Chapter 18

POSSESSING ME THOU POSSESSEST EVERYTHING. YET I POSSESS THEE. SO GOD HAS WILLED IT. WISH, AND THY WISHES SHALL BE ACCOMPLISHED. BUT MEASURE THE WISHES ACCORDING TO THY LIFE. HERE IT IS. I SHALL SHRINK WITH EACH WISH, AND SO SHALL THY LIFE, WILT THOU TAKE ME? TAKE ME! GOD WILL HEAR THEE. AMEN.

"Is it a joke or a mystery?"

"I do not know," said the old man. "I have offered the magic skin to many men. They laughed at it; but none would take it. I am like them. I doubt its power, but will not put it to the test."

"What!" said Raphael. "You have never formed a wish all the time you had it?"

"No!" said the old man. "I have discovered the great secret of human life. Look! I am a hundred and two years old. Do you know why men die? Because they use up the energy of life by wishing to do things and doing them. I am content to know things. My days have been spent wandering quietly over all the earth in the calm acquisition of knowledge. All desire, all lust after power are dead within me. So this skin, which I picked up in India, has never shrunk an inch since it came into my possession."

"You have never lived!" cried Raphael, turning from the old man, and seizing the skin. "Yes, I will take you. Now for a test. I am starving. Set before me a splendid banquet. Let me have as guests all the wildest, gayest, wittiest minds of young France. And women? Oh, the prettiest, wickedest women of the town! Wine, wit and women!"

A roar of laughter came from the old man. It resounded in the ears of Raphael like the laughter of a fiend from hell.

"Do you think my floors are going to open, and tables, waiters, and guests pop up before your eyes?" he said. "No! Your first wish is mean and vulgar; but it will be fulfilled in a natural manner. You wanted to die, eh? Your suicide is only postponed."

Raphael put the skin in his pocket, and abruptly left, saying, "You have never lived. I wish you knew what love was."

He heard the old man groan strangely, but without listening to his reproaches he rushed out of the shop, and in the street ran full tilt up against three young men.

"Brute! Ass! Idiot! Why, it's Raphael!" they cried. "You must come. Talk about a Roman orgy I We've been all over Paris looking, for you. A gorgeous feed. And all the girls from the Opera! The ancient Romans aren't in it."

"One at a time," said Raphael. "Now, Emile, just tell me what are you all shouting about?"

"Do you know Taillefer, the wealthy banker?" said Emile. "He is founding a newspaper. All the talent of young France is to be enlisted. You're invited to the inaugural festival to-night at the Rue Joubert. The ballot girls of the Opera are coming. Oh, Taillefer's doing the thing in style!"

Arm linked in arm, the four friends made their way to Taillefer's mansion, and there, in a large room brilliantly set out, they were welcomed by all the younger men of note in Paris. For some time Raphael felt ill at ease. He was surprised by the natural manner in which his wish had suddenly been accomplished. He took the magic skin out of his pocket, and looked at it. Magic? What man could believe nowadays in magic? But, nevertheless, he marvelled at the accidents of human life.

_II--A Fight Against Fate_

Although the banquet which he had desired was now set before him, Raphael was still very moody. Deaf to the loud, wild merriment of his companions, he thought sadly of the misfortune which had driven him that morning to the brink of the grave. Many noblemen find it difficult to exist in Paris on an income of several thousand pounds. The young Marquis de Valentin had lived there very happily on £12 a year. In 1826, his father, who had lost his wealth and lands in the Revolution, had died, leaving him £40. Taking a garret in the Rue des Cordiers, he had set about earning his living with his pen, and for three years he had laboured at a great work on "The Theory of the Will." He never went into society, but found a pleasant distraction from his studies in educating the daughter of his landlady.

Pauline Gaudin was a charming and beautiful child; her father, a baron of the empire, and an officer in the Grand Army, had been taken prisoner by the Russians in 1812, and never heard of since. Raphael was moved by the grace and innocence of the lovely human flower, that grew from a bud into an opening blossom under his care. But as he was too poor to marry her, he never made love to her.

Then, in January, 1830, he met the Countess Foedora, a brilliant, wealthy woman of society, widowed at the age of thirty, and eager to shine and astonish and captivate. For her sake, Raphael had put aside his scholarly studies and engaged in money-making hack-work. But after keeping him dangling about her for some months, she had cast him off, and in his misery he had resolved to end his life. Now he had got the magic skin. What if it were true what the strange old man had said? Should he wish to win the heart of Foedora? No! She was a woman without a heart. He would have nothing to do with women. Still, this skin!

"Measure it! Measure it!" he cried, flinging it down on the table.

"Measure what?" said Emile. "Has Taillefer's wine got into your head already?"

Raphael told them of the curiosity shop.

"That can be easily tested," said Emile, taking the skin and drawing its outline on a napkin. "Now wish, and see if it shrinks."

"I wish for six million pounds!" said Raphael.

"Hurrah!" said Emile. "And while you're about it make us all millionaires."

Taillefer's notary, Cardot, who had been gazing at Raphael during the dinner, walked across the room to him.

"My dear marquis," he said, "I've been looking for you all the evening. Wasn't your mother a Miss O'Flaharty?"

"Yes, she was," said Raphael--"Barbara O'Flaharty."

"Well, you are the sole heir of Major O'Flaharty, who died last August at Calcutta, leaving a fortune of six millions."

"An incalculable fortune," said Emile. Raphael spread out the skin upon the napkin. He shuddered violently on seeing a slight margin between the pencil-line on the napkin and the edge of the skin.

"What's the matter?" said the notary. "He has got a fortune very cheaply."

"Hold him up," said some one. "The joy will kill him."

A ghostly whiteness spread over the face of the happy heir. He had seen Death! He stared at the shrunken skin and the merciless outline on the napkin, and a feeling of horror came over him. The whole world was his; he could have all things. But at what a cost!

"Do you wish for some asparagus, sir?" said, a waiter.

"_I wish for nothing!_" shrieked Raphael. And he fled from the banquet.

"So," he said, when he was at last alone, "in this enlightened age, when science has stripped the very stars of their secrets, here am I frightened out of my senses by an old piece of wild ass's skin. To-morrow I will have it examined by Planchette, and put an end to this mad fancy."

Planchette, the celebrated professor of mechanics, treated the thing as a joke.

"Come with me to Spieghalter," he said. "He has just built a new kind of hydraulic press which I designed."

Arrived there, Planchette asked Spieghalter to stretch the magic skin. "Our friend," he said, "doubts if we can do it."

"You see this crank?" said Spieghalter to Raphael, pointing to the new press. "Seven turns to it, and a solid steel bar would break into thousands of pieces."

"The very thing I want," said Raphael.

Planchette put the skin between the metal plates, and, proud of his new invention, he energetically twisted the crank.

"Lie flat all of you!" shouted Spieghalter. "We're dead men."

There was an explosion, and a jet of water spurted out with terrific force. Falling on a furnace it twisted up the mass of iron as if it had been paper. The hydraulic chamber of the press had given way.

"The skin is untouched," said Planchette. "There was a flaw in the press."

"No, no!" said Spieghalter. "My press was as sound as a bell. The devil's in your skin, sir. Take it away!"

Spieghalter seized the talisman, and flung it on an anvil, and furiously belaboured it with a heavy sledgehammer. He then pitched it in a furnace, and ordered his workmen to blow the coal into a fierce white heat. At the end of ten minutes he drew it out with a pair of tongs uninjured. With a cry of horror the workmen fled from the foundry.

"I now believe in the devil," said Spieghalter.

"And I believe in God," said Planchette.

Raphael departed in a hard, bitter rage. He was resolved to fight like a man against his strange fate. He would follow the example of the former owner of the magic skin, and give himself up to study and meditation, and live his life in the tranquil acquisition of knowledge, undisturbed by passion and desire, and lust for power, and dominion and glory. On receiving his vast inheritance, he bought a mansion in the Rue de Varenne, and engaged a crowd of intelligent, quiet servants to wait upon him.

But his first care had been to seek out his foster-father, Jonathan, the old and devoted servitor of his family. To him he confided his dreadful secret.

"You must stand between the world and me, Jonathan," he said. "Treat me as a baby. Never ask me for orders. See that the servants feed me, and tend me, and care for me in absolute silence. Above all things, never let anyone pester me. Never let me form a wish of any kind."

For some months, the eccentric Marquis de Valentin was the talk of Paris. He lived in monastic silence and seclusion, and Jonathan never permitted any of his friends to enter the mansion. But one morning his old tutor, Porriquet, called, and Jonathan thought he might cheer his young master. He could not ask Raphael: "Do you wish to see M. Porriquet?" But after some thought he found a way of putting the question: "M. Porriquet is here, my lord. Do you think he ought to enter?"

Raphael nodded. Porriquet was alarmed at the appearance of his pupil. He looked like a plant bleached by darkness. The fact was, Raphael had surrendered every right in life in order to live. He had despoiled his soul of all the romance that lies in a wish. The better to struggle with the cruel power that he had challenged, he had stifled his imagination. He did not allow himself even the pleasures of fancy, lest they should awaken some desire. He had become an automaton.

Porriquet, unfortunately, was now an irritating old proser. He had failed in life and wanted to air all his grievances. At the end of five minutes' talk Raphael was about to wish that he would depart, when he caught sight of the magic skin hanging in a frame, with a red line drawn around it. Suppressing, with a shudder, his secret desire, he patiently bore with the old man's prolixity. Porriquet wanted very much to ask him for money, but did not like to do so, and after complaining for quite an hour or more about things in general, he rose to depart.

"Perhaps," he said, as he turned to leave the room, "I shall hear of a headmastership of a good school."

"The very thing for you!" said Raphael. "I _wish_ you could get it."

Then, with a sudden cry, he looked at the frame. There was a thin white edge between the skin and the red line.

"Go, you fool!" he shouted. "I have made you a headmaster. Why didn't you ask me for an annuity of a thousand pounds instead of using up ten years of my life on a silly wish? I could have won Foedora at the price! Conquered a kingdom!"

His lips were covered with froth, and there was a savage light in his eyes. Porriquet fled in terror. Then Raphael fell back in a chair, and wept.

"Oh, my precious life!" he sobbed. "No more kindly thoughts! No more friendship!"

_III.--The Agony of Death_

Raphael's condition had by now become so critical that a trip to Savoy was advised, and a few weeks later he was at Aix. One day, moving among the crowd of pleasure-seekers and invalids, a number of young men deliberately picked a quarrel with him, with the result that from one of them he received a challenge to fight a duel. Raphael did his utmost to persuade the other to apologise, even going to the extent of informing him of the terrible powers he possessed. Failing in his object, the fatal morning came round, and the unfortunate individual was shot through the heart. Not heeding the fallen man, Raphael hurriedly glanced at the skin to see what another man's life had cost him. The talisman had shrunk to the size of a small oak-leaf.

Seeing that his master was given over to a gloomy despair that verged upon madness, Jonathan resolved to distract his mind at all costs, and knowing that he was passionately fond of music, he engaged a box for him at the Opera. But Raphael was afraid above all things, of falling in love. Under the illimitable desire of passion the magic skin would shrivel up in an hour. So he used a strange, distorting opera-glass which made the loveliest face seem hideous.

With this he sat in his box, he surveyed the scene around him. Who was that old man over there, sitting beside a dancing-girl that Raphael had seen at Taillefer's? The owner of the curiosity shop! He had at last fallen in love, as Raphael had jestingly desired. No doubt the magic skin had shrunk under that wish before Raphael had measured it. A beautiful woman entered the theatre with a peer of France at her side. A murmur of admiration arose as she took her seat. She smiled at Raphael. In spite of the distorted image on his opera-glass, Raphael knew her. It was the Countess Foedora! In a single glance of intolerable scorn the man she had played false avenged himself. He did not waste an ill-wish on her. He merely took the glasses from his eyes, and answered her smile with a look of cold contempt. Everybody observed the sudden pallor of the countess; it was a public rejection.

"Raphael!"

The marquis turned at the sound of a beloved voice. Pauline was sitting in the box next to his. How beautiful she had grown! How maidenly she was still! Putting down his opera-glasses, Raphael talked to her of old times.

"You must come and see me to-morrow," said Pauline. "I have your great work on 'The Theory of the Will.' Don't you remember leaving it in the garret?"

"I was mad and blind then," said Raphael. "But I am cured at last."

"I wish Pauline to love me!" he kept repeating to himself all the way home. "I wish Pauline to love me!"

With a strange mixture of wild anguish and fierce joy, he looked at the magic skin to see what this vehement wish had cost him. Nothing! Not a sign of shrinkage could be discerned. The fact was that even the greatest talisman could not realise a desire which had long since been fulfilled. Pauline had loved Raphael from the time when they first met; while he had been priding himself on living on twelve pounds a year, she had been painting screens up to two or three o'clock every night, in order to buy him food and firing.

"Oh, my simple-minded darling," she said to him the next day, sitting on his lap and twining her arms about his neck, "you will never know what a pleasure it was for me to pay my handsome tutor for all his kindness. And wasn't I cunning? You never found me out."

"But I've found out now," said Raphael, "and I am going to punish you severely. Instead of marrying you in three months' time, as you suggest, I shall marry you at the end of this week."

Raphael was now the happiest man in Paris. Seeing that the magic skin had not shrunk with his last wish, he thought that the spell over his life was removed. And that morning he had thrown the talisman down a disused well in the garden.

At the end of the week, Pauline was sitting at breakfast with Raphael in the conservatory overlooking the garden. She was wearing a light dressing-gown; her long hair was all dishevelled, and her little, white, blue-veined feet peeped out of their velvet slippers. She gave a little cry of dismay, when the gardener appeared.

"I've just found this strange thing at the bottom of one of the wells," he said.

He gave Raphael the magic skin. It was now scarcely as large as a rose leaf.

"Leave me, Pauline! Leave me at once!" cried Raphael. "If you remain I shall die before your eyes."

"Die?" she said. "Die? You cannot. I love you--I love you!"

"Yes, die!" he exclaimed, showing her the little bit of skin. "Look, dearest. This is a talisman which represents the length of my life, and accomplishes my wishes. You see how little is left."

Pauline thought he had suddenly grown mad. She bent over him, and took up the magic skin. As Raphael saw her, beautiful with love and terror, he lost all control over his desires. To possess her again, and die on her breast!

"Come to me Pauline!" he said.

She felt the skin tickling her hand as it rapidly shrivelled up. She rushed into the bedroom, and closed the door.

"Pauline! Pauline!" cried the dying man, stumbling after her. "I love you! I want you! I wish to die for you!"

With extraordinary strength--the last outburst of life--he tore the door off the hinges, and saw Pauline in agony on a sofa. She had stabbed herself.

"If I die, he will live!" she was crying.

Raphael staggered across the room, and fell into the arms of beautiful Pauline, dead.

* * * * *

The Quest of the Absolute

"La Recherche de l'Absolu" was published in 1834, with a touching dedication to Madame Josephine Delannoy: "Madame, may it please God that this, my book, may live when I am dead, that the gratitude which is due from me to you, and which equals, I trust, your motherlike generosity to me, may hope to endure beyond the limits set to human love." The novel became a part of the "Human Comedy" in 1845. The struggle of Balthazar Claes in his quest for the Absolute, his disregard of all else save his work, and the heroic devotion of Josephine and Marguerite, are characteristic features of Balzac's art; the sordidness of life and the mad passion for the unattainable are admirably relieved, as in "Eugénie Grandet" and "Old Goriot," by a certain nobility and purity of motive. The novel is generally acknowledged one of Balzac's masterpieces, both in vigour of portraiture and minuteness of detail. Perhaps no one was ever better fitted to depict the ruin wrought by a fixed idea than Balzac himself, who wasted much of his laborious life in struggling to discover a short cut to wealth.

_I.--Claes, the Alchemist_

In Douai, situated in the Rue de Paris, there is a house which stands out from all the rest in the city by reason of its purely Flemish character. In all its details, this tall and handsome house expresses the manners of the domesticated people of the Low Countries. The name of the house for some two centuries has been Maison Claes, after the great family of craftsmen who occupied it. These Van Claes had amassed fortunes, played a part in politics, and had suffered many vicissitudes in the course of history without losing their place in the mighty bourgeois world of commerce. They were substantial people, princes of trade.

At the end of the eighteenth century the representative of this ancient and affluent family was Balthazar Claes, a tall and handsome young man, who after some years' residence in Paris, where he saw the fashionable world and made acquaintance with many of the great savants, including Lavoisier the chemist, returned to his home in Douai, and set himself to find a wife.

It was on a visit to a relation in Ghent that he heard gossip concerning a young lady living in Brussels, which made him curious to see so interesting a person. Rumour had two tales to tell of this Mlle. Josephine Temninck. She was beautiful, but she was deformed. Could deformity be triumphed over by beauty of face? A relative of Claes thought that it could, and maintained this opinion against the opposite camp. This relative spoke of Mlle. Temninck's character, telling how the sweet girl had surrendered her share of the family estate that her younger brother might make a great marriage, and how she had quite resigned herself, even on the threshold of her life, to the idea of spinsterhood and narrow means.

Claes sought out this noble soul. He found her inexpressibly beautiful, and the malformation of one of her shoulders appeared as nothing in his eyes. He lost his heart to Josephine, and made passionate love to her. Distracted by such adoration, the beautiful cripple was now lifted to dizzy heights of joy and now plunged into abysmal depths of despair. She had deemed herself irreparably plain; in the eyes of a charming young man, she found herself beautiful. But, could such love endure through life? To be loved was delicious, but to be deceived after so surprising a release from solitude would be terrible.

Conscious of her deformity, intimidated by the future, she became in the purity of her soul a coquette. She dissimulated her feelings, became exacting, and hid from her lover the passion of joy which was consuming her; indeed, she only revealed her true self after marriage had shown her the steadfast nobility of her husband's character, when she could no longer doubt of his affection. He loved her with fidelity and ardour. She realised all his ideals, and no consideration of duty entered into their passionate affection. She was Spanish, and had the secret of charm in her variety of attraction; ill-educated though she was, like most daughters of Spanish noblemen, she was engaging and bewildering in the force of her own nature and the religion of her absorbing love. In society she was dull; for her husband alone she was enchanting. No couple could have been happier.

They had four children, two boys and two girls; the eldest a girl named Marguerite.

Fourteen years after their marriage, in the year 1809, a change appeared in Balthazar, but so gradually that Mme. Claes did not at first question it. He became thoughtful, reflective, silent, preoccupied. When Josephine Claes noticed this change, it was too late for her to ask questions; she waited for Balthazar to speak. She began to fear. Balthazar, whose whole heaven had lain in the happiness of the family life, who had loved to play with his children, to attend to his tulips, to sun himself in the dark eyes of Josephine, seemed now to forget the existence of them all. He was indifferent to everything.

People who questioned her were put off with the brave story that Balthazar had a great work in hand, which would bring fame one day to his native town. Josephine's hazard was founded on truth. Workmen had been engaged for some time in the garret of the house, and there Claes spent the greater part of his time. But the poor lady was to learn the full truth from the neighbours she had attempted to hoodwink. They asked her if she meant to see herself and her children ruined, adding that her husband was spending a fortune on scientific instruments, machinery, books, and materials in a search for the Philosopher's Stone.

Humiliated that the neighbours should know more than she did, and terrified by the prospect in front of her, Josephine at last spoke to her husband.

"My dear," he said, "you would not understand what I am about. I am studying chemistry, and I am perfectly happy."

Things went from bad to worse. Claes became more taciturn and more invisible to his family. He was slovenly in dress and untidy in his habits. Only his servant Lemulquinier, or Mulquinier, as he was often called, was allowed to enter the attic and share his master's secrets. Mme. Claes had a rival. It was science.

One day she went to the garret, but Claes repulsed her with wrath and roughness.

"My experiment is absolutely spoilt," he cried vehemently. "In another minute I might have resolved nitrogen."

_II.--The Riddle of Existence_