The Girl With the Golden Eyes Read Online Free PDF

a lion’s courage, a monkey’s dexterity. He could slice through a bullet with a knife blade ten paces away; rode horseback in a way that fulfilled the myth of the centaur; gracefully drove a long-reined carriage; was agile as Cherubino and calm as a lamb; but he could beat a man from the slums at the horrid sports of kick-boxing or quarterstaff. He had such a way with thepiano that he could become an artist if he fell into misfortune, and had a voice that would have been worth 50,000 francs a season to a tenor like Barbaja. Alas, all these fine qualities, these charming defects, were tarnished by a horrible vice: He believed in neither men nor women, neither God nor the devil. Nature had begun to endow him with capriciousness; a priest had completed the process.
    To make the present adventure understandable, it is necessary to add here that Lord Dudley naturally found many women willing to produce a few copies from such a charming portrait. His second masterpiece of this sort was a young girl named Euphémie, born to a Spanish lady, raised in Havana, and brought back to Madrid with a young Creole woman from the Antilles, with all the ruinous tastes of the colonies; but she was fortunately married to an old and powerfully rich Spanish lord, Don Hijos, Marquis de San-Réal, who, after the occupation of Spain by French troops, had come to live in Paris, and had a house on the Rue Saint-Lazare. As much by unconcern as out of respect for the innocence of youth, Lord Dudley never bothered to inform his children about the various kinships he was creating for them everywhere. This is a slight inconvenience of civilization, which has many advantages; one must overlook its drawbacks in favor of its benefits. Lord Dudley,to finish with him, came in 1816 to take refuge in Paris, in order to avoid the pursuits of English justice, which protects nothing but merchandise from the Orient. When he saw Henri, the traveling lord asked who this young man was. Then, hearing his name, he said, “Ah! He is my son. What a pity!”
    That is the story of the young man who, around the middle of April, in 1815, was nonchalantly strolling down the wide lane in the Tuileries, like all animals who, knowing their strength, walk in peace and majesty; ordinary people naively turned around to look at him again, women didn’t turn round at all, they waited for him on his return, and engraved this suave face—which wouldn’t have marred the body of the most beautiful of them—in their memory, so as to be able to recall him at the right time.
    “What are you doing here on a Sunday?” the Marquis de Ronquerolles asked Henri in passing.
    “There are fish in the net,” the young man replied.
    This exchange of thoughts was made by means of two significant glances, without either Ronquerolles or de Marsay seeming to recognize each other. The young man examined the people strolling by, with that swiftness of glance and keen sense of hearing peculiar to the Parisian who seems, at first glance, to see nothing and hear nothing, but who sees and hears everything. At that instant, a young man came up to him, took him familiarly by the arm, and said, “How are things, my good de Marsay?”
    “Splendid,” de Marsay replied with that seemingly affectionate air which between the young people of Paris proves nothing, either for now or for the future.
    In fact, the youth of Paris are like none of the youth in other cities. They are divided into two classes: the young man who has something, and the young man who has nothing; or the young man who thinks and the one who spends. But you must understand that here it is a question only of those native sons who live the grand style of elegant life in Paris. A few other kinds of young men do exist, but they are children who come late to the Parisian way of life, and remain fooled by it. They don’t speculate, they study; they cram, say the others. Finally there are still other sorts of young men, both rich and poor, who