"If you are not a millionaire, you are most certainly drunk."

"Drunk with power. I can kill you!--Silence! I am Nero! I am
Nebuchadnezzar!"

"But, Raphael, we are in queer company, and you ought to keep quiet
for the sake of your own dignity."

"My life has been silent too long. I mean to have my revenge now on
the world at large. I will not amuse myself by squandering paltry

five-franc pieces; I will reproduce and sum up my epoch by absorbing
human lives, human minds, and human souls. There are the treasures of

pestilence--that is no paltry kind of wealth, is it? I will wrestle
with fevers--yellow, blue, or green--with whole armies, with gibbets.

I can possess Foedora--Yet no, I do not want Foedora; she is a
disease; I am dying of Foedora. I want to forget Foedora."

"If you keep on calling out like this, I shall take you into the
dining-room."

"Do you see this skin? It is Solomon's will. Solomon belongs to me--a
little varlet of a king! Arabia is mine, Arabia Petraea to boot; and

the universe, and you too, if I choose. If I choose-- Ah! be careful.
I can buy up all our journalist's shop; you shall be my valet. You

shall be my valet, you shall manage my newspaper. Valet! VALET, that
is to say, free from aches and pains, because he has no brains."

At the word, Emile carried Raphael off into the dining-room.
"All right," he remarked; "yes, my friend, I am your valet. But you

are about to be editor-in-chief of a newspaper; so be quiet, and
behave properly, for my sake. Have you no regard for me?"

"Regard for you! You shall have Havana cigars, with this bit of
shagreen: always with this skin, this supreme bit of shagreen. It is a

cure for corns, and efficacious remedy. Do you suffer? I will remove
them."

"Never have I known you so senseless----"
"Senseless, my friend? Not at all. This skin contracts whenever I form

a wish--'tis a paradox. There is a Brahmin underneath it! The Brahmin
must be a droll fellow, for our desires, look you, are bound to

expand----"
"Yes, yes----"

"I tell you----"
"Yes, yes, very true, I am quite of your opinion--our desires

expand----"
"The skin, I tell you."

"Yes."
"You don't believe me. I know you, my friend; you are as full of lies

as a new-made king."
"How can you expect me to follow your drunken maunderings?"

"I will bet you I can prove it. Let us measure it----"
"Goodness! he will never get off to sleep," exclaimed Emile, as he

watched Raphael rummaging busily in the dining-room.
Thanks to the peculiarclearness with which external objects are

sometimes projected on an inebriated brain, in sharp contrast to its
own obscure imaginings, Valentin found an inkstand and a table-napkin,

with the quickness of a monkey, repeating all the time:
"Let us measure it! Let us measure it!"

"All right," said Emile; "let us measure it!"
The two friends spread out the table-napkin and laid the Magic Skin

upon it. As Emile's hand appeared to be steadier than Raphael's, he
drew a line with pen and ink round the talisman, while his friend

said:
"I wished for an income of two hundred thousand livres, didn't I?

Well, when that comes, you will observe a mighty diminution of my
chagrin."

"Yes--now go to sleep. Shall I make you comfortable on that sofa? Now
then, are you all right?"

"Yes, my nursling of the press. You shall amuse me; you shall drive
the flies away from me. The friend of adversity should be the friend

of prosperity. So I will give you some Hava--na--cig----"
"Come, now, sleep. Sleep off your gold, you millionaire!"

"You! sleep off your paragraphs! Good-night! Say good-night to
Nebuchadnezzar!--Love! Wine! France!--glory and tr--treas----"

Very soon the snorings of the two friends were added to the music with
which the rooms resounded--an ineffectual concert! The lights went out

one by one, their crystal sconces cracking in the final flare. Night
threw dark shadows over this prolonged revelry, in which Raphael's

narrative had been a second orgy of speech, of words without ideas, of
ideas for which words had often been lacking.

Towards noon, next day, the fair Aquilina bestirred herself. She
yawned wearily. She had slept with her head upon a painted velvet

footstool, and her cheeks were mottled over by contact with the
surface. Her movement awoke Euphrasia, who suddenly sprang up with a

hoarse cry; her pretty face, that had been so fresh and fair in the
evening, was sallow now and pallid; she looked like a candidate for

the hospital. The rest awoke also by degrees, with portentous
groanings, to feel themselves over in every stiffened limb, and to

experience the infinite varieties of weariness that weighed upon them.
A servant came in to throw back the shutters and open the windows.

There they all stood, brought back to consciousness by the warm rays
of sunlight that shone upon the sleepers' heads. Their movements

during slumber had disordered the elaborately arranged hair and
toilettes of the women. They presented a ghastlyspectacle in the

bright daylight. Their hair fell ungracefully about them; their eyes,
lately so brilliant, were heavy and dim; the expression of their faces

was entirely changed. The sickly hues, which daylight brings out so
strongly, were frightful. An olive tint had crept over the lymphatic

faces, so fair and soft when in repose; the dainty red lips were grown
pale and dry, and bore tokens of the degradation of excess. Each

disowned his mistress of the night before; the women looked wan and
discolored, like flowers trampled under foot by a passing procession.

The men who scorned them looked even more horrible. Those human faces
would have made you shudder. The hollow eyes with the dark circles

round them seemed to see nothing; they were dull with wine and
stupefied with heavy slumbers that had been exhausting rather than

refreshing. There was an indescribableferocious and stolid bestiality
about these haggard faces, where bare physicalappetite appeared shorn

of all the poeticalillusion with which the intellect invests it. Even
these fearless champions, accustomed to measure themselves with

excess, were struck with horror at this awakening of vice, stripped of
its disguises, at being confronted thus with sin, the skeleton in

rags, lifeless and hollow, bereft of the sophistries of the intellect
and the enchantments of luxury. Artists and courtesans scrutinized in

silence and with haggard glances the surroundingdisorder, the rooms
where everything had been laid waste, at the havoc wrought by heated

passions.
Demoniac laughter broke out when Taillefer, catching the smothered

murmurs of his guests, tried to greet them with a grin. His darkly
flushed, perspiring countenance loomed upon this pandemonium, like the

image of a crime that knows no remorse (see L'Auberge Rouge). The
picture was complete. A picture of a foul life in the midst of luxury,

a hideousmixture of the pomp and squalor of humanity; an awakening
after the frenzy of Debauch has crushed and squeezed all the fruits of

life in her strong hands, till nothing but unsightly refuse is left to
her, and lies in which she believes no longer. You might have thought

of Death gloating over a family stricken with the plague.
The sweet scents and dazzling lights, the mirth and the excitement

were all no more; disgust with its nauseous sensations and searching
philosophy was there instead. The sun shone in like truth, the pure

outer air was like virtue; in contrast with the heated atmosphere,
heavy with the fumes of the previous night of revelry.

Accustomed as they were to their life, many of the girls thought of
other days and other wakings; pure and innocent days when they looked

out and saw the roses and honeysuckle about the casement, and the
fresh countryside without enraptured by the glad music of the skylark;

while earth lay in mists, lighted by the dawn, and in all the
glittering radiance of dew. Others imagined the family breakfast, the

father and children round the table, the innocentlaughter, the
unspeakable charm that pervaded it all, the simple hearts and their

meal as simple.
An artist mused upon his quiet studio, on his statue in its severe

beauty, and the graceful model who was waiting for him. A young man
recollected a lawsuit on which the fortunes of a family hung, and an

important transaction that needed his presence. The scholar regretted
his study and that noble work that called for him. Emile appeared just