The Magic Skin | Page 3

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Etext prepared by Dagny, [email protected] and Bonnie Sala

THE MAGIC SKIN BY HONORE DE BALZAC

Translator Ellen Marriage

To Monsieur Savary, Member of Le Academie des Sciences.

[omitted: a drawing representing the serpentine path made by the tip of
a stick when flourished.] STERNE--Tristram Shandy, ch. cccxxii.

I
THE TALISMAN

Towards the end of the month of October 1829 a young man entered
the Palais-Royal just as the gaming-houses opened, agreeably to the
law which protects a passion by its very nature easily excisable. He
mounted the staircase of one of the gambling hells distinguished by the
number 36, without too much deliberation.
"Your hat, sir, if you please?" a thin, querulous voice called out. A little
old man, crouching in the darkness behind a railing, suddenly rose and
exhibited his features, carved after a mean design.
As you enter a gaming-house the law despoils you of your hat at the
outset. Is it by way of a parable, a divine revelation? Or by exacting
some pledge or other, is not an infernal compact implied? Is it done to
compel you to preserve a respectful demeanor towards those who are
about to gain money of you? Or must the detective, who squats in our
social sewers, know the name of your hatter, or your own, if you
happen to have written it on the lining inside? Or, after all, is the
measurement of your skull required for the compilation of statistics as
to the cerebral capacity of gamblers? The executive is absolutely silent
on this point. But be sure of this, that though you have scarcely taken a
step towards the tables, your hat no more belongs to you now than you
belong to yourself. Play possesses you, your fortune, your cap, your
cane, your cloak.
As you go out, it will be made clear to you, by a savage irony, that Play
has yet spared you something, since your property is returned. For all
that, if you bring a new hat with you, you will have to pay for the
knowledge that a special costume is needed for a gambler.
The evident astonishment with which the young man took a numbered
tally in exchange for his hat, which was fortunately somewhat rubbed
at the brim, showed clearly enough that his mind was yet untainted; and
the little old man, who had wallowed from his youth up in the furious
pleasures of a gambler's life, cast a dull, indifferent glance over him, in
which a philosopher might have seen wretchedness lying in the hospital,
the vagrant lives of ruined folk, inquests on numberless suicides,
life-long penal servitude and transportations to Guazacoalco.
His pallid, lengthy visage appeared like a haggard embodiment of the
passion reduced to its simplest terms. There were traces of past anguish
in its wrinkles. He supported life on the glutinous soups at Darcet's, and
gambled away his meagre earnings day by day. Like some old hackney

which takes no heed of the strokes of the whip, nothing could move
him now. The stifled groans of ruined players, as they passed out, their
mute imprecations, their stupefied faces, found him impassive. He was
the spirit of Play incarnate. If the young man had noticed this sorry
Cerberus, perhaps he would have said, "There is only a pack of cards in
that heart of his."
The stranger did not heed this warning writ in flesh and blood, put here,
no doubt, by Providence, who has set loathing on the threshold of all
evil haunts. He walked boldly into the saloon, where the rattle of coin
brought his senses under the dazzling spell of an agony of greed. Most
likely he had been drawn thither by that most convincing of Jean
Jacques' eloquent periods, which expresses, I think, this melancholy
thought, "Yes, I can imagine that a man may take to gambling when he
sees only his