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
Swipe or use the arrow keys.
French Page · Branch 2 of 66
Novella · ¶¶ 1–2
French
p. 6Un des spectacles où se rencontre le plus d’épouvantement est certes l’aspect général de la population parisienne, peuple horrible à voir, hâve, jaune, tanné. Paris n’est-il pas un vaste champ incessamment remué par une tempête d’intérêts sous laquelle tourbillonne une moisson d’hommes que la mort fauche plus souvent qu’ailleurs et qui renaissent toujours aussi serrés, dont les visages contournés, tordus, rendent par tous les pores l’esprit, les désirs, les poisons dont sont engrossés leurs cerveaux; non pas des visages, mais bien des masques: masques de faiblesse, masques de force, masques de misère, masques de joie, masques d’hypocrisie; tous exténués, tous empreints des signes ineffaçables d’une haletante avidité? Que veulent-ils? De l’or, ou du plaisir?
Quelques observations sur l’âme de Paris peuvent expliquer les causes de sa physionomie cadavéreuse qui n’a que deux âges, ou la jeunesse ou la caducité: jeunesse blafarde et sans couleur, caducité fardée qui veut paraître jeune. En voyant ce peuple exhumé, les étrangers, qui ne sont pas tenus de réfléchir, éprouvent tout d’abord un mouvement de dégoût pour cette capitale, vaste atelier de jouissances, d’où bientôt eux-mêmes ils ne peuvent sortir, et restent à s’y déformer volontiers. Peu de mots suffiront pour justifier physiologiquement la teinte presque infernale des figures parisiennes, car ce n’est pas seulement par plaisanterie que Paris a été nommé un enfer. Tenez ce mot pour vrai. Là, tout fume, tout brûle, tout brille, tout bouillonne, tout flambe, s’évapore, s’éteint, se rallume, étincelle, pétille et se consume. Jamais vie en aucun pays ne fut plus ardente, ni plus cuisante. Cette nature sociale toujours en fusion semble se dire après chaque œuvre finie: - À une autre! comme se le dit la nature elle-même. Comme la nature, cette nature sociale s’occupe d’insectes, de fleurs d’un jour, de bagatelles, d’éphémères, et jette aussi feu et flamme par son éternel cratère. Peut-être avant d’analyser les causes qui font une physionomie spéciale à chaque tribu de cette nation intelligente et mouvante, doit-on signaler la cause générale qui en décolore, blêmit, bleuit et brunit plus ou moins les individus.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes: Novella
p. 7One of the spectacles in which the greatest terror is to be encountered is certainly the general aspect of the Parisian population, a people horrible to see, gaunt, yellow, tanned. Is Paris not a vast field incessantly churned by a tempest of interests, beneath which whirls a harvest of men whom death mows more often than elsewhere and who are always reborn just as densely packed, whose contorted, twisted faces exude through every pore the mind, the desires, the poisons with which their brains are pregnant; not faces, but indeed masks: masks of weakness, masks of strength, masks of misery, masks of joy, masks of hypocrisy; all exhausted, all imprinted with the ineffaceable signs of a panting avidity? What do they want? Gold, or pleasure?
A few observations on the soul of Paris may explain the causes of its cadaverous physiognomy, which has only two ages, either youth or decrepitude: wan and colorless youth, painted decrepitude that wishes to appear young. On seeing this exhumed people, foreigners, who are not obliged to reflect, at first experience a movement of disgust for this capital, vast workshop of enjoyments, from which soon they themselves cannot get out, and remain there willingly becoming deformed. Few words will suffice to justify physiologically the almost infernal tint of Parisian faces, for it is not only in jest that Paris has been named a hell. Hold this word to be true. There, everything smokes, everything burns, everything shines, everything seethes, everything blazes, evaporates, dies out, lights again, sparkles, crackles, and consumes itself. Never was life in any country more ardent, nor more searing. This social nature, always in fusion, seems to say to itself after each finished work: “On to another!” as nature itself says to itself. Like nature, this social nature occupies itself with insects, flowers of a day, trifles, ephemera, and also casts fire and flame from its eternal crater. Perhaps, before analyzing the causes that give a special physiognomy to each tribe of this intelligent and mobile nation, one must point out the general cause that discolors, blanches, blues, and browns its individuals to a greater or lesser degree.
Socrates
Reading The Girl with the Golden Eyes · Novella · ¶¶ 1–2
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.