International Short Stories: French | Page 4

back to the redoubt."
"And your comrades?"
"They are coming--all but poor Jean-Victor."
"Where is he?" cried the duke.
"Shot through the head with a bullet--died without a word!--ough!"
* * * * *
One night last winter, the Due de Hardimont left his club about two
o'clock in the morning, with his neighbor, Count de Saulnes; the duke
had lost some hundred louis, and had a slight headache.
"If you are willing, André," he said to his companion, "we will go
home on foot--I need the air."
"Just as you please, I am willing, although the walking may he bad."
They dismissed their coupés, turned up the collars of their overcoats,
and set off toward the Madeleine. Suddenly an object rolled before the
duke which he had struck with the toe of his boot; it was a large piece
of bread spattered with mud.
Then to his amazement, Monsieur de Saulnes saw the Due de
Hardimont pick up the piece of bread, wipe it carefully with his
handkerchief embroidered with his armorial bearings, and place it on a
bench, in full view under the gaslight.
"What did you do that for?" asked the count, laughing heartily, "are you

crazy?"
"It is in memory of a poor fellow who died for me," replied the duke in
a voice which trembled slightly, "do not laugh, my friend, it offends
me."

THE ELIXIR OF LIFE
BY HONORE DE BALZAC
In a sumptuous palace of Ferrara, one winter evening, Don Juan
Belvidéro was entertaining a prince of the house of Este. In those days
a banquet was a marvelous affair, which demanded princely riches or
the power of a nobleman. Seven pleasure-loving women chatted gaily
around a table lighted by perfumed candles, surrounded by admirable
works of art whose white marble stood out against the walls of red
stucco and contrasted with the rich Turkey carpets. Clad in satin,
glittering with gold and laden with gems which sparkled only less
brilliantly than their eyes, they all told of passions, intense, but of
various styles, like their beauty. They differed neither in their words
nor their ideas; but an expression, a look, a motion or an emphasis
served as a commentary, unrestrained, licentious, melancholy or
bantering, to their words.
One seemed to say: "My beauty has power to rekindle the frozen heart
of age." Another: "I love to repose on soft cushions and think with
rapture of my adorers." A third, a novice at these fêtes, was inclined to
blush. "At the bottom of my heart I feel compunction," she seemed to
say. "I am a Catholic and I fear hell; but I love you so--ah, so
dearly--that I would sacrifice eternity to you!" The fourth, emptying a
cup of Chian wine, cried: "Hurrah, for pleasure! I begin a new
existence with each dawn. Forgetful of the past, still intoxicated with
the violence of yesterday's pleasures, I embrace a new life of happiness,
a life filled with love."
The woman sitting next to Belvidéro looked at him with flashing eyes.
She was silent. "I should have no need to call on a bravo to kill my
lover if he abandoned me." Then she had laughed; but a comfit dish of
marvelous workmanship was shattered between her nervous fingers.
"When are you to be grand duke?" asked the sixth of the prince, with an
expression of murderous glee on her lips and a look of Bacchanalian
frenzy in her eyes.

"And when is your father going to die?" said the seventh, laughing and
throwing her bouquet to Don Juan with maddening coquetry. She was
an innocent young girl who was accustomed to play with sacred things.
"Oh, don't speak of it!" cried the young and handsome Don Juan.
"There is only one immortal father in the world, and unfortunately he is
mine!"
The seven women of Ferrara, the friends of Don Juan, and the prince
himself gave an exclamation of horror. Two hundred years later, under
Louis XV, well-bred persons would have laughed at this sally. But
perhaps at the beginning of an orgy the mind had still an unusual
degree of lucidity. Despite the heat of the candles, the intensity of the
emotions, the gold and silver vases, the fumes of wine, despite the
vision of ravishing women, perhaps there still lurked in the depths of
the heart a little of that respect for things human and divine which
struggles until the revel has drowned it in floods of sparkling wine.
Nevertheless, the flowers were already crushed, the eyes were steeped
with drink, and intoxication, to quote Rabelais, had reached even to the
sandals. In the pause that followed a door opened, and, as at the feast of
Balthazar, God manifested himself. He seemed to command
recognition now in the person of an old, white-haired