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

de Marsay was bound to become bored with his triumphs, so that for about two years he was often bored. Plunging to the depths of sensual delights, he brought back more pebbles than pearls. Thus he had come to the point, as sovereigns do, of begging Fortune for some obstacle to conquer, some undertaking that asked for the deployment of his idling moral and physical strength. Although Paquita Valdès presented him with the marvelous assembly of perfections he had not yet enjoyed in detail, the attraction of passion was almost nil for him. A constant satiety had weakened the sentiment of love in his heart. Like the old and the blasé, he had nothing left but extravagant whims, ruinous tastes, and fantasies that, once satisfied, left him with no good memoriesin his heart. In young people, love is the finest of sentiments, it makes life blossom in the soul, by its sun-like power it spreads the fairest inspirations and their great thoughts: The beginnings of any affair have a delicious taste. In men, love becomes a passion: Force leads to abuse. In old men, it turns to vice: Impotence leads to excess. Henri was at once an old man, a man, and a young man. For him to have the emotions of true love, he needed someone like Lovelace’s Clarissa Harlowe. Without the magical reflection of such an elusive pearl, he could experience nothing more than either passions sharpened by some Parisian vanity, or wagers made with himself to cause some woman to sink to a degree of corruption, or adventures that stimulated his curiosity. The report of Laurent, his valet, had just given an enormous value to the Girl with the Golden Eyes. It was a matter of waging battle with some secret enemy, who seemed as dangerous as he was cunning; to earn victory, all the forces at Henri’s disposal would be needed. He was going to play the ancient eternal comedy that will always be new, whose characters are an old man, a young lady, and a lover: Don Hijos, Paquita, de Marsay. Though Laurent was as good as Figaro, the duenna seemed incorruptible. Thus, the real-life play was more formidably developed by chance than it had ever been by any dramatic author! But isn’t Chance also a person of genius?
    “We’ll have to play a close game,” Henri told himself.
    “Well, then,” Paul de Manerville said to him as he came in, “where are we now? I’ve come to lunch with you.”
    “Fine,” Henri said. “You won’t be shocked if I complete my toilette in front of you?”
    “What a funny thought!”
    “We’re borrowing so many things from the English nowadays that we might turn into hypocrites and prudes just like them,” Henri said.
    Laurent had brought so many implements to his master, so many different articles, and such pretty ones, that Paul couldn’t prevent himself from exclaiming: “What, is your toilette going to take two hours?”
    “Not at all,” Henri said, “two and a half hours.”
    “Well, since we’re alone and we say anything we like to each other, explain to me why such a superior man as yourself—for you are superior—affects this exaggerated vanity, which must not be natural in you. Why spend two and a half hours grooming yourself, when it’s enough to take a fifteen-minute bath, run a comb through your hair, and get dressed? Come now, tell me your system.”
    “I’d have to like you a lot, you fat oaf, to confide such high thoughts to you,” the young man said, who at that moment was having his feet scrubbed with a soft brush lathered with English soap.
    “But I’ve vowed the most sincere attachment to you,” Paul de Manerville replied, “and I like you so much that I think you’re even better than I am!”
    “You must have noticed, if you’re still capable of observing a moral fact, that women like vain men,” de Marsay continued, responding to Paul’s declaration with a meaningful glance. “Do you know why women like vain men? My friend, conceited men are the only men who take care of themselves. Now, doesn’t