The Wild Ass's Skin

by Honoré de Balzac

  Thanks to this mysterious illuminism,* a specious convalescence, like those benign bouts of delirium accorded by nature as a remission in pain, Valentin enjoyed the pleasures of a second childhood in the first days of his sojourn in the heart of this smiling landscape. He went about discovering minutiae, undertaking a thousand things without finishing any of them, forgetting the next day what he had planned the day before, and not caring. He was happy, he felt he had been saved.

  One morning he chanced to stay in bed until midday, deep in that nebulous dream time between wakefulness and sleep, which gives to reality the appearance of fantasy and to chimeras the clear outlines of existence, when suddenly, without knowing at first if it were not a continuation of his dream, he heard for the first time the bulletin of his health given by his hostess to Jonathas, who had come, as he did each day, to ask after him. The Auvergnate no doubt thought that Valentin was still asleep and did not lower her high-pitched mountain voice.

  ‘He’s no better and he’s no worse,’ she said. ‘He has been coughing the whole night fit to give up the ghost. He coughs, he spits, the dear gentleman, it’s a terrible shame. My man and me wonder where he finds the strength to cough like that. It breaks our hearts. What a dreadful illness! He is very sick. I’m always afraid of finding him dead in his bed in the mornings. He is so white, like the wax statue of our Lord! Upon my word, I see him when he gets up, well his poor body is thin as a rake. And he doesn’t smell healthy either! He doesn’t care, he wears himself out running around as though he had strength and to spare. He’s very brave all the same, doesn’t complain. But to tell’ee the truth, he would be better in the earth than out of it, for he’s suffering like Christ on the cross! Not that I want that, sir, it’s not in our interests. Mind you, we should still love him even if he didn’t give us anything like what he does give us. It’s not the money that matters to us. Oh, my word, it’s only people from Paris who have those awful diseases, wherever do they get them from? Poor young man, he will surely have a bad end. This fever, you see, it undermines him, it eats him away, it will be the death of him. But he doesn’t realize it, he doesn’t know it, the poor young gentleman. He doesn’t notice anything. But you mustn’t grieve about it, Monsieur Jonathas! We have to tell ourselves that it will be a blessed relief for him not to suffer any more. You ought to say a novena* for him. I’ve seen people cured by novenas and I’d pay for a candle to save such a sweet creature, such a good man, such a paschal lamb …’

  Raphael’s voice had become too faint to make himself heard, so he was obliged to put up with this dreadful babble. However, impatience forced him from his bed, and he appeared on the threshold:

  ‘You old scoundrel,’ he shouted at Jonathas, ‘do you want to drive me to my grave?’ The peasant woman thought she’d seen a ghost, and made good her escape.

  ‘I forbid you’, Raphael continued, ‘to have the slightest worry about my health.’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur le Marquis,’ replied the old servant, wiping away a tear.

  ‘And in future you would even do well not to come here without my orders.’

  Jonathas hastened to obey. But before withdrawing he cast one loyal and sympathetic look at his master, and in that Raphael read his death warrant. Dispirited, and suddenly made aware of the true nature of his situation, Valentin sat down on the doorstep, folded his arms on his chest, and bowed his head. Jonathas, terrified, drew nearer to his master.

  ‘Monsieur?’

  ‘Go away, go away!’ the sick man shouted.

  The next morning Raphael climbed up over the rocks, and sat in a mossy crevice, from where he could see the narrow path which led from the watering-place to the cottage. Down below, he could see Jonathas once more talking to the peasant woman. A malevolent power enabled him to interpret the shaking of the head, the despairing gestures, the gloomy predictions of this simple soul, and even wafted her fateful words in the wind across the silence. Horrified, he took refuge in the highest peaks in the mountains and stayed there till evening, unable to rid himself of the grim thoughts so unfortunately reawakened in him by the cruel interest of which he was the object. Suddenly the woman from the Auvergne herself rose up before him like a shade in the shades of evening. In his strange poetic imagination he saw a vague resemblance in her black-and-white striped skirt to the fleshless ribs of a ghost.

  ‘The damp night’s coming on, dear sir,’ she said. ‘If you stay here you won’t be any better’n a rotten apple. You must come down. It’s not good for you to get damp in the dew and you’ve not had a bite to eat since morning.’

  ‘In the name of the Almighty,’ he exclaimed, ‘you old witch, I order you to let me live as I wish, or I shall leave your house. It is quite enough that you dig my grave every morning, without scratching away at it in the evening as well.’

  ‘Your grave, sir! Dig your grave! Where is it then, this grave? I wish you could be strong as an ox, like Grandfather here, not in the grave! The grave! We are all in the grave soon enough.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Raphael.

  ‘Take my arm, sir.’

  ‘No.’

  The sentiment that men find hardest to bear is pity, especially when they deserve it. Hatred is a tonic, it makes us feel alive, it inspires vengeance. But pity kills us, it robs us of the little strength we have left. It is an unctuous malice, a contemptuous tenderness, or a tenderness covering up insult. Raphael met with pity from all these people: of a kind triumphant in the old man, curious in the child, bothersome in the woman, self-interested in the husband. But whatever form this feeling took, it was always big with thoughts of death. A poet makes a poem out of everything, tragic or lyrical, according to the images that strike him. His exalted soul rejects all gentle nuances and always prefers bright, definite colours. This pity produced in Raphael’s heart a doleful poem of grieving and melancholy.

  He had presumably not thought of the uncompromising character of natural feelings when he expressed the wish to draw closer to nature. When he thought he was on his own beneath a tree, struggling with his obstinate cough, a fight he never won but always emerged from beaten by the terrible effort, he saw the bright, mobile eyes of the little boy, stationed behind a clump of grass like a wild animal, studying him with the curiosity of an urchin in which there is as much mockery as pleasure and a mixture of interest and heartlessness. The Trappists’ ‘Brother thou must die’* seemed to be constantly written in the eyes of the peasants Raphael was living with; he did not know which he feared the most, their naive words or their silence; everything about them oppressed him.

  One morning he saw two men in black prowling and sniffing around and spying on him. Then, pretending to be out for a walk, they asked him some banal questions, to which he gave a curt answer. He recognized them as the doctor and the priest from the spa, no doubt sent for by Jonathas, or by his hosts who wished to consult them; or else drawn there by the smell of impending death. He had a glimpse then of his own funeral procession: he heard the chanting of the priests, counted the candles, and it was only through a veil of black crêpe that he saw the beauty of this rich nature at the heart of which he thought he had found his real life. Everything that formerly had promised him a long life was now prophesying an early death. The next day, awash with the melancholic and sympathetic good wishes of his hosts, he left for Paris.

  * * *

  After travelling through the night, he awoke in one of the most fertile valleys of the Bourbonnais, whose beautiful views and sites whirled past him, rapidly borne away like the misty images of a dream. A teasing, cruel nature unfolded before his eyes. Now the River Allier rolled out its liquid, shiny ribbon through the rich countryside; now hamlets modestly hidden in a yellow rocky gorge showed the points of their spires; now the windmills in a little valley came into view after the monotony of vineyards, and always there were glimpses of handsome manor-houses, villages perched on cliffs, or roads bordered by majestic poplars; and finally the Loire and its long sparkling sheets of water glistening
upon golden sands. Such an infinity of wonderful things!

  Nature in ferment, robust as a child, scarcely able to contain all the love and sap of the month of June,* inevitably drew the dull gaze of the dying man. He pulled down the blinds in his carriage and slept again. Towards evening, having passed Cosne, he was awoken by rousing music and found himself in the middle of a village festival. The post-house was situated near the square. While the coachmen were changing his horses he watched these happy people dancing, the pretty young village girls adorned with flowers, the flirting, the excited youths, and the old farmers red and merry with wine. The small children were shrieking, the old women were laughing and chattering, all was noise and bustle and extended even to the costumes and the tables set out for the feast. The square and the church presented a gay picture. The roofs, the windows, and even the doors in the village were decked out in their Sunday best.

  Like all mortally sick people Raphael, impatient of the least noise, could not suppress an angry exclamation nor his wish to silence those fiddles, stop all the activity, hush the shouting, and disperse these brash revellers. He got into his carriage in a very bad humour.*

  When he looked at the square he saw that all joy had turned to dismay, the peasant women had scattered and the benches were deserted. On the steps where the band had been a blind musician carried on playing a shrill rondo on his clarinet. This music without dancers, this solitary old man with his disagreeable profile, in rags and with wispy hair, hiding in the shade of a lime tree, looked like a fantastic allegory of the wish Raphael had just made. Then there was one of those heavy thunderstorms that are suddenly precipitated by the electricity in the clouds in the month of June, and just as abruptly stop. It was such a natural occurrence that Raphael, after looking at some whitish clouds in the sky carried off by the squall, did not think to look at his magic skin. He got back into the corner of his carriage and was soon rattling along the road.

  Next day he was once more in his room at home in the chimney corner. He had had a big fire lit, for he was cold. Jonathas brought him some letters, all from Pauline. He opened the first one unhurriedly, and unfolded it as though it were the greyish paper of a demand sent by the taxman. He read the first sentence:

  ‘You’ve gone, but why, my Raphael? What! No one can tell me where you are? And if I don’t know, who else could?’

  Not wanting to read any more, he coldly took the letters and threw them in the fire, watching with a dull, lacklustre eye the flames twisting and playing with the scented paper as it shrivelled, curled, and crumbled into shreds.

  Fragments rolled over the ashes, allowing him to see the beginnings of sentences, words, thoughts half-consumed by fire, which he idly tried to decipher in the flames as though it were some mindless game.

  ‘Sitting at your door … waited … Whim … I obey … rivals … not I … your Pauline … love … no more Pauline then? … If you had wanted to leave me you would not have abandoned me … Eternal love … Dying …’

  These words aroused in him something like remorse. He seized the tongs and saved a last fragment of the letter.

  ‘ … I have murmured,’ wrote Pauline, ‘but I haven’t complained, Raphael. By going so far away from me you have no doubt wanted to spare me the burden of your worries. One day perhaps you will kill me, but you are too good to make me suffer. So don’t go away like that again. You see, I can face the greatest torture if I am by your side. The anxiety* you caused me would no longer be an anxiety: in my heart I have still more love than I have yet shown you. I can bear anything, except being away from you, weeping and not knowing what you …’

  Raphael put this fragment, blackened by the flames, on the mantelpiece, then immediately threw it into the fire again. The letter was too vivid a reminder of his love and his fate.

  ‘Go and fetch Monsieur Bianchon,’ he said to Jonathas.

  Horace came and found Raphael in bed.

  ‘My friend, can you concoct a drink with a little opium in it for me that keeps me in a state of continual sleepiness, without the risk of harm from its constant use?’

  ‘Nothing easier,’ replied the young doctor, ‘but you will need to stay up a few hours a day to eat.’

  ‘A few hours?’ said Raphael, interrupting him. ‘No, I don’t want to be up for more than one hour at most.’

  ‘Why do you wish to do this?’ queried Bianchon.

  ‘To sleep is to be still alive,’ replied the invalid. ‘Allow nobody in, not even Mademoiselle Pauline de Wittschnau,’ he said to Jonathas while the doctor was writing out his prescription.

  ‘Well, Monsieur Horace, has he any strength left?’ the old servant asked the doctor whom he had accompanied to the steps.

  ‘He may linger on for a long time, or die this evening. It’s touch and go with him whether he lives or dies. I don’t understand it,’ replied the doctor with a puzzled shrug. ‘We must distract him.’

  ‘Distract him! Sir, you don’t know what he’s like. The other day he killed a man without turning a hair. Nothing distracts him.’

  Raphael remained for a few days deep in the void of his induced sleep. Thanks to the material power exercised by the opium on our immaterial soul,* this man of so powerfully active an imagination brought himself down to the level of those slothful animals that crouch in the heart of the forest looking like vegetation, and don’t bestir themselves even to seize on an easy prey. He had even extinguished the daylight, it no longer came into the room. Towards eight in the evening he would get up. Without a clear consciousness of what he was doing, he would satisfy his hunger and then immediately go back to bed. The cold, anxious hours passed, bringing only confused images, apparitions, chiaroscuro shapes on a black background. He had buried himself in deep silence in a negation of all movement or intelligence. One evening he awoke much later than usual and found his dinner had not been brought. He rang for Jonathas.

  ‘You can go,’ he said. ‘I have made you a rich man, you will be happy in your old age. But I do not wish you to fool about with my life any more. I am hungry, you wretched man, where is my dinner? Answer me.’

  Jonathas gave a smile of satisfaction, took a candle whose flame flickered in the deep darkness of the huge rooms in the great house. He conducted his master, who walked like an automaton, to a vast gallery and opened the door with a flourish. Immediately Raphael, bathed in light, was dazzled and startled by an extraordinary spectacle. His candelabra were laden with candles, the rarest flowers from his hothouse were artistically arranged, a table sparkling with silver, gold, mother-of-pearl, porcelain; a royal repast, steaming hot, with appetizing dishes to tickle the tastebuds. He saw all his friends gathered there, mingling with women who were elegant in beautiful low-cut dresses, their shoulders bare, their hair ornamented with flowers, their eyes sparkling, all beautiful in their different ways, all desirable in their voluptuous costumes. One had set off her attractive figure to advantage in an Irish waistcoat, another was wearing the lascivious basque of the women of Andalusia; one, half-naked, as Diana the Huntress; one modestly and attractively attired in the dress of Mademoiselle de la Vallière:* all were equally bent on passion and revelry. Joy, love, and pleasure shone in the eyes of every guest.

  The moment the deathly face of Raphael appeared in the doorway, a spontaneous cheer went up, rapid, dazzling like the rays of light at this improvised feast. The voices, the perfumes, the lights, these intensely beautiful women aroused all his senses and reawakened his appetite. Sweet music from an orchestra hidden in an adjacent room rose above the intoxicating tumult in a flood of harmony and completed this strange vision. Raphael felt the touch of a soft hand pressed upon his—a woman’s hand, with cool white arms raised to embrace him: it was Aquilina. He realized that this picture was not insubstantial and fantastic like the fleeting images of his pale dreams. He uttered a dreadful cry, shut the door abruptly, and railed against his old servant, striking him a blow in the face.

  ‘You monster, have you sworn to kill me?’ he cried. Then
trembling at the thought of the danger he had just been in, he recovered enough strength to regain his room, took a strong sleeping-draught, and got into bed.

  ‘What the devil!’ said Jonathas, picking himself up. ‘Monsieur Bianchon told me I had to distract him.’

  It was about midnight. At that hour Raphael’s face, by one of those physiological quirks which are the astonishment and despair of medical science, radiated beauty as he slept. A bright pink flushed his white cheeks. His graceful brow, like a young girl’s, was expressive of his genius. Life bloomed on this quiet, tranquil face. You would have thought he was a child asleep under the protection of his mother. His sleep was a healthy sleep, a rhythmical pure breathing issued from his red lips. He smiled, transported no doubt by a dream into a land of delight. Perhaps he was a hundred years old, perhaps his grandchildren were wishing him a long life, perhaps from his rustic bench in the sunshine beneath the trees, like the prophet he could perceive the promised land on the far blue horizon!

  ‘So there you are!’

  These words, uttered in silvery tones, dissipated the cloudy visions of his sleep. By the light of the lamp he saw his Pauline sitting on the bed, a Pauline rendered more beautiful by absence and grief. Raphael lay there in wonderment at the sight of her white face, like the petals of a water-lily which, framed by her long black hair, seemed whiter still in the shadows. Tears had traced their shining passage on her cheeks, and lingered there, ready to fall at the least movement. Dressed in white, head bowed, hardly making any impression on the bed, she looked like an angel come down from the heavens, like an apparition that could be blown away with one breath.

  ‘Oh, all is forgotten,’ she cried, the moment Raphael opened his eyes. ‘I only have a voice to say “I am yours!” Yes, there is nothing but love in my heart. Oh never, my angel, have you been so handsome. Your eyes are ablaze. But I can guess the whole story! You have been away seeking to recover your health without me because you were afraid of me … Well now …’