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THE ELIXIR OF LIFE
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By
Clara Bell & James Waring
TO THE READER
At the very outset of the writer's literary career, a friend,
long since dead, gave him the subject of this Study. Later on he
found the same story in a collection published about the
beginning of the present century. To the best of his belief, it
is some stray fancy of the brain of Hoffmann of Berlin; probably
it appeared in some German almanac, and was omitted in the
published editions of his collected works. The Comedie Humaine is
sufficiently rich in original creations for the author to own to
this innocent piece of plagiarism; when, like the worthy La
Fontaine, he has told unwittingly, and after his own fashion, a
tale already related by another. This is not one of the hoaxes in
vogue in the year 1830, when every author wrote his "tale of
horror" for the amusement of young ladies. When you have read the
account of Don Juan's decorous parricide, try to picture to
yourself the part which would be played under very similar
circumstances by honest folk who, in this nineteenth century,
will take a man's money and undertake to pay him a life annuity
on the faith of a chill, or let a house to an ancient lady for
the term of her natural life! Would they be for resuscitating
their clients? I should dearly like a connoisseur in consciences
to consider how far there is a resemblance between a Don Juan and
fathers who marry their children to great expectations. Does
humanity, which, according to certain philosophers, is making
progress, look on the art of waiting for dead men's shoes as a
step in the right direction? To this art we owe several honorable
professions, which open up ways of living on death. There are
people who rely entirely on an expected demise; who brood over
it, crouching each morning upon a corpse, that serves again for
their pillow at night. To this class belong bishops' coadjutors,
cardinals' supernumeraries, tontiniers, and the like. Add to the
list many delicately scrupulous persons eager to buy landed
property beyond their means, who calculate with dry logic and in
cold blood the probable duration of the life of a father or of a
step-mother, some old man or woman of eighty or ninety, saying to
themselves, "I shall be sure to come in for it in three years'
time, and then----" A murderer is less loathsome to us than a
spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may
be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day,
in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every
moment of his life. Then what must it be to live when every
moment of your life is tainted with murder? And have we not just
admitted that a host of human creatures in our midst are led by
our laws, customs, and usages to dwell without ceasing on a
fellow-creature's death? There are men who put the weight of a
coffin into their deliberations as they bargain for Cashmere
shawls for their wives, as they go up the staircase of a theatre,
or think of going to the Bouffons, or of setting up a carriage;
who are murderers in thought when dear ones, with the
irresistible charm of innocence, hold up childish foreheads to be
kissed with a "Good-night, father!" Hourly they meet the gaze of
eyes that they would fain close for ever, eyes that still open
each morning to the light, like Belvidero's in this Study. God
alone knows the number of those who are parricides in thought.
Picture to yourself the state of mind of a man who must pay a
life annuity to some old woman whom he scarcely knows; both live
in the country with a brook between them, both sides are free to
hate cordially, without offending against the social conventions
that require two brothers to wear a mask if the older will
succeed to the entail, and the other to the fortune of a younger
son. The whole civilization of Europe turns upon the principle of
hereditary succession as upon a pivot; it would be madness to
subvert the principle; but could we not, in an age that prides
itself upon its mechanical inventions, perfect this essential
portion of the social machinery?
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