The Best Works of Balzac. Оноре де Бальзак

for the

       happiness my soul strove to reach—a soul crushed by fruitless

       labor, consumed by fears that make me doubt myself, eaten into by

       despair which has often urged me to die. No one in the world can

       conceive of the terrors my fateful imagination inflicts on me. It

       often bears me up to the sky, and suddenly flings me to earth

       again from prodigious heights. Deep-seated rushes of power, or

       some rare and subtle instance of peculiar lucidity, assure me now

       and then that I am capable of great things. Then I embrace the

       universe in my mind, I knead, shape it, inform it, I comprehend it

       —or fancy that I do; then suddenly I awake—alone, sunk in

       blackest night, helpless and weak; I forget the light I saw but

       now, I find no succor; above all, there is no heart where I may

       take refuge.

       "This distress of my inner life affects my physical existence. The

       nature of my character gives me over to the raptures of happiness

       as defenceless as when the fearful light of reflection comes to

       analyze and demolish them. Gifted as I am with the melancholy

       faculty of seeing obstacles and success with equal clearness,

       according to the mood of the moment, I am happy or miserable by

       turns.

       "Thus, when I first met you, I felt the presence of an angelic

       nature, I breathed an air that was sweet to my burning breast, I

       heard in my soul the voice that never can be false, telling me

       that here was happiness; but perceiving all the barriers that

       divided us, I understood the vastness of their pettiness, and

       these difficulties terrified me more than the prospect of

       happiness could delight me. At once I felt the awful reaction

       which casts my expansive soul back on itself; the smile you had

       brought to my lips suddenly turned to a bitter grimace, and I

       could only strive to keep calm, while my soul was boiling with the

       turmoil of contradictory emotions. In short, I experienced that

       gnawing pang to which twenty-three years of suppressed sighs and

       betrayed affections have not inured me.

       "Well, Pauline, the look by which you promised that I should be

       happy suddenly warmed my vitality, and turned all my sorrows into

       joy. Now, I could wish that I had suffered more. My love is

       suddenly full-grown. My soul was a wide territory that lacked the

       blessing of sunshine, and your eyes have shed light on it. Beloved

       providence! you will be all in all to me, orphan as I am, without

       a relation but my uncle. You will be my whole family, as you are

       my whole wealth, nay, the whole world to me. Have you not bestowed

       on me every gladness man can desire in that chaste—lavish—timid

       glance?

       "You have given me incredible self-confidence and audacity. I can

       dare all things now. I came back to Blois in deep dejection. Five

       years of study in the heart of Paris had made me look on the world

       as a prison. I had conceived of vast schemes, and dared not speak

       of them. Fame seemed to me a prize for charlatans, to which a

       really noble spirit should not stoop. Thus, my ideas could only

       make their way by the assistance of a man bold enough to mount the

       platform of the press, and to harangue loudly the simpletons he

       scorns. This kind of courage I have not. I ploughed my way on,

       crushed by the verdict of the crowd, in despair at never making it

       hear me. I was at once too humble and too lofty! I swallowed my

       thoughts as other men swallow humiliations. I had even come to

       despise knowledge, blaming it for yielding no real happiness.

       "But since yesterday I am wholly changed. For your sake I now

       covet every palm of glory, every triumph of success. When I lay my

       head on your knees, I could wish to attract to you the eyes of the

       whole world, just as I long to concentrate in my love every idea,

       every power that is in me. The most splendid celebrity is a

       possession that genius alone can create. Well, I can, at my will,

       make for you a bed of laurels. And if the silent ovation paid to

       science is not all you desire, I have within me the sword of the

       Word; I could run in the path of honor and ambition where others

       only crawl.

       "Command me, Pauline; I will be whatever you will. My iron will

       can do anything—I am loved! Armed with that thought, ought not a

       man to sweep everything before him? The man who wants all can do

       all. If you are the prize of success, I enter the lists to-morrow.

       To win such a look as that you bestowed on me, I would leap the

       deepest abyss. Through you I understand the fabulous achievements

       of chivalry and the most fantastic tales of the Arabian Nights. I can believe now in the most fantastic excesses of love, and in the success of a prisoner's wildest attempt to recover his liberty. You have aroused the thousand virtues that lay dormant within me—patience, resignation, all the powers of my heart, all the strength of my soul. I live by you and—heavenly thought!—for you. Everything now has a meaning for me in life. I understand everything, even the vanities of wealth. "I find myself shedding all the pearls of the Indies at your feet; I fancy you reclining either on the rarest flowers, or on the softest tissues, and all the splendor of the world seems hardly worthy of you, for whom I would I could command the harmony and the light that are given out by the harps of seraphs and the stars of heaven! Alas! a poor, studious poet, I offer you in words treasures I cannot bestow; I can only give you my heart, in which you reign for ever. I have nothing else. But are there no treasures in eternal gratitude, in a smile whose expressions will perpetually vary with perennial happiness, under the constant eagerness of my devotion to guess the wishes of your loving soul? Has not one celestial glance given us assurance of always understanding each other? "I have a prayer now to be said to God every night—a prayer full of you: 'Let my Pauline be happy!' And will you fill all my days as you now fill my heart? "Farewell, I can but trust you to God alone!"

       III

      "Pauline! tell me if I can in any way have displeased you

       yesterday? Throw off the pride of heart which inflicts on me the

       secret tortures that can be caused by one we love. Scold me if you

       will! Since yesterday, a vague, unutterable dread of having

       offended you pours grief on the life of feeling which you had made

       so sweet and so rich. The lightest veil that comes between two

       souls sometimes grows to be a brazen wall. There are no venial