THE ELIXIR OF LIFE
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By
Clara Bell & 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.
Every one of his compositions has been based upon ideas more or
less novel, which, as it seemed to him, needed literary
expression; he can claim priority for certain forms and for
certain ideas which have since passed into the domain of
literature, and have there, in some instances, become common
property; so that the date of the first publication of each Study
cannot be a matter of indifference to those of his readers who
would fain do him justice.
Reading brings us unknown friends, and what friend is like a
reader? We have friends in our own circle who read nothing of
ours. The author hopes to pay his debt, by dedicating this work
Diis ignotis.
THE ELIXIR OF LIFE
One winter evening, in a princely palace at Ferrara, Don Juan
Belvidero was giving a banquet to a prince of the house of Este.
A banquet in those times was a marvelous spectacle which only
royal wealth or the power of a mightly [sic] lord could furnish
forth. Seated about a table lit up with perfumed tapers, seven
laughter-loving women were interchanging sweet talk. The white
marble of the noble works of art about them stood out against the
red stucco walls, and made strong contrasts with the rich Turkey
carpets. Clad in satin, glittering with gold, and covered with
gems less brilliant than their eyes, each told a tale of
energetic passions as diverse as their styles of beauty. They
differed neither in their ideas nor in their language; but the
expression of their eyes, their glances, occasional gestures, or
the tones of their voices supplied a commentary, dissolute,
wanton, melancholy, or satirical, to their words.
One seemed to be saying--"The frozen heart of age might kindle at
my beauty."
Another--"I love to lounge upon cushions, and think with rapture
of my adorers."
A third, a neophyte at these banquets, was inclined to blush. "I
feel remorse in the depths of my heart! I am a Catholic, and
afraid of hell. But I love you, I love you so that I can
sacrifice my hereafter to you."
The fourth drained a cup of Chian wine. "Give me a joyous life!"
she cried; "I begin life afresh each day with the dawn. Forgetful
of the past, with the intoxication of yesterday''s rapture still
upon me, I drink deep of life--a whole lifetime of pleasure and
of love!"
The woman who sat next to Juan Belvidero looked at him with a
feverish glitter in her eyes. She was silent. Then--"I should
need no hired bravo to kill my lover if he forsook me!" she cried
at last, and laughed, but the marvelously wrought gold comfit box
in her fingers was crushed by her convulsive clutch.
"When are you to be Grand Duke?" asked the sixth. There was the
frenzy of a Bacchante in her eyes, and her teeth gleamed between
the lips parted with a smile of cruel glee.
"Yes, when is that father of yours going to die?" asked the
seventh, throwing her bouquet at Don Juan with bewitching
playfulness. It was a childish girl who spoke, and the speaker
was wont to make sport of sacred things.
"Oh! don''t talk about it," cried Don Juan, the young and handsome
giver of the banquet. "There is but one eternal father, and, as
ill luck will have it, he is mine."
The seven Ferrarese, Don Juan''s friends, the Prince himself, gave
a cry of horror. Two hundred years later, in the days of Louis
XV., people of taste would have laughed at this witticism. Or was
it, perhaps, that at the outset of an orgy there is a certain
unwonted lucidity of mind? Despite the taper light, the clamor of
the senses, the gleam of gold and silver, the fumes of wine, and
the exquisite beauty of the women, there may perhaps have been in
the depths of the revelers'' hearts some struggling glimmer of
reverence for things divine and human, until it was drowned in
glowing floods of wine! Yet even then the flowers had been
crushed, eyes were growing dull, and drunkenness, in Rabelais''
phrase, had "taken possession of them down to their sandals."
During that brief pause a door opened; and as once ...
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