The World's Greatest Books - Volume 1 Part 25

"Not to see them--it is the agony of death!"

"You shall see them."

"Ah! my angels!"

And with these feeble words, Old Goriot sank back on the pillow and breathed his last.

Anastasie did come to the death-chamber, but too late. "I could not escape soon enough," she said to Rastignac. The student smiled sadly, and Madame de Restaud took her father's hand and kissed it, saying, "Forgive me, my father."

Goriot had a pauper's funeral. The aristocratic sons-in-law refused to pay the expenses of the burial. These were sc.r.a.ped together with difficulty by Eugene de Rastignac, the law student, and Bianchon, the medical student, who had nursed him with loving tenderness to the last.

At the graveside in Pere Lachaise, Eugene and Christophe were the only mourners; Bianchon's duties detained him at the hospital. When the body of Old Goriot was lowered into the earth, the clergy recited a short prayer--all that could be given for the student's money. The pall of night was falling; the mist struck a chill on Eugene's nerves, and when he took a last glance at the sh.e.l.l containing all that was mortal of his old friend, he buried the last tear of his young manhood--a tear drawn by a sacred emotion from a pure heart.

Eugene wandered to the most elevated part of the cemetery, whence he surveyed that portion of the city between the Place Vendome and the dome of the Invalides, where lives that world of fashion which he had hungered to penetrate. With bitterness he muttered: "Now there is relentless war between us." And as the first act of defiance which he had sworn against society, Rastignac went to dine with Madame Nucingen!

The Magic Skin

In no other work is the special quality of Balzac's genius displayed so completely as in "La Peau de Chagrin," which we render as "The Magic Skin." Published in 1831, it is the earliest in date of his veritable masterpieces, and the finest in conception. There is no novel more soberly true to life than this strange fairy tale. His hero, the Marquis de Valentin, is a young aristocrat of the Byronic type. He rejects the simple joys and stern realities of human existence; he wants more than life can give. He gets what he wants. He obtains a magic skin which enables him to fulfil his every wish. But in so doing he uses up his vital powers. Such is the idea which makes this fantastic story a profound philosophical study.

_I.--The Seal of Solomon_

On a dull morning towards the end of October, 1830, a tall, pale, and rather handsome young man came to the Pont Royal, and leaned over the bridge, and gazed with wild and yet resolute eyes at the swirling waters below. Just as he was preparing to leap down, a ragged old woman pa.s.sed by.

"Wretched weather for drowning oneself, isn't it?" she said, with a grin. "How cold and dirty the Seine looks!"

The young man turned and smiled at her in the delirium of his courage.

Then, suddenly he shuddered. On a shed by the Tuileries he saw, written in large letters: "Help for the drowned." He foresaw the whole thing. A boat would put off to the rescue. If the rowers did not smash his skull in with their oars as he came to the surface, he would be taken to the shed and revived. If he were dead, a crowd would collect, newspaper men would come; his body would be recognised; and the Press would publish the news of the suicide of Raphael de Valentin. No! He would wait till nightfall, and then in a decent, private manner bequeath an unrecognizable corpse to a world that had disregarded his genius.

With the air of a wealthy man of leisure sauntering about the streets to kill time, the young marquis strolled down the Quai Voltaire, and followed the line of shops, looking listlessly at every window. But as he thought of the fate awaiting him at nightfall, men and houses swam in a mist before his eyes. To recover himself he entered a curiosity shop.

"If you care to go through our galleries," said the red-haired shop-boy, "you will find something worth looking at."

Raphael climbed up a dark staircase lined with mummies, Indian idols, stuffed crocodiles, and goggle-eyed monsters. They all seemed to grin at him as he pa.s.sed. Haunted by these strange shapes belonging to the borderland between life and death, he walked in a kind of dream through a series of long, dimly lighted galleries, in which was piled, in mad confusion, the work of every age and every clime. Here was a lovely statue by Michael Angelo, from which dangled the scalp of a Red Indian.

There, cold and impa.s.sive, was the lord of the ancient world, the Emperor Augustus, with a modern air-pump sticking in his eye. The walls were hung with priceless pictures, which were half-hidden by grimacing skeletons, rude wooden idols with horrible features, tall suits of gleaming armour, and figures of Egyptian deities, with the bodies of men and heads of animals. The place was a kitchen of all the arts and religions and interests of mankind.

This extraordinary confusion was rendered still more bizarre by the dim cross-lights that played upon everything. Raphael's eyes grew weary with gazing, and his mind was oppressed by the spectacle of the ruined splendours of thousands of years of human life. A fever born of hunger and exhaustion possessed him. The pictures appeared to light up, the statues seemed to move. Everything danced and swayed around him. Then a horrible Chinese monster advanced upon him with menacing eyes from the other side of the room, and he swooned away in terror.

When he came to, his eyes were dazzled by a flood or radiance streaming from a circle of crimson light. Before him, holding a bright red lamp, was a frail, white-haired, extraordinary man, clad in a long robe of black velvet. His body was wasted by extreme old age. His skin was like wrinkled parchment, and his lips were so thin and colourless that it was hardly possible to discern on his ivory-white face the line made by his mouth. But his eyes were marvellous. They were calm, clear and searching, and they glowed with the light and freshness of youth.

"So you have been looking over my collection," the old man said. "Do you wish to buy anything?"

"Buy?" said Raphael, with a strange smile. "I am utterly penniless. I have been examining your treasures just to while away the time till I could drown myself quietly and secretly at night. You will not grudge this last pleasure to a poet and man of learning, will you?"

"Penniless?" said the old man. "But you do not want to die because you are penniless! A young, handsome, intellectual lad like you could pick up a living somehow. What is it? Some woman, eh? Now let me help----"

"I want no help or advice or consolation," said Raphael furiously.

"And I will give you none," said the old man. "But as you are resolved to die, will you do something for me. I want to get rid of this."

He held the lamp up the wall, and showed Raphael a piece of very old s.h.a.green, about the size of a fox's skin.

"Ah!" said Raphael. "A wild a.s.s's skin engraved with Sanscrit characters. Why, here's the mark that some of the Eastern races call the Seal of Solomon!"

"You are truly a man of learning," said the strange old merchant, his breath coming in quick pants through his nostrils. "No doubt you can read the inscription."

"I should translate it thus," said Raphael, fixing his eyes upon the skin.

POSSESSING ME THOU POSSESSEST EVERYTHING. YET I POSSESS THEE. SO G.o.d HAS WILLED IT. WISH, AND THY WISHES SHALL BE ACCOMPLISHED. BUT MEASURE THE WISHES ACCORDING TO THY LIFE. HERE IT IS. I SHALL SHRINK WITH EACH WISH, AND SO SHALL THY LIFE, WILT THOU TAKE ME?

TAKE ME! G.o.d WILL HEAR THEE. AMEN.

"Is it a joke or a mystery?"

"I do not know," said the old man. "I have offered the magic skin to many men. They laughed at it; but none would take it. I am like them. I doubt its power, but will not put it to the test."

"What!" said Raphael. "You have never formed a wish all the time you had it?"

"No!" said the old man. "I have discovered the great secret of human life. Look! I am a hundred and two years old. Do you know why men die?

Because they use up the energy of life by wishing to do things and doing them. I am content to know things. My days have been spent wandering quietly over all the earth in the calm acquisition of knowledge. All desire, all l.u.s.t after power are dead within me. So this skin, which I picked up in India, has never shrunk an inch since it came into my possession."

"You have never lived!" cried Raphael, turning from the old man, and seizing the skin. "Yes, I will take you. Now for a test. I am starving.

Set before me a splendid banquet. Let me have as guests all the wildest, gayest, wittiest minds of young France. And women? Oh, the prettiest, wickedest women of the town! Wine, wit and women!"

A roar of laughter came from the old man. It resounded in the ears of Raphael like the laughter of a fiend from h.e.l.l.

"Do you think my floors are going to open, and tables, waiters, and guests pop up before your eyes?" he said. "No! Your first wish is mean and vulgar; but it will be fulfilled in a natural manner. You wanted to die, eh? Your suicide is only postponed."

Raphael put the skin in his pocket, and abruptly left, saying, "You have never lived. I wish you knew what love was."

He heard the old man groan strangely, but without listening to his reproaches he rushed out of the shop, and in the street ran full tilt up against three young men.

"Brute! a.s.s! Idiot! Why, it's Raphael!" they cried. "You must come. Talk about a Roman orgy I We've been all over Paris looking, for you. A gorgeous feed. And all the girls from the Opera! The ancient Romans aren't in it."

"One at a time," said Raphael. "Now, Emile, just tell me what are you all shouting about?"

"Do you know Taillefer, the wealthy banker?" said Emile. "He is founding a newspaper. All the talent of young France is to be enlisted. You're invited to the inaugural festival to-night at the Rue Joubert. The ballot girls of the Opera are coming. Oh, Taillefer's doing the thing in style!"

Arm linked in arm, the four friends made their way to Taillefer's mansion, and there, in a large room brilliantly set out, they were welcomed by all the younger men of note in Paris. For some time Raphael felt ill at ease. He was surprised by the natural manner in which his wish had suddenly been accomplished. He took the magic skin out of his pocket, and looked at it. Magic? What man could believe nowadays in magic? But, nevertheless, he marvelled at the accidents of human life.

_II--A Fight Against Fate_

Although the banquet which he had desired was now set before him, Raphael was still very moody. Deaf to the loud, wild merriment of his companions, he thought sadly of the misfortune which had driven him that morning to the brink of the grave. Many n.o.blemen find it difficult to exist in Paris on an income of several thousand pounds. The young Marquis de Valentin had lived there very happily on 12 a year. In 1826, his father, who had lost his wealth and lands in the Revolution, had died, leaving him 40. Taking a garret in the Rue des Cordiers, he had set about earning his living with his pen, and for three years he had laboured at a great work on "The Theory of the Will." He never went into society, but found a pleasant distraction from his studies in educating the daughter of his landlady.