



Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny





THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN EYES


By Honore De Balzac



Translated by Ellen Marriage



PREPARER'S NOTE: The Girl with the Golden Eyes is the third part of a
trilogy. Part one is entitled Ferragus and part two is The Duchesse de
Langeais. The three stories are frequently combined under the title The
Thirteen.




                             DEDICATION

                    To Eugene Delacroix, Painter.




THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN EYES


One of those sights in which most horror is to be encountered is,
surely, the general aspect of the Parisian populace--a people fearful
to behold, gaunt, yellow, tawny. Is not Paris a vast field in perpetual
turmoil from a storm of interests beneath which are whirled along a crop
of human beings, who are, more often than not, reaped by death, only to
be born again as pinched as ever, men whose twisted and contorted faces
give out at every pore the instinct, the desire, the poisons with
which their brains are pregnant; not faces so much as masks; masks of
weakness, masks of strength, masks of misery, masks of joy, masks of
hypocrisy; all alike worn and stamped with the indelible signs of
a panting cupidity? What is it they want? Gold or pleasure? A few
observations upon the soul of Paris may explain the causes of its
cadaverous physiognomy, which has but two ages--youth and decay: youth,
wan and colorless; decay, painted to seem young. In looking at
this excavated people, foreigners, who are not prone to reflection,
experience at first a movement of disgust towards the capital, that
vast workshop of delights, from which, in a short time, they cannot even
extricate themselves, and where they stay willingly to be corrupted. A
few words will suffice to justify physiologically the almost infernal
hue of Parisian faces, for it is not in mere sport that Paris has been
called a hell. Take the phrase for truth. There all is smoke and fire,
everything gleams, crackles, flames, evaporates, dies out, then lights
up again, with shooting sparks, and is consumed. In no other country has
life ever been more ardent or acute. The social nature, even in fusion,
seems to say after each completed work: "Pass on to another!" just as
Nature says herself. Like Nature herself, this social nature is busied
with insects and flowers of a day--ephemeral trifles; and so, too,
it throws up fire and flame from its eternal crater. Perhaps, before
analyzing the causes which lend a special physiognomy to each tribe of
this intelligent and mobile nation, the general cause should be pointed
out which bleaches and discolors, tints with blue or brown individuals
in more or less degree.

By dint of taking interest in everything, the Parisian ends by being
interested in nothing. No emotion dominating his face, which friction
has rubbed away, it turns gray like the faces of those houses upon which
all kinds of dust and smoke have blown. In effect, the Parisian, with
his indifference on the day for what the morrow will bring forth,
lives like a child, whatever may be his age. He grumbles at everything,
consoles himself for everything, jests at everything, forgets,
desires, and tastes everything, seizes all with passion, quits all with
indifference--his kings, his conquests, his glory, his idols of bronze
or glass--as he throws away his stockings, his hats, and his fortune. In
Paris no sentiment can withstand the drift of things, and their current
compels a struggle in which the passions are relaxed: there love is
a desire, and hatred a whim; there's no true kinsman but the
thousand-franc note, no better friend than the pawnbroker. This
universal toleration bears its fruits, and in the salon, as in the
street, there is no one _de trop_, there is no one absolutely useful,
or absolutely harmful--knaves or fools, men of wit or integrity. There
everything is tolerated: the government and the guillotine, religion and
the cholera. You are always acceptable to this world, you will never
be missed by it. What, then, is the dominating impulse in this country
without morals, without faith, without any sentiment, wherein, however,
every sentiment, belief, and moral has its origin and end? It is gold
and pleasure. Take those two words for a lantern, and explore that great
stucco cage, that hive with its black gutters, and follow the windings
of that thought which agitates, sustains, and occupies it! Consider!
And, in the first place, examine the world which possesses nothing.

The artisan, the man of the proletariat, who uses his hands, his tongue,
his back, his right arm, his five fingers, to live--well, this very man,
who should be the first to economize his vital principle, outruns his
strength, yokes his wife to some machine, wears out his child, and ties
him to the wheel. The manufacturer--or I know not what secondary thread
which sets in motion all these folk who with their foul hands mould
and gild porcelain, sew coats and dresses, beat out iron, turn wood and
steel, weave hemp, festoon crystal