The autograph of Mademoiselle Mars is addressed to me. It relates to her part in "La Grande Mademoiselle." There's the mysterious simplified. As soon as I havethe "George Sand" I will send it to you; but I should like you also to have the "Aurore Dudevant," so that you should possess her under both forms.
Continue, I beg you, to tell me all you think of me, without paying heed to my laments. You are right; better any suffering than dissimulation. But, seriously speaking, I see that you listen too much to your first impulse; you are, forgive me, violent and excitable, and in your first anger you are capable of breaking things without knowing whether they can be mended. I have put the wordseriouslyto give weight to my jesting. Do not therefore allow yourself to be carried away by the tattle of calumny; if any one were to come and tell me—as they did you—that you had married Alexandre Dumas, do you not think I should have laughed heartily—all the while regretting that a life so beautiful and noble should become a subject for tattle? Yes, seriously, I should always regret to see calumny brush the noble forehead of a woman, even if it left nothing behind it. In that I am just as positive as M. Hanski in my opinions. We men, we can defend ourselves; we have a stronger flight, which can put us above the rubbish of the press and the slanders of society. But you! you, who live calm and solitary within the precincts of a home, without our forum and our sword, truly it pains me when I know that a woman who is indifferent to me is made the object of calumny, or even ridicule. From you to me, you know whether in my judgments I am actuated by the narrow sentiments with which artists and writers usually speak of their comrades. I live apart from all such matters. Well, D... is a smirched man, a mountebank, and worse than that, a man of no talent. They have again offered me the cross, and I have again refused it.
I flattered myself that the post would carry to you more quickly than usual the letter in which I announced to you the end of the money troubles that caused you so muchpain. Have I sufficiently proved my friendship in telling you sorrows that I concealed from the rest of the world? Now, I shall have only my work to talk to you about.
When I see you I will tell you in detail about these days of penury, these fights of which you know only the main features, for I sent you merely bulletins. If there is some confusion in my letters it is that their dates are irregular; I quit them and return to them as my hurried occupations will allow. My way of working is still so difficult!
I entreat you, read each letter as if we were at the day on which it was written; and remember that nothing can prevail against her to whom it is addressed. It grieves me that, apropos of this joy set into the brass of my work, you should speak of hopes being lost! We will explain all that later, for, if I accomplish my tasks by the months of May or June, I shall take my flight to your great plain, and you will see your white serf otherwise than in painting. Then you shall see him famous, for by that time I shall have published: "César Birotteau," "La Torpille," the thirddizain, "Illusions Perdues," "La Haute Banque," "La Femme Supérieure," "Les Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée,"—all great and fine paintings added to my gallery.
What an outcry has been made against "La Vieille Fille"! When you laugh on reading it, you will ask yourself what the manners and morals of these French journalists are—the most infamous that I know of!
I cannot tell you much that is new about my life; for my life is eighteen hours' daily work in a garret, where there is a bed (I never leave it), and six hours' sleep. My health will require great care, because it is beginning to be much impaired by the toil and the great anxieties to which I have been a prey. What I say is based on serious facts. I must submit to physicians, humbly, or I shall quickly be destroyed.
Without vanity of author,yes, re-read the "Lys;" the work gains by being read a second time. But I am not deceived about the blemishes that are still in it. But they shall disappear; although the angel who is no more declared it without a fault.
You must never forget, dear, that I haveallto paint, and that each subject needs different colours. We can't relate Mademoiselle Cormon, the Chevalier de Valois, Suzanne, and du Bousquier in the style of Madame de Mortsauf, especially before a herd of envious beings who will say that I am aging unless I differentiate myself.
You send me wishes for my happiness; pray for me only that God will support me in my strength for work and in my resignation. Solitude with one hope—that is my life; it was that of the Fathers in the wilderness. Work is the staff with which I walk, indifferent to all, except the thought that is placed in the sanctuary.Una fides.Outside of that, there are nought but distractions in which the heart has no share. I mean the lifted heart, which is full of grief, but in which lives a sacred hope. You do not wholly know that vast domain; if you did you would not scold me.
In "Illusions Perdues" there is a young girl named Eve, who, to my eyes, is the most delightful creation that I have ever made.
Adieu; here's a half-day stolen from proofs, business, work. But in writing to you I see you, just as if I were studying the Almanach de Gotha at your house in Geneva; and when I think of that halt made in my sorrows, I fancy that all about me is gold and that I have nothing to do.
I will tell you another time of the visit I paid to Madame de Dino and M. de Talleyrand at Rochecotte in Touraine. M. de Talleyrand is amazing. He had two or three gushes of ideas that were prodigious. He invited me strongly to go and see him at Valençay, and if helives I shall not fail to do so. I still have Wellington and Pozzo di Borgo to see, so that my collection of antiques may be complete.
Anna's dog is always on my desk. Tell her that herhorsecommends himself to her memory. A thousand compliments to the inhabitants of your kingdom. Are your affairs doing well? is M. Hanski more at liberty? are his enterprises successful? You cut me off too many details of your proprietary mechanism. When you think of it, trace me a few itineraries of how to go to you. I have my reasons for wishing to know the various routes that lead there.
Well, again adieu, and tender wishes for all that concerns you. I am in terror when I think of you on the roads where there are wolves and Jewish coachmen.
This week I give Boulanger his last sitting. As soon as I have finished "Illusions Perdues" I will write to you. Till then I am caught in a vice, day and night.
Paris, January 1, 1837.
To-day I have had a great happiness; some one came to see me whom I have not seen for eternities, and who has given me such pleasure that I have been sitting, all day long, dreamily talking to her;[1]I never wearied of it. She has made a long journey, but a fortunate one. She is not changed. Do you not think there are beings in whom resides a larger portion of our life than in ourselves? You will know this being some day. I will not have you like her better than I do, but you cannot prevent yourself from being friendly, were it only on account of my fanaticism for her. She is a being so good, so constant, so grand, of so lofty a mind, so true, so naïve, so pure! These are the beings who serve as foils to all that we see about us. I cannot prevent myself from telling you of my joy as if you knew her, but I perceive that I am talking Greek to you. Forgive me that folly. There are, as Chérubin says, certain moments when we talk to the air, and it is better to talk to the heart of a friend.
Then this good day came in the midst of my hardest work, for "Illusions Perdues" must be finished under penalty of lawsuits and summons; at a moment, too, when I am very weary of the toils of this hard year, so hard!
I received some days ago your number 21. I have many things to say to you. But time! when one has to pay fifty francs a day for every day's delay. I see the moment when I shall escape this vile abyss; but my wings are weary hovering over it.
You say so little of "La Vieille Fille" that I think the book must have displeased you. Say so boldly; you have a voice in the chapter; and I'll tell you my reasons.
It will be difficult to judge of "Illusions Perdues." I can only give the beginning of the book, and three years must pass (as for "L'Enfant Maudit") before I can continue it.
I have meditated bringing you my portrait in person. If you hear the clack of a whip, the French clack, resounding in your courtyard, do not be much surprised. I need a month's complete separation from ideas, fatigues, in short, from all there is in France, and I long for Wierzchownia as for an oasis in the desert. None but myself know the good that Switzerland did me. Nothing but the question of money can hinder me.
I was mistaken in my estimation of my debts. They gave me fifty thousand francs; but I needed fourteen thousand more, and seven thousand for an endorsement imprudently given to Werdet. But I feel that the stage and two fine works will save me. To make the two plays, I need to hide in some desert place that no one knows of; and this is what I should like: to be one or two months buried in your snows. The more snow there were, the happier I should be. But these are crazy projects when I see the thickness of the cable that moors me here.
[1]Madame Hanska's miniature by Daffinger, a copy of which she had sent him.
[1]Madame Hanska's miniature by Daffinger, a copy of which she had sent him.
January 15, 1837.
I have received another letter from you, in which you manifest anxiety about the letters you have written me. Do not fear, I have received them all.
The interruption of this letter is easily explained. Ihave been ill the whole time. Finally I had what I seemed to have been in search of, an inflammation of the bowels, which is scarcely quieted to-day. I still suffer, but that is a small matter. I have had constant suffering, and I greatly feared an inflammation for my poor brain after so painful a year, painful in so many ways, hard in toil, and cruel in emotions, full of distresses. There was nothing surprising in such an illness. However, though I can, as yet, digest only milk, all is well and I resume my work.
"Illusions Perdues" appears this week. On the 17th I have a meeting to close up all claims from Madame Bêchet and Werdet. So there is one cause of torment the less. I am now going to work on "La Haute Banque" and "César Birotteau," and after that it will be but a small matter to free my pen. All will then be done; and I shall enter upon the execution of my new conventions, which only oblige me to six volumes a year,—to me an oasis from the moment that I have no longer the worry of the financial struggle. As for the fifteen thousand francs I still owe, I can quickly make head against them with a few plays. Besides, I have always hopes of the London affair. But I won't count any more except on that whichis.
Your last letter did me a good for which I thank you; I was in the calm state produced by forced confinement to my bed, and the details of your life delighted me. I think you very happy to be alone. Would you believe that, in spite of my illness, I was more harassed than ever about business? But all will now be pacificated. I shall only have to work, dear monitor. You speak golden words, but they have no other merit than to tell me more elegantly just what I tell myself. Moreover, you make me out little defects which I have not, to give yourself the pleasure of scolding me. No one is less extravagant than I; no one is willing to live with more economy.But reflect that I work too much to busy myself with certain details, and, in short, that I had rather spend five to six thousand francs a year than marry to have order in my household; for a man who undertakes what I have undertaken either marries to have a quiet existence, or accepts the wretchedness of La Fontaine and Rousseau. For pity's sake, don't talk to me of my want of order; it is the consequence of the independence in which I live, and which I desire to keep.
To rid myself on this theme of all solicitation on the part of those, men and women, who worry me about it, I have given out my programme, and declared that, although I have passed the fatal age of thirty-six, I wish a wife in keeping with my years, of the highest nobility, educated, witty, rich, as able to live in a garret as to play the part of ambassadress, without having to endure the impertinences of Vienna—like a person you have known—and willing to live without complaint as the wife of a poor book-workman; also I must be specially adored, espoused for my defects even more than for my few good qualities; and this wife must be grand enough, through intelligence, to understand that in the dual life there must be that sacred liberty by which all proofs of affection are voluntary and not the effect of duty (inasmuch as I abhor duty in matters of the heart); and, finally, that when this phœnix, this only woman who can render the author of the "Physiologie du Mariage" unhappy, is found,—I'll think about it. So now I live in perfect tranquillity; yet not without my griefs. When the brain and the imagination are both wearied, my life is more difficult than it was in the past. There's a blank that saddens me. The adored friend is here no longer. Every day I have occasion to deplore the eternal absence. Would you believe that for six months I have not been able to go to Nemours to bring away the things that ought to be in my sole possession? Every week I say to myself, "Itshall be this week!" That sorrowful fact paints my life as it is. Ah! how I long for the liberty of going and coming. No, I am in the galleys!
Yes, I am sorry you have not written me your opinion of "La Vieille Fille." I resumed my work this morning; I am obeying the last words that Madame de Berny wrote me: "I can die; I am sure that you have upon your brow the crown I wished to see there. The 'Lys' is a sublime work, without spot or flaw. Only, the death of Madame de Mortsauf did not need those horrible regrets; they injure that beautiful letter which she wrote."
Therefore, to-day I have piously effaced about a hundred lines, which, according to many persons, disfigure that creation. I have not regretted a single word, and each time that my pen was drawn through one of them never was heart of man more deeply stirred. I thought I saw that grand and sublime woman, that angel of friendship, before me, smiling as she smiled to me when I used a strength so rare,—the strength to cut one's own limb off and feel neither pain nor regret in correcting, in conquering one's self.
Oh!cara, continue to me those wise, pure counsels, so disinterested! If you knew with what religion I believe in what true friendship says.
This counsel came to me several days after the enormous labour those figures, enormous themselves, necessitated. I waited six months till my own critical judgment could be exercised on my work. I re-read the letter, weeping; then I took up my work and I saw that the angel was right. Yes, the regrets should be only suspected; it is the Abbé Dominis, and not Henriette, who should say the words that say all: "Her tears accompanied the fall of the white roses which crowned the head of that married Jephtha's daughter, now fallen one by one." Religion alone can express, chastely, poetically, with the melancholy of the Orient, this situation. Besides,what would be the good of Madame de Mortsauf's testament if she expressed herself so savagely at death? It was true in nature, but false in a figure so idealized. There are several defects still in the work. They are in Félix. The animosity of people in society has pointed them out to me; but they are very difficult to obviate. I strive to; the character of Félix is sacrificed in this work; much adroitness is needed to re-establish it. I shall succeed, however.
Cara, I have still at least seven years' labour, if I wish to achieve the work undertaken. I need some courage to embrace such a life, especially when it is deprived of the pleasures which a man desires most. Age advances! I have in my soul a little of the rage that I have just taken out from that of Madame de Mortsauf.
Adieu; I shall now re-read your last two letters and see if I have in this—so rambling in consequence of interruptions—forgotten to answer any of your points; and I will see, too, if I have any fact to tell you about my life.
We have suddenly lost Gérard. You will never have known his wonderful salon. What homage was rendered to the genius, to the goodness of heart, to the mind of that man at his funeral. All the most illustrious persons were present; the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés could not hold them. The first gentleman [the Duc de Maillé] and the first painter of King Charles X. have quickly followed their master. There is something touching in that.
I shall write to you on the day when I finish the terrible twelve volumes I have written between our first meeting at Neufchâtel and this year. Why can I not go and see you, that I might close this work, as I began it, in the light of your noble forehead!
Adieu; Colonel Frankowski is still here. That grieves me, because you will not have your prettycassoletteforNew Year's day. It is on my mantelpiece for the last three months. Well,addio; grant heaven that I may go to Germany on the same business that may take me to England. I shall know as to this in February. I should not consider a matter of two hundred leagues. If I go to Stuttgard I shall go to Wierzchownia.
You know all I have to say to your little world of the Ukraine. Good health above all; that is the prayer of those who have just been ill.
Paris, February 10, 1837.
I have received your last sad letter, in which you tell me of the illness and convalescence of M. Hanski from the prostration of the grippe. I have, as to my own health, barring all danger however, the same thing to tell you. Nearly the whole of my month of January was taken up by an attack of very intense cholerine, which deprived me of all energy and all my faculties. Then, after getting over that semi-ridiculous illness, I was seized by the grippe, which kept me ten days in bed.
So you have been practising the profession of nurse,cara, and M. Hanski has been ill to the point of keeping his bed for a long time,—he who went into the deserts of the Ukraine to lead a patriarchal life. If I joke, it is because I imagine that by the time my letter reaches you his convalescence will be over and all will be well with him, and with you—for I am not ignorant of the nursing you have just done; I know how fatiguing it is. In such cares about a patient's bed, the limbs swell and cause dull pains which affect the heart; I have nursed my mother.
Before my grippe I had, luckily, finished the last Part of the "Études de Mœurs," or God knows what difficulties I should have fallen into! So that brings the first twelve volumes of the "Études," begun at the time of my visit to Geneva in 1834, to an end in January, 1837. Iam much grieved not to be able to make you a little visit after this accomplishment of one of my hardest tasks. You accompanied "Eugénie Grandet" with a smile; I would have liked to see the same smile on "Illusions Perdues"—on the beginning and on the end of the way.
You are very right, you who know the empire that my work exercises on my life, to let drop into a bottomless abyss all the follies that are said about me, whether they come from a princess or a fish-woman. Did not some one come and ask me if it was true I had married one of the Ellslers, a dancer,—I, who cannot endure any of the people who set foot upon the stage? But here, in Paris, in the same town with me, not two steps away from me, they tell the most unheard-of things about me. Some describe me as a monster of dissoluteness and debauchery, others as a dangerous and vindictive animal whom every one should attack. I could not tell you all they say of me. I am a spendthrift; sometimes a lax man, sometimes an intractable one.
But let us leave such nonsense; it is enough that it weighs on me; it would be too much to let it weigh upon our dear correspondence.
So now I am delivered from the most odious contract and the most odious people in the world. The last Part was published a few days ago. It contains "La Grande Bretèche" rearranged; that is to say, better framed than it was originally, and accompanied by two other adventures. Also "La Vieille Fille," one of my best things (in my opinion), though it has roused a cloud of feuilletons against me. But Du Bousquier is as fine an image of the men who managed affairs under the Republic and became liberals under the Restoration as the Chevalier de Valois is of the old remains of the Louis XV. period. Mademoiselle Cormon is a very original creation, in my opinion. That is one of the figures which are almostunapproachable for the novelist, on account of the few salient points they offer to take hold of. But difficulties like these are little appreciated, and I resign myself in such cases to having worked for my own ideas.
"Illusions Perdues" is the introduction to a much more extensive work. These barbarous editors, impelled by money considerations, insist on their three hundred and sixty pages, no matter what they are. "Illusions Perdues" required three volumes; there are still two to do, which will be called "Un Grand Homme de Province à Paris;" this will, later, be joined to "Illusions Perdues," when the first twelve volumes are reprinted; just as the "Cabinet des Antiques" will conclude "La Vieille Fille."
I am now going to take up the last thirteen volumes of the "Études de Mœurs," which I hope will be finished in 1840.
You will notice a considerable lapse of time between my last letter and this one; it was taken up by the sufferings (without danger) which my two little consecutive illnesses caused me. I thought one would save me from the other, but it was no such thing. I am still very miserable; the cough is a horrid difficulty; it shakes me and kills me.
I dine to-morrow with Madame Kisseleff, who has promised to make me know Madame Z..., of whom you have told me so much that I asked for this dinner, before my grippe, at a beautiful ball given by Madame Appony to which I went. It is the only one, for I go nowhere—except to Madame Appony's great soirées, and to those seldom. I do not even go to the Opera, and I do not dine out, except at certain dinners which cannot be refused without losing supporters some day; like those of the Sardinian ambassador, for instance. But except for such things I have not been ten times in six months outside of my own home.
February 12.
My letter has been interrupted for two days; I have had business to attend to, for I have still enormous difficulties about the remainder of the debts I have not been able to pay off.
Madame Z... was not at the dinner. She was taken with grippe the night before. This grippe stops everything. There are more than five hundred thousand persons gripped. I have it still. We had the adorer of Madame P..., Bernhard, Madame Hamelin, the Pole who is seeking treasures by somnambulism, and a young relation of Madame Kisseleff who squints badly, also Saint-Marsan. The dinner was quite gay.
I had met Madame Kisseleff the previous evening at the Princess Schonberg's. A discussion arose about beautiful hands, and Madame Kisseleff said to me that she and I knew the most beautiful hands in the world; she meant yours, and I had the fatuity to colour up to my ears, very innocently, for I find in you so many beautiful qualities, and something so magnificent in head and figure, that I could not say at that moment what your hands were like, and I coloured at my own ignorance. I only know that they are small and plump.
I am writing at this moment, with fury, a thing for the stage, forthereis my salvation. I must live by the stage and my prose concurrently. It is called "La Première Demoiselle." I have chosen it for my début because it is wholly bourgeoise. Picture to yourself a house in the rue Saint-Denis (like La Maison du Chat qui pelote), in which I shall put a dramatic and tragic interest of extreme violence. No one has yet thought of bringing the adultery of the husband on the stage, and my play is based on that grave matter of our modern civilization. His mistress is in the house. No one has ever thought of making a female Tartuffe; and the mistress will be Tartuffe in petticoats; but the empire ofla premièredemoiselleover the master will be much easier to conceive than that of Tartuffe over Orgon, for the means of supremacy are much more natural and comprehensible.
In juxtaposition with these two passionate figures, there are an oppressed mother and two daughters equally victims to the perfidious tyranny ofla première demoiselle[forewoman]. The elder daughter thinks it wise to cajole the forewoman, who has her supporter in the house, for the bookkeeper loves her sincerely. The tyranny is so odious to the mother and daughters that the younger daughter, from a principle of heroism, desires to deliver her family by immolating herself. She determines to poison the tyrant; nothing stops her. The attempt fails, but the father, who sees to what extremities his children will go, sees also that the forewoman cannot live under his roof, and that, in consequence of this attempt, all family bonds are broken. He sends her away; but, in the fifth act, he finds it so impossible to live without this woman that he takes a portion of his fortune, leaves the rest to his wife, and elopes withla première demoiselleto America.
Those are the main features of the play. I do not speak of the details, though they are, I think, as original as the characters, which have not been, to my knowledge, in any other play. There is a scene of the family judgment on the young girl; there is the scene of the separation, etc.
I hope to finish it by March 1 and to see it played early in May. On its success my journey will largely depend; for the day when I owe nothing I shall have that liberty of going and coming for which I have sighed so long.
I await with keen impatience for another letter to tell me how you are, you and M. Hanski. As soon as I have ended my work and my deplorable affairs you shall know it; I will tell you if I am satisfied with my play and withmy last compositions, which are now to be done, and will take my nights and days for two months, for I must immediately do for the "Figaro" "César Birotteau" and for the "Presse" "La Haute Banque,"—two books that are quite important.
Addio, cara.Be always confident in your ideas; walk with courage in your own way. It seems to me that all trials have their object and their reward; otherwise, human life would have no meaning. As for me, the last pleasure I told you of—the coming of that friend so unexpectedly—proved to me that the sufferings through which I have passed were the price of that great pleasure. In all lives there must be such things.
Adieu; I send you this time a precious autograph, Lamartine; you will see that the verses are so chosen that they will not be ridiculous in a collection.
Florence, April 10, 1837.
In one month I have travelled very rapidly through part of France, one side of Switzerland, to Milan, Venice, Genoa, and after being detained by inadvertence in quarantine, here I am for the last two days in Florence, where, before seeing anything whatever, I rushed to Bartolini to see your bust. This was chiefly the object of this last stage of my journey, for I must be in Paris ten days hence. The desire to see Venice, and my quarantine made me spend more time than I could allow on that trip, and also made me regret not having gone to you. But the season [the condition of the roads] did not permit it, nor my finances.
The moment the publication of the last part of the "Études de Mœurs" was over, my strength suddenly collapsed. I had to distract my mind; and I foresee it will be so every fourth or fifth month. My health is detestable, disquieting; but I tell this only to you. My mind feels the effect of it. I am afraid of not being able tofinish my work. Everywhere the want of happiness pursues me, and takes from me the enjoyment of the finest things. Venice and Switzerland are the two creations, one human, the other divine, which seem to me, until now, to be without any comparison, and to stand outside of all ordinary data. Italy itself seems to me a land like any other.
I have travelled so fast that nowhere had I time to write to you. My thoughts belonged to you wholly, but I felt a horror of an inkstand and my pen. The loss I have met with is immense. The void it leaves might be filled by apresentfriendship, but afar, in spite of your letters, grief assails me at all hours, especially when at work. That other soul which counselled me, which saw all, which was always the point of departure of so many things, is lacking to me. I begin to despair of any happy future. Between that soul, absent for evermore, and the hopes to which I cling in some sweet hours, there is, believe me, an abyss above which I bend incessantly, and often the vertigo of misfortune mounts to my head. Every day bears away with it some shred of that gaiety which enabled me to surmount so many difficulties. This journey is a sad trial. I am alone, without strength.
You will probably receive my statue in Carrara marble (half-nature, that is, about three feet high, and marvellously like me) before the portrait of that rascal Boulanger, who, after the Exhibition, still wants three months to make the copy. I am vexed. He has five good paying portraits and an order for Versailles of one hundred and twenty feet of painting, which absorb him, and, as a friend, he makes me wait. So it may be that I shall bring the portrait to you myself; for, as I see it is impossible for me to work more than four months together, I shall start for the Ukraine in August, through Tyrol and Hungary, returning by Dresden.
I have a thousand things to tell you. But first, inreturn for my statue, I beg M. Hanski to send me a little line authorizing Bartolini to make me a copy of your bust. If M. Hanski will grant me this permission, I shall ask Bartolini to make it half size, so as to put it on my table in the study where I write. That dimension is the one in which my statue is made, and all artists, Bartolini himself, think it more favorable for physiognomy; it has more expression. It is better for the imagination to enlarge a head than for the eyes to see it in its exact proportions.
My statue has been a work of affection, and it bears the stamp of it. It was done in Milan by an artist named Puttinati; he would take nothing for it. I had great trouble to pay even the costs and the marble. But I shall take him to Paris with me; I will show him Paris and order a group of Séraphita rising to heaven between Wilfrid and Minna. The pedestal shall be made of all the species and terrestrial things of which she is the product. I shall put aside two thousand francs a year during the three years of its execution, and that will suffice to pay for it.
Venice, which I saw for only five days, two of which were rainy, enraptured me. I do not know if you ever noticed on the Grand Canal, just after the Palazzo Fini, a little house with two gothic windows; the whole facade being pure gothic.[1]Every day I made them stop before it, and often I was moved to tears. I conceived the happiness that two persons might obtain,—living there together, apart from all the world. Switzerland is costly, but in Venice one needs so little money to live! The price of the house would not be more than two years' rent of the Villa Diodati, which you admired so much on account of Lord Byron. It would just suffice for a little household, such as that of a poor poet, busy in the hours he must ravish from felicity, to keep thatfelicity ever equal in its strength. The summers could be passed on the Lake of Garda in a house as tiny. Twelve thousand francs a year would give this luxury. May the angel who so fatally has departed forgive me, but, now that all is over, I may say to you that the happiness to which Nature puts an end in our lifetime is not complete happiness. Twenty years, and more, of difference in age is too great. We ought to be able to grow old together; and it was permissible in me, before that house, to wish for the years that I once had, but with a woman who would be likeher, with youth added.
The future and the past are melted thus into one emotion, which is something that of Tantalus, for I have the conviction that I alone am an obstacle to that beautiful life. My engagements are, for at least two years to come, a barrier of honour; and when I think that in two years I shall be forty, and that until that age all my life will have been toil, toil that uses up and destroys, it is difficult to believe that I can ever be the object of a passion. Yes, the ice that study heaps about us may be preservative, but each thought casts snow upon our heads; and evening finds us with no flowers in our hands. Ah! believe me, a poor poet as sincerely loving as I shed bitter tears before that little house.
Yes, I cannot wrong Madame Delannoy, that second mother, who has intrusted to me as much as twenty-six thousand francs, nor my own mother whose life is mortgaged on my pen, nor those gentlemen who have just invested in my inkstand nearly seventy thousand francs. Ah! if I could win for myself two months of tranquillity at Wierzchownia, where I might do one or two fine plays, all my life would be changed! Those two months, so precious, I have just spent, you will tell me, in travel. Yes, but I started only because I was without ideas, without strength, my brain exhausted, my soul dejected, worn-out with my last struggles, which, believe me, weredreadful, horrible! There came a day of despair when I went to get a passport to Russia. There seemed nothing for me but to ask you for shelter for a year or two, abandoning to fools and enemies my reputation, my conscience, my life, which they would have rent and blasted until the day that I returned to triumph. But had they known where I was—and they would have known—what would have been said! That prospect stopped me. I can own it to you, now that the tempest is lulled, and I have only a few more efforts to make to reach tranquillity. During this month, though my soul is not refreshed, at least my brain is rested. I hope, on my return, that "César Birotteau," the thirddizain, and "La Haute Banque" may lift my name to the stars, higher than before. I begin to have nostalgia for my inkstand, my study, my proofs. That which caused me nausea before I came away now smiles to me. Moreover, the memory of that little house in Venice will give me courage; it has made me conceive that after my liberation fortune will signify nothing; that I shall have enough by writing one book a year,—and that I may then unite both work and happiness in that Villa Diodati on the water!
[1]Palazzo Contarini-Fasān.—TR.
[1]Palazzo Contarini-Fasān.—TR.
April 11.
I have just seen several of thesalasin the Pitti. Oh! that portrait of Margherita Doni by Raffaelle! I stood confounded before it. Neither Titian, nor Rubens, nor Tintoret, nor Velasquez—no brush can approach such perfection. I also saw the Pensiero, and I understood your admiration. I have had much pleasure in looking at what, two years ago, you admired. I caught up your thoughts. To-morrow I am going to the Medici gallery, though I have not fully seen the Pitti; I perceive that one ought to stay months in Florence, whereas I have but hours. Economy requires that I return by Livorno, Genoa, Milan, and the Splugen. That is the shortestroute in reality, though the longest to the eye; for one can go from Florence to Milan in thirty-six hours; and from Milan by the Splugen there are but eighty relays to Paris. By this route I can see Neufchâtel, and I own I have a tender affection for the street and the courtyard where I had the happiness of meeting you. I shall go and see the Île Saint-Pierre and the Crêt, and your house; after which I shall take that route through the Val de Travers which seemed to me so beautiful on my way to Neufchâtel.
I am kept here at the mercy of a steamboat which may call for me to-morrow or six days hence; it is very irregular. If I had not been detained for this horrible quarantine in a shocking lazaretto (which I could not have imagined as a prison for brigands), I should have had enough time to see Florence well. I went yesterday to the Cascine, where you took your walks; but the day was not fine. Bad weather has pursued me, everywhere it has snowed and rained; but my troubles began by losing my travelling companion. I was to have had Théophile Gautier, that man whose mind so pleases you; he was to share with me the costs of the journey and write a pendant to his "Voyage en Belgique;" but the necessity of doing the Exhibition, rendering an account of all that spoilt canvas in the Louvre, obliged him to remain in Paris. Italy has lost by it; for he is the only man capable of comprehending her and saying something fresh about her; but when I make the journey again he will come. We will choose our time better.
I have met Frankowski twice, once in Milan and again in Venice; he will take to you my New-Year's souvenir, or else he will send it to you. Each time that I have seen him the acquaintance ripens. I think him a man of honour and high integrity. He is a Pole of thevieille roche; his sentiments are frank. You could, that is, M. Hanski could do him a great service. You have property, I think, that is difficult to manage, and which, until now,has been badly managed by unfaithful stewards. Well, I think this brave colonel does not know where to turn for a living. He came to Paris to see what he could do with a novel. A man must be at the end of his hopes to land himself in a foreign country where publishers are refusing two or three hundred manuscripts a year. He asked me for a letter to M. de Metternich,—as if I could do anything for him with the prince, whom I never saw, as you know. However delicate such business is, if M. Hanski is thinking to send an honest man to manage his distant property and make it profitable, giving an honourable share to him who would bring it under cultivation, he might save a married man who, I think, despairs of his present position, and would blow his brains out rather than fail in the sternest honour. In case M. Hanski should think of trying this colonel, write me a line; I will then write to Frankowski to know if the place suits him; and if he answers affirmatively, I will give him a note for M. Hanski. Besides, the time this correspondence would take brings me to the period of my visit to Poland, and he could be useful to me as a guide in your country. I have a conviction that M. Hanski would do a good business for himself in doing this good action. I have had means of studying the colonel; and besides, M. Hanski is too prudent not to study his compatriot himself. When you see Frankowski, don't speak to him of the letter he asked of me for Metternich, for he asked it in a letter that was mad with despair, and I have known so well the despair of an honest man struggling against misfortune that I divined everything. I hope that this idea of mine may reach you in time. But, in all such cases, one should always save a man of honour the terrible shock of an interest caused only by compassion. This sentiment, in me, is stripped of what makes it so wounding; but others are not expected to know that. If all the world knew my heart, of what value would be the opening of it to those Ilove? So after explaining all this to you, you will read it to M. Hanski, and he will do what he thinks proper. But, in any case, it would be better to find an honest man to manage his estates well than to sell them; for after the late rise in value of the lands of Europe there is no doubt that those who possess them, in whatever part of Europe they may be, will have in the course of some years an enormous capital.
Not knowing that I should be detained in quarantine, and thinking to be absent only one month, I ordered my letters to be kept for me; so that I am without news of you since the last of February. Do you know, this seemed so hard to me that I inquired at Genoa if there was a vessel going to Odessa; they told me it took a month to go from Genoa to Odessa. Then I gazed into the sky at the point where the Ukraine must be, and I sent it a sorrowful farewell. At that moment I was capable, had it taken but twelve days to go to Odessa, of going to see you and not returning to Paris without my play. But then my debts, my obligations came back to my memory. What a life! Fame, when I have it, and if I have it, can never be a compensation for all my privations and all my sufferings!
I saw yesterday at La Pergola, a Princess Radziwill and a Princess Galitzin (who is not Sophie). There seem to be a good many Princesses Radziwill and Galitzin! There was also a Countess Orloff, who used to be an actress in Paris under the name of Wentzell. I hoped to enjoy my dear incognito; but, as at Milan and at Venice, I was recognized by strangers. Also I met the husband of a cousin of Madame de Castries, and Alexandre de Périgord, son of the Duc de Dino. Happily, I came to Florenceen polisson, as they used to say for the trips to Marly. I have neither clothes nor linen nor anything suitable to go into society, and so I preserve my dear independence.
April 13.
I have seen the gallery of the Medici, but in a hurry. I must come back here if I want to study art. A letter from the consul at Livorno, just received, tells me there will be no steamer till the 20th, and I must be in Paris from the 20th to 25th. So there is nothing for me to do but to take the mail-cart, and I leave in a few hours. I close my letter, which I would like to make longer, but will write again at Milan, through which I pass and where I shall stop two days, for I go by Como and the Saint-Gothard.
Adieu,cara contessina. I hope that all is well and that I shall find good news of you in Paris. At this moment of writing, you ought to have received my little souvenirs, if Frankowski is a faithful man. In a few months I shall have the happiness of seeing you, and that hope will render life and time the easier to bear. Do not forget to remember me to all, and permit your moujik to send you the expression—not new, but ever increasing in strength—of his devoted sentiments and tenderest thoughts.
Paris, May 10, 1837.
Here I am, back in Paris. My health is perfect, and my brain so much refreshed that it seems as though I had never written anything. I found three long letters from you which are delightful to me. I fished them out of the two hundred which awaited me and read them in the bath I took to unlimber me after my fatiguing journey; and certainty, I count that hour as the most delightful of all my trip. Before beginning my work, I am going to give myself the festival of a long talk with you.
In the first place,cara carina, put into that beautiful forehead, which shines with such sublime intelligence, that I have blind confidence in your literary judgment,and that I make you, in that respect, the heiress of the angel I have lost, and that what you write to me becomes the subject of long meditations. I now await your criticisms on "La Vieille Fille;" such as the dear conscience I once had, whose voice will ever echo in my ears, knew how to make them; that is to say, read the work over and point out to me, page by page, in the most exact manner, the images and the ideas that displease you; telling me whether I should take them out wholly and replace them, or modify them. Show neither pity nor indulgence; go boldly at it.Cara, should I not be most unworthy of the friendship you deign to feel for me if in our intimate correspondence I allowed the petty vanity of an author to affect me? So I entreat you, once for all, to suppress long eulogies. Tell me on three tones: that is good, that is fine, that is magnificent; you will then have a positive, comparative, and superlative, which are so grandiose in their line that I blush to offer them for your incense-pot. But they are still so far below the gracious praise you sometimes offer me that they are modest—though they might seem singular to a third person. I beg you therefore to be concise in praise and prolix in criticism; wait for reflection; do not write to me after the first reading. If you knew how much critical genius there is in what you said to me about my play you would be proud of yourself. But you leave that sentiment to your friends. Yes, Planche himself would not have been wiser; you have made me reflect so much that I am now employed in remodelling my ideas about it. Remember,carina, that I am sincere in all things, and especially in art; that I have none of that paternal silliness which ties so cruel a bandage round the eyes of many authors, and that if "La Vieille Fille" is bad, I shall have the courage to cut it out of my work.
I laughed much at what you write of the three heiresses of Warsaw, and at the tale you tell me, which was alsotold and invented in Milan. There they maintainedmordicusthat I had just married an immensely rich heiress, the daughter of a dealer in silks. There is no absurd story of which I am not made the hero, and I will amuse you heartily by telling them all to you when I see you.
I received M. Hanski's letter two days ago from the Rothschilds, and the five hundred francs were at Rougemont de Löwenberg's. The portrait has just been returned from the Exhibition. Boulanger will make the copy in a few weeks and the picture will soon be with you. You are to have the original, which has had the utmost success at the Salon; many critics consider it among the best of our modern works, and it has given rise to arguments which must have enchanted Boulanger. I am very sorry that the admirable frame I unearthed in Touraine cannot adorn your gallery; but there is no use in opposing the rigours of the custom-house. The statue will reach you about the same time. You will, I dare say, order a little corner closet on which to place the statue, and in it you can keep the enormous collection of manuscripts you will receive from me; so that, knowing how much you have of the man's heart, you will have his labours as well. I shall then be wholly at Wierzchownia.
Your three letters, read all at once, bathed my soul in the purest and sweetest affections, as the native waters of the Seine refreshed my body; it was more to me to read again and again those pages full of your adorable little writing than to rest myself.
I have made a horribly beautiful return journey; but it is good to have made it. It was like our retreat from Russia. Happy he who has seen the Beresina and come out, safe and sound, upon his legs. I crossed the Saint-Gothard with fifteen feet of snow on the path I took; the road not even distinguishable bythe tall stone posts which mark it. The bridges across the mountain torrents were no more visible than the torrents themselves. I came near losing my life several times in spite of the eleven guides who were with me. We crossed the summit at one o'clock in the morning by a sublime moonlight; and I saw the sunrise tint the snow. A man must see that once in his life. I came down so rapidly that in half an hour I passed from twenty-five degrees below freezing (which it was on the summit) to I don't know what degree of heat in the valley of the Reuss. After the horrors of the Devil's bridge, I crossed the Lake of the Four Cantons at four in the afternoon. It has been a splendid journey; but I must do it again in summer, to see all those noble sights under a new aspect. You see that I renounced my purpose of going by Berne and Neufchâtel. I returned by Lucerne and Bâle, having come by the Ticino and Como. I thought that route the most economical of time and money, whereas, on the contrary, I spent enormously of both. But I had the worth of my money; it was indeed a splendid journey; my excursion has been like a dream, but a dream in which presided the face of my faithful companion, of her of whom I have already told you the pleasure I had in seeing her, andwho did not suffer from the cold[her miniature].
Here I am, returned to my work. I am about to bring out immediately, one after the other: "César Birotteau," "La Femme Supérieure;" I shall finish "Illusions Perdues," then "La Haute Banque," and "Les Artistes." After that, I shall fly to the Ukraine, where, perhaps, I shall have the happiness to write a play which will end my financial agonies. Such is my plan of campaign,cara contessina.
May 11.
I have been very egotistical. I began by speaking of myself, answering the first things that struck me in your letters, and I ought to have said at once how glad I was to know you relieved of the deplorable but sublime duty of nurse, which you fulfilled so courageously and successfully. The reproach you make me for harshness in a sentence of mine, I feel very much. That sentence, believe me, was only the expression of my desire to see you perfect; and perhaps that desire was rather senseless, for it may be that contrasts are necessary in a character. But, however it is, I will never complain again, even when you accuse me unjustly, reflecting that an affection as sincere and as old as ours can be troubled only on the surface.
We are going no doubt to bring out a new edition of the "Études Philosophiques," the one in which is "Les Ruggieri." I have just re-read that fragment, and I see that it shows the effect of the state of anguish in which I was when I wrote it, and the feebleness of a brain which had produced too much. It needs much retouching. I do not know what has been thought of that poor preface to a book called "Illusions Perdues." I am going now to write the continuation and complete the work.
Your monotonous life tempts me much; and especially after travelling about do your tales of it please me. I owe to you the sole Homeric laugh I have had for a year, when I read of your fib to the Countess Marie, and when I read her letter so full of oratorical sugarplums. I do not think that woman true, and I really don't know how to answer her, for I am as stupid when I have nothing in my heart as I often am when my heart is full.
May 13.
I have now been at home eight days, and for eight days I have been making vain efforts to resume my work. Myhead refuses to give itself to any intellectual labour; I feel it to be full of ideas, but nothing comes out. I am incapable of fixing my thought; of compelling it to consider a subject under all aspects and deciding its march. I don't know when this imbecility will cease; but perhaps it is only my broken habit that is in fault. When a workman drops his tools for a time, his hand gets divorced. He must renew the fraternity that comes from habit, that links the hand to the tool, as the tool to the hand.
May 14.
I went last night to see "La Camaraderie," and I think the play is immensely clever. Scribe knows the business, but he does not know art; he has talent, but he will never have genius. I met Taylor, the royal comissioner to the Théâtre-Français, who has just brought from Spain, for a million francs, four hundred Spanish pictures, very fine ones. In a very few minutes it was arranged between us that he should undertake to have accepted, rehearsed, and played a piece of mine at the Théâtre-Français, without my name being known until the time comes to name the author; also to give me as many rehearsals as I want, and to spare me all the annoyances which accompany the reception and representation of a play. Now, which shall I write? Oh! how many conversations with you I need; for you are the only person—now that I am widowed of that soul which uplifted, followed, strengthened my attempts—the only one in whom I have faith. Yes, persons whose hearts are as noble as their birth, who have contracted the habit of noble sentiments and of things lofty in all ways, they alone are my critics. It is now some time since I have accustomed myself to think with you, to put you as second in my ideas, and you would hardly believe what sweetness I find in again beginning, after this travelling interregnum, to write to you the life of my thought—foras to that of my heart I have no need; in spite of certain melancholy passages, you know well that souls high-poised change little. Like the summits I have just seen, the clouds may sometimes cover them, the day may light them variously; but their snow remains pure and dazzling.
I went yesterday to see Boulanger. The picture has come back to him from the Exhibition. He wants another three weeks to make the copy which I give to my mother, but the canvas will start for Berditchef early in June, so that you will get it before the statue.
Adieu, for to-day. I must examine my thoughts about the stage, and start upon a journey through the dramatic limbo, to find out to what I must give life or death. This affair is of the highest importance to my financial interests, and is very serious for my reputation as a writer. To-morrow I will close my letter and send it. If I failed to write to you during my journey you will see by the frequency of my letters that I am repairing omissions.
May 15.
This is the eve of my fête-day, still my poor fête-day, for my financial affairs are not beauteous. The law about the National Guard will oblige me to make a violent move,—that of living in the country two leagues from Paris; but this time I will live in a house by myself. I shall thus be obliged very seriously to work my sixteen hours a day for three or four months; but at least (if the friendly indorsements I gave to that poor stupid Werdet do not cause trouble) I am all but easy in mind on financial matters.
Adieu. You will receive still another letter this week. Many tender things to you and my remembrances to all about you. I reply this week to M. Hanski.
Paris, May 20-29, 1837.
I write to you on rising, for this is my birthday, and I shall be all day long with my sister and mother.
Mon Dieu!how I should like to have news of you; but I am deprived of it by my own fault, for you have put thelex talionisinto our correspondence by not writing to me when I do not write to you. But that is very wrong. I am a man, and subject to crises. At this moment, for instance, Werdet has gone into bankruptcy, and I am summoned to pay the indorsements I gave him out of kindness, just as he had given some to me; but with this difference, that I have paid all the notes he endorsed for me, and he has not paid those I guaranteed for him. So now I must work night and day to get out of the embarrassment into which I have put myself.
You could never believe how crushing this last misfortune is. My business agents all tell me now is the time to make a journey.
Make a journey!—when I owe to Girardin, for the "Presse," "La Haute Banque" and "La Femme Supérieure;" to the "Figaro," "César Birotteau," and "Les Artistes;" to Schlesinger, for the "Gazette Musicale," "Gambara;" and the end of the thirddizainto Werdet's capitalist,—six works, all clamoured for by the four persons to whom I owe them, and which represent fifteen thousand francs, ten thousand of which have already been paid.
To pay my most pressing debts. I took all the money my new publishers gave me, and they only begin their monthly payments to me when I give them two unpublished volumes 8vo. I need at least three months to finish the six works named above as due, then three months for their two new volumes; so that here I am for six months without resources and without any means of getting money. Happily, the brain is in good health, thanks to my journey.
This is a bad birthday. I have begun it by dismissingmy three servants and giving up my apartment in the rue des Batailles [Chaillot], though I don't know whether the proprietor will be willing to cancel the lease. And finally, I have heroically resolved to live, if necessary, as I lived in the rue Lesdiguières, and to make an end to a secret misery which is dishonouring to the conscience.
Apropos of misery; I wrote you from Florence under the impression of distresses revealed by one of your countrymen. I beg you not to be vexed with me. Tell M. Hanski that in view of what has just happened to me, I have made the good resolution never to guarantee any one, either financially or morally. I beg him to regard all I said about that man as not said, and, inasmuch as I recommended him through your gracious lips, I beg him to do nothing in his favour. Do not accuse me of carelessness, but of ignorance. Later I will explain by word of mouth the reason of this change. The present makes me alter the past.
May 23.
Boulanger has written me a very free and easy, ungrateful letter, he will not make the copy he engaged to make, which distresses my mother and sister. The packer is at this moment making the case for the original; it leaves in a few days, and I shall address it, according to M. Hanski's letter, to MM. Halperine, at Brody, by diligence, direct; for neither the Rothschilds nor Rougemont de Löwenberg are willing to take charge of so cumbersome a parcel, and the colour-merchant who is packing the canvas, assures me that he has sent the most valuable pictures in this way. That's enough about my effigy. It is one of the finest things of the school. The most jealous painters have admired it. I am glad you will not be disappointed after waiting so long. I shall write you a little line the day I put the parcel in the diligence, and tell you the route it will take.
I have persuaded my mother to go and live two years in Switzerland at Lausanne. The sight of my struggle and that of my brother kills her. She sees us always working without pecuniary result, and she suffers dreadfully without having the material conflict which calls up strength.
If you knew all I have done for Boulanger you would feel the bitterness that fills my soul at this betrayal; for if he had not trifled with me for nearly a year you would have had the portrait six months ago, and it has now become ridiculous.
May 28.
Here I am, as you have often desired to see me. I have broken away from every one, and I go, in a few weeks, to a hidden garret, having blocked all the roads about me. I have been making a recapitulation of my work, and I have enough to do for four years, without, even then, completing all the series of the "Études de Mœurs." My monk's gown must not be a lie. I have but two things which make me live: work, and the hope of finding all my secret desires realized at the close of this toil. To whoever can live by those two potent ideas, life is still grand; and if I do not find again in the solitude to which I return that noble Madame de Berny, whom my sister Laure now calls my Josephine, at least she is not replaced by a Marie-Louise, but by glorious hope, the sole companion of a poet in travail. This journey, in refreshing my brain, rejuvenated me, and gave me back my force; I need it to accomplish my last efforts.
I have just finished a work which is called "Massimilla Doni," the scene of which is in Venice. If I can realize all my ideas as they present themselves in my brain it will be, assuredly, a book as startling as "La Peau de Chagrin," better written, more poetic possibly. I will not tell you anything about it. "Massimilla Doni"and "Gambara" are, in the "Études Philosophiques," the apparition of Music, under the double form ofexecutionandcomposition, subjected to the same trial as Thought in "Louis Lambert:" that is to say, the work and its execution are killed by the too great abundance of the creative principle,—that which dictated to me the "Chef-d'œuvre inconnu" in respect to painting; a study which I rewrote last winter. You will soon receive two Parts of the "Études Philosophiques" in which the work has been tremendous.
I have just finished a little study, entitled "Le Martyr calviniste," which with "Le Secret des Ruggieri" and "Les Deux Rêves" completes my study of the character of Catherine de' Medici. I have begun to write "La Femme Supérieure" for the "Presse," and in a few days I shall have finished "César Birotteau." All this in manuscript only; for, after composition, comes the battle of the proofs. You see that my ideas for the stage are again drowned in the flood of my obligations and my other work.
As soon as the above manuscripts are done I shall go into Berry, to Madame Carraud, and there finish the thirddizain, begun alas! in Geneva and dated from Eaux-Vives and the dear Pré-l'Évêque!
It is now two years since I saw you. So, when my head refuses ideas, when the ink-pot of my brain is empty, and I must have rest, by that time I hope I shall have bought, through privations, the necessary sum for a journey to Poland and to see Wierzchownia this autumn. God grant that I then have a mind free of all care, and that I complete between now and then the books that are to liberate me! Happily, except for a few sums, it is only a question of blackening paper, and that, fortunately, is in my own power. I am anxious to finish the two other volumes which, under the title of "Un Grand homme de Province à Paris" is to complete "Illusions Perdues"of which the introduction alone has appeared. That is, certainly, with "César Birotteau," my greatest work in dimensions.
May 29.
From the way I have started I hope to finish "La Femme Supérieure" in four days. I am stirred by a species of fury to finish the works for which I have already received the money. I live before my table; I leave it only to sleep; I dine there. Never did poet stay thus in a moral world; but yesterday some one told me I was said to be in Germany. I hope that the ridiculous stories spread about me will cease in consequence of the absolute seclusion in which I am about to live. At any rate, the commercial proceedings instituted against me by Werdet's creditors will have this good effect, that, being driven to hide myself, no one can gossip about me. But they will make fantastic tales about my disappearance!
I entreat you not to forget my request relative to corrections of "La Vieille Fille" and, in general, to all you find faulty in my works. I have none but you in the world to do me this friend's service. Be curt in your verdicts. When there was something very bad Madame de Berny never discussed; she wrote, "Bad" or, "Passage to be rewritten." Be, I pray you, my dear star and my literary conscience, as you are in so many other things my guide and my counsellor. You have a sure taste; you have the habit of comparison, because you read everything. This will be, moreover, an occupation in your desert.
Alas! I can only talk to you about myself. I am now without letters from you, delivered over to all sorts of anxieties, because I had the misfortune, in travelling, to leave you a month in silence,—though I wrote to you from Sion in the Valais, and expected to find an answer in Milan on my return from Florence. I have written to Milan, to Prince Porcia, to forward your letter here.
Have the kindness to write to Madame Jeroslas ... that I can more easily go four months hence and lay my homage at her feet than write her a letter at this moment. Seriously, I go to bed with a tired hand. I will send you a page for her in my next letter, though I shall not write you till I can announce the termination of "César Birotteau" and "La Femme Supérieure," the two great thorns I have in my foot at this moment. The thirddizainmay amuse me perhaps at Frapesle, Madame Carraud's house, where I shall live ten days among the flowers, well cared for by her, who is like a sister to me. She is very delicate, very feeble; she will go, too, I foresee it, that fine and noble intellect; and of the three truly grand women whom I have known, you alone will remain. Such friendships are not renewed,cara. Therefore, mine for you grows greater from all my losses, and, I dare to say it, from all the illusions that experience mows down like the flowers of the field. All my recent griefs, that ignoble little treachery of Boulanger, this present misfortune due to my attachment to the weak, all these things cast me with greater force to you, in whom I believe as in God, to whom the troubles of earth drive us back. There are affections that are like great rivers; all flows into them. So the longer I live, the more the river swells; the sea into which it casts itself is death.
I hope that all goes well with you, and that M. Hanski will be so kind as not to be vexed with me if I do not answer his gracious letter; I am so hurried! Tell him all that I would say to him; passing through such an interpreter that which I should write to him will be bettered. Take great care of yourself; after the long night-nursing you have borne, I tremble lest you should be ill; if that should happen, in God's name let me know; I must go and nurse you.
Adieu. I wish you good health, and Anna also. If my theory on human forces is true, you ought to live inthe atmosphere that my soul makes for you by surrounding you with sacred wishes. Would that it were like the thorny hedges placed about private fields, that cattle may neither feed nor trample there. I would that I could thus drive off all griefs, all disappointments, all that herd of worries, pain, and maladies. To you, who give me such strength, would I could return it!
Paris, May 31, 1837.
I have this instant received yours (number 28) of the 12th, written after you received the one I wrote you from Florence. But did you not receive one from Sion? which I do not, however, count as a letter, for there were only fifteen lines on a page. It is clear that some one kept the money for the postage, and read, or burned the letter.Mon Dieu!how vexed I am! I stopped at Sion expressly to write it. You ought to have received it early in March. Let us say no more about it.
I admire the capacity of your intelligence in regard to the person about whom I wrote you from Florence. The reasons that struck your mind struck mine later. But your letter grieves me. Such profound sadness reigns through the religious ideas it expresses. It seems as though you had lost all hope on earth. You ask me to make you confidences as I would to my best friend; but have I not told you all my life? I have often confided too much of my anguish to you, for it did you harm.
This letter comes to me at a bad moment. It has singularly added to the dumb grief that gnaws me and will kill me. I am thirty-eight years old, still crippled by debt, with nought but uncertainty as to my position. Scarcely have I taken two months to rest my brain before I repent them as a crime when I see the evils that have come through my inaction. This precarious life, which might be a spur in youth, becomes at my age an overwhelming burden. My head is turning white, and whatever pleasantthings may be said about it, it is clear that I must soon lose all hope of pleasing. Pure, tranquil, openly avowed happiness, for which I was made, escapes me; I have only tortures and vexations, through which a few rare gleams of blue sky shine.
My works are little understood and little appreciated; they serve to enrich Belgium, but they leave me in poverty. The only friend who came to me at my start in life, who was to me a true mother, has gone to heaven. And you, you write me there are as manyideasas there is distance between us, and you dissuade me from going to see you!
Your letter has done me great harm. Believe me, there is a certain measure of religious ideas beyond which all is vicious. You know what my religion is. I am not orthodox, and I do not believe in the Roman Church. I think that if there is a scheme worthy of our kind it is that of human transformations causing the human being to advance toward unknown zones. That is the law of creations inferior to ourselves; it ought to be the law of superior creations. Swedenborgianism, which is only a repetition in the Christian sense of ancient ideas, is my religion, with the addition which I make to it of the incomprehensibility of God. That said (and I say it to you because I know you to be so truly Roman Catholic that nothing can influence your mind about it), I must surely see more clearly than you see it what your detachment from all things here below conceals, and deplore it if it rests on false ideas. To comfort myself as to this, I have read over a letter in which you told me you wished to be always yourself, to show yourself—in your hours of melancholy, of piety, and of spring-tide returns.
June 1.
Your letter has left long traces upon me, and I can scarcely say what impressions I have had on reading thepart where you separate your readings into profane and religious. There is a whole world between your last but one letter and this letter. You have taken the veil. I am deathly sad.