Оноре де Бальзак (Honoré de Balzac)The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Magic Skin, by Honore de Balzac
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Title: The Magic Skin
Author: Honore de Balzac
Translator: Ellen Marriage
Release Date: February 22, 2010 [EBook #1307]
Last Updated: April 3, 2013
Language: English
Produced by Dagny, Bonnie Sala, and David Widger
THE MAGIC SKIN
By Honore De Balzac
Translated by Ellen Marriage
path made by the tip of a stick when flourished.]
STERNE—Tristram Shandy, ch. cccxxii.
THE MAGIC SKIN
I. THE TALISMAN II. A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART III. THE AGONY |
EPILOGUE ADDENDUM
THE MAGIC SKIN
I. THE TALISMAN
Towards the end of the month of October 1829 a young man entered the Palais-Royal just as the gaming-houses opened, agreeably to the law which protects a passion by its very nature easily excisable. He mounted the staircase of one of the gambling hells distinguished by the number 36, without too much deliberation.
"Your hat, sir, if you please?" a thin, querulous voice called out. A little old man, crouching in the darkness behind a railing, suddenly rose and exhibited his features, carved after a mean design.
As you enter a gaming-house the law despoils you of your hat at the outset. Is it by way of a parable, a divine revelation? Or by exacting some pledge or other, is not an infernal compact implied? Is it done to compel you to preserve a respectful demeanor towards those who are about to gain money of you? Or must the detective, who squats in our social sewers, know the name of your hatter, or your own, if you happen to have written it on the lining inside? Or, after all, is the measurement of your skull required for the compilation of statistics as to the cerebral capacity of gamblers? The executive is absolutely silent on this point. But be sure of this, that though you have scarcely taken a step towards the tables, your hat no more belongs to you now than you belong to yourself. Play possesses you, your fortune, your cap, your cane, your cloak.
As you go out, it will be made clear to you, by a savage irony, that Play has yet spared you something, since your property is returned. For all that, if you bring a new hat with you, you will have to pay for the knowledge that a special costume is needed for a gambler.
The evident astonishment with which the young man took a numbered tally in exchange for his hat, which was fortunately somewhat rubbed at the brim, showed clearly enough that his mind was yet untainted; and the little old man, who had wallowed from his youth up in the furious pleasures of a gambler's life, cast a dull, indifferent glance over him, in which a philosopher might have seen wretchedness lying in the hospital, the vagrant lives of ruined folk, inquests on numberless suicides, life-long penal servitude and transportations to Guazacoalco.