Diotimos Library · Literary Fiction Collection · Bilingual Edition
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
La Fille aux yeux d’or · French with an independent close English translation
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French Page · Branch 14 of 66
Novella · ¶ 10
French
p. 30Toutes les classes inférieures sont tapies devant les riches et en guettent les goûts pour en faire des vices et les exploiter. Comment résister aux habiles séductions qui se trament en ce pays? Aussi Paris a-t-il ses thériakis, pour qui le jeu, la gastrolâtrie ou la courtisane sont un opium. Aussi voyez-vous de bonne heure à ces gens-là des goûts et non des passions, des fantaisies romanesques et des amours frileux. Là règne l’impuissance; là plus d’idées, elles ont passé comme l’énergie dans les simagrées du boudoir, dans les singeries féminines. Il y a des blancs-becs de quarante ans, de vieux docteurs de seize ans. Les riches rencontrent à Paris de l’esprit tout fait, la science toute mâchée, des opinions toutes formulées qui les dispensent d’avoir esprit, science ou opinion. Dans ce monde, la déraison est égale à la faiblesse et au libertinage. On y est avare de temps à force d’en perdre. N’y cherchez pas plus d’affections que d’idées. Les embrassades couvrent une profonde indifférence, et la politesse un mépris continuel. On n’y aime jamais autrui. Des saillies sans profondeur, beaucoup d’indiscrétions, des commérages, par-dessus tout des lieux communs; tel est le fond de leur langage; mais ces malheureux Heureux prétendent qu’ils ne se rassemblent pas pour dire et faire des maximes à la façon de La Rochefoucauld; comme s’il n’existait pas un milieu, trouvé par le dix-huitième siècle, entre le trop plein et le vide absolu. Si quelques hommes valides usent d’une plaisanterie fine et légère, elle est incomprise; bientôt fatigués de donner sans recevoir, ils restent chez eux et laissent régner les sots sur leur terrain. Cette vie creuse, cette attente continuelle d’un plaisir qui n’arrive jamais, cet ennui permanent, cette inanité d’esprit, de cœur et de cervelle, cette lassitude du grand raoût parisien se reproduisent sur les traits, et confectionnent ces visages de carton, ces rides prématurées, cette physionomie des riches où grimace l’impuissance, où se reflète l’or, et d’où l’intelligence a fui.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes: Novella
p. 31Pleasure is like certain medical substances: to obtain constantly the same effects, one must double the doses, and death or brutishness is contained in the last. All the lower classes lie crouched before the rich and watch for their tastes in order to make vices of them and exploit them. How resist the skillful seductions plotted in this country? Thus Paris has its theriac-users, for whom gambling, belly-worship, or the courtesan is an opium. Thus you see early in these people tastes and not passions, romantic fantasies and chilly loves. There impotence reigns; there no more ideas, they have passed, like energy, into the posturings of the boudoir, into feminine mimicries. There are forty-year-old greenhorns, old doctors of sixteen. In Paris the rich encounter wit ready-made, science all chewed, opinions all formulated, which dispense them from having wit, science, or opinion. In this world, unreason is equal to weakness and libertinism. People there are miserly with time by dint of losing it. Seek there no more affections than ideas. Embraces cover a profound indifference, and politeness a continual contempt. One never loves another there. Sallies without depth, many indiscretions, gossip, above all commonplaces; such is the substance of their language; but these unhappy Happy claim that they do not assemble to say and enact maxims in the manner of La Rochefoucauld; as if there did not exist a middle, found by the eighteenth century, between overfullness and absolute emptiness. If a few vigorous men use a fine and light pleasantry, it is misunderstood; soon tired of giving without receiving, they remain at home and leave fools to reign over their ground. This hollow life, this continual expectation of a pleasure that never arrives, this permanent boredom, this inanition of mind, heart, and brain, this weariness of the great Parisian rout reproduce themselves upon the features, and manufacture those cardboard faces, those premature wrinkles, that physiognomy of the rich in which impotence grimaces, in which gold is reflected, and from which intelligence has fled.
Socrates
Reading The Girl with the Golden Eyes · Novella · ¶ 10
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Honoré de Balzac’s The Girl with the Golden Eyes turns Paris into a charged study of wealth, appetite, spectacle, secrecy, possession, and power. This exact page-aligned Literary Fiction edition presents the novella’s continuous movement in French with an independent close English translation prepared by Diotimos Editions.
Historical Text and Translation
The French reading text follows the 1843 Furne edition as presented in the Furne corrigé transcription at eBalzac and is checked, where needed, against the Gallica image of the volume. The original hierarchy, dedication to Eugène Delacroix, continuous sectioning, and closing 1834–1835 dateline are retained.
About Diotimos Editions
Diotimos Editions prepared this independent close translation directly from the French. Meaning, agency, logic, degree, reference, image, repetition, and ambiguity take precedence over elegance; Balzac’s clause order and long accumulations remain wherever grammatical English can bear them.
Rights
Balzac’s French source work is in the public domain. The 2026 English translation and Diotimos editorial matter are original to this edition and remain © 2026 Diotimos.