[1]This story, with details quite absurd on the face of them, Werdet quotes from M. Philarète Chasles; which shows how even his friends and gentlemen united with his enemies in creating myths about him.—TR.
[1]This story, with details quite absurd on the face of them, Werdet quotes from M. Philarète Chasles; which shows how even his friends and gentlemen united with his enemies in creating myths about him.—TR.
Paris, March 24, 1836.
At length I have received your last letter, numbered 5, a whole month after its predecessor! Being in the rue Cassini, I cannot verify whether I have received No. 4.
To what you ask of me, the friend says: No. But there is, in me, another personage, too proud to answer otherwise than by ayeswhen the matter concerned is something that amuses you. There are two things in my nature: childlike trust, and a total lack of egoism.
You are amusing yourself at Kiew, while I am interdicted even the Italian Opera. Never was my solitude so complete, nor my work so cruelly continuous. My health is so affected that I cannot pretend to recoverthat air of youth to which I had the weakness to cling. All is said. If, at my age, a man has never tasted pure, unshackled happiness, Nature will later prevent its being possible for him to wet his lips in the cup. White hairs cannot approach it. Life will have been for me a most sorrowful jest. My ambitions are falling one by one. Power is a small matter. Nature created in me a being of love and tenderness, and chance has constrained me to write my desires instead of satisfying them.
If between now and three years hence nothing is changed in my existence, I shall retire, peacefully, to Touraine, living on the banks of the Loire, hidden from all, and working only to fill the empty hours. I shall even abandon my great work. My forces are being exhausted in this struggle; it is lasting too long; it is wearing me out.
And yet, the affair of the "Cent Contes Drolatiques" seems as if it might be settled, and that would render my financial condition endurable; but it drags along in a despairing way. It will save me when I am dead. I have earned in the mass this year a sum much greater than what I owe; but the debts have fixed dates for becoming due, and the receipts are capricious.
Around me I have no one, or else only powerless friendships; for the nature of certain souls is to attach themselves only to those who suffer.
Frightened by this struggle, and not being willing even to see it, Jules Sandeau has fled from here, leaving me his rent, and a few debts on my hands. He is a man at sea, drifting, as they say of a vessel wrecked in mid-ocean, and battered by the gale. Like Medea, I havemyselfonly against all. Nothing is changed in my situation. I might write you for six months, and say but one thing: I toil. I have no longer any distractions, any amusements—the desert, and the sun!
I smiled in thinking that Madame Eve Hanska, towhom "Séraphita" is dedicated, plays lansquenet, and that this solitary personage is immersed in all mundane things.
Wednesday, 23.
My lawsuit with the "Revue de Paris" will be tried the day after to-morrow, Friday. The verdict will enable me to fix the day for putting out "Le Lys dans la Vallée" for sale. You can only know what that book is by reading it in full in Werdet's edition, which makes two handsome volumes, 8vo. The first is printed; I have just, before writing to you, signed the order to print the lastfeuilleof that volume. I had several sentences to re-write in a letter from Madame de Mortsauf to Félix, which made Madame Hamelin weep—so she told me. Nothing of all that was in your infamous "Revue;" nor was there anything of all my labour, which turned my bad manuscript into a work of style. You read the manuscript in Vienna.
Yesterday they brought me all the writings of "Séraphita" bound. The manuscript is in gray cloth, with the inside of black satin, and the back of Russia leather, to ward off worms. I have also all the writings of the "Lys." But how can I send you these things? I can't understand how it is that you have not received my letters, for I answer all yours regularly; and I wrote you one, lately, full of anxiety, which this one, just received, has calmed. But I imagine that having always addressed them to Berditchef they are still at Wierzchownia, unless they have sent them to you in a mass to Kiew.
I have been twice to the Exhibition at the Museum. We are not strong. If you had money to spend on objects of art I should have asked you to make a few fine purchases, for there are two or three things that are really beautiful,—a Venus by Pradier, and one or twopictures. Your friend Grosclaude has nothing in it, and I hear nothing more about him.
I am wholly taken up with the last work for Madame Bêchet, who, did I tell you? is marrying, and quits publishing for happiness. Nothing will be fully decided about my poor finances until after the publication of the last volume for Madame Bêchet. That is, for me, one of the culminating points of my fortune; for I can then begin the publication of the thirteen succeeding volumes, and receive about twelve thousand francs for the copies which belong to me.
I know nothing of you except from you, for of the country you are now in I know nothing but that which you tell me; I imagine you welcomed, fêted, as you would be wherever you went. But such pleasure, is it really pleasure? You were tired of it in Vienna, but you renew it at Kiew!
You would know how I love you if you had seen me searching through your letter all at once, taking in, at a glance, each page, to see if Anna, if you, if M. Hanski, if all, were well. Then, seeing that no one but a niece was ill, and that she had recovered, I gave a great sigh of relief. You would then have known how restricted are my affections; how few beings interest me. This solitude is sad, because, believe me, one wearies of the labours that fill it, and the heart never loses its claims; it needs expansions. I often make sad elegies when, weary of writing, I lie back in my chair, and rest my head upon it, and ask myself why a soul like mine is here, alone, without other joy than a few memories, as few as they are great. And when I see that what remains to me of life is the least fortunate half, the least active, the least loved, the least lovable, I am not exempt from a sadness that sheds tears.
I will write you as soon as I have finally arranged a thing which may settle my troubles; for I have resolvedto sell some of my shares in the "Chronique de Paris" in order to liquidate myself more rapidly. To-day, I am in the greatest uncertainty and overwhelmed with claims.
Well, adieu. In a few days I may write to you of gayer things. But I doubt it. My health is extremely bad. Coffee no longer procures me mental force. I must be rich enough to travel.
Thursday, 21.
I open my letter to add several things.
The first is about your cramps. Have two irons made that you can grasp at the moment the cramps seize you; have them made strongly magnetic. Here is the shape: O. As soon as you hold them in your hand the cramps will cease. If that does not stop them, write to me. But be sure the irons are strongly magnetized, and keep them near you, at your bed's head.
Fear nothing about corrections. In our language there are incontestable things. Ask for the third edition of the "Médecin de campagne," just out; read it. You will see if it is not improved. There are still a hundred incorrectnesses. It will only be perfect in the fourth edition. Re-read "Louis Lambert" in the "Livre Mystique,"—that is, if such work pleases you; if not, it becomes wearisome.
No, no, style is style. Massillon is Massillon, and Racine is Racine. According to the critics, the "Lys" is my culminating point. You will judge of it.
In re-reading your letter I find some bitter little epigrams against life; but, surely, there are enormous sufferings which you do not know, and never can know. The openings of life are never delightful except in the matter of sentiment. I will prove to you that there is something more delightful: I mean the perfect quietude of a life beloved, of a constancy intellectual enough to destroy monotony.
Adieu, re-adieu—if, indeed, that word is a friend's word. It should beau revoir, for in writing to you I have, like all solitaries, the gift of second sight, and I see you perfectly. Kiss Anna on the forehead from me for the joys she gives you; have the irons made at once, so that you may no longer curse life; which is a serious insult to those who love you; amuse yourself without dissipation; for dissipation fritters away the soul, and is to the detriment of all affections.
Here is a return to the lansquenet, and for that I beg your pardon; you have a soul rich enough to throw a little of it into cards if it pleases you. As for me, who live under the despotic rule of a Chartreux, I find I have not soul enough to suffice for my work and my affections. But I have not the luck to be a woman.
Paris, March 27, 1836.
I receive to-day your good packet, my dear number 7, in which you tell me of two afflicting deaths, but in which you also give me much pleasure by the exact detail of what happens to you. I am going, therefore, to write you at length on all that you inquire about; but on condition that you write to me punctually every week.
Your passage about fidelity, understood, after the Wronski manner, as intuitive truth, made my heart bound with joy. We love to find our own ideas expressed by a friend and to know that the moral sensations of both are of equal purity. Is not this the sentiment that a fine passage of Beethoven makes us feel, by representing to us, in its purest expression, a whole sentiment, a whole nature? For myself, I am convinced that in carrying very high our sentiments we multiply a thousand-fold our pleasures; a little lower, and all would be suffering; but in the heaven above us all is infinite. This is what your "Séraphita" shows. How is it you have not received February 24 (old style) a book published here inDecember? It is no longer even spoken of in France. What grief that I cannot obtain a permit for a single parcel to Wierzchownia. I'll go myself to Saint Petersburg and ask one of the Emperor! What! you, to whom the statue belongs, you have not seen it! It is not in the temple for which it was made! Everybody here has wondered over the dedication, and you have not read it printed, when the author is your devoted moujik. The world is upside down!
You are always talking to me of that detestable "Lys" which is not my "Lys." Wait, in order to know "Le Lys dans la Vallée," for Werdet's edition.
Your poor moujik will never be impertinent or defiant. But, writing in great haste, from heart to heart, and never reading over a letter, there may have been, apropos of Roger, a little too hearty a laugh—which was not right. No,cara, Nature gave me a trustfulness unbounded, a soul that is proof against everything. I have always had in me a something, I don't know what, which leads me to do quite otherwise than other people, and it may be that in me fidelity is pride. Having no other point of support but myself, I have been forced to magnify it, to reinforcethe myself. All my life is there; a life without vulgar pleasures. None of those who are near me would live it "at the price of Napoleon's and Byron's fame united," de Belloy said to me. But de Belloy saw only the hermit on his rock with his cruse and his loaf not bestowing a glance on the siren tempters. He did not see the ecstasy in the heavens, he did not know the revery, the evenings, the chimney-corner, the poems of Hope! I am a gambler, poor to the eyes of all; but I play my whole fortune once a year, when I gather in that which others squander!
My lawsuit has been postponed for a fortnight. Chaix d'Estange, who pleads against me, had to plead a case in the provinces. There's the "Lys" delayed!
You ask for details about the "Chronique de Paris." I have not given you any because it was a paper bothpoliticaland literary—Bedouck!—I forget nothing that I ought to do. Did I not tell you in Geneva that within three years I should begin to build the scaffolding for my political preponderance? Did I not repeat it in Vienna? Well, the "Chronique" is the old "Globe" (same idea) but placed to the Right instead of being to the Left; it is the newdoctrineof the Royalist party. We make the Opposition, and we preach autocratic power; that means that on arriving at the management of affairs we shall not be found in contradiction with what we have said. I am the supreme director of this journal, which appears twice a week, in a monstrous quarto form. It gives the amount of fourfeuillesof the "Revue de Paris," which makes eight a week; and we cost only sixty francs a year, whereas the "Revue" costs eighty, and gives only fourfeuillesa week. The higher criticism of politics, literature, art, sciences, administration, and a portion devoted to individual work, novels, etc., that is the scheme of the paper.
We have obtained Gustave Planche, an immense and grand critic. We are going to have Sainte-Beuve, and, perhaps, Victor Hugo. Capefigue is charged with domestic politics, and does it pretty well. I have an interest which is equivalent to thirty-two thousand francs capital, and if the "Chronique" goes beyond two thousand subscribers it may bring me in twenty thousand francs income, not counting my work, very dearly paid, and my salary as director. We have enough funds to go on for two years. We are between the "Gazette de France," the "Quotidienne," and the Right Centre. These two newspapers are so placed that they can make no concessions to the present régime, whereas we can, ourselves, compromise. We are going to ask to be allowed to enter Russia, because we are in favour of an alliance with Russia againstan English alliance, and for autocracy in the matter of government. Our doctrines as to criticism of art and literature are in favour of the highest moral expression. Is there not something grandiose in this enterprise? So, for the three months that I have now directed it, it has gained daily in respect and authority; only, the costs do crush us. Eachfeuillepays ten centimes tax to the treasury, and we have to go into bonds for seventy-five thousand francs in specie.
Extraordinary thing! It is this very operation that will financially save me. I hope to-morrow to sell sixteen of my shares (without cutting into the thirty-two). Besides which, the affair of the "Cent Contes Drolatiques," published in numbers and illustrated, appears on the point of being concluded. Louis Boulanger will do the drawings, and Perret the wood-cuts. Six thousand copies are to be struck off, which will give me thirty thousand francs of author's rights. So, in a few days from now, I shall have before me forty-five thousand francs, without counting the twenty-four thousand awaiting me on the day when Madame Bêchet gets her last Part. In all, seventy thousand francs. Now, as I only owe fifty thousand (not counting the debt to my mother), I shall see the end of my miseries.
But let me paint to you one of the thousand dramas of my life as artist and soldier. On my return from Vienna (you know what disasters that absence caused me), my silver-plate was pawned. I have never yet been able to redeem it. I have to pay three thousand francs to do so, and I have never had three thousand francs. I owe on the 31st about eight thousand four hundred. In order to live honourably until now, and meet all my obligations, I have used up my resources; all are exhausted. I am, as it were, at Marengo. Desaix must come and Kellermann must charge; then all is said. But, the men who are to give me sixteen thousand francs for my sixteen shares inthe "Chronique" are coming to dine with me. You know that people lend and show confidence to none but the rich. All about me breathes opulence, ease, the wealth of a lucky artist. If at the dinner my silver is hired, all will fail; the man who is arranging the affair is a painter,—an observing race, satirical, deep, like Henri Monnier, in itscoup d'œil; he will see the weak spot in the cuirass, he will guess the Mont-de-Piété—which he knows better than any one. Adieu, my affair. All my future lies in redeeming that silver, which is worth five thousand francs and is pledged for three thousand. I must have it to-morrow, or perish. Isn't it curious? This is the 27th; on the 31st of March I must pay six thousand francs, and I haven't a farthing. But on the 5th of April the signing of the "Drolatiques" affair may give me fifteen thousand francs!
I cannot ask a single person in Paris to lend me money, for I am thought rich and my prestige would fall, would vanish away. The affair of the "Chronique" is due to the credit I enjoy. I was able to speaken maître. Put oil on this flame by representing to yourself the perpetual fire, the ardour of a soul that is consuming itself, and tell me if that is not a drama. One ought to be a great financier, a cold, wise, prudent man; onemustbe!—I say no more, for yesterday one of my friends said truly: "When your statue is made it ought to be in bronze, to rightly picture the man."
My health is at this moment so greatly affected that Dr. Nacquart issues an edict which has to be obeyed. Coffee is suppressed. Every evening they put upon my stomach a linseed poultice. I am kept on chicken broth, and eat nothing but white meat. I drink gum water, and they give me inward sedatives. I have to follow this regimen for ten days and then go to Touraine for a month, to recover life and health. All the mucous membranes are violently inflamed; I cannot digest without horrible suffering.
If my money matters could be well done, and done quickly, instead of going to Touraine I would go and see you for a few days. Would it be possible? I desire it so keenly. A journey would restore me. In any case, do not be vexed with me; it is better to do my business and pay my debts, to recover my sacred liberty, to be able to come and go as I like, to owe neither sou nor line, and postpone the joy of seeing you. Better to put one's fortune in a place inaccessible to storm, than to discount it like a spendthrift.
I may tell you now that the dawn of my liberation begins to show, and that all foretells the end of my troubles. The journey to Vienna was the signal folly of my life. It cost five thousand francs and upset all my affairs. We can laugh about it, and I do not tell it to you now to give myself the smallest little merit, but only to prove to you that if I do not go to see you it is from a wise calculation of friendship; it is a proof of attachment; it will enable me to show you a friend whom you have never yet known, the man a child, without cares, without troubles that gnaw the heart, taking from him his grace, distorting his nature, everything, even to his glance.
If you only knew how, after this solitary life, I long to grasp Nature by a rapid rush across Europe, how my soul thirsts for the immense, the infinite; for Nature seen in the mass, not in detail, judged on its grand lines, sometimes damp with rain, sometimes rich with sun, as we bound across space, seeing lands instead of villages! If you knew this you would not tell me to come, for that redoubles my torture, it fans the furnace on which I sleep.[1]
Grant heaven that I sell the sixteen shares of the "Chronique" and that the matter of the "Drolatiques" may be decided. And then, then! Above all, if Werdet can buy back from Madame Bêchet the "Études de Mœurs," then I could travel, I could go and spend a week at Wierzchownia. You would find the heart of the intellectual moujik ever young, but the moujik himself is deteriorating physically. "No one fights with impunity against the will of Nature," Dr. Nacquart said to me yesterday, ordering me his prescriptions and wanting things I refused: such as not working, and taking much amusement—which the Wronski theory forbids. As for me, I love the noble absolute. I don't forget how indulgent you were in your advice at Vienna; but I have intolerant superstitions.
I have long thought what I wrote to you about your brother; this is not a consolationad hoc, it is a sentiment of my own; there are none but those that have an iron will who can be indulgent to such weaknesses, for they have often been so near, they have so often measured the depths of the gulf! But these thoughts are not social; they can only be uttered in the ear of a friend; they would do us harm. One must be Walter Scott to risk Connachar in the "Fair Maid of Perth." And yet, I mean to go farther; I shall give in "Les Héritiers Boirouge" [never published] a body to my thoughts. I shall there introduce a personage of that kind, but to my mind, more grandiose. I was able to give interest to Vautrin; I shall be able to raise fallen men and give them an aureole by introducing common souls into those souls, whose weakness is the abuse of strength, and who fall because they go beyond it.
The loss of your sister's child is a dreadful misfortune, about which only mothers understand each other, for they alone are in the secret of what they lose; but at your sister's age, such losses are reparable. Children, consideredin their vital future are one of the great social monstrosities. There are few fathers who give themselves the trouble to reflect on their duties. My father had made great studies on this subject; he communicated them to me (I mean their results) at an early age, and I gained fixed ideas which dictated to me the "Physiologie du Mariage,"—a book more profound than satirical or flippant; which will be completed by my great work on "Education" taken in its broad meaning, which I carry up to before generation, for the child is in the father. I am a great proof, and so is my sister, of the principles of my father. He was fifty-nine years old when I was born, and sixty-three when my sister was born. Now, through the power of our vitality we have both failed to succumb; we have centenarian constitutions. Without that power of force and life transmitted by my father I should be dead under my debts and obligations.
I see the children of rich families all enervated by the situation of their fathers and mothers. The mother is worn-out by society, the father by his vices; their children are weakly. But these great and fruitful ideas do not come within the epistolary domain. The question is immense; it has innumerable ramifications. It often absorbs me. It is not suitable to discuss here, but I refer it to Sterne, whose opinions I share entirely. "Tristram Shandy" is, in this respect, a masterpiece.
I cannot tell you anything of Paris; I live in a monk's round, directing my newspaper, writing, contending, more occupied in divining secrets of State than those surrounding me. I want power in France, and I shall have it; but one must be well prepared for the battle, and trained in all questions. When a man of a certain compass does not absorb himself in the real and material joys of love, he must either give himself up to ambition, or vow his life to obscurity. All medium stations are ignoble and vulgar. My youth is near to extinction without ever being fullysatisfied by the only destiny that I had; for Madame de Berny was not young, and, believe me, youth and beauty are something. My dream of those days was always incomplete. If I continue my present life without change for only six years more, I can truly say that my life is a failure. My life was Diodati. Two years, three years would suffice. The month of May, 1836, is approaching and I shall be thirty-seven years old; as yet I am nothing; I have done nothing complete or great; I have only heaped up stones. In that young Coliseum now constructing there is no sun, or at least its rays come from afar, so far that the soul has need of imagination to give being to the monument. But neither fame nor fortune gives back the grace of youth. Something superhuman is needed to meet with love when one is past forty. What a measure of belief in one's self—I do not say in others—to hope to escape the common law! And yet I am all faith. When troubles have gone I shall be twenty years old once more. And then I wish to be so good.
Well, adieu. I desire that this letter full of hope may be confirmed to you by the next, for as soon as the two affairs are concluded, I will write you a line.
Answer me quickly about the portrait. Louis Boulanger is to paint it. He has just left me, with the intention of making a great work of it.
[1]Here is one of his rare revelations of the soul of his work, of that which produced it, which conceived, for instance, the "Majesty of cold," the scene on the Falberg, the breaking of the ice-bonds in "Séraphita." The reader must have perceived how little, amid his overwhelming talk about his work, he revealed the mind behind the work. That was partly because he never thought of it as a personal thing. He did not weaken his work by a study of his own mind: that is Genius.—TR.
[1]Here is one of his rare revelations of the soul of his work, of that which produced it, which conceived, for instance, the "Majesty of cold," the scene on the Falberg, the breaking of the ice-bonds in "Séraphita." The reader must have perceived how little, amid his overwhelming talk about his work, he revealed the mind behind the work. That was partly because he never thought of it as a personal thing. He did not weaken his work by a study of his own mind: that is Genius.—TR.
Paris, April 23, 1836.
Cara.I receive to-day your number 8 with twenty days' interval. How many things have happened in twenty days! Yes, I have delayed writing, but intentionally. I wanted to send you only good news, and my affairs have been getting worse and worse. I have none but dreadful combats to relate to you, struggles, sufferings, useless measures taken, nights without sleep. To listen to my life a demon would weep.
Reading the last paragraphs of your letter I said tomyself, "Well, I will write to her, even if to sadden her." Sorrow has a strong life, too strong perhaps.
My lawsuit is not yet tried. I must wait six days more for a verdict, unless the trial is still further postponed. The matter of the "Contes Drolatiques" is not decided. The shares of the "Chronique" are difficult to dispose of. So, my embarrassments redouble. For two months, since I have had so much business, I have done little work; here are two months lost; that is to say, the goose with the golden eggs is ill. Not only am I discouraged, but the imagination needs rest. A journey of two months would restore me. But a journey of two months means ten thousand francs, and I cannot have that sum when, on the contrary, I am behindhand with just that money. My liberation retreats; my dear independence comes not.
"Le Livre Mystique" is little liked here; the sale of the second edition does not go off. But in foreign countries it is very different; there the feeling is passionate. I have just received a very graceful letter from a Princess Angelina Radziwill, who envies you your dedication, and says it is all of life for a woman to have inspired that book. I was very pleased for you.Mon Dieu!if you could have seen how in my quivering there was nothing personal. How happy I was to feel myself full of pride for you! What a moment of complete pleasure, and all unmixed! I shall thank the princess for you and not for myself—as we give treasures to a doctor who saves a beloved person. Besides, this is the first testimony to my success which has reached me from abroad.
Cara, write me quickly if you have any very trustworthy person in Saint Petersburg, because I have the means, or shall have, to send you those manuscripts through the French embassy. They can instantly reach Saint Petersburg; but from there to you, you must find the intermediary.
My letter was interrupted by the arrival of a commissary of police and two agents, who arrested me, and took me to the prison of the National Guard, where I am at this moment, and where I continue my letter peacefully. I am here for five days. I shall celebrate the birthday of the King of the French. But I lose the fine fireworks I intended to go and see![1]
My publisher [Werdet] has come, and given me an explanation of the non-arrival of the "Livre Mystique" to your hands. It is forbidden by the censor. So now I don't know what we shall do. Is it not singular that the person to whom it is dedicated should be the only one who has not read it? You must find out what is proper to do about it. I await your orders.
Here are all my ideas put to flight. This prison is horrid; all the prisoners are together. It is cold, and we have no fire. The prisoners are of the lowest class, they are playing cards and shouting. Impossible to have a moment's tranquillity. They are mostly poor workmen, who cannot give two days of their time to guard duty without losing the subsistence of their families; and here and there are a few artists and writers, for whom this prison is even better than the guard-house. They say the beds are dreadful.
I have just got a table, a sofa, and a chair, and I am in a corner of a great, bare hall. Here I shall finish the "Lys dans la Vallée." All my affairs are suspended; and this happens on a day when my paper appears, and almost on the eve of the 30th, when I have three thousand francs to pay.
This is one of the thousand accidents of our Parisian life; and every day the like happens in all business. A man on whom you count to do you a service is in the country, and your plan fails. A sum that should have been paid to you is not paid. You must make ten tramps to find some one (and often at the last moment) for the success of some important matter. You can never imagine how much agony accompanies these hours, these days, lost. Many a time I have lain down wearied,—incapable of undertaking to write a single word, of thinking my most dear ideas!
I cannot too often repeat it—it is a battle equal to those of war; the same fatigues under other forms. No real benevolence, no succour. All is protestation without efficacy. I have vanquished for six years, even seven; well, discouragement lays hold upon me when only one quarter of my debt remains to be paid, the last quarter. I don't know what to do. My life stops short before those last four thousand ducats.
[1]Under Louis-Philippe all citizens were compelled to leave their homes and do guard-duty, or, as Werdet says, paddle in the mud with knapsacks on their backs and muskets on their shoulders, for one or two nights every month. Many were the devices of worthy citizens to escape this nuisance. Balzac retreated to Chaillot and fenced himself in with a series of pass-words that made access to him nearly impossible. He was, however, so Werdet says, summoned twelve times before the authorities, and escaped only by bribing the agents. But the thirteenth time he was "empoigné" and locked up in what was satirically called the "Hôtel des Haricots." Werdet's account of this is very amusing (pp. 247-272 of his book), but absolutely false, for he gives an account of how the famous cane originated in the prison, whereas we know that Balzac described it to Madame Hanska March 30, 1835, more than a year earlier.—TR.
[1]Under Louis-Philippe all citizens were compelled to leave their homes and do guard-duty, or, as Werdet says, paddle in the mud with knapsacks on their backs and muskets on their shoulders, for one or two nights every month. Many were the devices of worthy citizens to escape this nuisance. Balzac retreated to Chaillot and fenced himself in with a series of pass-words that made access to him nearly impossible. He was, however, so Werdet says, summoned twelve times before the authorities, and escaped only by bribing the agents. But the thirteenth time he was "empoigné" and locked up in what was satirically called the "Hôtel des Haricots." Werdet's account of this is very amusing (pp. 247-272 of his book), but absolutely false, for he gives an account of how the famous cane originated in the prison, whereas we know that Balzac described it to Madame Hanska March 30, 1835, more than a year earlier.—TR.
Monday, 25th.
I have again interrupted my letter for forty-eight hours. Just as I was writing the wordducatsEugène Sue arrived. He is imprisoned for forty-eight hours. We have spent them together, and I would not continue this letter before him. He talked to me of his occupations, of his fortune. He is rich, and sheltered from everything. He no longer thinks of literature; he lives for himself alone; he has developed a complete selfishness; he does nothing for others, all for himself; hewants, at the end of his day, to be able to say that all that he has done, and all that has been done was for him. Woman is merely an instrument; he does not wish to marry. He is incapable of feeling any sentiment. I listened to all this tranquilly, thinking of my interrupted letter. It pained me for him. Oh! these forty-eight hours were all I needed to prove to me that men without ambition love no one. He went away, without thanking me for having sacrificed for him the concession I had obtained of being alone in the dormitory; for his admission came near compromising the little comforts a few friends had extracted for me from the inflexible staff of grocers, anxious to club all classes together in this fetid galley. I am going to bed.
Saturday, 30.
Great news! The bill for the lateral canal in the Lower Loire, which will go from Nantes to Orléans, has passed the Chamber of Deputies, and will be presented, May 3, to the Chamber of Peers, where the Marquis de la Place, the friend of all pupils of the École Polytechnique, has promised my brother-in-law to have it passed. So, there are my sister and her husband attaining, after ten years' struggle, to their ends. You know I told you at Geneva about that fine enterprise. Now, the only point is to find the twenty-six millions. But that is nothing after what has been done. The stock will be rated so high that money will not be lacking.
At this moment I have a hope on my own account. That is to buy the grant of the grantee, M. de Villevêque, and try to make something on it by selling to a banker. My brother-in-law has just left my prison to try and arrange this affair. If I have this luck, I might in two months make a couple of hundred thousand francs, which would heal all my wounds. It is especially in political warfare that money is the nerve.
Sue drew caricatures with pen and ink on a bit ofpaper to which he put his name; so I send it to you as autograph. It will remind you of my seven days in prison.
Here, I am dying of consuming activity, while, from what you say, you are living in stagnation, without aliment, without your emotions of travel, which makes you desire either travel or complete solitude. What you tell me of Anna delights me; I had some fears for that frail health, but the fears came from my affection, for I know that these organizations, apparently weak, are sometimes of astonishing power.
I have just written to Hammer; he asked me for a second copy of "Le Livre Mystique." I shall send him two; and as our dear Hammer is as patient as a goat that is strangling herself, and thinks that books can go as fast as the post, I shall request him to send you one by the first opportunity. That's a first attempt, I'll try ten more, and out of ten there may be a lucky chance.
I have the set of pearls for you. But how can I send them?
When I leave the prison I shall go and see Madame Kisseleff. That will be number two of my chances.
Apropos, if you find a safe opportunity remember my tea, for there is none good in Paris. I tasted yours (Russian, I mean) a few days ago, and I am shameless enough to remind you of this. "Norma" has had little success here.
The gracefulness you have put into your last letter received here, to console me for the grief of knowing that the "Lys" was published in its first proof [in Russia] I cannot accept as author. The French language admits nothing that comforts the heart of M. Honoré de Balzac. You will say so with me when you hold the book and read it. However it be, the Apollo and the Diana are more beautiful than blocks of marble. The young man, the Oaristes, is more graceful than a skeleton, and we preferthe peach to the peach-stone, though that may contain a million of peaches.
I have much distress, even enormous distress in the direction of Madame de Berny; not from her directly, but from her family. It is not of a nature to be written. Some evening at Wierzchownia, when the wounds are scars, I will tell it to you in murmurs that the spiders cannot hear, for my voice shall go from my lips to your heart. They are dreadful things, that scoop into life to the bone, deflowering all, and making one doubt of all, except of you for whom I reserve these sighs.
Oh! what repressions there are in my heart! Since I left Vienna all my sufferings, of all kinds, of all natures, have redoubled. Sighs sent through space, sufferings endured in secret, sufferings unperceived! My God! I who have never done ill, how many times have I said to myself, "One year of Diodati, and the lake!" How often have I thought, "Why not be dead on such a day, at such an hour?" Who is in the secret of so many inward storms, of so much passion lost in secret? Why are the fine years going, pursuing hope, which escapes, leaving nought behind but an indefatigable ardour of re-hoping? During this burning year, when at every moment all seems ending, and no end comes, desires lay hold upon me to flee this crater which makes me fear a withered end—to flee it to the ends of the earth.
I am the Wandering Jew of Thought, always afoot, always marching, without rest, without enjoyments of the heart, with nothing but that which leaves a memory both rich and poor, with nothing that I can wrest from the future. I beg from the future, I stretch my hands to it. It casts me—not an obole, but—a smile that says, "To-morrow."
Paris, May 1, 1836.
This is the day on which last year I said to myself, "I am going there!" Last evening, I left my window for sadness overcame me. Sleep drove away the grief.
I have worked much to-day. I shall close this letter this evening; I will see if I have forgotten to tell you any facts of the last twenty days, when I have been like a shuttlecock between two battledores. I am going to set to work at the difficult passages in the "Lys." I must finish the chapter entitled, "First Loves." I think that I have undertaken literary effects that are extremely difficult to render. What work! What ideas are buried in this book! It is the poetic pendant of the "Médecin de campagne." I like all you write to me of the little events of your existence at Kiew: the name of Vandernesse, the little lady, etc. But I would like your letters still better if you would write me ten lines a day; no, not ten lines, but a word, a sentence. You have all your time, and I have only hours stolen from sleep to offer you. You are the luxury of the heart, the only luxury that does not ruin, but brings with it nature's own simplicity, riches, poverty,—in short, all!
Alas! not being at home to-day I cannot enclose to you any autograph, and I have some interesting ones: Talma, Mademoiselle Mars, all sorts of people; I shall have one of Napoleon, one of Murat, etc. You will see that when a matter concerns the documentary treasures of Wierzchownia we have great constancy in our ideas.
To-day I have worked much; I shall spend the night on the completion of the "Lys;" for I have still thirtyfeuillesof my writing to do, which is one quarter of the book. After that I must finish the "Héritiers Boirouge" for Madame Bêchet, who is married and become Madame Jacquillart; and next, give "La Torpille" in June to the "Chronique," without which we go to the bad. You see it is impossible that I should budge from here beforeSeptember; there is nothing to be said; those things must be done. After that I shall have no money, I shall only have fulfilled my engagements. So I don't know which way to turn; what with notes falling due, no receipts, and no friend to advance me funds, what will become of me? Either some lucky chance or perish. Hitherto luck has served me.
Just now I am particularly overwhelmed because I counted on the conclusion of the affair of the "Cent Contes Drolatiques" which gave me thirty thousand francs and would have quieted everything. But the longer it goes, the less it ends. I am more than disheartened, I am crazy about it.
There, then, are my affairs. Much work to finish, no money to receive, much money to pay. Am I to be stopped in the midst of my career? What can I attempt?
My brother-in-law came back this morning. M. Lainé de Villevêque asks to reflect upon this sale, he asks three days; and that is the least a man should take to decide so important a matter. I have offered him twenty thousand ducats for his position as grantee, but in ready money. I hope that Rossini will get Aguado to lend it to me, and that I can then resell the position to Rothschild for the double or treble, out of which those scamps will still make five or six millions. There's a pretty smile; the first that fortune has bestowed upon me.
You see that in my next letter I shall have very interesting things to tell you: the canal affair; my lawsuit and the "Lys," and finally "Les Drolatiques," which will be either a complete failure or a piece of business done; in such matters I must have a "yes" or a "no."
Adieu,cara; do not make yourself unhappy about all this. I have broad shoulders, the courage of a lion, strength of character, and if, at times, melancholy lays hold upon me, I look at the future, I believe in something good—though the years do pass with cruel rapidity; andwhat years! Ah, the beautiful years! Shall I ever again see the Lake of Geneva, or Neufchâtel?
Well, adieu; till ten days hence. You will know all that should be said for me and of me to those about you.
From Monsieur Hanski to H. De Balzac.
Wierzchownia, May 15, 1836.
Monsieur,—Having at last, after various attempts, succeeded in procuring an inkstand in malachite, I hasten, monsieur, to send it to you through the house of Rothschild. Have the kindness to inquire for it and to keep it as the souvenir of a true friendship, which cannot change, in spite of the vast distance that separates us; which thought alone can cross, for the present.
If God wills it as I desire, perhaps some day we shall come to find you. Meanwhile, if your literary occupations and the distractions of the world leave you a moment at liberty, think sometimes of your friends in the North, who, in spite of their frigid climate, know how to feel and appreciate your sentiments and your talents.
Your works, monsieur, make us pass many agreeable moments in our solitude. They give us even the illusion of seeing you playing with Anna, who, day by day, grows prettier. She is already a great lady, who begins to play the piano, and promises to have a distinguished talent for it. She has also a taste, a decided passion for reading; I can no longer find her books analogous to her age; we have exhausted the book-shops of Saint Petersburg.
You could hardly believe, monsieur, the pleasure I have had in reading "L'Interdiction." I was filled with the same sentiment I described to you when reading for the first time at Neufchâtel "Le Médecin de campagne." Give us as many as possible of such works; society expects that service of you. The picture of the judge, and that of the nobleman restoring the property which,according to his own conviction, he illegally possessed, are of incomparable beauty and rare perfection. They cannot but strongly influence the morals of this age. Men of heart, of talent, of genius, it is your mission to blast vices, to give the greatest brilliancy to virtue, and to repair the evil of which the philosophy of the last century cast the germ.
But I perceive that I am out of my natural vocation, and becoming diffuse. That is a defect communicated to me by the Châtelaine of Wierzchownia and sovereign of Paulowska, who is quite enchanted to find herself once more in her empire of flowers and verdure, who salutes you, and is preparing to write you a long letter of I don't know how many pages.
It can only be in two years hence that we shall propose to ourselves to make a journey for the education of little Anna, and I have a presentiment, monsieur, that we shall find you sitting in the Chamber, and be present at some of your eloquent speeches. While awaiting the realization of that dream, accept the assurance of a true and sincere friendship.
Venceslas Hanski.
P. S.I send you the design of the inkstand before you receive it; that you may know if you receive the right thing.
To Madame Hanska.
Paris, May 16-June 16, 1836.
One year ago to-day, I was at the Hôtel de la Poire, in Vienna, at one o'clock, having made the journey in five days, and not having slept for three nights! At two o'clock, after an hour's sleep, I gave myself thefêteof going to the Walterische Haus. To-day, my only pleasure will be, in the midst of my perpetual battle, a halt of two hours to write you a line,cara contessina. But instead of sending you a bouquet of rosy hopes, Ihave only sad things to tell you. All that I announced to you of good has failed. Nothing of that which would have freed me succeeds.
However, to-day Madame Bêchet may perhaps cede her rights in the "Études de Mœurs" to Werdet; and this is more important than you know to my tranquillity; for if I have but one publisher I can regulate my work, I can manage to obtain a month's rest, and you know what I can make of a month's rest. The "Contes Drolatiques" affair still drags on.
During the last few days a great change has taken place in me. Ambition has disappeared. I no longer want to enter public life by the Chamber or by journalism. So my efforts will now tend to rid me of the "Chronique de Paris." This determination comes to me from the aspect of the Chamber of Deputies. The folly of the orators, the silliness of the debates, the little chance there is of triumphing against such miserable mediocrity, have made me renounce the idea of mixing myself in it otherwise than as a minister. Therefore, two years hence, I shall try to open, with cannon-shot, the doors of the Academy; for academicians can become peers, and I will endeavour to make a large enough fortune to reach the Upper Chamber and enter power through power itself.
"Le Lys dans la Vallée" is sapping me. Neither the lawsuit nor the book is finished. I have ten morefeuilles, one hundred and sixty pages, to do wholly—to write and correct. I hope to finish in ten days, though it is almost a quarter of the book; but it is the easiest quarter. All is now settled,posé. I have only to conclude. The striking character is decidedly M. de Mortsauf. It was very difficult to draw that figure; but it is done now. I have raised the statue of the Emigration. I have collected in one and the same creation all the features of theémigréreturned to his estates, and perhaps all thefeatures of the husband; for married men do, more or less, resemble M. de Mortsauf. The book will appear, I hope, by June 1. But how can I send you your copy? I could send it by the embassy, but I must know the address of some one who is devoted to you in Saint Petersburg.
June 16.
You could never understand what my life has been between these two dates. This letter has lain a month on my table without my being able to add a word. I have received two letters from you and one from M. Hanski without being able to answer them, and to-day I must lock my door and take a morning to write to you. I have so many things to tell you! So many events have happened to me I do not know where to begin. Besides, it is impossible to tell you all; it would fill volumes.
First, my lawsuit is won and my book is out. I have worked night and day to finish the book in time to have it appear the very day the verdict was given. You must know that the same sort of attack that was made against my credit during my journey to Vienna, when they declared me in prison for debt, my enemies have again made against my character and my integrity. All the most ignoble and basest calumny, all the mud that could be found has been heaped upon me. I had to write a defence, for the public,in a single night. You can read it in the "Lys," to which it forms an introduction [he suppressed it, later]. I won twice over, once before the public, and once before the judges, who were indignant. On what will they now attack me?[1]
Ah! you will never know how burning my life has been during this month. I was alone to meet it, harassed by the newspaper people demanding money; harassed bymy own payments to meet; harassed by my book, for which I had day and night to correct proof. No, I wonder I lived through it. Life is too heavy; I have no pleasure in living.
You have grieved me much by sending back to me the foolish things your aunt has said,—that I am married to a lady whose name and person I do not know,—while I am laden here with the foolish things of Paris! Those from Constantinople are too much! Keep, I beg of you your credulity for good things. I really do not know what Madame Rosalie [Rzewuska] means, or what Hammer writes me; he says you are going to Constantinople, and that he has sent your "Livre Mystique" to your aunt, who will deliver it to you in person. I am lost in all this muddle of news.
Though I have won my suit and the "Lys" is out, my affairs do not prosper; it is one of the victories that kill. Another such, and I am dead. The production of books does not suffice to extinguish my debts; I must have recourse to the stage, and there I shall encounter such keen hatreds that they may bar my entrance, or deceive the public on the value of the works I produce there.
I received Monsieur Hanski's letter during those days. I have a better edition of the "Médecin de campagne" to send him. But I still do not know how to send it, therefore I keep it for him.
I am so encumbered with delayed business, cares, tentatives, that I write you with a sort of inebriated head that does not allow of logic; so I hasten to close this letter and send it off. You will receive another, acknowledging the reception of the inkstand, which from the drawing seems to me of crushing magnificence for a poor devil.
Boulanger has made a very fine thing of my portrait. It will have, I think, the honours of the King's corner in the coming Exhibition. Don't trouble yourself aboutthe money for the copy, which will be an original, for I am to sit for yours as I did for this one. I will pay him the five hundred francs, fifty ducats, and when I go to Wierzchownia you can, if I am not rich, return them; if I am rich I shall have no need of them. But all artists think that Boulanger has done a fine thing, which, apart from its merit as a portrait, is great as a painting. I have had to give sittings of seven and eight hours—already ten of them—through the storms of this month.
At the moment when I am writing to you and when I need some repose to revive my brain, which drops like a jaded horse (for it is impossible not to see that there are organs the strength of which is limited), the manager of our newspaper sends me missive after missive to pay him thirteen thousand more francs, the last of the forty-five thousand which I owe on my purchase. These are pin-pricks into one's spinal marrow. So I must leave my letter a second time and rush about the city to realize on certain shares; and I must at the same time finish the "Ecce Homo" begun in the "Chronique" two days ago.
Again my letter is interrupted. Oh! this time it is too much! Do you know by what? By a legal notice from Madame Bêchet, who summons me to furnish her within twenty-four hours my two volumes in 8vo, with a penalty of fifty francs for every day's delay! I must be a great criminal and God wills that I shall expiate my crimes! Never was such torture! This woman has had ten volumes 8vo out of me in two years, and yet she complains at not getting twelve!
You will be some time without news of me, for I shall probably flee into the valley of the Indre and there write in twenty days the two volumes of that woman and get rid of her. For such an enterprise one must have no distraction, no thought other than that of the work we write. Yes, if I die for it, I must be done with these obligations. But if you only knew what an absence oftwenty days is to me in my affairs. It is conflagration. I beg of you, do not be worried. If I do not write to you, it is that I am either fighting for serious interests, or working for something urgent, ardent, that brooks no delay. Here I am, rebeginning a horrible struggle—that of money interests and books to write! Put an end to the last of my contracts by satisfying Madame Bêchet, and write a fine book! And I have twenty days! And it shall be done! The "Héritiers Boirouge" and "Illusions Perdues" will be written in twenty days!
I leave you, as you see, more harassed, more persecuted, more occupied than ever. I have the sad presentiment that nothing can end well out of all this. Human nature has its limits, the strong as well as the weak, and I shall soon have attained my limit.
Well, adieu; you, one of the three persons who might know me, have you many doubts, have you left any dark corners without penetrating them, because I have not had the happiness to be long near you?