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 54 of 66
Novella · ¶¶ 211–219
French
p. 110- Bien! Paul. Si tu continues à te moquer de toi-même, tu pourras bientôt te moquer de tout le monde.
En déjeunant, de Marsay commença, quand il en fut à fumer ses cigares, à voir les événements de sa nuit sous un singulier jour. Comme beaucoup de grands esprits, sa perspicacité n’était pas spontanée, il n’entrait pas tout à coup au fond des choses. Comme chez toutes les natures douées de la faculté de vivre beaucoup dans le présent, d’en exprimer pour ainsi dire le jus et de le dévorer, sa seconde vue avait besoin d’une espèce de sommeil pour s’identifier aux causes. Le cardinal de Richelieu était ainsi, ce qui n’excluait pas en lui le don de prévoyance nécessaire à la conception des grandes choses. De Marsay se trouvait dans toutes ces conditions, mais il n’usa d’abord de ses armes qu’au profit de ses plaisirs, et ne devint l’un des hommes politiques les plus profonds du temps actuel que quand il se fut saturé des plaisirs auxquels pense tout d’abord un jeune homme lorsqu’il a de l’or et le pouvoir. L’homme se bronze ainsi: il use la femme, pour que la femme ne puisse pas l’user. En ce moment donc, de Marsay s’aperçut qu’il avait été joué par la Fille aux yeux d’or, en voyant dans son ensemble cette nuit dont les plaisirs n’avaient que graduellement ruisselé pour finir par s’épancher à torrents. Il put alors lire dans cette page si brillante d’effet, en deviner le sens caché. L’innocence purement physique de Paquita, l’étonnement de sa joie, quelques mots d’abord obscurs et maintenant clairs, échappés au milieu de la joie, tout lui prouva qu’il avait posé pour une autre personne. Comme aucune des corruptions sociales ne lui était inconnue, qu’il professait au sujet de tous les caprices une parfaite indifférence, et les croyait justifiés par cela même qu’ils se pouvaient satisfaire, il ne s’effaroucha pas du vice, il le connaissait comme on connaît un ami, mais il fut blessé de lui avoir servi de pâture. Si ses présomptions étaient justes, il avait été outragé dans le vif de son être. Ce seul soupçon le mit en fureur, il laissa éclater le rugissement du tigre dont une gazelle se serait moquée, le cri d’un tigre qui joignait à la force de la bête l’intelligence du démon.
- Eh! bien, qu’as-tu donc? lui dit Paul.
- Rien!
- Je ne voudrais pas, si l’on te demandait si tu as quelque chose contre moi, que tu répondisses un rien semblable, il faudrait sans doute nous battre le lendemain.
- Je ne me bats plus, dit de Marsay.
- Ceci me semble encore plus tragique. Tu assassines donc?
- Tu travestis les mots. J’exécute.
- Mon cher ami, dit Paul, tes plaisanteries sont bien poussées au noir, ce matin.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes: Novella
p. 111“Good! Paul. If you continue to make fun of yourself, you will soon be able to make fun of everyone.”
While breakfasting, de Marsay began, when he had reached the point of smoking his cigars, to see the events of his night in a singular light. Like many great minds, his perspicacity was not spontaneous; he did not enter all at once into the depths of things. As in all natures endowed with the faculty of living greatly in the present, of expressing, so to speak, its juice and devouring it, his second sight needed a kind of sleep in order to identify itself with causes. Cardinal de Richelieu was like this, which did not exclude in him the gift of foresight necessary to the conception of great things. De Marsay was in all these conditions, but at first he used his weapons only for the benefit of his pleasures, and became one of the most profound politicians of the present time only when he had saturated himself with the pleasures of which a young man thinks first when he has gold and power. Man is bronzed in this way: he wears out woman so that woman cannot wear him out. At that moment, then, de Marsay perceived that he had been played by the Girl with the Golden Eyes, on seeing as a whole this night whose pleasures had only gradually trickled before ending by pouring out in torrents. He was then able to read in this page so brilliant in effect and divine its hidden meaning. Paquita’s purely physical innocence, the astonishment of her joy, a few words at first obscure and now clear, escaped in the midst of joy, everything proved to him that he had posed for another person. Since none of the social corruptions was unknown to him, since he professed a perfect indifference concerning all caprices and believed them justified by the very fact that they could be satisfied, he was not alarmed by vice; he knew it as one knows a friend, but he was wounded at having served as its fodder. If his presumptions were correct, he had been outraged in the quick of his being. This suspicion alone threw him into a fury; he let burst forth the roar of the tiger of whom a gazelle had made fun, the cry of a tiger that joined the intelligence of the demon to the strength of the beast.
“Well then, what is the matter with you?” Paul said to him.
“Nothing!”
“I would not want, if someone asked you whether you had anything against me, you to answer with a similar nothing; we would doubtless have to fight the next day.”
“I no longer fight,” said de Marsay.
“This seems still more tragic to me. Then you murder?”
“You travesty words. I execute.”
“My dear friend,” said Paul, “your jokes are very dark indeed this morning.”
Socrates
Reading The Girl with the Golden Eyes · Novella · ¶¶ 211–219
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.