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 5 of 66
Novella · ¶¶ 4–5
French
p. 12Elle se livre à des mouvements qui la font se gauchir, se grossir, maigrir, pâlir, jaillir en mille jets de volonté créatrice. Puis son plaisir, son repos est une lassante débauche, brune de peau, noire de tapes, blême d’ivresse, ou jaune d’indigestion, qui ne dure que deux jours, mais qui vole le pain de l’avenir, la soupe de la semaine, les robes de la femme, les langes de l’enfant tous en haillons. Ces hommes, nés sans doute pour être beaux, car toute créature a sa beauté relative, se sont enrégimentés, dès l’enfance, sous le commandement de la force, sous le règne du marteau, des cisailles, de la filature, et se sont promptement vulcanisés. Vulcain, avec sa laideur et sa force, n’est-il pas l’emblème de cette laide et forte nation, sublime d’intelligence mécanique, patiente à ses heures, terrible un jour par siècle, inflammable comme la poudre, et préparée à l’incendie révolutionnaire par l’eau-de-vie, enfin assez spirituelle pour prendre feu sur un mot captieux qui signifie toujours pour elle: or et plaisir! En comprenant tous ceux qui tendent la main pour une aumône, pour de légitimes salaires ou pour les cinq francs accordés à tous les genres de prostitution parisienne, enfin pour tout argent bien ou mal gagné, ce peuple compte trois cent mille individus. Sans les cabarets, le gouvernement ne serait-il pas renversé tous les mardis? Heureusement, le mardi, ce peuple est engourdi, cuve son plaisir, n’a plus le sou, et retourne au travail, au pain sec, stimulé par un besoin de procréation matérielle qui, pour lui, devient une habitude. Néanmoins ce peuple a ses phénomènes de vertu, ses hommes complets, ses Napoléons inconnus, qui sont le type de ses forces portées à leur plus haute expression, et résument sa portée sociale dans une existence où la pensée et le mouvement se combinent moins pour y jeter de la joie que pour y régulariser l’action de la douleur.
Le hasard a fait un ouvrier économe, le hasard l’a gratifié d’une pensée, il a pu jeter les yeux sur l’avenir, il a rencontré une femme, il s’est trouvé père, et après quelques années de privations dures il entreprend un petit commerce de mercerie, loue une boutique. Si ni la maladie ni le vice ne l’arrêtent en sa voie, s’il a prospéré, voici le croquis de cette vie normale.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes: Novella
p. 13Then its pleasure, its rest, is a tiring debauch, brown of skin, black with blows, pale with drunkenness, or yellow with indigestion, which lasts only two days, but steals the bread of the future, the soup of the week, the wife's dresses, the child's swaddling clothes, all in rags. These men, born no doubt to be beautiful, for every creature has its relative beauty, have been regimented, from childhood, under the command of force, under the reign of the hammer, the shears, the spinning mill, and have promptly been Vulcanized. Is not Vulcan, with his ugliness and his strength, the emblem of this ugly and strong nation, sublime in mechanical intelligence, patient at its hours, terrible one day per century, inflammable as powder, and prepared for the revolutionary conflagration by brandy, in short witty enough to catch fire at a captious word that always means to it: gold and pleasure! Including all those who hold out their hand for alms, for legitimate wages, or for the five francs accorded to every kind of Parisian prostitution, in short for all money well or badly earned, this people numbers three hundred thousand individuals. Without the taverns, would the government not be overthrown every Tuesday? Fortunately, on Tuesday this people is benumbed, sleeps off its pleasure, no longer has a sou, and returns to work, to dry bread, stimulated by a need for material procreation which, for it, becomes a habit. Nevertheless this people has its phenomena of virtue, its complete men, its unknown Napoleons, who are the type of its forces carried to their highest expression, and sum up its social reach in an existence where thought and movement combine less to cast joy into it than to regulate in it the action of pain.
Chance has made a worker thrifty, chance has gratified him with a thought, he has been able to cast his eyes upon the future, he has met a woman, he has found himself a father, and after some years of hard privations he undertakes a small haberdashery trade, rents a shop. If neither illness nor vice stops him on his path, if he has prospered, here is the sketch of this normal life.
Socrates
Reading The Girl with the Golden Eyes · Novella · ¶¶ 4–5
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.