The Girl with the Golden Eyes

Name: The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Author: Honoré de Balzac

La Fille aux yeux d’or · French with an independent close English translation

The Girl with the Golden EyesNovella · ¶¶ 282–291

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Facing Pages · Branch 62 of 66

Novella · ¶¶ 282–291

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French

p. 126

Elle attendit un regard, ne l’obtint pas, et tomba demi-morte. Le mulâtre jeta sur Henri un coup d’œil si épouvantablement significatif qu’il fit trembler, pour la première fois de sa vie, ce jeune homme, à qui personne ne refusait le don d’une rare intrépidité. - « Si tu ne l’aimes pas bien, si tu lui fais la moindre peine, je te tuerai. » Tel était le sens de ce rapide regard. De Marsay fut conduit avec des soins presque serviles le long d’un corridor éclairé par des jours de souffrance, et au bout duquel il sortit par une porte secrète dans un escalier dérobé qui conduisait au jardin de l’hôtel San-Réal. Le mulâtre le fit marcher précautionneusement le long d’une allée de tilleuls qui aboutissait à une petite porte donnant sur une rue déserte à cette époque. De Marsay remarqua bien tout, la voiture l’attendait; cette fois le mulâtre ne l’accompagna point; et, au moment où Henri mit la tête à la portière pour revoir les jardins et l’hôtel, il rencontra les yeux blancs de Christemio, avec lequel il échangea un regard. De part et d’autre ce fut une provocation, un défi, l’annonce d’une guerre de sauvages, d’un duel où cessaient les lois ordinaires, où la trahison, ou la perfidie était un moyen admis. Christemio savait qu’Henri avait juré la mort de Paquita. Henri savait que Christemio voulait le tuer avant qu’il ne tuât Paquita. Tous deux s’entendirent à merveille.

- L’aventure se complique d’une façon assez intéressante, se dit Henri.

- Où monsieur va-t-il? lui demanda le cocher.

De Marsay se fit conduire chez Paul de Manerville.

Pendant plus d’une semaine Henri fut absent de chez lui, sans que personne pût savoir ni ce qu’il fit pendant ce temps, ni dans quel endroit il demeura. Cette retraite le sauva de la fureur du mulâtre, et causa la perte de la pauvre créature qui avait mis toute son espérance dans celui qu’elle aimait comme jamais aucune créature n’aima sur cette terre. Le dernier jour de cette semaine, vers onze heures du soir, Henri vint en voiture à la petite porte du jardin de l’hôtel San-Réal. Trois hommes l’accompagnaient. Le cocher était évidemment un de ses amis, car il se leva droit sur son siége, en homme qui voulait, comme une sentinelle attentive, écouter le moindre bruit. L’un des trois autres se tint en dehors de la porte, dans la rue; le second resta debout dans le jardin, appuyé sur le mur; le dernier, qui tenait à la main un trousseau de clefs, accompagna de Marsay.

- Henri, lui dit son compagnon, nous sommes trahis.

- Par qui, mon bon Ferragus?

- Ils ne dorment pas tous, répondit le chef des Dévorants: il faut absolument que quelqu’un de la maison n’ait ni bu ni mangé. Tiens, vois cette lumière.

- Nous avons le plan de la maison, d’où vient-elle?

- Je n’ai pas besoin du plan pour le savoir, répondit Ferragus; elle vient de la chambre de la marquise.

The Girl with the Golden Eyes: Novella

p. 127

She waited for a look, did not obtain one, and fell half dead. The mulatto cast upon Henri a glance so frightfully significant that it made this young man tremble for the first time in his life, a young man to whom no one denied the gift of rare intrepidity. “If you do not love her well, if you cause her the least pain, I will kill you.” Such was the meaning of this rapid glance. De Marsay was conducted with almost servile care along a corridor lit by borrowed lights, at the end of which he passed through a secret door onto a hidden staircase that led to the garden of the San-Réal mansion. The mulatto made him walk cautiously along an avenue of lindens that ended at a small door opening onto a street deserted at that time. De Marsay noticed everything well; the carriage was waiting for him; this time the mulatto did not accompany him; and, at the moment when Henri put his head through the carriage door to see the gardens and the mansion again, he met the white eyes of Christemio, with whom he exchanged a look. On both sides it was a provocation, a challenge, the announcement of a war of savages, of a duel in which the ordinary laws ceased, in which treachery or perfidy was an admitted means. Christemio knew that Henri had sworn Paquita's death. Henri knew that Christemio wanted to kill him before he killed Paquita. Both understood each other marvelously.

“The adventure is becoming complicated in a rather interesting way,” Henri said to himself.

“Where is monsieur going?” the coachman asked him.

De Marsay had himself driven to Paul de Manerville’s.

For more than a week Henri was absent from his home, without anyone’s being able to know either what he did during that time or in what place he stayed. This retreat saved him from the mulatto’s fury and caused the ruin of the poor creature who had placed all her hope in the man she loved as no creature ever loved on this earth. On the last day of this week, toward eleven o’clock in the evening, Henri came by carriage to the small garden door of the San-Réal mansion. Three men accompanied him. The coachman was obviously one of his friends, for he rose upright on his seat, like a man who wanted, as an attentive sentinel, to listen for the least noise. One of the other three remained outside the door, in the street; the second remained standing in the garden, leaning against the wall; the last, who held a ring of keys in his hand, accompanied de Marsay.

“Henri,” his companion told him, “we are betrayed.”

“By whom, my good Ferragus?”

“They are not all asleep,” replied the chief of the Devourers: “someone in the house absolutely must have neither drunk nor eaten. Look, see that light.”

“We have the plan of the house; where does that light come from?”

“I do not need the plan to know that,” Ferragus replied; “it comes from the marquise’s room.”

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.

Discussion Questions

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.