“How would you save a falling monarchy?” asked Beaumarchais.
“God is present,” replied the little lawyer.
“Therefore,” remarked Monsieur de Calonne, with the inconceivable levity which characterized him, “we have the agreeable resource of believing ourselves the instruments of God, according to the Gospel of Bossuet.”
As soon as the ladies discovered that the tale related only to a conversation between the queen and the lawyer, they had begun to whisper and to show signs of impatience, — interjecting, now and then, little phrases through his speech. “How wearisome he is!” “My dear, when will he finish?” were among those which reached my ear.
When the strange little man had ceased speaking the ladies too were silent; Monsieur Bodard was sound asleep; the surgeon, half drunk; Monsieur de Calonne was smiling at the lady next him. Lavoisier, Beaumarchais, and I alone had listened to the lawyer’s dream. The silence at this moment had something solemn about it. The gleam of the candles seemed to me magical. A sentiment bound all three of us by some mysterious tie to that singular little man, who made me, strange to say, conceive, suddenly, the inexplicable influences of fanaticism. Nothing less than the hollow, cavernous voice of Beaumarchais’s neighbor, the surgeon, could, I think, have roused me.
“I, too, have dreamed,” he said.
I looked at him more attentively, and a feeling of some strange horror came over me. His livid skin, his features, huge and yet ignoble, gave an exact idea of what you must allow me to call the scum of the earth. A few bluish-black spots were scattered over his face, like bits of mud, and his eyes shot forth an evil gleam. The face seemed, perhaps, darker, more lowering than it was, because of the white hair piled like hoarfrost on his head.
“That man must have buried many a patient,” I whispered to my neighbor the lawyer.
“I wouldn’t trust him with my dog,” he answered.
“I hate him involuntarily.”
“For my part, I despise him.”
“Perhaps we are unjust,” I remarked.
“Ha! to-morrow he may be as famous as Volange the actor.”
Monsieur de Calonne here motioned us to look at the surgeon, with a gesture that seemed to say: “I think he’ll be very amusing.”
“Did you dream of a queen?” asked Beaumarchais.
“No, I dreamed of a People,” replied the surgeon, with an emphasis which made us laugh. “I was then in charge of a patient whose leg I was to amputate the next day — ”
“Did you find the People in the leg of your patient?” asked Monsieur de Calonne.
“Precisely,” replied the surgeon.
“How amusing!” cried Madame de Genlis.
“I was somewhat surprised,” went on the speaker, without noticing the interruption, and sticking his hands into the gussets of his breeches, “to hear something talking to me within that leg. I then found I had the singular faculty of entering the being of my patient. Once within his skin I saw a marvellous number of little creatures which moved, and thought, and reasoned. Some of them lived in the body of the man, others lived in his mind. His ideas were things which were born, and grew, and died; they were sick and well, and gay, and sad; they all had special countenances; they fought with each other, or they embraced each other. Some ideas sprang forth and went to live in the world of intellect. I began to see that there were two worlds, two universes, — the visible universe, and the invisible universe; that the earth had, like man, a body and a soul. Nature illumined herself for me; I felt her immensity when I saw the oceans of beings who, in masses and in species, spread everywhere, making one sole and uniform animated Matter, from the stone of the earth to God. Magnificent vision! In short, I found a universe within my patient. When I inserted my knife into his gangrened leg I cut into a million of those little beings. Oh! you laugh, madame; let me tell you that you are eaten up by such creatures — ”
“No personalities!” interposed Monsieur de Calonne. “Speak for yourself and for your patient.”
“My patient, frightened by the cries of his animalcules, wanted to stop the operation; but I went on regardless of his remonstrances; telling him that those evil animals were already gnawing at his bones. He made a sudden movement of resistance, not understanding that what I did was for his good, and my knife slipped aside, entered my own body, and — ”
“He is stupid,” said Lavoisier.
“No, he is drunk,” replied Beaumarchais.
“But, gentlemen, my dream has a meaning,” cried the surgeon.
“Oh! oh!” exclaimed Bodard, waking up; “my leg is asleep!”
“Your animalcules must be dead,” said his wife.
“That man has a vocation,” announced my little neighbor, who had stared imperturbably at the surgeon while he was speaking.
“It is to yours,” said the ugly man, “what the action is to the word, the body to the soul.”
But his tongue grew thick, his words were indistinct, and he said no more. Fortunately for us the conversation took another turn. At the end of half an hour we had forgotten the surgeon of the king’s pages, who was fast asleep. Rain was falling in torrents as we left the supper-table.
“The lawyer is no fool,” I said to Beaumarchais.
“True, but he is cold and dull. You see, however, that the provinces are still sending us worthy men who take a serious view of political theories and the history of France. It is a leaven which will rise.”
“Is your carriage here?” asked Madame de Saint-James, addressing me.
“No,” I replied, “I did not think that I should need it to-night.”
Madame de Saint-James then rang the bell, ordered her own carriage to be brought round, and said to the little lawyer in a low voice: —
“Monsieur de Robespierre, will you do me the kindness to drop Monsieur Marat at his own door? — for he is not in a state to go alone.”
“With pleasure, madame,” replied Monsieur de Robespierre, with his finical gallantry. “I only wish you had requested me to do something more difficult.”
THE ELIXIR OF LIFE
Translated by Clara Bell and James Waring
First published in 1831, L’Élixir de longue vie is a short story concerning Grand Duke Bartolommeo Belvidero, who is ninety years old and living in the princely palace at Ferrara, Italy, with the young and handsome Don Juan Belvidero, the son of his old age. The prodigal son occupies the lively rooms of the palace and fills it with beautiful women wearing gems and luxurious fabrics, fine foods and wines. Bartolommeo has lived quietly and frugally for many years, while indulging Don Juan’s tastes, but as the old man takes his deathbed, surprising secrets are about to be revealed.
An original illustration
TO THE READER
At the very outset of the writer’s literary career, a friend, long since dead, gave him the subject of this Study. Later on he found the same story in a collection published about the beginning of the present century. To the best of his belief, it is some stray fancy of the brain of Hoffmann of Berlin; probably it appeared in some German almanac, and was omitted in the published editions of his collected works. The Comedie Humaine is sufficiently rich in original creations for the author to own to this innocent piece of plagiarism; when, like the worthy La Fontaine, he has told unwittingly, and after his own fashion, a tale already related by another. This is not one of the hoaxes in vogue in the year 1830, when every author wrote his “tale of horror” for the amusement of young ladies. When you have read the account of Don Juan’s decorous parricide, try to picture to yourself the part which would be played under very similar circumstances by honest folk who, in this nineteenth century, will take a man’s money and undertake to pay him a life annuity on the faith of a chill, or let a house to an ancient lady for the term of her natural life! Would they be for resuscitating their clients? I should dearly like a connoisseur in consciences to consider how far there is a resemblance between a Don Juan and fathers who marry their children to great expectations
. Does humanity, which, according to certain philosophers, is making progress, look on the art of waiting for dead men’s shoes as a step in the right direction? To this art we owe several honorable professions, which open up ways of living on death. There are people who rely entirely on an expected demise; who brood over it, crouching each morning upon a corpse, that serves again for their pillow at night. To this class belong bishops’ coadjutors, cardinals’ supernumeraries, tontiniers, and the like. Add to the list many delicately scrupulous persons eager to buy landed property beyond their means, who calculate with dry logic and in cold blood the probable duration of the life of a father or of a step-mother, some old man or woman of eighty or ninety, saying to themselves, “I shall be sure to come in for it in three years’ time, and then — — ” A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life. Then what must it be to live when every moment of your life is tainted with murder? And have we not just admitted that a host of human creatures in our midst are led by our laws, customs, and usages to dwell without ceasing on a fellow-creature’s death? There are men who put the weight of a coffin into their deliberations as they bargain for Cashmere shawls for their wives, as they go up the staircase of a theatre, or think of going to the Bouffons, or of setting up a carriage; who are murderers in thought when dear ones, with the irresistible charm of innocence, hold up childish foreheads to be kissed with a “Good-night, father!” Hourly they meet the gaze of eyes that they would fain close for ever, eyes that still open each morning to the light, like Belvidero’s in this Study. God alone knows the number of those who are parricides in thought. Picture to yourself the state of mind of a man who must pay a life annuity to some old woman whom he scarcely knows; both live in the country with a brook between them, both sides are free to hate cordially, without offending against the social conventions that require two brothers to wear a mask if the older will succeed to the entail, and the other to the fortune of a younger son. The whole civilization of Europe turns upon the principle of hereditary succession as upon a pivot; it would be madness to subvert the principle; but could we not, in an age that prides itself upon its mechanical inventions, perfect this essential portion of the social machinery?
If the author has preserved the old-fashioned style of address To the Reader before a work wherein he endeavors to represent all literary forms, it is for the purpose of making a remark that applies to several of the Studies, and very specially to this. Every one of his compositions has been based upon ideas more or less novel, which, as it seemed to him, needed literary expression; he can claim priority for certain forms and for certain ideas which have since passed into the domain of literature, and have there, in some instances, become common property; so that the date of the first publication of each Study cannot be a matter of indifference to those of his readers who would fain do him justice.
Reading brings us unknown friends, and what friend is like a reader? We have friends in our own circle who read nothing of ours. The author hopes to pay his debt, by dedicating this work Diis ignotis.
THE ELIXIR OF LIFE
One winter evening, in a princely palace at Ferrara, Don Juan Belvidero was giving a banquet to a prince of the house of Este. A banquet in those times was a marvelous spectacle which only royal wealth or the power of a mightly [sic] lord could furnish forth. Seated about a table lit up with perfumed tapers, seven laughter-loving women were interchanging sweet talk. The white marble of the noble works of art about them stood out against the red stucco walls, and made strong contrasts with the rich Turkey carpets. Clad in satin, glittering with gold, and covered with gems less brilliant than their eyes, each told a tale of energetic passions as diverse as their styles of beauty. They differed neither in their ideas nor in their language; but the expression of their eyes, their glances, occasional gestures, or the tones of their voices supplied a commentary, dissolute, wanton, melancholy, or satirical, to their words.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 1244