The Best Works of Balzac. Оноре де Бальзак

crimes in love! If you have the very spirit of that noble

       sentiment, you must feel all its pangs, and we must be unceasingly

       careful not to fret each other by some heedless word.

       "No doubt, my beloved treasure, if there is any fault, it is in

       me. I cannot pride myself in the belief that I understand a

       woman's heart, in all the expansion of its tenderness, all the

       grace of its devotedness; but I will always endeavor to appreciate

       the value of what you vouchsafe to show me of the secrets of

       yours.

       "Speak to me! Answer me soon! The melancholy into which we are

       thrown by the idea of a wrong done is frightful; it casts a shroud

       over life, and doubts on everything.

       "I spent this morning sitting on the bank by the sunken road,

       gazing at the turrets of Villenoix, not daring to go to our hedge.

       If you could imagine all I saw in my soul! What gloomy visions

       passed before me under the gray sky, whose cold sheen added to my

       dreary mood! I had dark presentiments! I was terrified lest I

       should fail to make you happy.

       "I must tell you everything, my dear Pauline. There are moments

       when the spirit of vitality seems to abandon me. I feel bereft of

       all strength. Everything is a burden to me; every fibre of my body

       is inert, every sense is flaccid, my sight grows dim, my tongue is

       paralyzed, my imagination is extinct, desire is dead—nothing

       survives but my mere human vitality. At such times, though you

       were in all the splendor of your beauty, though you should lavish

       on me your subtlest smiles and tenderest words, an evil influence

       would blind me, and distort the most ravishing melody into

       discordant sounds. At those times—as I believe—some

       argumentative demon stands before me, showing me the void beneath

       the most real possessions. This pitiless demon mows down every

       flower, and mocks at the sweetest feelings, saying: 'Well—and

       then?' He mars the fairest work by showing me its skeleton, and

       reveals the mechanism of things while hiding the beautiful

       results.

       "At those terrible moments, when the evil spirit takes possession

       of me, when the divine light is darkened in my soul without my

       knowing the cause, I sit in grief and anguish, I wish myself deaf

       and dumb, I long for death to give me rest. These hours of doubt

       and uneasiness are perhaps inevitable; at any rate, they teach me

       not to be proud after the flights which have borne me to the skies

       where I have gathered a full harvest of thoughts; for it is always

       after some long excursion in the vast fields of the intellect, and

       after the most luminous speculations, that I tumble, broken and

       weary, into this limbo. At such a moment, my angel, a wife would

       double my love for her—at any rate, she might. If she were

       capricious, ailing, or depressed, she would need the comforting

       overflow of ingenious affection, and I should not have a glance to

       bestow on her. It is my shame, Pauline, to have to tell you that

       at times I could weep with you, but that nothing could make me

       smile.

       "A woman can always conceal her troubles; for her child, or for

       the man she loves, she can laugh in the midst of suffering. And

       could not I, for you, Pauline, imitate the exquisite reserve of a

       woman? Since yesterday I have doubted my own power. If I could

       displease you once, if I failed once to understand you, I dread

       lest I should often be carried out of our happy circle by my evil

       demon. Supposing I were to have many of those dreadful moods, or

       that my unbounded love could not make up for the dark hours of my

       life—that I were doomed to remain such as I am?—Fatal doubts!

       "Power is indeed a fatal possession if what I feel within me is

       power. Pauline, go! Leave me, desert me! Sooner would I endure

       every ill in life than endure the misery of knowing that you were

       unhappy through me.

       "But, perhaps, the demon has had such empire over me only because

       I have had no gentle, white hands about me to drive him off. No

       woman has ever shed on me the balm of her affection; and I know

       not whether, if love should wave his pinions over my head in these

       moments of exhaustion, new strength might not be given to my

       spirit. This terrible melancholy is perhaps a result of my

       isolation, one of the torments of a lonely soul which pays for its

       hidden treasures with groans and unknown suffering. Those who

       enjoy little shall suffer little; immense happiness entails

       unutterable anguish!

       "How terrible a doom! If it be so, must we not shudder for

       ourselves, we who are superhumanly happy? If nature sells us

       everything at its true value, into what pit are we not fated to

       fall? Ah! the most fortunate lovers are those who die together in

       the midst of their youth and love! How sad it all is! Does my soul

       foresee evil in the future? I examine myself, wondering whether

       there is anything in me that can cause you a moment's anxiety. I

       love you too selfishly perhaps? I shall be laying on your beloved

       head a burden heavy out of all proportion to the joy my love can

       bring to your heart. If there dwells in me some inexorable power

       which I must obey—if I am compelled to curse when you pray, if

       some dark thought coerces me when I would fain kneel at your feet

       and play as a child, will you not be jealous of that wayward and

       tricky spirit?

       "You understand, dearest heart, that what I dread is not being

       wholly yours; that I would gladly forego all the sceptres and the

       palms of the world to enshrine you in one eternal thought, to see

       a perfect life and an exquisite poem in our rapturous love; to

       throw my soul into it, drown my powers, and wring from each hour

       the joys it has to give!

       "Ah, my memories of love are crowding back upon me, the clouds of

       despair will lift. Farewell. I leave you now to be more entirely

       yours. My beloved soul, I look for a line, a word that