Sarrasine | Page 4

is here used, is a game, or
rather a series of games, of cards, each player, when it is his turn to
deal, selecting the game to be played.
"Monsieur de Lanty has not owned this house very long, has he?"
"Oh, yes! It is nearly ten years since the Marechal de Carigliano sold it
to him."
"Ah!"
"These people must have an enormous fortune."
"They surely must."
"What a magnificent party! It is almost insolent in its splendor."
"Do you imagine they are as rich as Monsieur de Nucingen or
Monsieur de Gondreville?"
"Why, don't you know?"
I leaned forward and recognized the two persons who were talking as

members of that inquisitive genus which, in Paris, busies itself
exclusively with the /Whys/ and /Hows/. /Where does he come from?
Who are they? What's the matter with him? What has she done?/ They
lowered their voices and walked away in order to talk more at their ease
on some retired couch. Never was a more promising mine laid open to
seekers after mysteries. No one knew from what country the Lanty
family came, nor to what source--commerce, extortion, piracy, or
inheritance--they owed a fortune estimated at several millions. All the
members of the family spoke Italian, French, Spanish, English, and
German, with sufficient fluency to lead one to suppose that they had
lived long among those different peoples. Were they gypsies? were
they buccaneers?
"Suppose they're the devil himself," said divers young politicians, "they
entertain mighty well."
"The Comte de Lanty may have plundered some /Casbah/ for all I care;
I would like to marry his daughter!" cried a philosopher.
Who would not have married Marianina, a girl of sixteen, whose beauty
realized the fabulous conceptions of Oriental poets! Like the Sultan's
daughter in the tale of the /Wonderful Lamp/, she should have
remained always veiled. Her singing obscured the imperfect talents of
the Malibrans, the Sontags, and the Fodors, in whom some one
dominant quality always mars the perfection of the whole; whereas
Marianina combined in equal degree purity of tone, exquisite feeling,
accuracy of time and intonation, science, soul, and delicacy. She was
the type of that hidden poesy, the link which connects all the arts and
which always eludes those who seek it. Modest, sweet, well-informed,
and clever, none could eclipse Marianina unless it was her mother.
Have you ever met one of those women whose startling beauty defies
the assaults of time, and who seem at thirty-six more desirable than
they could have been fifteen years earlier? Their faces are impassioned
souls; they fairly sparkle; each feature gleams with intelligence; each
possesses a brilliancy of its own, especially in the light. Their
captivating eyes attract or repel, speak or are silent; their gait is
artlessly seductive; their voices unfold the melodious treasures of the
most coquettishly sweet and tender tones. Praise of their beauty, based
upon comparisons, flatters the most sensitive self-esteem. A movement
of their eyebrows, the slightest play of the eye, the curling of the lip,

instils a sort of terror in those whose lives and happiness depend upon
their favor. A maiden inexperienced in love and easily moved by words
may allow herself to be seduced; but in dealing with women of this sort,
a man must be able, like M. de Jaucourt, to refrain from crying out
when, in hiding him in a closet, the lady's maid crushes two of his
fingers in the crack of a door. To love one of these omnipotent sirens is
to stake one's life, is it not? And that, perhaps, is why we love them so
passionately! Such was the Comtesse de Lanty.
Filippo, Marianina's brother, inherited, as did his sister, the Countess'
marvelous beauty. To tell the whole story in a word, that young man
was a living image of Antinous, with somewhat slighter proportions.
But how well such a slender and delicate figure accords with youth,
when an olive complexion, heavy eyebrows, and the gleam of a velvety
eye promise virile passions, noble ideas for the future! If Filippo
remained in the hearts of young women as a type of manly beauty, he
likewise remained in the memory of all mothers as the best match in
France.
The beauty, the great wealth, the intellectual qualities, of these two
children came entirely from their mother. The Comte de Lanty was a
short, thin, ugly little man, as dismal as a Spaniard, as great a bore as a
banker. He was looked upon, however, as a profound politician,
perhaps because he rarely laughed, and was always quoting M. de
Metternich or Wellington.
This mysterious family had all the attractiveness of a poem by Lord
Byron, whose difficult passages were translated differently by each
person in fashionable society; a poem that grew more obscure and more
sublime from