



Produced by Dagny





THE MESSAGE


By Honore De Balzac



Translated by Ellen Marriage



To M. le Marquis Damaso Pareto




THE MESSAGE


I have always longed to tell a simple and true story, which should
strike terror into two young lovers, and drive them to take refuge each
in the other's heart, as two children cling together at the sight of a
snake by a woodside. At the risk of spoiling my story and of being taken
for a coxcomb, I state my intention at the outset.

I myself played a part in this almost commonplace tragedy; so if it
fails to interest you, the failure will be in part my own fault, in
part owing to historical veracity. Plenty of things in real life are
superlatively uninteresting; so that it is one-half of art to select
from realities those which contain possibilities of poetry.

In 1819 I was traveling from Paris to Moulins. The state of my finances
obliged me to take an outside place. Englishmen, as you know, regard
those airy perches on the top of the coach as the best seats; and for
the first few miles I discovered abundance of excellent reasons for
justifying the opinion of our neighbors. A young fellow, apparently in
somewhat better circumstances, who came to take the seat beside me
from preference, listened to my reasoning with inoffensive smiles. An
approximate nearness of age, a similarity in ways of thinking, a common
love of fresh air, and of the rich landscape scenery through which the
coach was lumbering along,--these things, together with an indescribable
magnetic something, drew us before long into one of those short-lived
traveller's intimacies, in which we unbend with the more complacency
because the intercourse is by its very nature transient, and makes no
implicit demands upon the future.

We had not come thirty leagues before we were talking of women and love.
Then, with all the circumspection demanded in such matters, we proceeded
naturally to the topic of our lady-loves. Young as we both were, we
still admired "the woman of a certain age," that is to say, the woman
between thirty-five and forty. Oh! any poet who should have listened to
our talk, for heaven knows how many stages beyond Montargis, would have
reaped a harvest of flaming epithet, rapturous description, and very
tender confidences. Our bashful fears, our silent interjections, our
blushes, as we met each other's eyes, were expressive with an eloquence,
a boyish charm, which I have ceased to feel. One must remain young, no
doubt, to understand youth.

Well, we understood one another to admiration on all the essential
points of passion. We had laid it down as an axiom at the very outset,
that in theory and practice there was no such piece of driveling
nonsense in this world as a certificate of birth; that plenty of women
were younger at forty than many a girl of twenty; and, to come to the
point, that a woman is no older than she looks.

This theory set no limits to the age of love, so we struck out, in all
good faith, into a boundless sea. At length, when we had portrayed our
mistresses as young, charming, and devoted to us, women of rank, women
of taste, intellectual and clever; when we had endowed them with
little feet, a satin, nay, a delicately fragrant skin, then came the
admission--on his part that Madame Such-an-one was thirty-eight years
old, and on mine that I worshiped a woman of forty. Whereupon, as if
released on either side from some kind of vague fear, our confidences
came thick and fast, when we found that we were in the same
confraternity of love. It was which of us should overtop the other in
sentiment.

One of us had traveled six hundred miles to see his mistress for an
hour. The other, at the risk of being shot for a wolf, had prowled about
her park to meet her one night. Out came all our follies in fact. If it
is pleasant to remember past dangers, is it not at least as pleasant
to recall past delights? We live through the joy a second time. We told
each other everything, our perils, our great joys, our little pleasures,
and even the humors of the situation. My friend's countess had lighted
a cigar for him; mine made chocolate for me, and wrote to me every day
when we did not meet; his lady had come to spend three days with him at
the risk of ruin to her reputation; mine had done even better, or worse,
if you will have it so. Our countesses, moreover, were adored by their
husbands; these gentlemen were enslaved by the charm possessed by every
woman who loves; and, with even supererogatory simplicity, afforded us
that just sufficient spice of danger which increases pleasure. Ah! how
quickly the wind swept away our talk and our happy laughter!

When we reached Pouilly, I scanned my new friend with much interest, and
truly, it was not difficult to imagine him the hero of a very serious
love affair. Picture to yourselves a young man of middle height, but
very well proportioned, a bright, expressive face, dark hair, blue eyes,
moist lips, and white and even teeth. A certain not unbecoming pallor
still overspread his delicately cut features, and there were faint dark
circles about his eyes, as if he were recovering from an illness. Add,
furthermore, that he had white and shapely hands, of which he was as
careful as a pretty woman should be; add that he seemed to be very well
informed, and was decidedly clever, and it should not be difficult for
you to imagine that my traveling companion was more than worthy of a
countess. Indeed, many a girl might have wished for such a husband, for
he was a Vicomte with an income of twelve or fifteen thousand livres,
"to say nothing of expectations."

About a league out of Pouilly the coach was overturned. My
luckless comrade, thinking to save himself, jumped to the edge of a
newly-ploughed field, instead of following the fortunes of the vehicle
and clinging tightly to the roof, as I did. He either miscalculated in
some way, or he slipped; how it happened, I do not know, but the coach
fell over upon him, and he was crushed under it.

We carried him into a peasant's cottage, and there, amid the moans wrung
from him by horrible sufferings, he contrived to give me a commission--a
sacred task, in that it was laid upon me by a dying man's last wish.
Poor boy, all through his agony he was torturing himself in his young
simplicity of heart with the thought of the painful shock to his
mistress when she should suddenly read of