The Wild Ass's Skin (Oxford World's Classics)

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘My eleven hundred francs were to be sufficient for my needs for three years, and I gave myself that length of time to produce a work that might draw the attention of the public to me, bringing me fortune or celebrity. I was glad to think I was going to live off bread and milk, like a hermit of the Thebaid,* buried in a world of books and ideas quite removed from the tumultuous world of Parisian society, a place of work and quiet where, like a chrysalis, I could build myself a tomb from which I would emerge, dazzling and triumphant. I would risk death in order to have life. Reducing my existence to my real needs, to what was strictly necessary, I thought three hundred and sixty-five francs a year ought to be enough for a poor fellow like me. And in fact this meagre sum of money was enough for me as long as I wished to subject myself to my self-imposed monkish discipline …’

  ‘Impossible!’ cried Émile.

  ‘I lived like that for almost three years,’ Raphael replied, with some pride. ‘Let me reckon it up,’ he went on: ‘three sous for bread, two for milk, three for sausage, that prevented me from starving and kept my brain in a state of particular clarity. As you know, I have observed wonderful effects produced by diet on the imagination. My lodgings cost me three sous a day, three sous of oil afforded me enough light at night, I cleaned my room myself, I wore flannel shirts so that I should not have to spend more than two sous a day on my laundry. I used coal for heating, and divided by three hundred and sixty-five, the number of days in a year, it always averaged out at two sous a day at most. I had clothes, linen, and shoes to last me three years and needed decent clothes only for going to libraries and for some public lectures. All this expenditure only came to eighteen sous, and I had two sous left for emergencies. During this long working period I don’t recall ever having gone beyond the Pont des Arts, nor ever having bought any water. I used to get it in the mornings at the fountain in the Place Saint-Michel, at the end of the Rue de Grès. I wore my poverty with pride. The man who senses he has a fine future ahead of him goes through life like an innocent to the scaffold; he is not ashamed. I did not want to take into consideration the possibility that I might fall ill. Like Aquilina, the poorhouse held no terrors for me. I never doubted my good health for a moment. In any case, a poor man only takes to his bed to die. I cut my hair myself, until such time as an angel of love and goodness … but I don’t wish to anticipate.

  ‘Just let me say, my dear friend, that because I had no mistress I lived with one great idea, with a dream, a lie in which we all begin to believe, sooner or later. Today I laugh at that self, saintly perhaps or sublime, who no longer exists. Society, the world, our habits and customs seen at close quarters have revealed to me the danger of my innocent faith and the uselessness of my fervent labours. These provisions are of no use to the man of ambition. The burden of the man who seeks his fortune must be light. The mistake of superior men is to waste their early years making themselves worthy of favour. While the poor store up their strength and knowledge so as to carry without effort the weight of a power that escapes them, the schemers, rich in words and deprived of ideas, come and go, take advantage of the fools, and establish themselves in the confidence of halfwits. Some study, others press on, some are modest, others bold; the man of genius wears his pride silently, the schemer nails his colours to the mast and is certain to make his way in the world. Men of power have so great a need to believe in ready-made merit, in a self-publicizing sort of talent, that it is a childishness in the true philosopher to hope for worldly reward. Of course I do not wish to paraphrase the commonplaces of virtue, the Song of Songs eternally sung by misunderstood geniuses; I merely want to explain the reason for the frequent success obtained by mediocre men.

  ‘Alas, study is such a good mother that it is perhaps a crime to ask any reward from her other than the pure, sweet joys she feeds her children with. I remember how I used to sometimes dip my bread cheerfully in my milk, sitting by the window breathing in the fresh air, while allowing my gaze to range over a landscape of brown, greyish, red roofs, their slates or tiles covered in yellow or green moss. If at first this sight seemed monotonous, I soon discovered a singular beauty in it. Sometimes, of an evening, rays of light filtering through gaps in the shutters subtly altered and lit up the black depths of this remarkable landscape. Sometimes the pale glow of streetlamps below cast yellowish reflections through the fog and faintly etched, along the streets, the undulating roofs packed tightly together in an ocean of motionless waves. Sometimes, again, the odd figure appeared in the middle of this bleak wasteland; amongst the flowers in some aerial garden I would espy the hooked, angular profile of an old woman watering her nasturtiums, or, framed in a broken dormer window, a young girl doing her hair, believing herself to be on her own, and all I could see of her were her beautiful forehead and long tresses raised aloft by a pretty white arm. I admired some short-lived vegetation in the gutters, weeds abruptly carried off in a sudden deluge. I studied the mosses, their colours revived by the rain, which in the sun became a dry velvety brown of various hues. In short, the poetic and fleeting effects of the daylight, the gloom of the fog, the sudden glints of sunlight, the silence and the magic of the night, the mysteries of the dawn, the smoke from each chimney, all the details of this singular landscape became familiar and intriguing. I liked my prison, it was one that I had chosen. These Paris savannahs formed by roofs, flat as a plain but covering abysses teeming with people, matched my mood and were in harmony with my ideas. It’s tiring to suddenly come down again to earth from the celestial heights where scientific meditations have drawn us. And I have always perfectly understood why monasteries are so bare.’

  * * *

  ‘When I had firmly resolved to follow my new way of life, I looked for lodgings in the most deserted districts of Paris. One evening, coming back to my lodgings from l’Estrapade, I happened to pass through the Rue des Cordiers. At the end of the Rue de Cluny* I saw a little girl of about fourteen playing at shuttlecock and battledore with one of her friends, both of them amusing the neighbours with their laughter and fun. It was a fine, warm evening and September was not yet out. In front of each door women were sitting gossiping, as they do in the provinces on feast days. First I observed the young girl, whose face was most expressive, and whose pose was just right for a painter. A scene to delight the eyes. I sought the reason for this conviviality in the heart of Paris, and noticed there was no way through at the end of the street so there wouldn’t be many passers-by. I recalled that Jean-Jacques Rousseau had lived around here and I looked for and found the Hotel Saint-Quentin; its dilapidated state gave me hopes I might find a cheap room there and I thought I’d take a look.

  ‘Entering a low-ceilinged room, I saw the regulation brass candlesticks complete with candles methodically laid out above each key and I was struck by the cleanliness of this room, that in most other lodging-houses was generally so neglected but was furnished here like a tableau de genre: the blue bed, the utensils, the furniture looked as pretty as if they had been on public display. The mistress of the house, a woman of about forty, with a careworn face and eyes seeming misted with tears, got to her feet and came over to me. I told her what I could afford to pay for my lodging, and without evincing any surprise, she searched for a key among all the others and led the way to the attic, where she showed me a room with a view of the roofs and the courtyards of neighbouring houses, from whose windows long poles protruded, laden with washing. This attic room was terrible: it was yellowing, rank, and smelt of poverty—and seemed to be just waiting for a scholar to inhabit it. The roof sloped steadily down and you could see the sky through the dislodged tiles. There was space for a bed, a table, a few chairs, and in the narrow angle under the roof I managed to put my piano. Unable to afford to furnish this cage that was worthy of the Plombs* in Venice, the poor woman had never succeeded in letting it. Having carefully exempted in the sale I’d recently had what were more or less my personal belongings, I soon came to an agreement with my landlady and moved in next day.

  �
�I lived in this aerial tomb for nearly three years, working ceaselessly day and night with such pleasure that studying seemed to me to be the finest occupation, the happiest way to spend one’s life. The calm and the silence necessary to a scholar have, like love, something gentle, intoxicating about them. The exercising of the mind, the search for ideas, the tranquil contemplations of science afford us ineffable delights, indescribable, like all that pertains to the intelligence, whose phenomena are invisible to our external senses. So we are forever obliged to explain the mysteries of the spirit by making material comparisons. The pleasure of swimming in a lake of pure water, surrounded by rocks, woods, and flowers, alone and caressed by a warm wind, might give those who know nothing about it a very imperfect image of the happiness I felt as my soul bathed in the glow of a mysterious light, when I listened to the confused and terrible voices of inspiration, when, from an unknown spring, images flowed into my quivering brain. To watch an idea appearing in the field of human abstractions like the sun in the morning—and which rises as the sun does, or which, even better, grows like a child, arrives at puberty, slowly becomes a man, is a joy superior to all other joys on this earth, or rather, is a divine pleasure. Study lends a kind of magic to everything around us.

  ‘The shabby desk I was writing on, the brown leather that covered it, my piano, bed, armchair, my bizarre wallpaper, and all my furniture came to life and became my humble friends, silent accomplices of my future. How many times have I confided my thoughts to them! Often, as I let my eyes travel over a crumbling piece of moulding, I came across a new argument, a striking proof of my thesis, or words that struck me as felicitous in rendering almost untranslatable ideas. By contemplating the objects around me, I found they had a distinctive face and character, they often spoke to me. If beyond the rooftops, a ray from the setting sun stole through my narrow window, they would take on colour, grow pale or brighten, become sadder or more cheerful, surprising me always with novel effects. These little occurrences in the solitary life, which the busy world does not notice, are the consolation of prisoners. For was I not captivated by an idea, imprisoned in a system, albeit sustained by the prospect of a life of glory? At each problem overcome, I kissed the gentle hands of the woman with the lovely eyes, elegant and rich, who would one day stroke my hair and say tenderly: “How you have suffered my poor angel!”

  ‘I had begun two important works. In a very few days a play would bring me renown, and give me an entrée into that society in which I wanted to play my part, enjoying the royal privileges of a man of genius. You all thought this masterpiece the first mistake of a young man leaving college, a real puerile foolishness. Your jokes clipped the wings of the fertile illusions that have not revived since that moment. You alone, my dear Émile, soothed the deep wounds others inflicted on my heart! You alone admired my Theory of the Will, the lengthy work for which I learned oriental languages, anatomy, physiology, and to which I devoted the greater part of my time. This work, if I am not mistaken, will complete the work of Mesmer, Lavater, Gall, Bichat,* and open up a new road to human knowledge. That is where my beautiful life ends, this daily sacrifice, this work of a silkworm unknown to the world, whose only reward is perhaps in the work itself. From the day my reason came of age until the day I finished working out my theory, I observed, wrote, and read incessantly and my life has been one long prescribed task.

  ‘Effeminate in my love of oriental indolence, in love with my dreams, a sensualist, I have always worked, refusing to taste the delights of Parisian life. A lover of good food, I have been abstemious. Liking both walking and sea-voyages, and wanting to travel to different countries, and still finding pleasure like a child in playing at ducks and drakes with pebbles on a pond, I have stayed permanently at my desk, pen in hand. Though I enjoy conversation, I went and listened in silence to the professors at public lectures in the national library and museum;* I slept on my solitary pallet like a monk of the order of St Benedict, and yet woman was my only chimera, a chimera I cherished and which continually eluded me! In short, my life has been a cruel antithesis, a perpetual lie. After all that, do you still dare to pass judgement upon men?

  ‘Sometimes my natural appetites revived, like a fire that has been a long time smouldering in the ash. In a sort of mirage or delirious fever, unable to take to bed all the women I desired, deprived of everything and living in an artist’s garret, I pictured myself surrounded by ravishing mistresses. I was driving through the streets of Paris, reclining on soft cushions in a dazzling horse and carriage! I was eaten up by vice, plunged headlong into debauchery, wanting it all, having it all, in short, drunk with fasting, like St Anthony in his temptation.* Luckily sleep in the end dispelled these all-consuming visions; next day science would summon me with a smile and I was its loyal servant. I imagine so-called women of virtue must frequently be prey to these whirlwinds of madness, desire, and passion which rise up in us despite ourselves; such dreams are not without their charm, for do they not resemble those conversations on winter evenings when you leave your fireside and travel to China? But what becomes of virtue during those delightful journeys where imagination overcomes all obstacles?

  ‘For my first ten months as a recluse I led the life of poverty and solitude I have been describing to you; I used to get my daily provisions in the morning, without anyone seeing me. I cleaned my own bedroom. I was master and servant at one and the same time … I diogenized* with unbelievable pride. But after that time, when my landlady and her daughter observed my customs and habits, studied my person, and realized how poor I was, perhaps because they were themselves extremely impoverished, an inevitable bond developed between us. Pauline, the charming creature whose artless, unobtrusive grace had in a sense brought me there, performed several services for me which I could not refuse. All misfortunes are related, they share the same language, the same generosity, the generosity of those who, possessing nothing, are liberal with their feelings, give of their time and of themselves.

  ‘Almost without me noticing Pauline took charge of my room, eager to wait on me, and her mother made no objection. I saw her mother mending my linen herself and blushing when I caught her in this charitable occupation. Having become their protégé despite myself, I accepted their services. In order to understand this singular affection you have to realize the extent to which my work was important to me, the tyranny of ideas and the instinctive repugnance that the man who lives by thinking feels for the trivia of the material world. How to resist the delicate attentions of Pauline, tiptoeing silently, when she brought me my frugal meals, noticing I had not eaten for seven or eight hours. With womanly grace and childlike ingenuousness she indicated with a smile that I should not take any notice of her. She was Ariel, slipping sylph-like under my roof, anticipating my every need. One evening, with a touching simplicity, Pauline told me her life-story. Her father was leader of a squadron of cavalry in the imperial grenadiers. At the passage of the Berezina* he had been taken prisoner by the Cossacks; later when Napoleon suggested an exchange, the Russian authorities unsuccessfully tried to locate him in Siberia. According to the other prisoners he had escaped, planning to go to India. From that time on Madame Gaudin, my landlady, had not been able to obtain any news of her husband, and the disasters of 1814 and 1815 occurred. Alone, without resources or help, she had decided to keep furnished lodgings to provide for her daughter. She was still hoping to see her husband again. Her worst sorrow was that she was leaving her daughter without an education, her Pauline, god-daughter of the Princess Borghese* and who would not have disappointed her imperial guardian in the fine future she planned for her. When Madame Gaudin confided this bitter sorrow, which was killing her, and told me in tones that broke my heart: “I should willingly give up the scrap of paper that makes Gaudin a baron of the Empire and our claim to the estate of Wittschnau, to know that Pauline was being educated at Saint-Denis”*—suddenly I had a thrill of inspiration, and in recognition of the care heaped upon me by these two women I had the notion of offering mys
elf to finish Pauline’s education. The candour with which these two women accepted my proposal equalled the simplicity that prompted it.

  ‘And thus I had many hours of recreation. The girl had the happiest of dispositions, she was such a quick learner that she soon became more adept than me at playing the piano. By accustoming herself to think aloud next to me she displayed the myriad qualities of a heart opening up to life like the petals of a flower gently unfolding in the sun. She listened attentively and willingly to me, letting her black velvety eyes, that seemed to be smiling, rest on me; and repeated her lessons in a sweet, loving voice, exhibiting a childlike joy whenever I was pleased with her. Her mother, daily more worried about having to preserve from every danger a young woman who, as she grew, was fulfilling all the promise of her childhood grace, watched with pleasure as she confined herself all day to study. My piano being the only one available to her, she took advantage of my absences to practise.

  ‘When I came in I would find Pauline in my room, dressed in the most modest fashion. But at the least movement her slight waist and pretty figure could be seen under the coarse material she wore. Like the heroine of “Donkey Skin”,* she had pretty little feet in her unbecoming shoes. But this treasury of charms, this girlish abundance, all this wealth of beauty was as if lost on me. I had vowed to consider Pauline as nothing but a sister, I would have hated to destroy her mother’s trust in me, I admired this charming girl as if she were a picture, a portrait of a dead mistress. In short, she was my child, my statue. Like a new Pygmalion, I wanted to make a marble figure out of a living, talking, feeling, fresh-faced virgin. I was very stern with her, but the more I made her suffer the effects of my schoolmaster’s authority, the more sweetly submissive she became.