The Best Works of Balzac. Оноре де Бальзак
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Название: The Best Works of Balzac
Автор: Оноре де Бальзак
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4057664560742
isbn:
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 vitality. At such times, though you
were in all the splendor of your beauty, though you should lavish
on me your subtlest smiles and tenderest words, an evil influence
would blind me, and distort the most ravishing melody into
discordant sounds. At those times—as I believe—some
argumentative demon stands before me, showing me the void beneath
the most real possessions. This pitiless demon mows down every
flower, and mocks at the sweetest feelings, saying: 'Well—and
then?' He mars the fairest work by showing me its skeleton, and
reveals the mechanism of things while hiding the beautiful
results.
"At those terrible moments, when the evil spirit takes possession
of me, when the divine light is darkened in my soul without my
knowing the cause, I sit in grief and anguish, I wish myself deaf
and dumb, I long for death to give me rest. These hours of doubt
and uneasiness are perhaps inevitable; at any rate, they teach me
not to be proud after the flights which have borne me to the skies
where I have gathered a full harvest of thoughts; for it is always
after some long excursion in the vast fields of the intellect, and
after the most luminous speculations, that I tumble, broken and
weary, into this limbo. At such a moment, my angel, a wife would
double my love for her—at any rate, she might. If she were
capricious, ailing, or depressed, she would need the comforting
overflow of ingenious affection, and I should not have a glance to
bestow on her. It is my shame, Pauline, to have to tell you that
at times I could weep with you, but that nothing could make me
smile.
"A woman can always conceal her troubles; for her child, or for
the man she loves, she can laugh in the midst of suffering. And
could not I, for you, Pauline, imitate the exquisite reserve of a
woman? Since yesterday I have doubted my own power. If I could
displease you once, if I failed once to understand you, I dread
lest I should often be carried out of our happy circle by my evil
demon. Supposing I were to have many of those dreadful moods, or
that my unbounded love could not make up for the dark hours of my
life—that I were doomed to remain such as I am?—Fatal doubts!
"Power is indeed a fatal possession if what I feel within me is
power. Pauline, go! Leave me, desert me! Sooner would I endure
every ill in life than endure the misery of knowing that you were
unhappy through me.
"But, perhaps, the demon has had such empire over me only because
I have had no gentle, white hands about me to drive him off. No
woman has ever shed on me the balm of her affection; and I know
not whether, if love should wave his pinions over my head in these
moments of exhaustion, new strength might not be given to my
spirit. This terrible melancholy is perhaps a result of my
isolation, one of the torments of a lonely soul which pays for its
hidden treasures with groans and unknown suffering. Those who
enjoy little shall suffer little; immense happiness entails
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