



Produced by Dagny





THE PURSE


By Honore De Balzac


Translated by Clara Bell



  To Sofka


  "Have you observed, mademoiselle, that the painters and
  sculptors of the Middle Ages, when they placed two figures in
  adoration, one on each side of a fair Saint, never failed to
  give them a family likeness? When you here see your name among
  those that are dear to me, and under whose auspices I place my
  works, remember that touching harmony, and you will see in
  this not so much an act of homage as an expression of the
  brotherly affection of your devoted servant,

                                                "DE BALZAC."




THE PURSE


For souls to whom effusiveness is easy there is a delicious hour that
falls when it is not yet night, but is no longer day; the twilight
gleam throws softened lights or tricksy reflections on every object, and
favors a dreamy mood which vaguely weds itself to the play of light
and shade. The silence which generally prevails at that time makes it
particularly dear to artists, who grow contemplative, stand a few
paces back from the pictures on which they can no longer work, and pass
judgement on them, rapt by the subject whose most recondite meaning then
flashes on the inner eye of genius. He who has never stood pensive by a
friend's side in such an hour of poetic dreaming can hardly understand
its inexpressible soothingness. Favored by the clear-obscure, the
material skill employed by art to produce illusion entirely disappears.
If the work is a picture, the figures represented seem to speak and
walk; the shade is shadow, the light is day; the flesh lives, eyes
move, blood flows in their veins, and stuffs have a changing sheen.
Imagination helps the realism of every detail, and only sees the
beauties of the work. At that hour illusion reigns despotically; perhaps
it wakes at nightfall! Is not illusion a sort of night to the mind,
which we people with dreams? Illusion then unfolds its wings, it bears
the soul aloft to the world of fancies, a world full of voluptuous
imaginings, where the artist forgets the real world, yesterday and the
morrow, the future--everything down to its miseries, the good and the
evil alike.

At this magic hour a young painter, a man of talent, who saw in art
nothing but Art itself, was perched on a step-ladder which helped him to
work at a large high painting, now nearly finished. Criticising himself,
honestly admiring himself, floating on the current of his thoughts,
he then lost himself in one of those meditative moods which ravish and
elevate the soul, soothe it, and comfort it. His reverie had no doubt
lasted a long time. Night fell. Whether he meant to come down from his
perch, or whether he made some ill-judged movement, believing himself to
be on the floor--the event did not allow of his remembering exactly the
cause of his accident--he fell, his head struck a footstool, he lost
consciousness and lay motionless during a space of time of which he knew
not the length.

A sweet voice roused him from the stunned condition into which he had
sunk. When he opened his eyes the flash of a bright light made him close
them again immediately; but through the mist that veiled his senses he
heard the whispering of two women, and felt two young, two timid hands
on which his head was resting. He soon recovered consciousness, and by
the light of an old-fashioned Argand lamp he could make out the most
charming girl's face he had ever seen, one of those heads which are
often supposed to be a freak of the brush, but which to him suddenly
realized the theories of the ideal beauty which every artist creates
for himself and whence his art proceeds. The features of the unknown
belonged, so to say, to the refined and delicate type of Prudhon's
school, but had also the poetic sentiment which Girodet gave to the
inventions of his phantasy. The freshness of the temples, the regular
arch of the eyebrows, the purity of outline, the virginal innocence so
plainly stamped on every feature of her countenance, made the girl a
perfect creature. Her figure was slight and graceful, and frail in form.
Her dress, though simple and neat, revealed neither wealth nor penury.

As he recovered his senses, the painter gave expression to his
admiration by a look of surprise, and stammered some confused thanks.
He found a handkerchief pressed to his forehead, and above the smell
peculiar to a studio, he recognized the strong odor of ether, applied no
doubt to revive him from his fainting fit. Finally he saw an old woman,
looking like a marquise of the old school, who held the lamp and was
advising the young girl.

"Monsieur," said the younger woman in reply to one of the questions
put by the painter during the few minutes when he was still under the
influence of the vagueness that the shock had produced in his ideas, "my
mother and I heard the noise of your fall on the floor, and we fancied
we heard a groan. The silence following on the crash alarmed us, and we
hurried up. Finding the key in the latch, we happily took the liberty
of entering, and we found you lying motionless on the ground. My mother
went to fetch what was needed to bathe your head and revive you. You
have cut your forehead--there. Do you feel it?"

"Yes, I do now," he replied.

"Oh, it will be nothing," said the old mother. "Happily your head rested
against this lay-figure."

"I feel infinitely better," replied the painter. "I need nothing further
but a hackney cab to take me home. The porter's wife will go for one."

He tried to repeat his thanks to the two strangers; but at each sentence
the elder lady interrupted him, saying, "Tomorrow, monsieur, pray
be careful to put on leeches, or to be bled, and drink a few cups of
something healing. A fall may be dangerous."

The young girl stole a look at the painter and at the pictures in the
studio. Her expression and her glances revealed perfect propriety; her
curiosity seemed rather absence of mind, and her eyes seemed to speak
the interest which women feel, with the most engaging spontaneity, in
everything which causes us suffering. The two strangers seemed to forget
the painter's works in the painter's mishap. When he had reassured them
as to his condition they left, looking at him with an anxiety that was
equally free from insistence and from familiarity, without asking any
indiscreet questions, or trying to incite him to any wish to visit them.
Their proceedings all bore the hall-mark of natural refinement and good
taste. Their noble and simple manners at first made no great impression
on the painter, but subsequently, as he recalled all the details of the
incident, he was greatly struck by them.

When they reached the floor beneath that occupied by the painter's
studio, the old lady gently observed, "Adelaide, you left the door
open."

"That was to come to my assistance," said the painter, with a grateful
smile.

"You came down just now, mother," replied the young girl, with a blush.

"Would you like us to accompany you all the way downstairs?" asked the
mother. "The stairs are dark."

"No, thank you, indeed, madame; I am much better."

"Hold tightly by the rail."

The two women remained on the landing to light the young man, listening
to the sound of his