The Purse | Page 3

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Typed and first proof by Dagny. [email protected]

THE PURSE BY HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated By Clara Bell

To Sofka
"Have you observed, mademoiselle, that the painters and sculptors of
the Middle Ages, when they placed two figures in adoration, one on
each side of a fair Saint, never failed to give them a family likeness?
When you here see your name among those that are dear to me, and
under whose auspices I place my works, remember that touching
harmony, and you will see in this not so much an act of homage as an
expression of the brotherly affection of your devoted servant, "DE

BALZAC."

For souls to whom effusiveness is easy there is a delicious hour that
falls when it is not yet night, but is no longer day; the twilight gleam
throws softened lights or tricksy reflections on every object, and favors
a dreamy mood which vaguely weds itself to the play of light and shade.
The silence which generally prevails at that time makes it particularly
dear to artists, who grow contemplative, stand a few paces back from
the pictures on which they can no longer work, and pass judgement on
them, rapt by the subject whose most recondite meaning then flashes on
the inner eye of genius. He who has never stood pensive by a friend's
side in such an hour of poetic dreaming can hardly understand its
inexpressible soothingness. Favored by the clear-obscure, the material
skill employed by art to produce illusion entirely disappears. If the
work is a picture, the figures represented seem to speak and walk; the
shade is shadow, the light is day; the flesh lives, eyes move, blood
flows in their veins, and stuffs have a changing sheen. Imagination
helps the realism of every detail, and only sees the beauties of the work.
At that hour illusion reigns despotically; perhaps it wakes at nightfall!
Is not illusion a sort of night to the mind, which we people with dreams?
Illusion then unfolds its wings, it bears the soul aloft to the world of
fancies, a world full of voluptuous imaginings, where the artist forgets
the real world, yesterday and the morrow, the future--everything down
to its miseries, the good and the evil alike.
At this magic hour a young painter, a man of talent, who saw in art
nothing but Art itself, was perched on a step-ladder which helped him
to work at a large high painting, now nearly finished. Criticising
himself, honestly admiring himself, floating on the current of his
thoughts, he then lost himself in one of those meditative moods which
ravish and elevate the soul, soothe it, and comfort it. His reverie had no
doubt lasted a long time. Night fell. Whether he meant to come down
from his perch, or whether he made some ill-judged movement,
believing himself to be on the floor--the event did not allow of his
remembering exactly the cause of his accident--he fell, his head struck
a footstool, he lost consciousness and lay motionless during a space of
time of which he knew not the length.
A sweet voice roused him from the stunned condition into which he

had sunk. When he opened his eyes the flash of a bright light made him
close them again immediately; but through the mist that veiled his
senses he heard the whispering of two women, and felt two young, two
timid hands on which his head was resting. He soon recovered
consciousness, and by the light of an old-fashioned Argand lamp he
could make out the most charming girl's face he had ever seen, one of
those heads which are often supposed to be a freak of the brush, but
which to him suddenly realized the theories of the ideal beauty which
every artist creates for himself and whence his art proceeds. The
features of the unknown belonged, so to say, to the refined and delicate
type of Prudhon's