The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Passion in the Desert, by Honore de Balzac

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Title: A Passion in the Desert

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Ernest Dowson

Release Date: December, 1998 [Etext #1555]
Posting Date: February 26, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PASSION IN THE DESERT ***

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A PASSION IN THE DESERT

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Ernest Dowson

A PASSION IN THE DESERT

"The whole show is dreadful," she cried coming out of the menagerie of
M. Martin. She had just been looking at that daring speculator "working
with his hyena,"--to speak in the style of the programme.

"By what means," she continued, "can he have tamed these animals to such
a point as to be certain of their affection for----"

"What seems to you a problem," said I, interrupting, "is really quite
natural."

"Oh!" she cried, letting an incredulous smile wander over her lips.

"You think that beasts are wholly without passions?" I asked her. "Quite
the reverse; we can communicate to them all the vices arising in our own
state of civilization."

She looked at me with an air of astonishment.

"But," I continued, "the first time I saw M. Martin, I admit, like you,
I did give vent to an exclamation of surprise. I found myself next to an
old soldier with the right leg amputated, who had come in with me. His
face had struck me. He had one of those heroic heads, stamped with
the seal of warfare, and on which the battles of Napoleon are written.
Besides, he had that frank, good-humored expression which always
impresses me favorably. He was without doubt one of those troopers
who are surprised at nothing, who find matter for laughter in
the contortions of a dying comrade, who bury or plunder him quite
light-heartedly, who stand intrepidly in the way of bullets;--in fact,
one of those men who waste no time in deliberation, and would not
hesitate to make friends with the devil himself. After looking very
attentively at the proprietor of the menagerie getting out of his box,
my companion pursed up his lips with an air of mockery and contempt,
w