Summary

“A Passion in the Desert” (“Passion dans le desert”) is a short story by Honoré de Balzac, the 19th-
century French writer best known for his collection of linked fictions titled La Comédie Humaine.
Although “A Passion” first appeared in an 1830 issue of Revue de Paris, Balzac later included it in
“Scenes from Military Life,” the 15thvolume of La Comédie Humaine. Structured as a frame narrative,
the story begins in Paris. The unnamed narrator and a woman have just witnessed a show featuring
trained wild animals. When the woman wonders if animals have feelings, the narrator relates the story
of a soldier, a panther, and their deep bond.

Egypt is the setting for the narrator’s tale, which he himself heard from an experienced person of the
Napoleonic Wars. While serving in Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, a young soldier from France’s
Provence region was captured by “Maugrabins,” a group of itinerant Arabs. When the Maugrabins stop
at an oasis, and their attention diverted, the Frenchman escapes on horseback. His flight frees him from
his captors, but falls him into a sea of sand “without limit.” Finally, after a hectic and ineffective effort to
track down the French army, the soldier’s horse dies of exhaustion.

The burning desert stretches endlessly in every direction around the soldier, offering no glimpse of hope
for his situation. Despair surrounds him. Resolving to end his own suffering, the soldier loads his rifle,
but then pauses to reflect on his past. Uplifting memories of Paris and other French villages displace his
desperate thoughts, and he sets off across a hill with new courage.

At the bottom of the hill, he discovers a sparkling spring outside a natural cave shaded by fruit-filled
palm trees, and “a joy that was half insane” overflows him. The cave provides welcome break from the
sun. After covering the cave’s entrance with a fallen tree to protect himself from interrupting animals,
the soldier falls asleep inside his refuge.

The sound of breathing wakes the soldier during the night. Apprehended with fear, he sits up, but
darkness prevents him from identifying the source of the sound. After long minutes of terrified
assumption, the soldier sees his “terrible companion” when a beam of moonlight glows “upon the
shining, spotted skin of a panther” sleeping just two feet from him. Various strategies for killing the
animal race through his mind, and after dismissing each as too risky, the soldier decides to delay his
strike until daylight.

At the break of dawn, the soldier can better assess his sleeping enemy. The panther is female, and her
bloody muzzle suggests she has recently filled her belly. She wakes and leisurely washes her face while
the soldier watches, fascinated, thinking, “She is like a dainty woman.”

When the panther rises and walks toward him, the soldier touches his blade but doesn’t use it against
her. Her closeness attracts him instead of run “his hand along her spine from the head to the flanks.”
She responds to his cuddles by voluptuously curling her tail and purring. The soldier continues to stroke
the panther until he calms her into a quiet state of happiness, at which point, he quietly exits the cave.

The soldier is hardly to the top of the hill, however, when the panther bounds up to him and rubs
against his legs, willing for more caresses. He obliges, this time using the point of his blade to scratch her
head while he calculates how to deliver a deadly cut. As he prepares to strike her throat, the panther
gracefully slides into repose at his feet and fascinates him with what he perceives to be a kind gaze. She
allows the soldier to walk a short distance away from her, where he sees the half-eaten remains of his
horse. With relief, he realizes that after this extensive meal, the panther will not be tending to regard
him as prey.

The soldier walks back to the panther and continues caressing her. When they wrestle playfully, the
sight of her harmful claws triggers his underlying fear and mistrust. He reaches for his blade, but a
dislike to harming this “inoffensive creature” prevents him from using his weapon once again.
Moreover, he starts to fancy her as a “friend in the limitless desert.” The soldier names the panther
“Mignonne,” after his first mistress who, during fits of jealousy, would threaten to kill him.

As night falls, the soldier’s apprehensions about Mignonne and her savage nature return. He waits until
she is asleep and then leaves her, hoping to make his way to the Nile. He blunders into quicksand, but
Mignonne has been shadowing the soldier and pulls him to safety. His trust in the panther restored, the
soldier returns with her to the cave.

When the soldier wakes the next morning, Mignonne is gone. She soon comes back to him with tell-tale
blood on her muzzle. As he pets the panther, the soldier lightheartedly blames her of eating a
Maugrabin and then cautions, “But you are not to eat a Frenchman; remember that! If you do, I will not
love you.”

Days pass, and the soldier’s affection for the panther grows. While he also gains a new appreciation for
the dazzling beauty of the desert, it is nevertheless insufficient to make him content with his “weird
present.” To attract would-be rescuers, he fashions his shirt into a banner and ties it to the top of a tree.

As the panther shows no desire to eat the soldier but only to receive his fond attentions, his fear of her
lessens. She give out a jealous roar when he admires an eagle flying overhead, obliging him to
appreciate “afresh her rounded flanks” and conclude, “She was as pretty as a woman.” Their eyes meet
in a moment of mutual understanding, and he cheers in the belief that “[s]he has a soul!”

Despite the soldier’s passion for Mignonne and her determined demonstrations of loyalty, suspicions
that she might let down him stay behind in his mind. One day, when she harmlessly takes his leg in her
teeth, he panics and attempts her with his knife. When soldiers arrive shortly thereafter, having seen his
makeshift banner, they find him weeping over the lifeless panther.

Balzac’s story questions the idea that human nature is more distinguished than that of animals. At the
beginning of the story, the woman suggests to the narrator that humans bother animals with “all the
vices arising in our own state of civilization,” and indeed, the soldier proves more violent than the
panther.

Commentary on story/ critical analysis

The beauty of nature is settled on comprehensively in the piece as can be noted through the extremely
descriptive language used by the author when speaking on the desert. He compares it to “An endless
sea of black grains” and in the very end of the story, “God without mankind.”

The extremely clashing emotions of mysterious love and logical mistrust are used to draw out the
complex emotions that humans can feel only when love and distrust mingle. While such a concept could
be likened to many surrealistic and explanatory ideas (life, death, relationships, morality, etc.) it is wiser
not to introduce any such comparisons as the story seems to be written to exist in a very realistic scope.
The author was well known for being one of the first to introduce realism to the European literature
scene. In his stories, the human characteristics of his characters serve to convey much more to the
reader than a metaphorical analysis of their actions would.

The story is titled properly as the passion of the relationship between the man and the panther is
described accurately and in depth through the thoughts of the man and the actions of the panther. The
idea of human insecurity is dealt with widely in the story as the man continually suspects the panther of
wanting to eat him, despite having only experienced love and warmth from the creature. The endless
fear of what could happen and what logically should happen, eventually overpower the trembling
encouragement of positivity in the relationship of the man and the beast. This could be a means of the
author suggesting that we should be less suspicious in life, that we should enjoy things as they are,
simple and beautiful, and not be overly suspicious, insecure, and distrustful of others