Here and there sparkled brilliant glances, eclipsing
the lights, the fire of the diamonds, and which lent
a new animation to hearts already too much on fire.
There might be surprised also little attitudes of the
head significant for the lovers, and negative atti-
tudes for the husbands. The sudden outbursts of
the voices of the players, at each unforeseen stroke,
the clinking of gold, mingled with the music, with
the murmur of the conversations ; to complete the
transport of this multitude — inebriated by all that
the world can offer of seductions — a vapor of per-
fume and a general intoxication acted upon all these
wandering imaginations. Thus, on my right, the
sombre and silent image of death; on my left, the
decent bacchanalians of life: here, nature cold, dull,
in mourning; there, men in enjoyment. I myself,
on the border of these two pictures so incongruous,
which, a thousand times repeated in various man-
ners, render Paris the most amusing city in the
world and the most philosophical, I made for myself
a sort of moral medley, half pleasant, half funereal.
With the left foot I beat time to the music, and I
seemed to have the other in a coffin. My leg was in
fact chilled by one of those draughts of air which
freeze one-half of your body whilst the other half
feels the moist heat of the salons, an accident fre-
quent enough at balls.
SARRASINE 209
"It is not very long that Monsieur de Lanty has
owned this hotel ?"
"Oh! yes. It is nearly ten years since the Mare-
chal de Carigliano sold it to him — "
"Ah!"
"These people must have an immense fortune?"
"I should say so."
"What a fete! It is of an insolent luxury."
"Do you think them as rich as Monsieur de Nu-
cingen or Monsieur de Gondreville?"
"But you do not then know? — "
I put out my head and recognized the two inter-
locutors as belonging to that inquisitive class who,
in Paris, occupy themselves exclusively with the
Whys ? The Hows ? Where did it come from ? Who
are they ? What is there ? What has she done ?
They were talking in a low tone of voice, and went
away to converse more at their ease on some soli-
tary sofa. Never had a richer mine been opened to
the searchers of mysteries. No one knew from
what country came the family Lanty, nor from what
commerce, from what spoliation, from what piracy,
or from what inheritance proceeded a fortune esti-
mated at several millions. All the members of this
family spoke Italian, French, Spanish, English and
German with such perfection as to make it seem
probable that they had lived for a long time in these
different countries. Were they Bohemians? Were
they filibusters?
"If they were the devil!" said the young politi-
cians, "they know how to receive marvelously well. "
14
2IO SARRASINE
"Had the Comte de Lanty plundered some Cas-
bah, I would marry his daughter all the same !" cried
a philosopher.
Who would not have married Marianina, a young
girl of sixteen, whose beauty realized the fabulous
conception of the Oriental poets! Like the daugh-
ter of the Sultan in the tale of The Wonderful
Lamp, she should have been kept veiled. Her sing-
ing made to pale their incomplete talents the
Malibrans, the Sontags, the Fodors, in whom
some dominant quality has always impaired the
perfection of the ensemble; whilst Marianina knew
how to unite in the same degree the purity of sound,
the feeling, the justness of the movement and of the
intonation, the soul and the science, the correctness
and the sentiment. This girl was the type of that
secret poetry, common bond of all the arts, and which
always flies from those who seek it. Gentle and
modest, learned and spirituelle, nothing could eclipse
Marianina unless it were her mother.
Have you ever encountered one of those women
whose overpowering beauty defies the attacks of age,
and who seem, at thirty-six, more desirable than
they could have been fifteen years earlier ? Their
countenance is a passionate soul, it sparkles; each
feature is illuminated with intelligence; every
detail possesses a particular brilliancy, especially
in the light. Their seductive eyes attract, refuse,
speak or keep silent; their gait is innocently know-
ing; their voice displays the melodious richness of
tones, the most coquettishly soft and tender. Their
SARRASINE 211
praises, by comparison, flatter the self-love of those
most hard to please. A movement of their eye-
brows, the least glance of the eye, their lip, which
grows stern, all impress a sort of terror on those
whose life and whose happiness depends on them.
Inexperienced in love and docile to persuasion, a
young girl may allow herself to be seduced; but for
these women, a man should know how, like Monsieur
de Jaucourt, not to cry out when, hiding himself in the
back of a wardrobe, the femme de chambre crushes
two of his fingers in the crack of a door. To love
these puissant sirens, is it not to gamble with one's
life? And this is why perhaps we love them so
passionately! Such was the Comtesse de Lanty.
Filippo, the brother of Marianina, partook, like
his sister, of the marvelous beauty of the countess.
To say all in one word, this young man was a liv-
ing image of the Antinous, with a form more slen-
der. But how well these thin and delicate propor-
tions accord with youth when an olive skin, strong
eyebrows and the fire of a velvety eye, promise for
the future male passions, generous thoughts ! If
Filippo lived in the hearts of all the young girls as
a type, he lived equally in the regard of all the
mothers as the best parti in France.
The beauty, the fortune, the wit, the graces of
these two children came altogether from their
mother. The Comte de Lanty was short, ugly, and
pock-marked; sombre as a Spaniard, wearisome as
a banker. He passed moreover for a profound poli-
tician, perhaps because he laughed but seldom, and
212 SARRASINE
was always quoting Monsieur de Metternich or
Wellington.
This mysterious family had all the attraction of a
poem by Lord Byron, the difficulties of which were
translated in a different manner by each person of
the fashionable world, — a chant obscure and sublime
from strophe to strophe. The reserve which Mon-
sieur and Madame de Lanty preserved respecting
their origin, their past existence and their relation
with the four corners of the globe, was not for any
great length of time a subject of astonishment in
Paris. In no country perhaps is the axiom of Ves-
pasian better comprehended. There, the ecus, even
though spotted with blood or with mud, betray
nothing and represent everything. Provided that
the upper classes of society know the figure of your
fortune, you are classed among the sums which are
equal to yours, and no one asks to see your parch-
ments, because everybody knows how little they
cost. In a city in which social problems are solved
by algebraic equations, the adventurers have excel-
lent chances in their favor. Even supposing that
this family had been Bohemian in its origin, it was
so rich, so attractive, that the upper circles of
society could well afford to pardon it its little mys-
teries. But, unfortunately, the enigmatic history
of the house of Lanty offered a perpetual interest of
curiosity, similar enough to that of the romances
of Anne Radcliffe.
The observers, those persons who make it a point
to know in what shop you buy your candelabra, or
SARRASINE 21 3
who ask you the amount of your rent when your
apartment pleases them, had remarked, from time
to time, in the midst of the fetes, the concerts, the
balls, the routs given by the countess, the appear-
ance of a strange personage. This was a man.
The first time that he showed himself in the hotel,
was during a concert, where he seemed to have
been attracted to the salon by the enchanting voice
of Marianina.
"Within the last minute I have felt cold," said a
lady standing near the door, to her neighbor.
The unknown, who was near this lady, went
away.
"Here is something curious! I am too warm,"
said this woman after the departure of the stranger.
"And you will accuse me, perhaps, of being crazy,
but I cannot avoid the impression that my neigh-
bor, that gentleman in black, who had just gone
away, made me cold."
Very soon, the exaggeration natural to people
in high society originated and accumulated the
most amusing ideas, the oddest expressions, the
most ridiculous stories concerning this mysterious
personage. Without being precisely a vampire, a
ghoul, an artificial man, a species of Faust or of
Robin des Bois, he partook, according to these
friends of the fantastic, of all these anthropomorphic
natures. There were to be met with here and
there certain Germans who took for truths these
ingenious mockeries of the Parisian slander.
The stranger was simply an ancient man. Several
214 SARRASINE
of these young men, who were in the habit of
deciding the future of Europe every morning in a
few elegant phrases, determined to see in the un-
known some great criminal, the possessor of im-
mense riches. The romancers related the life of
this old man, and gave you truly remarkable de-
tails of the atrocities committed by him during the
time he was in the service of the prince of Mysore.
The bankers, a more positive class, set up a plausi-
ble fable.
"Bah!" said they, shrugging their great shoul-
ders with a movement of pity, "this little old man
is a tete genoise !"
"Monsieur, if it is not an indiscretion, would
you have the kindness to explain to me what you
mean by a Genoese head?"
"Monsieur, it is a man upon the duration of whose
life repose enormous sums, and on his good health
depend doubtless the revenues of this family. I re-
member to have heard at Madame d'Espard's a
magnetizer proving, by very specious historical
considerations, that this old man, kept under glass,
was the famous Balsamo, called Cagliostro. Accord-
ing to this modern alchemist, the Sicilian adven-
turer had escaped death, and amused himself by
making gold for his grandchildren. And, finally,
the bailiff of Ferette pretended to have recognized
in this singular personage the Comte de Saint-
Germain."
These sillinesses, uttered in the light tone, with
the mocking air which, in our days, characterizes
SARRASINE 21 5
a society without any faiths, gave rise to vague sus-
picions concerning the house of Lanty. Finally, by a
singular combination of circumstances, the members
of this family justified the conjectures of the world
by a line of conduct sufficiently mysterious toward
this old man, whose life was in some sort concealed
from all investigation.
Should this personage cross the threshold of the
apartment which he was reputed to occupy in the
Hotel Lanty, his appearance always caused a great
sensation in the family. It could have been said
to be an event of the highest importance. Filippo,
Marianina, Madame de Lanty and an old domestic
alone had the privilege of aiding the unknown to
walk, to rise, to seat himself. Each one watched
solicitously his slightest movements. It seemed as
though this was an enchanted person on whom de-
pended the happiness, the life or the fortunes of
all. Was it fear or affection ? The society people
could not discover any indication which would aid
them to solve this problem. Hidden for entire
months in the depths of an unknown sanctuary,
this familiar genius issued suddenly and, as it were,
furtively, without being expected, and appeared
in the midst of the salons like those fairies of other
times who descended from their flying dragons to
come and trouble those solemnities to which they
had not been bidden. The most skilful observers
could alone at these periods divine the inquietude of
the masters of the household, who knew how to
conceal their feeling with a singular skill. But,
2l6 SARRASINE
sometimes, even while dancing in a quadrille, the
too candid Marianina cast a glance of terror on the
old man, whom she followed through the multitude.
Or else Filippo hastened, slipping through the crowd,
to join him, and remained near him, tender and
attentive, as if the contact of men or the least breath
would destroy this curious creature. The countess
endeavored to approach him, without appearing to
have the intention of rejoining him; then, in
assuming a manner and a countenance as expres-
sive of servility as of tenderness, of submission as
of despotism, she said two or three words to which
the old man nearly always deferred : he disappeared,
led away, or, to speak more clearly, carried away,
by her. If Madame de Lanty were not there, the
count employed a thousand stratagems to reach him ;
but he had the appearance of making himself heard
with difficulty and treated him like a spoiled child
whose mother satisfies its caprices or dreads its un-
ruliness. Some indiscreet persons have ventured to
question rashly the Comte de Lanty, but this cold and
reserved man had never appeared to be able to com-
prehend the interrogation of these curious ones.
Thus, after a great many attempts, which the cir-
cumspection of all the members of this family had
rendered fruitless, no one sought any longer to dis-
cover a secret so well guarded. The spies of good
society, the open-mouthed and the politic ones, had
finished, weary of the contest, by no longer occupy-
ing themselves with this mystery.
But, in this moment, there were perhaps in the
SARRASINE 217
midst of these resplendent salons certain philoso-
phers who, even while taking an ice, a sorbet, or in
setting down on a console their empty punch glass,
said to each other :
"I should not be surprised to learn that these peo-
ple are sharpers. This old fellow, who hides him-
self and only appears at the equinoxes or at the
solstices, has to me quite the air of an assassin — "
"Or of a bankrupt—"
"It is very nearly the same thing. To kill a
man's fortune is sometimes worse than to kill him
himself."
"Monsieur, I have bet twenty louis; there are
forty coming to me."
"Faith, Monsieur, there are only thirty left on
the table."
"Well, there, you see how society is mixed here!
No one can play."
"That is true. — But here are now six months that
we have not seen the Spirit. Do you believe that
it is a living being?"
"Eh! eh! at the very most — "
These last words were uttered, near me, by un-
known persons who went away at the moment in
which I resumed, in the last train of thought, my
reflections mingled with white and black, with life
and death. My fantastic imagination, as well as
my eyes, contemplated alternately the festivity
which had now reached its highest degree of splen-
dor and the sombre picture of the gardens. I do not
know how long 1 had been meditating on these two
218 SARRASINE
sides of the human medal ; but suddenly the smoth-
ered laughter of a young woman recalled me to my-
self. I remained stupefied at the appearance of the
figure which presented itself before my eyes. By
one of the rarest caprices of nature, the half fune-
real thought which had been traversing my brain
had issued forth, it was there before me, personified,
living; it had sprung, like Minerva, from the head of
Jupiter, grand and strong; it had at once a hundred
years of age and twenty-two, it was living and dead.
Escaped from his chamber, like a maniac from his
cell, the little old man had doubtless slipped skil-
fully behind a hedge of persons listening to the
voice of Marianina, who was finishing the cavatina
of Tancred. He seemed to have issued from un-
derground, pushed up by some theatrical mechan-
ism. Motionless and sombre, he remained a
moment looking at this festival, the murmur of
which had perhaps reached his ears. His preoccu-
pation, almost somnambulic, was so concentrated on
certain things, that he found himself in the midst
of the world without seeing the world. He had
surged up without ceremony close to one of the
most ravishing women in Paris, a dancer elegant
and youthful, with delicate forms, one of those fig-
ures as fresh as that of a child, white and pink, and
so frail, so transparent, that it would seem as
though a man's glance could penetrate them, as the
rays of the sun traverse pure ice. They were
there, before me, both of them together, united and
so close together that the stranger touched the dress
SARRASINE 219
of gauze and the garlands of flowers and the lightly-
crimped hair and the floating girdle.
1 had brought this young woman to Madame de
Lanty's ball. As this was the first time that she
had been in this house, I forgave her her smothered
laugh; but 1 made to her quickly some imperious
sign, I do not know what, which filled her with con-
fusion and inspired her with respect for her neigh-
bor. She seated herself near me. The old man did
not wish to quit this delicious creature, to whom he
attached himself wilfully with that obstinacy, mute
and without apparent cause, which is characteristic
of the extremely aged, and which causes them to
resemble children. In order to seat himself near the
young lady, he was obliged to take a folding-chair.
His least movements were marked by that coid
heaviness, that stupid indecision which character-
izes the gestures of a paralytic. He sat down
slowly on his seat, with circumspection, and in
mumbling some unintelligible words. His broken
voice resembled the noise which a stone makes in
falling into a well. The young woman pressed my
hand closely, as if she sought to save herself from a
precipice, and shuddered when this man, whom she
was looking at, turned upon her two eyes without
warmth, two glaucous eyes which could only be
compared to tarnished mother-of-pearl.
"I am afraid," she said to me, leaning toward my
ear.
"You can speak," I replied; "he hears with great
difficulty."
220 SARRASINE
"You know him, then?"
"Yes."
At this she took courage sufficiently to examine
for a moment this creature without a name in
human language, form without substance, being
without life, or life without action. She was under
the influence of that fearful curiosity which impels
women to procure for themselves dangerous
emotions, to see tigers chained, to look at boa-
constrictors, while frightening themselves at being
separated from them only by feeble barriers. Al-
though the little old man was stoop-shouldered, like a
laboring man, it could readily be seen that his figure
must have been of ordinary height. His excessive
meagreness, the delicacy of his limbs, proved that
his proportions had always remained slender. He
wore small-clothes of black silk which floated
around his fleshless thighs in folds, like a furled
sail. An anatomist could have promptly recognized
the symptoms of a frightful phthisis on seeing the
slight legs which served to sustain this strange
body. You would have said they were two bones
crossed on a tomb. A sentiment of profound horror
for mankind seized the heart when a fatal attention
had revealed to you the signs impressed by decrepi-
tude on this fragile machine. The unknown wore
a white waistcoat, embroidered with gold, in the
ancient style, and his linen was of a dazzling white-
ness. A jabot of English lace sufficiently yellowed,
the richness of which would have been envied by a
queen, formed yellow ruches on his chest; but, on
SARRASINE 221
him, this lace was rather a rag than an adornment
In the midst of this jabot a diamond of an incalcula-
ble value glittered, like the sun. This superannu-
ated luxury, this material richness without taste,
served to set off in still stronger fashion the coun-
tenance of this strange being. The frame was
worthy of the portrait. This dark visage was
angular and hollowed in every sense, — the chin
was hollow, the temples were hollow, the eyes were
lost in yellowish orbits. The maxillary bones,
rendered prominent by an indescribable meagre-
ness, designed cavities in the middle of each cheek.
These gibbosities, more or less revealed by the
lights, produced curious shadows and reflections
which completed the want of resemblance between
this visage and the human countenance. Moreover,
the years had so closely fastened to the bone the
yellowish and fine skin of this visage that they had
there described everywhere a multitude of wrinkles,
either circular, like the ripples of water caused by a
stone thrown by a child, or star-shaped, like the
fracture of a window-pane, but always deep and as
close together as the edges of the leaves of a book.
There are old men who present to us more hideous
portraits; but that which contributed the most to
give the appearance of an artificial creation to the
spectre risen before us was the red and the white
with which he shone. The eyebrows of his mask
received from the lights a lustre which revealed a
painting very well executed. Happily for the sight
saddened by so many ruins, his cadaverous cranium
222 SARRASINE
was concealed under a blond peruque, the innumer-
able curls of which betrayed an extraordinary pre-
tension. For the rest, the feminine coquetry of
this phantasmagoric personage was emphatically
enough announced by the gold rings which hung in
his ears, by the rings of which the wonderful stones
glittered on his ossified fingers, and by a watch
chain which scintillated like the brilliants of a
necklace at the throat of a woman. Finally, this
species of Japanese idol preserved on his bluish
lips a fixed arid arrested smile, a smile implacable
and bantering, like that of a death's-head. Silent,
motionless as a statue, it exhaled the musky odor
of those old gowns which the heirs of a duchess ex-
hume from her drawers during an inventory. If the
old man turned his eyes toward the assembly, it
seemed as though the movement of those globes,
incapable of reflecting a light, were accomplished
by an imperceptible artifice; and, when the eyes
arrested themselves, he who examined them ended
by doubting if they had moved. To see, near to
this human debris, a young woman whose neck,
whose arms and whose chest were naked and white;
whose lines were full and redolent of beauty,
whose hair rising admirably from an alabaster fore-
head inspired love, whose eyes did not receive but
gave out light, who was soft, fresh, and whose
vaporous curls, whose balmy breath, seemed too
heavy, too hard, too powerful for this shadow,
for this man in dust, — ah! it was certainly death
and life, my revery, an imaginary arabesque, a
SARRASINE 223
chimera half hideous, divinely female from the
waist up.
"There are, however, such marriages, which take
place with sufficient frequency in the world," I
said to myself.
"He smells of the cemetery!" cried the terrified
young woman, who pressed against me as if
to assure herself of my protection, and whose
tumultuous movements revealed to me the ex-
tremity of her fear. — "It is a horrible vision," she
resumed.
"I cannot stay here any longer. If I look at it
again I shall believe that death itself has come to
seek me. But does it live?"
She put out her hand and touched the phenome-
non with that hardihood of which women are capa-
ble in the violence of their desires ; but a cold sweat
broke out on her skin, for, as soon as she touched
the old man, she heard a cry like that of a rattle.
This sharp voice, if it were a voice, issued from a
throat almost dried up. Then to this clamor suc-
ceeded quickly a little cough like a child's, convul-
sive and of a peculiar sonorousness. At this noise,
Marianina, Filippo, and Madame de Lanty turned
their looks upon us, and their glances were like
lightning. The young woman could have wished
herself at the bottom of the Seine. She took my
arm, drew me off toward a boudoir. Men and
women, everybody, made way for us. When we
reached the end of the reception apartments, we en-
tered a little semicircular cabinet. My companion
224 SARRASINE
threw herself on a divan, palpitating with terror,
without knowing where she was.
"Madame, you are distracted," I said to her.
"But," she answered, after a moment of silence
during which I admired her, "is it my fault? Why
does Madame de Lanty permit ghosts to wander
about in her hotel ?"
"Come," 1 replied, "you imitate the silly ones.
You take a little old man for a spectre."
"Keep silent," she replied, with that mocking and
imposing air which all women know so well how to
assume when they are determined to be right. —
"What a pretty boudoir!" she cried, looking around
her. "Blue satin always makes an admirable
effect for hangings. How fresh it is ! Ah ! the beau-
tiful picture!" she added, rising and going to take
her stand before a magnificently framed canvas.