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A Start in Life-Part8_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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begins, and the conversation gets under way with all the more vivacity

because those present feel a need of enlivening the journey and



forgetting its tedium.

That is how things happen in French stage-coaches. In other countries



customs are very different. Englishmen pique themselves on never

opening their lips; Germans are melancholy in a vehicle; Italians too



wary to talk; Spaniards have no public conveyances; and Russians no

roads. There is no amusement except in the lumbering diligences of



France, that gabbling and indiscreet country, where every one is in a

hurry to laugh and show his wit, and where jest and epigram enliven



all things, even the poverty of the lower classes and the weightier

cares of the solid bourgeois. In a coach there is no police to check



tongues, and legislative assemblies have set the fashion of public

discussion. When a young man of twenty-two, like the one named



Georges, is clever and lively, he is much tempted, especially under

circumstances like the present, to abuse those qualities.



In the first place, Georges had soon decided that he was the superior

human being of the party there assembled. He saw in the count a



manufacturer of the second-class, whom he took, for some unknown

reason, to be a chandler; in the shabby young man accompanied by



Mistigris, a fellow of no account; in Oscar a ninny, and in Pere

Leger, the fat farmer, an excellent subject to hoax. Having thus



looked over the ground, he resolved to amuse himself at the expense of

such companions.



"Let me see," he thought to himself, as the coucou went down the hill

from La Chapelle to the plain of Saint-Denis, "shall I pass myself off



for Etienne or Beranger? No, these idiots don't know who they are.

Carbonaro? the deuce! I might get myself arrested. Suppose I say I'm



the son of Marshal Ney? Pooh! what could I tell them?--about the

execution of my father? It wouldn't be funny. Better be a disguised



Russian prince and make them swallow a lot of stuff about the Emperor

Alexander. Or I might be Cousin, and talk philosophy; oh, couldn't I



perplex 'em! But no, that shabby fellow with the tousled head looks to

me as if he had jogged his way through the Sorbonne. What a pity! I



can mimic an Englishman so perfectly I might have pretended to be Lord

Byron, travelling incognito. Sapristi! I'll command the troops of Ali,



pacha of Janina!"

During this mental monologue, the coucou rolled through clouds of dust



rising on either side of it from that much travelled road.

"What dust!" cried Mistigris.



"Henry IV. is dead!" retorted his master. "If you'd say it was scented

with vanilla that would be emitting a new opinion."



"You think you're witty," replied Mistigris. "Well, it IS like vanilla

at times."



"In the Levant--" said Georges, with the air of beginning a story.

"'Ex Oriente flux,'" remarked Mistigris's master, interrupting the



speaker.

"I said in the Levant, from which I have just returned," continued



Georges, "the dust smells very good; but here it smells of nothing,

except in some old dust-barrel like this."



"Has monsieurlately returned from the Levant?" said Mistigris,

maliciously. "He isn't much tanned by the sun."



"Oh! I've just left my bed after an illness of three months, from the

germ, so the doctors said, of suppressed plague."



"Have you had the plague?" cried the count, with a gesture of alarm.

"Pierrotin, stop!"



"Go on, Pierrotin," said Mistigris. "Didn't you hear him say it was

inward, his plague?" added the rapin, talking back to Monsieur de



Serizy. "It isn't catching; it only comes out in conversation."

"Mistigris! if you interfere again I'll have you put off into the



road," said his master. "And so," he added, turning to Georges,

"monsieur has been to the East?"



"Yes, monsieur; first to Egypt, then to Greece, where I served under

Ali, pacha of Janina, with whom I had a terrible quarrel. There's no



enduring those climates long; besides, the emotions of all kinds in

Oriental life have disorganized my liver."



"What, have you served as a soldier?" asked the fat farmer. "How old

are you?"



"Twenty-nine," replied Georges, whereupon all the passengers looked at

him. "At eighteen I enlisted as a private for the famous campaign of



1813; but I was present at only one battle, that of Hanau, where I was

promoted sergeant-major. In France, at Montereau, I won the rank of



sub-lieutenant, and was decorated by,--there are no informers here,

I'm sure,--by the Emperor."



"What! are you decorated?" cried Oscar. "Why don't you wear your




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