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The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan-Part5_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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realize the simplicity that constant work and solitude leave in the

heart; all that love--reduced to a mere need, and now repugnant,



beside an ignoble woman--excites of regret and longings for diviner

sentiments in the higher regions of the soul. D'Arthez was, indeed,



the child, the boy that Madame de Cadignan had recognized. An

illumination something like his own had taken place in the beautiful



Diane. At last she had met that superior man whom all women desire and

seek, if only to make a plaything of him,--that power which they



consent to obey, if only for the pleasure of subduing it; at last she

had found the grandeurs of the intellect united with the simplicity of



a heart all new to love; and she saw, with untold happiness, that

these merits were contained in a form that pleased her. She thought



d'Arthez handsome, and perhaps he was. Though he had reached the age

of gravity (for he was now thirty-eight), he still preserved a flower



of youth, due to the sober and ascetic life which he had led. Like all

men of sedentary habits, and statesmen, he had acquired a certainly



reasonable embonpoint. When very young, he bore some resemblance to

Bonaparte; and the likeness still continued, as much as a man with



black eyes and thick, dark hair could resemble a sovereign with blue

eyes and scanty, chestnut hair. But whatever there once was of ardent



and noble ambition in the great author's eyes had been somewhat

quenched by successes. The thoughts with which that brow once teemed



had flowered; the lines of the hollow face were filling out. Ease now

spread its golden tints where, in youth, poverty had laid the yellow



tones of the class of temperament whose forces band together to

support a crushing and long-continued struggle. If you observe



carefully the noble faces of ancient philosophers, you will always

find those deviations from the type of a perfect human face which show



the characteristic to which each countenance owes its originality,

chastened by the habit of meditation, and by the calmness necessary



for intellectual labor. The most irregular features, like those of

Socrates, for instance, become, after a time, expressive of an almost



divine serenity.

To the noble simplicity which characterized his head, d'Arthez added a



naive expression, the naturalness of a child, and a touching

kindliness. He did not have that politeness tinged with insincerity



with which, in society, the best-bred persons and the most amiable

assume qualities in which they are often lacking, leaving those they



have thus duped wounded and distressed. He might, indeed, fail to

observe certain rules of social life, owing to his isolated mode of



living; but he never shocked the sensibilities, and therefore this

perfume of savagery made the peculiar affability of a man of great



talent the more agreeable; such men know how to leave their

superiority in their studies, and come down to the social level,



lending their backs, like Henry IV., to the children's leap-frog, and

their minds to fools.



If d'Arthez did not brace himself against the spell which the princess

had cast about him, neither did she herself argue the matter in her



own mind, on returning home. It was settled for her. She loved with

all her knowledge and all her ignorance. If she questioned herself at



all, it was to ask whether she deserved so great a happiness, and what

she had done that Heaven should send her such an angel. She wanted to



be worthy of that love, to perpetuate it, to make it her own forever,

and to gently end her career of frivolity in the paradise she now



foresaw. As for coquetting, quibbling, resisting, she never once

thought of it. She was thinking of something very different!--of the



grandeur of men of genius, and the certainty which her heart divined

that they would never subject the woman they chose to ordinary laws.



Here begins one of those unseen comedies, played in the secret regions

of the consciousness between two beings of whom one will be the dupe



of the other, though it keeps on this side of wickedness; one of those

dark and comic dramas to which that of Tartuffe is mere child's play,



--dramas that do not enter the scenic domain, although they are

natural, conceivable, and even justifiable by necessity; dramas which






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