A Woman of Thirty | Page 3

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Etext prepared by Dagny, [email protected] and John Bickers,
[email protected]

A Woman of Thirty
by Honore de Balzac
Translated by Ellen Marriage

DEDICATION
To Louis Boulanger, Painter.

A WOMAN OF THIRTY

I.
EARLY MISTAKES
It was a Sunday morning in the beginning of April 1813, a morning
which gave promise of one of those bright days when Parisians, for the
first time in the year, behold dry pavements underfoot and a cloudless
sky overhead. It was not yet noon when a luxurious cabriolet, drawn by
two spirited horses, turned out of the Rue de Castiglione into the Rue
de Rivoli, and drew up behind a row of carriages standing before the
newly opened barrier half-way down the Terrasse de Feuillants. The
owner of the carriage looked anxious and out of health; the thin hair on
his sallow temples, turning gray already, gave a look of premature age
to his face. He flung the reins to a servant who followed on horseback,
and alighted to take in his arms a young girl whose dainty beauty had
already attracted the eyes of loungers on the Terrasse. The little lady,
standing upon the carriage step, graciously submitted to be taken by the
waist, putting an arm round the neck of her guide, who set her down
upon the pavement without so much as ruffling the trimming of her

green rep dress. No lover would have been so careful. The stranger
could only be the father of the young girl, who took his arm familiarly
without a word of thanks, and hurried him into the Garden of the
Tuileries.
The old father noted the wondering stare which some of the young men
gave the couple, and the sad expression left his face for a moment.
Although he had long since reached the time of life when a man is fain
to be content with such illusory delights as vanity bestows, he began to
smile.
"They think you are my wife," he said in the young lady's ear, and he
held himself erect and walked with slow steps, which filled his
daughter with despair.
He seemed to take up the coquette's part for her; perhaps of the two, he
was the more gratified by the curious glances directed at those little feet,
shod with plum-colored prunella; at the dainty figure outlined by a
low-cut bodice, filled in with an embroidered chemisette, which only
partially concealed the girlish throat. Her dress was lifted by her
movements as she walked, giving glimpses higher than the shoes of
delicately moulded outlines beneath open-work silk stockings. More
than one of the idlers turned and passed the pair again, to admire or to
catch a second glimpse of the young face, about which the brown
tresses played; there was a glow in its white and red, partly reflected
from the rose-colored satin lining of her fashionable bonnet, partly due
to the eagerness and impatience which sparkled in every