The Wild Ass's Skin by Honoré de Balzac
In spite of their habit of vice, many of the girls remembered how they used to wake up in the old days when they saw, innocent and pure, through their casements entwined with roses and honeysuckle, an unspoilt countryside made enchanting by the joyous trills of the nightingale, mistily lit by the gleams of dawn and decorated with the fantasies of the morning dew.
Others imagined the family dinner-table around which children and fathers laughed innocently together, where everything radiated an indefinable charm, where the food was as unsophisticated as their hearts. An artist thought of the peace of his studio, of his chaste statue, of the graceful model awaiting him. A young man, remembering the lawsuit on which the destiny of a family depended, thought of the important settlement that demanded his presence. A scientist longed for his study where a noble work was calling him. Almost all were ashamed of their behaviour.
At that moment Émile, fresh and rosy-faced like the smartest of salesmen in a fashion shop, appeared, smiling.
‘You are uglier than a lot of debt-collectors,’ he cried. ‘You won’t be able to do anything today, the day is lost. We might as well eat.’
At these words, Taillefer left to give his orders. The women languidly left to fix their hair and faces in front of the mirrors. They all pulled themselves together. The most vicious among them preached to the more well-behaved. The courtesans made fun of those who didn’t have the stomach to carry on with this strenuous banquet. In a moment these ghosts came back to life, formed little groups, smilingly asked each other questions. A few deft, nimble footmen promptly put the furniture and everything else back in its place. A splendid breakfast was served. The guests then piled into the dining-room. There, although everything bore the indelible marks of the excesses of the day before, at least there were traces of life and thought, as there are in the last convulsions of a dying man. Rather like the processions on Shrove Tuesday, the saturnalia were laid to rest by mummers tired of their dancing, sated with drunkenness, who wished to prove the impotence of pleasure itself rather than admit their own.
As soon as this intrepid assembly sat down round the capitalist’s table, Cardot, who the previous day had prudently disappeared after dinner, to conclude his orgy in the marital bed, showed his officious face, on which a gentle smile was playing. He seemed to have sniffed a legacy in the offing—to share out, to inventorize, to engross, a succession full of fees, as juicy as the quivering fillet into which the host was now plunging his knife.
‘Oh oh, we are going to have a notarized breakfast,’ cried de Cursy.
‘You are just in time to assess and endorse all these documents,’ said the banker, showing him the food laid out before them.
‘There’s no will to make, but as for a contract of marriage—perhaps!’ said the scientist, who had married well, for the first time, a year ago.
‘Oh! Oh!’
‘Ah! Ah!’
‘One moment,’ replied Cardot, deafened by the chorus of bad jokes. ‘I have come here for something important. I am bringing six millions to one of you.’ There was a deep silence. ‘Monsieur,’ he said, addressing Raphael, who at that moment was unceremoniously wiping his eyes with a corner of his napkin. ‘Was Madame your mother not a Mademoiselle O’Flaherty?’
‘She was, yes,’ replied Raphael, rather mechanically, ‘Barbara-Maria.’
‘Have you your birth certificate and that of Madame de Valentin?’
‘I think so.’
‘Well then, Monsieur, you are the sole and only inheritor of Major O’Flaherty who died in August 1828 in Calcutta.’
‘It’s an “incalcuttable” fortune!’ quipped the trenchant critic.
‘The Major having in his will disposed of several sums of money to a few public bodies, his estate was reclaimed from the India Company by the French government,’ went on the lawyer. ‘At present it is accessible and able to be claimed. I had been searching vainly for the possible heirs of Mademoiselle Barbara-Maria O’Flaherty for the last fortnight, when yesterday at table …’
At that moment Raphael got up with the abrupt movement of a man who has received a sudden blow. There was a sort of silent acclamation, the first reaction of the guests was provoked by an unspoken envy; all eyes turned towards him like so many flames. Then a murmur started up, like that of the groundlings becoming angry, like the murmurings of a riot, getting louder, and everyone said something to acknowledge this huge fortune brought by the notary. Raphael, quite restored to his senses by the prompt obedience of fate, immediately spread out on the table the napkin with which he had measured the ass’s skin. Paying no attention to what was being said, he placed the talisman over it and shivered violently when he saw a small gap between the edge of the skin and the outline traced on the linen.
‘Why, what’s the matter with him?’ cried Taillefer. ‘He’s made an easy fortune.’
‘Hold him up, Châtillon,’* said Bixiou to Émile, ‘his delight will kill him.’
A horrible pallor made all the muscles in the drawn face of this new heir stand out; his features contracted, the skin over his bones turned white, the hollows in his cheeks grew dark, and the eyes became fixed. DEATH was staring him in the face. This splendid banquet, in the midst of faded courtesans, sated faces, this death-agony of pleasure, was a living image of his life. Raphael looked three times at the talisman which had room and to spare inside the merciless lines imprinted on the napkin; he tried not to believe it. But a clear presentiment annulled his disbelief. The world belonged to him, he could do anything, but no longer wanted anything. Like a traveller in the desert, he had a small amount of water to slake his thirst and had to measure out his life by the number of gulps he took. He saw how many days of his life each wish would cost him. Then he believed in the wild ass’s skin, he listened to his own breathing, he felt ill already, he wondered: ‘Could I be tubercular? Did my mother not die of a lung disease?’
‘Oh Raphael, you are going to have such a good time! What will you give me?’ asked Aquilina.
‘Let’s drink to the death of his uncle, Major Martin O’Flaherty! There’s a man for you!’
‘He will be a peer of France.’
‘Bah, what’s a peer of France after July?’* said the critic.
‘Will you have a box at the Bouffons?’
‘I hope you will treat us all,’ said Bixiou.
‘A man like him knows how to do things in style,’ said Émile.
Not one word of the cheery remarks of this jolly assembly could Valentin comprehend. He was thinking in a vague sort of way of the humdrum, unassuming life of a Breton peasant, with many children to look after, ploughing his field, eating buckwheat bread, drinking cider out of its jug, believing in the Virgin Mary and in the king, taking Communion at Easter, dancing on Sundays on the village green and not understanding the priest’s sermon. The spectacle before him at that moment—the gilded wainscotting, the courtesans, the meal, the luxury—all seized him by the throat and made him choke.
‘Do you want some asparagus?’ cried the banker.
‘I want nothing,’ thundered Raphael.
‘Bravo,’ replied Taillefer. ‘You understand what it means to own a fortune. One has the right to be impertinent. You are one of us! Messieurs, let us drink to the power of gold. Monsieur de Valentin, now a millionaire six times over, has assumed power. He is king, he is all-powerful, he is above everything, as are all rich people. For him henceforth, ALL FRENCHMEN ARE EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW is a lie inscribed at the head of the Charter.* He will not obey the Law, the Law will obey him. There is no scaffold, no executioner for millionaires!’
‘No,’ replied Raphael, ‘they are their own executioners!’
‘Another prejudice!’ cried the banker.
‘Let’s have a drink,’ said Raphael, putting the talisman in his pocket.
‘What are you doing there?’ said Émile, catching hold of his hand. ‘Gentlemen,’ he added, addressing the assembled guests, who were more than a little astonished at Raphael’s behaviour,
‘Ah my darling Raphael, I want a necklace of pearls,’ cried Euphrasie.
‘If he has any gratitude, he’ll give me two carriages with fine fast horses,’ said Aquilina.
‘Wish me a hundred thousand francs a year!’
‘Cashmere shawls!’
‘Pay my debts!’
‘Send my big skinflint of an uncle an apoplexy!’
‘Raphael, I’ll settle for a hundred thousand francs a year.’
‘There are a tidy few donations here!’ cried the notary.
‘He ought to be able to cure me of the gout.’
‘Lower the cost of bonds,’ cried the banker.
All these sentences were fired off like the shower that ends a firework display. These frantic requests were perhaps made more in earnest than in jest.
‘My dear friend,’ said Émile gravely, ‘I’ll be happy with two hundred thousand francs a year. Be a good fellow and arrange it.’
‘Émile,’ said Raphael, ‘do you not realize what it would cost me?’
‘What a silly excuse!’ cried the poet. ‘Should we not sacrifice ourselves for our friends?’
‘I am almost tempted to wish for your deaths, all of you,’ replied Valentin, glaring blackly and penetratingly at the guests.
‘The dying are dreadfully cruel,’ said Émile with a laugh. ‘You are rich,’ he added seriously, ‘well, I don’t give you two months before you become disgustingly selfish. You are already stupid, you don’t understand a joke. All you need now is to believe in your wild ass’s skin …’
Raphael, afraid of the mockery of the assembled company, kept quiet, drank immoderately till he was drunk and for a while managed to forget its fateful power.
THE DEATH AGONY
ONE day at the beginning of December* an old man of seventy or more was walking, despite the rain, along the Rue de Varenne, peering up as he reached the door of each big house, with the simplicity of a child and the absorbed air of a philosopher, searching for the address of Monsieur le Marquis Raphael de Valentin. On his face, framed by his long, straggly grey hair as dry as a leaf of old parchment shrivelling up in the flames, were the signs of an intense sorrow doing battle with a despotic nature. If a painter had encountered this strange person, so thin and bony in his black garments, he would surely have gone back to his studio and drawn him on his sketch-pad, inscribing below the portrait: ‘Classical Poet in search of a Rhyme.’ Checking the number he had been given, this living image of Rollin* knocked timidly at the door of a magnificent mansion.
‘Is Monsieur Raphael at home?’ he asked of the man in livery who answered the door.
‘Monsieur le Marquis is not at home to anyone,’ replied the servant, swallowing an enormous sop of bread that he retrieved from a large bowl of coffee.
‘But his carriage is there,’ the elderly stranger replied, pointing to a superb horse and carriage waiting under the wooden awning, which was fashioned like a canvas tent and which sheltered the steps. ‘He’ll be coming out soon. I’ll wait.’
‘My dear fellow, you could be there till tomorrow morning,’ the doorman replied. ‘Monsieur always has a carriage waiting. But please leave. I’d lose six hundred francs if I ever allowed a stranger into the house without orders to do so.’
At that moment an old man of considerable stature whose costume resembled that of an usher in some ministerial office emerged from the hallway and hurried down the steps, looking at this bewildered old gentleman who was asking to see his master.
‘Anyway, here’s Monsieur Jonathas. Ask him.’
The two old gentlemen, drawn to one another by sympathy or mutual curiosity, met in the centre of the vast courtyard at a spot where a few tufts of grass were pushing up between the paving-stones. An eerie silence reigned in this house. Seeing Jonathas, you felt the urge to uncover the mystery that was written on his features, and which pervaded everything, down to the last detail, in this gloomy house.
Raphael’s first care on receiving the enormous inheritance from his uncle had been to discover the whereabouts of his old faithful servant, whose affection he could rely on. Jonathas cried with joy on seeing his young master again, for he thought he had said goodbye to him for ever; but nothing equalled his happiness when the Marquis promoted him to the prestigious position of steward. Old Jonathas became an intermediary power between Raphael and the outside world. With absolute control of his master’s fortune, the blind agent of an unknown plan, he was like a sixth sense through which normal human sensations filtered through to Raphael.
‘Monsieur, I should like to speak to Raphael,’ said the old man to Jonathas, climbing up a couple of steps to shelter from the rain.
‘Speak to Monsieur le Marquis!’ cried the other. ‘Why, he hardly speaks a word to me, and I am his foster-father.’
‘But I am his foster-father too!’ cried the old man. ‘Your wife may have suckled him, but I have taught him to suck the milk of the Muses. He is my nursling, my child, my carus alumnus!* I have trained his mind, cultivated his understanding, developed his talents, and dare I say it, to my own honour and glory. For is he not one of the most remarkable men of our age? I taught him in the sixth and third class as well as in rhetoric.* I am his teacher.’
‘Aha, so you are Monsieur Porriquet?’
‘The same. But Monsieur …’
‘Hush,’ said Jonathas to two kitchen-boys whose voices shattered the claustral silence in which the house was entombed.
‘Is Monsieur the Marquis then suffering from some illness?’ asked the teacher.
‘My dear Monsieur,’ replied Jonathas, ‘God alone knows what has got into my master. Do you realize there is not another house like ours in the whole of Paris? Do you understand? Not another house. No, indeed not. Monsieur le Marquis bought this house, which used to belong to a duke and peer. He spent three hundred thousand francs on its furnishings. Three hundred thousand francs, quite a sum, wouldn’t you say? But every room in the house is a real marvel. “Well,” I said to myself when I saw such magnificence, “that’s just like his late father! The young Marquis will be receiving the Town and the Court!” But nothing of the sort. Monsieur will see nobody. He leads a strange life, Monsieur Porriquet, do you understand? An unconciliable life. Monsieur rises every day at the same time. He lets me and nobody else, do you see, enter his room. I go in at seven, summer or winter. An odd arrangement.
‘When I go in, I say “Monsieur le Marquis, you must wake up and get dressed.” And he wakes up and gets dressed. I have to give him his dressing-gown, always the same style and the same material. I have to replace it when it’s worn out, only to save him having to ask for another. The fact is, he has a thousand francs to get through each day, he can do whatever he wants, the dear boy. Anyway, I’m so fond of him he could slap me on the right cheek and I’d show him the left. And if he asked me to do more difficult things than that, I would still do them, you understand? As it is, he has given me so many trivial little tasks to do that my time is fully taken up.
‘He reads the newspapers, doesn’t he? Well, my orders are to place them in the same position on the same table. And I go and shave him at the same time every day, and my hand must be steady. And the cook would lose a thousand crowns annuity that’s waiting for him after Monsieur’s death if lunch were not served without fail on the dot at ten every morning and dinner on the dot of five. The menu is decided in advance for the whole year, day by day. Monsieur le Marquis doesn’t want for anything. He has strawberries when they come into season, and eats mackerel as soon as the first delivery arrives in Paris. The menu is printed, he knows by heart in the morning what he is having for dinner that evening.
‘And then he gets dressed at the same time in the same clothes, with the same underwear,
‘If it’s a fine day, I go in and say to my master: “Will Monsieur be going out today?” He answers me yes or no. If he wants to go for a ride he doesn’t have to wait for his horses, they are always harnessed. The coachman stays unconciliably, whip in hand, as you see him now. In the evening after dinner Monsieur goes one day to the Opéra and another to the Ital… Oh no, he hasn’t gone to the Italiens yet, I only managed to get him a box yesterday. Then he comes in at exactly eleven to go to bed. During the day when he does nothing else he’s reading, he reads all the time, does my master. That’s what he wants to do. I have orders to read the Journal de la Librairie* before he does in order to buy new books, so that he can find them on the mantelpiece the same day as they come out. My job is to go in every hour and tend to the fire and everything, to see he doesn’t need anything. He’s given me a little book to learn by heart, Monsieur, and all my duties are written out in it, it’s a regular catechism. In the summer I have to keep the temperature at the same level of coolness with stocks of ice, and put fresh flowers around everywhere all the time. He is rich! He has a thousand francs to get through a day so he can do whatever takes his fancy. He’s been deprived of the basics for so long, the poor boy! He doesn’t bother anybody, he’s good as gold, but mind you, there must be complete silence in the house and garden! And my master mustn’t express one single wish, everything must be ship-shape and done by the book.
‘And he’s quite right. If you don’t keep servants in order everything goes haywire. I tell him all he must do and he listens to me. You wouldn’t believe what lengths he has gone to. His rooms are … mech … oh, what is it? … mechanized. He opens, let’s say, the door of his bedroom or his study, and lo and behold! All the other doors open automatically. Then he can go from one end of the house to the other without finding one door locked. It’s nice and handy and easier for the rest of us! But that cost a fortune! Well Monsieur Porriquet, he says to me: