A Passion in the Desert
A PASSION IN THE DESERT BY HONORE DE BALZAC Translated by Ernest Dowson "The whole show is dreadful," she cried coming out of the menagerie of M. Martin. She had just been looking at that daring speculator "working with his hyena,"--to speak in the style of the programme. "By what means," she continued, "can he have tamed these animals to such a point as to be certain of their affection for----" "What seems to you a problem," said I, interrupting, "is really quite
been a contemporary of mine at the university, and we had many interests
in common. He was a lawyer; we did not very often meet, but when we did
meet it was always with great cordiality and sympathy. I now found him
ill and suffering from overwork, in a very melancholy state. When I
first visited him, he was sitting alone, in the garden of a little
house in the country. I could see that he was ill and sad; he was making
pretence to read, but the book was wholly disregarded.
When I attempted to put my mind into communication with his, it was very
difficult to see the drift of his thoughts. I was like a man walking in
a dense fog, who can just discern at intervals recognisable objects as
they come within his view; but there was no general prospect and no
distance. His mind seemed a confused current of distressing memories;
but there came a time when his thought dwelt for a moment upon myself;
he wished that I could be with him, that he might speak of some of his
perplexities. In that instant, the whole grew clearer, and little by
little I was enabled to trace the drift of his thoughts. I became aware
that though he was indeed suffering from overwork, yet that his enforced
rest only removed the mental distraction of his work, and left his mind
free to revive a whole troop of painful thoughts. He had been a man of
strong personal ambitions, and had for twenty years been endeavouring to
realise them. Now a sense of the comparative worthlessness of his aims
had come upon him. He had despised and slighted other emotions; and his
mind had in consequence drifted away like a boat into a bitter and
barren sea. He was a lonely man, and he was feeling that he had done ill
in not multiplying human emotions and relations. He reflected much upon
A PASSION IN THE DESERT BY HONORE DE BALZAC Translated by Ernest Dowson "The whole show is dreadful," she cried coming out of the menagerie of M. Martin. She had just been looking at that daring speculator "working with his hyena,"--to speak in the style of the programme. "By what means," she continued, "can he have tamed these animals to such a point as to be certain of their affection for----" "What seems to you a problem," said I, interrupting, "is really quite