with happiness, caught hold of Pauline.

  ‘Oh … my father … my father,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll drive back with you, for I want to be apart from you for as little as possible.’

  ‘Such a loving thought! I did not dare suggest it …’

  ‘Are you not the whole world to me?’

  It would be tedious to recount in detail the sweet chatterings of their love, for it is the tone, the look, the untranslatable gesture that alone give them value. Valentin escorted Pauline as far as her house, and returned home with as much joy in his heart as any man can feel or bear on this earth. When he was sitting in his armchair near his fire, thinking of the sudden and complete realization of all his hopes, an icy thought went through him as the blade of a sword pierces a breast. He looked at the ass’s skin and it had shrunk a little more. He uttered—without the Jesuitical reticences of the Abbess of Andouillets*—the worst French oath, leaned his head back on his chair, and remained in that position, with his eyes staring at, but not seeing, a Grecian dish.

  ‘Great God,’ he cried. ‘What! All my wishes, all! Poor Pauline!’

  He took a pair of compasses and measured how much life the morning had cost him:

  ‘I’ve hardly got two months,’ he said.

  A cold sweat came upon him, and suddenly obeying an inexpressible rage he seized the ass’s skin, crying:

  ‘What a fool I am!’

  He ran out, and crossing the gardens, threw the talisman into the bottom of a well:

  ‘What will be, will be!’ he said. ‘The devil take all this stupidity.’

  * * *

  Raphael gave himself up to enjoying the happiness of being in love and living in the closest intimacy with Pauline. Their wedding, delayed by problems too mundane to explain, was to be celebrated at the beginning of March. They had tested their love, never doubting each other, and their happiness had proved the strength of their affection. Never were two souls, two passions, so perfectly matched. The more they got to know each other the more they loved each other. On one side as on the other there was the same delicacy, the same modesty, the same delight, the most heavenly delight of all. No clouds in their sky. Gradually the desires of the one became law for the other. Both rich, they could indulge any fancy, and when they were apart had none. An exquisite taste, a feeling for beauty, a true poetry animated the soul of the bride. Scorning to spend money on trinkets, a smile from her lover seemed lovelier to her than all the pearls of Ormuz; muslin or flowers were her richest ornaments. Moreover, Pauline and Raphael avoided society, their own company being so beautiful and abundant! Idle theatregoers would see this pretty clandestine pair at the Italiens or the Opéra every evening. If at first some sarcastic remarks were made in the salons, soon the torrent of events sweeping through Paris made them forget these two inoffensive lovers. And finally their wedding was announced, so the prudes were satisfied and luckily their staff exercised discretion, so no particularly spiteful remarks came to spoil their happiness.

  One morning towards the end of February, the season when the fine days make people think about the joys of spring, Pauline and Raphael were having breakfast in a little summer-house, a kind of conservatory full of flowers that looked out onto the garden. At that hour the rays of the pale, mild winter sun filtered through the shrubs that were planted here and there, and warmed the air. The lively contrasts of the different greenery, the colours of the clumps of flowers, and the various play of light and shade were a delight to the eyes.

  While the rest of Paris was still huddling around its pathetic hearths, the young couple were laughing in their bower of camellias, lilac, and heather. Their joyful heads rose above the narcissi, the lilies of the valley, and the Bengal roses.

  Beneath their feet, in this conservatory that afforded such delight to the senses, was African rush matting with colours like those in a carpet. The walls hung with green twill did not show the least sign of damp. The furniture was wood, apparently unvarnished, but its shiny surface shone with cleanliness. A kitten crouching on the table, attracted by the smell of milk, let its face be dabbed with coffee by Pauline. She was playing with it, teasing it with the cream, trying its patience, just enough to keep the fight going. She burst out laughing at each of its little antics and made lots of funny remarks to prevent Raphael from reading the newspaper, which he had let fall ten times already. In this morning scene there reigned an inexpressible happiness, like everything that is natural and unaffected.

  Raphael went on pretending to read his paper but covertly watching Pauline’s tussles with the kitten; his Pauline, robed in a long dressing-gown which did not quite conceal her figure; his Pauline, with her hair untidy and showing a small white foot with faint blue veins in its black velvet slipper. Charming to look at in her morning attire, delightful as the fantastic figures of Westall,* she gave the impression of being both girl and woman, perhaps rather more girl than woman; she felt an unmitigated happiness, knowing of love only its joyous beginnings. Just at the moment when, completely absorbed in his sweet reverie, Rap
hael had forgotten his newspaper, Pauline seized it, crumpled it up into a ball, and threw it into the garden. The kitten chased after it and it went round and round, like the politics it contained.

  Raphael, distracted by this childish scene, thought to go on reading and made a move to pick up the news-sheet he no longer had, whereupon there were peals of merry laughter, over and over again like birdsong.

  ‘I am jealous of your newspaper,’ she said, wiping away the tears that her childish laughter had brought to her eyes. ‘Is it not a crime’, she went on, suddenly becoming a woman again, ‘to read about Russian politics in my presence and prefer the prose of Tsar Nicholas* to the words and looks of love?’

  ‘I wasn’t reading, my love, I was watching you.’

  At that moment the heavy tread of the gardener’s hobnail boots scrunching on the gravel was heard near the conservatory.

  ‘Excuse me, Monsieur le Marquis, if I am interrupting you and the lady, but I’m bringing you a curious thing I’ve never seen before! As I was drawing a bucket of water from the well, saving your honour, I pulled up this strange sort of seaweed. Here it is! All the same it must be used to growing in water, for it wasn’t wet or even damp. It was dry as a stick and not a bit swollen. As Monsieur le Marquis knows far more about these things than me, I thought I should bring it to him, out of curiosity.’

  And the gardener showed Raphael the inexorable ass’s skin, now not six inches square.

  ‘Thank you, Vanière,’ said Raphael, ‘what a very odd thing.’

  ‘What is it my angel? You are so pale!’ cried Pauline.

  ‘Leave us please, Vanière.’

  ‘Your voice frightens me,’ went on the girl, ‘it’s oddly changed. What’s the matter? Are you in pain? Where does it hurt? You must be ill! A doctor!’ she shouted. ‘Jonathas, come and help!’

  ‘Pauline my love, be quiet,’ answered Raphael, who had recovered his equilibrium. ‘Let’s go out. There’s a flower somewhere near me whose scent makes me feel sick. Can it be the verbena?’

  Pauline dashed at the inoffensive plant, seized it by the stem, and threw it into the garden.

  ‘Oh my angel,’ she cried, squeezing Raphael with a passion that equalled their passionate love, and with a languorous coquetry putting up her rosy lips for him to kiss, ‘when I saw you go pale like that I realized I would not live long without you: your life is mine. My Raphael, run your hand over my back. I can still feel the touch of death, I am cold there. Your lips are burning. And your hand … is icy,’ she added.

  ‘You are mad!’ cried Raphael.

  ‘Why that tear?’ she asked. ‘Let me drink it.’

  ‘Oh Pauline, Pauline, you love me too much.’

  ‘There is something extraordinary going on in you, Raphael. Tell me the truth, for I am sure to know your secret before long. Give me that,’ she said, taking the wild ass’s skin.

  ‘You are my executioner!’ cried the young man, looking in horror at the talisman.

  ‘How your voice has changed!’ answered Pauline dropping the dire and fateful thing.

  ‘Do you love me?’ he went on.

  ‘Do I love you? Can you really be asking me that?’

  ‘Well then, leave me, go away!’

  The poor girl did as he bade her and left.

  ‘What!’ Raphael exclaimed, when he was alone. ‘In this century of enlightenment when we have learned that diamonds are carbon crystals, in an age when there is an explanation for everything, where the police would prosecute a new Messiah before the tribunals and refer his miracles to the Academy of Sciences, in an age when we only put our trust in a notary’s signature, why should I believe in a sort of Mene mene tekel upharsin?* No, in God’s name, I shall not believe that the Supreme Being can take any pleasure in tormenting an honest creature. Let us consult the scientists.’

  * * *

  Before long, halfway between the Halle aux Vins, which was a huge warehouse of barrels of wine, and la Salpêtrière,* which was an immense seminary for drunks, he reached a little pond where ducks, remarkable for the rarity of their different species, were disporting themselves, their iridescent colours, like the stained glass in a cathedral, flashing in the sunshine. All kinds of ducks were there, quacking, splashing, swarming around, making a sort of duck assembly gathered against its will but happily without charter or political principles and protected from the huntsmen under the eyes of the naturalists who happened to be studying them.

  ‘There’s Monsieur Lavrille,’* said a keeper to Raphael, who had asked to see that great zoological authority.

  The Marquis saw a small man absorbed in profound meditations on two ducks. This middle-aged professor had a gentle face, with an obliging expression that made it seem more gentle still. But the preoccupation with his subject could be seen in every aspect of his appearance: his very wig, which he scratched continually and had pushed back at a fantastical angle, revealing a line of white hair, was the mark of his passion for scientific discoveries, which, like all passions, removes us so powerfully from the realities of this world that we lose conscience of ourselves. Raphael, himself a student and a scientist, admired this naturalist whose observations were devoted to the increase of human knowledge and who contributed, even in his errors, to the reputation of French science. But a woman of fashion might have ridiculed the gap between his trousers and his striped waistcoat: it was chastely filled by a shirt, much crumpled as he bent down and got up again in the course of his zoological observations.

  After a few preliminary polite remarks Raphael decided it was necessary to pay Monsieur Lavrille a banal compliment about his ducks.

  ‘Oh, we are not short of ducks,’* the naturalist replied. ‘This genus is, moreover, as you no doubt know, the most fertile of the order of webfoots. It begins with the swan and ends with the zin-zin duck and comprises one hundred and thirty-seven varieties of very distinct individuals, with different names, habits, countries of origin, appearances, and who do not resemble each other any more than a white man resembles a black. Truly, Monsieur, when we eat a duck mostly we give no thought to the range …’

  He broke off at the sight of a pretty little goose waddling up the bank in the pond. ‘Here we have the Canada goose, the poor little orphan from Canada, who has come a very long way to show us his brown-and-grey plumage, and his little black cravat! Look, he’s scratching himself. And this is the famous feathered goose or eider duck, under whose feathers our ladies of fashion sleep. How pretty she is! Who could fail to admire that little belly of reddish white, that green beak? I have just witnessed, my dear sir, a coupling of which I had until now despaired. The marriage was successfully consummated and I shall await the result with impatience. I flatter myself I may obtain a one hundred and thirty-eighth species, possibly to be named after me! Here are the newly married couple,’ he said, pointing to two ducks. ‘On the one hand there is a white-fronted Anas albifrons, the laughing duck, and on the other the red-crested pochard, the whistling duck, Buffon’s Anas ruffina. I couldn’t decide for a long time between the whistling duck, the white-browed duck, and the northern shoveller, Anas clypeata. Look, there’s the spoonbilled duck, that great brownish black devil with the green neck and the handsome purplish tinge. But, monsieur, the whistling duck was crested, so you will understand that I didn’t have to think too long about my decision. The only variety missing here is the variegated black-headed duck. Some naturalists insist that this duck is just the same as the crooked-bill teal, but in my opinion …’ He made a wonderful gesture which expressed at one and the same time the modesty and pride of the scientist, a pride full of obstinacy, a modesty full of confidence, ‘… I do not think so,’ he added. ‘You see, my dear monsieur, we are not having fun and games here. I am busy at the moment with a monograph on the genus of duck. But I am at your disposal.’

  * * *

  As they made their way towards a rather pretty house in the Rue de Buffon, Raphael offered the ass’s skin to Monsieur Lavrille’s scrutiny.


  ‘I know what this is,’ said the naturalist, lowering his magnifying glass on to the talisman. ‘It has served as the covering for a box. Shagreen is extremely old! Today case-makers prefer to use sharkskin. Sharkskin is, as you no doubt know, the skin of the Raja sephen, a fish from the Red Sea.’

  ‘But this, monsieur, since you have been so very good as to …’

  ‘This’, replied the zoologist, interrupting, ‘is something quite different. Sharkskin and shagreen, my dear sir, are as different as chalk and cheese, a fish and a quadruped. However, the skin of the fish is stronger than the skin of the dry land animal. This’, he said, pointing to the talisman, ‘is, as you no doubt know, one of the most curious products of the natural world.’

  ‘Is that so?’ cried Raphael.

  ‘Monsieur,’ replied the scientist, settling down in his armchair, ‘this is a donkey skin.’

  ‘That I know,’ said the young man.

  ‘In Persia’, the naturalist went on, ‘there lives an extremely rare donkey, the wild ass of the ancients, Equus asinus, the koulan of the Tartars; Pallas* went there to study it, the first to do so. In fact this animal had for a long time been thought a mythical creature. It is, as you know, famous in holy scripture; Moses had forbidden it to couple with its related species. But the onager is still more famous for acts of prostitution it was used for, of which the prophets of the Bible often speak. Pallas, as you doubtless know, declares in his Act Petrop, volume 2, that these strange practices are still faithfully believed by the Persians and the Nogais* to be a sovereign remedy for the maladies of the kidneys and gout. We poor Parisians, we are ignorant of these things!

  ‘The Museum does not possess a wild ass. What a superb animal!’ went on the naturalist. ‘He is full of mystery. His eye is equipped with a kind of reflecting plate to which the orientals attribute the power of its fascination. His coat is smoother and glossier than that of our most beautiful horses. It is crisscrossed with stripes of a more-or-less tawny colour and is very like the pelt of the zebra. The wool is soft, wavy, silky smooth to the touch. His eyesight is as keen and precise as that of a human. A little larger than our finest domestic donkeys, he is endowed with an extraordinary courage. If by chance he is surprised, he defends himself with remarkable tenacity against the most ferocious of beasts. As for the speed of his movement, one can only compare it to the flight of a bird. An onager, my dear sir, would outstrip the best Arab or Persian steeds in a race and leave them for dead.