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The Red Inn-Part5_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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"Yes, what of her?"

"I met her, three days ago, at the ball of the Neapolitan ambassador,



and I am passionately in love with her. For pity's sake tell me her

name. No one was able--"



"That is Mademoiselle Victorine Taillefer."

I grew dizzy.



"Her step-mother," continued my neighbor, "has lately taken her from a

convent, where she was finishing, rather late in the day, her



education. For a long time her father refused to recognize her. She

comes here for the first time. She is very beautiful and very rich."



These words were accompanied by a sardonic smile.

At this moment we heard violent, but smothered outcries; they seemed



to come from a neighboringapartment and to be echoed faintly back

through the garden.



"Isn't that the voice of Monsieur Taillefer?" I said.

We gave our full attention to the noise; a frightful moaning reached



our ears. The wife of the banker came hurriedly towards us and closed

the window.



"Let us avoid a scene," she said. "If Mademoiselle Taillefer hears her

father, she might be thrown into hysterics."



The banker now re-entered the salon, looked round for Victorine, and

said a few words in her ear. Instantly the young girl uttered a cry,



ran to the door, and disappeared. This event produced a great

sensation. The card-players paused. Every one questioned his neighbor.



The murmur of voices swelled, and groups gathered.

"Can Monsieur Taillefer be--" I began.



"--dead?" said my sarcastic neighbor. "You would wear the gayest

mourning, I fancy!"



"But what has happened to him?"

"The poor dear man," said the mistress of the house, "is subject to



attacks of a disease the name of which I never can remember, though

Monsieur Brousson has often told it to me; and he has just been seized



with one."

"What is the nature of the disease?" asked an examining-judge.



"Oh, it is something terrible, monsieur," she replied. "The doctors

know no remedy. It causes the most dreadfulsuffering. One day, while



the unfortunate man was staying at my country-house, he had an attack,

and I was obliged to go away and stay with a neighbor to avoid hearing



him; his cries were terrible; he tried to kill himself; his daughter

was obliged to have him put into a strait-jacket and fastened to his



bed. The poor man declares there are live animals in his head gnawing

his brain; every nerve quivers with horrible shooting pains, and he



writhes in torture. He suffers so much in his head that he did not

even feel the moxas they used formerly to apply to relieve it; but



Monsieur Brousson, who is now his physician, has forbidden that

remedy, declaring that the trouble is a nervousaffection, an



inflammation of the nerves, for which leeches should be applied to the

neck, and opium to the head. As a result, the attacks are not so



frequent; they appear now only about once a year, and always late in

the autumn. When he recovers, Taillefer says repeatedly that he would



far rather die than endure such torture."

"Then he must suffer terribly!" said a broker, considered a wit, who



was present.

"Oh," continued the mistress of the house, "last year he nearly died



in one of these attacks. He had gone alone to his country-house on

pressing business. For want, perhaps, of immediate help, he lay



twenty-two hours stiff and stark as though he were dead. A very hot

bath was all that saved him."



"It must be a species of lockjaw," said one of the guests.

"I don't know," she answered. "He got the disease in the army nearly



thirty years ago. He says it was caused by a splinter of wood entering

his head from a shot on board a boat. Brousson hopes to cure him. They



say the English have discovered a mode of treating the disease with

prussic acid--"



At that instant a still more piercing cry echoed through the house,

and froze us with horror.



"There! that is what I listened to all day long last year," said the

banker's wife. "It made me jump in my chair and rasped my nerves






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