The Magic Skin

by Honore de Balzac
Translated by Ellen Marriage

To Monsieur Savary, Member of Le Academie des Sciences.
I

THE TALISMAN
Towards the end of the month of October 1829 a young man entered the

Palais-Royal just as the gaming-houses opened, agreeably to the law
which protects a passion by its very nature easily excisable. He

mounted the staircase of one of the gambling hells distinguished by
the number 36, without too much deliberation.

"Your hat, sir, if you please?" a thin, querulous voice called out. A
little old man, crouching in the darkness behind a railing, suddenly

rose and exhibited his features, carved after a mean design.
As you enter a gaming-house the law despoils you of your hat at the

outset. Is it by way of a parable, a divinerevelation? Or by exacting
some pledge or other, is not an infernalcompact implied? Is it done

to compel you to preserve a respectful demeanor towards those who are
about to gain money of you? Or must the detective, who squats in our

social sewers, know the name of your hatter, or your own, if you
happen to have written it on the lining inside? Or, after all, is the

measurement of your skull required for the compilation of statistics
as to the cerebral capacity of gamblers? The executive is absolutely

silent on this point. But be sure of this, that though you have
scarcely taken a step towards the tables, your hat no more belongs to

you now than you belong to yourself. Play possesses you, your fortune,
your cap, your cane, your cloak.

As you go out, it will be made clear to you, by a savage irony, that
Play has yet spared you something, since your property is returned.

For all that, if you bring a new hat with you, you will have to pay
for the knowledge that a special costume is needed for a gambler.

The evidentastonishment with which the young man took a numbered
tally in exchange for his hat, which was fortunately somewhat rubbed

at the brim, showed clearly enough that his mind was yet untainted;
and the little old man, who had wallowed from his youth up in the

furious pleasures of a gambler's life, cast a dull, indifferent glance
over him, in which a philosopher might have seen wretchedness lying in

the hospital, the vagrant lives of ruined folk, inquests on numberless
suicides, life-long penal servitude and transportations to

Guazacoalco.
His pallid, lengthy visage appeared like a haggard embodiment of the

passion reduced to its simplest terms. There were traces of past
anguish in its wrinkles. He supported life on the glutinous soups at

Darcet's, and gambled away his meagre earnings day by day. Like some
old hackney which takes no heed of the strokes of the whip, nothing

could move him now. The stifled groans of ruined players, as they
passed out, their mute imprecations, their stupefied faces, found him

impassive. He was the spirit of Play incarnate. If the young man had
noticed this sorry Cerberus, perhaps he would have said, "There is

only a pack of cards in that heart of his."
The stranger did not heed this warning writ in flesh and blood, put

here, no doubt, by Providence, who has set loathing on the threshold
of all evil haunts. He walked boldly into the saloon, where the rattle

of coin brought his senses under the dazzling spell of an agony of
greed. Most likely he had been drawn hither" target="_blank" title="ad.到那里 a.那边的">thither by that most convincing

of Jean Jacques' eloquent periods, which expresses, I think, this
melancholy thought, "Yes, I can imagine that a man may take to

gambling when he sees only his last shilling between him and death."
There is an illusion about a gambling saloon at night as vulgar as

that of a bloodthirsty drama, and just as effective. The rooms are
filled with players and onlookers, with poverty-stricken age, which

drags itself hither" target="_blank" title="ad.到那里 a.那边的">thither in search of stimulation, with excited faces, and
revels that began in wine, to end shortly in the Seine. The passion is

there in full measure, but the great number of the actors prevents you
from seeing the gambling-demon face to face. The evening is a harmony

or chorus in which all take part, to which each instrument in the
orchestra contributes his share. You would see there plenty of

respectable people who have come in search of diversion, for which
they pay as they pay for the pleasures of the theatre, or of gluttony,

or they come hither as to some garret where they cheapen poignant
regrets for three months to come.

Do you understand all the force and frenzy in a soul which impatiently
waits for the opening of a gambling hell? Between the daylightgambler

and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between
a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady's window.

Only with morning comes the real throb of the passion and the craving
in its stark horror. Then you can admire the real gambler, who has

neither eaten, slept, thought, nor lived, he has so smarted under the
scourge of his martingale, so suffered on the rack of his desire for a

coup of trente-et-quarante. At that accursed hour you encounter eyes
whose calmness terrifies you, faces that fascinate, glances that seem

as if they had power to turn the cards over and consume them. The
grandest hours of a gambling saloon are not the opening ones. If Spain

has bull-fights, and Rome once had her gladiators, Paris waxes proud
of her Palais-Royal, where the inevitable roulettes cause blood to

flow in streams, and the public can have the pleasure of watching
without fear of their feet slipping in it.

Take a quiet peep at the arena. How bare it looks! The paper on the
walls is greasy to the height of your head, there is nothing to bring

one reviving thought. There is not so much as a nail for the
convenience of suicides. The floor is worn and dirty. An oblong table

stands in the middle of the room, the tablecloth is worn by the
friction of gold, but the straw-bottomed chairs about it indicate an

odd indifference to luxury in the men who will lose their lives here
in the quest of the fortune that is to put luxury within their reach.

This contradiction in humanity is seen wherever the soul reacts
powerfully upon itself. The gallant would clothe his mistress in

silks, would deck her out in soft Eastern fabrics, though he and she
must lie on a truckle-bed. The ambitiousdreamer sees himself at the

summit of power, while he slavishly prostrates himself in the mire.
The tradesman stagnates in his damp, unhealthy shop, while he builds a

great mansion for his son to inherit prematurely, only to be ejected
from it by law proceedings at his own brother's instance.

After all, is there a less pleasing thing in the world than a house of
pleasure? Singular question! Man is always at strife with himself. His

present woes give the lie to his hopes; yet he looks to a future which
is not his, to indemnify him for these present sufferings; setting

upon all his actions the seal of inconsequence and of the weakness of
his nature. We have nothing here below in full measure but misfortune.

There were several gamblers in the room already when the young man
entered. Three bald-headed seniors were lounging round the green

table. Imperturbable as diplomatists, those plaster-cast faces of
theirs betokened blunted sensibilities, and hearts which had long

forgotten how to throb, even when a woman's dowry was the stake. A
young Italian, olive-hued and dark-haired, sat at one end, with his

elbows on the table, seeming to listen to the presentiments of luck
that dictate a gambler's "Yes" or "No." The glow of fire and gold was

on that southern face. Some seven or eight onlookers stood by way of
an audience, awaiting a drama composed of the strokes of chance, the

faces of the actors, the circulation of coin, and the motion of the
croupier's rake, much as a silent, motionless crowd watches the

headsman in the Place de Greve. A tall, thin man, in a threadbare
coat, held a card in one hand, and a pin in the other, to mark the

numbers of Red or Black. He seemed a modern Tantalus, with all the
pleasures of his epoch at his lips, a hoardless miser drawing in

imaginary gains, a sane species of lunatic who consoles himself in his
misery by chimerical dreams, a man who touches peril and vice as a

young priest handles the unconsecrated wafer in the white mass.
One or two experts at the game, shrewd speculators, had placed

themselves opposite the bank, like old convicts who have lost all fear
of the hulks; they meant to try two or three coups, and then to depart

at once with the expected gains, on which they lived. Two elderly
waiters dawdled about with their arms folded, looking from time to

time into the garden from the windows, as if to show their
insignificant faces as a sign to passers-by.

The croupier and banker threw a ghastly and withering glance at the
punters, and cried, in a sharp voice, "Make your game!" as the young

man came in. The silence seemed to grow deeper as all heads turned
curiously towards the new arrival. Who would have thought it? The

jaded elders, the fossilized waiters, the onlookers, the fanatical
Italian himself, felt an indefinable dread at sight of the stranger.

Is he not wretched indeed who can excite pity here? Must he not be
very helpless to receive sympathy, ghastly in appearance to raise a

shudder in these places, where pain utters no cry, where wretchedness
looks gay, and despair is decorous? Such thoughts as these produced a

new emotion in these torpid hearts as the young man entered. Were not