第59章 A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART(35)

"If you are not a millionaire, you are most certainly drunk.""Drunk with power. I can kill you!--Silence! I am Nero! I am Nebuchadnezzar!""But, Raphael, we are in queer company, and you ought to keep quiet for the sake of your own dignity.""My life has been silent too long. I mean to have my revenge now on the world at large. I will not amuse myself by squandering paltry five-franc pieces; I will reproduce and sum up my epoch by absorbing human lives, human minds, and human souls. There are the treasures of pestilence--that is no paltry kind of wealth, is it? I will wrestle with fevers--yellow, blue, or green--with whole armies, with gibbets.

I can possess Foedora--Yet no, I do not want Foedora; she is a disease; I am dying of Foedora. I want to forget Foedora.""If you keep on calling out like this, I shall take you into the dining-room.""Do you see this skin? It is Solomon's will. Solomon belongs to me--a little varlet of a king! Arabia is mine, Arabia Petraea to boot; and the universe, and you too, if I choose. If I choose-- Ah! be careful.

I can buy up all our journalist's shop; you shall be my valet. You shall be my valet, you shall manage my newspaper. Valet! VALET, that is to say, free from aches and pains, because he has no brains."At the word, Emile carried Raphael off into the dining-room.

"All right," he remarked; "yes, my friend, I am your valet. But you are about to be editor-in-chief of a newspaper; so be quiet, and behave properly, for my sake. Have you no regard for me?""Regard for you! You shall have Havana cigars, with this bit of shagreen: always with this skin, this supreme bit of shagreen. It is a cure for corns, and efficacious remedy. Do you suffer? I will remove them.""Never have I known you so senseless----"

"Senseless, my friend? Not at all. This skin contracts whenever I form a wish--'tis a paradox. There is a Brahmin underneath it! The Brahmin must be a droll fellow, for our desires, look you, are bound to expand----""Yes, yes----"

"I tell you----"

"Yes, yes, very true, I am quite of your opinion--our desires expand----""The skin, I tell you."

"Yes."

"You don't believe me. I know you, my friend; you are as full of lies as a new-made king.""How can you expect me to follow your drunken maunderings?""I will bet you I can prove it. Let us measure it----""Goodness! he will never get off to sleep," exclaimed Emile, as he watched Raphael rummaging busily in the dining-room.

Thanks to the peculiar clearness with which external objects are sometimes projected on an inebriated brain, in sharp contrast to its own obscure imaginings, Valentin found an inkstand and a table-napkin, with the quickness of a monkey, repeating all the time:

"Let us measure it! Let us measure it!"

"All right," said Emile; "let us measure it!"The two friends spread out the table-napkin and laid the Magic Skin upon it. As Emile's hand appeared to be steadier than Raphael's, he drew a line with pen and ink round the talisman, while his friend said:

"I wished for an income of two hundred thousand livres, didn't I?

Well, when that comes, you will observe a mighty diminution of my chagrin.""Yes--now go to sleep. Shall I make you comfortable on that sofa? Now then, are you all right?""Yes, my nursling of the press. You shall amuse me; you shall drive the flies away from me. The friend of adversity should be the friend of prosperity. So I will give you some Hava--na--cig----""Come, now, sleep. Sleep off your gold, you millionaire!""You! sleep off your paragraphs! Good-night! Say good-night to Nebuchadnezzar!--Love! Wine! France!--glory and tr--treas----"Very soon the snorings of the two friends were added to the music with which the rooms resounded--an ineffectual concert! The lights went out one by one, their crystal sconces cracking in the final flare. Night threw dark shadows over this prolonged revelry, in which Raphael's narrative had been a second orgy of speech, of words without ideas, of ideas for which words had often been lacking.

Towards noon, next day, the fair Aquilina bestirred herself. She yawned wearily. She had slept with her head upon a painted velvet footstool, and her cheeks were mottled over by contact with the surface. Her movement awoke Euphrasia, who suddenly sprang up with a hoarse cry; her pretty face, that had been so fresh and fair in the evening, was sallow now and pallid; she looked like a candidate for the hospital. The rest awoke also by degrees, with portentous groanings, to feel themselves over in every stiffened limb, and to experience the infinite varieties of weariness that weighed upon them.

A servant came in to throw back the shutters and open the windows.

There they all stood, brought back to consciousness by the warm rays of sunlight that shone upon the sleepers' heads. Their movements during slumber had disordered the elaborately arranged hair and toilettes of the women. They presented a ghastly spectacle in the bright daylight. Their hair fell ungracefully about them; their eyes, lately so brilliant, were heavy and dim; the expression of their faces was entirely changed. The sickly hues, which daylight brings out so strongly, were frightful. An olive tint had crept over the lymphatic faces, so fair and soft when in repose; the dainty red lips were grown pale and dry, and bore tokens of the degradation of excess. Each disowned his mistress of the night before; the women looked wan and discolored, like flowers trampled under foot by a passing procession.