The Elixir of Life | Page 3

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Typed and first proof by Dagny [email protected]

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