The Wild Ass's Skin

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘And yet I still loved her! I hoped to melt her iciness by enfolding her in the wings of a poet’s love. If I could once open her heart out to a womanly tenderness, if I could initiate her into the sublimity of self-sacrifice, I could then view her as a perfect creature. She would become an angel! I loved her as a man, as a lover, as an artist, when in order to win her I should not have loved her at all. Some self-satisfied, cool calculator would have no doubt conquered her. Vain and affected as she was, she would have understood the language of vanity, would have let herself become embroiled in the snares of an intrigue. She would have been mastered by a man who was unfeeling and ice-cold. I suffered sharp pains, like a blade through my heart, when she unconsciously revealed her selfishness. I suffered to think of her alone one day and not knowing which way to turn for help, never meeting any friendly gaze. One evening I summoned up the courage to paint a vivid picture of her in her old age—abandoned, empty, sad. At the spectacle of this terrifying vengeance of cheated nature she said something very shocking: “I shall still have money,” she replied. “With gold we can still create around us the feelings necessary to our well-being.”

  ‘I left, dumbfounded by the logic of this luxury, this woman, this society, blaming myself for being so stupid as to idolize her. Since I did not love Pauline because she was poor, the rich Foedora had every right to reject Raphael. Our conscience is an infallible judge, as long as we have not murdered it. “Foedora”, a voice cried in my ear with some sophistry, “does not love or reject anyone. She is free, but once upon a time she gave herself for money. Whether as lover or husband, the Russian count possessed her. She will certainly give in to one temptation in her life! Wait for that moment.” Neither chaste nor promiscuous, the woman lived far from humanity, in a sphere of her own, hell or paradise. But this female mystery dressed in cashmere and embroidered gowns set alight in my heart all human feelings: pride, ambition, love, curiosity.

  ‘A fashionable whim or the desire to appear original that afflicts us all had made many people sing the praises of a little show running at one of the boulevard theatres. The Countess expressed the desire to see the powdered face of an actor who was currently delighting some of the intelligentsia, and I had obtained the honour of taking her to the first night of I don’t know what dreadful farce. The box cost scarcely five francs, but I did not have a bean. Still having half a book of memoirs to write, I did not dare go and beg help from Finot, and my universal provider, Rastignac, was not there. This constant lack of money was casting a shadow over my life. Once, as we left the theatre, Foedora had made me call a cab, without my being able to escape the compulsion she had to show off. She did not accept any excuse, neither my liking for rain, nor my desire to go to a gambling-house. She did not guess I had no money, not from my embarrassment nor from my rueful remarks. I wore an ashamed expression, but did she understand my look? The life of a young man is subject to such strange whims! During the ride home thoughts seared my heart at every turn of the wheel. I tried to detach a plank of wood in the floor of the cab, hoping to slip through on to the cobbles. But coming across insuperable obstacles I was convulsed with laughter and relapsed into a state of quiet gloom, stunned like a man in the stocks. As I arrived home, Pauline cut off my first stammering words: “If you haven’t any change …” Oh, Rossini’s music was nothing compared with those words!

  ‘But to return to the Funambules.* To take the Countess to that show I thought I would pawn the gold frame that was round my mother’s portrait. Although the pawnbrokers had always loomed large in my mind as one of the gateways to prison, it was still better to carry my bed there myself than to ask for alms. The look given you by a man whom you beg for money is so distressing! Some borrowings cost us our honour, as certain refusals uttered by a friend can take away our last illusion.

  ‘Pauline was working—her mother was in bed. Throwing a furtive glance at the bed whose curtains were slightly drawn back, I thought Madame Gaudin was deeply asleep when I saw a dark patch in the middle where her still, sallow face pressed against the pillow.

  ‘“You are sad,” said Pauline to me, putting the brush down on her coloured drawing.

  ‘“My poor child,” I replied, “you can do me a great service.”

  ‘She gave me such a happy look, I was startled. “Can she be in love with me?” I wondered.

  ‘“Pauline?” I enquired, sitting down beside her to look at her closely. She guessed what I meant, my tone was so questioning. She lowered her eyes and I studied her intently, thinking I could read her heart as if it were my own, her face was so open and pure.

  ‘“Do you love me?” I asked.

  ‘“A little … passionately … not at all!”* she cried. She did not love me. Her mocking tone and the pretty gesture which escaped her betrayed nothing but a young girl’s light-hearted gratitude. I therefore confessed my trouble, my financial embarrassment, and begged her to help me.

  ‘“What, Monsieur Raphael, you don’t want to go to the pawnbrokers yourself and yet you send me!”

  ‘I blushed, embarrassed at her childlike logic. Then she took my hand as though she wanted to make up for the directness of her exclamation with a caress.

  ‘“Oh, I would go of course,” she said, “but there is no need. This morning behind the piano I found two five-franc coins that had slipped down without you seeing, between the wall and the back, and I put them on your table.”

  ‘“You are bound to receive some money soon, Monsieur Raphael,” said her kind mother, poking her head out between the curtains. “I can easily lend you some in the meantime.”

  ‘“Oh Pauline,” I cried, squeezing her hand, “I wish I were rich.”

  ‘“Pooh, why?” said she, cheekily. Her hand trembling in mine echoed the beating of my heart. She withdrew her hand in a trice, and studied mine.

  ‘“You will marry a rich woman!” she said. “But she will give you a hard time. Oh heavens, she will be the death of you. I am sure of it!”

  ‘There was in her voice a sort of belief in the crazy superstitions of her mother.

  ‘“You are very credulous, Pauline!”

  ‘“Oh, of course I am,” she said, looking at me with a terrified expression, “the woman you love will kill you.”

  ‘She took up her brush again and dipped it in the paint, visibly agitated, and would no longer meet my eyes. At that moment I could easily have believed in the supernatural. A man is never completely miserable when he is superstitious, for superstition often means hope. Closeted in my room I did in fact see two splendid five-franc pieces whose presence I couldn’t explain. In my muddled thoughts as I dozed off I made an effort to go over my expenses and account for this unexpected windfall, but, losing track in useless calculations, I fell asleep. The next day Pauline came to see me when I was on the point of leaving to reserve a box at the theatre.

  ‘“Perhaps ten francs are not enough,” this kindly, charming girl said to me with a blush. “My mother has told me to offer you this money. Please take it.”

  ‘She threw three crowns onto my desk and made to run away. But I held her back. Admiration dried the tears that were welling in my eyes.

  ‘“Pauline,” I said, “you are an angel! The loan you are offering me touches me much less than the modest way in which you offer it. I wanted a woman who was rich, elegant, aristocratic. Alas, now I wish for millions, and to meet a young girl, poor like you, and, like you, rich at heart. I should thus renounce a passion which is killing me. You are perhaps right.”

  ‘“Enough,” she said. She fled, and the trills of her laughter like a nightingale’s echoed on the stairs.

  ‘“She is very lucky not to have fallen in love yet!” I said to myself, thinking of the torments I had been suffering for the past months.

  ‘Pauline’s fifteen francs were very valuable to me. Foedora, thinking of the odour of the people in the theatre where we should have to remain in our seats for several hours, expressed the wish for a nosegay of flowers, so I went to b
uy her some, and returned, bearing my life and my fortune in my hands. I felt both remorse and pleasure as I gave her a bouquet, whose price revealed to me how wastefully extravagant was the superficial gallantry that was customary in society. Soon she complained about the rather powerful scent of the Mexican jasmine. She was filled with an intolerable disgust when she saw the audience and found herself sitting on a hard bench, and blamed me for having brought her there! Though she was sitting next to me she would not stay, but insisted on leaving.

  ‘I had imposed upon myself sleepless nights, wasted two months of my life, and she still did not care for me! Never was this diabolical woman more lovely—or more unfeeling. On the way home, seated next to her in a narrow coupé,* I breathed in her breath, I touched her perfumed glove, I gazed uninterruptedly on the treasures of her beauty. I could smell a sweet perfume of iris. All woman—and yet not womanly. At that instant a shaft of light allowed me to see into the depths of her mysterious life. I thought suddenly of the book recently published by a poet, a true artist’s conception inspired by the statue of Polycles.* I saw in my imagination that monstrous creature who, sometimes in the form of an officer, tames a spirited horse, sometimes in the guise of a young girl, makes her toilette and reduces her lovers to despair, or a lover breaking the heart of a sweet and modest virgin. Not knowing how to puzzle out the enigma of Foedora in any other way, I told her this fantastic story. But her resemblance to this poetry of the impossible was in no way obvious to her; she thought it frankly amusing, like a child captivated by a fable from the Arabian Nights.

  ‘“To resist a man of my age, the warmth of the wonderful communion of the soul, there must be something mysterious holding Foedora back,” I told myself, as I went back to my lodgings. “Perhaps, like Lady Delacour,* she is eaten up with cancer? It may be she is kept alive by artificial means.” At this thought my blood ran cold.

  ‘Then I made a plan that was at once the most extravagant and the most reasonable that a lover could ever conceive. To examine this woman’s body as I had already studied her mind, and, in short, have a full knowledge of her, I resolved to spend a night in her room, without her knowing. This is how I carried out the enterprise that was eating into my soul, as the desire for vengeance devours the heart of a Corsican monk.* On her days for entertaining Foedora received too many people for the porter to be able to work out an exact balance between those arriving and those departing. Certain of being able to stay in the house without provoking a scandal, I impatiently awaited the Countess’s next soirée. As I got dressed, I put into my waistcoat pocket a small English penknife, in lieu of a dagger.* If found on my person this knife I sharpened my pens with would not arouse suspicions, but since I did not know where my romantic endeavour would lead, I thought it as well to be armed.

  ‘When the rooms began to fill up, I went into the bedroom to reconnoitre, and found the blinds and shutters closed, which was the first piece of luck. As the chambermaid might come to untie the curtains draped across the windows, I undid their hooks. I risked a great deal by daring to perform this household task in advance, but I had accepted the dangers of my situation and coolly assessed them. Around midnight I went and hid in a window recess. I tried climbing onto the plinth of the woodwork so that my feet wouldn’t be visible, leaning back against the wall and hanging onto the window-catch. After having studied my balance, where the points of support were, and worked out how much room there was between me and the curtains, I managed to familiarize myself with the difficulties of my position so as not to be found out, just so long as I was not afflicted with cramp, coughs, or sneezes. In order not to tire myself uselessly I stood upright and waited for the critical moment when I should have to remain suspended like a spider in its web. The white watered silk-and-muslin curtains formed huge folds like organ pipes in front of me, and I made holes in them with my penknife so as to see everything through these arrow slits. I heard the muffled voices in the rooms, the laughter and chatting, the occasional raised tones. Little by little this confusion of voices, this dimly heard noise diminished. A few men came to take their hats from the Countess’s chest of drawers near where I was standing. When they brushed against the curtains I shuddered to think of all the things people do when they are in a hurry to leave and hunt around everywhere for their belongings. But since nothing bad happened, it augured well for the success of my enterprise. The last hat was carried off by a long-standing admirer of Foedora who, thinking himself alone and seeing the bed, uttered a deep sigh followed by a heartfelt exclamation I find it hard to describe. The Countess, who, in the boudoir next to her bedroom, now had only five or six of her intimates still around her, suggested they take tea there. Gossip, for which modern society has reserved the paltry amount of belief it still possesses, rubbed shoulders with witticisms, clever jibes, the clinking of cups and spoons. Rastignac, pitiless towards my rivals, provoked loud bursts of laughter with his biting remarks.

  ‘“Monsieur de Rastignac is not a man to have as an enemy,” said the Countess with a laugh.

  ‘“That is true,” he replied quite candidly. “I have always been right about the people I hate. As indeed about my friendships,” he added. “But I suppose my enemies are as useful to me as my friends. I have made a rather special study of the modern idiom and the natural artifices used to attack or defend anything. Ministerial eloquence is a social skill. Is one of your friends dull of wit? Then you talk about his moral rectitude, his frankness. Is another writer’s book rather dull? You recommend it as a conscientious piece of work. If the book is badly written, you praise its ideas. Is such and such a man without faith or constancy and slippery as an eel? Why then, you say he is charming, fascinating, and has charisma. Where it involves your enemies, you confront them with the living and the dead. You turn the terms of your arguments upside down and you are as astute in discovering their defects as you were clever at bringing out the virtues of your friends. This way of turning the eyeglass onto the moral viewpoint is the secret of our conversation and the whole art of the courtier. Not to make use of it is to try and fight, without any weapons, those who are armed to the teeth like medieval knights. And I do make use of it! I even go too far sometimes. So people respect me and my friends, for—moreover—my sword is as sharp as my tongue.”

  ‘One of Foedora’s most fervent admirers, a young man whose impertinence was notorious and who even used it as a means of getting along in the world, took up the gauntlet so disdainfully thrown down by Rastignac. He began to talk about me, ridiculously exaggerating my talents and my person. Rastignac had not reckoned with that kind of backbiting. This sardonic paean of praise was misunderstood by the Countess, who mercilessly sacrificed me to her friends. She abused my confidences, my ambitions and aspirations—for their amusement.

  ‘“He has a great future,” said Rastignac. “He may be a man who will take cruel revenge, and his talents are at the very least equal to his courage. So I regard those who attack him as extremely foolhardy. He has a long memory …”

  ‘“And in fact writes memoirs,” said the Countess, who seemed put out by the deep silence which ensued.

  ‘“Memoirs of a pseudo-countess, Madame,” replied Rastignac. “To write those you need a different kind of courage.”

  ‘“Oh I think he has plenty of that,” she went on. “He is faithful to me.”

  ‘Suddenly I was seized with the fervent desire to appear to these mockers, like the ghost of Banquo in Macbeth. I was losing a mistress but I had a friend! However, love suddenly suggested to me one of those cowardly, subtle paradoxes with which it can soothe all our pain. “If Foedora loves me,” I thought, “would she not have to hide her affection beneath a teasing remark? How many times has the heart not belied the utterance of the lips?”

  ‘Finally my impertinent rival, who had remained alone with the Countess, got up to leave.

  ‘“What, already?” she coaxed, in a tone that made my heart miss a beat. “Won’t you stay a little while? Have you nothing else to say to m
e? Will you not sacrifice some of your pleasures for my sake?”

  ‘He departed.

  ‘“Oh!” she exclaimed with a yawn. “They are all so boring.” She pulled hard on a bell-rope and the noise echoed through the apartments. The Countess went into her bedroom, humming a tune from Pria che spunti.* No one had ever heard her sing, and this silence had given rise to bizarre interpretations. They said she had promised her first lover, charmed by her talents and jealous beyond the grave, not to allow anyone else this pleasure, which he wished to have enjoyed for himself alone. I strained with all my being to breathe in the sound. Her voice soared from one note to the next, Foedora seemed to come alive; the riches of her throat poured forth and that melody partook of the divine. The Countess’s voice had a real clarity, a perfect pitch, a harmonious and vibrant tone that stirred and excited the listener and touched the heart. Women who can make music are nearly always amorous by nature. A woman who sings like that must know how to love. The beauty of that voice was therefore yet another mysterious element in a woman who was already such a mystery. I saw her then as I see you now; she seemed to be listening to herself and feeling a sensuality all her own. It was as though she was reaching a climax of love. She stood in front of the mantelpiece as she finished the main theme of this rondo. But when she fell silent her face changed, her features dropped, and she showed her fatigue. She had just taken off a mask. She had finished playing her actress’s role. However, the ravages imprinted on her beauty by her artistry or by the tiredness after the soirée were not without their charms.