With the air of a wealthy man of leisure sauntering about the streets to kill time, the young marquis strolled down the Quai Voltaire, and followed the line of shops, looking listlessly at every window. But as he thought of the fate awaiting him at nightfall, men and houses swam in a mist before his eyes. To recover himself he entered a curiosity shop. "If you care to go through our galleries," said the red-haired shop-boy, "you will find something worth looking at."
Raphael climbed up a dark staircase lined with mummies, Indian idols, stuffed crocodiles, and goggle-eyed monsters. They all seemed to grin at him as he passed. Haunted by these strange shapes belonging to the borderland between life and death, he walked in a kind of dream through a series of long, dimly lighted galleries, in which was piled, in mad confusion, the work of every age and every clime. Here was a lovely statue by Michael Angelo, from which dangled the scalp of a Red Indian. There, cold and impassive, was the lord of the ancient world, the Emperor Augustus, with a modern air-pump sticking in his eye. The walls were hung with priceless pictures, which were half-hidden by grimacing skeletons, rude wooden idols with horrible features, tall suits of gleaming armour, and figures of Egyptian deities, with the bodies of men and heads of animals. The place was a kitchen of all the arts and religions and interests of mankind.
This extraordinary confusion was rendered still more bizarre by the dim cross-lights that played upon everything. Raphael's eyes grew weary with gazing, and his mind was oppressed by the spectacle of the ruined splendours of thousands of years of human life. A fever born of hunger and exhaustion possessed him. The pictures appeared to light up, the statues seemed to move. Everything danced and swayed around him. Then a horrible Chinese monster advanced upon him with menacing eyes from the other side of the room, and he swooned away in terror.
When he came to, his eyes were dazzled by a flood or radiance streaming from a circle of crimson light. Before him, holding a bright red lamp, was a frail, white-haired, extraordinary man, clad in a long robe of black velvet. His body was wasted by extreme old age. His skin was like wrinkled parchment, and his lips were so thin and colourless that it was hardly possible to discern on his ivory-white face the line made by his mouth. But his eyes were marvellous. They were calm, clear and searching, and they glowed with the light and freshness of youth.
"So you have been looking over my collection," the old man said. "Do you wish to buy anything?"
"Buy?" said Raphael, with a strange smile. "I am utterly penniless. I have been examining your treasures just to while away the time till I could drown myself quietly and secretly at night. You will not grudge this last pleasure to a poet and man of learning, will you?"
"Penniless?" said the old man. "But you do not want to die because you are penniless! A young, handsome, intellectual lad like you could pick up a living somehow. What is it? Some woman, eh? Now let me help----"
"I want no help or advice or consolation," said Raphael furiously.
"And I will give you none," said the old man. "But as you are resolved to die, will you do something for me. I want to get rid of this."
He held the lamp up the wall, and showed Raphael a piece of very old shagreen, about the size of a fox's skin.
"Ah!" said Raphael. "A wild ass's skin engraved with Sanscrit characters. Why, here's the mark that some of the Eastern races call the Seal of Solomon!"
"You are truly a man of learning," said the strange old merchant, his breath coming in quick pants through his nostrils. "No doubt you can read the inscription."
"I should translate it thus," said Raphael, fixing his eyes upon the skin.
POSSESSING ME THOU POSSESSEST EVERYTHING. YET I
POSSESS THEE. SO GOD HAS WILLED IT. WISH, AND
THY WISHES SHALL BE ACCOMPLISHED. BUT MEASURE
THE WISHES ACCORDING TO THY LIFE. HERE
IT IS. I SHALL SHRINK WITH EACH WISH, AND
SO SHALL THY LIFE, WILT THOU TAKE ME?
TAKE ME! GOD WILL HEAR THEE. AMEN.
"Is it a joke or a mystery?"
"I do not know," said the old man. "I have offered the magic skin to many men. They laughed at it; but none would take it. I am like them. I doubt its power, but will not put it to the test."
"What!" said Raphael. "You have never formed a wish all the time you had it?"
"No!" said the old man. "I have discovered the great secret of human life. Look! I am a hundred and two years old. Do you know why men die? Because they use up the energy of life by wishing to do things and doing them. I am content to know things. My days have been spent wandering quietly over all the earth in the calm acquisition of knowledge. All desire, all lust after power are dead within me. So this skin, which I picked up in India, has never shrunk an inch since it came into my possession."
"You have never lived!" cried Raphael, turning from the old man, and seizing the skin. "Yes, I will take you. Now for a test. I am starving. Set before me a splendid banquet. Let me have as guests all the wildest, gayest, wittiest minds of young France. And women? Oh, the prettiest, wickedest women of the town! Wine, wit and women!"
A roar of laughter came from the old man. It resounded in the ears of Raphael like the laughter of a fiend from hell.
"Do you think my floors are going to open, and tables, waiters, and guests pop up before your eyes?" he said. "No! Your first wish is mean and vulgar; but it will be fulfilled in a natural manner. You wanted to die, eh? Your suicide is only postponed."
Raphael put the skin in his pocket, and abruptly left, saying, "You have never lived. I wish you knew what love was."
He heard the old man groan strangely, but without listening to his reproaches he rushed out of the shop, and in the street ran full tilt up against three young men.
"Brute! Ass! Idiot! Why, it's Raphael!" they cried. "You must come. Talk about a Roman orgy I We've been all over Paris looking, for you. A gorgeous feed. And all the girls from the Opera! The ancient Romans aren't in it."
"One at a time," said Raphael. "Now, Emile, just tell me what are you all shouting about?"
"Do you know Taillefer, the wealthy banker?" said Emile. "He is founding a newspaper. All the talent of young France is to be enlisted. You're invited to the inaugural festival to-night at the Rue Joubert. The ballot girls of the Opera are coming. Oh, Taillefer's doing the thing in style!"
Arm linked in arm, the four friends made their way to Taillefer's mansion, and there, in a large room brilliantly set out, they were welcomed by all the younger men of note in Paris. For some time Raphael felt ill at ease. He was surprised by the natural manner in which his wish had suddenly been accomplished. He took the magic skin out of his pocket, and looked at it. Magic? What man could believe nowadays in magic? But, nevertheless, he marvelled at the accidents of human life.
II--A Fight Against Fate
Although the banquet which he had desired was now set before him, Raphael was still very moody. Deaf to the loud, wild merriment of his companions, he thought sadly of the misfortune which had driven him that morning to the brink of the grave. Many noblemen find it difficult to exist in Paris on an income of several thousand pounds. The young Marquis de Valentin had lived there very happily on £12 a year. In 1826, his father, who had lost his wealth and lands in the Revolution, had died, leaving him £40. Taking a garret in the Rue des Cordiers, he had set about earning his living with his pen, and for three years he had laboured at a great work on "The Theory of the Will." He never went into society, but found a pleasant distraction from his studies in educating the daughter of his landlady.
Pauline Gaudin was a charming and beautiful child; her father, a baron of the empire, and an officer in the Grand Army, had been taken prisoner by the Russians in 1812, and never heard of since. Raphael was moved by the grace and innocence of the lovely human flower, that grew from a bud into an opening blossom under his care. But as he was too poor to marry her, he never made love to her.