The Girl with the Golden Eyes

The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore De Balzac and Translated by Ellen Marriage. La Fille aux yeux d'or (English: The Girl With the Golden Eyes) is a novella by Honor de Balzac. It is the third part of the Thirteen series, which includes the short stories Ferragus and La Duchesse de Langeais. It is also part of his La Com die humaine novel sequence. The story follows the decadent heir Henri de Marsay, who becomes enamored of the eponymous beauty, Paquita Valdes, and plots to seduce her. He succeeds but becomes disillusioned when he discovers she is also involved with another lover and so plots to murder her. When he arrives to kill her, he discovers that she is already dead by the hand of her lover, his half-sister. She declares that Paquita came from a land where women are no more than chattels, able to be bought and used in any way. In the last lines of the story, de Marsay tells a friend that the girl has died of "something to do with the heart."