The Girl With the Golden Eyes

by Honoré de Balzac

  Of the two men, poor Henri de Marsay knew a father only in the one not forced to be one. Naturally M. de Marsay’s paternity was very incomplete. In the natural order of things, children have a father only at rare moments; and in this respect the gentleman imitated nature. The good man would not have sold his name if he hadn’t had any vices. So he dined in dives without remorse and drank elsewhere the meager income the national treasury paid to men of private means. Then he handed the child over to an old sister, a maiden lady de Marsay, who took great care of him, and gave him, using the meager pension allotted by her brother, a private tutor, a priest without a penny or a stitch, who sized up the young man’s future and resolved, out of the 100,000 francs allowance, to pay himself for the cares he devoted to his pupil, of whom he became fond. This private tutor one day found he had by chance become a genuine priest, one of those ecclesiastics cut out to become a cardinal in France, or a Borgia fit for the papal tiara. In three years he taught the child what they would have taken ten years to teach him in school. Then this great man, who was named the Abbé de Maronis, completed his student’s education by having him study civilization in all its forms: He fed him from his own experience, hardly ever brought him into churches, which in those days were kept locked; sometimes took him backstage in theaters, more often to the homes of courtesans; he took apart human emotions piece by piece for him; taught him politics in the heart of salons, where it was cooking; he explicated for him the machinery of government, and tried, out of friendship for a fine neglected nature, but one rich in hope, to serve as a virile replacement for the mother: Isn’t the Church the mother of orphans? His student responded well to so many attentions. This worthy man died a bishop in 1812, with the satisfaction of having left beneath heaven a child whose heart and mind were so well formed at sixteen years of age, that he could easily get the upper hand of a man of forty. Who would have expected to meet a heart of bronze, an unfeeling brain beneath so seductive an exterior, like those that the painters of old, those naïve artists, gave to the serpent in the earthly paradise? That was still not enough. The good purple devil had also introduced his favorite child to certain acquaintances in high Parisian society who would be the equivalent, in the young man’s hands, of another 100,000 in income. Finally, this priest, lecherous but political, unbelieving but knowledgeable, treacherous but likeable, weak in appearance but as vigorous of mind as he was of body, was so truly useful to his student, so indulgent towards his vices, such a good calculator of every kind of strength, so profound when some kind of human deduction had to be made, so fresh at table, at Frascati’s gaming rooms, at … I don’t know where else, that the grateful Henri de Marsay was now, by 1814, scarcely moved by anything but the sight of the portrait of his dear bishop, the only personal belonging this prelate was able to bequeath to him. The bishop was an admirable example of the men whose genius will save the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman church, which is at the moment compromised by the weakness of its recruits, and by the old age of its pontiffs; but so the Church wishes it. The continental war prevented the young de Marsay from meeting his true father, whose name it is doubtful he even knew. An abandoned child, he didn’t know Mme de Marsay either. Naturally he barely missed his putative father. As to Mlle. de Marsay, his only mother, he had a pretty little tomb raised to her in the Père Lachaise Cemetery when she died. Monseigneur de Maronis had guaranteed one of the best places in heaven to this old maid, so that, seeing her happy to die, Henri gave her egotistical tears and began to cry for himself. Seeing this suffering, the abbé dried the tears of his student, pointing out to him that the good lady took her snuff in such a disgusting way, and had become so ugly, so deaf, and so boring, that he should be grateful to death. The bishop had had his student set free in 1811. Then when the mother of M. de Marsay married again, the priest chose, in a family council, one of those honest brainless men picked out by him from the confessional, and charged him with administering the fortune whose income he did indeed apply to the needs of the community, but whose capital he wanted to preserve.

  Near the end of 1814, then, Henri de Marsay had no remaining obligatory sentiment left on Earth, and found himself as free as a bird without a mate. Although he had completed his twenty-second year, he looked as if he were scarcely seventeen. Even his severest rivals regarded him as the prettiest boy in Paris. From his father, Lord Dudley, he had acquired the most amorously seductive blue eyes; from his mother, the thickest black hair; from them both, a pure blood, the skin of a young girl, a gentle, modest bearing, a slim, aristocratic waist, beautiful hands. For a woman, to see him was to be crazy about him; you know how it is—she conceives of one of those desires that gnaws at her heart, but that is soon forgotten thanks to the impossibility of satisfying it, because the woman is one of the common Parisian variety without tenacity. Few of them say to themselves the I WILL PREVAIL of the men of the House of Orange. Beneath this youthful bloom, and despite the limpid pool of his eyes, Henri had a lion’s courage, a monkey’s dexterity. He could slice through a bullet with a knife blade ten paces away; rode horseback in a way that fulfilled the myth of the centaur; gracefully drove a long-reined carriage; was agile as Cherubino and calm as a lamb; but he could beat a man from the slums at the horrid sports of kick-boxing or quarterstaff. He had such a way with the piano that he could become an artist if he fell into misfortune, and had a voice that would have been worth 50,000 francs a season to a tenor like Barbaja. Alas, all these fine qualities, these charming defects, were tarnished by a horrible vice: He believed in neither men nor women, neither God nor the devil. Nature had begun to endow him with capriciousness; a priest had completed the process.

  To make the present adventure understandable, it is necessary to add here that Lord Dudley naturally found many women willing to produce a few copies from such a charming portrait. His second masterpiece of this sort was a young girl named Euphémie, born to a Spanish lady, raised in Havana, and brought back to Madrid with a young Creole woman from the Antilles, with all the ruinous tastes of the colonies; but she was fortunately married to an old and powerfully rich Spanish lord, Don Hijos, Marquis de San-Réal, who, after the occupation of Spain by French troops, had come to live in Paris, and had a house on the Rue Saint-Lazare. As much by unconcern as out of respect for the innocence of youth, Lord Dudley never bothered to inform his children about the various kinships he was creating for them everywhere. This is a slight inconvenience of civilization, which has many advantages; one must overlook its drawbacks in favor of its benefits. Lord Dudley, to finish with him, came in 1816 to take refuge in Paris, in order to avoid the pursuits of English justice, which protects nothing but merchandise from the Orient. When he saw Henri, the traveling lord asked who this young man was. Then, hearing his name, he said, “Ah! He is my son. What a pity!”

  That is the story of the young man who, around the middle of April, in 1815, was nonchalantly strolling down the wide lane in the Tuileries, like all animals who, knowing their strength, walk in peace and majesty; ordinary people naively turned around to look at him again, women didn’t turn round at all, they waited for him on his return, and engraved this suave face—which wouldn’t have marred the body of the most beautiful of them—in their memory, so as to be able to recall him at the right time.

  “What are you doing here on a Sunday?” the Marquis de Ronquerolles asked Henri in passing.

  “There are fish in the net,” the young man replied.

  This exchange of thoughts was made by means of two significant glances, without either Ronquerolles or de Marsay seeming to recognize each other. The young man examined the people strolling by, with that swiftness of glance and keen sense of hearing peculiar to the Parisian who seems, at first glance, to see nothing and hear nothing, but who sees and hears everything. At that instant, a young man came up to him, took him familiarly by the arm, and said, “How are things, my good de Marsay?”

  “Splendid,” de Marsay replied with that seemingly affectionate air which between the you
ng people of Paris proves nothing, either for now or for the future.

  In fact, the youth of Paris are like none of the youth in other cities. They are divided into two classes: the young man who has something, and the young man who has nothing; or the young man who thinks and the one who spends. But you must understand that here it is a question only of those native sons who live the grand style of elegant life in Paris. A few other kinds of young men do exist, but they are children who come late to the Parisian way of life, and remain fooled by it. They don’t speculate, they study; they cram, say the others. Finally there are still other sorts of young men, both rich and poor, who embrace careers and follow them quite simply; they are a little like Rousseau’s Émile, an ordinary citizen through and through, and they never belong to society. Diplomats impolitely call them simpletons. Simpletons or not, they increase the number of those average people beneath whose weight France bends. They are always there; always ready to spoil public or private affairs with the flat trowel of mediocrity, boasting about their impotence, which they call manners and probity. These Good Conduct Medals infest the government, the army, the magistracy, the chambers, the court. They weaken, depress the country as it were, and form in the body politic a lymph that overburdens it and makes it flabby. These respectable individuals call talented people immoral, or rogues. Though these rogues get paid for their services, at least they serve; while the “respectable” people do nothing but harm, but are respected by the crowd. Fortunately for France, though, elegant youth firmly stigmatizes them with the name of “old fools.”

  Hence, at first glance, it is natural to regard the two kinds of young men who lead an elegant life—an enviable guild to which Henri de Marsay belonged—as quite distinct. But observers who do not stop at the surface of things are soon convinced that the differences are purely moral, and that nothing is so deceptive as their attractive shell. These young men all hasten to override everyone else; blather about things, people, literature, the fine arts; always have the “Pitt and Cobourg” of that year on the tips of their tongues; interrupt conversation with a pun; poke fun at science and scholars; scorn everything they don’t know or fear—then set themselves above everything, appointing themselves supreme judges of everything. All of them would willingly cheat their fathers, and would be ready to gush crocodile tears onto their mothers’ breast; but in fact they don’t believe in anything; they speak ill of women, or play at being chaste, actually all the while obeying an evil courtesan, or some old socialite. All of them are eaten away down to their very bones by calculation, depravity, by a brutal desire to succeed, and if they are in danger of suffering from the stone, if you examine them you will find each does have one, but in their hearts. In their normal state, they have the prettiest exteriors, swear on their friendship every other minute, and are thoroughly engaging. The same mockery dominates their ever-changing jargon; they aim for eccentricity in their appearance, revel in repeating the silly phrases of whatever actor is in vogue, and start out any new acquaintance with scorn or impertinence so that they can somehow score the first point in this game: But woe betide anyone who doesn’t know enough to let one of his eyes be gouged out so he can gouge out both of theirs! They seem just as indifferent to the misfortunes of their country as they are to its scourges. They are all like the pretty white foam that crowns waves in storms. They get dressed, dine, dance, have fun on the day of the Battle of Waterloo, during the cholera, or during a revolution. Finally, they all make the same expenditures; but here the difference begins. Of this fluctuating and pleasantly squandered fortune, some have the capital, and others are waiting for it; they have the same tailors, but the bills of the second kind of youth are yet to be settled. If some, like sieves, receive all kinds of ideas without keeping any of them, the second kind compare them and take all the good ones for themselves. If the former think they know something, but actually know nothing and understand everything, lend everything to those who need nothing and offer nothing to those who need something, the latter secretly study the thoughts of other people, and invest their money as well as their whims at high interest. The former have ceased to receive true impressions, since their soul, like a mirror tarnished with use, no longer reflects any image; the latter economize their senses and their life, all the while seeming to throw them both out the window. The former, based on the faith of hope, devote themselves without conviction to a system that is borne forth by a fair wind, but then they jump onto another political craft when the first one starts to go adrift; the latter size up the future, sound it, and see in political loyalty what the English see in commercial probity: an ingredient for success. But where the young man who has something makes a play on words or utters a fine turn of phrase about the change of thrones, the one who has nothing makes a public calculation, or a secret servile act, and succeeds, all the while showering his friends with punches. The former never believe in the abilities of others, take all their ideas as new, as if the world had just been created overnight; they have a limitless confidence in themselves, and have no enemy crueler than their own person. But the latter are armed with a continual mistrust of men, whom they value at their true worth, and are just profound enough to have one more thought than the friends they exploit; and at night, when their head is resting on the pillow, they weigh men as a miser weighs his gold coins. The former get angry at an impertinent remark of no importance, and let themselves be made fun of by diplomats who make them pose in front of them while they hold the string of these marionettes, self-esteem; whereas the latter earn the respect of others and choose their victims and their protectors.

  Then, one day, the ones who had nothing, have something; and the ones who had something, have nothing. They regard their comrades who have attained a position as sly little devils, with their hearts in the wrong place, but also as strong men. “He is very strong!” is the immense praise awarded those who have succeeded, quibuscumque viis, by whatever means, in politics, or with a woman, or a fortune. Among them, we find certain young men who play this role starting out with debts; and naturally, they are more dangerous than those who play it without having a penny.

  The young man who called himself a friend of Henri de Marsay was a scatterbrain, fresh out of the provinces, whom the young men then in fashion were teaching the art of properly squandering an inheritance; but he had one last piece of pie left to eat in his province, a reliable estate. He was simply an heir who had gone without transition from his meager hundred francs a month to the entire paternal fortune, and who, even if he didn’t have wit enough to see that people were making fun of him, knew enough math to confine himself to two-thirds of his capital. He was just discovering in Paris, in return for a few thousand-franc bills, the exact price of equestrian tack, the art of not taking too much care of his gloves, of listening to expert meditations on what wages to give people, and finding out what fixed sum was the most profitable to settle on with them; he was most eager to be able to talk knowledgeably about his horses or his dog from the Pyrénées, and to recognize what sort of woman a lady was by recognizing her attire, her walk, and her boots; studying the rules of écarté, remembering a few fashionable phrases, and, by means of his stay in Parisian society, acquiring the necessary authority to import a taste for tea and English silver later on into the provinces, and to give himself the right to scorn everything around him for the rest of his days. De Marsay had taken him on as a friend to make use of him in society, the way a bold speculator uses a trusted assistant. The false or real friendship of de Marsay gave social position to Paul de Manerville who, for his part, thought he was cunning in thus exploiting his close friend. He lived in his friend’s reflection, constantly sheltered under his umbrella, wore the same shoes as he did, basked in his glow. Standing next to Henri, or even walking alongside him, he seemed to be saying: “Don’t insult us, we are real tigers.” Often he allowed himself to say self-complacently: “If I asked Henri for such or such a thing, he is a good enough friend of mine to do it.…” But he took care never
to ask him for anything. He was afraid of him, and his fear, though imperceptible, reacted on others, and was of service to de Marsay. “What a proud man de Marsay is,” Paul would say. “You’ll see, he’ll be whatever he wants to be. I wouldn’t be surprised to find him someday as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Nothing can resist him.” So he made de Marsay into what Corporal Trim made of his hat, a constant byword. “Ask de Marsay, and you’ll see!”

  Or else: “The other day, de Marsay and I were out hunting, he didn’t want to believe me, but I jumped a bush without budging an inch from my horse!”

  Or else: “The other day, de Marsay and I were visiting some ladies, and, my word of honor, I was …” and so on.

  So Paul de Manerville could only be classified among the great, illustrious, and powerful tribe of simpletons who achieve success. He would be a deputy one day. Right now he wasn’t even a young man yet. His friend de Marsay defined him thus: “You ask me what Paul is. Paul? Paul is Paul de Manerville.”

  “I’m surprised, old man,” he said to de Marsay, “that you’re here, on Sunday.”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  “An affair?”

  “Possibly.…”

  “Nonsense!”

  “I could easily say just the same to you, without compromising my own amour. Anyway a woman who comes to the Tuileries on Sunday is of no consequence, aristocratically speaking.”

  “Ha!”

  “Be quiet, or I won’t tell you anything else. You laugh too loudly, you’ll make people think we overdid it at lunch. Last Thursday, here, on the Feuillants esplanade, I was strolling along without thinking about anything at all. But when I had reached the gate to the Rue de Castiglione through which I planned to leave, I found myself face to face with a woman, or rather a young lady who, if she didn’t exactly throw her arms around my neck, still found herself halted, stopped dead—less, I think, out of human respect than through one of those profound shocks that numb your arms and legs, travel down your spine, and end in the soles of your feet, rooting you to the ground. I have often produced effects of this sort, a kind of animal magnetism that becomes intense when both parties feel interconnected. But, dear friend, I was not drunk, and she was not an ordinary tart. Psychologically speaking, her face seemed to say: ‘What, you’re here, my ideal, the being from my innermost thoughts, my dreams morning and night? How can you be? Why this morning? Why not yesterday? Take me, I’m yours, et cetera!’ ‘Oh good,’ I said to myself, ‘another one!’ So I examined her. Ah! Dear friend, physically speaking, this stranger is the most delightfully feminine woman I have ever met. She belongs to that variety of female the Romans called fulva, flava, a woman of fire. And what struck me first of all, what I’m still smitten with, are her two yellow eyes, like tiger’s eyes; a golden yellow that gleams, living gold, gold that thinks, gold that loves and wants more than anything to come nestle inside your watch-pocket!”