The Girl With the Golden Eyes by Honoré de Balzac, Charlotte Mandell Read Free Book Online Page A

surrounded by lackeys, an old joker even more savage and surly than the guard. If someone gets through the carriage entrance, my majordomo emerges, makes you wait under the peristyle, and puts you through an interrogation as if you were a criminal. That has happened to me, an ordinary mailman. He took me for a
seminary
in disguise,” he said, laughing at his own play on the word ‘emissary.’ “As to other people, don’t even hope to get anything out of them, I think they’re mute, no one in the neighborhood has heard a word out of them; I don’t know what kind of wages they’re given not to speak and not to drink anything; the fact is they’re unapproachable, either because they’re afraid of being shot, or because they have an enormous amount to lose if they’re indiscreet. If your master loves Mlle.Paquita enough to surmount all these obstacles, he will certainly not triumph over Doña Concha Marialva, the duenna who is her companion, and who would put her under her skirts rather than leave her. These two women seem as if they’re sewn together.”
    “What you tell me, worthy mailman,” Laurent said after tasting the wine, “confirms what I’ve just learned. On my word as an honest man, I thought they were making fun of me. The greengrocer across the street told me that at night, in the gardens, they let loose some dogs whose food is hung from posts, so that they can’t reach it. So these cursed animals think that any people who come in are after their food, and they’d tear them to pieces. You might suggest I throw them lumps of meat, but apparently they’re raised to eat only from the concierge’s hand.”
    “The porter of M. le Baron de Nucingen, whose garden is next door to that of the San-Réal mansion, told me the exact same thing,” the mailman said.
    “Oh good, my master knows him,” Laurent told himself. “Did you know,” he resumed, keeping a careful eye on the mailman, “that I belong to a master who is a proud man, and if he got it into his head to kiss the soles of an empress’s feet, that would inevitably come to pass? If he needed you, which I hope for your sake is the case, since he’s generous, could we count on you?”
    “Indeed, Monsieur Laurent. My name is Moinot. My name is written exactly the same as
moineau
, sparrow: M-o-i-n-o-t.”
    “I see,” said Laurent.
    “I live on the Rue des Trois-Frères, No. 11, on the sixth floor,” Moinot went on. “I have a wife and four children. If what you want from me doesn’t go beyond the possibilities of conscience and my administrative duties—you understand!—I am yours to command.”
    “You are a good man,” Laurent said to him as he shook his hand.
    “Paquita Valdès must be the mistress of the Marquis de San-Réal, a friend of King Ferdinand’s. Only an eighty-year-old Spanish cadaver is capable of taking such precautions,” Henri said when his valet de chambre had told him the results of his researches.
    “Monsieur,” Laurent said to him, “unless you arrive there in a balloon, no one can get into that mansion.”
    “How stupid you are! Does one need to enter the mansion to have Paquita, when Paquita can easily leave it?”
    “But, Monsieur, what about the duenna?”
    “We can confine her to her room for a few days, your duenna.”
    “So then, we’ll have Paquita!” Laurent said, rubbing his hands.
    “Idiot!” Henri continued. “I’ll condemn you to the Concha if you push insolence to the point of talking that way about a woman before I’ve had her. Turn your mind to dressing me, I’m going out.”
    Henri remained for a moment plunged in joyous thought. We’ll say this in praise of women: He won all those he deigned to desire. And what could one think of a woman without a lover who could resist a young man armed with beauty, which is the body’s spirit, armed with spirit, which is the soul’s grace, armed with moral force and wealth, which are the only two real powers? But by triumphing so easily,