The Message

The Message

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Message, by Honore de Balzac
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Title: The Message
Author: Honore de Balzac
Translator: Ellen Marriage
Release Date: April 3, 2005 [EBook #1189]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
MESSAGE ***

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THE MESSAGE
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated by Ellen Marriage

To M. le Marquis Damaso Pareto

I have always longed to tell a simple and true story, which should strike
terror into two young lovers, and drive them to take refuge each in the
other's heart, as two children cling together at the sight of a snake by a
woodside. At the risk of spoiling my story and of being taken for a
coxcomb, I state my intention at the outset.
I myself played a part in this almost commonplace tragedy; so if it fails
to interest you, the failure will be in part my own fault, in part owing to
historical veracity. Plenty of things in real life are superlatively
uninteresting; so that it is one-half of art to select from realities those
which contain possibilities of poetry.
In 1819 I was traveling from Paris to Moulins. The state of my finances
obliged me to take an outside place. Englishmen, as you know, regard
those airy perches on the top of the coach as the best seats; and for the
first few miles I discovered abundance of excellent reasons for
justifying the opinion of our neighbors. A young fellow, apparently in
somewhat better circumstances, who came to take the seat beside me
from preference, listened to my reasoning with inoffensive smiles. An
approximate nearness of age, a similarity in ways of thinking, a
common love of fresh air, and of the rich landscape scenery through
which the coach was lumbering along,--these things, together with an
indescribable magnetic something, drew us before long into one of
those short-lived traveller's intimacies, in which we unbend with the
more complacency because the intercourse is by its very nature
transient, and makes no implicit demands upon the future.
We had not come thirty leagues before we were talking of women and
love. Then, with all the circumspection demanded in such matters, we
proceeded naturally to the topic of our lady-loves. Young as we both
were, we still admired "the woman of a certain age," that is to say, the
woman between thirty-five and forty. Oh! any poet who should have
listened to our talk, for heaven knows how many stages beyond
Montargis, would have reaped a harvest of flaming epithet, rapturous
description, and very tender confidences. Our bashful fears, our silent
interjections, our blushes, as we met each other's eyes, were expressive
with an eloquence, a boyish charm, which I have ceased to feel. One
must remain young, no doubt, to understand youth.
Well, we understood one another to admiration on all the essential

points of passion. We had laid it down as an axiom at the very outset,
that in theory and practice there was no such piece of driveling
nonsense in this world as a certificate of birth; that plenty of women
were younger at forty than many a girl of twenty; and, to come to the
point, that a woman is no older than she looks.
This theory set no limits to the age of love, so we struck out, in all good
faith, into a boundless sea. At length, when we had portrayed our
mistresses as young, charming, and devoted to us, women of rank,
women of taste, intellectual and clever; when we had endowed them
with little feet, a satin, nay, a delicately fragrant skin, then came the
admission--on his part that Madame Such-an-one was thirty-eight years
old, and on mine that I worshiped a woman of forty. Whereupon, as if
released on either side from some kind of vague fear, our confidences
came thick and fast, when we found that we were in the same
confraternity of love. It was which of us should overtop the other in
sentiment.
One of us had traveled six hundred miles to see his mistress for an hour.
The other, at the risk of being shot for a wolf, had prowled about her
park to meet her one night. Out came all our follies in fact. If it is
pleasant to remember past dangers, is it not at least as pleasant to recall
past delights? We live through the joy a second time. We told each
other everything, our perils, our great joys, our little