The Lily of the Valley

The Project Guten­berg EBook of The Lily of the Val­ley, by Hon­ore de Balzac

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Ti­tle: The Lily of the Val­ley

Au­thor: Hon­ore de Balzac

Re­lease Date: Jan­uary 25, 2005 [EBook #1569]

Lan­guage: En­glish

Char­ac­ter set en­cod­ing: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTEN­BERG EBOOK THE LILY OF THE VAL­LEY ***

Pro­duced by John Bick­ers and Dag­ny

THE LILY OF THE VAL­LEY

BY

HON­ORE DE BALZAC

Trans­lat­ed by Katharine Prescott Worme­ley

DED­ICA­TION

To Mon­sieur J. B. Nac­quart, Mem­ber of the Roy­al Acade­my of Medicine.

Dear Doc­tor--Here is one of the most care­ful­ly hewn stones in the sec­ond course of the foun­da­tion of a lit­er­ary ed­ifice which I have slow­ly and la­bo­ri­ous­ly con­struct­ed. I wish to in­scribe your name up­on it, as much to thank the man whose sci­ence once saved me as to hon­or the friend of my dai­ly life.

De Balzac.

THE LILY OF THE VAL­LEY

EN­VOI

Fe­lix de Van­de­nesse to Madame la Comtesse Na­tal­ie de Man­erville:

I yield to your wish­es. It is the priv­ilege of the wom­en whom we love more than they love us to make the men who love them ig­nore the or­di­nary rules of com­mon-​sense. To smooth the frown up­on their brow, to soft­en the pout up­on their lips, what ob­sta­cles we mirac­ulous­ly over­come! We shed our blood, we risk our fu­ture!

You ex­act the his­to­ry of my past life; here it is. But re­mem­ber this, Na­tal­ie; in obey­ing you I crush un­der foot a re­luc­tance hith­er­to un­con­quer­able. Why are you jeal­ous of the sud­den rever­ies which over­take me in the midst of our hap­pi­ness? Why show the pret­ty anger of a pet­ted wom­an when si­lence grasps me? Could you not play up­on the con­tra­dic­tions of my char­ac­ter with­out in­quir­ing in­to the caus­es of them? Are there se­crets in your heart which seek ab­so­lu­tion through a knowl­edge of mine? Ah! Na­tal­ie, you have guessed mine; and it is bet­ter you should know the whole truth. Yes, my life is shad­owed by a phan­tom; a word evokes it; it hov­ers vague­ly above me and about me; with­in my soul are solemn mem­ories, buried in its depths like those ma­rine pro­duc­tions seen in calmest weath­er and which the storms of ocean cast in frag­ments on the shore.

The men­tal la­bor which the ex­pres­sion of ideas ne­ces­si­tates has re­vived the old, old feel­ings which give me so much pain when they come sud­den­ly; and if in this con­fes­sion of my past they break forth in a way that wounds you, re­mem­ber that you threat­ened to pun­ish me if I did not obey your wish­es, and do not, there­fore, pun­ish my obe­di­ence. I would that this, my con­fi­dence, might in­crease your love.

Un­til we meet,

Fe­lix.