作者：Honoré de Balzac
出版社：Delphi Classics (Parts Edition)
格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT
The Elixir of Life by Honoré de Balzac - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)试读：
HONORÉ DE BALZACChrist in FlandersParts EditionBy Delphi Classics, 2014Version 1COPYRIGHT‘Christ in Flanders’Honoré de Balzac: Parts Edition (in 116 parts)
First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.
© Delphi Classics, 2017.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.
ISBN: 978 1 90890 966 4
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www.delphiclassics.comHonoré de Balzac: Parts Edition
This eBook is Part 76 of the Delphi Classics edition of Honoré de Balzac in 116 Parts. It features the unabridged text of Christ in Flanders from the bestselling edition of the author’s Collected Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Honoré de Balzac, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.
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HONORÉ DE BALZAC
IN 116 VOLUMESParts Edition Contents
Scenes from Private Life
1, At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
2, The Ball at Sceaux
3, Letters of Two Brides
4, The Purse
5, Modeste Mignon
6, A Start in Life
7, Albert Savarus
8, Vendetta
9, A Second Home
10, Domestic Peace
11, Madame Firmiani
12, Study of a Woman
13, The Imaginary Mistress
14, A Daughter of Eve
15, The Message
16, The Grand Breteche
17, La Grenadiere
18, The Deserted Woman
19, Honorine
20, Beatrix
21, Gobseck
22, A Woman of Thirty
23, Father Goriot
24, Colonel Chabert
25, The Atheist’s Mass
26, The Commission in Lunacy
27, The Marriage Contract
28, Another Study of Woman
Scenes from Provincial Life
29, Ursule Mirouet
30, Eugenie Grandet
The Celibates
31, Pierrette
32, The Vicar of Tours
33, The Two Brothers
Parisians in the Country
34, The Illustrious Gaudissart
35, The Muse of the Department
36, The Old Maid
37, The Collection of Antiquities
Lost Illusions
38, Two Poets
39, A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
40, Eve and David
The Thirteen
41, Ferragus
42, The Duchesse de Langeais
43, Girl with the Golden Eyes
44, Rise and Fall of César Birotteau
45, The Firm of Nucingen
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
46, Esther Happy: How a Courtesan Can Love
47, What Love Costs an Old Man
48, The End of Evil Ways
49, Vautrin’s Last Avatar
50, Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan
51, Facino Cane
52, Sarrasine
53, Pierre Grassou
The Poor Relations
54, Cousin Betty
55, Cousin Pons
56, A Man of Business
57, A Prince of Bohemia
58, Gaudissart II
59, Bureaucracy
60, Unconscious Comedians
61, The Lesser Bourgeoisie
The Seamy Side of History
62, Madame de La Chanterie
63, The Initiate
Scenes from Political Life
64, An Episode Under the Terror
65, An Historical Mystery
66, The Deputy of Arcis
67, Monsieur de Sallenauve
68, Z. Marcas
Scenes from Military Life
69, The Chouans
70, A Passion in the Desert
Scenes from Country Life
71, Sons of the Soil
72, The Country Doctor
73, The Village Rector
74, The Lily of the Valley
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
75, The Magic Skin
76, Christ in Flanders
77, Melmoth Reconciled
78, The Unknown Masterpiece
79, Gambara
80, Massimilla Doni
81, The Alkahest
82, The Hated Son
83, Farewell
84, Juana
85, The Recruit
86, El Verdugo
87, A Drama on the Seashore
88, Maitre Cornelius
89, The Red Inn
Catherine de’ Medici
90, The Calvinist Martyr
91, The Secrets of the Ruggieri
92, The Two Dreams
93, The Elixir of Life
94, The Exiles
95, Louis Lambert
96, Seraphita
ANALYTICAL STUDIES
97, Physiology of Marriage
98, Little Miseries of Conjugal Life
Pathology of Social Life
99, Traité de La Vie Élégante
100, Théorie de La Démarche
101, Traité Des Excitants Modernes
The Short Stories
102, Droll Stories
103, The Napoleon of the People
The Plays
104, Introduction to Balzac’s Dramas by J. Walker Mcspadden
105, Vautrin
106, The Resources of Quinola
107, Pamela Giraud
108, The Stepmother
109, Mercadet
The Criticism
110, The Criticism
The Biographies
111, Honoré de Balzac by Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
112, Honoré de Balzac, His Life and Writings by Mary F. Sandars
113, Balzac and Madame Hanska by Elbert Hubbard
114, Balzac by Frederick Lawton
115, Women in the Life of Balzac by Juanita Helm Floyd
116, Glossary of Characters in ‘La Comédie Humaine’
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Christ in FlandersTranslated by Ellen MarriageThis is an 1831 short story, set a long time ago in the history of Brabant. A boat is depicted as leaving port, full of passengers, from the coast of Flanders to Ostend. There are two sets of passengers; the poor and the rich. In the stern sits a young knight, a damsel and her mother, a Bishop, a burgher of Bruges with his servant, and a doctor from the University of Louvain, traveling with his clerk. Whilst in the bow, there sits the poorer group of passengers, such as a young mother with a baby, a peasant and his ten year old son, and Tomas, a rower.DEDICATIONTo Marcelline Desbordes-Valmore, a daughter of Flanders, of whom these modern days may well be proud, I dedicate this quaint legend of old Flanders.DE BALZAC.CHRIST IN FLANDERSAt a dimly remote period in the history of Brabant, communication between the Island of Cadzand and the Flemish coast was kept up by a boat which carried passengers from one shore to the other. Middelburg, the chief town in the island, destined to become so famous in the annals of Protestantism, at that time only numbered some two or three hundred hearths; and the prosperous town of Ostend was an obscure haven, a straggling village where pirates dwelt in security among the fishermen and the few poor merchants who lived in the place.But though the town of Ostend consisted altogether of some score of houses and three hundred cottages, huts or hovels built of the driftwood of wrecked vessels, it nevertheless rejoiced in the possession of a governor, a garrison, a forked gibbet, a convent, and a burgomaster, in short, in all the institutions of an advanced civilization.Who reigned over Brabant and Flanders in those days? On this point tradition is mute. Let us confess at once that this tale savors strongly of the marvelous, the mysterious, and the vague; elements which Flemish narrators have infused into a story retailed so often to gatherings of workers on winter evenings, that the details vary widely in poetic merit and incongruity of detail. It has been told by every generation, handed down by grandames at the fireside, narrated night and day, and the chronicle has changed its complexion somewhat in every age. Like some great building that has suffered many modifications of successive generations of architects, some sombre weather-beaten pile, the delight of a poet, the story would drive the commentator and the industrious winnower of words, facts, and dates to despair. The narrator believes in it, as all superstitious minds in Flanders likewise believe; and is not a whit wiser nor more credulous than his audience. But as it would be impossible to make a harmony of all the different renderings, here are the outlines of the story; stripped, it may be, of its picturesque quaintness, but with all its bold disregard of historical truth, and its moral teachings approved by religion — a myth, the blossom of imaginative fancy; an allegory that the wise may interpret to suit themselves. To each his own pasturage, and the task of separating the tares from the wheat.The boat that served to carry passengers from the Island of Cadzand to Ostend was upon the point of departure; but before the skipper loosed the chain that secured the shallop to the little jetty, where people embarked, he blew a horn several times, to warn late lingerers, this being his last journey that day. Night was falling. It was scarcely possible to see the coast of Flanders by the dying fires of the sunset, or to make out upon the hither shore any forms of belated passengers hurrying along the wall of the dykes that surrounded the open country, or among the tall reeds of the marshes. The boat was full.“What are you waiting for? Let us put off!” they cried.Just at that moment a man appeared a few paces from the jetty, to the surprise of the skipper, who had heard no sound of footsteps. The traveler seemed to have sprung up from the earth, like a peasant who had laid himself down on the ground to wait till the boat should start, and had slept till the sound of the horn awakened him. Was he a thief? or some one belonging to the custom-house or the police?As soon as the man appeared on the jetty to which the boat was moored, seven persons who were standing in the stern of the shallop hastened to sit down on the benches, so as to leave no room for the newcomer. It was the swift and instinctive working of the aristocratic spirit, an impulse of exclusiveness that comes from the rich man’s heart. Four of the seven personages belonged to the most aristocratic families in Flanders. First among them was a young knight with two beautiful greyhounds; his long hair flowed from beneath a jeweled cap; he clanked his gilded spurs, curled the ends of his moustache from time to time with a swaggering grace, and looked round disdainfully on the rest of the crew. A high-born damsel, with a falcon on her wrist, only spoke with her mother or with a churchman of high rank, who was evidently a relation. All these persons made a great deal of noise, and talked among themselves as though there were no one else in the boat; yet close beside them sat a man of great importance in the district, a stout burgher of Bruges, wrapped about with a vast cloak. His servant, armed to the teeth, had set down a couple of bags filled with gold at his side. Next to the burgher came a man of learning, a doctor of the University of Louvain, who was traveling with his clerk. This little group of folk, who looked contemptuously at each other, was separated from the passengers in the forward part of the boat by the bench of rowers.The belated traveler glanced about him as he stepped on board, saw that there was no room for him in the stern, and went to the bows in quest of a seat. They were all poor people there. At first sight of the bareheaded man in the brown camlet coat and trunk-hose, and plain stiff linen collar, they noticed that he wore no ornaments, carried no cap nor bonnet in his hand, and had neither sword nor purse at his girdle, and one and all took him for a burgomaster sure of his authority, a worthy and kindly burgomaster like so many a Fleming of old times, whose homely features and characters have been immortalized by Flemish painters. The poorer passengers, therefore, received him with demonstrations of respect that provoked scornful tittering at the other end of the boat. An old soldier, inured to toil and hardship, gave up his place on the bench to the newcomer, and seated himself on the edge of the vessel, keeping his balance by planting his feet against one of those traverse beams, like the backbone of a fish, that hold the planks of a boat together. A young mother, who bore her baby in her arms, and seemed to belong to the working class in Ostend, moved aside to make room for the stranger. There was neither servility nor scorn in her manner of doing this; it was a simple sign of the goodwill by which the poor, who know by long experience the value of a service and the warmth that fellowship brings, give expression to the open-heartedness and the natural impulses of their souls; so artlessly do they reveal their good qualities and their defects. The stranger thanked her by a gesture full of gracious dignity, and took his place between the young mother and the old soldier. Immediately behind him sat a peasant and his son, a boy ten years of age. A beggar woman, old, wrinkled, and clad in rags, was crouching, with her almost empty wallet, on a great coil of rope that lay in the prow. One of the rowers, an old sailor, who had known her in the days of her beauty and prosperity, had let her come in “for the love of God,” in the beautiful phrase that the common people use.“Thank you kindly, Thomas,” the old woman had said. “I will say two Paters and two Aves for you in my prayers to-night.”The skipper blew his horn for the last time, looked along the silent shore, flung off the chain, ran along the side of the boat, and took up his position at the helm. He looked at the sky, and as soon as they were out in the open sea, he shouted to the men: “Pull away, pull with all your might! The sea is smiling at a squall, the witch! I can feel the swell by the way the rudder works, and the storm in my wounds.”The nautical phrases, unintelligible to ears unused to the sound of the sea, seemed to put fresh energy into the oars; they kept time together, the rhythm of the movement was still even and steady, but quite unlike the previous manner of rowing; it was as if a cantering horse had broken into a gallop. The gay company seated in the stern amused themselves by watching the brawny arms, the tanned faces, and sparkling eyes of the rowers, the play of the tense muscles, the physical and mental forces that were being exerted to bring them for a trifling toll across the channel. So far from pitying the rowers’ distress, they pointed out the men’s faces to each other, and laughed at the grotesque expressions on the faces of the crew who were straining every muscle; but in the fore part of the boat the soldier, the peasant, and the old beggar woman watched the sailors with the sympathy naturally felt by toilers who live by the sweat of their brow and know the rough struggle, the strenuous excitement of effort. These folk, moreover, whose lives were spent in the open air, had all seen the warnings of danger in the sky, and their faces were grave. The young mother rocked her child, singing an old hymn of the Church for a lullaby.“If we ever get there at all,” the soldier remarked to the peasant, “it will be because the Almighty is bent on keeping us alive.”“Ah! He is the Master,” said the old woman, “but I think it will be His good pleasure to take us to Himself. Just look at that light down there...” and she nodded her head as she spoke towards the sunset.Streaks of fiery red glared from behind the masses of crimson-flushed brown cloud that seemed about to unloose a furious gale. There was a smothered murmur of the sea, a moaning sound that seemed to come from the depths, a low warning growl, such as a dog gives when he only means mischief as yet. After all, Ostend was not far away. Perhaps painting, like poetry, could not prolong the existence of the picture presented by sea and sky at that moment beyond the time of its actual duration. Art demands vehement contrasts, wherefore artists usually seek out Nature’s most striking effects, doubtless because they despair of rendering the great and glorious charm of her daily moods; yet the human soul is often stirred as deeply by her calm as by her emotion, and by silence as by storm.For a moment no one spoke on board the boat. Every one watched that sea and sky, either with some presentiment of danger, or because they felt the influence of the religious melancholy that takes possession of nearly all of us at the close of the day, the hour of prayer, when all nature is hushed save for the voices of the bells. The sea gleamed pale and wan, but its hues changed, and the surface took all the colors of steel. The sky was almost overspread with livid gray, but down in the west there were long narrow bars like streaks of blood; while lines of bright light in the eastern sky, sharp and clean as if drawn by the tip of a brush, were separated by folds of cloud, like the wrinkles on an old man’s brow. The whole scene made a background of ashen grays and half-tints, in strong contrast to the bale-fires of the sunset. If written language might borrow of spoken language some of the bold figures of speech invented by the people, it might be said with the soldier that “the weather has been routed,” or, as the peasant would say, “the sky glowered like an executioner.” Suddenly a wind arose from the quarter of the sunset, and the skipper, who never took his eyes off the sea, saw the swell on the horizon line, and cried:“Stop rowing!”The sailors stopped immediately, and let their oars lie on the water.“The skipper is right,” said Thomas coolly. A great wave caught up the boat, carried it high on its crest, only to plunge it, as it were, into the trough of the sea that seemed to yawn for them. At this mighty upheaval, this sudden outbreak of the wrath of the sea, the company in the stern turned pale, and sent up a terrible cry.“We are lost!”“Oh, not yet!” said the skipper calmly.As he spoke, the clouds immediately above their heads were torn asunder by the vehemence of the wind. The gray mass was rent and scattered east and west with ominous speed, a dim uncertain light from the rift in the sky fell full upon the boat, and the travelers beheld each other’s faces. All of them, the noble and the wealthy, the sailors and the poor passengers alike, were amazed for a moment by the appearance of the last comer. His golden hair, parted upon his calm, serene forehead, fell in thick curls about his shoulders; and his face, sublime in its sweetness and radiant with divine love, stood out against the surrounding gloom. He had no contempt for death; he knew that he should not die. But if at the first the company in the stern forgot for a moment the implacable fury of the storm that threatened their lives, selfishness and their habits of life soon prevailed again.“How lucky that stupid burgomaster is, not to see the risks we are all running! He is just like a dog, he will die without a struggle,” said the doctor.He had scarcely pronounced this highly judicious dictum when the storm unloosed all its legions. The wind blew from every quarter of the heavens, the boat span round like a top, and the sea broke in.“Oh! my poor child! my poor child!... Who will save my baby?” the mother cried in a heart-rending voice.“You yourself will save it,” the stranger said.The thrilling tones of that voice went to the young mother’s heart and brought hope with them; she heard the gracious words through all the whistling of the wind and the shrieks of the passengers.“Holy Virgin of Good Help, who art at Antwerp, I promise thee a thousand pounds of wax and a statue, if thou wilt rescue me from this!” cried the burgher, kneeling upon his bags of gold.“The Virgin is no more at Antwerp than she is here,” was the doctor’s comment on this appeal.“She is in heaven,” said a voice that seemed to come from the sea.“Who said that?”
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