【英文原著类】THE MESSAGE(信笺).pdf

THE MESSAGE
THE MESSAGE
BY HONORE` DE BALZAC
Translated By Ellen Marriage
To M. le Marquis Damaso Pareto
1
THE MESSAGE
I have always longed to tell a simple and true story, which should
strike terror into two young lovers, and drive them to take refuge each in
the other's heart, as two children cling together at the sight of a snake by a
woodside. At the risk of spoiling my story and of being taken for a
b, I state my intention at the outset.
I myself played a part in this monplace tragedy; so if it
fails to interest you, the failure will be in part my own fault, in part owing
to historical veracity. Plenty of things in real life are superlatively
uninteresting; so that it is one-half of art to select from realities those
which contain possibilities of poetry.
In 1819 I was traveling from Paris to Moulins. The state of my
finances obliged me to take an outside place. Englishmen, as you know,
regard those airy perches on the top of the coach as the best seats; and for
the first few miles I discovered abundance of excellent reasons for
justifying the opinion of our neighbors. A young fellow, apparently in
somewhat better circumstances, who came to take the seat beside me from
preference, listened to my reasoning with inoffensive smiles. An
approximate nearness of age, a similarity in ways of thinking, mon
love of fresh air, and of the rich landscape scenery through which the
coach was lumbering along,--these things, together with an indescribable
ic something, drew us before long into one of those short-lived
traveller's intimacies, in which we unbend with the placency
because the intercourse is by its very nature transient, and makes no
implicit demands upon the future.
We had e thirty leagues before we were talking of women and
love. Then, with all the circumspection demanded in such matters, we
proceeded naturally to the topic of our lady-loves. Young as we both were,
we still admired "the woman of a certain age," that is t