The Commission in Lunacy

by Honore de Balzac
Translated by Clara Bell

DEDICATION
Dedicated to Monsieur le Contre-Amiral Bazoche,

Governor of the Isle of Bourbon, by the grateful writer.
DE BALZAC.

In 1828, at about one o'clock one morning, two persons came out of a
large house in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, near the Elysee-

Bourbon. One was the famous doctor, Horace Bianchon; the other was one
of the most elegant men in Paris, the Baron de Rastignac; they were

friends of long standing. Each had sent away his carriage, and no cab
was to be seen in the street; but the night was fine, and the pavement

dry.
"We will walk as far as the boulevard," said Eugene de Rastignac to

Bianchon. "You can get a hackney cab at the club; there is always one
to be found there till daybreak. Come with me as far as my house."

"With pleasure."
"Well, and what have you to say about it?"

"About that woman?" said the doctor coldly.
"There I recognize my Bianchon!" exclaimed Rastignac.

"Why, how?"
"Well, my dear fellow, you speak of the Marquise d'Espard as if she

were a case for your hospital."
"Do you want to know what I think, Eugene? If you throw over Madame de

Nucingen for this Marquise, you will swap a one-eyed horse for a blind
one."

"Madame de Nucingen is six-and-thirty, Bianchon."
"And this woman is three-and-thirty," said the doctor quickly.

"Her worst enemies only say six-and-twenty."
"My dear boy, when you really want to know a woman's age, look at her

temples and the tip of her nose. Whatever women may achieve with their
cosmetics, they can do nothing against those incorruptible witnesses

to their experiences. There each year of life has left its stigmata.
When a woman's temples are flaccid, seamed, withered in a particular

way; when at the tip of her nose you see those minute specks, which
look like the imperceptible black smuts which are shed in London by

the chimneys in which coal is burnt. . . . Your servant, sir! That
woman is more than thirty. She may be handsome, witty, loving--

whatever you please, but she is past thirty, she is arriving at
maturity. I do not blame men who attach themselves to that kind of

woman; only, a man of your superior distinction must not mistake a
winter pippin for a little summer apple, smiling on the bough, and

waiting for you to crunch it. Love never goes to study the registers
of birth and marriage; no one loves a woman because she is handsome or

ugly, stupid or clever; we love because we love."
"Well, for my part, I love for quite other reasons. She is Marquise

d'Espard; she was a Blamont-Chauvry; she is the fashion; she has soul;
her foot is as pretty as the Duchesse de Berri's; she has perhaps a

hundred thousand francs a year--some day, perhaps, I may marry her! In
short, she will put me into a position which will enable me to pay my

debts."
"I thought you were rich," interrupted Bianchon.

"Bah! I have twenty thousand francs a year--just enough to keep up my
stables. I was thoroughly done, my dear fellow, in that Nucingen

business; I will tell you about that.--I have got my sisters married;
that is the clearest profit I can show since we last met; and I would

rather have them provided for than have five hundred thousand francs a
year. No, what would you have me do? I am ambitious. To what can

Madame de Nucingen lead? A year more and I shall be shelved, stuck in
a pigeon-hole like a married man. I have all the discomforts of

marriage and of single life, without the advantages of either; a false
position to which every man must come who remains tied too long to the

same apron-string."
"So you think you will come upon a treasure here?" said Bianchon.

"Your Marquise, my dear fellow, does not hit my fancy at all."
"Your liberal opinions blur your eyesight. If Madame d'Espard were a

Madame Rabourdin . . ."
"Listen to me. Noble or simple, she would still have no soul; she

would still be a perfect type of selfishness. Take my word for it,
medical men are accustomed to judge of people and things; the sharpest

of us read the soul while we study the body. In spite of that pretty
boudoir where we have spent this evening, in spite of the magnificence

of the house, it is quite possible that Madame la Marquise is in
debt."

"What makes you think so?"
"I do not assert it; I am supposing. She talked of her soul as Louis

XVIII. used to talk of his heart. I tell you this: That fragile, fair
woman, with her chestnut hair, who pities herself that she may be

pitied, enjoys an iron constitution, an appetite like a wolf's, and
the strength and cowardice of a tiger. Gauze, and silk, and muslin

were never more cleverly twisted round a lie! Ecco."
"Bianchon, you frighten me! You have learned a good many things, then,

since we lived in the Maison Vauquer?"
"Yes, since then, my boy, I have seen puppets, both dolls and

manikins. I know something of the ways of the fine ladies whose bodies
we attend to, saving that which is dearest to them, their child--if

they love it--or their pretty faces, which they always worship. A man
spends his nights by their pillow, wearing himself to death to spare

them the slightest loss of beauty in any part; he succeeds, he keeps
their secret like the dead; they send to ask for his bill, and think

it horribly exorbitant. Who saved them? Nature. Far from recommending
him, they speak ill of him, fearing lest he should become the

physician of their best friends.
"My dear fellow, those women of whom you say, 'They are angels!' I--

I--have seen stripped of the little grimaces under which they hide
their soul, as well as of the frippery under which they disguise their

defects--without manners and without stays; they are not beautiful.
"We saw a great deal of mud, a great deal of dirt, under the waters of

the world when we were aground for a time on the shoals of the Maison
Vauquer.--What we saw there was nothing. Since I have gone into high

society, I have seen monsters dressed in satin, Michonneaus in white
gloves, Poirets bedizened with orders, fine gentlemen doing more

usurious business than old Gobseck! To the shame of mankind, when I
have wanted to shake hands with Virtue, I have found her shivering in

a loft, persecuted by calumny, half-starving on a income or a salary
of fifteen hundred francs a year, and regarded as crazy, or eccentric,

or imbecile.
"In short, my dear boy, the Marquise is a woman of fashion, and I have

a particular horror of that kind of woman. Do you want to know why? A
woman who has a lofty soul, fine taste, gentle wit, a generously warm

heart, and who lives a simple life, has not a chance of being the
fashion. Ergo: A woman of fashion and a man in power are analogous;

but there is this difference: the qualities by which a man raises
himself above others ennoble him and are a glory to him; whereas the

qualities by which a woman gains power for a day are hideous vices;
she belies her nature to hide her character, and to live the militant

life of the world she must have iron strength under a frail
appearance.

"I, as a physician, know that a sound stomach excludes a good heart.
Your woman of fashion feels nothing; her rage for pleasure has its

source in a longing to heat up her cold nature, a craving for
excitement and enjoyment, like an old man who stands night after night

by the footlights at the opera. As she has more brain than heart, she
sacrifices genuinepassion and true friends to her triumph, as a

general sends his most devoted subalterns to the front in order to win