The Magic Skin by Honoré de Balzac (best ebook reader for laptop .txt) 📕

my wardrobe, linked his arm in mine, and inquired into my affairs with a quite brotherly interest. Caught by his engaging manner, I gave him a brief account of my life and hopes; he began to laugh, and treated me as a mixture of a man of genius and a fool. His Gascon accent and knowledge of the world, the easy life his clever management procured for him, all produced an irresistible effect upon me. I should die an unrecognized failure in a hospital, Rastignac said, and be buried in a pauper's grave. He talked of charlatanism. Every man of genius was a charlatan, he plainly showed me in that pleasant way of his that makes him so fascinating. He insisted that I must be out of my senses, and would be my own death, if I lived on alone in the Rue des Cordiers. According to him, I ought to go into society, to accustom people to the sound of my name, and to rid myself of the simple title of 'monsieur' which sits but ill on a great man in his lifetime.

"'Those who know no better,' he cried, 'call this sort of business _scheming_, and moral people condemn it for a "dissipated life." We need not stop to look at what people think, but see the results. You work, you say? Very good, but nothing will ever come of that. Now, I am ready for anything and fit for nothing. As lazy as a lobster? Very likely, but I succeed everywhere. I go out into society, I push myself forward, the others make way before me; I brag and am believed; I incur debts which somebody else pays! Dissipation, dear boy, is a methodical policy. The life of a man who deliberately runs through his fortune often becomes a business speculation; his friends, his pleasures, patrons, and acquaintances are his capital. Suppose a merchant runs a risk of a million, for twenty years he can neither sleep, eat, nor amuse himself, he is brooding over his million, it makes him run about all over Europe; he worries himself, goes to the devil in every way that man has invented. Then comes a liquidation, such as I have seen myself, which very often leaves him penniless and without a reputation or a friend. The spendthrift, on the other hand, takes life as a serious game and sees his horses run. He loses his capital, perhaps, but he stands a chance of being nominated Receiver-General, of making a wealthy marriage, or of an appointment of attache to a minister or ambassador; and he has his friends left and his name, and he never wants money. He knows the standing of everybody, and uses every one for his own benefit. Is this logical, or am I a madman after all? Haven't you there all the moral of the comedy that goes on every day in this world?... Your work is completed' he went on after a pause; 'you are immensely clever! Well, you have only arrived at my starting-point. Now, you had better look after its success yourself; it is the surest way. You will make allies in every clique, and secure applause beforehand. I mean to go halves in your glory myself; I shall be the jeweler who set the diamonds in your crown. Come here to-morrow evening, by way of a beginning. I will introduce you to a house where all Paris goes, all OUR Paris, that is--the Paris of exquisites, millionaires, celebrities, all the folk who talk gold like Chrysostom. When they have taken up a book, that book becomes the fashion; and if it is something really good for once, they will have declared it to be a work of genius without knowing it. If you have any sense, my dear fellow, you will ensure the success of your "Theory," by a better understanding of the theory of success. To-morrow evening you shall go to see that queen of the moment--the beautiful Countess Foedora....'

"'I have never heard of her....'

"'You Hottentot!' laughed Rastignac; 'you do not know Foedora? A great match with an income of nearly eighty thousand livres, who has taken a fancy to nobody, or else no one has taken a fancy to her. A sort of feminine enigma, a half Russian Parisienne, or a half Parisian Russian. All the romantic productions that never get published are brought out at her house; she is the handsomest woman in Paris, and the most gracious! You are not even a Hottentot; you are something between the Hottentot and the beast.... Good-bye till to-morrow.'

"He swung round on his heel and made off without waiting for my answer. It never occurred to him that a reasoning being could refuse an introduction to Foedora. How can the fascination of a name be explained? FOEDORA haunted me like some evil thought, with which you seek to come to terms. A voice said in me, 'You are going to see Foedora!' In vain I reasoned with that voice, saying that it lied to me; all my arguments were defeated by the name 'Foedora.' Was not the name, and even the woman herself, the symbol of all my desires, and the object of my life?

"The name called up recollections of the conventional glitter of the world, the upper world of Paris with its brilliant fetes and the tinsel of its vanities. The woman brought before me all the problems of passion on which my mind continually ran. Perhaps it was neither the woman nor the name, but my own propensities, that sprang up within me and tempted me afresh. Here was the Countess Foedora, rich and loveless, proof against the temptations of Paris; was not this woman the very incarnation of my hopes and visions? I fashioned her for myself, drew her in fancy, and dreamed of her. I could not sleep that night; I became her lover; I overbrimmed a few hours with a whole lifetime--a lover's lifetime; the experience of its prolific delights burned me.

"The next day I could not bear the tortures of delay; I borrowed a novel, and spent the whole day over it, so that I could not possibly think nor keep account of the time till night. Foedora's name echoed through me even as I read, but only as a distant sound; though it could be heard, it was not troublesome. Fortunately, I owned a fairly creditable black coat and a white waistcoat; of all my fortune there now remained abut thirty francs, which I had distributed about among my clothes and in my drawers, so as to erect between my whims and the spending of a five-franc piece a thorny barrier of search, and an adventurous peregrination round my room. While I as dressing, I dived about for my money in an ocean of papers. This scarcity of specie will give you some idea of the value of that squandered upon gloves and cab-hire; a month's bread disappeared at one fell swoop. Alas! money is always forthcoming for our caprices; we only grudge the cost of things that are useful or necessary. We recklessly fling gold to an opera-dancer, and haggle with a tradesman whose hungry family must wait for the settlement of our bill. How many men are there that wear a coat that cost a hundred francs, and carry a diamond in the head of their cane, and dine for twenty-five SOUS for all that! It seems as though we could never pay enough for the pleasures of vanity.

"Rastignac, punctual to his appointment, smiled at the transformation, and joked about it. On the way he gave me benevolent advice as to my conduct with the countess; he described her as mean, vain, and suspicious; but though mean, she was ostentatious, her vanity was transparent, and her mistrust good-humored.

"'You know I am pledged,' he said, 'and what I should lose, too, if I tried a change in love. So my observation of Foedora has been quite cool and disinterested, and my remarks must have some truth in them. I was looking to your future when I thought of introducing you to her; so mind very carefully what I am about to say. She has a terrible memory. She is clever enough to drive a diplomatist wild; she would know it at once if he spoke the truth. Between ourselves, I fancy that her marriage was not recognized by the Emperor, for the Russian ambassador began to smile when I spoke of her; he does not receive her either, and only bows very coolly if he meets her in the Bois. For all that, she is in Madame de Serizy's set, and visits Mesdames de Nucingen and de Restaud. There is no cloud over her here in France; the Duchesse de Carigliano, the most-strait-laced marechale in the whole Bonapartist coterie, often goes to spend the summer with her at her country house. Plenty of young fops, sons of peers of France, have offered her a title in exchange for her fortune, and she has politely declined them all. Her susceptibilities, maybe, are not to be touched by anything less than a count. Aren't you a marquis? Go ahead if you fancy her. This is what you may call receiving your instructions.'

"His raillery made me think that Rastignac wished to joke and excite my curiosity, so that I was in a paroxysm of my extemporized passion by the time that we stopped before a peristyle full of flowers. My heart beat and my color rose as we went up the great carpeted staircase, and I noticed about me all the studied refinements of English comfort; I was infatuatedly bourgeois; I forgot my origin and all my personal and family pride. Alas! I had but just left a garret, after three years of poverty, and I could not just then set the treasures there acquired above such trifles as these. Nor could I rightly estimate the worth of the vast intellectual capital which turns to riches at the moment when opportunity comes within our reach, opportunity that does not overwhelm, because study has prepared us for the struggles of public life.

"I found a woman of about twenty-two years of age; she was of average height, was dressed in white, and held a feather fire-screen in her hand; a group of men stood around her. She rose at the sight of Rastignac, and came towards us with a gracious smile and a musically-uttered compliment, prepared no doubt beforehand, for me. Our friend had spoken of me as a rising man, and his clever way of making the most of me had procured me this flattering reception. I was confused by the attention that every one paid to me; but Rastignac had luckily mentioned my modesty. I was brought in contact with scholars, men of letters, ex-ministers, and peers of France. The conversation, interrupted a while by my coming, was resumed. I took courage, feeling that I had a reputation to maintain, and without abusing my privilege, I spoke when it fell to me to speak, trying to state the questions at issue in words more or less profound, witty or trenchant, and I made a certain sensation. Rastignac was a prophet for the thousandth time in his life. As soon as the gathering was large enough to restore freedom to individuals, he took my arm, and we went round the rooms.

"'Don't look as if you were too much struck by the princess,' he said, 'or she will guess your object in coming to visit her.'

"The rooms were furnished in excellent taste. Each apartment had a character of its own, as in wealthy English houses; and the silken hangings, the style of the furniture, and the ornaments, even the most trifling, were all subordinated to the original idea. In a gothic boudoir the doors were concealed by