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:
ourselves, we who are superhumanly happy? If nature sells us
everything at its true value, into what pit are we not fated to
fall? Ah! the most fortunate lovers are those who die together in
the midst of their youth and love! How sad it all is! Does my soul
foresee evil in the future? I examine myself, wondering whether
there is anything in me that can cause you a moment's anxiety. I
love you too selfishly perhaps? I shall be laying on your beloved
head a burden heavy out of all proportion to the joy my love can
bring to your heart. If there dwells in me some inexorable power
which I must obey—if I am compelled to curse when you pray, if
some dark thought coerces me when I would fain kneel at your feet
and play as a child, will you not be jealous of that wayward and
tricky spirit?
"You understand, dearest heart, that what I dread is not being
wholly yours; that I would gladly forego all the sceptres and the
palms of the world to enshrine you in one eternal thought, to see
a perfect life and an exquisite poem in our rapturous love; to
throw my soul into it, drown my powers, and wring from each hour
the joys it has to give!
"Ah, my memories of love are crowding back upon me, the clouds of
despair will lift. Farewell. I leave you now to be more entirely
yours. My beloved soul, I look for a line, a word that may restore
my peace of mind. Let me know whether I really grieved my Pauline,
or whether some uncertain expression of her countenance misled me.
I could not bear to have to reproach myself after a whole life of
happiness, for ever having met you without a smile of love, a
honeyed word. To grieve the woman I love—Pauline, I should count
it a crime. Tell me the truth, do not put me off with some
magnanimous subterfuge, but forgive me without cruelty."
FRAGMENT
"Is so perfect an attachment happiness? Yes, for years of
suffering would not pay for an hour of love.
"Yesterday, your sadness, as I suppose, passed into my soul as
swiftly as a shadow falls. Were you sad or suffering? I was
wretched. Whence came my distress? Write to me at once. Why did I
not know it? We are not yet completely one in mind. At two
leagues' distance or at a thousand I ought to feel your pain and
sorrows. I shall not believe that I love you till my life is so
bound up with yours that our life is one, till our hearts, our
thoughts are one. I must be where you are, see what you feel, feel
what you feel, be with you in thought. Did not I know, at once,
that your carriage had been overthrown and you were bruised? But
on that day I had been with you, I had never left you, I could see
you. When my uncle asked me what made me turn so pale, I answered
at once, 'Mademoiselle de Villenoix had has a fall.'
"Why, then, yesterday, did I fail to read your soul? Did you wish
to hide the cause of your grief? However, I fancied I could feel
that you were arguing in my favor, though in vain, with that
dreadful Salomon, who freezes my blood. That man is not of our
heaven.
"Why do you insist that our happiness, which has no resemblance to
that of other people, should conform to the laws of the world? And
yet I delight too much in your bashfulness, your religion, your
superstitions, not to obey your lightest whim. What you do must be
right; nothing can be purer than your mind, as nothing is lovelier
than your face, which reflects your divine soul.
"I shall wait for a letter before going along the lanes to meet
the sweet hour you grant me. Oh! if you could know how the sight
of those turrets makes my heart throb when I see them edged with
light by the moon, our only confidante."
IV
"Farewell to glory, farewell to the future, to the life I had
dreamed of! Now, my well-beloved, my glory is that I am yours, and
worthy of you; my future lies entirely in the hope of seeing you;
and is not my life summed up in sitting at your feet, in lying
under your eyes, in drawing deep breaths in the heaven you have
created for me? All my powers, all my thoughts must be yours,
since you could speak those thrilling words, 'Your sufferings must
be mine!' Should I not be stealing some joys from love, some
moments from happiness, some experiences from your divine spirit,
if I gave my hours to study—ideas to the world and poems to the
poets? Nay, nay, my very life, I will treasure everything for you;
I will bring to you every flower of my soul. Is there anything
fine enough, splendid enough, in all the resources of the world,
or of intellect, to do honor to a heart so rich, so pure as yours
—the heart to which I dare now and again to unite my own? Yes,
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