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Modeste Mignon-Part27_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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when the caressing glance is but an echo of the stage, when the

expression of the face changes from sentiment to sentimentality, and



the artifices of the mind show their rusty edges. Genius alone renews

its skin like a snake; and in the matter of charm, as in everything



else, it is only the heart that never grows old. People who have

hearts are simple in all their ways. Now Canalis, as we know, had a



shrivelled heart. He misused the beauty of his glance by giving it,

without adequate reason, the fixity that comes to the eyes in



meditation. In short, applause was to him a business, in which he was

perpetually on the lookout for gain. His style of paying compliments,



charming to superficial people, seemed insulting to others of more

delicacy, by its triteness and the cool assurance of its cut-and-



dried flattery" target="_blank" title="n.奉承；谄媚的举动">flattery. As a matter of fact, Melchior lied like a courtier. He

remarked without blushing to the Duc de Chaulieu, who made no



impressionwhatever when he was obliged to address the Chamber as

minister of foreign affairs, "Your excellency was truly sublime!" Many



men like Canalis are purged of their affectations by the

administration of non-success in little doses.



These defects, slight in the gilded salons of the faubourg Saint-

Germain, where every one contributes his or her quota of absurdity,



and where these particular forms of exaggerated speech and affected

diction--magniloquence, if you please to call it so--are surrounded by



excessive luxury and sumptuous toilettes, which are to some extent

their excuse, were certain to be far more noticed in the provinces,



whose own absurdities are of a totally different type. Canalis, by

nature over-strained and artificial, could not change his form; in



fact, he had had time to grow stiff in the mould into which the

duchess had poured him; moreover, he was thoroughly Parisian, or, if



you prefer it, truly French. The Parisian is amazed that everything

everywhere is not as it in Paris; the Frenchman, as it is in France.



Good taste, on the contrary, demands that we adapt ourselves to the

customs of foreigners without losing too much of our own character,--



as did Alcibiades, that model of a gentleman. True grace is elastic;

it lends itself to circumstances; it is in harmony with all social



centres; it wears a robe of simple material in the streets, noticeable

only by its cut, in preference to the feathers and flounces of middle-



class vulgarity. Now Canalis, instigated by a woman who loved herself

much more than she loved him, wished to lay down the law and be,



everywhere, such as he himself might see fit to be. He believed he

carried his own public with him wherever he went,--an error shared by



several of the great men of Paris.

While the poet made a studied and effective entrance into the salon of



the Chalet, La Briere slipped in behind him like a person of no

account.



"Ha! do I see my soldier?" said Canalis, perceiving Dumay, after

addressing a compliment to Madame Mignon, and bowing to the other



women. "Your anxieties are relieved, are they not?" he said, offering

his hand effusively; "I comprehend them to their fullest extent after



seeing mademoiselle. I spoke to you of terrestrial creatures, not of

angels."



All present seemed by their attitudes to ask the meaning of this

speech.



"I shall always consider it a triumph," resumed the poet, observing

that everybody wished for an explanation, "to have stirred to mention



on of those men of iron whom Napoleon had the eye to find and make the

supporting piles on which he tried to build an empire, too colossal to



be lasting: for such structures time alone is the cement. But this

triumph--why should I be proud of it?--I count for nothing. It was the



triumph of ideas over facts. Your battles, my dear Monsieur Dumay,

your heroic charges, Monsieur le comte, nay, war itself was the form



in which Napoleon's idea clothed itself. Of all of these things, what

remains? The sod that covers them knows nothing; harvests come and go



without revealing their resting-place; were it not for the historian,

the writer, futurity would have no knowledge of those heroic days.



Therefore your fifteen years of war are now ideas and nothing more;

that which preserves the Empire forever is the poem that the poets






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