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The Elixir of Life By: Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) |
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By Honore De Balzac
Translated By Clara Bell and James Waring TO THE READER At the very outset of the writer's literary career, a friend, long since
dead, gave him the subject of this Study. Later on he found the same
story in a collection published about the beginning of the present
century. To the best of his belief, it is some stray fancy of the brain
of Hoffmann of Berlin; probably it appeared in some German almanac,
and was omitted in the published editions of his collected works. The
Comedie Humaine is sufficiently rich in original creations for the
author to own to this innocent piece of plagiarism; when, like the
worthy La Fontaine, he has told unwittingly, and after his own fashion,
a tale already related by another. This is not one of the hoaxes in
vogue in the year 1830, when every author wrote his "tale of horror"
for the amusement of young ladies. When you have read the account of
Don Juan's decorous parricide, try to picture to yourself the part which
would be played under very similar circumstances by honest folk who, in
this nineteenth century, will take a man's money and undertake to pay
him a life annuity on the faith of a chill, or let a house to an ancient
lady for the term of her natural life! Would they be for resuscitating
their clients? I should dearly like a connoisseur in consciences to
consider how far there is a resemblance between a Don Juan and fathers
who marry their children to great expectations. Does humanity, which,
according to certain philosophers, is making progress, look on the art
of waiting for dead men's shoes as a step in the right direction? To
this art we owe several honorable professions, which open up ways of
living on death. There are people who rely entirely on an expected
demise; who brood over it, crouching each morning upon a corpse, that
serves again for their pillow at night. To this class belong bishops'
coadjutors, cardinals' supernumeraries, tontiniers , and the like.
Add to the list many delicately scrupulous persons eager to buy landed
property beyond their means, who calculate with dry logic and in cold
blood the probable duration of the life of a father or of a step mother,
some old man or woman of eighty or ninety, saying to themselves, "I
shall be sure to come in for it in three years' time, and then " A
murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted
on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is
always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his
vileness pervades every moment of his life. Then what must it be to live
when every moment of your life is tainted with murder? And have we not
just admitted that a host of human creatures in our midst are led by
our laws, customs, and usages to dwell without ceasing on a
fellow creature's death? There are men who put the weight of a coffin
into their deliberations as they bargain for Cashmere shawls for their
wives, as they go up the staircase of a theatre, or think of going to
the Bouffons, or of setting up a carriage; who are murderers in thought
when dear ones, with the irresistible charm of innocence, hold up
childish foreheads to be kissed with a "Good night, father!" Hourly they
meet the gaze of eyes that they would fain close for ever, eyes that
still open each morning to the light, like Belvidero's in this Study.
God alone knows the number of those who are parricides in thought.
Picture to yourself the state of mind of a man who must pay a life
annuity to some old woman whom he scarcely knows; both live in
the country with a brook between them, both sides are free to hate
cordially, without offending against the social conventions that require
two brothers to wear a mask if the older will succeed to the entail,
and the other to the fortune of a younger son. The whole civilization
of Europe turns upon the principle of hereditary succession as upon a
pivot; it would be madness to subvert the principle; but could we not,
in an age that prides itself upon its mechanical inventions, perfect
this essential portion of the social machinery? If the author has preserved the old fashioned style of address To the
Reader before a work wherein he endeavors to represent all literary
forms, it is for the purpose of making a remark that applies to
several of the Studies, and very specially to this... Continue reading book >>
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