‘“Come and have dinner with me here tomorrow night at seven.”
‘We got up, Rastignac threw some small change in the direction of the waiter, put the bill in his pocket, and we left. I was dumbfounded at the reckless way he had transacted my honourable aunt, the Marquise of Montbauron.
‘“I’d rather sail to Brazil and teach Indians algebra that I know nothing of than sully the name of my family!”
‘Rastignac interrupted me with a shout of laughter. “What an idiot you are! Take the two hundred and fifty first and do the memoirs. When they are finished you refuse to put your aunt’s name to them. Madame de Montbauron, dead on the scaffold, with her hooped skirts, the respect she was held in, her beauty, her face-powder, and her slippers are worth a good deal more than six hundred francs. If the bookseller does not in the end want to pay what your aunt is worth he will find some old gentleman of dubious origins or grubby countess to sign the memoirs.”
‘“Oh,” I cried, “why did I leave my virtuous garret? The world is a vile place when you dig below the surface.”
‘“Well,” replied Rastignac, “those are fine words, but we are talking business. You are such a child. Listen. As far as the memoirs go, the public will be your judge. As to my literary pimp, has he not spent eight years of his life and paid for his dealings with publishers with cruel experience? You are sharing the work on the book unequally with him, but is not your share of the money greater? Twenty-five louis is a far bigger sum of money to you than a thousand francs is to him. Go on, surely you can write historical memoirs, a work of art if ever there was one, when Diderot wrote six sermons for five hundred francs.”*
‘“Well, I suppose”, I told him with some emotion, “I haven’t any choice in the matter. So, my dear friend, I owe you thanks. Twenty-five louis will make me a very rich man.”
‘“And richer than you think,” he went on, with a laugh. “If Finot gives me a commission in this affair, can’t you guess that it will be yours? Let’s go to the Bois de Boulogne,” he said, “we will see your Countess there and I’ll show you the pretty little widow I am due to marry—a charming lady, a rather plump woman from Alsace. She reads Kant, Schiller, Jean-Paul,* and a host of tear-jerkers! Her particular quirk is that she always wants to know my opinion, and I am obliged to pretend I understand all this Germanic sensibility, that I know masses of ballads, all of which medicine I am forbidden by my doctor. I’ve not yet managed to get her out of the habit of this literary enthusiasm. She breaks into floods of tears when she reads Goethe and I am obliged to weep a little too in sympathy, for she has fifty thousand a year, my dear, and the prettiest little ankle, the slenderest little hand in the world! Oh, if she did not pronounce ‘my angel’ as ‘my anchel’ and ‘jumble’ as ‘chumble’ she would be a most accomplished woman.”
‘We met the Countess, resplendent in her glittering carriage. That coquettish creature greeted us most affectionately, giving me a smile that struck me as divine and full of love. Oh, I was indeed happy; I felt she loved me, I had money in my pocket, and all the treasures of passion; I was poor no longer. Light-hearted, gay, content with the world, I found my friend’s mistress quite charming. The trees, the air, the sky, the whole of nature seemed to me to reflect Foedora’s smile. Coming back from the Champs-Élysées we visited Rastignac’s hatmaker and tailor. Thanks to the Necklace Affair I would be able to abandon my pathetic position of appeasement, and go on the attack. From now on I would be able to hold my own, fearlessly and with grace and elegance, against all the young men who swarmed around Foedora. I went back to my lodgings. I closed the door, remaining in apparent composure at my attic window, but in reality bidding an eternal farewell to my roofs, living in the future and dramatizing my life in anticipation of its love and pleasures. Oh, how stormy a life can become between the four walls of a garret! The human soul is a sort of magician, it turns straw into diamonds. Under its magic wand enchanted palaces spring up like flowers of the meadow in the warm breath of the sun. The next day towards midday Pauline knocked softly at my door and brought me—can you guess?—a letter from Foedora. The Countess asked me to come and meet her in the Luxembourg gardens so that we could visit the Museum and the Jardin des Plantes together.
‘“The messenger is waiting for your reply,” she said after a moment’s silence. I promptly scribbled a thank-you note and Pauline took it away. I got dressed. Just when, rather pleased with myself, I had nearly finished getting ready, a sudden cold shudder went through me at the thought: “Will Foedora come in her carriage or on foot? Will it rain or be fine? And anyway,” I reflected, “whether she comes on foot or in a carriage, can one ever be certain of the vagaries of women? She won’t have any money on her and she will want to give a hundred sous to some little street urchin because he is wearing such picturesque rags.”
‘I had not a bean and could not expect any money until that evening. Oh, how dearly does a poet pay, in these youthful crises, for the intellectual powers he has acquired by habit and work! In an instant a thousand sharp, painful thoughts pricked me like so many thorns. I looked at the sky through my window, the weather seemed very uncertain. I could hire a cab for the day if the weather were bad, but if I did, should I not be on tenterhooks all the time in the midst of my happiness, in case I did not meet Finot that evening? I felt I wasn’t strong enough to bear so much anxiety in the midst of my joy. Although certain I should not find anything, I undertook a thorough exploration of my room; I looked for non-existent crowns in the depths of my mattress, I searched everywhere, I even shook out my old boots. In a state of nervous fever, I looked wild-eyed at my pieces of furniture after turning everything upside down. Can you understand the delirious joy I felt on opening for the seventh time the drawer of my writing table that I was investigating with the sort of indolence in which despair plunges us, when I noticed stuck to one of the sides, slyly lurking there but clean, shiny, and clear as a rising star, a beautiful, noble, five-franc coin? Not asking it to account for its silence or the cruel way it had kept itself hidden like that, I kissed it like a friend faithful in my misfortune and greeted it with a resounding shout. I turned round abruptly and saw Pauline, her face white as a sheet.
‘“I thought”, she said in a voice that trembled, “that you had hurt yourself. The messenger …” She broke off as though she was choking. “But my mother paid him,” she added. Then she fled, a childish, fairylike, will o’ the wisp. Poor girl! I wished she were as happy as me. At that moment I felt I had within me all the pleasures of the earth, and wished I could restore to those less fortunate the share I felt I was stealing from them.
‘We are almost always right in our forebodings of adversity. The Countess had sent her cab away. By one of these caprices which pretty women do not always explain even to themselves, she wished to visit the Jardin des Plantes on foot, by way of the boulevards.
‘“But it’s going to rain,” I told her.
‘She took pleasure in contradicting me. As it happened, it was fine all the time we were walking in the Luxembourg. When we left the gardens I started to worry as a big cloud came over and let fall one or two drops of rain; we got into a cab. When we reached the boulevards the rain stopped and the sky cleared again. Arriving at the Museum, I wanted to send the cab away, but Foedora begged me to keep it. What torments! But to chat to her while suppressing my secret agitation, which was no doubt expressed in my face by a foolish, fixed smile, to wander around the Jardin des Plantes, along the leafy paths, feeling her arm on mine, there was something fantastic about it all. It was a dream, broad waking. Her movements, however, either walking or when we stopped, in spite of their apparent wantonness, had nothing gentle or amorous about them. When I sought to relate in some way to her natural rhythms, I encountered an underlying, secret excitation, something jerky and uncoordinated. Women without a soul have nothing soft about their gestures. So we were not in step, either in mind or body. There are no words to describe this lack of coordination between two creatures, for we are
not yet accustomed to recognizing thought in movement. This phenomenon of our nature is felt instinctively but cannot be put into words.
‘During these violent paroxysms of my passion,’ Raphael continued after a moment’s silence, and as if he were answering an objection he had made to himself, ‘I did not dissect my sensations, analyse my pleasures, nor count the beats of my heart as a miser examines and weighs his gold coins. No. Today experience casts a gloomy light upon past events and it is memory that brings me these images, as in fair weather the waves of the sea bring the flotsam of a wreck piece by piece on to the shore.
‘“You can do me a rather important service,” said the Countess, looking at me in a rather embarrassed way. “After confiding in you my antipathy to love, I feel freer to ask you to do something for me in the name of friendship. Won’t you”, she went on with a laugh, “be much more worthy of me if you oblige me today?”
‘I looked at her, pained. She felt nothing in my presence, her voice was wheedling and not at all affectionate. She seemed to me a consummate actress playing a part. Then all at once her tone, her look, her words revived my hopes. But if my love, reborn, was shining in my eyes, she sustained its glow without any dimming of her own, for hers seemed, like those of a tiger, to be sheeted with steel. At such times, I hated her.
‘“The protection of the Duke of Navarreins”, she continued, in her most winning tones, “would be very useful to me in my dealings with a very powerful person in Russia, whose intervention is necessary to secure justice in an affair that concerns both my fortune and my standing in society, the recognition of my marriage by the Emperor. Is the Duke of Navarreins not your cousin? A letter from him would decide everything.”
‘“I am entirely at your disposal,” I replied. “Tell me what to do.”
‘“That is very good of you,” she went on, squeezing my hand. “Come and have dinner with me, I will tell you everything as if you were my confessor.”
‘So this woman, so mistrustful, so discreet, and about whose financial affairs no one had ever heard a word, wanted to ask my advice! “How I love the silence you have imposed upon me now!” I cried, “But I should have wanted some even harsher trial to prove my love.”
‘At that moment she accepted my look of ecstasy and did not shun my admiration. So she did love me! We arrived at her house. Luckily the money in my purse was enough to pay the coachman. I spent a delightful day alone with her, in her house. It was the first time I was able to see her in this way. Until that moment her guests, her embarrassing politeness, and her frigidity had created a distance between us, even during her lavish dinners. But now I was at home with her as though I lived under the same roof; I could say she was mine. My roving imagination broke through the barriers, arranged the events of life the way I wanted, and plunged me into the delights of a happy love-affair. Feeling as if I were her husband, I admired her as she busied herself with mundane things. I even took pleasure in watching her take off her hat and shawl. She left me for a moment, then came back with her hair in place, quite charming. This pretty toilette had been performed for my benefit! During dinner she showered attentions upon me, and showed infinite grace in a thousand little ways that seem unimportant but are half the pleasure of life. When we were both in front of a crackling fire, sitting on silk cushions, surrounded by the most desirable creations of oriental luxury; when I saw so near to me this woman whose famous beauty made so many hearts miss a beat, this woman so difficult to conquer talking to me and making me the object of all her coquettish charm, my rapture became more akin to suffering. Unfortunately I remembered the important affair I had to conclude and rose to go to the rendezvous that had been agreed the previous day.
‘“What, already!” she said when she saw me take my hat.
‘She loved me! At least I thought she did, as I heard her utter those two words in caressing tones. To prolong my ecstasy I would willingly have exchanged two years of my life for each hour she was happy to give me. My happiness increased as I thought of the money I was losing. It was midnight when she sent me away.
‘Nevertheless, the next day my heroine made me regret it bitterly as I feared I had lost my chance of the memoir that had become so important for me. I hurried off to look for Rastignac and we went to catch the titular author of my future book as he was getting up. Finot read out to me an agreement in which there was no mention of my aunt, and after the signing he counted out two hundred and fifty francs for me. We three lunched together. When I had paid for my new hat, sixty luncheon vouchers at thirty sous, and my debts, all I had left were thirty francs. But life’s problems had been solved for the time being. If I had listened to Rastignac, I could be a wealthy man simply by adopting the “English system”.* He pressed me to borrow money, claiming that running up debts would be the best way to sustain my credit. According to him the future was the most considerable, the most solid capital in the world. In thus mortgaging my debts on future contingencies, he gave my custom to his own tailor, an artist who understood what a young man needed and would leave me in peace until my marriage.’
* * *
‘From that day on I broke with the studious and monastic life that I had been leading for the last three years. I visited Foedora very frequently and tried to outshine in my attire the young fops or heroes of the group who were there. Thinking I had escaped from poverty for ever, I recovered my liberty of mind, I outdid my rivals, and acquired the reputation of being a fascinating man, brilliant and irresistible. However, clever people said about me: “A fellow as witty as that can only have cerebral passions!” They were charitable enough to praise my wit at the expense of my feelings. “He’s so lucky not to be in love!” they cried. “If he were in love, would he be so jolly, so full of verve?” Yet in Foedora’s presence I was very much in love and very stupid! Alone with her, I did not know what to say, or if I did speak, I made insulting remarks about love. It was a kind of gay melancholy, like a sycophant who wants to hide a cruel disappointment.
‘In brief I tried to make myself indispensable in her life, her happiness, her vanity. Every day in her company I was a slave, a plaything always at her beck and call. After thus frittering away my day I would go back home and work all night, only sleeping two or three hours or so in the morning. But not having, unlike Rastignac, the experience of “the English system”, I soon became penniless. From then on, my dear friend, I was a dandy without conquests, elegant with no money, amorous without a name. I relapsed into the precarious existence, the cold and profound misery carefully hidden under the deceptive appearance of luxury.
‘Then I suffered as I had before, but less acutely; I suppose I had become accustomed to these terrible crises. Often tea and cakes, so parsimoniously dispensed in the salons, were my only food. Sometimes the sumptuous dinners of the Countess kept me going for two whole days. I spent all my time in effort and scientific observation studying the impenetrable character of Foedora in greater depth. Until then either hope or despair had swayed my opinion, I saw in her by turns the most loving or the most unfeeling of all her sex. But these alternate states of joy or sadness became intolerable for me. I tried to find a way out of this dreadful struggle, by killing my feelings of love. Glimpses of clarity sometimes threw a desperate light on the great gulf between us. The Countess justified all my fears, for I had not yet seen one tear in her eyes. A touching scene in the theatre left her cold and mocking, she reserved all her sensitivity of feeling for herself and could not imagine either the misfortune or the happiness of others. In short, she had played me along! Happy to make a sacrifice for her, I had almost gone on hands and knees to my relative the Duke of Navarreins, a self-centred man who thought my poverty shameful and had done me too much ill not to detest me. He received me with that cold politeness that makes gestures and words seem an insult; the anxious expression on his face made me feel sorry for him. I was ashamed for him, of his meanness when he was surrounded by so much grandeur, of his miserliness in the midst of so much luxury. He spoke to m
e of the substantial losses he had incurred from the drop in value of the three-percent bonds,* and I told him the purpose of my visit. The gradual change in his manner from icy to affectionate disgusted me. Well my friend, he came to the Countess’s house, and he completely put me in the shade. Foedora was charming to him, dispensed unheard-of munificence. She bewitched him and, ignoring me, discussed with him this mysterious affair, about which I learned nothing. I had merely been a means to an end for her! … She seemed not to be aware of me when my cousin was there, she seemed to receive me then with less pleasure than on the day I had been introduced. One evening she humiliated me in front of the Duke with one of those gestures and one of those looks that cannot be described in words. I left in tears, working out a thousand plans of revenge, devising terrible violations.
‘I often took her to the Bouffons. Seated beside her there, deeply in love, I gazed at her and I gave myself over to the charms of the music, my soul ravished by the twofold pleasure of loving and finding my emotions echoed in the phrases of the musician. My passion was in the air, on the stage, it triumphed everywhere except in my mistress’s heart. Then I took Foedora’s hand, studied her features and her eyes, and longed for our feelings to join in one of those sudden harmonies which, brought to life by the music, make souls vibrate in unison. But her hand lay mute in mine and her eyes said nothing. When the fire in my heart shone from my face too brightly for her, she forced a smile, the banal expression such as you may observe on the lips of every portrait in every exhibition. She was not listening to the music. The divine scores of Rossini, Cimarosa, Zingarelli, did not recall any feeling, any poetic moment in her life. Her soul was a desert. Foedora in that theatre was like a play within a play. Her opera-glasses travelled back and forth from one box to another. Ill at ease, though quiet, she was a slave to fashion. Her box, her hat, her carriage, her appearance, were what she cared about. You often meet people of great stature who hide a tender and delicate heart under a bronze exterior. But Foedora hid a heart of bronze beneath a frail and graceful envelope. My knowledge of human psychology ripped many a veil from her. If it is polite to forget oneself for others, to put into one’s voice and gestures a constant gentleness, to please others by making them happy in themselves, Foedora, in spite of all her sophistication, had not erased all trace of her plebeian origins: her self-abnegation was false, her manners, instead of being innate, had been laboriously acquired; in brief, her politeness smacked of servitude. Her honeyed words seemed to her favourites the expression of her goodness, her pretentious exaggeration a sign of noble enthusiasm. I alone had studied her airs and grimaces, I had stripped from her inner being the flimsy crust that satisfies society and was no longer taken in by her affectations. I knew her feline soul intimately. When a fool paid her a compliment, or praised her, I was ashamed for her.
The Wild Ass's Skin (Oxford World's Classics) Page 17
