Louis Lambert, Honoré de Balzac [best fiction books of all time .TXT] 📗

condemned to know for ever what happiness means, and to be for
ever bereft of it; if, like a banished angel, I am to cherish the
sense of celestial joys while bound for ever to a world of sorrow
--well, I can keep the secret of my love as well as that of my
griefs.--And farewell!

"Yes, I resign you to God, to whom I will pray for you, beseeching
Him to grant you a happy life; for even if I am driven from your
heart, into which I have crept by stealth, still I shall ever be
near you. Otherwise, of what value would the sacred words be of
this letter, my first and perhaps my last entreaty? If I should
ever cease to think of you, to love you whether in happiness or in
woe, should I not deserve my punishment?"


II

"You are not going away! And I am loved! I, a poor, insignificant
creature! My beloved Pauline, you do not yourself know the power
of the look I believe in, the look you gave me to tell me that you
had chosen me--you so young and lovely, with the world at your
feet!

"To enable you to understand my happiness, I should have to give
you a history of my life. If you had rejected me, all was over for
me. I have suffered too much. Yes, my love for you, my comforting
and stupendous love, was a last effort of yearning for the
happiness my soul strove to reach--a soul crushed by fruitless
labor, consumed by fears that make me doubt myself, eaten into by
despair which has often urged me to die. No one in the world can
conceive of the terrors my fateful imagination inflicts on me. It
often bears me up to the sky, and suddenly flings me to earth
again from prodigious heights. Deep-seated rushes of power, or
some rare and subtle instance of peculiar lucidity, assure me now
and then that I am capable of great things. Then I embrace the
universe in my mind, I knead, shape it, inform it, I comprehend it
--or fancy that I do; then suddenly I awake--alone, sunk in
blackest night, helpless and weak; I forget the light I saw but
now, I find no succor; above all, there is no heart where I may
take refuge.

"This distress of my inner life affects my physical existence. The
nature of my character gives me over to the raptures of happiness
as defenceless as when the fearful light of reflection comes to
analyze and demolish them. Gifted as I am with the melancholy
faculty of seeing obstacles and success with equal clearness,
according to the mood of the moment, I am happy or miserable by
turns.

"Thus, when I first met you, I felt the presence of an angelic
nature, I breathed an air that was sweet to my burning breast, I
heard in my soul the voice that never can be false, telling me
that here was happiness; but perceiving all the barriers that
divided us, I understood the vastness of their pettiness, and
these difficulties terrified me more than the prospect of
happiness could delight me. At once I felt the awful reaction
which casts my expansive soul back on itself; the smile you had
brought to my lips suddenly turned to a bitter grimace, and I
could only strive to keep calm, while my soul was boiling with the
turmoil of contradictory emotions. In short, I experienced that
gnawing pang to which twenty-three years of suppressed sighs and
betrayed affections have not inured me.

"Well, Pauline, the look by which you promised that I should be
happy suddenly warmed my vitality, and turned all my sorrows into
joy. Now, I could wish that I had suffered more. My love is
suddenly full-grown. My soul was a wide territory that lacked the
blessing of sunshine, and your eyes have shed light on it. Beloved
providence! you will be all in all to me, orphan as I am, without
a relation but my uncle. You will be my whole family, as you are
my whole wealth, nay, the whole world to me. Have you not bestowed
on me every gladness man can desire in that chaste--lavish--timid
glance?

"You have given me incredible self-confidence and audacity. I can
dare all things now. I came back to Blois in deep dejection. Five
years of study in the heart of Paris had made me look on the world
as a prison. I had conceived of vast schemes, and dared not speak
of them. Fame seemed to me a prize for charlatans, to which a
really noble spirit should not stoop. Thus, my ideas could only
make their way by the assistance of a man bold enough to mount the
platform of the press, and to harangue loudly the simpletons he
scorns. This kind of courage I have not. I ploughed my way on,
crushed by the verdict of the crowd, in despair at never making it
hear me. I was at once too humble and too lofty! I swallowed my
thoughts as other men swallow humiliations. I had even come to
despise knowledge, blaming it for yielding no real happiness.

"But since yesterday I am wholly changed. For your sake I now
covet every palm of glory, every triumph of success. When I lay my
head on your knees, I could wish to attract to you the eyes of the
whole world, just as I long to concentrate in my love every idea,
every power that is in me. The most splendid celebrity is a
possession that genius alone can create. Well, I can, at my will,
make for you a bed of laurels. And if the silent ovation paid to
science is not all you desire, I have within me the sword of the
Word; I could run in the path of honor and ambition where others
only crawl.

"Command me, Pauline; I will be whatever you will. My iron will
can do anything--I am loved! Armed with that thought, ought not a
man to sweep everything before him? The man who wants all can do
all. If you are the prize of success, I enter the lists to-morrow.
To win such a look as that you bestowed on me, I would leap the
deepest abyss. Through you I understand the fabulous achievements
of chivalry and the most fantastic tales of the _Arabian Nights_.
I can believe now in the most fantastic excesses of love, and in
the success of a prisoner's wildest attempt to recover his
liberty. You have aroused the thousand virtues that lay dormant
within me--patience, resignation, all the powers of my heart, all
the strength of my soul. I live by you and--heavenly thought!--for
you. Everything now has a meaning for me in life. I understand
everything, even the vanities of wealth.

"I find myself shedding all the pearls of the Indies at your feet;
I fancy you reclining either on the rarest flowers, or on the
softest tissues, and all the splendor of the world seems hardly
worthy of you, for whom I would I could command the harmony and
the light that are given out by the harps of seraphs and the stars
of heaven! Alas! a poor, studious poet, I offer you in words
treasures I cannot bestow; I can only give you my heart, in which
you reign for ever. I have nothing else. But are there no
treasures in eternal gratitude, in a smile whose expressions will
perpetually vary with perennial happiness, under the constant
eagerness of my devotion to guess the wishes of your loving soul?
Has not one celestial glance given us assurance of always
understanding each other?

"I have a prayer now to be said to God every night--a prayer full
of you: 'Let my Pauline be happy!' And will you fill all my days
as you now fill my heart?

"Farewell, I can but trust you to God alone!"


III

"Pauline! tell me if I can in any way have displeased you
yesterday? Throw off the pride of heart which inflicts on me the
secret tortures that can be caused by one we love. Scold me if you
will! Since yesterday, a vague, unutterable dread of having
offended you pours grief on the life of feeling which you had made
so sweet and so rich. The lightest veil that comes between two
souls sometimes grows to be a brazen wall. There are no venial
crimes in love! If you have the very spirit of that noble
sentiment, you must feel all its pangs, and we must be unceasingly
careful not to fret each other by some heedless word.

"No doubt, my beloved treasure, if there is any fault, it is in
me. I cannot pride myself in the belief that I understand a
woman's heart, in all the expansion of its tenderness, all the
grace of its devotedness; but I will always endeavor to appreciate
the value of what you vouchsafe to show me of the secrets of
yours.

"Speak to me! Answer me soon! The melancholy into which we are
thrown by the idea of a wrong done is frightful; it casts a shroud
over life, and doubts on everything.

"I spent this morning sitting on the bank by the sunken road,
gazing at the turrets of Villenoix, not daring to go to our hedge.
If you could imagine all I saw in my soul! What gloomy visions
passed before me under the gray sky, whose cold sheen added to my
dreary mood! I had dark presentiments! I was terrified lest I
should fail to make you happy.

"I must tell you everything, my dear Pauline. There are moments
when the spirit of vitality seems to abandon me. I feel bereft of
all strength. Everything is a burden to me; every fibre of my body
is inert, every sense is flaccid, my sight grows dim, my tongue is
paralyzed, my imagination is extinct, desire is dead--nothing
survives but my mere human