Shagreen leather or shagreen is a fairly famous type of leather that was once especially popular. They still actively wear it now, but it is less common than in ancient times, but at the same time it cannot be called old-fashioned!

What is shagreen and what does it look like?

It is made from different types raw materials (from lamb, horse, goat skin), it owes its name to French, chagrin means "rump". Initially this leather was made in Arab countries and Asia, but then began to be produced in Europe and Russia.

It is soft and rough to the touch, its surface is decorated with a characteristic natural pattern, reminiscent of a goatskin pattern. It is fine-grained and very effective! This is thin and beautiful skin. Nowadays they are often released natural leather with this pattern applied by embossing. In this case it is used natural material!

Because of its "pimply" appearance it was used as a decorative material - they made panels from it, upholstered furniture, etc.

Interestingly, there is a type of shagreen - galyusha, which is made from the skins of stingrays and sharks. The thickness of shagreen leather varies, but it is not thick (thin leather), which is tensile.

What is made from shagreen?

From its original appearance, this type of leather has become extremely widespread for decorative purposes, interior design, and upholstery. It is used to cover expensive furniture and is used to decorate the interior, creating special facing panels, panels and household items. Her pattern is truly unique!

This is an expensive material and quite labor-intensive to produce. Often, the shagreen effect is also used to name other phenomena or processing techniques: grainy paper, unevenly dried paint on a car, etc.

In addition to furniture, a lot of small things are made from it, such as key rings, bags and clutches, purses, covers of books and albums, notebooks, cases for musical instruments, and, of course, they make clothes and shoes. The shagreen effect is often imitated in artificial leather (the pattern is repeated), because of this, many people believe that shagreen is artificial leather, but it is not!

History of creation

Balzac called this novel the “starting point” of his creative path.

Main characters

• Raphael de Valentin, young man.
• Emil, his friend.
• Pauline, daughter of Madame Godin.
• Countess Theodora, a secular woman.
• Rastignac, a young man who is Emile's friend.
• The owner of the antiquities shop.
• Taillefer, newspaper owner.
• Cardo, lawyer.
• Aquilina, courtesan.
• Euphrasinya, courtesan.
• Madame Gaudin, a ruined baroness.
• Jonathan, Raphael's old servant.
• Fino, publisher.
• Mr. Poriquet, former teacher Raphael.
• Mister Lavril, naturalist.
• Mister Tablet, mechanic.
• Spiggalter, mechanic.
• Baron Jafe, chemist.
• Horace Bianchon, a young doctor and friend of Raphael.
• Brisset, doctor.
• Cameristus, doctor.
• Mogredi, doctor.

Composition and plot

The novel consists of three chapters and epilogue:

Mascot

The young man, Raphael de Valentin, is poor. Education brought him nothing. He wants to drown himself and, to pass the time until nightfall, he goes into an antiquities shop, where the old owner shows him an amazing talisman - shagreen leather. On the reverse side of the talisman there are signs in Sanskrit.; translation reads:

Possessing me, you will possess everything, but your life will belong to me. God wants it that way. Wish and your wishes will be fulfilled. However, balance your desires with your life. She is here. With every wish, I will decrease, as if your days. Do you want to own me? Take it. God will hear you. Let it be so!

Thus, any wish of Raphael will come true, but for this his life will also be shortened. Raphael agrees and plans to organize a bacchanalia.

He leaves the shop and meets friends. One of them, journalist Emil, calls on Raphael to head a wealthy newspaper and reports that he has been invited to a celebration of its establishment. Raphael sees this only as a coincidence, but not as a miracle. The feast truly fulfills all his desires. He admits to Emil that a few hours ago he was ready to throw himself into the Seine. Emil asks Rafael about what made him decide to commit suicide.

Woman without a heart

Rafael tells the story of his life.

He decides to live a quiet life in the attic of a miserable hotel in a remote quarter of Paris. The owner of the hotel, Madame Godin, in Russia, while crossing the Berezina, her baron husband went missing. She believes that someday he will return, fabulously rich. Polina, her daughter, falls in love with Rafael, but he has no idea about it. He completely devotes his life to working on two things: a comedy and a scientific treatise “The Theory of the Will”.

One day he meets young Rastignac on the street. He offers him a way to quickly get rich through marriage. There is one woman in the world - Theodora - fabulously beautiful and rich. But she doesn’t love anyone and doesn’t even want to hear about marriage. Rafael falls in love and begins to spend all his money on courtship. Theodora does not suspect his poverty. Rastignac introduces Raphael to Fino, a man who offers to write a forged memoir for his grandmother, offering a lot of money. Rafael agrees. He begins to lead a broken life: he leaves the hotel, rents and furnishes a house; every day he is in society... but he still loves Theodora. Deeply in debt, he goes to the gambling house where Rastignac was once lucky enough to win 27,000 francs, loses the last Napoleon and wants to drown himself.

This is where the story ends.

Raphael remembers the shagreen leather in his pocket. As a joke, to prove his power to Emile, he asks for six million francs. At the same time, he takes measurements - puts the skin on a napkin and traces the edges with ink. Everyone falls asleep. The next morning, the lawyer Cardo comes and announces that Raphael’s rich uncle, who had no other heirs, died in Calcutta. Raphael jumps up and checks his skin with the napkin. The skin shrank! He's terrified. Emil states that Raphael can make any wish come true. Everyone makes requests half seriously, half jokingly. Rafael doesn't listen to anyone. He is rich, but at the same time almost dead. The talisman works!

Agony

Beginning of December. Rafael lives in a luxurious house. Everything is arranged so that no words are spoken. Wish, Want etc. On the wall in front of him there is always a framed piece of shagreen, outlined in ink.

A former teacher, Mr. Porique, comes to Rafael, an influential man. He asks to secure a position for him as an inspector at a provincial college. Rafael accidentally says in a conversation: “I sincerely wish...”. The skin tightens and he screams furiously at Porika; his life hangs by a thread.

He goes to the theater and meets Polina there. She is rich - her father has returned, and with a large fortune. They meet in Madame Gaudin's former hotel, in the same old attic. Rafael is in love. Polina admits that she has always loved him. They decide to get married. Arriving home, Rafael finds a way to deal with the shagreen: he throws the skin into the well.

April. Rafael and Polina live together. One morning a gardener comes, having caught shagreen from the well. She became very small. Rafael is in despair. He goes to see the learned men, but everything is useless: the naturalist Lavril gives him a whole lecture on the origin of donkey skin, but he can’t stretch it; mechanic Tablet puts it in a hydraulic press, which breaks; the chemist Baron Jafe cannot break it down with any substances.

Polina notices signs of consumption in Rafael. He calls Horace Bianchon, his friend, a young doctor, who convenes a consultation. Each doctor expresses his scientific theory, they all unanimously advise going to the water, putting leeches on your stomach and breathing fresh air. However, they cannot determine the cause of his illness. Raphael leaves for Aix, where he is treated poorly. They avoid him and declare almost to his face that “since a person is so sick, he should not go to the water.” A confrontation with the cruelty of secular treatment led to a duel with one of the brave brave men. Raphael killed his opponent, and the skin shrank again. Convinced that he is dying, he returns to Paris, where he continues to hide from Polina, putting himself into a state of artificial sleep in order to last longer, but she finds him. Burnt with desires at the sight of her, he dies.

Epilogue

In the epilogue, Balzac makes it clear that he does not want to describe Polina’s further earthly path. In a symbolic description, he calls her either a flower blooming in a flame, or an angel coming in a dream, or the ghost of a Lady, depicted by Antoine de la Salle. This ghost seems to want to protect his country from the invasion of modernity. Speaking about Theodora, Balzac notes that she is everywhere, as she personifies secular society.

Screen adaptations and productions

• Shagreen skin () - teleplay by Pavel Reznikov.
• Shagreen skin () - short film by Igor Apasyan
• Shagreen Bone () is a short pseudo-documentary feature film by Igor Bezrukov.
• Shagreen Skin (La peau de chagrin) () - a feature film based on the novel by Honoré de Balzac, directed by Berliner Alain.
• Shagreen skin () - radio play by Arkady Abakumov.

Notes

Links

• Shagreen leather in the library of Maxim Moshkov
• Boris Griftsov - translator of the novel into Russian

Human Comedy
Scenes of private life
Scenes of life in Paris
Scenes of political life	A case from the times of terror Dark Case Z. Markas
Scenes of military life
Scenes of village life
Philosophical studies	Shagreen leather Forgiven Melmoth An unknown masterpiece Search for the absolute

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Honore de Balzac

"Shagreen skin"

Mascot

At the end of October, a young man, Raphael de Valentin, entered the building of the Palais Royal, in whose gaze the players noticed some kind of terrible secret, his facial features expressed the impassivity of a suicide and a thousand disappointed hopes. Lost, Valentin squandered his last Napoleon and began to wander the streets of Paris in a daze. His mind was consumed by a single thought - to commit suicide by throwing himself into the Seine from the Pont Royal. The thought that during the day he would become the prey of the boatmen, which would be valued at fifty francs, disgusted him. He decided to die at night, “to leave an unidentified corpse to society, which despised the greatness of his soul.” Walking carelessly, he began to look at the Louvre, the Academy, the towers of the Cathedral of Our Lady, the towers of the Palace of Justice, the Pont des Arts. To wait until nightfall, he headed to the antiquities shop to ask the price for works of art. There a thin old man appeared before him with an ominous mockery on his thin lips. The insightful old man guessed about the mental torment young man and proposed to make him more powerful than the monarch. He handed him a piece of shagreen, on which the following words were engraved in Sanskrit: “By possessing me, you will possess everything, but your life will belong to me.”<…>Wish and your wishes will be fulfilled<…>With every wish, I will diminish, like your days..."

Raphael entered into an agreement with the old man, whose whole life consisted of conserving his strength unspent in passions, and wished, if his fate did not change in the shortest possible time, that the old man would fall in love with the dancer. On the Pont des Arts, Valentin accidentally met his friends, who, considering him an outstanding person, offered him a job in a newspaper in order to create an opposition “capable of satisfying the dissatisfied without much harm to the national government of the citizen king” (Louis Philippe). Friends took Raphael to a dinner party at the newspaper's founding house in the house of the richest banker Taillefer. The audience that gathered that evening in a luxurious mansion was truly monstrous: “Young writers without style stood next to young writers without ideas, prose writers, greedy for poetic beauty, stood next to prosaic poets<…>There were two or three scientists here, created to dilute the atmosphere of conversation with nitrogen, and several vaudevillians, ready at any moment to sparkle with ephemeral sparkles, which, like the sparks of a diamond, do not shine or warm.” After a sumptuous dinner, the public was offered the most beautiful courtesans, subtle imitations of “innocent timid maidens.” The courtesans Aquilina and Euphrasia, in a conversation with Raphael and Emil, argue that it is better to die young than to be abandoned when their beauty fades.

Woman without a heart

Rafael tells Emil about the reasons for his mental anguish and suffering. From childhood, Raphael's father subjected his son to severe discipline. Until he was twenty-one he was under with a steady hand parent, the young man was naive and longed for love. Once at a ball, he decided to play with his father’s money and won an impressive amount of money for him, however, ashamed of his action, he hid this fact. Soon his father began to give him money for maintenance and share his plans. Raphael's father fought for ten years with Prussian and Bavarian diplomats, seeking recognition of rights to foreign land holdings. His future depended on this process, to which Raphael was actively involved. When the decree of loss of rights was promulgated, Raphael sold the lands, leaving only the island, which had no value, where his mother's grave was located. A long reckoning with creditors began, which brought my father to the grave. The young man decided to stretch the remaining funds over three years, and settled in a cheap hotel, doing scientific work - “The Theory of Will”. He lived from hand to mouth, but the work of thought, occupation, seemed to him the most beautiful work in life. The owner of the hotel, Madame Gaudin, took care of Raphael like a mother, and her daughter Polina provided him with many services, which he could not refuse. After a while, he began to give lessons to Polina, the girl turned out to be extremely capable and smart. Having plunged headlong into science, Raphael continued to dream of beautiful lady, luxurious, noble and rich. In Polina he saw the embodiment of all his desires, but she lacked the salon polish. “...a woman, even if she is attractive, like the beautiful Helen, this Galatea of ​​Homer, cannot win my heart if she is even the slightest bit dirty.”

One winter, Rastignac brought him into the house “where all of Paris visited” and introduced him to the charming Countess Theodora, the owner of eighty thousand livres of income. The Countess was a lady of about twenty-two, enjoyed an impeccable reputation, had a marriage behind her, but did not have a lover, the most enterprising red tape in Paris suffered a fiasco in the struggle for the right to possess her. Raphael fell madly in love with Theodora, she was the embodiment of those dreams that made his heart tremble. Parting with him, she asked him to visit her. Returning home and feeling the contrast of the situation, Raphael cursed his “honest, respectable poverty” and decided to seduce Theodora, who was the last lottery ticket on which his fate depended. What kind of sacrifices did the poor seducer make: he incredibly managed to get to her house on foot in the rain and maintain a presentable appearance; He used his last money to take her home when they returned from the theater. In order to provide himself with a decent wardrobe, he had to enter into an agreement to write false memoirs, which were to be published under the name of another person. One day she sent him a note by messenger and asked him to come. Appearing at her call, Raphael learned that she needed the protection of his influential relative, the Duke de Navarrene. The madman in love was only a means to realize a mysterious business that he never knew about. Raphael was tormented by the thought that the reason for the countess's loneliness could be a physical disability. To dispel his doubts, he decided to hide in her bedroom. Having left the guests, Theodora entered her apartment and seemed to take off her usual mask of politeness and friendliness. Raphael did not find any flaws in her, and calmed down; falling asleep, she said: “Oh my God!” The delighted Raphael made a lot of guesses, suggesting what such an exclamation could mean: “Her exclamation, either meaningless, or deep, or accidental, or significant, could express happiness, grief, bodily pain, and concern.” . As it turned out later, she just remembered that she had forgotten to tell her broker to exchange the five percent rent for a three percent one. When Raphael revealed to her his poverty and all-consuming passion for her, she replied that she would not belong to anyone and would agree to marry only the Duke. Raphael left the countess forever and moved to Rastignac.

Rastignac, having played in a gambling house with their joint money, won twenty-seven thousand francs. From that day on, the friends went on a rampage. When the funds were wasted, Valentin decided that he was a “social zero” and decided to die.

The narrative returns to the moment when Raphael is in Taillefer's mansion. He takes a piece of shagreen leather from his pocket and expresses a desire to become the owner of two hundred thousand in annual income. The next morning, notary Cardo informs the public that Raphael has become the rightful heir of Major O'Flaherty, who died the day before. The newly rich man looked at the shagreen and noticed that it had decreased in size. He was overwhelmed by the ghostly chill of death, now “he could do everything - and no longer wanted anything.”

Agony

One December day, an old man came to the luxurious mansion of the Marquis de Valentin, under whose leadership Raphael-Mr. Porrique once studied. The old devoted servant Jonathan tells the teacher that his master leads a reclusive life and suppresses all desires. The venerable old man came to ask the marquis to ask the minister to reinstate him, Porrique, as an inspector at a provincial college. Raphael, tired of the old man's long outpourings, accidentally said that he sincerely wished that he could achieve reinstatement. Realizing what was said, the Marquis became furious; when he looked at the shagreen, it noticeably decreased. In the theater he once met a dry old man with young eyes, while in his gaze now only echoes of outdated passions were read. The old man was leading Raphael’s acquaintance, the dancer Euphrasia, by the arm. To the questioning glance of the Marquis, the old man replied that now he was happy as a young man, and that he misunderstood existence: “All life is in a single hour of love.” Looking at the audience, Raphael fixed his gaze on Theodora, who was sitting with another admirer, still just as beautiful and cold. On the next chair with Raphael sat a beautiful stranger, attracting the admiring glances of all the men present. It was Polina. Her father, who at one time commanded a squadron of mounted grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, was captured by the Cossacks; According to rumors, he managed to escape and reach India. When he returned, he made his daughter the heiress of a million-dollar fortune. They agreed to meet at the Saint-Quentin Hotel, their former home, which kept the memories of their poverty; Polina wanted to hand over the papers that Raphael bequeathed to her when he moved.

Finding himself at home, Rafael looked longingly at the talisman and wished that Polina would love him. The next morning he was filled with joy - the talisman had not decreased, which means the contract was broken.

Having met, the young people realized that they loved each other with all their hearts and nothing would interfere with their happiness. When Raphael once again looked at the shagreen, he noticed that it had shrunk again, and in a fit of anger he threw it into the well. “What will be will be,” the exhausted Rafael decided and began to live in perfect harmony with Polina. One February day, the gardener brought the Marquis a strange find, “the dimensions of which now did not exceed six square inches.”

From now on, Raphael decided to seek a means of salvation from scientists in order to stretch the shagreen and prolong his life. The first person he went to was Mr. Lavril, the “priest of zoology.” When asked how to stop skin narrowing, Lavril replied: “Science is vast, but human life is very short. Therefore, we do not pretend to know all natural phenomena.”

The second person the Marquis turned to was the professor of mechanics, Tablet. An attempt to stop the narrowing of the shagreen by applying a hydraulic press to it was unsuccessful. Shagreen remained safe and sound. The amazed German hit the skin with a blacksmith's hammer, but there was no trace of damage left on it. The apprentice threw the skin into a coal firebox, but even from it the shagreen was taken out completely unharmed.

The chemist Jafe broke his razor while trying to cut the skin, tried to cut it electric shock, subjected to the action of a voltaic column - all to no avail.

Now Valentin no longer believed in anything, began to look for damage to his body and called the doctors. For a long time he began to notice signs of consumption, now it became obvious to both him and Polina. The doctors came to the following conclusion: “a blow was needed to break the window, but who delivered it?” They attributed it to leeches, diet and climate change. Raphael smiled sarcastically in response to these recommendations.

A month later he went to the waters of Aix. Here he encountered the rude coldness and neglect of those around him. They avoided him and declared almost to his face that “since a person is so sick, he should not go to the water.” A confrontation with the cruelty of secular treatment led to a duel with one of the brave brave men. Raphael killed his opponent, and the skin shrank again.

After leaving the waters, he settled in the rural hut of Mont-Dore. The people with whom he lived deeply sympathized with him, and pity is “the most difficult feeling to endure from other people.” Soon Jonathan came for him and took his master home. He threw Polina's letters to him, in which she poured out her love for him, into the fireplace. The opium solution prepared by Bianchon put Raphael into artificial sleep for several days. The old servant decided to follow Bianchon's advice and entertain his master. He called full house friends, a magnificent feast was planned, but Valentin, who saw this spectacle, became furious with anger. After drinking a portion of sleeping pills, he fell back into sleep. Polina woke him up, he began to beg her to leave him, showed a piece of skin that had become the size of a “periwinkle leaf”, she began to examine the talisman, and he, seeing how beautiful she was, could not control himself. “Polina, come here! Pauline!" - he shouted, and the talisman in her hand began to shrink. Polina decided to tear her chest and strangle herself with a shawl in order to die. She decided that if she killed herself, he would live. Raphael, seeing all this, became drunk with passion, rushed to her and died immediately.

Epilogue

What happened to Polina?

On the steamer City of Angers, a young man and a beautiful woman admired a figure in the fog over the Loire. “This light creature, now an undine, now a sylph, hovered in the air - so the word that you search in vain hovers somewhere in your memory, but you cannot catch it<…>One would think that this is the ghost of the Lady, portrayed by Antoine de la Salle, who wants to protect her country from the invasion of modernity." Retold A. Benevolent

A mysterious man, Raphael de Valentin, entered the Palais Royal building. Having lost his last Napoleon, he wandered the streets of Paris for a long time with thoughts of suicide. On his way he met an evil old man who examined Raphael’s torment. He promised to make the young man the richest in the world and handed over a piece of shagreen with the appropriate inscription, but with the condition of taking the guy’s days of life in exchange.

The agreement was concluded. On the way back, Raphael de Valentin met his friends, who offered him a job at the newspaper, and after that they went to dinner in honor of the creation of this newspaper with the banker Taillefer. The evening was a great success and was imbued with luxury and grandeur.

The guy shares his emotional experiences with his friend Emil. Growing up under his father's strict discipline, he dreamed of love. One day it happened that Rafael won a good amount of money, but was afraid to admit it to his father. Afterwards he began to acquaint his son with his affairs. Raphael's father fought tirelessly with creditors, but soon died, and the lands had to be sold, leaving only the island with his mother's grave.

The young man lived very poorly and was engaged in scientific work. The owner of the hotel where Raphael lived was very kind to him, and her daughter Polina showed him various kinds services. Valentin dreamed of a beautiful and noble lady, whom he did not see in Polina.

Later he meets Countess Theodora, who became the embodiment of the guy’s dreams. He decides to seduce the beauty and spends the last of his money to woo her.

Valentin decides to do the unthinkable - he hides in the countess's bedroom, and then shares with her the secret of his poverty and endless love. But Theodora refuses him. The disappointed guy moves to live with Rastignac.

After receiving the money they won together, the friends begin to lead a riotous lifestyle, and after wasting their finances, Rafael decides to end his life.

And here he is in Taillefer's house. He takes out that same piece of shagreen leather, wanting to receive an income of two hundred thousand a year.

Already in the morning, Rafael becomes the heir of Major O'Flaherty and a rich man. One day, an old man, Mr. Porrique, comes to the new mansion of the Marquis de Valentin with a request to restore the position of inspector at the college. When the Marquis spontaneously uttered words of encouragement to the elder’s outpourings, he discovered that his magical shagreen had decreased in size.

Once visiting the theater, Raphael met the very man who once gave him the desired talisman. His eyes were full of youth, and a young dancer walked with him on his arm. The old man, in response to the marquis’s questioning glance, said: “All life is in a single hour of love.” Here his gaze caught the sight of Countess Theodora with another admirer, and sitting next to her was the beautiful and unknown girl. This was the same Polina who, after the death of her father, became a rich heiress.

Former close friends agree to meet at their old place, and when Valentin returned home, he looked longingly at the piece of leather and wished that Polina would love him again. In the morning he noticed that the talisman had not shrunk.

The young people started dating, and Rafael again notices a decrease in skin. In anger, he throws her into the well and lives happily with Polina.

One February day, the gardener found a very small shagreen leather, thereby forcing the Marquis to seek help from scientists in extending his days. But the search for a solution to the problem ended in failure.

Afterwards, Rafael began to get sick and faced cruel treatment of his personality by society.

The Marquis is hiding from people and Polina in the countryside. And upon returning home, he takes a dose of sleeping pills so as not to see the celebrations in honor of his arrival. Waking up, he sees Polina in front of him, who is trying in every possible way to save her beloved. And he, intoxicated with insane passion, rushes into her arms and dies.

Essays

Raphael De Valentin - characteristics of a literary hero

Artistic electronic edition

Balzac, Honore de

Shagreen leather: novel; An unknown masterpiece: a story / Honore de Balzac; lane from fr. Boris Griftsov, Ioanna Bryusova; will accompany article and notes by Vera Milchina. – M.: Vremya, 2017. – (Time-tested).

ISBN 978-5-0011-2046-9

From the works of Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) one can get a comprehensive idea of ​​the history and everyday life of France in the first half of the 19th century century. But Balzac not only described the world around him, he also created his own world - the multi-volume “Human Comedy”. Balzac's heroes are people consumed by a strong, all-consuming and most often destructive passion. Their own desires turn out to be fatal. In the novel “Shagreen Skin” Balzac described this situation with the help of expressive metaphor: a magical talisman fulfills all the wishes of the main character, but each fulfilled wish shortens his life. The artist’s passion for perfection, described in the story “The Unknown Masterpiece,” is also disastrous.

Upon release classic books We, the Vremya publishing house, really wanted to create a truly modern series, to show a living connection between the timeless classics and the surrounding reality. Therefore, we turned to famous writers, scientists, journalists and cultural figures with a request to write accompanying articles for the books they chose - not dry explanatory texts or cheat sheets for exams, but a kind of declaration of love to the authors dear to their hearts. Some turned it out sublime and touching, others drier and more academic, but it was always sincere and interesting, and sometimes unexpected and unusual.

The translator and literary historian Vera Milchina confesses her love for the work of Honore de Balzac - the book is worth reading just to compare your opinion with the article and look at the work from a different angle.

© V. A. Milchina, accompanying article, notes, 2017

© Composition, design, “Time”, 2017

SHAGREEN LEATHER

I. Talisman

At the end of October 1829, a young man entered the Palais Royal, just at the time when the gambling houses were opened, according to the law protecting the rights of passion, subject to taxation by its very essence. Without hesitation, he climbed the stairs of the brothel, which was marked with the number “36”.

- Would you like to give me my hat? - a deathly pale old man, who was perched somewhere in the shadows behind the barrier, sternly shouted to him, and then suddenly stood up and exposed his vile face.

When you enter a gambling house, the first thing the law does is take away your hat. Perhaps this is a kind of gospel parable, a warning sent from heaven, or rather a special kind of hellish contract that requires some kind of collateral from us? Perhaps they want to force you to respect those who beat you? Perhaps the police, penetrating all public sewers, want to know the name of your hatter or your own, if you wrote it on the lining of your hat? Or maybe they finally intend to take measurements from your skull so that they can later compile instructive statistical tables mental abilities players? The administration remains completely silent on this matter. But keep in mind that as soon as you take the first step towards the green field, the hat no longer belongs to you, just as you no longer belong to yourself: you are at the mercy of the game - both you and your wealth, and your hat, and your cane, and your cloak. And when leaving a game returns to you what you deposited - that is, with a murderous, materialized epigram, she will prove to you that she still leaves something for you. However, if you have a new headdress, then the lesson, the meaning of which is that the player should have a special costume, will cost you a pretty penny.

The bewilderment that appeared on the young man's face when he received a number in exchange for a hat, the brim of which, fortunately, was slightly frayed, indicated his inexperience; the old man, probably steeped in the seething pleasures of excitement from a young age, looked at him with a dull, indifferent look, in which a philosopher would have discerned the squalor of a hospital, the wanderings of bankrupts, a string of drowned people, indefinite penal servitude, and exile to Guasacoalco. His thirsty and bloodless face, which indicated that he now fed exclusively on Darcet gelatin soups, was a pale image of passion, simplified to the extreme. Deep wrinkles spoke of constant torment; He must have lost all his meager earnings on payday. Like those nags who are no longer affected by the blows of the whip, he would not flinch under any circumstances, he remained insensitive to the dull groans of the losers, to their silent curses, to their dull glances. That was the incarnation games. If the young man had looked closely at this sad Cerberus, perhaps he would have thought: “There is nothing in his heart but a deck of cards!” But he did not listen to this personified advice, put here, of course, by Providence itself, just as it imparts something disgusting to the hallway of any brothel. He entered the hall with decisive steps, where the ringing of gold bewitched and blinded the soul, overwhelmed by greed. Probably, the young man was pushed here by the most logical of all the eloquent phrases of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the sad meaning of which, I think, is this: “Yes, I admit that a person can go to play, but only when between himself and death he sees only his last ecu."

In the evenings, the poetry of the gambling houses is vulgar, but it is guaranteed success, just like the bloody drama. The halls are filled with spectators and players, poor old people who have trudged here to warm themselves, faces excited by the orgy that began with wine and is about to end in the Seine. Passion is on display here in abundance, but the over-the-top cast keeps you from looking the game's demon straight in the face. In the evenings it is a real concert, with the whole troupe screaming and each instrument of the orchestra delivering its own phrase. You will see here a lot of respectable people who came here for entertainment and pay for it in the same way as some pay for an interesting performance or for a delicacy, while others, having bought sellable caresses cheaply somewhere in the attic, then pay for them for three whole months with burning regrets. But will you understand to what extent a person is obsessed with excitement when he is impatiently waiting for the opening of a den? There is the same difference between an evening player and a morning player as between a careless husband and a lover languishing under the window of his beauty. Only in the morning will you encounter quivering passion and need in all its terrible nakedness in the gambling house. This is when you can admire a real player, a player who did not eat, did not sleep, did not live, did not think - so cruelly was he tormented by the scourge of failures, which carried away his constantly doubling bets, so he suffered, exhausted by the itch of impatience: when, finally, "thirty and forty" will appear? At this damned hour you will notice eyes whose calmness frightens you, you will notice faces that terrify you, glances that seem to lift the cards and devour them.

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Honore de Balzac
Shagreen leather

Mr. Savary, member of the Academy of Sciences

Cmern, Tristram Shandy, ch. CCCXXII

I. Talisman

At the end of October last year, a young man entered the Palais Royal, just at the time when the gambling houses open - according to the law protecting the rights of passion, subject to taxation by its very nature. Without hesitation, he climbed the stairs of the brothel, which was marked with the number “36”.

- Would you like to give me my hat? - a deathly pale old man, who was perched somewhere in the shadows behind the barrier, sternly shouted to him, and then suddenly stood up and exposed his vile face.

When you enter a gambling house, the first thing the law does is take away your hat. Perhaps this is a kind of gospel parable, a warning sent from heaven, or rather a special kind of hellish contract that requires some kind of collateral from you? Perhaps they want to force you to respect those who beat you? Perhaps the police, penetrating all public sewers, want to know the name of your hatter or your own, if you wrote it on the lining of your hat? Or maybe they finally intend to take measurements from your skull so that they can then compile instructive statistical tables of the mental abilities of players? The administration remains completely silent on this matter. But keep in mind that as soon as you take the first step towards the green field, the hat no longer belongs to you, just as you no longer belong to yourself: you are at the mercy of the game - both you and your wealth, and your hat, and your cane, and your cloak. And when you exit, the game returns to you what you deposited - that is, with a murderous, materialized epigram it will prove to you that it still leaves something for you. However, if you have a new headdress, then the lesson, the meaning of which is that the player should have a special costume, will cost you a pretty penny.

The bewilderment that appeared on the young man's face when receiving a number in exchange for a hat, the brim of which, fortunately, was slightly frayed, indicated his inexperience; the old man, probably mired in the seething pleasures of excitement from a young age, looked at him with a dull, indifferent look, in which a philosopher would have discerned the squalor of the hospital, the wanderings of bankrupts, a string of drowned people, indefinite penal servitude, exile to Guasacoalco. His thirsty and bloodless face, which indicated that he now fed exclusively on Darcet’s gelatinous soups, was a pale image of passion, simplified to the extreme. Deep wrinkles spoke of constant torment: he must have lost all his meager earnings on payday. Like those nags who are no longer affected by the blows of the whip, he would not flinch under any circumstances, he remained insensitive to the dull groans of the losers, to their silent curses, to their dull glances. It was the epitome of the game. If the young man had taken a closer look at this sad Cerberus, perhaps he would have thought: “There is nothing in his heart but a deck of cards!” But he did not listen to this personified advice, put here, of course, by Providence itself, just as it communicates something disgusting to the hallway of any brothel. He entered the hall with decisive steps, where the ringing of gold bewitched and blinded the soul, overwhelmed by greed. Probably, the young man was driven here by the most logical of all eloquent phrases of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the sad meaning of which, I think, is this: “Yes, I admit that a person can go to play, but only when between himself and death he sees only his last ecu."

In the evenings, the poetry of the gambling houses is vulgar, but it is guaranteed success, just like the bloody drama. The halls are filled with spectators and players, poor old people who have trudged here to warm themselves, faces excited by the orgy that began with wine and is about to end in the Seine. Passion is on display here in abundance, but the over-the-top cast keeps you from looking the game's demon straight in the face. In the evenings it is a real concert, with the whole troupe screaming and each instrument of the orchestra delivering its own phrase. You will see here a lot of respectable people who came here for entertainment and pay for it in the same way as some pay for an interesting performance or for a delicacy, while others, having bought sellable caresses cheaply somewhere in the attic, then pay for them for three whole months with burning regrets. But will you understand to what extent a person is obsessed with excitement when he is impatiently waiting for the opening of a den? There is the same difference between an evening player and a morning player as between a careless husband and a lover languishing under the window of his beauty. Only in the morning will you meet in the gambling house tremulous passion and need in all its terrible nakedness. That’s when you can admire a real player, a player who didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, didn’t live, didn’t think - he was so cruelly tormented by the scourge of failures that carried away his constantly doubling bets, so he suffered, exhausted by the itch of impatience - when will he finally Will you roll "thirty and forty"? At this damned hour you will notice eyes whose calm is terrifying, you will notice faces that fascinate you, glances that seem to lift the cards and devour them.

So, gambling houses are great only at the beginning of the game. In Spain there is a bullfight. There were gladiators in Rome, and Paris is proud of its Palais Royal, where the exciting roulette allows you to enjoy an exciting picture in which the blood flows in streams and does not threaten, however, to wet the feet of the spectators sitting in the stalls. Try to take a quick look at this arena, enter!.. What squalor! On the walls, covered with greasy wallpaper the size of a person, there is nothing that could refresh the soul. There is not even a nail that would make suicide easier. The parquet is shabby and dirty. The middle of the room is occupied by an oval table. It is covered with cloth worn with gold coins, and chairs are crowded around - the most simple chairs with wicker straw seats, and this clearly exposes the curious indifference to luxury among people who come here to their destruction, for the sake of wealth and luxury. Similar contradictions are revealed in a person whenever the soul forcefully pushes itself away from itself. The lover wants to dress his beloved in silk, clothe her in the soft fabrics of the East, and most often possesses her on a wretched bed. An ambitious man, dreaming of supreme power, grovels in the mud of servility. The merchant breathes the damp, unhealthy air in his shop in order to erect a vast mansion from which his son, heir to early wealth, will be expelled after losing a lawsuit against his brother. Yes, finally, is there anything less pleasant than a house of pleasure? Terrible thing! Eternally fighting with himself, losing hope in the face of impending troubles and saving himself from troubles with hopes for the future, a person in all his actions shows his characteristic inconsistency and weakness. Here on earth, nothing is fully realized except misfortune.

When the young man entered the hall, there were already several players there. Three bald old men were lounging around a green field; their faces, like plaster masks, impassive, like those of diplomats, revealed satiated souls, hearts that had long forgotten how to tremble even if the inviolable estate of their wife was at stake. Young black-haired Italian, with olive color face, calmly leaned his elbows on the edge of the table and seemed to listen to those secret premonitions that shout the fatal words to the player: “Yes! - No!" This southern face emanated gold and fire. Seven or eight spectators stood in a row, as if in a gallery, and awaited the performance that was promised to them by the whim of fate, the faces of the actors, the movement of money and spatulas. These idle people were silent, motionless, attentive, like a crowd gathered on the Place de Greve when the executioner cuts off someone's head. A tall, thin gentleman in a shabby tailcoat held a notebook in one hand and a pin in the other, intending to mark how many times red and black would come up. He was one of the modern Tantalus, living apart from the pleasures of his age, one of the misers playing for an imaginary bet, something like a sensible madman who, in times of disaster, amuses himself a pipe dream, who deals with vice and danger in the same way that young priests deal with the sacrament when they celebrate early mass. Opposite the player were the scoundrels who had studied all the chances of the game, looking like seasoned convicts who would not be frightened by the galleys, who had come here to risk three bets and, in case of a win, which was the only source of their income, to leave immediately. Two old footmen walked indifferently back and forth, crossing their arms, and from time to time looked out of the windows into the garden, as if in order to show their flat faces to passers-by instead of a sign. The cashier and the banker had just cast a dull, murderous look at the punters and said in a choked voice: “Bet!” when the young man opened the door. The silence seemed to deepen even more; heads turned curiously to the new visitor. Unheard of! At the appearance of the stranger, the stupefied old men, the petrified lackeys, the spectators, even the Italian fanatic - absolutely everyone experienced some kind of terrible feeling. You have to be very unhappy to arouse pity, very weak to arouse sympathy, very gloomy in appearance, for hearts to tremble in this hall, where grief is always silent, where grief is cheerful and despair is decent. So it was precisely all these properties that gave rise to that new sensation that stirred the frozen souls when the young man entered. But didn’t the executioners sometimes shed tears on the blond girls’ heads, which they had to cut off at the signal given by the Revolution?

At first glance, the players read some terrible secret on the newcomer’s face; a sad thought was visible in his delicate features, the expression of his young face testified to futile efforts, a thousand disappointed hopes! The gloomy impassivity of the suicide lay on his forehead with a matte and sickly pallor, a bitter smile appeared in light folds at the corners of his mouth, and his whole face expressed such resignation that it was painful to look at him. A certain hidden genius sparkled in the depths of those eyes, clouded, perhaps, by weariness from pleasure. Was it not debauchery that marked this noble face, formerly pure and radiant, but now rumpled, with its unclean mark? Doctors would probably attribute this feverish flush and dark circles under the eyes to heart disease or chest disease, while poets would want to see in these signs signs of selfless service to science, traces of sleepless nights spent in the light of a working lamp. But a passion more deadly than illness, and an illness more merciless than mental labor and genius, distorted the features of this young face, contracted these mobile muscles, tired the heart, which had barely been touched by orgies, labor and illness. When a famous criminal appears at hard labor, the prisoners greet him respectfully - so in this den, demons in human form, experienced in suffering, greeted unheard of sorrow, a deep wound that their gaze measured, and by the greatness of the silent irony of the stranger, by the beggarly sophistication of his clothes recognized him as one of their rulers. The young man was wearing an excellent tailcoat, but the tie was too close to the vest, so that there was hardly any underwear underneath. His hands, graceful as a woman’s, were of dubious cleanliness - after all, he had been walking without gloves for two days. If the banker and even the footmen shuddered, it was because the charm of innocence still bloomed in his fragile and slender body, in his hair, blond and sparse, naturally curly. Judging by his facial features, he was about twenty-five years old, and his depravity seemed accidental. The freshness of youth still resisted the devastation of unsatisfied voluptuousness. Darkness and light, non-existence and life fought throughout his entire being, and perhaps that is why he gave the impression of something charming and at the same time terrible. The young man appeared here like an angel, devoid of radiance, lost on the path. And all these honored mentors, in vicious and shameful passions, felt compassion for him - like a toothless old woman, filled with pity for a beautiful girl who had embarked on the path of debauchery - and were ready to shout to the newcomer: “Get out of here! “And he walked straight to the table, stopped, and without hesitation threw it onto the cloth. gold coin and she rolled on black; then like everyone else strong people, despising miserly indecision, he looked at the banker defiantly and at the same time calmly. This move aroused such interest that the old men did not place a bet; However, the Italian, with fanatic passion, seized on the idea that fascinated him and bet all his gold against the stranger’s bet. The cashier forgot to say the usual phrases, which over time turned into a hoarse and inarticulate cry: “Bet!” - “Bet accepted!” - “I don’t accept it anymore!” The banker removed the cards, and it seemed that even he, the machine gun, indifferent to losing and winning, the organizer of these gloomy amusements, wished the newcomer success. The spectators were all ready to see the denouement of the drama in the fate of this gold coin, the last scene of a noble life; their eyes, fixed on the fatal sheets of cardboard, burned, but, despite all the attention with which they watched first the young man, then the cards, they could not notice a sign of excitement on his cold and submissive face.

“Red, black, pass,” the banker announced in an official tone.

Something like a dull wheeze escaped from the Italian’s chest when he saw how, one after another, the folded bank notes that the cashier threw to him fell onto the cloth. And the young man only realized his death when the spatula was extended for his last Napoleon. The ivory quietly hit the coin, and the gold one, with the speed of an arrow, rolled to the pile of gold lying in front of the cash register. The stranger slowly lowered his eyelids, his lips turned white, but he immediately opened his eyes again; like coral, his lips turned red, he became like an Englishman for whom there are no secrets in life, and disappeared, not wanting to beg for sympathy with that heartbreaking look that players who have fallen into despair often throw at the audience. How many events happened in one second, and how much does one blow mean? dice!

“This was, of course, his last charge,” the croupier said, smiling, after a minute’s silence and, holding the gold coin with two fingers, showed it to those present.

- Crazy head! He’ll probably throw himself into the river,” one of the regulars responded, looking at the players, who all knew each other.

- Yeah! - exclaimed the footman, taking a pinch of tobacco.

- We should follow the example of this gentleman! - the old man said to his comrades, pointing to the Italian.

Everyone looked back at the happy gambler, who was counting bank notes with trembling hands.

- Is this a player? – the cashier inserted. – The player would split his money into three bets to increase the odds.

The lost stranger, leaving, forgot about the hat, but the old guard dog, who noticed its pitiful condition, silently handed him this rag; the young man mechanically returned the number and went down the stairs, whistling “Di tanti palpiti” 1
“What a thrill” (it.).

So quiet that he himself could barely hear this wonderful melody.

He soon found himself under the arcades of the Palais Royal, walked to the Rue Saint-Honoré and, turning into the Tuileries Garden, crossed it with an indecisive step. He walked as if in the desert; he was pushed by people he met, but he did not see them; through the noise of the street he heard only one voice - the voice of death; he was numb, plunged into a meditation similar to that into which criminals fall when they are taken from the Palace of Justice to the Place de Greve, to the scaffold, red with the blood that has been pouring on it since 1793.

There is something great and terrible about suicide. For most people, falling is not scary, like for children who fall from such a small height that they do not hurt themselves, but when they crash great person, then this means that he fell from high altitude that he rose to heaven and saw some inaccessible paradise. Those hurricanes must be merciless that make you ask for peace of mind at the barrel of a pistol. How many young talents, driven into the attic, lost among a million living beings, wither and die in the face of a bored crowd, tired of gold, because they have no friend, no comforting woman near them! Once we think about it, suicide will appear before us in all its gigantic significance. God alone knows how many plans, how many unfinished poetic works, how much despair and muffled screams, fruitless attempts and premature masterpieces are squeezed between self-willed death and the life-giving hope that once called the young man to Paris. Every suicide is a sublime poem of melancholy. Will a book emerge in the ocean of literature that, in its exciting power, could compete with such a newspaper article: “Yesterday, at four o’clock in the afternoon, a young woman threw herself into the Seine from the Pont des Arts”?

Everything pales before this Parisian laconicism - dramas, novels, even the ancient title: “The Lament of the Glorious King of Carnavan, Imprisoned by His Children” - the only fragment of the lost book over which Stern, who himself abandoned his wife and children, cried...

The stranger was besieged by thousands of similar thoughts, flying in fragments through his head, just as torn banners flutter during a battle. For a brief moment, he threw off the burden of thoughts and memories, stopping in front of flowers, the heads of which faintly swayed among the greenery in the wind; then, feeling the trembling of life within himself, still struggling with the painful thought of suicide, he raised his eyes to the sky, but the hanging gray clouds, the melancholy howls of the wind and the dank autumn dampness inspired him with the desire to die. He approached the Royal Bridge, thinking about the last whims of his predecessors. He smiled, remembering that Lord Castlereagh, before cutting his throat, had satisfied the basest of our needs, and that Academician Auger, going to his death, began to look for a snuff-box so that he could take a snuff. He tried to understand these oddities, questioned himself, when suddenly, pressing against the parapet of the bridge to make way for the market porter, who nevertheless stained the sleeve of his tailcoat with something white, he caught himself carefully brushing off the dust. Having reached the middle of the bridge, he looked gloomily at the water.

“This is not the weather for drowning,” the old woman dressed in rags told him with a grin. – The hay is dirty and cold!..

He answered her with a simple-minded smile, expressing all his insane determination, but suddenly shuddered when he saw in the distance, on the Tuileries pier, a barracks with a sign on which was written in huge letters: rescue of drowning people. Monsieur Dache suddenly appeared before his mind's eye, fully armed with his philanthropy, setting in motion the virtuous oars with which they break the heads of drowned people if, to their misfortune, they emerge from the water; he saw how M. Dache gathered onlookers around him, looked for the doctor, prepared the fumigation; he read the condolences compiled by journalists in the intervals between a merry party and a meeting with a smiling dancer; he heard the ringing of ecus, which the prefect of police counted out to the boatmen as a reward for his corpse. Dead, he is worth fifty francs, but alive - he is just a talented person who has neither patrons, nor friends, nor a straw mattress, nor a canopy to shelter from the rain - a real social zero, useless to the state, which, incidentally, didn't care about him at all. Death in broad daylight seemed disgusting to him; he decided to die at night in order to leave an unidentified corpse to society, which despised the greatness of his soul. And so, with the air of a carefree reveler who needs to kill time, he walked further towards the Quai Voltaire. When he went down the steps that end the bridge, at the corner of the embankment his attention was attracted by old books laid out on the parapet, and he almost asked the price for them. But he immediately laughed at himself, philosophically put his hands in his vest pockets and again walked with his carefree gait, in which one could feel cold contempt - when suddenly, with amazement, he heard a truly fantastic clinking of coins in his pocket. A smile of hope lit up his face, sliding across his lips, it spread around all his features, his forehead, lighting up his eyes and darkened cheeks with joy. This glimpse of happiness was like the lights that run across the remains of burnt paper; but his face suffered the fate of black ash - it again became sad as soon as he quickly pulled his hand out of his pocket and saw three coins of two sous.

- Good sir, la carita! la carita! Catarina! 2
Give alms! For Saint Catherine's sake! (it.)

At least one sou for bread!

A chimney sweep boy with a black, puffy face, covered in soot, dressed in rags, extended his hand to this man to beg his last penny.

Standing two steps from the little Savoyard, an old beggar, timid, sickly, worn out, in pitiful rags, said in a rough and dull voice:

- Sir, give me as much as you can, I will pray to God for you...

But when the young man looked at the old man, he fell silent and did not ask anymore - perhaps on that deathly face he noticed signs of a need more acute than his own.

- La carita! la carita!

The stranger threw some change to the boy and the old man and stepped off the sidewalk of the embankment to continue along the houses - he could no longer endure the heartbreaking sight of the Seine.

“God bless you,” said both beggars.

Approaching the print shop, this half-dead man saw a young woman getting out of a luxurious carriage. He admired the charming person, whose white face was beautifully framed by the satin of an elegant hat. He was captivated by her slender figure and graceful movements. Descending from the step, she slightly lifted her dress, and her leg was visible, the delicate contours of which were perfectly outlined by a white, tightly stretched stocking. A young woman entered the store and began buying albums and collections of lithographs; she paid several gold pieces, they flashed and clinked on the desk. The young man, pretending to be examining the engravings displayed at the entrance, fixed on the beautiful stranger the most piercing gaze that a man can cast, and the answer was that carefree gaze that is accidentally cast upon passers-by. On his part it was a farewell to love, to a woman! But this last, passionate appeal was not understood, did not excite the heart of the frivolous woman, did not make her blush or lower her eyes. What does he mean to her? One more admiring glance, one more desire excited by her, and in the evening she will say smugly: “Today I was pretty.” The young man went to another window and did not turn around when the stranger got into the carriage. The horses started moving, and this last image of luxury and grace faded, just as his life should have faded. He walked with a sluggish gait along the shops, looking at the samples of goods in the windows without much interest. When the shops ran out, he began to look at the Louvre, the Academy, the towers of the Cathedral of Our Lady, the towers of the Palace of Justice, the Pont des Arts. All these buildings seemed to take on a dull appearance, reflecting the gray tones of the sky, the pale gaps between the clouds, which gave a kind of angry appearance to Paris, subject, like a pretty woman, to inexplicably capricious changes of ugliness and beauty. Nature itself seemed to have decided to bring the dying person into a state of mournful ecstasy. Entirely in the grip of a pernicious force, whose relaxing effect finds its mediator in the fluids running through our nerves, he felt that his body was imperceptibly becoming fluid. The torment of this agony gave everything a wave-like movement: he saw people, buildings through the fog, where everything swayed. He wanted to get rid of the irritating influence of the physical world, and he headed to the antiquities shop to give food to his feelings or at least wait there for the night, asking the price for works of art. So, going to the scaffold, the criminal tries to gather his courage and, not trusting his own strength, asks for something reinforcing; however, the consciousness of imminent death for a moment restored the young man's self-confidence to a duchess with two lovers, and he entered the curio shop with an air of independence, with that frozen smile on his lips that happens to drunkards. And wasn’t he drunk from life or, perhaps, from near death? Soon he began to feel dizzy again, and everything suddenly seemed to him colored in strange colors and animated by slight movement. Undoubtedly, this was due to the improper circulation of the blood, now seething in his veins like a waterfall, now flowing calmly and sluggishly, like lukewarm water. He stated that he wanted to inspect the halls and see if there were any rarities there that suited his taste. A young red-haired clerk, with full rosy cheeks, wearing an otter cap, entrusted the care of the shop to an old peasant woman, a kind of female Caliban, busy cleaning a tiled stove, a real miracle of art generated by the genius of Bernard Palissy; then he said to the stranger in a casual tone:

- Look, sir, look! Downstairs we have only ordinary things, but take the trouble to go upstairs and I will show you the most beautiful mummies from Cairo, vases with inlays, carved ebony - genuine Renaissance, all freshly received, of the highest quality.

The stranger was in such a terrible state that his cicerone chatter, these stupid merchant phrases were disgusting to him, like petty pesterings with which limited minds kill a man of genius; however, having decided to carry his cross to the end, he pretended to listen to the guide and answered him with gestures or monosyllables; but gradually he won for himself the right to walk in silence and fearlessly surrendered to his last thoughts, which were terrible. He was a poet, and his soul accidentally found abundant food for itself: during his lifetime he was to see the ashes of twenty worlds.

At first glance, the halls of the store presented a chaotic picture in which all the creations of God and man were crowded together. Stuffed crocodiles, boas, and monkeys smiled at the church stained glass windows, as if trying to bite the marble busts, chase after lacquered objects, and climb onto the chandeliers. The Sevres vase, on which Madame Jacotot depicted Napoleon, was located next to the sphinx dedicated to Sesostris. The beginning of the world and yesterday's events were combined here in a strangely complacent manner. A kitchen spit lay on a reliquary, a republican saber lay on a medieval arquebus. Madame DuBarry from Latour's pastel, with a star on her head, naked and surrounded by clouds, seemed to be examining the Indian chibouk with greedy curiosity and trying to guess the purpose of its spirals, snaking towards her. The instruments of death - daggers, strange pistols, weapons with a secret bolt - alternated with everyday items: porcelain bowls, Saxon plates, transparent Chinese cups, antique salt shakers, medieval sweet boxes. An ivory ship with full sails floated on the back of a motionless turtle. The pneumatic machine pierced the very eye of Emperor Augustus, who maintained regal dispassion. Several portraits of French merchant elders and Dutch burgomasters, as insensitive now as in life, towered above this chaos of antiquity, casting dull and cold glances at it. All countries seemed to have brought here some fragment of their knowledge, a sample of their arts. It was like a philosophical garbage dump, where there was no shortage of anything - not a savage’s peace pipe, not a green and gold slipper from the seraglio, not a Moorish scimitar, not a Tatar idol. Everything was here, right down to the soldier’s pouch, right down to the church monstrance, right down to the plume that once adorned the canopy of some throne. And thanks to the many bizarre highlights that arose from the mixture of shades, from the sharp contrast of light and shadow, this monstrous picture was enlivened by thousands of diverse light phenomena. The ear seemed to hear interrupted screams, the mind caught unfinished dramas, the eye discerned lights that were not completely extinguished. In addition, all these objects were covered with a light cover of indestructible dust, which gave their corners and various curves an unusually picturesque appearance.

The stranger first compared these three halls, where the wreckage of civilization and cults, deities, masterpieces of art, monuments of past kingdoms, revelry, sanity and madness were crowded, to a multifaceted mirror, each face of which reflects the whole world. Having received this general, vague impression, he wanted to concentrate on something pleasant, but, looking at everything around him, thinking, dreaming, he fell under the power of a fever, which was caused, perhaps, by the hunger that tormented his insides. Thoughts about the fate of entire nations and individuals, witnessed by the labors of human hands that survived them, plunged the young man into a drowsy stupor; the desire that brought him to this shop was fulfilled: he found a way out of real life, climbed the steps into the ideal world, reached the magical palaces of ecstasy, where the universe appeared to him in fragments and reflections, as it once flashed, blazing, before the eyes of the Apostle John on Patmos , future.

Many images, suffering, graceful and terrible, dark and shining, distant and close, stood before him in crowds, myriads, generations. Ossified, mysterious Egypt rose from the sands in the form of a mummy, entwined in black shrouds, followed by pharaohs who buried entire nations to build a tomb for themselves, and Moses, and the Jews, and the desert - he glimpsed an ancient and solemn world. A fresh and captivating marble statue on a twisted column, shining with whiteness, spoke to him of the voluptuous myths of Greece and Ionia. Ah, who in his place would not smile when he saw, against the red background of a clay, finely molded, Etruscan vase, a young dark girl dancing in front of the god Priapus, whom she joyfully greeted? And nearby the Latin queen tenderly caressed the chimera! All the whims of imperial Rome wafted here, evocating in the imagination the bath, bed, toilet of the carefree, dreamy Julia, waiting for her Tibullus. The head of Cicero, possessing the power of Arab talismans, brought to mind free Rome and opened the pages of Titus Livy to the young stranger. He contemplated the "Senatus populusque romanus" 3
Roman Senate and people (lat.)

; the consul, the lictors, the togas bordered with purple, the struggle in the forum, the angry people - everything flashed before him like the hazy visions of a dream. Finally, Christian Rome prevailed over these images. The painting opened the heavens, and he saw the Virgin Mary floating in a golden cloud among the angels, eclipsing the light of the sun; she, this reborn Eve, listened to the complaints of the unfortunate and meekly smiled at them. When he touched the mosaic made from pieces of lava from Vesuvius and Etna, his soul was transported to hot and golden Italy; he was present at the Borgia orgies, wandered through the Abruzzo mountains, longed for the love of Italian women, and was imbued with a passion for pale faces with elongated black eyes. Seeing a medieval dagger with a patterned handle that was as elegant as lace and covered with rust that looked like traces of blood, he tremblingly guessed the denouement of the night's adventure, interrupted by the cold blade of his husband. India, with its religions, came to life in a Buddhist idol, dressed in gold and silk, with a pointed headdress consisting of diamonds and decorated with bells. Near this god was spread a mat, still smelling of sandalwood, beautiful, like the bayadère who once reclined on it. The Chinese monster with slanted eyes, a twisted mouth and an unnaturally curved body excited the viewer's soul with the fantastic inventions of the people, who, tired of beauty, always the same, find unspeakable pleasure in the diversity of the ugly. At the sight of the salt shaker that came out of the workshop of Benvenuto Cellini, he was transported to the famous centuries of the Renaissance, when the arts and licentiousness flourished, when sovereigns amused themselves with torture, when decrees requiring chastity for ordinary priests came from the princes of the church, resting in the arms of courtesans. The cameo reminded him of the victories of Alexander, the arquebus with a wick - the massacres of Pizarro, and the pommel of the helmet - religious wars, frantic, seething, cruel. Then the joyful images of knightly times were hammered from the Milanese armor with excellent notching and polishing, and through the visor the paladin's eyes still sparkled.

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