Free The Girl With the Golden Eyes by Honoré de Balzac, Charlotte Mandell Page A

mother of hers had stayed in Henri’s imagination like something hellish, crouching, cadaverous, vicious, savage, something the fantasies of painters and poets had not yet guessed. In actual fact, never had a tryst more inflamed his senses, or revealed to him bolder sensual delights, or made love gush more from his core to spread itself like an atmosphere around a man. This was something dark, mysterious, sweet, tender, constrained and expansive, a pairing of the horrible and the heavenly, of paradise and hell, that made de Marsay almost drunk. He was no longer himself, and yet he was old enough to be able to resist the intoxications of pleasure.
    In order to understand de Marsay’s behavior at the end of this story, it must be explained how his soul had expanded at an age when most young men’s shrank from getting mixed up with womenor having too much to do with them. His soul had grown through a combination of secret circumstances that endowed him with an immense unknown power. This young man held a scepter in his hand that was more powerful than that of modern kings, almost all of them restrained by laws in even their slightest wishes. De Marsay wielded the autocratic power of the Oriental despot. But this power, so stupidly put into practice in Asia by coarse men, was increased tenfold by European intelligence and by French wit—the liveliest, keenest of all instruments of the mind. Henri could do whatever he liked in the interest of his pleasures and his vanities. This invisible action on the social world had clothed him in a real but secret majesty, discreet, folded in on itself. He had about himself, not the opinion that Louis XIV would have had, but what the proudest of Caliphs, of Pharaohs, of Xerxes who believe they belong to the divine race, had about themselves, when they imitated God by veiling themselves from their subjects, under the pretext that their gaze caused death. Thus, without having any remorse at being both judge and plaintiff, de Marsay coldly condemned to death the man or woman who had seriously offended him. Although often pronounced almost offhandedly, the sentence was irrevocable. A mere foible became a catastrophe, like lightning striking some happy Parisian girl inher fiacre, instead of killing the old coachman who is bringing her to a tryst. Thus the bitter, profound pleasantry that marked the conversation of this young man generally caused fear in others; no one felt a desire to challenge him. Women intensely love those who call themselves “pashas,” who seem as if they’re accompanied by lions and executioners, and who walk clothed in terror. These men have an ensuing confidence of action, a certainty of power, a pride of look, a leonine awareness that for women embody the type of strength they all dream of. De Marsay was such a man.
    Joyous at that instant with his future, he became once again young and vibrant, and thought only of love as he went to bed. He dreamed of the Girl with the Golden Eyes, as passionate young men dream: monstrous images, elusive peculiarities, full of light, which reveal invisible worlds, but always in an incomplete way, for the interposing veil changes optic conditions. The next day and the day after that, he disappeared without anyone knowing where he had gone. His power belonged to him only on certain conditions, and fortunately for him, during these two days, he was a simple soldier in the service of the demon whose talismanic existence he possessed. But at the agreed-upon time, that night, on the boulevard, he waited for the carriage, which wasn’t late in coming. The mulatto approached Henri to tell him,in French, a phrase he seemed to have learned by heart: “If you want to come, she told me, you have to agree to have your eyes blindfolded.”
    And Christemio showed him a scarf of white silk.
    “No!” Henri said, whose omnipotence suddenly rebelled.
    And he wanted to climb in. The mulatto gave a sign; the carriage started off.
    “Yes!” de