Read Online The Unknown Masterpiece by Honoré de Balzac - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Honoré de Balzac
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easily seduced by the pleasures of luxury without which he could not have survived, just as he set great store by the social distinctions which his opinions rejected. Hence his theories as an artist, a thinker, and a poet were frequently inconsistent with his tastes, his sentiments, and his habits as a millionaire nobleman; but he consoled himself for these contradictions by discovering them in many Parisians who were similarly liberal in their interests, aristocratic by nature.
It had occasioned him no surprise, therefore, albeit a certain anxiety, on December 31, 1830, to be walking, during one of our midwinter thaws, close behind a woman whose clothes indicated a profound, radical, long-standing, indeed inveterate poverty, no prettier than so many others he saw every evening at the Théâtre des Bouffons, at the Opéra, in the salons, and certainly not so young as Madame de Manerville, from whom he had obtained the promise of a rendezvous this very day and who may still have been expecting him. Still there was something so tender yet so fierce in the intense glances the creature kept darting at him—so much suffering, so many stifled pleasures! And she had blushed so furiously when, emerging from a shop where she had remained a quarter of an hour, her eyes met those of the Milanese nobleman who had waited for her a few steps away!... There were, in fact, so many
yets
that the count, overcome by one of those furious temptations for which there is no name in any language, even in the vocabulary of orgy, had set off in pursuit of this woman in just the way an old Parisian hunts down shopgirls. As he walked along, sometimes behind, sometimes ahead of her, he scrutinized every detail of her person and attire, hoping to dislodge the absurd and insensate desire which had taken possession of his brain; he soon realized that this examination was affording him a deeper pleasure than the kind he had tasted the day before in contemplating, under the ripples of a perfumed bath, the irreproachable forms of a cherished mistress. From time to time this unknown creature would lower her head and give him the sidelong glance of a tethered goat; then, realizing she was still pursued, she walked faster as though to escape. Yet when a crush of carriages or some other incident brought Andrea close, he saw her flinch under his gaze without anything in her features betraying annoyance. These sure signs of an emotional struggle provided the ultimate spur to the unruly dreams which were exciting him, and he raced down the rue Froidmanteau which, after many false starts, the woman suddenly entered, imagining she had eluded her pursuer. He was indeed astonished by this maneuver. Night had fallen. Two heavily rouged creatures drinking cassis at a wineshop counter caught sight of the young woman and called to her. She stopped on the threshold, answered their friendly compliments by a few soft-spoken words, and continued on her way. Andrea, still walking behind her, saw her vanish into one of the darkest doorways on this street, the name of which was still unknown to him. The repellent aspect of the house the heroine of his fantasy had just entered gave him a feeling close to nausea. Stepping back to examine the premises, he found a nasty-looking fellow at his side, and asked him what kind of place this was. The man, clasping a knotty stick in his right hand and resting his left on his hip, answered with a single word: “Joker!” But as he continued staring at the Italian under the streetlamp, his countenance assumed a conciliatory expression.
“Oh, excuse me, monsieur,” he went on, suddenly changing his tone. “There’s a restaurant, too, a sort of table d’hôte, but the cooking’s terrible—they put cheese in the soup! Perhaps that’s what monsieur is looking for? It’s easy to see from his clothes that monsieur is Italian; Italians are quite fond of velvet—and of cheese. If monsieur would like me to show him a better restaurant, my
It had occasioned him no surprise, therefore, albeit a certain anxiety, on December 31, 1830, to be walking, during one of our midwinter thaws, close behind a woman whose clothes indicated a profound, radical, long-standing, indeed inveterate poverty, no prettier than so many others he saw every evening at the Théâtre des Bouffons, at the Opéra, in the salons, and certainly not so young as Madame de Manerville, from whom he had obtained the promise of a rendezvous this very day and who may still have been expecting him. Still there was something so tender yet so fierce in the intense glances the creature kept darting at him—so much suffering, so many stifled pleasures! And she had blushed so furiously when, emerging from a shop where she had remained a quarter of an hour, her eyes met those of the Milanese nobleman who had waited for her a few steps away!... There were, in fact, so many
yets
that the count, overcome by one of those furious temptations for which there is no name in any language, even in the vocabulary of orgy, had set off in pursuit of this woman in just the way an old Parisian hunts down shopgirls. As he walked along, sometimes behind, sometimes ahead of her, he scrutinized every detail of her person and attire, hoping to dislodge the absurd and insensate desire which had taken possession of his brain; he soon realized that this examination was affording him a deeper pleasure than the kind he had tasted the day before in contemplating, under the ripples of a perfumed bath, the irreproachable forms of a cherished mistress. From time to time this unknown creature would lower her head and give him the sidelong glance of a tethered goat; then, realizing she was still pursued, she walked faster as though to escape. Yet when a crush of carriages or some other incident brought Andrea close, he saw her flinch under his gaze without anything in her features betraying annoyance. These sure signs of an emotional struggle provided the ultimate spur to the unruly dreams which were exciting him, and he raced down the rue Froidmanteau which, after many false starts, the woman suddenly entered, imagining she had eluded her pursuer. He was indeed astonished by this maneuver. Night had fallen. Two heavily rouged creatures drinking cassis at a wineshop counter caught sight of the young woman and called to her. She stopped on the threshold, answered their friendly compliments by a few soft-spoken words, and continued on her way. Andrea, still walking behind her, saw her vanish into one of the darkest doorways on this street, the name of which was still unknown to him. The repellent aspect of the house the heroine of his fantasy had just entered gave him a feeling close to nausea. Stepping back to examine the premises, he found a nasty-looking fellow at his side, and asked him what kind of place this was. The man, clasping a knotty stick in his right hand and resting his left on his hip, answered with a single word: “Joker!” But as he continued staring at the Italian under the streetlamp, his countenance assumed a conciliatory expression.
“Oh, excuse me, monsieur,” he went on, suddenly changing his tone. “There’s a restaurant, too, a sort of table d’hôte, but the cooking’s terrible—they put cheese in the soup! Perhaps that’s what monsieur is looking for? It’s easy to see from his clothes that monsieur is Italian; Italians are quite fond of velvet—and of cheese. If monsieur would like me to show him a better restaurant, my
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