The Wild Ass's Skin (Oxford World's Classics)

by Honoré de Balzac

  Planchette himself slipped the skin between the two plates of the all-powerful press, and, full of that confidence that goes with scientific conviction, he worked the handle energetically.

  ‘Lie down, all of you or we are dead,’ cried Spieghalter in a voice like thunder, falling to the floor himself.

  A horrible screeching resounded through the workshops. The water contained in the machine burst through the cast-iron, produced a jet of immeasurable force, and luckily flew at an old forge which it knocked over, wrenched out, and twisted, as a waterspout wraps itself round a house and carries it away.

  ‘Oh,’ said Planchette calmly, ‘the ass’s skin is not in the least affected! Master Spieghalter, there must have been a straw in your casting or a crack in the big tube.’

  ‘No no, I know my castings. This man can take his contraption off with him, it must have the devil in it.’

  The German seized a blacksmith’s hammer, threw the skin on an anvil, and with all the strength that anger imparts, dealt the talisman the heaviest blow that had ever resounded in that workshop.

  ‘Not a mark to be seen!’ exclaimed Planchette, running his fingers over the recalcitrant skin.

  The workers came running. The foreman took the skin and threw it into the hot coals in the forge. All of them, ranged in a semicircle round the fire, waited impatiently for an enormous bellows to work. Raphael, Spieghalter, Professor Planchette occupied the centre of this smoke-blackened, attentive crowd. When he saw all those pale eyes, those heads powdered with iron dust, those black shiny clothes, those hairy chests, Raphael thought himself carried off into the nocturnal and fantastic world of German ballads. The foreman seized the skin with tongs after leaving it in the flames for ten minutes.

  ‘Give it back to me,’ said Raphael.

  The foreman jokingly presented it to Raphael. The Marquis kneaded the cold, supple skin easily between his fingers. A cry of terror went up, the workers ran away, Valentin remained alone with Planchette in the deserted workshop.

  ‘There is surely something of the devil in it!’ cried Raphael in desperation. ‘So no power on earth can grant me one day longer!’

  ‘Monsieur, I am mistaken,’ said the mathematician contritely. ‘We should have subjected this strange skin to the action of a mill. Whatever was I thinking of, suggesting pressure?’

  ‘I’m the one who asked for it,’ replied Raphael.

  The scientist breathed again, like a prisoner acquitted by a whole jury. However, intrigued by the strange problem offered by the skin, he reflected a moment and said: ‘We must treat this unknown substance with reagent. Let’s go and see Japhet,* perhaps we shall have more luck with chemistry than mechanics.’

  Valentin set his horse to a fast trot, in the hope of finding the famous chemist Japhet in his laboratory.

  ‘Well, my old friend,’ said Planchette seeing Japhet sitting in an armchair contemplating a precipitate. ‘How’s chemistry?’

  ‘Sleeping. Nothing new. However, the Academy has acknowledged the existence of salicin.* But salicin, asparagine, strychnine, and digitalin are nothing new.’

  ‘Instead of inventing things,’ said Raphael, ‘it seems you are reduced to inventing names for them.’

  ‘By God, that’s the truth, young man.’

  ‘Look,’ said Professor Planchette to the chemist, ‘try to break down this substance for us. If you manage to extract some kind of element, I’ll name it in advance diabolin, for, in our efforts to compress it, we have just broken a hydraulic press.’

  ‘Let’s see it, let’s see it,’ cried the chemist in delight. ‘Perhaps it will indeed be a new element.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Raphael, ‘it is quite simply a piece of donkey skin.’

  ‘What did you say, sir?’ the famous chemist asked in a serious tone.

  ‘I’m not joking,’ replied the Marquis, handing him the onager skin.

  Baron Japhet applied the tip of his tongue, so used to tasting salts, acids, alkalis, gases, to the skin, and after trying it once or twice, said: ‘It has no taste whatsoever! Let’s see now, we’ll give it a little drink of hydrofluoric acid.’

  Subjected to the action of this substance which instantly destroys animal tissues, the skin did not change at all.

  ‘This is not shagreen,’ cried the chemist. ‘We’ll treat this mysterious substance as though it’s a mineral and smash it on its head by putting it in an infusible dish in which I have, as it happens, some red potassium.’

  Japhet left and soon came back.

  ‘Monsieur,’ he said to Raphael, ‘allow me to take a piece of this strange material, it is so extraordinary …’

  ‘A piece!’ cried Raphael. ‘No, not a single hair! You just try, anyway,’ he said half in earnest, half in jest.

  The scientist broke a razor trying to make some impression on the skin. He tried to disintegrate it with a powerful charge of electricity, then subjected it to the action of a voltaic pile. All the powers of his science failed against the terrifying talisman. It was seven in the evening. Planchette, Japhet, and Raphael, oblivious to the passage of time, were awaiting the results of one last experiment. The shagreen emerged victorious from the terrible shock of being subjected to a significant quantity of azotic chlorine.

  ‘I am lost!’ cried Raphael. ‘God has decreed it. I am going to die.’

  He left the two scientists astounded.

  ‘Let’s take care not to tell this story to the Academy, our collegues would make fun of us,’ said Planchette to the chemist after a long pause during which they looked at each other without daring to say what they were thinking.

  The two scientists were like Christians coming out of their tombs and finding no God in heaven. Science? Powerless! Acids? Like water! Red potassium? Dishonoured! Voltaic batteries and bolts of electricity? Children’s toys!

  ‘A hydraulic press broken like a sippet,’ added Planchette.

  ‘I believe in the devil,’ said Baron Japhet after a moment’s silence.

  ‘I believe in God,’ replied Planchette.

  Both were true to their profession. For a physicist the universe is a machine only needing a maker. For chemistry, that work of the devil, which breaks everything down, the world is only gases in motion.

  ‘Facts can’t be denied,’ said the chemist.

  ‘Pah! For our consolation, our friends the doctrinaires* have invented that vacuous axiom: As stupid as a fact.’

  ‘Your axiom’, replied the chemist, ‘seems to me as stupid as any fact.’

  They began to laugh, and went to have their dinner, in the manner of men who are able to treat a miracle as a mere phenomenon.

  * * *

  Valentin was in a cold fury as he went home. He no longer believed in anything, his thoughts were all muddled in his brain, whirling and turning like those of every man in the presence of an impossible fact. He had wanted to believe there was some hidden flaw in Spieghalter’s machine; the powerlessness of science and fire did not surprise him. But the suppleness of the skin when he handled it, and its resistance when the forces of destruction at man’s disposal were applied to it, terrified him. This indisputable fact made his head whirl.

  ‘I have gone mad,’ he told himself. ‘Although I haven’t eaten a thing since this morning I’m not hungry or thirsty and I feel as if a fire is burning in my chest.’

  He put the shagreen back into the frame which had formerly encased it and, having traced the present contour of the talisman in red ink, sat down in his armchair.

  ‘Eight o’clock already!’ he exclaimed. ‘Today has passed like a dream.’

  He put his elbow on the arm of his chair, rested his head in his left hand, lost in one of those gloomy meditations, in the unknown, all-consuming thoughts of one condemned to death.

  ‘Oh Pauline,’ he exclaimed, ‘my poor child! There are some chasms that love cannot cross, no matter how strong his wings.’

  At that moment he clearly heard a suppressed sigh, and recognized, by one of the most to
uching privileges of passion, the breathing of none other than his Pauline.

  ‘Oh,’ he said to himself, ‘that is my sentence. If she were there I should die in her arms.’

  A gay burst of uncontrolled laughter made him look towards his bed, and through the transparent curtains he saw Pauline’s face smiling at him like a child happy at the trick she has just played. Her beautiful hair fell in a thousand ringlets round her shoulders. She was like a Bengal rose on a bed of white roses.

  ‘I charmed Jonathas into letting me in,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t this bed belong to me, your wife? Don’t scold me, darling, I just wanted to sleep next to you as a surprise. Forgive me for being so silly.’

  She jumped out of bed with feline grace, looking radiant in her muslin, and perched on Raphael’s knee.

  ‘Which chasm were you speaking of, my love?’ she said, with a visibly anxious expression on her face.

  ‘Death.’

  ‘You are causing me pain,’ she replied. ‘There are some thoughts we poor women cannot dwell on. They kill us. Is it the power of love or a lack of courage? I do not know. Death does not frighten me,’ she went on with a laugh, ‘to die with you tomorrow morning together in one last kiss, would be a joy. It seems to me I should already have lived for more than a hundred years. What does the number of days matter if in one night, in one hour, we have used up a whole life of peace and love?’

  ‘You are quite right,’ said Raphael. ‘Heaven is speaking through your pretty mouth. Give it to me to kiss and let us die.’

  ‘Let’s die then,’ she laughed.

  Towards nine in the morning daylight was coming in through the gaps in the blinds. Though softened by the muslin curtains, you could still see the rich colours on the carpets and the silk furnishings of the bedroom where the two lovers were lying. Some gold ornaments glistened here and there. A ray of sunshine came to light the soft eiderdown that had been thrown to the floor by the revels of love. Pauline’s dress was a filmy apparition hanging from a large cheval glass. Her pretty little slippers had been abandoned some way from the bed. A nightingale came and perched on the window-ledge; its repeated warblings, and the noise of its wings suddenly spread as it took off, woke Raphael.

  ‘To die,’ he said finishing a thought he had had in his dreams, ‘it is necessary that my organism, this structure of flesh and bones animated by my will which makes an individual man out of me, exhibits some defect that can be diagnosed. Doctors must know the symptoms of the part of the body being attacked and be able to tell me if I am ill or healthy.’

  He contemplated his wife,* who was asleep with her arms around his neck, expressing her tender care for him even as she slept. Gracefully stretched out like a young child and with her face turned towards him, Pauline seemed to be looking at him still, proffering her pretty mouth, parted by her pure, regular breathing. Her small teeth like white porcelain brought out the flushed red of her young lips on which a smile was playing. Her rosy cheeks were brighter and her lily whiteness whiter at that moment than at the more amorous hours of the day. Her graceful, trusting abandon combined the charms of love with the adorable characteristics of a sleeping child. Women, even the most unsophisticated of them, still obey certain social conventions during their waking hours which limit the free expansiveness of their souls; but sleep seems to give them back the spontaneity in their life, which characterizes so beautifully the age of innocence.

  Like one of those dear celestial creatures who has not thus far learnt to calculate in her gestures nor dissemble in her looks, Pauline did not blush at anything. Her profile stood out clearly against the fine lawn of the pillows, her dishevelled hair among the wide lace frills lent her a rebellious little look. But she had fallen asleep in contentment, her long eyelashes lying against her cheek as if to protect her eyes from too strong a light or to prolong the quiet of the soul when it tries to preserve a perfect but passing physical pleasure. Her dainty little ear, pink and white, framed by a wisp of hair and drawn into a shell of Brussels lace, would have made an artist, a painter, an old man fall madly in love with her, or would perhaps have restored some madman to his senses. To see your mistress fast asleep, smiling in her dreams, peaceful under your protection, loving you even as she sleeps, just when she appears least conscious, still offering you her silent mouth which speaks to you in her sleep of that last kiss! To see a woman trusting, half-naked, but wrapped up in her love as if in a cloak, and chaste in the midst of disorder; to admire her sparse clothing, a silk stocking hastily abandoned the night before for your express pleasure, a girdle untied that implies an infinite trust in you, is that not an ineffable delight? That girdle is a poem in itself: the woman it protected no longer exists, she belongs to you, she has become you. From now on if you betray her you will harm yourself. Raphael let his eyes rest with loving tenderness upon this bedroom that seemed charged with love and memories, where daylight took on voluptuous colours. Then he looked again at this woman with the pure youthful body, still loving him, whose feelings were all and only for him; and he wished he could live for ever.

  When his eyes fell on Pauline she immediately opened her eyes, as if a ray of sunshine had fallen upon her.

  ‘Good morning, my love!’ said she, smiling. ‘How handsome you are!’

  Those two heads blessed with a grace born of love, youth, the half-light, and the silence, formed one of those divine scenes whose ephemeral magic belongs only to the first days of passion, as naivety and candour are the attributes of childhood. Alas, those springtime joys of love, just like the laughter of our youth, must flee away, and only live in our memory, to bring despair or waft us some consolatory breath of perfume, according to the vagaries of our inner meditations.

  ‘Why did you wake?’ said Raphael. ‘I took so much pleasure in watching you, I was in tears.’

  ‘And I,’ she replied, ‘I wept last night when I watched you sleeping. But not from joy. Listen, Raphael, listen to me. When you are asleep your breathing is not clear, there is something in your chest that rattles and that makes me afraid. During your sleep you have a little dry cough, exactly like my father who is dying of consumption. I recognized in the noise made by your lungs some of the strange symptoms of this illness. And I was sure you were feverish, your hand was sweaty and burning hot. Darling, you are young,’ she said with a shiver, ‘you could still recover if, by some misfortune … But no,’ she cried joyfully, ‘that illness is infectious, the doctors say.’ She entwined both arms round Raphael and, catching his breath in one of those kisses where souls meet, said: ‘Let us die young, both of us, and go to heaven with our arms full of flowers.’

  ‘Such plans are only made when we are in good health,’ replied Raphael, plunging his hands into Pauline’s hair. But then he suffered a dreadful bout of coughing, one of those coughs which seem to come from the grave, when the forehead goes pale and sufferers are left trembling and in a sweat, nerves shattered, ribs shaken, with aching backs and an indescribable heaviness in their veins. Raphael, pale and near to collapse, slowly got into bed, exhausted, like a man whose entire strength has been expended in one last effort. Pauline stared at him with eyes that were wide with fear and remained without moving, white, not speaking.

  ‘Let us not be silly any more, my angel,’ she said trying to hide from Raphael the horrible forebodings which were flooding over her.

  She hid her face in her hands, to hide the hideous spectacle of DEATH. Raphael’s face had become pallid and hollow, like a skull pulled from the depths of a cemetery for some scholar’s research. Pauline recalled the exclamation that Valentin had let slip the night before, and told herself: ‘Yes, there are some chasms that even love cannot cross; it will be swallowed up by them.’

  Some days after this desolating scene Raphael found himself, one morning in the month of March, sitting in an armchair surrounded by four doctors, who had seated him in the daylight in front of his bedroom window and were taking it in turns to feel his pulse, listen to his chest, and ask him questions wit
h every appearance of interest. The sick man was trying to read their thoughts, interpreting their gestures as well as the slightest frown that crossed their brow. This consultation was his last hope. These supreme judges would pronounce a sentence of life or death. So, to extract a final word from the compendium of human knowledge, Valentin had summoned the oracles of modern medicine. Thanks to his fortune and his name, the three systems between which all human knowledge drifts were represented there in front of him. Three of the doctors embraced the whole of medical philosophy, and represented the conflict between Spirituality, Analysis, and what you might call a mocking Eclecticism. The fourth doctor was Horace Bianchon,* a very knowledgeable man with a great future ahead of him, perhaps the most distinguished of all the new doctors, the sage and modest representative of the studious young generation preparing to inherit the treasure amassed over the last fifty years by the Paris School, and who will perhaps build the monument for which the preceding centuries have assembled so much and such varied material. A friend of the Marquis and of Rastignac, he had cared for him for some days previously and now was helping him answer the questions of the three professors, to whom he was explaining, sometimes rather emphatically, the symptoms that seemed to point to a lung disease.

  ‘You have no doubt been overdoing things, leading a life of debauchery, or applying yourself to great works of the intellect?’ said one of the doctors to Raphael; his square head, broad face, and energetic constitution seeming to purport a genius superior to that of his two rivals.

  ‘I tried to kill myself by debauchery after labouring for three years at a great work which you will perhaps read one day,’ replied Raphael.

  The tall doctor gave a satisfied nod as if to say: ‘I thought so!’

  This doctor was the illustrious Brisset, the head of the Organic school, the successor to the likes of Cabanis and Bichat,* the doctor for positivists and materialists, seeing in man a finite being subject solely to the laws of his own organism, whose normal state or harmful afflictions can be explained by obvious causes.