Honore de Balzac
Page 9
"Lord Dudley must have been your father!"
The head of each was drooped in affirmation.
"She was true to the blood," said Henri, pointing to Paquita.
"She was as little guilty as it is possible to be," replied Margarita Euphemia Porraberil, and she threw herself upon the body of Paquita, giving vent to a cry of despair. "Poor child! Oh, if I could bring thee to life again! I was wrong—forgive me, Paquita! Dead! and I live! I—I am the most unhappy."
At that moment the horrible face of the mother of Paquita appeared.
"You are come to tell me that you never sold her to me to kill," cried the Marquise. "I know why you have left your lair. I will pay you twice over. Hold your peace."
She took a bag of gold from the ebony cabinet, and threw it contemptuously at the old woman's feet. The chink of the gold was potent enough to excite a smile on the Georgian's impassive face.
"I come at the right moment for you, my sister," said Henri. "The law will ask of you—"
"Nothing," replied the Marquise. "One person alone might ask for a reckoning for the death of this girl. Cristemio is dead."
"And the mother," said Henri, pointing to the old woman. "Will you not always be in her power?"
"She comes from a country where women are not beings, but things—chattels, with which one does as one wills, which one buys, sells, and slays; in short, which one uses for one's caprices as you, here, use a piece of furniture. Besides, she has one passion which dominates all the others, and which would have stifled her maternal love, even if she had loved her daughter, a passion—"
"What?" Henri asked quickly, interrupting his sister.
"Play! God keep you from it," answered the Marquise.
"But whom have you," said Henri, looking at the girl of the golden eyes, "who will help you to remove the traces of this fantasy which the law would not overlook?"
"I have her mother," replied the Marquise, designating the Georgian, to whom she made a sign to remain.
"We shall meet again," said Henri, who was thinking anxiously of his friends and felt that it was time to leave.
"No, brother," she said, "we shall not meet again. I am going back to Spain to enter the Convent of los Dolores."
"You are too young yet, too lovely," said Henri, taking her in his arms and giving her a kiss.
"Good-bye," she said; "there is no consolation when you have lost that which has seemed to you the infinite."
A week later Paul de Manerville met De Marsay in the Tuileries, on the Terrasse de Feuillants.
"Well, what has become of our beautiful girl of the golden eyes, you rascal?"
"She is dead."
"What of?"
"Consumption."
PARIS, March 1834-April 1835.
Addendum
*
Note: The Girl with the Golden Eyes is the third part of a trilogy. Part one is entitled Ferragus and part two is The Duchesse de Langeais. In other addendum references all three stories are usually combined under the title The Thirteen.
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Bourignard, Gratien-Henri-Victor-Jean-Joseph
Ferragus
Dudley, Lord
The Lily of the Valley
A Man of Business
Another Study of Woman
A Daughter of Eve
Manerville, Paul Francois-Joseph, Comte de
The Ball at Sceaux
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Marriage Settlement
Marsay, Henri de
Ferragus
The Duchesse of Langeais
The Unconscious Humorists
Another Study of Woman
The Lily of the Valley
Father Goriot
Jealousies of a Country Town
Ursule Mirouet
A Marriage Settlement
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Letters of Two Brides
The Ball at Sceaux
Modeste Mignon
The Secrets of a Princess
The Gondreville Mystery
A Daughter of Eve
Ronquerolles, Marquis de
The Imaginary Mistress
The Peasantry
Ursule Mirouet
A Woman of Thirty
Another Study of Woman
Ferragus
The Duchesse of Langeais
The Member for Arcis
* * *