June 2.
I have begun "La Femme Supérieure" in a manner that promised to finish it in four days, and now it is impossible for me to write a line. My faculties seem unstrung. I had made my mother decide on spending two years in Switzerland to spare her the sight of my struggle, the triumph of which I placed at that date. But she is now ill. Two nephews to bring up, my mother to support, and my work insufficient!—that is one of the aspects of my life. Continual injustice, constant calumny, the betrayal of friends, that is another.[1]The embarrassments into which Werdet's failure flung me, and my new treaty which keeps me in a state of extreme poverty, that is a third. The literary difficulties of what I do and the continuity of toil, that is another. I am worn-out on the four faces of the square by an equal pressure of trouble. If my soul finds the ivory door through which it flees into lands of illusion, dreams of happiness, closed, what will become of it? Solitude, farewell to the world? It is sorrowful for those who live by the heart to have no life possible but that of the brain.
When you receive this letter Boulanger's portrait will be on its way to you; it was packed this week. I wished to have it rolled, but the colour-dealer and a picture-restorer whom I consulted assured me it would go safely in a square box the size of the picture. You will have a fine work, so several painters say. The eyes especially are well rendered, but more in the general physical expression of the worker than with the loving soul of the individual. Boulanger saw the writer, and not the tenderness of the imbecile always taken-in, not the softness of the manbefore the sufferings of others, which made all my miseries come from holding out a helping hand to weaklings in the rut of ill-luck. In order to do a service in 1827 to a working printer, I found myself, in 1829, crushed down under a debt of one hundred and fifty thousand francs and cast, without bread, into a garret. In 1833, just as my pen was giving signs of enabling me to clear my obligations, I connected myself with Werdet; I wanted to make him my only publisher, and in my desire to make him prosper, I signed engagements, so that in 1837, I find myself again with a hundred and fifty thousand francs of debt, and on that account so threatened with arrest that I am obliged to live in hiding. I make myself, as I go along, the Don Quixote of the feeble; I wanted to give courage to Sandeau, and I dropped upon that head four or five thousand francs that would have saved another man! I need a barrier between the world and me; I must content myself with producing without spending; I must shut myself up within a narrow circle, under pain of succumbing.
[1]See Memoir, pp. 231, 232, 329.—TR.
[1]See Memoir, pp. 231, 232, 329.—TR.
June 5.
Yesterday I sent away my three servants; Auguste, whom you have seen, remains, on a salary that my new publishers, the printers, and I pay. He will carry proofs. I am trying to get rid of my apartment rue des Batailles; that of rue Cassini is paid up, and the lease ends October 1 of this year. I must resume the life I led in the rue Lesdiguières: live on little, and work always. Alas! I need a family! Perhaps I will go and settle in some village in Touraine. A garret in Paris is still dangerous.
I have seven years' work before me, counting three works a year like the "Lys," and I shall be forty-five when the principal lines of my work are defined and the portions very nearly filled in. At forty-five one is no longer young, in form at least; one must, to preserve a few fine days, plunge into the ice of complete solitude.
My mind is not tranquil enough to write for the stage. A play is the easiest and the most difficult work for the human mind; either it is a German toy, or an immortal statue, Polichinello or Venus, the "Misanthrope" or "Figaro." The miserable melodramas of Hugo frighten me. I need a whole winter at Wierzchownia to adjust a play, and I have four months of crushing work to do before I can know if I shall have the money, and when and how I shall have it, to enable me to go there.
Perhaps I shall take one of those sublime resolutions which turn life inside out like a glove. That is very possible. Perhaps I shall leave literature, to enrich myself, and take it up later if it suits me to do so; I have been reflecting about this for some days past.
Are you not tired of hearing me ring my song on every key? Does not this continualegotisteryof a man fighting forever in a narrow circle bore you? Say so, because in your letter you seemed disposed to turn away from me, as from a beggar who knows nothing but thePater, and says it over and over again.
Cara, I hold Florence to be a great lady, a glorious city, where we breathe the middle ages; but, as I told you, Venice and Switzerland are two conceptions which resemble nothing. I have not dared to say any harm to you of your bust, because it gave me too much joy to see it. As for the mouth, do not complain of Bartolini; he has made it beautiful and true. Your mouth is one of the sweetest creations I have ever seen; in the bust it has, certainly, the expression your aunt and others blame; but that is only on the surface of the thing. Without your mouth, the forehead would be hydrocephalus. There is an exact balance in the two, between sensations and ideas, between the heart and the brain; there is, above all, in the expression thus blamed, an extreme nobility and infinite sweetness, two attributes which render you adorable to those who know you well.No one has analyzed your head and face more than I. The last time that I could study you, and have enough coolness to do so, was in Daffinger's studio [in Vienna], and it was only there that I detected on your lips a few faint signs of cruel passion. Do not be astonished at those two words: it is such indications that give to your mouth the expression those ladies complain of; but such evidences are repressed by goodness. You have something violent in your first impulse, but reflection, kindness, gentleness, nobleness, follow instantly. I do not regard this as a defect. The first impulse has its cause, and I will tell it to you in your chimney-corner at Wierzchownia, if you think to ask me; and I will give you proofs of what I say about you, examples taken from what I saw you do in Vienna—in the affair of the letter, for instance, which was written under one such impulse. If you were exclusively good you would be a sheep—which is too insipid.
Well, adieu,cara; a thousand tender regards,quand mêmemotto of the friends of the throne. Many prettinesses to the pretty Anna for her thought and for herself. I shall write this week to M. Hanski.
Paris, July 8, 1837.
I just receive your number 29, in which there is an "at last!" which makes me tremble, dear, for it is now nearly a month since I wrote to you.
The explanation of my silence is in "La Femme Supérieure," which fills seventy-five columns of the "Presse" and which was written in a month, day by day. I sat up thirty nights of that damned month, and I don't believe that I slept more than sixty-odd hours in the course of it; I never had time to trim my beard, and I, the enemy of all affectation, now wear the goat's beard of La Jeune France. After writing this letter I must take a bath, not without terror, for I am afraid of relaxingthe fibres which are strung up to the highest tension; and I must begin again on "César Birotteau," which is growing ridiculous on account of its delays. Besides, it is now ten months since the "Figaro" paid me for it.
Nothing can express to you the sweeping onward of such mad work. At any price I must have my freedom of mind, for, another year of this life, and I shall die at my oar. I have done during this month, "Les Martyrs ignorés" "Massimilla Doni," and "Gambara." When I have finished "César Birotteau" I must then do "La Maison Nucingen et Compagnie" and another book, which will bring me to the end of these miseries that give me so much toil and no money. I found time to see about the packing of that portrait, which you will surely have, I think, before this letter reaches you.
The long delay of your number 29 has added to all my troubles the fear of some illness in your home; you cannot think what anxiety that puts into my mind. And I fear so much lest some breath of poisoned slander, some calumny may reach you, lest the sorrows of my life may have wearied you, that the failure of your letters puts me in a fever.
I will not talk to you again of the difficulties of my life, for the affair you know of has rendered them enormous and insurmountable. While I work night and day to free my pen, my new publishers give me nothing until I work for them; so that I must run in debt, and all my money worries will begin again. Werdet's failure has killed me. I imprudently indorsed for him, I was sued, and I was forced to hide and defend myself. The men whose duty it is to arrest debtors discovered me, thanks to treachery, and I had the pain of compromising the persons who had generously given me an asylum. It was necessary, in order not to go to prison, to find the money for the Werdet debt at once, and, consequently, to involve myself again to those who lent it to me.
Such a little episode in the midst of my toil!
I will no longer wring your heart with the details of my struggle. Besides, it would take volumes to tell you all of them and explain them. The truth is, I do not live. Always toil! I cannot support this life for more than three or four months at a time. I have still forty-five days more of it; after that I shall be utterly broken down, and then I will go and revive in the solitude of the Ukraine, if God permits it. I hope to last till the end of "César Birotteau."
"La Femme Supérieure" makes two thick 8vo volumes. It is ended in the newspaper, but not in the book form; I am adding a fourth Part.
I wish I had strength enough to give the end of "Illusions Perdues." But that is very difficult; though very urgent, because my payment of fifteen hundred francs a month does not begin till then.
Not only have I not closed the gulf of sorrows, but I have not closed that of my business affairs. I have hoped so often that I am weary of hope, as I told you. I am a prey to deep disgust, and I shut myself up in complete solitude. Nevertheless, a grand affair is preparing for me in the publication of my works, with vignettes, etc., resting upon an enterprise both inciting and attractive to the public. This is an interest in a tontine, created from a portion of the profit of subscribers, who are divided into classes and ages; one to ten, ten to twenty, twenty to thirty, thirty to forty, forty to fifty, fifty to sixty, sixty to seventy, seventy to eighty. So, the subscriber will obtain a magnificent volume, as to typographic execution, and the chance of thirty thousand francs income for having subscribed. Also the capital of the income will remain to the subscriber's family.
It is very fine; but it needs three thousand subscribers per class to make it practicable. But imagine that, in spite of the ardour of my imagination, I have received somany blows that I shall see this project played with an indifferent eye. An enormous sum is required for advertising; and four hundred thousand francs for the vignettes alone. The work will be in fifty volumes, published in demi-volumes. It will include the "Études de Mœurs" complete, the "Études Philosophiques" complete, and the "Études Analytiques" complete, under the general title of "Études Sociales." In four years the whole will have been published. The vignettes will be in the text itself, and there will be seventy-five in a volume, which will prevent all piracy in foreign countries.
But this depends still on several administrative points to settle. May fate grant it success! It is high time. I feel that a few days more like the last, and I am vanquished.
I, who know so amply what misfortune is, I cry to you from the depths of my study, enjoy the material good that M. Hanski bestows upon you, and which you justly boast of to me. I wish with all the power of my soul that you may never know such miseries as mine.
If this affair takes place, and taking place, succeeds, you shall be the first informed of it; and never letter more joyous will rush through Europe! But I have reached the point of very great doubt in all business affairs.
You will some day read "La Femme Supérieure," and if ever I needed a serious and sincere opinion upon a composition, it is on this. Twenty letters of reprobation reach the newspaper daily, from persons who stop their subscriptions, etc., saying that nothing could be more wearisome, it is all insipid gabbling, etc.; and they send me these letters! There is one, among others, from a man who calls himself my great admirer, which says that "he cannot conceive the stupidity of such a composition." If that is so, I must have been heavily mistaken.
This distrust, into which such communications throw an author, is little propitious to a start on "César Birotteau"which I make to-day and must push with the greatest celerity. I have robbed you of the manuscript and proofs of "La Femme Supérieure" to the profit of mycara sorella, who has none of these things, and who, on seeing the bound proofs brought home to me for you, said, in a melancholy tone, "Am I never to have any of them myself?" So I thought to give her those of "La Femme Supérieure;" I will keep those of the reprints for you.
On coming out of my painful labour of forty-five days, I have religiously put your dear Anna's heart's-ease into my "Imitation of Jesus Christ," where there is another on a fragment of a yellow sash.
What events, what thoughts have passed beneath heaven's arch in seven years! and what terror must one feel as one sees one's self advancing ever, with no lull in the storm! One must not think of happy fancies pictured on the horizon, especially when the soul is ever in mourning.
I send you a thousand caressing desires; I would that you had all the happiness that flees from me. I see but too well that my life can never be other than a life of toil, and that I must place my pleasure there, in the occupation by which I live. And yet, when my pen is free, two or three months hence, I shall once more tempt fortune; I shall make a last effort. But if I do so, it is because there is no risk of money. After that, if nothing comes of it, I shall retire into some corner, to live there like a country curate without parishioners, indifferent to all material interests, and resting on my heart and my imagination,—those two great motive powers of life. This is only telling you that you count for more than half in that vision.
I did not finish "Berthe la Repentie" without thinking at every line that I began it with fury at Pré-l'Évêque in 1834, now nearly four years ago. I ought never to have had debts; I ought to have lived like a canon in theUkraine, having no other function than to drive away your blue devils and those of M. Hanski and write adizainevery year. 'T would have been too beautiful a life. Between repose and me there are twelve thousand ducats of debt, and the farther I go, the more they increase. Chateaubriand is dying of hunger. He sold his past as author, and he has sold his future. The future gives him twelve thousand francs a year, so long as he publishes nothing; twenty-live thousand if he publishes. That to him is poverty; he is seventy-five years old, an age at which all genius is extinct, but the memories of youth reflower. That is how we love—the first time in reality, the second time in memory.
Addio, cara.I must leave you to take up mydizainand "César Birotteau" alternately. I would give I know not what, all, except our dear friendship, to have finished those two works which will bring me in nothing but insults.
I think it surprising that you had not received my New Year's gift in June, for Colonel Frankowski has been in Poland three months. Put a kiss on Anna's forehead from her horse, the quietest she will ever have in her stables. Remember me to all about you and to M. Hanski. I send nothing to you who possess the whole of this Parisian moujik.
I conceived yesterday a work grand in its thought, small in its volume; it is a book I shall do immediately. It will be called by some man's name, such as "Jules, or the new Abeilard." The subject will be the letters of two lovers led to the religious life by love, a true heroic romanceà laScudéry.
Paris, July 19, 1837.
Cara, you will end by being so weary of my jeremiads that when you receive a letter from me you will fling it into the fire without opening it, certain that it is a garretful of blue devils and the amplest stock of melancholy inthe world. If my fat and daring countenance is at this moment installed before you, you will never behold my griefs on that swelling forehead—less ample, less beautiful than yours—nor on those rotund cheeks of a lazy monk. But so it is. He who was created for pleasure and happy carelessness, for love and for luxury, works like a galley-slave.
I was talking to Heine yesterday about writing for the stage. "Beware of that," he said; "he who is accustomed to Brest cannot accustom himself to Toulon. Stay in your own galley."
I am the lighter by three works: here is the thirddizaindone in manuscript, but not in proofs; here is "Gambara" finished, and I am at the last proof of "Massimilla Doni;" and finally, in three days I shall begin the end of "César Birotteau." I hope the woodman brings down trees; I hope the workman is no bungler. But I am always meeting worthy people, Parisians, who say to me, "Why don't you publish something?" Yesterday, after leaving Heine, I met Rothschild on the boulevard, that is to say, all the wit and money of the Jews; and he said to me, "What are you doing now?" "La Femme Supérieure" has been inundating the "Presse" for the last fortnight!
Cara, you talk to me still of my dissipation, my travels, and society. That is wrong in you. I travel when it is impossible to rouse my broken-down brain. When I return, I shut myself up and work night and day until death comes—of the brain, be it understood, though a man may die of work. I did wrong not to go to the Ukraine, but I am the first punished; that wrong was caused by my poverty. But I have just discovered an economical means of conveyance which I shall use as soon as I am free. It is to go from here to Havre, Havre to Hamburg, Hamburg to Berlin, Berlin to Breslau, Breslau to Lemberg, Lemberg to Brody. I think that route willnot be dear, as so much is done by water. From Paris to Hamburg, four days, is two hundred francs, everything included. Only, will you come and fetch me at Brody, where I shall be without a vehicle and ignorant of the language? That is the project I am caressing; and it makes me hasten my work.
There is nothing new about the grand affair of my publication on the tontine plan. But the petty newspapers are already laughing at this enterprise, which they know nothing about, and solely because it makes to my profit.
Is not this singular? I was just here when Auguste brought me your kind and very amiable number 30—in the sense that there is an adorable number of pages. In the first place,cara, I see that you are not speaking to me with a frank heart in fearing that your letter would be flung down with disdain! and you came near using a worse word. Ah! have we never understood each other? Have you no idea of friendship,—no knowledge of true sentiments? It must be so, if you can imagine I am not more interested in your missing book and all that happens around you than I am in the finest or the most hideous events of the world. I am so angry, so shaken by that passage in your letter that my hand trembles as if I had killed my neighbour. It is you who have killed something in me. But you can revive it by pouring out to me without fear your reveries. Next, you tell me that I am hiding from you some gambling loss, some disaster, and that I am a poor head financially.
Dear and beautiful châtelaine, you talk of poverty like one who does not know it and who never will know it. The unfortunate are always wrong, because they begin by being unfortunate.
Must I for the fifth or sixth time explain to you the mechanism of my poverty, and how it is that it only grows and increases? I will do so, if only to prove to you that I am the greatest financier of the epoch. Butwe will never return to the subject again, will we?—for there is nothing sadder than to relate troubles from which we still suffer:—
In 1828 I was flung into this poor rue Cassini, when my family would not even give me bread, in consequence of a liquidation to which they compelled me, owing one hundred thousand francs and being without a penny. There, then, was a man who had to have six thousand francs to pay his interests, and three thousand francs on which to live; total, nine thousand francs a year. Now, during the years 1828, 1829, and 1830 I did not earn more than three thousand francs, for M. de Latouche paid only one thousand for "Les Chouans;" the publisher Mame failed and paid me only seven hundred and fifty francs, instead of fifteen hundred, for the "Scènes de la Vie privée;" the "Physiologie du Mariage" brought me only one thousand francs, through the bad faith of the publisher; and M. de Girardin paid me only fifty francs afeuille[16 pages] in his paper "La Mode." Thus in the course of three years my debt was increased by twenty-four thousand francs.
1830 came; general disaster to the publishing business. "La Peau de Chagrin" paid me only seven hundred francs; three thousand later by adding the "Contes Philosophiques" to it. Then the "Revue de Paris" took tenfeuillesa year, at one hundred and sixty francs: total, sixteen hundred francs. So 1830 and 1831 together gave me only ten thousand francs; but I had to pay eighteen thousand francs for interest and my living. Thus I increased the debt by eight thousand francs. The capital of the debt then amounted to one hundred and thirty-two thousand francs.
1833 came; and then by making my agreement with Madame Bêchet I found myself equal to my living and my debt; that is to say, I could live and pay my interest; because from 1833 to 1836 I earned ten thousand francsa year; I then owed six thousand two hundred francs interest, and I supposed I could live on four thousand francs. But, at this moment of success, new disasters came.
A man who has only his pen, and who must meet ten thousand francs a year when he does not have them, is compelled to many sacrifices. It was soon, not one hundred and thirty-two thousand francs that I owed, but one hundred and forty thousand, for how did I fight the necessity that pressed upon me? With an aide-de-camp who may be compared to the vulture of Prometheus [Werdet]; with usurers who made me pay nine, ten, twelve, twenty per cent interest, and who consumed in applications, proceedings, and errands fifty per cent and more of my time. Moreover, I had signed agreements with publishers who had advanced me money on work to be done; so that when I signed the Bêchet agreement I had to deduct from the thirty thousand francs she was to pay me for the first twelve volumes of the "Études de Mœurs" ten thousand francs to indemnify Gosselin and two other publishers. So it was not thirty thousand, but twenty thousand francs only; and those twenty thousand are reduced to ten thousand by a loss I have lately met with, of copies that were worth that sum. The fire in the rue du Pot-de-Fer consumed the volumes I bought back from Gosselin.
So my position in 1837 exactly corresponds with these facts, when it places me with one hundred and sixty-two thousand francs of debt; for all that I have earned has never covered interests and expenses. My expenditure in luxury, for which you sometimes blame me, is produced by two necessities. First: when a man works as I do, and his time is worth to him twenty to fifty francs an hour, he heeds a carriage, for a carriage is an economy. Then he must have lights all night, coffee at all hours, much fire, and everything orderly about him; it is that whichconstitutes the costly life of Paris. Second: in Paris, those who speculate in literature have no other thought than to extort from it. If I had stayed in a garret I should have earned nothing. This is what ruins the men of letters in Paris,—Karr, Goslan, etc. They are needy, and it is known; publishers pay them five hundred francs for what is worth three thousand. I therefore considered it good business to exhibit an exterior of fortune, so as not to be bargained with and to fix my own price.
If you do not regard with admiration a man who, bearing the weight of such a debt, writing with one hand, lighting with the other,never committing a baseness, cringing to no usurer, nor to journalism, imploring no man, neither his creditor nor his friend, never tottering in the most suspicious, most selfish, most miserly country in the world, where they lend to the rich only,—-a man whom calumny has pursued and is still pursuing, a man who they said was in Sainte Pélagie when he was with you in Vienna,—then you know nothing of the world![1]
The enterprise of the "Chronique de Paris" was undertaken to play a bold stroke and pay off my debt. Instead of winning, I lost.
It was a horrible reverse.
And in the midst of this hell of conflicting interests, of days without bread, of friends who betrayed me, of jealousies that tried to injure me, I had to write ceaselessly, to think, to toil; to have droll ideas when I wept, to write of love with a heart bleeding from inward wounds, with scarce a hope on the horizon—and that hope reproachful, and asking from a knight brought back from the battle, where and why he was wounded.
Cara, do not condemn in the midst of this long torture the poor struggler who seeks a corner where to sit down and recover breath, where to breathe the sweet air of the shore and not the dusty air of the arena; do not blame me for having spent a few miserable thousand francs in going to Neufchâtel, Geneva, Vienna, and twice to Italy. (You do not comprehend Italy; in that you are dull, and I will tell you why.) Do not blame me for going to spend two or three months near you; for without these halts I should be dead.
Imprint this very succinct explanation in your beautiful and noble, pure, sublime head, and never return to these ideas that I gamble, etc.; for I have never gambled, never had any other disasters than those into which my own kindness dragged me.
Alas! I thought my pious offering for the new year had reached your hands; for allow me the intoxicating pleasure of thinking that what I give you caused me a little privation. It is in that way that poverty can equal riches. If that poor man has sold it he must have been much in need. But I shall never console myself for knowing that the chain you gave me in Geneva is not in your hands. The misfortune I can repair. What is irreparable is that the mails arrive withoutbringing me any letters from you. You make to yourself false ideas about me, and you do not know to what black dragons I fall a victim when a fortnight passes without manna from the Ukraine.
What! you did not receive that letter from Sion? In future, when I travel I shall prepay my letters myself. Oh! the honour of Swiss innkeepers! The rascal in whom I trusted must have burned the letter and kept the francs I gave him to prepay it.
You and I are not of the same opinion on religious questions, but I should be in despair if you adopted my ideas; I like better to see you keep your own; and I shall never do anything, even though I think I am right, to destroy them. Only, knowing you to be a good and true Catholic, I prefer the pages in which you disappoint me to those in which you preach to me Catholicism; and yet, they all give me the greatest pleasure. That is only telling you that I want both. I conceive of Catholicism as poesy, and I am preparing a work in which two lovers are led by love to the religious life; then thatbag of nailswhom you call your aunt will like me much and declare that I make a good use of my talents!
Addio. You have very cruelly proved to me that you have a prudent friendship for me; you judge very sternly the poor strivings of a stormy life which, from its youth up, has never had the satisfaction of saying to itself, "This is really mine."
I send you a letter I received yesterday from my sister; you will see that the poor child cannot help weeping when I weep, and laughing when I laugh. But then, it is true, she is near me, and you are in the Ukraine. And besides, those who are truly beloved are always sure of not wounding, for from them all is dear—even unjust blame.
A thousand friendly compliments to M. Hanski andremembrances to all. A kiss on the hair of your dear Anna. Thanks for the heart's-ease.
[1]For a fuller understanding of this, I refer the reader to his sister's account of his pecuniary trials, and to a brief statement of the then existing system of literary payments, which will be found in my "Memoir of Balzac," pp. 70, 71, 81, 89, 90, 158-160. It is possible that had Balzacbeen another manhe might have rid himself of his incubus of debt—though it is difficult to say how a young man owing 100,000 francs and 6 per cent interest on them, without one penny to pay either debt or interest, could have done so. But the question here is: Could the man whose business it was to know men live apart from their lives, a beggar in a garret? Can the genius whose mission it was to grasp the whole of human society be judged in his business methods like a city banker? Edmond Werdet, the publisher, who said he suffered through his publication of Balzac's works, and who, nine years after his death, wrote a book upon him partly for revenge ("Portrait intime de Balzac, sa vie, son humeur, et son caractère." 1 vol., Paris, 1859), brought no charge against him of want of probity, or of failure to keep his money engagements. On the contrary, he says in one place: "He was an honest man; an honest man in debt, not a business man in debt, as M. Taine has said of him." In another place he says: "Balzac had his absurdities if you will, but he was exempt from vices."—TR.
[1]For a fuller understanding of this, I refer the reader to his sister's account of his pecuniary trials, and to a brief statement of the then existing system of literary payments, which will be found in my "Memoir of Balzac," pp. 70, 71, 81, 89, 90, 158-160. It is possible that had Balzacbeen another manhe might have rid himself of his incubus of debt—though it is difficult to say how a young man owing 100,000 francs and 6 per cent interest on them, without one penny to pay either debt or interest, could have done so. But the question here is: Could the man whose business it was to know men live apart from their lives, a beggar in a garret? Can the genius whose mission it was to grasp the whole of human society be judged in his business methods like a city banker? Edmond Werdet, the publisher, who said he suffered through his publication of Balzac's works, and who, nine years after his death, wrote a book upon him partly for revenge ("Portrait intime de Balzac, sa vie, son humeur, et son caractère." 1 vol., Paris, 1859), brought no charge against him of want of probity, or of failure to keep his money engagements. On the contrary, he says in one place: "He was an honest man; an honest man in debt, not a business man in debt, as M. Taine has said of him." In another place he says: "Balzac had his absurdities if you will, but he was exempt from vices."—TR.
For you only.
I should be most unjust if I did not say that from 1823 to 1833 an angel sustained me through that horrible war. Madame de Berny, though married, was like a God to me. She was a mother, friend, family, counsellor; she made the writer, she consoled the young man, she created his taste, she wept like a sister, she laughed, she came daily, like a beneficent sleep, to still his sorrows. She did more; though under the control of a husband, she found means to lend me as much as forty-five thousand francs, of which I returned the last six thousand in 1836, with interest at five per cent, be it understood. But she never spoke to me of my debt, except now and then; without her, I should, assuredly, be dead. She often divined that I had eaten nothing for days; she provided for all with angelic goodness; she encouraged that pride which preserves a man from baseness,—for which to-day my enemies reproach me, calling it a silly satisfaction in myself—the pride that Boulanger has, perhaps, pushed to excess in my portrait.
Therefore, that memory is for much in my life; it is ineffaceable, for it mingles with everything. Tears are in me now for two persons only,—for her who is no more, and for her who still is, and, I hope, ever will be. Thus I am inexplicable to all; for none have ever known the secret of my life; I would not deliver it up to any one. You have detected it; keep it for me securely.
Addio.It was natural that I should not mix this great history of the heart with the tale of my disasters and that of a material life so difficult. But I could not let your analytical forehead cast a thought on my confession of misery that would say I had forgotten her whogave me the strength to resist it, or her who continues that rôle.
But let us leave all this henceforth. Let me take up once more my burden. I bear it alone; and I can but smile at those who ask why I do not run thus laden.
But neither do I wish you, in thinking of me, to see me always suffering and harassed. There come hours when I look from my window, my eyes to the sky, forgetting all, lost as I am in memories. If the sorrowful had not the power to forget their sorrows, if they could not make themselves an oasis where the springs and the palms are, what would become of us?
Adieu; do not blame me again without thinking of all that ought to keep you from saying that I conceal some great catastrophe. Do you think that I lose millions in the boudoir of an opera girl?
Saché, August 25, 1837.
I receive your number 31 here. I ended by getting an inflammation of the lungs, and I came to Touraine by order of the doctor, who advised me not to work, but to amuse myself, and walk about. To amuse myself is impossible. Nothing but travel can counterbalance my work. As for working, that is still impossible; even the writing of these few lines has given me an intolerable pain in the back between the shoulders; and as for walking, that is still more impossible; for I cough soagedlythat I fear to check the perspiration it causes by passing from warm to cool spots and breezy openings. I thought Touraine would do me good. But my illness has increased. The whole left lung is involved, and I return to Paris to submit to a fresh examination. But as I must, no matter what state I am in, resume my work and leave a mild and milky regimen for that of stimulants, I feel that toil will carry me off.
I have reached a point where I no longer regret life;hopes are too distant; tranquillity too laborious to attain. If I had only moderate work to do I would submit without a murmur to this fate; but I have too much grief, too many enemies. The third Part of the "Études Philosophiques" is now for sale. Not a paper has noticed it. Fourteen copies have been sold, though nearly all was new and unpublished! The indorsements I so imprudently gave to that miserable Werdet have given rise to a keener pursuit of me than I ever had for real debt; for I never met with such severity, having, ever since I lived in the world, been strictly punctual. Never was an illness more untimely for my affairs.
You must think that your dear letter came as a benefaction from Providence in the solitude of Saché. But, dear, why do you make, like those spiteful little feuilletonists and so many others, the false reasoning that considers an author guilty of all that he puts into the mouth of his actors? Because I paint a journalist without faith or law, make him talk as he thinks, and begin the portrait of that hideous and cancerous sore, does it follow that my literature is that of a commercial traveller? You are so wrong in this that I will not insist; only, I don't like to find my polar star at fault, nor to catch myself smiling as I kiss her pages. You are infallible for me. Do not quarrel with me too much in the little time I have to live.
The grand affair is coming on. They engrave, design, and print vigorously. But, if there is success, success will come too late. I feel myself decidedly ill. I should have done better to go and pass six months at Wierzchownia than to stay on the battle-field, where I shall end by being knocked over. When one has neither supports nor ammunition there comes a moment when one must capitulate. The whole world of Paris rises in arms against inflexible virtue, and beats it down at any cost.
I meditate retiring to Touraine; but I cannot be therealone. There is no one to see there. One must have all in one's own home.
The moments when my energy deserts me are becoming more frequent, and, in those terrible phases, it is impossible to answer for one's self. There is neither reasoning, nor sentiment, nor doctrine that can quell the excesses of that crisis, when the soul is, so to speak, absent. Journeys cost so much money, and ruin me for a year or more; thus I am forced to remain in France. The law about the National Guard drives me into going to Touraine, for it is impossible for me to submit to that rule. So I think that towards the middle of September I shall have chosen a little house on the banks of the Cher or the Loire. I am even in treaty for one now, which would suit me very well, but there are serious difficulties.
I am surprised that you have not yet received Boulanger's picture. They assured me it would go by a flying-waggon which went so fast that in a month it would be delivered in Brody. Now it is more than two months since I announced to you its departure.
This distance between us is something very dreadful. Your letter has been so delayed that I feared illnesses; I feared lest your fatigues had affected your health. I see now that you and yours are well. I will write you from Paris after seeing the doctor.
Why are you vexed with me for not having told you of Madame Contarini? I shall be angry with you till death for always believing that I need foreign female preachers to refresh my memory ofmy country. Alas! I think of it too much. I have too much subordinated all my thoughts to what you, so distant from me, think, to be happy. In short, I am neither converted nor to be converted, for I have but one religion and I do not divide my sentiments. If my religion is too terrestrial, the fault is in God,who made it what it is. Madame Contarini didnot know that she was following in your religious foot-prints; for it is you who have undertaken my conversion.
You are always the providence of some one. That poor Swiss girl, will she love you better than the other? For we ought never to judge those we love; I am very fixed on that principle. The affection that is not blind is no affection at all.
I resume this letter at midnight, before going to bed. My bedroom here, which people come to see out of curiosity, looks out on woods that are two or three times centennial, and I take in a view of the Indre and the little château that I called Clochegourde. The silence is marvellous.
I leave to-morrow, 26th, for Tours with M. de Margonne, and the 28th for Paris, where my deplorable affairs need me. I always leave this lonely valley with regret.
My mother is very unwell. She sinks under the distress which the precarious position of her children gives her; for we have to take charge, my brother-in-law, my sister and myself, of the children of my poor dead sister Laurence. What makes me spur the principle of my courage so much is my desire to succeed in time to gild her old age.
Do you know that your letter is dated July 27, and that I received it August 21?—a whole month! A month without news of you is a very long time for a friendship watching for it at all hours, and often, between two proofs, taking its head in its hands and asking itself, "What is she thinking of?"
Well, adieu, for my fatigue is returning; I am going to bed and shall think of all I have not told you, forgetfulnesses which come of so short a letter; in Paris I shall have more to tell you. But, no matter what I say, find ever on my pages the purest and sweetest flowers of an affection that distance cannot lessen, which springsacross that distance,—an affection known to you, and which, in a word, is ever prolix.
Paris, September 1, 1837.
Cara, I hasten to tell you that the inflammation, which turned into bronchitis, is now cured. But I must begin work again, and God knows what will happen in consequence of new excesses. Though all goes well physically, all goes ill pecuniarily; and I will not tell you the particulars, lest they bring upon me more unjust suspicions.
I begin this evening a comedy in five acts, entitled, "Joseph Prudhomme;" for I must come to that last resource; I am in the condition of "My kingdom for a horse!"
Three months hence you will receive three very important works: "César Birotteau," the thirddizain, and the "Lettres de deux Amants, ou le nouvel Abeilard." I count the comedy as nothing. I think I have never done anything that can be compared to "Berthe la Repentie," the diamond of the thirddizain. You brought luck to that poem, for the first chapter was written in Geneva, three days after my arrival.
I wish not to tell you anything about the "Lettres de deux Amants;" that is a surprise I desire to make to my dear preacheress, to teach her to comprehend that when one has undertaken to paint the whole of a moral world, one must paint it under all its aspects, with believers and unbelievers, and every one in his place. Apropos of the comedy which I am now going to attempt and to put upon the stage, I admire to see how persistence is necessary in art. That comedy has been in my head for ten years; it has come back and back under divers faces, it has been a score of times cast and recast, modified, made, remade, and made again, and now it is about to come to the surface, new and vulgar, grandand simple. I am delighted with it; I foresee a great success and a work which may maintain itself on the repertory among the score of plays which make the glory of the Théâtre-Français. I have a second sight about it, as about "La Peau de Chagrin" and "Eugénie Grandet." After being reassured by the friend to whom I confided the first doubt I had about it, I have seen in it the elements of a great thing. There is comedy and dumb tragedy, laughter and tears both. It has five acts, as long and fertile as those of "Le Mariage de Figaro." This work, brought to birth in the midst of my present miseries, is, at this moment, like a carbuncle glowing in the shadows of a muddy grotto. A terrible desire seizes me to go and write it in Switzerland, at Geneva; but the dearness of living among those Swiss alarms me.
I have just seen the drawings made for "La Peau de Chagrin," and they are wonderful. This enterprise is gigantic. Four thousand steel engravings, drawn on copper-plate in the text itself. One hundred per volume! In short, if this affair succeeds, the "Études Sociales" will be brought forth in their entirety, in a magnificent costume, with regal trappings.
Admit that if, in a few months, Fortune visits my threshold, I shall have earned her well; and be sure that I shall cling fast hold on whatever she deigns to fling to me.
Never did I find myself in such a tempest as now, and never did hope show herself so serene or so beautiful; she is lustrous in her turquoise, she smiles to me, and I let myself go to that smile which helps me to bear my misfortunes. Without these celestial apparitions what would become of poets and of artists when unhappy?
Adieu, dear. I must not tire you too long with the echoes of the storm—unless, indeed, they make Wierzchowniathe sweeter to you, and the long expanse of the Ukraine more placid to your eye.
I do not understand bow it is that I am not, in the middle of August, installed in some corner of your mansion, duly framed and mounted, with all the monastic dignity that painter gave me.
You cannot imagine how beautiful Paris is becoming. We needed the reign of a trowel to arrive at such grand results. This magnificence, which advances daily and on all sides, will make us worthy of being the capital of the world. The boulevards paved with asphalt, lighted by bronze candelabra with gas, the increasing splendour of the shops, of that fair, two leagues long, perpetually going on and varied by ever new handiworks, compose a spectacle that is unequalled. In ten years we shall be clean; "Paris mud" will be out of the dictionaries; we shall become so magnificent that Paris will be really a great lady, the first of queens, crowned with battlements.
I renounce Touraine and remain a citizen of the intellectual metropolis. But I shall exempt myself from the draconian tyranny of the National Guard by putting three leagues of distance between me and this terrible queen. Respect is good taste towards royalties. An obscure village will receive my miseries and my grandeurs. Your moujik will have a very humble cottage, whence he will now and then depart at half-past six to reach the Italian Opera at eight, for music is a distraction, the only one that remains to him. Those beneficent voices refresh both soul and mind.
Adieu, dear. You share in sorrows; it is right that I should send you rays of gentle hope when she makes an azure rift athwart the dais of gray cloud. God grant that star may not fall like others, but lead me to some treasure-trove.
I please myself in thinking that you are happy; thatyour life has taken, after the departure of your guests, its accustomed way, that Paulowska brings you in her golden fleeces, that no one steals your books, that no wicked page of mine has furrowed that brow so full of dazzling majesty; in short, that you have all the crumbs of little happiness, for that is much. Materialities, which are the half of life, are not lacking to you; and if they bring monotony, at least the energy that may spend itself in sacred regions—where you bear it to the detriment of this poor passionate earth—is not exhausted. You know, this long time, what wishes I make that life be light upon you. I hope that Anna, and your tall young ladies, and the master, and the Swiss maid, in short, all your household, are well, and that you have no grief that makes you lift your eyes to heaven.
After that phrase I pick up my spade, I mean my pen, and dig in the field "Birotteau," which still needs delving and rolling and raking and watering; and when you read the letter of François to César, remember that it was there that my thought made a pause to turn to you and send you this letter across your steppe, like a flower of friendship asking asylum in your soil, which, in spite of wintry snows, will be always coloured and perfumed by a sincere affection.
Sèvres, October 10, 1837.
Much time has gone by without my writing to you; I have lived so tempestuously that I am not sure whether on my return from Touraine and after my convalescence I thought to tell you that my chest was quite well and had nothing the matter with it.
In order to put myself outside of that atrocious law of the National Guard, I have removed from the rue Cassini and the rue des Batailles, and legally quitted Paris; that is to say, I have gone before three mayorsand declared that I quitted the capital; after which I installed myself and live here at Sèvres. Therefore take note that after you receive this letter you must address your letters to "Monsieur Surville, rue de la Ville-d'Avray, Sèvres, Seine-et-Oise," for I must receive my letters under that name for some months to come, so that my address may not be known at the post-office, partly for secret reasons (which are Werdet's failure, and the pursuit which I must endure till I can earn the money to pay up my indorsements), and partly to escape the great quantity of letters with which unknown men and women overwhelm me.
I have bought here a bit of ground containing some forty rods, on which my brother-in-law is going to build me a tiny house, where I shall henceforth live until my fortune is made, or where I shall remain forever if I stay a beggar. When it is built, and I am in it, which will be in January next, I will let you know, and you can then write to me under my own name, and put the address of my poor hermitage, which is "Les Jardies," the name of the piece of ground on which I hang like a worm on a green leaf. Land about Paris is so parcelled out that I had to negotiate with three peasants to collect this lot of forty rods, and a rod contains only seventeen square feet. I am here at a distance which allows me to go and come from Paris in two hours. I can go to the theatre and sleep at home. I am in Paris without being there. There are neither heavy taxes nor tolls; living is cheaper, and the day when I can make sure of having a thousand francs a month for myself I can have a carriage. And finally, I escape that perpetual inquisition which publishes every step I take and every word I say. I shall neither see nor receive any one. Then instead of spending twenty thousand francs with other people where I may lodge, I shall spend them on my own home, and nothing shall ever get me out of that. Youwould never believe how I like fixedness. Constancy is one of the corner-stones of my nature.
You can easily understand that these turmoils have not left me a minute to myself. I have looked at a hundred houses around Paris, and been in negotiations for several. For a whole month I have roamed the environs to find what I wanted on the exact boundary of the department of the Seine and Seine-et-Oise. I came very near buying one house; but after convincing myself that I should have to spend twenty thousand francs in repairs and alterations to suit myself, I determined to buy a piece of ground and build; for a house would cost only twelve thousand francs, built as I wished it, and the land, with the peasant's house on it, came to not more than five thousand. Reckoning the interior at three thousand, the whole would be twenty thousand, and allowing five thousand for mistakes, that would make twenty-five thousand; that is, a rental of twelve hundred francs a year, and the comfort of having one's cabin to one's self without the annoyances of noise, for my land backs upon the park of Saint-Cloud. I have retained the apartment in the rue de Batailles for a few months to store my furniture until I install myself at Les Jardies.
I hasten to write to you, because to-morrow I begin "La Maison Nucingen" for the "Presse." That means fifty columns to hatch out before the end of the month, and then?—then my pen will be free, for my new editors have compromised with the defunct "Figaro," now about to rise from its ashes, and I have finished that thirddizain. So, about November 1 my pen will owe nothing to any one, and I can begin the execution of my new treaty by the publication of "César Birotteau." But, as that work cannot appear before January 1, and as I have had an advance of two months, I shall receive no money till March. My distress must therefore go on for six months longer, and it is frightful.
This illness has made me lose six irreparable weeks. I think ever, if my embarrassments are too great, of going to take refuge with you for three months. I keep that project for a last resource, and I now repent that I have not already put it into execution; for when I am known to be travelling everybody waits, and nobody says anything. After that, returning with one or two plays in hand, all my money troubles could be pacified. But I cannot do that until I have paid my pen debts and given one work to my new editors; which throws me over to the month of February,—if, always, my house is finished and I am in it.
I cannot give you an idea of the turmoil in which I have been for the last six weeks, and the disconnectedness of my life, usually (in body) so peaceful. And all the while I had to read proofs and write. You are ignorant, in your Ukraine, of what Parisian removals are; nothing describes them but a provincial saying: "Three removals are equal to one conflagration."
In the midst of these worries and fatigues I have had two joys: they are your two letters, which I shall answer in a few days, for I have united them with their elders in a precious casket which I took to my sister, in order not to subject them to these removal agitations. I think there is something in them I ought to answer.
It is probable that I shall not go to the Opera, and this will be, I assure you, a great privation; because there is nothing that distracts my mind like music, and I do not know how else to relax my soul. Nothing will remain to me but the contemplation of the azure waves of hope, and I don't know whether this hovering with spread wings above that infinite, which recedes as we approach it, is not a pain—which pleases perhaps, but is none the less painful.
I have had many griefs since I wrote to you. In the passing crisis in which I am, every one has fled me likea leper. I am all alone. But I prefer this solitude within my solitude to the fawning hatred which is called, in Paris, friendship.
I have still aconteto write for my thirddizain, to replace one which was too free, and it is now a month that I have been trying to find something, without avail. Nothing but the want of thatfeuilledelays the publication.... Next month the announcement of our tontine on the "Études Sociales" will, no doubt, appear; and from the 1st to the 15th the magnificent edition will be ready. They have begun with "La Peau de Chagrin." The second volume will be "Le Médecin de campagne," and the third "Le Lys dans la Vallée." God grant that the affair succeed!
I am in despair at hearing that yourcassoletteis in Warsaw, and I cannot imagine why it has not been sent to you by some opportunity. Is there no communication between you and Warsaw? There are now strong reasons for suspecting the person in question, whose journey is inexplicable. I add to this letter a line for him, which you must seal and send to him, to hasten the delivery of that jewel.
Write me a line, I beg of you, to let me know if the picture has reached Brody. Double the time it ought to have taken has elapsed, and I am very impatient to know if anything unlucky has happened to it on the journey. I hear nothing of the statue from Milan. Those Italians are really very singular.
You wrote me that you might go to Vienna, but have never again mentioned that project. If you go there I could bring you, myself, a wholelibraryof manuscripts which belong to you, and are beginning to be difficult to transport.
This is the first time I have ever answered two letters from you; for if you reckon up, you will see that in letter-writing I have the advantage, in spite of whatyou call, so insultingly, your chatter. Whatever it is, I am grieved when I do not get it, and it is now a fortnight since I have seen Auguste enter, bearing respectfully a little packet, neatly folded and very spruce, which comes from such distance and yet has nothing of the immensity of the steppes in its form.
My play, the comedy in five acts, is all laid out, and as your opinion has made me change and modify the one I first began, I dare not tell you this one, because when your reply comes it will be written, and if you are against it you will throw me into terrible perplexities. Is not this falling on one's knees before one's critic? Wherefore, behold me there! I place myself at your feet with a good grace, entreating you to pay no attention to what I have just said, and to go your way with your female scissors through my plot, and cut up my dramatic calico mercilessly, for, in my present situation, this play represents a hundred thousand francs, and I must make it a masterpiece well and quickly, or succumb.
You know "Monsieur Prudhomme," the type made by Henri Monnier? I take it boldly; because in order to seize success one must not have to obtain acceptance for a creation. One must, like the ambassador making love, buy it ready-made. Hence, there is no anxiety about the personage; I am sure of the laughter so far. Only, I must annihilate Monnier, and my Prudhomme must bethePrudhomme. Monnier made only a poor vaudeville of burlesques; I shall make five acts for the Théâtre-Français.
Prudhomme, as type of our present bourgeoisie, as image of the Gannerons, of the Aubés, of the National Guard, of that middle-class on whichil padronerests, is a personage far more comic than Turcaret, droller than Figaro. He is wholly of the present day. Here is the subject:—
At thirty-seven years of age, Prudhomme is seized with a passion for the daughter of a porter,—charming person, who studies at the Conservatoire and has carried off prizes. She sees before her the career of Mademoiselle Mars; she has distinction, jargon, she is quitecomme il faut; she is eighteen, but she has been already betrayed in a first love; she has had a son by a pupil at the Conservatoire, who has gone to America out of love for his child, being alarmed by his poverty, and resolved to make his fortune. Pamela mourns him, but she has the child on her arms. The desire to support and bring up her child makes her marry Prudhomme, from whom she conceals her situation. Prudhomme, at thirty-seven, possesses thirty thousand francs in savings; he has invested them in the mines of Anzin in 1815, and his shares are worth, in 1817, three hundred thousand francs. That incites him to marry. The marriage takes place. He has a daughter by his wife. The thousand-franc shares of Anzin are worth, in 1834, one hundred and fifty thousand francs. This is the prologue; for the play itself begins in 1834, eighteen years later.
Monsieur Prudhomme has realized fifteen hundred thousand francs on half his shares, and keeps the rest. He has made himself a banker; and, as happens to all imbeciles, he has prospered under the advice of his wife, who is an angelic and superior woman, full of propriety and good taste. She has known how to play the rôle of a woman of means. But her attachment to her husband, inspired by the really good qualities of that ridiculous man, strengthened by the passion that he has for her, by the comfort that he gives her through his wealth, is balanced by the maternal sentiment exalted to the highest pitch which Pamela bears to her first child, whom, thanks to this wealth, she was enabled to bring up, with an invisible hand, until two years earlier, when she introduced him into her own home, without his knowingthe truth. Adolphe is made head clerk, and the poor mother has played her dreadful part so carefully that no one, not even Adolphe, suspects the great love that envelops him. M. Prudhomme is very fond of Adolphe. Mademoiselle Prudhomme is seventeen years old. The play is entitled "Le Mariage de Mademoiselle Prudhomme." M. Prudhomme, rich from the shares of Anzin, rich with the profits of his bank, and possessing much private property, will give his daughter a million. She is, therefore, with a million and expectations, one of the best matches in Paris.
I must tell you that, unlike the Antonys, Adolphe is a gay, practical young fellow, happy in his position, delighted not to have either father or mother, and never inquiring about them. In that lies a dreadful drama between the mother and her son, for poor Madame Prudhomme is tortured a dozen times a day by the indifference of her son in the matter of his mother, and by a crowd of circumstances I cannot explain here; they make the play itself.
The fortune of Mademoiselle Prudhomme tempts a young notary, who owes his business to his predecessor, who is eager to be paid for it. This old notary is a friend of Prudhomme; he has introduced the young notary to the house. Madame Prudhomme's tenderness for Adolphe does not escape his eye; he believes that she intends to give him her daughter; and the two notaries open Prudhomme's eyes to his wife's love for Adolphe. Here, then, is the wife unjustly accused of an imaginary sin, from which she does not know how to vindicate herself. The comedy comes, you understand, from thepathosof Prudhomme, and from his efforts to convict his wife. His wife accepts the singular combat of silencing her husband as if she were guilty, which is a satirical situation completely in the style of Molière. But she sees whence the blow has come. Shefences with the two notaries, and, pressed by them, she shows them the infamy of their conduct, and declares that she will never give her daughter to a man capable of soiling the honour of the mother to obtain the daughter. They are forced to retract to Prudhomme, and the mother, to secure the tranquillity of her husband, is forced to separate from her son.
That is the main play; but, you understand, there is an enormous quantity of situations, scenes, movements. Servants are mixed up in it. It is a picture of our present bourgeoisie. There is a return of Adolphe's father, which complicates everything, and brings about the dénouement. There is a horrible scene in which Prudhomme, in order to get light on his wife's passion, proposes the marriage of brother and sister, and arms himself with his wife's terror. There is also the most fruitful of all subjects, great ridicule of men and things through Prudhomme's magniloquence. Madame Prudhomme is the Célimène of the bank, the true character of our women of the present day. But there is, above all, a keen satire on manners and morals. Prudhomme, accepting this false disaster, vanquished by the superiority of his wife, is a figure that was lacking to the stage. The solid happiness, marred by the slander of self-interested persons and restored by them for their own interests, has the true ring of comedy. Mademoiselle Prudhomme does not marry. Apparently, all this is vague; but the vagueness and want of outline is that of the "Misanthrope," the plot of which is in ten lines. The rôle of Madame Prudhomme, who is forty years old, can be played only by Mademoiselle Mars; but, with her tacit maternity, crushed down at every moment, she can be superb.
Ecco, cara, the card on which I am about to stake my whole future; for I have but that chance left, so deplorable is the state of the publishing business now; and Imust, if our grand affair fails, have something to fall back upon. I shall not do that play only. I shall do two others at the same time, so as to obtain the receipts of two theatres at least.
Addio.I will write you between now and November 1, when I shall have got some pressing matters off my hands. But, I entreat you, do not forget, and continue to me the tale of your tranquil Ukrainean life. I have flowers beneath my windows, dahlias, plants that make me think of your gardens. When I open the book in which I put all the thoughts of my work, and so many other things, I turn ever to the one saying, "I will be Richelieu to preserve you." That, in this great corral of my ideas, is the flower that my eye caresses oftenest.
Be indulgent to the poor thirddizain, the third of which was written at the hôtel de l'Arc. "Berthe la Repentie" is decidedly the finest thing in the "Contes Drolatiques." I gossip to you about my poor thoughts; my life is such a desert; there are so many misconceptions, recent betrayals, difficulties, that I dare not talk to you of my material life. It is too sad.
October 12.
The "Conte" is rewritten and sent to the printing-office, and I can say that I am heartily glad to have finished at last that eternally "in the press"dizain. I have many other books to finish also. "Massimilla Doni" lacks a chapter on "Moïse," which requires long studies of the score; and as I must make them with a consummate musician, I cannot be master of my own work. Next I have a preface to sew on, like a collaret, to "La Femme Supérieure;" and a fourth Part also, like a bustle; for the sixty-five columns in the "Presse" did not furnish forth a volume; hence the preface and the added end of the volume. You cannot imagine howthese mendings, these replasterings, weary me; I am worn-out with such secondary toils.
I have forgotten to tell you, I think, about Mademoiselle de Fauveau, who remembers you very well. She and her sister are such Catholics that the latter made difficulties about marrying the son of Bautte (the millionaire jeweller of Geneva where you and I went together, you remember?) on account of his religion, and yet these two poor women are in great poverty. Is not that splendid in faith? Mademoiselle de Fauveau, to whom I said that many persons objected to what I made Madame de Mortsauf say before dying, fell into a holy wrath with such profane ones, for she holds in admiration the "Lys dans la Vallée." When I told her that I had modified the cries of the flesh she said:—
"At least, do not take out: I will learn English to say 'my dear.'"
She thought the Catholic theme magnificently laid down; for it is the combat of mind over matter.
"Unhappily," I said to her, "it seems that none but you and I see it so."
She is a charming person, but rather too mystical and mythic. She made me go to San Miniato to see primitive triglyphs, superb, in relation to the Trinity; but I saw nothing of the kind. Don't call me a "commercial traveller" again, on account of that blindness. I would like to be a traveller and travel to yourcara patria, but not a commercial one.
Adieu; I hope that this frail paper will tell you all I think, and that you will not think of my distress, or of my griefs; but that you will do as I do myself—lift, gaily and sadly both, my head to heaven, whence I have awaited, from my youth up, the Orient of full happiness.
Do not scold me too much,cara, for my silence, for there has been no truce or rest to me since my last letter; and I have been saying to myself that I must have madeyou anxious, without being able to sit down and write; for to write one word only is what I can never do. Some day, beside your fire, make me relate to you this month; you will then see what it has been. These are real novels that must be kept for private talks; and then the lord of Wierzchownia will laugh, as he did when I told him of my campaigns in China.
Chaillot, October 20, 1837.
I receive this morning your number 34 and have just read the tale of your journey. I am here for my mother's fête-day.
Those cursed builders demand the whole month of November to arrange my cabin at Sèvres; and I shall be here at least a fortnight to attend to the proofs of "La Maison Nucingen." My editors have arranged with the "Figaro" and have bought back my agreement with it, so that my pen owes nothing to any one, no matter who, after the publication of "La Maison Nucingen." I am unusually content with the thirddizain. But you don't know how that literature is proscribed; it is so blamed for obscenity that I should not be surprised at a general hue and cry against it. English manias are gaining on us; it is enough to make one adore Catholicism.
"Massimilla Doni," another book which will be much misunderstood, gives me immense labour from its difficulties; but I have never caressed anything so much as those mythical pages, because the myth is so profoundly buried beneath reality. You have, no doubt, before this read "Gambara" in the "Revue de Saint-Pétersbourg;" for those worthy pirates will not have overlooked that work, which cost me six months toil.
I have seen Versailles; Louis Philippe's action was so far good, as it saved the palace; but it is the most ignoble and the silliest piece of work in itself I ever saw; so bad is it in art and so niggardly in execution. Whenyou see it you will be amazed; and when I explain to you what is Louis XIV., Louis XV., Louis XVI., and Empire, you will think the rest horribly mean and bourgeois. Your Aunt Leczinska is there a dozen times in family portraits, and I took pleasure in looking at her and saying to myself with a laugh, "Better a live emperor than a buried dowdy;" for you are a queen of beauty, and she an ugly dowdy; though that must be the fault of the painters, for she was really very handsome. An extraordinary thing is, that there is not one of her portraits that is like another; so many portraits, so many different women. She was, no doubt, variable. What is really fine at Versailles, worthy of Titian and all that is noblest in painting, is the "Consecration of Napoleon" and the "Crowning of Josephine," the "Blessing of the Eagles" and "Napoleon pardoning Arabs" in the pictures of David and Guérin. What a great painter David is! He is colossal. I never saw those three pictures before.
I write to you also in presence of a friend [her portrait] in the contemplation of whom I lose myself as in the infinite. I have a quarrel to make with you, apropos of an insincere sentence in your number 33, about your regret at not having friends who can travel for your benefit. That sentence is one of the wounds that reach my heart; for you know well that if for you and yours it were necessary that I should go to the ends of the earth, or do daily something difficult and binding (which is more than exhibiting one's self in greater ways), I would not reflect a moment, I would do it with the blind obedience of a dog. If you know that, your remark is bad; if you do not know it, put me to the proof. My character, my manners and morals, all that is I, is so horribly calumniated that despair seizes me when I see that I have not even one little corner where doubt and suspicion do not enter.
You tell me that I write to you less often; there is nota letter of yours without an answer, and I often write to you in a scramble amid the desperate struggles I maintain, which will end, perhaps, in conquering my courage.
The announcement of our grand affair is postponed to the period of the general elections, a moment when the newspapers are much read. The first number will probably appear November 15. It will be my Austerlitz, or my Waterloo.
You spoke of the material obstacles to your presence among the works at Wierzchownia; but I own that if you understand very little my material obstacles, I understand yours still less; I cannot conceive expense in the solitude of a steppe. Make me your bailiff, and you will see that the man who created Grandet understands domestic economy. I would rather be your bailiff than be Lord Byron; Lord Byron was not happy, and I should be very happy.