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The Lily of the Valley-Part2_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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by either Monsieur or Madame Lepitre, who went out themselves on those

days and were to call for me on their way home. Singular amusement for



a young lad! My aunt, the Marquise de Listomere, was a great lady, of

ceremonious habits, who would never have dreamed of offering me money.



Old as a cathedral, painted like a miniature, sumptuous in dress, she

lived in her great house as though Louis XV. were not dead, and saw



none but old women and men of a past day,--a fossil society which made

me think I was in a graveyard. No one spoke to me and I had not the



courage to speak first. Cold and alien looks made me ashamed of my

youth, which seemed to annoy them. I counted on this indifference to



aid me in certain plans; I was resolved to escape some day directly

after dinner and rush to the Palais-Royal. Once seated at whist my



aunt would pay no attention to me. Jean, the footman, cared little for

Monsieur Lepitre and would have aided me; but on the day I chose for



my adventure that luckless dinner was longer than usual,--either

because the jaws employed were worn out or the false teeth more



imperfect. At last, between eight and nine o'clock, I reached the

staircase, my heart beating like that of Bianca Capello on the day of



her flight; but when the porter pulled the cord I beheld in the street

before me Monsieur Lepitre's hackney-coach, and I heard his pursy



voice demanding me!

Three times did fate interpose between the hell of the Palais-Royal



and the heaven of my youth. On the day when I, ashamed at twenty years

of age of my own ignorance, determined to risk all dangers to put an



end to it, at the very moment when I was about to run away from

Monsieur Lepitre as he got into the coach,--a difficult process, for



he was as fat as Louis XVIII. and club-footed,--well, can you believe

it, my mother arrived in a post-chaise! Her glance arrested me; I



stood still, like a bird before a snake. What fate had brought her

there? The simplest thing in the world. Napoleon was then making his



last efforts. My father, who foresaw the return of the Bourbons, had

come to Paris with my mother to advise my brother, who was employed in



the imperialdiplomatic service. My mother was to take me back with

her, out of the way of dangers which seemed, to those who followed the



march of events intelligently, to threaten the capital. In a few

minutes, as it were, I was taken out of Paris, at the very moment when



my life there was about to become fatal to me.

The tortures of imagination excited by repressed desires, the



weariness of a life depressed by constant privations had driven me to

study, just as men, weary of fate, confine themselves in a cloister.



To me, study had become a passion, which might even be fatal to my

health by imprisoning me at a period of life when young men ought to



yield to the bewitching activities of their springtide youth.

This slight sketch of my boyhood, in which you, Natalie, can readily



perceive innumerable songs of woe, was needful to explain to you its

influence on my future life. At twenty years of age, and affected by



many morbid elements, I was still small and thin and pale. My soul,

filled with the will to do, struggled with a body that seemed weakly,



but which, in the words of an old physician at Tours, was undergoing

its final fusion into a temperament of iron. Child in body and old in



mind, I had read and thought so much that I knew life metaphysically

at its highest reaches at the moment when I was about to enter the



tortuous difficulties of its defiles and the sandy roads of its

plains. A strange chance had held me long in that delightful period



when the soul awakes to its first tumults, to its desires for joy, and

the savor of life is fresh. I stood in the period between puberty and



manhood,--the one prolonged by my excessive study, the other tardily

developing its living shoots. No young man was ever more thoroughly



prepared to feel and to love. To understand my history, let your mind




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