The Wild Ass's Skin

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘Whether I mistook, as was my usual commendable custom, polite formulas for sincerity, or whether Foedora saw in me some imminent celebrity and wanted to increase her menagerie of clever men, I felt she had taken a liking to me. I brought into play all my knowledge of physiology and my previous studies of women in order to examine in the most minute detail this singular person and her behaviour during the evening. Hidden in a window recess, I tried to work out from her bearing what she was thinking, and studied her behaviour as a hostess as she came and went, sat down to chat, called a man over, questioned him, or leaned against a door to listen to his answer. I observed such a light, willowy motion when she walked, such a graceful undulation in her dress, and she excited so powerful a desire in me that I began to have serious doubts about her supposed virtue. If Foedora was having nothing to do with love nowadays, she must have at one time been very passionate. For a knowing sensuality was written all over her, even in the way she posed in front of the man she was talking to; she leaned against the panelling in a flirtatious fashion, like a woman about to be seduced, but at the same time ready to flee should an overly bold look intimidate her. Her arms lightly folded, and seeming just to breathe out her words, listening indulgently with her whole being, she exuded sentiment. Her fresh red lips contrasted with the lively pallor of her complexion. Her brown hair brought out the orange tint of her eyes rather well; veined like Florentine stone, their expression seemed to add subtlety to her words. Her bosom displayed the most attractive charms. A rival would perhaps have been critical of the heavy eyebrows, which seemed to meet in the middle, and would have found fault with the faint down which could be seen in the contours of her face. But I detected passion imprinted everywhere. Love was written on the Italian eyelids of this woman, on those fine shoulders worthy of the Venus de Milo, in her features, on her upper lip which was rather full and had a slight shadow on it. She was more than a woman, she was a novel. Yes, this wealth of female charm, the harmony of the lines, the promise of passion in that luxurious figure, all were tempered by a constant reserve, by an extraordinary modesty, which contrasted with the expression of her whole person. You had to have powers of observation as acute as my own to see in this nature the signs of a voluptuous destiny. To explain my thinking more clearly: in Foedora there were two women, separated, shall we say, at the level of her bosom; below she was cold, only her head seemed amorous; before letting her eyes rest upon a man she prepared her look, as if something mysterious was going on in her, there was something convulsive in her shining eyes. In brief, either my science was imperfect and I had many more secrets to discover in the world of psychology, or the Countess did indeed possess a beautiful soul; its feelings and emanations imparted to her face the charm that subjects and fascinates us and exercises a wholly moral authority, the more powerful because it accords with the impulses of desire.

  ‘I left, charmed, seduced by this woman, intoxicated by her aura of luxury, excited by everything in myself that was noble, vicious, good, and bad. Feeling so moved, so alive, so exalted, I thought I could understand the attraction that brought these artists here, these diplomats, these men of power, these financiers whose hearts were as steely as their strongboxes. No doubt they came to seek in her company the delirious emotion which made all the forces of my own being vibrate, whipped up my blood in every vein, set every little nerve on edge and my brain throbbing! She had given herself to nobody in order to keep them all. A woman is a flirt as long as she does not fall in love.

  ‘“So perhaps”, I said to Rastignac, “she was married or sold to some old man and the memory of her first marriage has made her dread love affairs.”

  ‘I came back on foot from the faubourg Saint-Honoré where Foedora lived. Almost the whole of Paris lies between her house and the Rue des Cordiers. The night was cold and yet it seemed but a short distance. How foolish I was to seek to conquer Foedora in the winter, a cold winter, when I had less than thirty francs in my possession, when the distance separating us was so great! Only an impoverished young man can appreciate the cost of a love-affair in terms of carriages, gloves, clothes, linen, and so on! If love remains platonic for too long, he is ruined. Truly, there is many a Lauzun* from the Law School who cannot court a lady-love living on the first floor. And how could I—weak, undernourished, plainly attired, pale and gaunt like an artist recovering from finishing a work of art—compete with those pretty, curly-headed young dandies, whose cravats were the despair of all Croatia,* rich, equipped with tilburies, and attired in insolence?

  ‘“It shall be Foedora or death,” I cried as I crossed over a bridge. “Foedora is my fortune!”

  ‘That fine Gothic boudoir and Louis Quatorze salon passed before my eyes; I saw again the Countess in her white dress, her large graceful sleeves, her seductive walk, and her tempting décolleté. When I arrived back at my bare garret, cold and untidy as a naturalist’s wig, I was still surrounded by the images of Foedora’s luxury. This disparity was an evil counsellor, surely crimes must be born of it. Shaking with anger then, I cursed my decent, honest poverty, my attic room from which so many fruitful ideas had sprung. I called to account God, the devil, society, my father, and the whole universe, for my destiny, my misfortune; I went to bed starving, muttering ridiculous curses, but firm in my resolve to seduce Foedora. This woman’s heart was the final lottery-ticket on which my fortune depended. I will spare you my first visits to Foedora, in order to arrive promptly at the dramatic turn of events.

  ‘At the same time as attempting to conquer this woman’s heart, I tried to win over her intellect and get her vanity on my side. In order to be sure of her love I gave her a thousand reasons to love herself better, and never left her in a state of indifference. Women want emotion at any price; I lavished it on her. I’d have her angry with me rather than indifferent. If at first, driven by a firm resolve and desire that she should fall in love with me, I acquired some ascendancy over her, soon my passion increased, I was no longer master of my feelings, I was lost, I fell truly and madly in love. I do not rightly know what we call, in poetry or in conversation, love. But the feeling that suddenly grew in my dual nature—I have never found it described anywhere, not in the rhetorical, affected language of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose lodgings I was now perhaps occupying, nor in the formal conceptions of our two literary centuries, nor in Italian painting. The view of the lake of Bienne, a few tunes of Rossini, the Murillo Madonna owned by Marshal Soult, the letters of la Lescombat,* a few words in anthologies, but especially in the prayers of the ecstatics and certain passages from our fables, these are the only things which have been able to transport me into the divine regions of my first love.

  ‘Nothing in human languages, no translation of human thought made through the medium of paintings, statues, words, or music, can render the strength, the truth, the completeness, that suddenness of the feeling in the soul! Art is indeed fiction. Love passes through infinite transformations before mingling for ever with our lives and staining it for ever with its colours of flame. The secret of this gradual infusion escapes the analysis of the artist. True passion expresses itself in cries and sighs that weary the dispassionate man. You have to be truly in love to share the ragings of Lovelace when you read Clarissa Harlowe.* Love is a simple spring, rising from a bed of cress, flowers, and gravel, now a stream, now a river, changing its nature and aspect as it flows, throwing itself into an infinite ocean where unformed minds see only monotony, but where great souls lose themselves in endless contemplation.

  ‘How can one presume to describe those transitory nuances of feeling, those nothings of such value, those words whose tone exhausts the treasures of language, those looks more full of meaning than the richest poem? At each of the mystical stages by which we gradually fall in love with a woman an abyss opens, vast enough to swallow up all the poetry in the world. For how indeed could we describe in just a few words the living, mysterious agitations of the soul, when words fail us even when we try to paint the mysteries of visible beauty
? What fascination! How many hours have I spent plunged in a state of ineffable ecstasy, just looking at her. And so happy, for what reason? I don’t know. In those moments, if her face was flooded with light, there was some phenomenon working in it which made it shine; the almost invisible down that gilded her delicate, fine skin softly defined its features with the beauty we admire in the distant outlines of the horizon when they fade into the sun. It seemed that the daylight caressed her by becoming one with her, or that there shone forth from her radiant face a light brighter than light itself; then a shadow passing over this sweet face would change its tone and vary her expression. Often a thought seemed to be painted on her marble brow. Her eyes appeared to redden, her eyelids fluttered, and her features were moved by a smile; the sensitive coral lips came to life, parted, and closed again. Some glints in her hair threw brown hues upon her clear temples. And each of these occurrences spoke to me. Each nuance of beauty presented fresh feasts to my eyes, revealed graces as yet unknown to my heart. I tried to read some feeling, some hope for me, in all her successive facial expressions. These silent exchanges passed from one soul to the other like a sound into its echo, and showered upon me momentary joys which left deep impressions. Her voice caused a delirium in me which I could scarcely contain. Like that prince of Lorraine* whose name I don’t recall, I could have held without feeling it a burning coal in the hollow of my hand while she was passing her caressing fingers through my hair. It was no longer admiration or desire; I was under a fatal spell.

  ‘Often when I came back to my room, I could still see a faint vision of Foedora in her house, and I participated in her daily life. If she was unwell, I suffered, and I would say to her next day:

  ‘“You have been unwell!”

  ‘How often she came to me in the small hours, evoked by the power of my ecstasy! Sometimes, like a sudden shaft of light shining forth, she would make me fling down my pen; Science and Study fled in fear and sorrow! She compelled me to admire her by readopting the pose in which I had once seen her. Sometimes I myself went to search her out in the world of ghosts and greeted her like the spirit of hope, asking her to let me hear her silvery tones. Then I woke, sobbing.

  ‘One day, after promising to come to the theatre with me, she suddenly on a whim refused to go, and begged me to leave her alone. In despair at this contrariness that was costing me a day’s work, and, need I say, my last crown, I went to where she had been supposed to be, wanting to see the play that she had wanted to see. I had scarcely sat down when a charge, like electricity, went through me. A voice in my head said: “She’s there!” I turned round and spied the Countess in her box at the back of the stalls, concealed in the shadows. I knew by instinct where to look, and my eyes found her immediately with an extraordinary clarity, my soul flew towards her like an insect to a flower. What had alerted my senses like that? Superficial people may be surprised that one soul may thrill to another in that way, but the effects of our inner nature are as simple as the usual phenomena of our external vision. So I was not so much astonished as annoyed. My studies of our little-known psychological powers did at least enable me to recognize in my passion some living proofs of my theory. This alliance of the scientist and the lover, of veritable idolatry and the passion for science, had something very strange about it. The scientist in me was often happy about what caused despair in the lover, and the lover in me, when he was in the ascendant, was happy to keep science at a distance.

  ‘Foedora saw me and her face darkened. I embarrassed her. In the first interval I went and joined her. She was alone, so I stayed. Though we had never spoken of love, I felt something was about to be said. I had not yet told her my secret, and yet there was a sort of tacit understanding between us. She would tell me what she was intending to do for entertainment and would ask me the day before with a sort of friendly concern if I was coming. She looked at me enquiringly when she said something witty, as though she had wanted to please me alone; if I sulked, she started to coax me; if she was cross, I had a kind of right to ask her why; if I did something wrong, she made me plead for a long time before granting me forgiveness. These quarrels to which we had taken a liking, were lovers’ quarrels. She displayed much grace and flirtatiousness and I enjoyed that so much! But at that particular moment our friendship was completely suspended and we remained there facing one another like two strangers. The Countess was icy. I feared disaster.

  ‘“Please see me home,” she said when the play was over.

  ‘The weather had suddenly changed. As we left the theatre it was sleeting. Foedora’s carriage wasn’t able to get to the door of the theatre. A commissionaire, seeing an elegantly dressed lady obliged to cross the boulevard, held open his umbrella above our heads, and, when we had got in the carriage, claimed payment for this service. I had no money, and would have given ten years of my life at that moment for two sous. My manhood and its endless vanities were crushed in me by that infernal suffering. The words: “I have no change, my good man!” spoken in a harsh tone which seemed to come from my thwarted passion, were uttered by me, this man’s brother. I who knew so well what misfortune was! I who had once given away 700,000 francs without a thought! The valet pushed the commissionaire aside and the horses cleaved the air. On the way back to her house Foedora, distracted or affecting to be preoccupied, replied to my questions with dismissive monosyllables. I said nothing. It was a dreadful moment. Once arrived at her house we sat down by the fireside. When the valet had gone away after coaxing the fire into life, the Countess turned to me with an indefinable air and said in a rather solemn tone:

  ‘“Since my return to France my fortune has been a temptation for some young men. I have received enough declarations of love to satisfy my pride. I have met men whose attachment was so sincere and so deep that they would have married me, even if they had only found in me the poor girl I once was. Well, Monsieur Valentin, let me say that new riches and titles have been offered to me. But also that I have never seen again those people who have had the unfortunate idea of mentioning love. If my affection for you was slight I should not give you this warning, in which there is more concern for you than pride on my part. A woman lays herself open to receiving a rebuff when, supposing herself to be loved, she refuses in advance a feeling which is always flattering. I know the scenes with Arsinoé, Araminte,* so I am familiar with the rejoinders that I may hear in such circumstances; but today I hope I shall not be thought ill of by a man of distinction for having bared my soul to him.”

  ‘She expressed herself with the coolness of a lawyer or a notary explaining to their clients the procedure in a court case or the terms of a contract. The clear, seductive timbre of her voice did not suggest the least emotion; only her face and her attitude, always noble and composed, seemed to me to have a certain coldness, a diplomatic reserve. No doubt she had pondered her words and stage-managed this scene. Oh, my dear friend, when certain women take pleasure in breaking our hearts, when they have made up their minds to put the knife in and twist it round in the wound, those women are adorable, they are in love, or they want to be loved! One day they will reward us for our pain, as God must, so they say, remunerate our good deeds. They will give us back a hundredfold in pleasure the pain they have inflicted, for they know how cruel it is. Is not their cruelty full of passion? But to be tormented by a woman who kills us with her indifference, is it not a terrible torture? At that moment Foedora was treading unconsciously on all my hopes, spoiling my life and destroying my future with the cold insouciance and innocent cruelty of a child who, out of mere curiosity, tears the wings off a butterfly.

  ‘“Later on,” Foedora added, “you will acknowledge the strength of the affection I have for my friends. You will always find me good and loyal to them. I could give my life for them, but you would despise me if I allowed them to love me without sharing in that love. I have said enough. You are the only man to whom I have ever told these things.”

  ‘At first I was at a loss for words and I had difficulty stemming the w
hirlwind of emotion rising up in me. But soon I quelled my feelings and began to smile.

  ‘“If I tell you I love you,” I replied, “you will banish me. If I maintain indifference, you will punish me. Priests, judges, and women never divest themselves completely of their robes. Silence doesn’t prejudge anything. Be content then, Madame, with my silence. To have addressed such friendly warnings to me, you must have been afraid of losing me, and that thought may gratify my self-esteem. But let us leave personalities aside. You are perhaps the only woman with whom I can argue philosophically about a resolution so contrary to the laws of nature. Relative to others of your species, you are a phenomenon. So let us seek together in all good faith the cause of this psychological anomaly. Does there exist in you, as in many women who are proud of themselves and their own perfections, a refined egotism which inspires horror in you at the idea of belonging to a man, abdicating your will and being subject to a conventional superiority which offends you? In that case you would seem a thousand times more beautiful to me. Were you mistreated by your first lover? Perhaps the value you attach to the elegance of your waist, your charming bosom, makes you fearful of the havoc motherhood can bring about? Would that be one of your best-kept secrets for refusing to be loved too well? Have you imperfections which make you chaste despite yourself? Do not get angry, I am simply discussing, studying the question; I am a thousand leagues from passion. Nature which can make people blind from birth can surely create women who are deaf, dumb, and blind in matters of love. You truly are a valuable subject for medical observation! You do not know your worth. You can have a perfectly legitimate disgust for men, and I would approve of that, for they all seem ugly and odious to me. But you are right,” I added, feeling my heart swell, “you must despise us. The man who is worthy of you does not exist!”