The Human Comedy by Honoré de Balzac Read Free Book Online Page A

held over Paris and have not closed their doors.
    The salon of Mademoiselle des Touches, celebrated in Paris, is the last refuge for the lost art of French conversation, with its hidden profundity, its thousand digressions, its exquisite politesse. There you will still find manners of genuine grace, despite all the conventions of etiquette; you will find talk enjoyed with abandon, despite the innate reserve of the comme il faut set; above all, you will find noble and magnanimous ideas. There no one thinks of keeping his thoughts to himself with a mind to penning a drama, and in an anecdote no one sees a book to be written. In short, the hideous skeleton of a desperate, moribund literature never walks through the door when a felicitous jape is made or an interesting subject raised. The memory of one such evening has remained with me particularly, less for a tale told in confidence, by which the illustrious de Marsay laid bare one of the deepest recesses of the female heart, than for the observations his account inspired concerning the changes wrought in French womankind since the fateful July revolution.
    That evening, chance had assembled a small crowd whose indisputable talents have earned them reputations all across Europe. This is not an appeal to French national pride, for there were more than a few foreigners among us. But it was not in fact the most famous who shone brightest that evening. Ingenious repartee, subtle observations, sparkling gibes, pictures painted with brilliant clarity came thick and fast in a spontaneous, effervescent rush, offered up without arrogance or artifice, spoken with sincerity, and savored with delight. Above all, the guests shone by their refinement and their inventiveness, which were nothing short of artistic. You will find elegant manners elsewhere in Europe—you will find cordiality, bonhomie, sophistication—but only in Paris, in this salon, and in those of whom I’ve just spoken, does there flourish the special wit that gives all these social virtues a pleasing, multifaceted unity, a sort of fluvial momentum by which that profusion of musings, aphorisms, tales, and pages from history wend their way in an easy and untrammeled flow. Paris alone, the capital of taste, possesses the secret that makes of conversation a joust, in which every temperament is encapsulated in a quip, in which each has his say, all his experience condensed in a word, in which all find amusement, refreshment, and exercise. And only there, too, will you truly exchange your ideas; there you will not, like the dolphin in the fable , carry a monkey on your shoulders; there you will be understood, with no danger of wagering gold against pot metal. Secrets artfully betrayed, exchanges both light and deep, everything undulates, spins, changes luster and color with each passing sentence. Keen judgments and breathless narrations follow one upon the next. Every eye listens, every gesture is a question, every glance an answer. There, in a word, all is perspicuity and reflection. Never did the phenomenon of speech, to which, when carefully studied and skillfully wielded, an actor or storyteller owes his glory, cast so overpowering a spell on me. I was not the only one bewitched by this magic; it was a delicious evening for all of us. The conversation soon fell into an anecdotal mood, its precipitous course ferrying some curious confidences, several portraits, a thousand follies, making that delightful improvisation utterly untranslatable. But if these things are told with all their candor intact, all their natural forthrightness, all their illusory aimlessness, perhaps you will fully grasp the charm of a true French party, captured at the moment when the sweetest companionship makes everyone forget his own interests, his exclusive self-love, or, if you like, his pretensions.
    Toward two in the morning, our supper winding down, no one was left at the table but intimate friends, tempered by fifteen years’ frequentation, or