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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English Page · Branch 65 of 66
Novella · ¶¶ 303–318
French
p. 132Henri lui arrêta le bras, et ils purent ainsi se contempler tous deux face à face. Une surprise horrible leur fit couler à tous deux un sang glacé dans les veines, et ils tremblèrent sur leurs jambes comme des chevaux effrayés. En effet, deux Ménechmes ne se seraient pas mieux ressemblé. Ils dirent ensemble le même mot: - Lord Dudley doit être votre père?
Chacun d’eux baissa la tête affirmativement.
- Elle était fidèle au sang, dit Henri en montrant Paquita.
- Elle était aussi peu coupable qu’il est possible, reprit Margarita-Euphémia Porrabéril, qui se jeta sur le corps de Paquita en poussant un cri de désespoir. - Pauvre fille! oh! je voudrais te ranimer! J’ai eu tort, pardonne-moi, Paquita! Tu es morte, et je vis, moi! Je suis la plus malheureuse.
En ce moment apparut l’horrible figure de la mère de Paquita.
- Tu vas me dire que tu ne l’avais pas vendue pour que je la tuasse, s’écria la marquise. Je sais pourquoi tu sors de ta tanière. Je te la payerai deux fois. Tais-toi.
Elle alla prendre un sac d’or dans le meuble d’ébène et le jeta dédaigneusement aux pieds de cette vieille femme. Le son de l’or eut le pouvoir de dessiner un sourire sur l’immobile physionomie de la Géorgienne.
- J’arrive à temps pour toi, ma sœur, dit Henri. La justice va te demander…
- Rien, répondit la marquise. Une seule personne pouvait demander compte de cette fille. Christemio est mort.
- Et cette mère, demanda Henri en montrant la vieille, ne te rançonnera-t-elle pas toujours?
- Elle est d’un pays où les femmes ne sont pas des êtres, mais des choses dont on fait ce qu’on veut, que l’on vend, que l’on achète, que l’on tue, enfin dont on se sert pour ses caprices, comme vous vous servez ici de vos meubles. D’ailleurs, elle a une passion qui fait capituler toutes les autres, et qui aurait anéanti son amour maternel, si elle avait aimé sa fille; une passion…
- Laquelle? dit vivement Henri en interrompant sa sœur.
- Le jeu, dont Dieu te garde! répondit la marquise.
- Mais par qui vas-tu te faire aider, dit Henri en montrant la Fille aux yeux d’or, pour enlever les traces de cette fantaisie, que la justice ne te passerait pas?
- J’ai sa mère, répondit la marquise, en montrant la vieille Géorgienne à qui elle fit signe de rester.
- Nous nous reverrons, dit Henri, qui songeait à l’inquiétude de ses amis et sentait la nécessité de partir.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes: Novella
p. 133Henri stopped her arm, and they were thus able to contemplate each other face to face. A horrible surprise made icy blood flow through both their veins, and they trembled on their legs like frightened horses. Indeed, two Menaechmi could not have resembled each other better. They said the same word together: “Lord Dudley must be your father?”
Each of them lowered their head in affirmation.
“She was faithful to the blood,” said Henri, indicating Paquita.
“She was as little guilty as is possible,” resumed Margarita-Euphémia Porrabéril, who threw herself upon Paquita’s body with a cry of despair. “Poor girl! Oh! I would like to revive you! I was wrong; forgive me, Paquita! You are dead, and I live, I! I am the most unhappy.”
At this moment the horrible face of Paquita's mother appeared.
“You are going to tell me that you had not sold her so that I might kill her,” cried the marquise. “I know why you are coming out of your lair. I will pay you twice for her. Be silent.”
She went to take a bag of gold from the ebony cabinet and threw it contemptuously at this old woman’s feet. The sound of gold had the power to draw a smile upon the Georgian woman’s motionless physiognomy.
“I arrive in time for you, my sister,” said Henri. “Justice is going to ask you...”
“Nothing,” replied the marquise. “Only one person could demand an account of this girl. Christemio is dead.”
“And this mother,” Henri asked, indicating the old woman, “will she not always hold you to ransom?”
“She is from a country where women are not beings but things with which one does what one wants, which one sells, which one buys, which one kills, which, in short, one uses for one’s caprices, as you use your furniture here. Besides, she has a passion that makes all the others capitulate and that would have annihilated her maternal love, if she had loved her daughter; a passion...”
“Which one?” said Henri quickly, interrupting his sister.
“Gambling, from which may God preserve you!” replied the marquise.
“But by whom will you have yourself helped,” said Henri, indicating the Girl with the Golden Eyes, “to remove the traces of this caprice, which justice would not overlook?”
“I have her mother,” replied the marquise, indicating the old Georgian woman, to whom she made a sign to remain.
“We shall see each other again,” said Henri, who was thinking of his friends’ anxiety and felt the necessity of leaving.
Socrates
Reading The Girl with the Golden Eyes · Novella · ¶¶ 303–318
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.