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Two Poets-Part10_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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Palissy, Louis XI., Fox, Napoleon, Christopher Columbus, and Julius



Caesar,--all these world-famous gamblers had begun life hampered with

debt, or as poor men; all of them had been misunderstood, taken for



madmen, reviled for bad sons, bad brothers, bad fathers; and yet in

after life each one had come to be the pride of his family, of his



country, of the civilized world.

Her arguments fell upon fertile soil in the worst of Lucien's nature,



and spread corruption in his heart; for him, when his desires were

hot, all means were admissible. But--failure is high treason against



society; and when the fallen conqueror has run amuck through bourgeois

virtues, and pulled down the pillars of society, small wonder that



society, finding Marius seated among the ruins, should drive him forth

in abhorrence. All unconsciously Lucien stood with the palm of genius



on the one hand and a shamefulending in the hulks upon the other;

and, on high upon the Sinai of the prophets, beheld no Dead Sea



covering the cities of the plain--the hideous winding-sheet of

Gomorrah.



So well did Louise loosen the swaddling-bands of provincial life that

confined the heart and brain of her poet that the said poet determined



to try an experiment upon her. He wished to feel certain that this

proud conquest was his without laying himself open to the



mortification of a rebuff. The forthcoming soiree gave him his

opportunity. Ambition blended with his love. He loved, and he meant to



rise, a double desire not unnatural in young men with a heart to

satisfy and the battle of life to fight. Society, summoning all her



children to one banquet, arouses ambition in the very morning of life.

Youth is robbed of its charm, and generous thoughts are corrupted by



mercenary scheming. The idealist would fain have it otherwise, but

intrusive fact too often gives the lie to the fiction which we should



like to believe, making it impossible to paint the young man of the

nineteenth century other than he is. Lucien imagined that his scheming



was entirely prompted by good feeling, and persuaded himself that it

was done solely for his friend David's sake.



He wrote a long letter to his Louise; he felt bolder, pen in hand,

than face to face. In a dozen sheets, copied out three several times,



he told her of his father's genius and blighted hopes and of his

grinding poverty. He described his beloved sister as an angel, and



David as another Cuvier, a great man of the future, and a father,

friend, and brother to him in the present. He should feel himself



unworthy of his Louise's love (his proudest distinction) if he did not

ask her to do for David all that she had done for him. He would give



up everything rather than desert David Sechard; David must witness his

success. It was one of those wild letters in which a young man points



a pistol at a refusal, letters full of boyish casuistry and the

incoherent reasoning of an idealist; a delicioustissue of words



embroidered here and there by the naive utterances that women love so

well--unconscious revelations of the writer's heart.



Lucien left the letter with the housemaid, went to the office, and

spent the day in reading proofs, superintending the execution of



orders, and looking after the affairs of the printing-house. He said

not a word to David. While youth bears a child's heart, it is capable



of sublime reticence. Perhaps, too, Lucien began to dread the

Phocion's axe which David could wield when he chose, perhaps he was



afraid to meet those clear-sighted eyes that read the depths of his

soul. But when he read Chenier's poems with David, his secret rose



from his heart to his lips at the sting of a reproach that he felt as

the patient feels the probing of a wound.



And now try to understand the thoughts that troubled Lucien's mind as




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