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The Lily of the Valley-Part31_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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discovered the true cause of this disease; it is my sensibility that

is killing me. Indeed, all our feelings affect the gastric centre."



"Then do you mean," I said, smiling, "that the best-hearted people die

of their stomachs?"



"Don't laugh, Felix; nothing is more absolutely true. Too keen a

sensibility increases the play of the sympathetic nerve; these



excitements of feeling keep the mucous membrane of the stomach in a

state of constantirritation. If this state continues it deranges, at



first insensibly, the digestive functions; the secretions change, the

appetite is impaired, and the digestion becomes capricious; sharp



pains are felt; they grow worse day by day, and more frequent; then

the disorder comes to a crisis, as if a slow poison were passing the



alimentary canal; the mucous membrane thickens, the valve of the

pylorus becomes indurated and forms a scirrhus, of which the patient



dies. Well, I have reached that point, my dear friend. The induration

is proceeding and nothing checks it. Just look at my yellow skin, my



feverish eyes, my excessive thinness. I am withering away. But what is

to be done? I brought the seeds of the disease home with me from the



emigration; heaven knows what I suffered then! My marriage, which

might have repaired the wrong, far from soothing my ulcerated mind



increased the wound. What did I find? ceaseless fears for the

children, domestic jars, a fortune to remake, economies which required



great privations, which I was obliged to impose upon my wife, but

which I was the one to suffer from; and then,--I can tell this to none



but you, Felix,--I have a worse trouble yet. Though Blanche is an

angel, she does not understand me; she knows nothing of my sufferings



and she aggravates them; but I forgive her. It is a dreadful thing to

say, my friend, but a less virtuous woman might have made me more



happy by lending herself to consolations which Blanche never thinks

of, for she is as silly as a child. Moreover my servants torment me;



blockheads who take my French for Greek! When our fortune was finally

remade inch by inch, and I had some relief from care, it was too late,



the harm was done; I had reached the period when the appetite is

vitiated. Then came my severeillness, so ill-managed by Origet. In



short, I have not six months to live."

I listened to the count in terror. On meeting the countess I had been



struck with her yellow skin and the feverish brilliancy of her eyes. I

led the count towards the house while seeming to listen to his



complaints and his medical dissertations; but my thoughts were all

with Henriette, and I wanted to observe her. We found her in the



salon, where she was listening to a lesson in mathematics which the

Abbe Dominis was giving Jacques, and at the same time showing



Madeleine a stitch of embroidery. Formerly she would have laid aside

every occupation the day of my arrival to be with me. But my love was



so deeply real that I drove back into my heart the grief I felt at

this contrast between the past and the present, and thought only of



the fatal yellow tint on that celestial face, which resembled the halo

of divine light Italian painters put around the faces of their saints.



I felt the icy wind of death pass over me. Then when the fire of her

eyes, no longer softened by the liquid light in which in former times



they moved, fell upon me, I shuddered; I noticed several changes,

caused by grief, which I had not seen in the open air. The slender



lines which, at my last visit, were so lightly marked upon her

forehead had deepened; her temples with their violet veins seemed



burning and concave; her eyes were sunk beneath the brows, their

circles browned;--alas! she was discolored like a fruit when decay is



beginning to show upon the surface, or a worm is at the core. I, whose

whole ambition had been to pour happiness into her soul, I it was who



embittered the spring from which she had hoped to refresh her life and

renew her courage. I took a seat beside her and said in a voice filled



with tears of repentance, "Are you satisfied with your own health?"

"Yes," she answered, plunging her eyes into mine. "My health is



there," she added, motioning to Jacques and Madeleine.

The latter, just fifteen, had come victoriously out of her struggle



with anaemia, and was now a woman. She had grown tall; the Bengal

roses were blooming in her once sallow cheeks. She had lost the






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