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Gambara By: Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) |
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By Honore de Balzac
Translated by Clara Bell and James Waring DEDICATION To Monsieur le Marquis de Belloy It was sitting by the fire, in a mysterious and magnificent
retreat, now a thing of the past but surviving in our memory,
whence our eyes commanded a view of Paris from the heights of
Belleville to those of Belleville, from Montmartre to the
triumphal Arc de l'Etoile, that one morning, refreshed by tea,
amid the myriad suggestions that shoot up and die like rockets
from your sparkling flow of talk, lavish of ideas, you tossed to
my pen a figure worthy of Hoffmann, that casket of unrecognized
gems, that pilgrim seated at the gate of Paradise with ears to
hear the songs of the angels but no longer a tongue to repeat
them, playing on the ivory keys with fingers crippled by the
stress of divine inspiration, believing that he is expressing
celestial music to his bewildered listeners. It was you who created GAMBARA; I have only clothed him. Let me
render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, regretting only
that you do not yourself take up the pen at a time when gentlemen
ought to wield it as well as the sword, if they are to save their
country. You may neglect yourself, but you owe your talents to us.
GAMBARA
New Year's Day of 1831 was pouring out its packets of sugared almonds,
four o'clock was striking, there was a mob in the Palais Royal, and the
eating houses were beginning to fill. At this moment a coupe drew up at
the perron and a young man stepped out; a man of haughty appearance,
and no doubt a foreigner; otherwise he would not have displayed the
aristocratic chasseur who attended him in a plumed hat, nor the coat
of arms which the heroes of July still attacked. This gentleman went into the Palais Royal, and followed the crowd round
the galleries, unamazed at the slowness to which the throng of loungers
reduced his pace; he seemed accustomed to the stately step which is
ironically nicknamed the ambassador's strut; still, his dignity had a
touch of the theatrical. Though his features were handsome and imposing,
his hat, from beneath which thick black curls stood out, was perhaps
tilted a little too much over the right ear, and belied his gravity by
a too rakish effect. His eyes, inattentive and half closed, looked down
disdainfully on the crowd. "There goes a remarkably good looking young man," said a girl in a low
voice, as she made way for him to pass. "And who is only too well aware of it!" replied her companion aloud who
was very plain. After walking all round the arcades, the young man looked by turns at
the sky and at his watch, and with a shrug of impatience went into a
tobacconist's shop, lighted a cigar, and placed himself in front of a
looking glass to glance at his costume, which was rather more ornate
than the rules of French taste allow. He pulled down his collar and his
black velvet waistcoat, over which hung many festoons of the thick gold
chain that is made at Venice; then, having arranged the folds of his
cloak by a single jerk of his left shoulder, draping it gracefully so
as to show the velvet lining, he started again on parade, indifferent to
the glances of the vulgar. As soon as the shops were lighted up and the dusk seemed to him black
enough, he went out into the square in front of the Palais Royal, but as
a man anxious not to be recognized; for he kept close under the houses
as far as the fountain, screened by the hackney cab stand, till he
reached the Rue Froid Manteau, a dirty, poky, disreputable street a
sort of sewer tolerated by the police close to the purified purlieus of
the Palais Royal, as an Italian major domo allows a careless servant to
leave the sweepings of the rooms in a corner of the staircase. The young man hesitated. He might have been a bedizened citizen's wife
craning her neck over a gutter swollen by the rain. But the hour was not
unpropitious for the indulgence of some discreditable whim. Earlier, he
might have been detected; later, he might find himself cut out... Continue reading book >>
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