The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Listeners who like to plunge straight into a story would do well to skip the lengthy preamble. Here, Balzac the virtuoso satirist depicts the levels of Parisian society as a version of the Inferno of Dante - but perhaps keeps the reader waiting too long for the first act of his operatic extravaganza.
Our beautiful, androgynous hero, Henri de Marsay, is one of the bastard offspring of a depraved Regency milord and himself practises the cynical arts of the libertine. His quarry is the exotic Paquita Valdes, she of the golden eyes.
But there is a mysterious third person in this liaison...
The shocking truth of their interrelationships marks this out at once as one of those French novels that Lady Bracknell would instantly ban from the house. (Summary by Martin Geeson)
Genre(s): Romance, Published 1800 -1900
Language: English
Group: Balzac's Human Comedy
| Section | Chapter | Reader | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Play 01 | Preamble: Paris | Martin Geeson |
01:00:32 |
| Play 02 | 'Upon one of those fine spring mornings...' | Martin Geeson |
00:29:46 |
| Play 03 | 'The young man who called himself...' | Martin Geeson |
00:17:50 |
| Play 04 | 'De Marsay was not impulsive...' | Martin Geeson |
00:22:06 |
| Play 05 | 'When, after making an excellent meal...' | Martin Geeson |
00:19:39 |
| Play 06 | 'At the hour mentioned Henri was...' | Martin Geeson |
00:30:23 |
| Play 07 | 'For the next and succeeding day Henri disappeared...' | Martin Geeson |
00:21:39 |
| Play 08 | 'If it be impossible to paint the unheard-of delights...' | Martin Geeson |
00:17:25 |
| Play 09 | 'At breakfast, by the time he had started...' | Martin Geeson |
00:19:16 |
| Play 10 | 'Paquita seemed to have been created for love...' | Martin Geeson |
00:16:18 |
| Play 11 | 'De Marsay was driven to the house...' | Martin Geeson |
00:15:46 |