Read Online Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) by Honoré de Balzac - Free Book Online
Authors: Honoré de Balzac
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concave tiles such as are used for all roof-structures in the southern parts of France. The worm-eaten window-frames were furnished with the enormous shutters supported by thick cross-beams which the hot climate necessitates. It would have been difficult in the whole of Angoulême to find a building so full of cracks and so held together by the strength of its cement. Imagine the workshop itself, having light at both ends but dark in the centre, its walls plastered with posters, the lower half of them worn brown by the workmen who had been rubbing against them for thirty years, its ceiling encumbered with rope-tackle, its piles of paper, aged presses, stacks of stone slabs for flattening out the wetted sheets, rows of case and, at one end, the two cages in which master and foreman took their respective stances. This will show you what sort of existence the two friends led.
In 1821, in the early days of May, David and Lucien were standing by the window overlooking the court at about two in the afternoon, just as their four or five workmen were going off to dinner. When the master-printer saw his apprentice shutting the street door, which had a bell, he took Lucien out into the courtyard, as if he could no longer endure the smell of paper, ink-troughs, presses and old wooden utensils. The two of them sat down under the arbour from which they could descry anyone entering the workshop. The sunbeams frolicking among the vine-branches caressed the two poets and threw a halo of light around them. The contrast between the physiognomy and characters of the two men was so strongly accentuated that it might have tempted a painter to take up his brush. David had the physical conformation which nature bestows on beings predestined to arduous effort, whether spectacular or unobserved. His broad chest was setbetween robust shoulders which had the same fullness as all his members. His face, tanned brown, but florid and plump, rising from a sturdy neck, and framed in an abundant forest of black hair, reminded one at first of Boileau’s cathedral canons, ruddy and glowing with health. But further inspection revealed, in the curve of his full lips, his cleft chin, the square cut of his nose with its sensitively chiselled nostrils – and above all in his eyes! – the steady flame of a first and only love, the sagacity of a thinker, the ardent melancholy of a mind capable of scanning the horizon from end to end and taking cognizance of all its undulations, one which readily found disillusion in imagined joys after subjecting them to the hard, clear light of analysis. If one could divine in this countenance the darting flashes of genius in eruption, one could also see the cinders lining the crater: the hope burning within it was damped down by a profound consciousness of the social obscurity in which humble birth and lack of means confine so many lofty spirits. In contrast with this needy printer nauseated with his occupation though it brought him so much in contact with intellectual activity, in contrast with this squat, ungainly Silene who drank as from a goblet deep draughts of science and poetry, seeking intoxication from them in order to forget the miseries of provincial life, Lucien had the grace of bearing with which sculptors have endowed the Indian Bacchus. His face had the distinction of line found in antique beauty: he had a Grecian brow and nose, the smooth whiteness of a woman’s skin, and eyes of so deep a blue that they seemed to be black – eyes brimming with tenderness, their whites so limpid as to vie with those of a child. Above these fine orbs, edged with long, light brown lashes, were eye-brows such as a Chinese brush might have traced. A silky down gave a touch of colour to the cheeks and harmonized with that of his fair, naturally curly hair. An Olympian suavity shone forth on his golden-white temples. His short but gently curving chin bore the impress of incomparable nobility. The smile of a mourning angel hovered over
In 1821, in the early days of May, David and Lucien were standing by the window overlooking the court at about two in the afternoon, just as their four or five workmen were going off to dinner. When the master-printer saw his apprentice shutting the street door, which had a bell, he took Lucien out into the courtyard, as if he could no longer endure the smell of paper, ink-troughs, presses and old wooden utensils. The two of them sat down under the arbour from which they could descry anyone entering the workshop. The sunbeams frolicking among the vine-branches caressed the two poets and threw a halo of light around them. The contrast between the physiognomy and characters of the two men was so strongly accentuated that it might have tempted a painter to take up his brush. David had the physical conformation which nature bestows on beings predestined to arduous effort, whether spectacular or unobserved. His broad chest was setbetween robust shoulders which had the same fullness as all his members. His face, tanned brown, but florid and plump, rising from a sturdy neck, and framed in an abundant forest of black hair, reminded one at first of Boileau’s cathedral canons, ruddy and glowing with health. But further inspection revealed, in the curve of his full lips, his cleft chin, the square cut of his nose with its sensitively chiselled nostrils – and above all in his eyes! – the steady flame of a first and only love, the sagacity of a thinker, the ardent melancholy of a mind capable of scanning the horizon from end to end and taking cognizance of all its undulations, one which readily found disillusion in imagined joys after subjecting them to the hard, clear light of analysis. If one could divine in this countenance the darting flashes of genius in eruption, one could also see the cinders lining the crater: the hope burning within it was damped down by a profound consciousness of the social obscurity in which humble birth and lack of means confine so many lofty spirits. In contrast with this needy printer nauseated with his occupation though it brought him so much in contact with intellectual activity, in contrast with this squat, ungainly Silene who drank as from a goblet deep draughts of science and poetry, seeking intoxication from them in order to forget the miseries of provincial life, Lucien had the grace of bearing with which sculptors have endowed the Indian Bacchus. His face had the distinction of line found in antique beauty: he had a Grecian brow and nose, the smooth whiteness of a woman’s skin, and eyes of so deep a blue that they seemed to be black – eyes brimming with tenderness, their whites so limpid as to vie with those of a child. Above these fine orbs, edged with long, light brown lashes, were eye-brows such as a Chinese brush might have traced. A silky down gave a touch of colour to the cheeks and harmonized with that of his fair, naturally curly hair. An Olympian suavity shone forth on his golden-white temples. His short but gently curving chin bore the impress of incomparable nobility. The smile of a mourning angel hovered over
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