The Wild Ass's Skin Author:Honoré de Balzac General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1908 Original Publisher: Dent Subjects: Fiction / Classics Fiction / Literary History / Europe / France Literary Criticism / European / French Travel / Europe / France Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may... more » be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: II A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART After a moment's silence, Raphael said with a careless gesture -- 'Perhaps it is an effect of the fumes of punch -- I really cannot tell -- this clearness of mind that enables me to comprise my whole life in a single picture, where figures and hues, lights, shades, and half-tones are faithfully rendered. I should not have been so surprised at this poetical play of imagination if it were not accompanied with a sort of scorn for my past joys and sorrows. Seen from afar, my life appears to contract by some mental process. That long, slow agony of ten years' duration can be brought to memory to-day in some few phrases, in which pain is resolved into a mere idea, and pleasure becomes a philosophical reflection. Instead of feeling things, I weigh and consider them ' ' You are as tiresome as the explanation of an amendment,' cried Emile. 'Very likely,' said Raphael submissively. 'I spare you the first seventeen years of my life for fear of abusing a listener's patience. Till that time, like you and thousands of others, I had lived my life at school or the fycee, with its imaginary troubles and genuine happinesses, which are so pleasant to look back upon. Our jaded palates still crave for that Lenten fare, so long as we have not tried it afresh. It was a pleasant life, with the tasks that we thought so contemptible, but which taught us application for all that. . . . ' 'Let the drama begin,' said Emile, half-plai...« less