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The Hated Son-Part8_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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Immortal labor. His yearnings, his sorrows were the links that united

him to the unseen world; he went there, armed with his love, to seek



his mother; realizing thus, with the sublime harmonies of ecstasy, the

symbolic enterprise of Orpheus.



Often, when crouching in the crevice of some rock, capriciously curled

up in his granitegrotto, the entrance to which was as narrow as that



of a charcoal kiln, he would sink into involuntary sleep, his figure

softly lighted by the warm rays of the sun which crept through the



fissures and fell upon the dainty seaweeds that adorned his retreat,

the veritable nest of a sea-bird. The sun, his sovereign lord, alone



told him that he had slept, by measuring the time he had been absent

from his watery landscapes, his golden sands, his shells and pebbles.



Across a light as brilliant as that from heaven he saw the cities of

which he read; he looked with amazement, but without envy, at courts



and kings, battles, men, and buildings. These daylight dreams made

dearer to him his precious flowers, his clouds, his sun, his granite



rocks. To attach him the more to his solitaryexistence, an angel

seemed to reveal to him the abysses of the moral world and the



terrible shocks of civilization. He felt that his soul, if torn by the

throng of men, would perish like a pearl dropped from the crown of a



princess into mud.

PART II



HOW THE SON DIED

CHAPTER IV



THE HEIR

In 1617, twenty and some years after the horrible night during which



Etienne came into the world, the Duc d'Herouville, then seventy-six

years old, broken, decrepit, almost dead, was sitting at sunset in an



immense arm-chair, before the gothic window of his bedroom, at the

place where his wife had so vainly implored, by the sounds of the horn



wasted on the air, the help of men and heaven. You might have thought

him a body resurrected from the grave. His once energetic face,



stripped of its sinisteraspect by old age and suffering, was ghastly

in color, matching the long meshes of white hair which fell around his



bald head, the yellow skull of which seemed softening. The warrior and

the fanatic still shone in those yellow eyes, tempered now by



religious sentiment. Devotion had cast a monastic tone upon the face,

formerly so hard, but now marked with tints which softened its



expression. The reflections of the setting sun colored with a faintly

ruddy tinge the head, which, in spite of all infirmities, was still



vigorous. The feeble body, wrapped in brown garments, gave, by its

heavy attitude and the absence of all movement, a vivid impression of



the monotonousexistence, the terrible repose of this man once so

active, so enterprising, so vindictive.



"Enough!" he said to his chaplain.

That venerable old man was reading aloud the Gospel, standing before



the master in a respectful attitude. The duke, like an old menagerie

lion which has reached a decrepitude that is still full of majesty,



turned to another white-haired man and said, holding out a fleshless

arm covered with sparse hairs, still sinewy, but without vigor:--



"Your turn now, bonesetter. How am I to-day?"

"Doing well, monseigneur; the fever has ceased. You will live many



years yet."

"I wish I could see Maximilien here," continued the duke, with a smile



of satisfaction. "My fine boy! He commands a company in the King's




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