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The Collection of Antiquities-Part13_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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Count would lend himself to his schemes of revenge? Or was he merely

profiting by an opportunity for which he had been on the watch for



years? One circumstance there was, to be sure, in his manner of

preparing his stroke, which shows a certain skill. Who was it that



gave du Croisier warning of the moment? Was it the Kellers? Or could

it have been President du Ronceret's son, then finishing his law



studies in Paris?

Du Croisier wrote to Victurnien, telling him that the Kellers had been



instructed to advance no more money; and that letter was timed to

arrive just as the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse was in the utmost



perplexity, and the Comte d'Esgrignon consumed by the sense of poverty

as dreadful as it was cunninglyhidden. The wretched young man was



exerting all his ingenuity to seem as if he were wealthy!

Now in the letter which informed the victim that in future the Kellers



would make no further advances without security, there was a tolerably

wide space left between the forms of an exaggerated respect and the



signature. It was quite easy to tear off the best part of the letter

and convert it into a bill of exchange for any amount. The diabolical



missive had been enclosed in an envelope, so that the other side of

the sheet was blank. When it arrived, Victurnien was writhing in the



lowest depths of despair. After two years of the most prosperous,

sensual, thoughtless, and luxurious life, he found himself face to



face with the most inexorable poverty; it was an absolute

impossibility to procure money. There had been some throes of crisis



before the journey came to an end. With the Duchess' help he had

managed to extort various sums from bankers; but it had been with the



greatest difficulty, and, moreover, those very amounts were about to

start up again before him as overdue bills of exchange in all their



rigor, with a stern summons to pay from the Bank of France and the

commercial court. All through the enjoyments of those last weeks the



unhappy boy had felt the point of the Commander's sword; at every

supper-party he heard, like Don Juan, the heavy tread of the statue



outside upon the stairs. He felt an unaccountable creeping of the

flesh, a warning that the sirocco of debt is nigh at hand. He reckoned



on chance. For five years he had never turned up a blank in the

lottery, his purse had always been replenished. After Chesnel had come



du Croisier (he told himself), after du Croisier surely another gold

mine would pour out its wealth. And besides, he was winning great sums



at play; his luck at play had saved him several unpleasant steps

already; and often a wild hope sent him to the Salon des Etrangers



only to lose his winnings afterwards at whist at the club. His life

for the past two months had been like the immortal finale of Mozart's



Don Giovanni; and of a truth, if a young man has come to such a plight

as Victurnien's, that finale is enough to make him shudder. Can



anything better prove the enormous power of music than that sublime

rendering of the disorder and confusion arising out of a life wholly



give up to sensual indulgence? that fearful picture of a deliberate

effort to shut out the thought of debts and duels, deceit and evil



luck? In that music Mozart disputes the palm with Moliere. The

terrific finale, with its glow, its power, its despair and laughter,



its grisly spectres and elfish women, centres about the prodigal's

last effort made in the after-supper heat of wine, the frantic



struggle which ends the drama. Victurnien was living through this

infernal poem, and alone. He saw visions of himself--a friendless,



solitary outcast, reading the words carved on the stone, the last

words on the last page of the book that had held him spellbound--THE



END!

Yes; for him all would be at an end, and that soon. Already he saw the



cold, ironical eyes which his associates would turn upon him, and

their amusement over his downfall. Some of them he knew were playing



high on that gambling-table kept open all day long at the Bourse, or

in private houses at the clubs, and anywhere and everywhere in Paris;



but not one of these men could spare a banknote to save an intimate.

There was no help for it--Chesnel must be ruined. He had devoured



Chesnel's living.

He sat with the Duchess in their box at the Italiens, the whole house



envying them their happiness, and while he smiled at her, all the

Furies were tearing at his heart. Indeed, to give some idea of the



depths of doubt, despair, and incredulity in which the boy was

groveling; he who so clung to life--the life which the angel had made



so fair--who so loved it, that he would have stooped to baseness

merely to live; he, the pleasure-loving scapegrace, the degenerate






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