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 43 of 66
Novella · ¶¶ 145–155
French
p. 88En ce moment, Paquita leva la tête, jeta sur lui un de ces regards qui vont jusqu’à l’âme et la brûlent. Elle lui parut si belle, qu’il se jura de posséder ce trésor de beauté.
- Ma Paquita, sois à moi!
- Tu veux me tuer? dit-elle peureuse, palpitante, inquiète, mais ramenée à lui par une force inexplicable.
- Te tuer, moi! dit-il en souriant.
Paquita jeta un cri d’effroi, dit un mot à la vieille, qui prit d’autorité la main de Henri, celle de sa fille, les regarda long-temps, les leur rendit en hochant la tête d’une façon horriblement significative.
- Sois à moi ce soir, à l’instant, suis-moi, ne me quitte pas, je le veux, Paquita! m’aimes-tu? viens!
En un moment, il lui dit mille paroles insensées avec la rapidité d’un torrent qui bondit entre des rochers, et répète le même son, sous mille formes différentes.
- C’est la même voix! dit Paquita mélancoliquement, sans que de Marsay pût l’entendre, et… la même ardeur, ajouta-t-elle.
- Hé! bien, oui, dit-elle avec un abandon de passion que rien ne saurait exprimer. Oui, mais pas ce soir. Ce soir, Adolphe, j’ai donné trop peu d’opium à la Concha, elle pourrait se réveiller, je serais perdue. En ce moment, toute la maison me croit endormie dans ma chambre. Dans deux jours, sois au même endroit, dis le même mot au même homme. Cet homme est mon père nourricier, Christemio m’adore et mourrait pour moi dans les tourments sans qu’on lui arrachât une parole contre moi. Adieu, dit-elle en saisissant Henri par le corps et s’entortillant autour de lui comme un serpent.
Elle le pressa de tous les côtés à la fois, lui apporta sa tête sous la sienne, lui présenta ses lèvres, et prit un baiser qui leur donna de tels vertiges à tous deux, que de Marsay crut que la terre s’ouvrait, et que Paquita cria: - « Va-t’en! » d’une voix qui annonçait assez combien elle était peu maîtresse d’elle-même. Mais elle le garda tout en lui criant toujours: « Va-t’en! » et le mena lentement jusqu’à l’escalier.
Là, le mulâtre, dont les yeux blancs s’allumèrent à la vue de Paquita, prit le flambeau des mains de son idole, et conduisit Henri jusqu’à la rue. Il laissa le flambeau sous la voûte, ouvrit la portière, remit Henri dans la voiture, et le déposa sur le boulevard des Italiens avec une rapidité merveilleuse. Les chevaux semblaient avoir l’enfer dans le corps.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes: Novella
p. 89At that moment Paquita raised her head and cast upon him one of those looks that reach the soul and burn it. She appeared so beautiful to him that he swore to himself to possess this treasure of beauty.
“My Paquita, be mine!”
“You want to kill me?” she said, fearful, palpitating, anxious, but brought back to him by an inexplicable force.
“Kill you, I!” he said, smiling.
Paquita uttered a cry of fright, said a word to the old woman, who authoritatively took Henri's hand and her daughter's, looked at them for a long time, then returned them to them, shaking her head in a horribly significant manner.
“Be mine tonight, this instant; follow me; do not leave me; I will it, Paquita! Do you love me? Come!”
In a moment he said a thousand senseless words to her with the rapidity of a torrent that bounds among rocks and repeats the same sound in a thousand different forms.
“It is the same voice!” Paquita said sadly, without de Marsay being able to hear her, “and... the same ardor,” she added.
“Well, yes,” she said with an abandonment of passion that nothing could express. “Yes, but not tonight. Tonight, Adolphe, I gave too little opium to Concha; she might wake; I would be lost. At this moment, the whole house believes me asleep in my room. In two days, be at the same place; say the same word to the same man. That man is my foster father; Christemio adores me and would die for me in torments without anyone tearing from him a word against me. Farewell,” she said, seizing Henri around the body and twisting herself around him like a serpent.
She pressed him from every side at once, brought her head beneath his, presented her lips to him, and took a kiss that gave them both such vertigo that de Marsay believed the earth was opening, and Paquita cried, “Go away!” in a voice that sufficiently announced how little mistress of herself she was. But she kept him while still crying to him, “Go away!” and slowly led him as far as the staircase.
There the mulatto, whose white eyes lit up at the sight of Paquita, took the torch from his idol's hands and conducted Henri as far as the street. He left the torch beneath the archway, opened the door, put Henri back into the carriage, and deposited him on the boulevard des Italiens with marvelous rapidity. The horses seemed to have hell in their bodies.
Socrates
Reading The Girl with the Golden Eyes · Novella · ¶¶ 145–155
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.