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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Facing Pages · Branch 41 of 66
Novella · ¶¶ 126–137
French
p. 84L’Espagnole profitait de ce moment de stupeur pour se laisser aller à l’extase de cette adoration infinie qui saisit le cœur d’une femme quand elle aime véritablement et qu’elle se trouve en présence d’une idole vainement espérée. Ses yeux étaient tout joie, tout bonheur, et il s’en échappait des étincelles. Elle était sous le charme, et s’enivrait sans crainte d’une félicité long-temps rêvée. Elle parut alors si merveilleusement belle à Henri que toute cette fantasmagorie de haillons, de vieillesse, de draperies rouges usées, de paillassons verts devant les fauteuils, que le carreau rouge mal frotté, que tout ce luxe infirme et souffrant disparut aussitôt. Le salon s’illumina, il ne vit plus qu’à travers un nuage la terrible harpie, fixe, muette sur son canapé rouge, et dont les yeux jaunes trahissaient les sentiments serviles que le malheur inspire ou que cause un vice sous l’esclavage duquel on est tombé comme sous un tyran qui vous abrutit sous les flagellations de son despotisme. Ses yeux avaient l’éclat froid de ceux d’un tigre en cage qui sait son impuissance et se trouve obligé de dévorer ses envies de destruction.
- Quelle est cette femme? dit Henri à Paquita.
Mais Paquita ne répondit pas. Elle fit signe qu’elle n’entendait pas le français, et demanda à Henri s’il parlait anglais. De Marsay répéta sa question en anglais.
- C’est la seule femme à laquelle je puisse me fier, quoiqu’elle m’ait déjà vendue, dit Paquita tranquillement. Mon cher Adolphe, c’est ma mère, une esclave achetée en Géorgie pour sa rare beauté, mais dont il reste peu de chose aujourd’hui. Elle ne parle que sa langue maternelle.
L’attitude de cette femme et son envie de deviner, par les mouvements de sa fille et d’Henri, ce qui se passait entre eux furent expliquées soudain au jeune homme, que cette explication mit à l’aise.
- Paquita, lui dit-il, nous ne serons donc pas libres?
- Jamais! dit-elle d’un air triste. Nous avons même peu de jours à nous.
Elle baissa les yeux, regarda sa main, et compta de sa main droite sur les doigts de sa main gauche, en montrant ainsi les plus belles mains qu’Henri eût jamais vues.
- Un, deux, trois…
Elle compta jusqu’à douze.
- Oui, dit-elle, nous avons douze jours.
- Et après?
The Girl with the Golden Eyes: Novella
p. 85The Spanish girl took advantage of this moment of stupefaction to abandon herself to the ecstasy of that infinite adoration which seizes a woman's heart when she truly loves and finds herself in the presence of an idol vainly hoped for. Her eyes were all joy, all happiness, and sparks escaped from them. She was under the charm and intoxicated herself without fear on a felicity long dreamed of. She then appeared so marvelously beautiful to Henri that all this phantasmagoria of rags, old age, worn red draperies, green mats before the armchairs, the badly scoured red tile, all this infirm and suffering luxury, disappeared at once. The salon was illuminated; he saw the terrible harpy only through a cloud, fixed and mute upon her red sofa, whose yellow eyes betrayed the servile feelings that misfortune inspires or that are caused by a vice beneath whose slavery one has fallen as beneath a tyrant who stupefies you under the lashings of his despotism. Her eyes had the cold gleam of those of a caged tiger that knows its impotence and finds itself obliged to devour its desires for destruction.
“Who is this woman?” Henri said to Paquita.
But Paquita did not answer. She signaled that she did not understand French and asked Henri whether he spoke English. De Marsay repeated his question in English.
“She is the only woman whom I can trust, although she has already sold me,” Paquita said calmly. “My dear Adolphe, she is my mother, a slave bought in Georgia for her rare beauty, of which little remains today. She speaks only her mother tongue.”
This woman's attitude and her desire to divine, from her daughter's and Henri's movements, what was passing between them were suddenly explained to the young man, whom this explanation put at ease.
“Paquita,” he said to her, “then we shall not be free?”
“Never!” she said with a sad air. “We even have few days to ourselves.”
She lowered her eyes, looked at her hand, and counted with her right hand upon the fingers of her left hand, thus showing the most beautiful hands Henri had ever seen.
“One, two, three...”
She counted to twelve.
“Yes,” she said, “we have twelve days.”
“And afterward?”
Socrates
Reading The Girl with the Golden Eyes · Novella · ¶¶ 126–137
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.