Young Raphaël pined in a garret of stone,
Too proud to be poor and too fiercely alone.
He dreamed of the heights of the Paris elite,
While starvation hovered in every dark street.
Two women would shadow his short, mortal race:
One born of pure spirit, one painted in grace.

First came gentle Pauline, the landlord’s sweet child,
Whose heart was a garden, untamed and unspoiled.
She mended his linen, she brought him his bread,
And loved the grand thoughts that inside him were bred.
But blind to her beauty, he looked past her door,
In search of a goddess to worship and adore.

He found Countess Foedora, icy and bright,
The queen of high fashion, a specter of light.
He spent his last sous just to stand in her train,
But she offered him nothing but polite disdain.
Her heart was a flint that no passion could spark,
A glittering diamond that shone in the dark.

[…]

Then came the shagreen, with its dark, heavy price,
That turned all his world to a kingdom of ice.
With gold in his pockets and death in his breath,
He fled from Foedora, who tasted of death.
But fortune is fickle, and circles will bend—
In a theater stall, he met truth in the end.

There sat his Pauline, now an heiress of wealth,
In the bloom of her youth and the glow of her health.
No longer the girl in the apron of gray,
She stole every heart in the brilliant display.
The love they had buried rushed back like a flood,
Reigniting the fire in Raphaël's blood.

“I loved you when poor, and I love you when grand,”
She whispered, and gave him her trembling hand.
He took her to palaces, shielded from pain,
And fancied that youth had been given again.
But there on the wall hung the shrinking shagreen,
The terrible specter that stood in between.

[…]

For every sweet hour and every desire,
The talisman withered like hemp in a fire.
He knew that to love her and wish her to stay
Was drawing him closer to ultimate clay.
He rationed his words and he measured his breath,
For a sigh of devotion was a summons to death.

Pauline saw him fading, a ghost in her sight,
And discovered the skin in the dead of the night.
She read the dark truth on the narrowing hide:
To save her dear lover, she must step aside.
“If my love is your poison, then let me depart!”
She cried as she fled with a fracturing heart.

He chased her, he caught her, he broke through the door,
As the talisman shrunk till it existed no more.
One final, wild surge of a dying desire—
He threw himself on her, a mountain of fire.
He bit at her breast as his breathing gave way,
And died in the arms of his weeping Pauline.