[1]For complete bibliographical lists of Balzac's Works of all kinds, with dates of publication, etc., see Memoir to this translated edition, pp. 351-369.—TR.
[1]For complete bibliographical lists of Balzac's Works of all kinds, with dates of publication, etc., see Memoir to this translated edition, pp. 351-369.—TR.
July 15.
Les Jardies were sold this morning for seventeen thousand five hundred francs, having cost me a hundred thousand! Here I am, without house, hearth, or home. A few days hence I shall begin to fulfil my lastpenobligations; there are but six volumes still to do, and then, having neither house, nor furniture, nor prosecution to fear, I can travel! But still I am separated from that travel by six volumes, and the reprinting ofLa Comédie Humaine, which would appear during my journey. It seems hardly likely I could do the six volumes and four of the reprints between now and October 15; however, I shall try.
No letter from you; my anxiety has reached the highest point. I begin to yield myself to the most absurd ideas. I shall consult a somnambulist to know if you are ill. A few days ago I had my fortune toldwith cards by a very famous wizard. I had never seen one of those singular phenomena. The man told me, after consulting his cards, things of incredible accuracy, with particulars about my past life; and he explained to me his prognostics for the future. This man, without education, and extremely common, uses choice expressions the moment he is with his cards. The man and the cards is another being to the man without the cards. He told me—not knowing me from Adam—me, who did not myself know at two o'clock that I should consult him at three, that my life until to-day had been one continued series of struggles, in which I had always been victorious. He also told me that I should soon be married; which was mygreat curiosity.
July 16.
Ought I to send this letter? Ought I to wait longer? You have left two letters from me without an answer; this will be the third. In the midst of my toil, under which I bend, but do not break, this is a continual anxiety which distresses me.
I have always the intention to pass part of the coming winter with you; but all depends on the reprinting of my works, which becomes problematical in spite of the fifteen thousand francs already paid me for it. The affair seems to be heavy and difficult, and I live in conferences with my lawyer and the three publishers, who want so many guarantees that I believe I shall begin all over again the troubles of the agreement I have just bought out, at a cost of one hundred thousand francs.
You are very courageous if you have done all you said in your last letter, and you must now see that I was right when I spoke to you of the value that a woman ought to have in her own house—which is a wholly French idea. For pity's sake, dear, send me a line the moment you receive this letter, which I shall send offto-day. I have great need to know how you are, what you are doing, whether you or any of yours are ill; for surely nothing but illness could thus interrupt all news between us. Remember that the corner of earth where Wierzchownia is interests me more than all the other lands of the world put together.
I begin to weary extremely of my continual toil. It is now nearly five years that I have not ceased to work; the wizard who told me I should soon have my tranquillity must have lied.
Adieu, dear; all tender regards and remembrances across the spaces which I too, sooner or later, will cross; with what pleasure none but myself can know! But, for pity's sake, a word, a letter. I await it with an impatience that so much delay has made a soul-sickness. The wizard told me that within six weeks I should receive a letter which would change all my life; and in the live combinations of cards which he made, that fact reappeared in all of them. I will relate to you some day thatséanceand make you laugh heartily.
Adieu,sempre medesimo.
Paris, September, 1841.
Dear countess, it is now nearly ten months since I have received any letters from you; and this is the fifth letter I have written without receiving any reply. I am more than anxious; I know not what to think.
This time, I have good news to tell you.Primo: I have at length paid off the debt which crushed my life and my efforts. The hundred thousand francs due to those with whom I made that fatal treaty of 1836 are paid.Secundo: Les Jardies are sold to a friend who will keep them for me.Tertio: no one can any longer harass me; my debts are fixed at a certain figure. I spend nothing, and, if I keep my health and force, they willallbe paid in eighteen months.Quarto: threefirms of publishers, Dubochet, Furne, and Hetzel and Paulin, unite to undertake the publication of all my works, a great number, with engravings, to be sold cheaply.La Comédie Humaineis at last to arise, beautiful, well corrected, and almost complete. My works will be purchasable; for as they are now, no one knows where to buy them, or has the money to do so; they have hitherto cost three hundred francs, whereas now they will cost eighty and be well printed. This is an affair which alone might pay my debts. But I do not count upon it; I rely only on my pen and new works.
During this year I have written thirty thousand lines for the newspapers. In 1842 I shall write forty thousand. I have, besides, a comedy in five acts for the Théâtre-Français, not counting "Mercadet," which is always on the stocks. I have written this year, in all, sixteen volumes. But in the spring, if my play is played, I shall go to Germany and to you; for between now and then you will have told me why you have punished me and deprived me of my bread. I could not travel now; I must prepare enough volumes of my complete works, so that this new publication might not suffer by my absence. I have to fill up my frame-work. Many things are still lacking in the "Scènes de province" and "Scènes Parisiennes." As for the "Scènes de la Vie politique, militaire, and campagne," two-thirds are still wanting, and I must finish them all in seven years, under pain of never doingLa Comédie Humaine,—which is the title of my history of society painted in action.
In the midst of all this business and toil, and I may say,renascent pains, the grief that your silence causes is the greatest of all; each day more poignant; and I no longer seek for the reasons of your silence. I await them.
As soon as, through the devotion of Gavault (mylawyer, the solicitor of the city of Paris), I saw that there was still a means to remain in France and pull myself through my difficulties, and that I could respond to his advances of money by pecuniary profits, I redoubled in courage and I sacrificed the journey I was to have made to you. But I told you so, instantly, in a letter telling you all my hopes. This year, thebetterhas made long strides. I shall attain to—death perhaps, but my last glance shall see the Romans fly!
How shall I explain to you that amid these triple battles I feel a cold place in my heart; that I can no longer complain, or write to you; I can only suffer! How many explanations have I given to your silence, all either wounding or irritating! This letter leaves in September; you will receive it in October or November. I cannot, therefore, receive a reply to it before January. That will be four or five months more of uncertainty and fears, amid the most terrible, most active, most occupied life that there is in the world—for I move a world, and you do not know what a Prometheus afoot, acting, with an unseen vulture within his heart, is. I have moments when I cannot invent reasons for your silence; I have reviewed them all and have found each more bitter than the others.
This year I have worked through two hundred nights, and I must begin another in the same way to conquer my liberty. Ah! they may well make a goddess of her!
The address "M. de Brugnol, rue Basse No. 19, Passy, department of the Seine," is always the direct and right address.
Paris, September 30, 1841.
Dear countess, I have just received the letter you have sent me under cover to Souverain, and I am amazed beyond measure. First of all, have the charity to answer by return of mail the following questions:—
1. Did you address the letters which have been returnedto you to M. de Brugnol, rue Basse No. 19; Passy; or were they directed to Sèvres?
2. At what dates ought they to have reached me?
Your answer is of great importance to my tranquillity; for I must discover through what causes your letters have not been delivered to me.
Nothing ever made such an impression on me as your little letter sent through my publisher. I have more than suffered, I have been ill from it. I have had a species of congestion of the head, which was, apparently, the result of it. The letter you will have received a few days before you receive this will paint to you my anxieties. When putting it myself into the post, I spoke to the postmaster, telling him that I had put four letters into his office to which I had had no answer; and that never had my correspondence, lasting eight or nine years, been thus interrupted; that I did not know whether my letters were received, and I feared this might be on account of some error in the prepayment of mine. He answered that if there had been an error it was his affair and would not affect the delivery of the letters. But if I had not received this letter through Souverain, or your answer to my last in the needed time (two and a half months), I should have started, dear, even if so rash a journey had stopped the species of prosperity which Gavault, the lawyer, is introducing into my affairs. Imagine, therefore, what a revulsion there was in my mind on reading your letter so full of melancholy, of deep sadness, which shows me thatsome evil trickhas been played, to repress which I have need of an answer to the above questions.
Dear, and very dear, you must know that my activity the past year has been cruel; I can only use that word. I have made an agreement to write forty thousand lines in the newspapers from October, 1841, to October, 1842; and if I obtain two francs and a half a line, all my indebtedness will be cleared off, or nearly so, and I shallhave won an independence I have never had since I existed. I shall owe not a sou nor a line to any one in the world. It is to that result that I have immolated my dearest affections, and renounced that journey I had planned. But it is impossible that after the coming winter I shall not need some violent and long diversion, and in April I will go to Germany, and beyond it, to you.
The sorrowful eloquence of your dear letter of a wounded heart made me weep; my heart was wrung as I read, at its close, your assurances of old affection, when in me all was the same as ever while you were blaming me. These flashes of joy on learning that all our pain came from neither you nor myself, and that amid this disaster, which has darkened eight months of our life, we each had the same confidence in the other—though you were saddened and I impatient, almost unjust—were needed to send some balm into my heart. Must I again tell you that you and my sister are the sole deities of my heart. It was, dear, extreme misfortune which made me give you that hope of my visit. But I have been stronger against excessive work than I expected. After ten months of labour, to have written "Ursule Mirouët" in twenty days is one of those things which printers and witnesses of that remarkable effort will not believe. It has nothing analogous to it but "César Birotteau."
Well! God owed me the joy, mingled with tears, that your letter brought me; without it I might not have been able to do another like effort this month, when I must give a rival to "Le Médecin de campagne." To win the Montyon prize for 1842, I am now writing "Les Frères de la Consolation." They talk of giving me the cross, for which I care very little; it is not at forty years of age that it can give pleasure; but I could not refuse Villemain.
"Les Mémoires de deux jeunes Mariées" will be out in a few days. In another month I shall finish, in the "Presse," my story of "La Rabouilleuse," the first part of which appeared under the title of "Les Deux Frères."
I have great need to see Germany thoroughly in order to be able to write the "Scènes de la Vie militaire;" and I shall go straight to Dresden to view the battle-field.
The affair of the publication of my great work, under the title ofLa Comédie Humainein which all my compositions will be classed and definitively corrected, is about to begin. In order to travel, I must leave four volumes ready with my publishers, fourcompactvolumes. The whole will be in twenty-eight volumes at four francs, with illustrations.
Doesn't your head swim in reading me? Now you see where the travail of my nights goes. And by the end of December I shall finish a comedy called "Les Rubriques de Quinola." Do you feel what there is under all this? There isyou! Your friend must be a giant, a truly great man; and it is with the greatest of men that I set up a rivalry. I hope that when we meet again you will find the Honoré of Geneva much taller, that you will not be so old as you say you are, and that after so much time spent apart from each other we may have, both of us, a second youth. Don't calumniate yourself, dear.
Borget, who has returned from China after making the tour of the world, will reduce the Wierzchownia landscape and make a pretty picture of it. Alas! it is still unframed in my study; you will not believe my poverty till it is all over and I tell you about it. I suffer less on that account than I have done, without as yet being at ease; I must still be earning the bread of the morrow; but Gavault maintains with firmness the plan formed for my release from debt and my freedom.
I no longer have Les Jardies, and I do not live under my own name; consequently no more prosecutions andcosts. I am in reality as if I owed nothing; I am asked for nothing, and all my earnings are accumulating in Gavault's hands without loss, until they reach the total of my debt; and I live on three hundred francs a month at Passy. There, dear. Ten more novels and two plays, if they succeed, will buy me back Les Jardies and liberty. When once I reach that point, I shall think of making myself a fortune equal to that I have earned to pay my debts, and that will give me an income of twenty thousand francs a year!
After the sensation of grief your letter gave me came the unspeakable pleasure of knowing you still my friend, though pained; but why not have taken, dear, the following course on the return of the first letter? What had you done with your wits? Has the heart no wits? At any rate, put this into your beautiful head, behind that splendid forehead: direct always to "M. de Balzac, Paris,poste restante." Even a husband cannot obtain the letters for his wife; the post gives them only to her without her husband; it writes to the person to whom they are addressed to come and fetch them; and as the post is always informed of my whereabouts, a letterposte restantewill always reach me.
I cannot write to you, dear, oftener than once a month; but I will never fail in that, unless from illness, or too hard labour. By the end of October I may be able to send you, through Bellizard, the original edition, fifty copies only being printed, of "Les Frères de la Consolation."
January 5, 1842.
I have this instant received, dear angel, your letter sealed with black [telling him of the death of M. Hanski, on November 10, 1841], and, after reading it, I could not perhaps wish to have received any other from you, in spite of the sad things you tell me about yourself and your health. As for me, dear, adored one, although thisevent makes me attain to that which I have ardently desired for nearly ten years, I can, before you and God, do myself this justice, that I have never had in my heart any other thing than complete submission, and that I have not, in my most cruel moments, stained my soul with evil wishes. No one can prevent certain involuntary transports. Often I have said to myself, "How light my life would be withher!" No one can keep his faith, his heart, his inner being without hope. Those two motive powers, of which the Church makes virtues, have sustained me in my struggle.
But I conceive the regrets that you express to me; they seem to me natural and true; especially after a protection that has never failed you since that letter at Vienna. I am, however, joyful to know that I can write to you with open heart to tell you all those things on which I have kept silence, and disperse the melancholy complaints you have founded on misconceptions, so difficult to explain at a distance. I know you too well, or I think I know you too well, to doubt you for one moment; and I have often suffered, very cruelly suffered, that you have doubted me, because, since Neufchâtel, you are my life. Let me say this to you plainly, after having so often proved it to you. The miseries of my struggle and of my terrible work would have worn-out the greatest and strongest men; and often my sister has desired to put an end to them, God knows how; I always thought the remedy worse than the disease. It is therefore you alone who have supported me till now; yet I have never counted on more than we saw—that day at Les Chênes, you remember?—of that old couple Sismonde de Sismondi, Philemon and Baucis, which so touched us. Nothing in me has changed.
I have redoubled in work to go and see you this year, and I have succeeded. Since I last wrote to you I have not slept more than two hours of a night, and I havewritten, above my promised books and articles, two plays in live acts, one with a prologue, which begin their rehearsal to-morrow at the Odéon. I hoped by working for some months longer like the last eighteen months to pay my crushing debts and save Les Jardies. This constant labour has, especially during the last five years, parted me wholly from society. To-day I want my patent of eligibility, for Lamartine has a rotten-borough for me, and to be one of the coming legislature is a future for us.
To conceive of this in the thick of the battle, is it not loving well to have such courage, such boldness, when, your letters becoming so rare, I was tortured, week by week, with the desire to go to you and learn the reason of your silence?—for the few words, almost illegible, which ended your letters were always to me fresh beams of hope. "Be patient," you said to me; "you are loved as much as you love. Do not change, for others change not."
We have both been courageous, one as much as the other; why, therefore, should we not be happy to-day? Do you think it was for myself that I have been so persistent in magnifying my name? Oh! I am perhaps very unjust, but such injustice comes from the violence of my heart. I would have liked two words for me in your letter, but I sought them in vain; two words for him who, since the scene you live in is before his eyes, has not passed, while working, ten minutes without looking at it; I have there sought all, ever since it came to me, that we each have asked in the silence of our spirits. I have not been able to part with it to let Borget make his copy. The certainty of knowing you free has made me gentle, or I should have been more angry, were you not mourning.
O my beloved angel, be prudent and take care of yourself; take care of your precious health. I shall not work much before my departure. I start for GermanyMarch 20th, and I will not cross Saxony without your permission; but I cannot any longer have so many leagues between us. I have already signified to my publishers that they must at once print enough Parts to have no need of me until after September.
I have carefully buried my joy, just as I hid my griefs and my memories, in the depths of my heart. But I will tell it to you. I remained, all stupefied, for twenty-four hours, locked in my study, not willing that any one should speak to me. When I came out I was hot in the midst of intense sudden cold. Let me tell you of a little superstition, a little circumstance which has made a great impression upon me. On November 1 I lost one of the two shirt buttons Madame de Berny had given me, which I wore one day, and yours the next day. After losing it, I could only wear yours; and this little chance matter troubled me to a point you will imagine when I tell you that my mother and all about me noticed it. I said to myself, "There is in it some warning from heaven!" I love you so, and it has cost me so horribly to keep silence about it since Vienna, that I value the solitude of my study at Passy, where no one penetrates, and where I can be with you.
Ah! dear, you have put so many things into your letter that I do not start at once. I await your answer here; you will then have had time to reflect how difficult it is for me to remain in Paris when for six years I have longed to see you. Oh! write me that your existence shall be wholly mine, that we shall now be happy, without any possible cloud. Will you ever know how much strength it has needed to write to you thus, without saying a word to paint to you the ardour of this unique love, preserved as my one treasure, my only hope! Oh! how many times, under my most bitter disappointments, in struggles, in griefs, I have turned to the North,—to me the Orient, peace, happiness!
To speak now of business, I have made a great step. On the 5th or 7th of February they play at the Odéon "L'École des Grands Hommes," an immense comedy on the struggle of a man of genius with his epoch. The scene is in 1560, in Spain. It relates to the man who sailed a steamboat in the port of Barcelona, let her sink to the bottom, and disappeared. If I have a success, I start; if I fail, I must write four volumes to get the money for my journey. But I have still another play at the Vaudeville.
My complete works are being rapidly printed, and will be issued during my journey.
If I have two successes, I shall leave the money to buy back Les Jardies, and pay off some lesser creditors, and I am sure, in two years, to complete my liberation. Only I must have enough to buy back the house for my mother, to whom I owe the sum of forty thousand francs.
Gavault, my lawyer, is satisfied. Every one believes in a great success for "Les Ressources de Quinola," the false title of my play. I keep the one I have just told you for the last moment.
The "Mémoires de deux jeunes Mariées," published in the "Presse," has had the greatest success. But the finest work this year is "Ursule Mirouët."
I send this little line, written in haste. I will write you more in detail within three or four days. I am worn-out with work, and I am still up all night, for there is much to be done to the play. I have three acts to add to the second play, and my newspaper articles on my shoulders.
As for your letters, dear, adored one, be without anxiety. If I die suddenly there is nothing to fear. They are in a box like the one you have; and above them is a notice, which my sister knows of, to put them all into the fire without looking at them, and I am sureof my sister. But why this uneasiness now? Why? I ask myself that question in terrible anxiety. You must be more ill than you have told me. You did not fill the last page in your letter! You have put so much uneasiness around that which makes me happy that I know not what to think. Alas! do you not feel, my cherished angel, my flower of heaven, that all you wish of me shall be done as you wish? Do I not love you even more for you than for myself?
I entreat you, on receiving my letter, write me two words only, to let me know if I can write to you with open heart (for I am still hampered by what you say to me), and how you are; I need to know nothing more than that. You, all is you, dearest; I am only uneasy about your health. Take care of yourself; you owe this to me.
Adieu, my dear and beautiful life that I love so well, and to whom I now can tell it.Sempre medesimo.
Note.—The "Lettres à l'Étrangère" end here. The letters that follow are those to Madame Hanska, given in Balzac's Correspondence, vol. xxiv. of the Édition Définitive of his works. No letters have, so far, been published between the one dated above, January 5, 1842, and the one that here follows, dated October 14, 1843, written after a visit paid by Balzac to Madame Hanska in St. Petersburg.
So far as can now be ascertained, the history of their relationship from this date is as follows: Madame Hanska would not, or could not, consent to marry Balzac after Monsieur Hanski's death for the following reasons: 1. Her duty to her daughter, to whom she was left guardian, with the care, conjointly with the child's uncle, of enormous estates in the Ukraine. 2. Russian law, which required relinquishment of property on marriage with a foreigner. 3. The difficulty of obtaining the Emperor's consent to such marriage.
The first difficulty was removed by the marriage of her daughter Anna, in 1846, to Count Georges Mniszech, the ownerof vast estates in Volhynia; and in September of that year Balzac was summoned to meet Madame Hanska at Wiesbaden, at or about which time it is said that she pledged herself definitively to marry him.
Meantime, he had met her at several places, and had travelled with her in Germany, Holland, and Italy, as will be seen by the following letters. In the summer of 1845 Madame Hanska paid a visit to Paris with her daughter; but in secrecy to avoid the displeasure of the Russian government. During this visit Balzac took her to Tours, Vendôme, and the valley of the Cher, to show her the places of his childhood. The visit to Vendôme is recorded in a letter written after his death to M. Armand Baschet by M. Mareschal-Duplessis, director of the College, who was also director when Balzac was a pupil there. M. Mareschal mentions that he was accompanied by a lady; but he mistakes Madame Hanska's nationality and calls her an Englishwoman; or she may herself have conveyed that idea for the sake of her incognito, which was all-important to her.
In October of the same year (1845) Balzac accompanied Madame Hanska to Naples for a few days only; but he met her in Rome in March, 1846, and stayed there a month. His visit to Wiesbaden, mentioned above, took place in October, 1846. In December Balzac went to Dresden, returning some weeks later with Madame Hanska, who remained in Paris till April, 1847, when she returned to Wierzchownia. Balzac left Paris in September, 1847, and paid his first and long desired visit to Wierzchownia, arriving about the first of October. He stayed there until February, 1848, when he returned to Paris, leaving it again early in September for Wierzchownia; where he lived until one month after his marriage to Madame Hanska, which took place March 15, 1850. He returned to Paris with his wife May 20, and died three months later, August 19, 1850.—TR.
Berlin, October 14, 1843.
Dear countess,[1]I arrived here this morning at six o'clock, having had for all rest twelve hours at Tilsit, from which must be deducted three hours given to the director of posts, to whom I had an introduction, and who did me so many services that I took tea with him in the evening. I arrived too late to dine there with Stieglitz, as we desired.
As long as I was on Russian soil I seemed to be still with you, and, without being exactly of a frolicking gaiety, you must have seen by my little letter from Taurogen that I had strength enough left to joke at my grief. But once on foreign soil, I can say nothing at all, except that this journey may be made to go to you, but not on quitting you. The aspect of Russian lands, without culture, without inhabitants, seemed to me natural; but the same sight seen in Prussia was horribly sad, and in keeping with the sadness that seized upon me. These barren tracts, this sterile soil, this cold desolation, this poverty, gripped and chilled me. I felt myself as much saddened as if there had been a contrast between my heart and Nature. Black grief swooped down upon me more and more heavily as physical fatigueincreased. But do not pity me for taking the land journey, because these late storms must have made the navigation of the Baltic very bad.
I know how you are by the way I feel; I feel within me an immense void, which enlarges and deepens more and more, and from which nothing distracts me. So I have renounced going to Dresden; I do not feel the courage to go there. Holbein's Madonna will not be stolen between now and a year hence; the scene of the battle and the defiles of the Kulm will not change, and I shall have a reason, next May, to make the journey again with other ideas. Don't blame me for my faint-heartedness; nothing now pleases me in this journey, which did so please me in the salon of the Hotel Koutaitsof when you said, "You will go here—and there." I listened to you, I went, for it was you who told me. But now, how can I help it? far from you all is lifeless, without a soul. Next year, perhaps; but now, I have nothing but the gulf of my toil, and I go to it by the shortest way.
I slept this morning from seven o'clock till midday, a few tired, restless hours. I have breakfasted, dressed, and paid three visits: to Bresson, Redern, and Mendelssohn; and on my return I sit down to write to you, for to talk with you is the greatest, the most vital instinct of the moment.
I was interrupted by Comte Bresson, who came immediately to invite me to dinner for to-morrow, because he leaves, or rather his wife leaves, the day after; she goes before him to Madrid. As far as I can judge, he is a man of intelligence and great good sense; above all, without any species of pretension, which is rare in diplomatists, and I prize it much. He advised me to write a line to Humboldt, of whom I saw much in Paris at Gérard's and elsewhere; he will, no doubt, show me Potsdam. M. Bresson goes to Spain, and Salvandy to Turin.
I resume my dear laments, and I must tell you that the highway from Petersburg to Tilsit is only practicable at two sections: from Petersburg to Narva, and from Riga to Taurogen; so that for more than half way the road is detestable when it rains, and it had rained a great deal, alas! Imagine the jolts we made! but the vehicles are excellent; they resisted them. All that is Russian has a very tough life. A roadway is laid down across the sands of Livonia with gorse; out though the road has the gorsecharacteristics, it has, none the less, a disquieting aspect and a boggy style. It is a miracle to get over the road in three days and a half; and that gives a great idea of Russian stubbornness. We had eight horses, and sometimes ten, in certain places. Where the chaussée [paved road] is made it is magnificent. Ah! I shall have pleasure in going over it again! butthenit will not be over gorse but flowers that I shall be jolted. Literally, one eats nothing by the way, for there is nothing to eat; but the way-stations are very handsome, and there is always excellent Russian tea. I am therefore able to honour my grief by thinness, due to the diet of the journey; if I suffered, my mental condition was such that I did not become conscious of it; the grief of quitting you quelled hunger, just as the pleasure of meeting you had already quelled sea-sickness. You are above all.
I am here at the Hôtel de Russie, which is passably good and not too dear. From Berlin I shall go to Leipzig and Frankfort-on-the-Main, by the PrussianSchnell-post; and from Frankfort to France by steamboat, or railroad all the way; which is, I think, more economical than any other way of travelling.
I have found two road companions, two sculptors, one of whom, as I told you, speaks an almost incomprehensible French, and I have just made the rounds of Berlin with him. These young men have been full of attentionsto me all the way, especially from Riga, where I parted from my first companion, the Frenchman. The artist-nature is everywhere the same. These two young fellows got me out of all difficulties at inns, and I have just invited them to dinner (arapindinner, be it understood). It is the least I can do for such obliging lads to thank them for their good care before we part.
This sulky Berlin is not comparable to sumptuous Petersburg. In the first place, one might cut a score of mean little towns like the capital of the Brandebourg out of the great city of the vast European empire, and there would still remain enough space built upon to crush the score of extracted little Berlins without injury to its vast extent. But, at first sight, Berlin seems the more populated; for I have perceived several individuals in the streets, which is not often the case in Petersburg. However, the houses here, without being handsome, seem well built; one can see that they are not wanting in comfort inside. The public buildings, rather ugly of aspect, are of handsome freestone; and the space around them is so managed as to set them off. Very likely it is to this artfulness that Berlin owes its air of being more populous than Petersburg; I should have said moreanimatedif it concerned any other people; but the Prussian, with his brutish heaviness, is never anything but ponderous; less beer and bad tobacco, and more French or Italian wit is needed to produce the stir of the other great capitals of Europe, or else the grand industrial and commercial ideas which have caused the great development of London; but Berlin and its inhabitants will never be otherwise than an ugly little town inhabited by ugly fat people.
However, it must be admitted, to whoso returns from Russia, Germany has an indefinable air which can only be explained by the magic word LIBERTY, manifested by free manners and customs, or, I should say, by freedomin manners and customs. The principal public buildings of Berlin are grouped about the hotel where I am, so that I could see them all in an hour. Fatigue is seizing me; I aspire to dinner: the first I have eaten since the splendours of Russia.
Till to-morrow, dear countess.
[1]To Madame Hanska, at St. Petersburg. Balzac has just left her after a visit of two months.—TR.
[1]To Madame Hanska, at St. Petersburg. Balzac has just left her after a visit of two months.—TR.
October 15.
Our dinner was composed of soup, venison, mayonnaise of fish, macaroni with cheese, a little dessert, a half-bottle of madeira, and a bottle of bordeaux.Ecco, signora!At eight o'clock I dismissed my guests and went to bed, the first bed that resembled a bed since I left Dunkerque. Before going to sleep I thought of you and of what you might be doing at eight o'clock of a Saturday evening. I imagined you were at the theatre; I saw the Michel theatre; but I did not have the cruel pleasure, as inSchnell-postor inKaréta potchtôvaïa, to think till midnight, for at midnight I was sound asleep, and in the morning I slept till eight o'clock. You have so often subdued the most imperious things in nature that you will pardon poor nature for taking its revenge for once. Exclusively tender souls have a worship for memories, and your memory, you cannot doubt it, is always in my heart and in my thought. I give myself the fête of thinking of it during that short half-dreaming moment when we feel ourselves betwixt slumber and sleep; and all the sweet impressions of the two months I have spent with you return to enchant my soul with their radiant images, so full of harmony. You see that the Virgin of Poland is the same as the Notre-Dame of France, and that if my journey is saddened by a separation such as I have now borne three times, all is otherwise well with me.
I have received from M. de Humboldt the note which encloses mine; it is, certainly, curious under presentcircumstances. I send it to you; and I can speak of it openly, as this letter will be carried to you by Viardot, whom I have just met, and who agrees very willingly to take it; he is one of the most honourable men I know; in whom one can put the utmost confidence; he will give it into your own hand.
October 16.
I have just dined with Madame Bresson,néede Guitaut. There was a great dinner at the Embassy on occasion of the King's fête. Except the ambassadress, everybody was old and ugly or young and hideous; the handsomest woman, if not the youngest, was the one I took into dinner; guess who,—the Duchesse de Talleyrand (ex-Dino) who was there with her son, the Duc de Valençay, who looked to be ten years older than his mother. The conversation was about people's names and little incidents happening at court within forty-eight hours. But at any rate, it explained to me Hoffmann's jests about German courts. Impossible to join Redern; I had his wife on one side of me,—the face of an heiress, and a very rich heiress to make him forget such lack of charm.
Nothing can be more wearisome than Berlin. I am consumed with ennui—ennui has entered me to the bone, and I am afraid of being ill. I write this before going to bed; it is nine o'clock; but what can one do in Berlin? For all amusement there's "Medea," translated from the German, and played literally! Yesterday they played before the court Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream," also translated literally! The King of Prussia protects letters, but, as you see, they are mostly dead letters.
I leave to-morrow, and go to Leipzig by the railway to reach Mayence; after which by the same to Dresden to see the Gallery.
M. de Humboldt made me a visit of an hour this morning, charged, he said, with the compliments of the King and the Princess of Prussia. He gave me all necessary information as to how to find Tieck at Potsdam, and I shall profit by it to study the physiognomy of that great barrack of Frederick the Great, of whom de Maistre said: "He was not a great man; at the most a great Prussian."
I went out by the railway, and on getting into a carriage I found the fantastic Duchesse de Talleyrand, with her hair dressed in a mass of flowers and diamonds, like an apparition of a midsummer night's dream. She was on her way to court in full dress, to dine with the Princess of Prussia. We had also for third the Comte de Redern, a mouldy old Prussian fop, dry as a Genevese and important as a retired diplomatist. I requested the shepherdess of threescore to lay my respects at the feet of the princess.
I saw Tieck in his home; he seemed pleased with my homage. There was an old countess, his contemporary in spectacles, octogenarian perhaps, a mummy with a green eye-shade, who seemed to me a domestic divinity. I have just returned; it is half-past six o'clock, and I have eaten nothing since morning. Berlin is the city of ennui; I should die of it in a week. Poor Humboldt is dying of it; he drags about with him a nostalgia for Paris. As I start to-morrow morning by the railway, I must bid you adieu. I cannot write again until I get to Mayence.
In talking this morning with Comte Bresson, I told him I had been driven from Petersburg by the tattle of porters and ignoble gossip; that no one believed in generous and disinterested sentiments, and that I was angry with the Russian people for attacking my sacred liberty by imagining that I should do like Loëve-Weymar. M. Bresson strongly approved; and said thata Frenchman should never marry any but a French-woman; I told him I was of his opinion, and that was what I should do! I am told that if I stay here a week fêtes will be made for me. But a week means three hundred francs, and really, for Berlin, that is too dear. If I could only get away from this dreadful town by paying that sum, I don't say it would be too much; I would even add a little to be off the quicker. More than ever do I see that nothing is possible to me without you, and the more space I put between us, the more I feel the strength of the tie that holds me. I live by the past only, and I live in it only, withdrawn into the depths of my heart. Must it not be horrible suffering to be alone as I am, with the continual memory of these two months, from which my thought plucks flowers, blossom by blossom, with melancholy and religious tenderness?
October 17.
I leave you afresh this morning, for it is like a fresh leaving not to write to you in the evening what I have done during the day. I go to Leipzig, where I shall book my place in theSchnell-postfor Frankfort. I shall sleep at Leipzig; the next day go to Dresden, and return, on the 20th, to take the Prussian conveyance.
The loneliness that takes the place of intimacy has all the ways of remorse—I feel a violent need of changing from place to place, stirring, going, coming; as if at the end of this physical agitation and all these useless movements I should find you. I look with tenderness at this paper which I shall carry in a moment to Viardot, thinking how your pretty fingers will hold it in that salon where the hours fled so sweetly and so rapidly. Viardot will faithfully deliver to you this packet, in which I may say that my life will be one long anguish till I see you again. From Mayence you shall have a letter which will tell you of my acts and deeds after leaving Berlin. I shall reachPassy about November 10; therefore write me on the 3rd, of your style.
Adieu; if I have failed in our agreement, if anything displeases you in this letter, be, as ever, kind and forgive me. Think of my grief, my loneliness, my sorrow, and you will be full of pity and indulgence for the poor exile.
Dresden, October 19, 1843.
I left Berlin with ennui, dear, but I have found nostalgia here. Nothing that I eat nourishes me, nothing that I see distracts me. I have seen the famous Gallery, and Raffaelle's Virgin, also Holbein's, and I said to myself, "I love my love too well!" In going through the famous treasury, I would have given all for one half-hour on the Neva. To add to my troubles I am here for two days longer than I wished to be; and this is why. From Berlin I went to Leipzig and passed the night. I had counted without the fair at Leipzig; all the seats were taken in theSchnell-post. I then asked the landlord to book my seat and keep my luggage, instead of my dragging it to Dresden and back, for they demand an infinite number of thalers for overweight of luggage. The landlord said it was doubtful if he could get me a seat for the 20th, the day I wished to start, and I have just received a letter from him saying I can have no place till the 22nd.
Yesterday, on arriving, having missed the hour for the Gallery, I walked about Dresden in all directions, and it is, I assure you, a charming city; very preferable as a residence to that mean and melancholy Berlin. It has the look of a capital; partly a Swiss, partly a German town; the environs are picturesque and all is charming. I can conceive of living in Dresden; there is a mixture of gardens and dwellings that delights the eye. As for the palace begun by Augustus the Strong, it is really a most curious masterpiece of rococo architecture. As afantasy it is almost as fine as gothic, and as art it is exquisite. What a misfortune that so enchanting a conception is unfinished, and is left in a deplorable state. It would take, of course, millions to repair, complete, arrange, and furnish this delightful gem. There is nothing in Petersburg, still less in Prussia, nor in the whole North to compare to it. What a man was that Augustus, calling himself Elector in Poland, and King in Saxony!
I saw so many Titians in Florence and Venice that those in the Dresden gallery had less value in my eyes. Correggio's "Night" seemed to me over-praised; but his Magdalen, two Virgins of his, the two Madonnas of Raffaelle, and the Dutch and Flemish pictures are well worth the journey. The treasury is nonsense; its two or three millions in diamonds could not dazzle eyes that had just seen those of the Winter Palace. Besides, the diamond says nothing to me; a dew-drop, sparkling in a ray of the rising sun, is to me more beautiful than the finest diamond in the world—just as a certain smile is more beautiful to me than the finest picture. So I must return to Dresden with you in order that the pictures may speak to me. Rubens moved me somewhat, but the Rubens of the Louvre are more complete. The true masterpiece of the Gallery is Holbein's Madonna, which extinguishes all the rest. How I regretted that I could not hold your hand in mine while I admired it with that inward delight and plenitude of happiness which the contemplative enjoyment of the beautiful bestows! The Madonna of Raffaelle, one expects it; but Holbein's Madonna is the unexpected, and it grasps one.
Dear countess, you will never form to yourself a complete idea of my dreadful loneliness. Not speaking the language and not knowing a person to speak to, I have not uttered a hundred sentences since I left Riga and that French merchant. I am always in front of myself, and the scenery being a desert and a plain, I have nothing tointerest the eye; the heart has passed from excess of riches to the most absolute pauperism. The recapitulation mentally of those hours that flew by, alas! so rapidly, the dreamy thoughts that followed them gave such bitter sadness to a nature naturally gay and laughing that my two sculptors said to me—that is, the one who thought he spoke French—"What is it? what is the matter?" Another fortnight like this and I shall gently, gently die, without apparent illness.
I see that I must renounce the Rhine and Belgium and return to strong occupation in the affairs and toils of Paris. This air does me harm; I am inwardly debilitated; nothing restores my tone, nothing cheers my courage, I thirst for nothing. I have two nostalgias: one for the banks of the Neva which I leave, the other for the France to which I go.
German railway trains are a pretext for eating and drinking; they stop at every moment; the passengers get out and drink and eat, and get in only to do it all over again; so that the mail-cart in France goes faster than the trains in Germany.
It is eleven at night; I am in a hotel where every one is asleep. Dresden is quiet as a sick-room; I feel no desire to sleep. Have I grown old that the Gallery has given me so few emotions? or has the source of my emotions changed? Ah! surely, I recognize the infinite of my attachment and its depth in the immense void there now is in my soul. To love, for me, is to live; and to-day more than ever I feel it, I see it, all things prove it to me, and I recognize that there will never be for me any other taste, any other absorption, any other passion than that you know, which fills not only my heart but my entire brain.
October 20.
Absolutely nothing to tell you but what you already know. I have just returned from the theatre, which iscertainly one of the most charming I ever saw. Despléchin, Séchan, and Diéterle, the three decorators who did our French Opera house, came here to arrange it. Nothing could be prettier. If you choose Dresden for a residence Anna will have the loveliest hall she ever dreamed of. They sang a German version of "Fra Diavolo" which seemed to me an excellent preparation for sleep. I had seen the collections of porcelains and antiquities in the morning. I feel tired. Fatigue is a power; and I am now going to bed at eleven o'clock. You know of whom I shall dream as I sleep.
October 21.
I leave to-morrow; my place is booked, and I will finish my letter, because I wish to put it in the post myself. I have a head like an empty pumpkin, and I am in a state which makes me more uneasy than I can tell you. If I continue thus in Paris I must return. I have no feeling for anything, no desire to live, not the slightest energy, nor do I feel any will. You will never know until I explain it to you verbally, the courage I display in writing to you. This morning I stayed till eleven o'clock in bed, unable to get up. It is horrible suffering which has its seat nowhere; which cannot be described; which attacks both heart and brain. I feel stupid, and the farther I go, the worse the malady becomes. I will write you from Mayence if I feel better. But as for the present, I can only describe my condition as Fontenelle, a centenarian, explained his,—"a difficulty of being." I have not smiled since I left you; it is spleen of the heart; and that is very serious, for it is a double spleen.
Adieu, dear star thrice blessed! there may come a moment when I can express to you the thoughts that oppress me; to-day I can only tell you that I love you too well for my peace; for, after this August and this September, I feel that I can only live beside you and thatyour absence is death. Oh! how happy I should be were I walking and conversing with you in the little garden overhanging the bridge of Troïsk, where there is nothing yet but broomsticks to mark where they mean to plant the trees. To me, there was no garden in Europe more lovely—when you were in it, I mean. There are moments when I see clearly the least little objects that surround you; I look at the cushion with a pattern of black lace worked upon it on which you leaned, and I count the stitches! Never was my memory so fresh; my inward sight, on which are mirrored the houses that I build, the landscapes I create, is now all given to the service of the most completely happy memories of my life. You could never imagine the treasures of revery which glorify certain hours; there are some which fill my eyes with tears. My inward eyes behold those angular bronzes against which I struck my knees as I wound my way through your blue salon, and the little chair in which you reposed your dreamy thoughts! What power and happiness there is in these returns to a past which thus we see again. Such moments are more than life; for the whole of life is in this one hour withdrawn from real existence to the profit of these memories which flood my soul in torrents. What sweetness and what strength lies in the simple thought of certain material objects, which attracted but little notice in the happy days that are past; and how happy I feel myself to feel thus!
Adieu; I am going to carry my letter to the post. All tenderness to your child a thousand times blessed; my regards to Lirette, and to you all that there is in my heart, my soul, my brain.
Passy, February 5, 1844.
Yesterday I did errands; for I must think about getting "Les Petits Bourgeois" set up by a printer at the cost of a new publisher. I went to see the successor ofM. Gavault, and there I found a summons from that dreadful Locquin-coquin. No one more audacious than a swindler! he cries, "Murder! thieves!" to hang his victim. All this stirred my bile, and as I had been up since three in the morning I felt very weary, and went to bed at six to rise at four. While I slept the dear journal came; I put it aside for my waking and have just read it. All these opposing emotions, some exasperating, others gentle, not to say divine, have done me harm; I feel exhausted, which seldom happens to me. I must be at M. Gavault's at nine o clock for consultation with him and his successor, M. Picard, on the Locquin affair; now, to get there at nine o'clock supposes breakfasting at seven; and I who have still fivefeuilletsto write for Hetzel, promised to him for this morning! I had kept them back in order to have acalm nightto search them out; they needed mind, and my mind was all upset!
I entreat you, do not be worried about the Reviews; it would even be a pity were it otherwise. A man is lost in France the moment he makes himself a name, and is crowned in his lifetime. Insults, calumnies, rejection, all that suits me. Some day it will be known that if I lived by my pen there never entered two centimes into my purse that were not hardly and laboriously earned, that praise or blame were equally indifferent to me, that I have built up my work amid cries of hatred and literary musketry, and have done so with a firm and imperturbable hand. My revenge is to write, in the "Débats," "Les Petits Bourgeois;" which will make my enemies say with fury, "At the moment one might think his bag was empty he produces a masterpiece." That is what Madame Reybaud said on reading "David Séchard," "Honorine," etc. You will read the strange history of "Esther." I will send it to you thoroughly corrected; you will there see a Parisian world which is, and always will be, unknown to you, very different from the falseworld of "Les Mystères" and ever comic; in which the author, as George Sand said, applies a whip that strips off all the plasters put on to hide the wounds he uncovers. You write me: "What a volume is that which contains 'Nucingen,' 'Pierre Grassou,' and 'Les Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan'!" Perhaps you are right; I am proud of it (between ourselves).
You will see if the corruption of the Spanish abbé, which annoys you, was not necessary to develop the history of Lucien in Paris, ending in a frightful suicide. Lucien had already served as an easel on which to paint journalism; he serves again to paint the piteous and pitiable class of kept women; the corruption of the flesh, after the corruption of the mind. Next comes "Les Petits Bourgeois," and, for conclusion, "Les Frères de la Consolation." Nothing will then be lacking in my Paris butartists, thestage, and thesavants. I shall then have painted the great modern monster under all its aspects.
To sum up: here is the stake I play for,—four men have had in this half-century an immense influence: Napoleon, Cuvier, O'Connell; and I desire to be the fourth. The first lived on the blood of Europe, he inoculated himself with armies; the second espoused the globe; the third has incarnated himself in a people; and I shall have carried a whole social world in my brain. Better live thus than call out every evening, "Spades, hearts, trumps!" or find out why Madame such a one has done such or such a thing. But there will always be in me something greater than the writer, happier than he, and that is, your serf. My sentiment is nobler, grander, more complete than all the satisfactions of vanity or fame. Without this plenitude of heart I could not have accomplished one tenth of my work; I should not have had this ferocious courage. Tell yourself often this truth in your moments of melancholy, andyou will divine by the toil-effect the grandeur of its cause.
Your journal has done me good to read, and I shall re-read it again to-morrow, more than once. It is six o'clock; I must see about inventing and then writing the little trifles for Hetzel. I leave you, sending to you all flowers of the heart.
February 6.
Yesterday I went out, but I suffered much; that thief who sues me, your letter, all these violent and opposing emotions did me harm. If the colic, as Lord Byron says, puts love to flight it certainly knocks down imagination; not only have I suffered, but my brain has been as if veiled. Last night was dreadful, and the waking not pleasant. After breakfasting, I feel rather better; but I have to go out for current affairs, and I cannot think of it without repugnance, so weak and ill do I still feel. I have, nevertheless, corrected the article for Hetzel, and addedla coda,the most difficult part to wrench out. I still have one horribly difficult chapter to do of threefeuillets; after which I shall be delivered. But while breakfasting the idea of a pretty comedy in three acts came to me; I will tell it to you if I write it. This week I must finish "Le Programme," and then set seriously to work on "Mercadet."
I dine to-day with Girardin, and shall pay a visit to M. de Barante to thank him for his letter. I perceive, sadly, that my hard labour has aged me much; if I do not go to Germany by the grace of God and yourself, I shall make a trip on foot among the Alps.
Do not think that I ever tire of the Daffinger. I give it to myself as a reward when I have done my task, and at night it is there, beside me, on my table, and I search my ideas in it.
February 7.
I am still not well, and I have even gone to bed during the day; but I feel a little better now and shall dine with my doctor. I have just done the article for Hetzel, which will be, like all things wrenched out in spite of Minerva, detestable. Yesterday I consulted M. Roux (Dupuytren's successor, alas!), and he strongly advised me that journey on foot as the only means of arresting the inclination of my cerebral organs to inflame.
I am now going to two printing-offices to negotiate affairs, and, among others, to arrange with a publisher for "Les Petits Bourgeois."
February 8.
When I do not suffer in my head I suffer in the intestines, and I have at all times a little fever; nevertheless, this morning, at the moment of writing to you, I am well, or rather, I feel better.
Yesterday I talked with a publisher named Kugelmann. He is a German, who seems to me full of good-will; we shall settle something to-day when I have done with the "Débats;" I go to Bertin at eleven o'clock. If the two affairs can be arranged I shall have nearly twenty thousand francs for "Les Petits Bourgeois." They want to illustrate either "Eugénie Grandet" or "La Physiologie du Mariage," and have made me proposals to that effect. If these proposals lead to any result you shall know it, of course. Yesterday I met Poirson, manager of the Gymnase, in an omnibus, and he proposed to me to give him the comedy of "Prudhomme," and have it played by Henri Monnier. That is one of my crutches for this year; I shall go and explain it to him next Monday; and if it suits him, I shall set to work upon it immediately, so as to have it played in March—or rather in May, for March has twice been fatal to me.
Adieu for to-day, celestial star, implored and followed with so much religion. Every day I say to myself, thinking of your dear household of three, "I hope they are happy! that nothing troubles them! that Lirette sanctifies herself more and more; that Anna goes sometimes to the theatre (for her health, as she says so prettily); and that madame will from time to time look down the Neva to where Paris lies." As for me, I think only of that rococo salon, and so thinking, I make a little mental prayer to a human divinity, especially about nine o'clock, when tea makes me think that you are taking yours in the lamplight at that white table, the yellow wavelets of which I see at moments, together with the samovar. What friends are things, when they surround beloved beings! There is even a stupid ivory elephant that returns to my memory at times. As for the causeuse, the little carpet, the Louis XIV. screen, and the chair on which you rested your noble, cherished head, they are objects of worship. Do you feel yourself loved even in the outward objects to which you have given more real life than living and moving beings have to me? Your sadnesses make me smile, and I say to myself, "She was notthensitting in her chair; she was not looking then at her chimney-corner." But it would have been a pity not to write those four pages; they are sublime; and were it not for the deep respect I have for you, I would put them proudly into one of my books, to give you the enjoyment of seeing how superior you are to scribblers like the rest of us. That letter is a true diamond as style and as thought; you have the inspiring influence, dear lady!—
See how I chatter with you! Can I help it? I make my letters one of those cat-like sensuous joys to which we grow used, and which wrap us so softly that we forget they are but thecopyof their cause!—
Well, one more look at that dear rue Millionne, and adeep, deep sigh, alas! not to be there. Why should you not have a poet as others have a dog, a parrot, a monkey?—and all the more because I am a little of all three, and repeat to you ever the one phrase, "I am faithful!" (Here the countess throws up her head and casts a superb glance.)
Adieu till to-morrow; I have recovered a little gaiety the last two days; are some happy events happening to you? God owes them to you. Have you not suffered enough to expiate the fault of all who surround you?—for as to you, you have never understood or practised anything but the good and the beautiful.
February 10.
Yesterday Bertin was ill, but he sent word that the affair held good. I went to the printing-office, but the publisher did not come; a bad sign. Here's a strange thing! the printer fell so in love with the title "Les Petits Bourgeois de Paris" that he wants to buy the book of me for twenty thousand francs and publish it illustrated! I came home to dinner and went to bed, for I had this morning to read seven folios ofLa Comédie Humaineand the whole of Hetzel's article. It crushed me down. I went to bed after breakfast and slept till dinner-time, and as I could not sleep again from six in the evening till three next morning, I took some coffee, and here I am at nine in the evening, writing at my table.
If I have luck I shall sell the right to illustrate "Eugénie Grandet," and the "Petits Bourgeois" affair will come off, and this will bring me out of these matters (I mean the annoying matters). They played a new tragedy at the Odéon last night, but I did not go; I reserve myself for Tuesday, when the "Mystères de Paris" are brought out at the Porte-Saint-Martin.
February 14.
"Les Mystères" ended this morning at half-past one after midnight. I did not get back to Passy till three in the morning. It is now one o'clock, and I am just up. Frédérick Lemaître was in fear of a cerebral congestion; I found him yesterday at midday in bed; he had just plunged into a mustard bath up to his knees. Twice the night before he lost his eyesight. "Les Mystères" is the worst play in the world, but Frédérick's talent will make a furor for it. As actor, he was magnificent. You never can describe such effects, they must be seen. I am satisfied with the success he will give to "Les Mystères," because it gives me time to finish "Mercadet." The princes were in a proscenium box, and as the Prince de Joinville had never seen me, the Duc de Nemours pointed me out to him.
Since then I have written to Poirson that I will go and see him Friday to agree about "Prudhomme." I am to dine with my old friend the Duchesse de Castries, who, just now, for one reason or another, renews her kind attentions to your servant. All my prose is ready for Hetzel. To-day I dine with Lingay, the man who wanted to put to the profit of the State, so he said, my talent of observation. He does not seem vexed with me for my want of compliance, or perhaps he has too much intelligence not to have understood me.
February 16.
I went out yesterday for much business.
1. A purchaser wants my Florentine furniture. People have come from all parts to see it, even the antiquity dealers; and they are all in a flutter of admiration. You don't know what this means. It was the article in the "Messager" (which you will doubtless read copied into the "Débats") which has roused all this attention.
2. The matter of "Les Petits Bourgeois" rests, so far,with the "Débats." But the publisher wants the book; no doubt to illustrate with "Eugénie Grandet" and the "Physiologie du Mariage."
3. Poirson thinks the idea of the play excellent and proposes toguide me!—and if the execution is equal to the plot, he assures me of all the advantages I can desire. So I may appear once more before the public about April 1. Here I am, with "Prudhomme" and "Les Petits Bourgeois" on my hands; but no money. I must coin it in a manner to conquer tranquillity for three months. It is terrifying. This is Shrove-Saturday; I must spend it working, Sunday too, with a fury that is not French, but Balzacian.
February 17.
You know, dear countess, that there are days when the brain becomes inert. In spite of my best will I have sat all day long in my arm-chair, turning over the leaves of the "Musée-des-Familles!"—what do you say to that?—and in gazing from time to time at my Daffinger, without finding aught there than the most sublime and charming creature in the world and not a line ofcopy! I wanted to return to "Madame de la Chanterie," but I could only write twofeuillets.
February 18.
I dine to-day with Poirson, the theatre manager.
Yesterday I dined out; a dinner of twenty-five persons at a restaurant; but what a dinner! It would have cost two or three thousand roubles in the 60th degree of latitude. I went this morning to see Bertin and have come home to tell you that all is concluded. Three thousand one hundred and fifty francs a volume, like those of "Les Mystères." That will make nine thousand five hundred. I am going to bed, worn-out with fatigue.
February 19.
Shrove-Tuesday, February 19. Oh joy! I have your letter and have just read it. You ask why I no longer goin the Versailles direction. Simply because one does not seek that which annoys and displeases. Do you want to know the only way in which to cease to be to meunicaanddilecta? it is to speak of that to me. All that was a bad dream which must be forgotten in order not to blush for it to one's self. Deprived of your letters I no longer lived; nor did I live again until once more I saw your dear handwriting. And you speak to me of Versailles; the very name sickens me, with the ideas attached to it, and this when I am so far from you with vast spaces parting us! But you do not know how in your absence I am deprived of soul and brain. I live by the reception of one letter, and I no sooner have it than I want another.
Ah! your letter was indeed due me amidst the annoyances and troubles of all kinds that assail me and the crushing work which implores peace and has never found it except near you. Even Hetzel, whom I thought a friend, is getting up with Bertin a foolish squabble with me. If you only knew in what a fit of misanthropy I went to bed. It was frightful. But also, with what delight I read those pages so full of sincerity and affection! One hour of such pure, heavenly enjoyment would make one accept the martyrdoms of human existence.
Yes, you have every reason to be proud of your child. It is through seeing young girls of her sphere, those who are the best brought-up here, that I say to you, and repeat it: you have the right to be proud of your Anna. Tell her that I love her, for you, whose happiness she is, and for her own angelic soul which I appreciate so truly. You tell me, dear countess, that, in the midst of your good success, there is something in the supreme decision which thwarts you, but you do not tell me what it is. Please repair that omission; do not let me fancy evil out of this uncertainty. Nothing, no event in the things of life, no woman however beautiful,nothingcan disturb that whichisfor ten years past, because I love your soul as much as your person, and you will ever be to me the Daffinger. Do you know what is the most lasting thing in sentiment? It isla sorcellerie à froid—charm that can be deliberately judged. Well, that charm in you has undergone the coolest examination, and the most minute as well as the most extended comparison, and all is more than favourable to you. Dear fraternal soul, you are the saintly and noble and devoted being to whom a man confides his life and happiness with ample security. You are the pharos, the light-giving star, thesicura richezza, senza brama. I have understood you, even to your sadnesses, which I love. Among all the reasons which I find to love you—and to love you with that flame of youth which was the only happy moment of my past life—there is not one against my loving, respecting, admiring you. With you no mental satiety can exist: in that I say to you a great thing; I say the thing that makes happiness. You will learn henceforth, from day to day, from year to year, the profound truth of what I am now writing to you. Whence comes it? I know not; perhaps from similarity of characters, or that of minds; but, above all, from that wonderful phenomenon calledentente cordiale—intimate comprehension—and also from the circumstances of our lives. We have both been deeply tried and tortured in the course of our existence; each has had a thirst for rest in our heart and in our outward life. We have the same worship of the ideal, the same faith, the same devotion to each other. Well, if those elements do not produce happiness, as their contraries produce unhappiness, then we must deny that saltpetre, coal, etc., produce ashes. But beyond these good reasons, it must be said, dear, that there is another, a fact, a certainty, the inspiration of a feeling beyond all else—the inexplicable, intangible, invisible flame which God has given to certain of his creatures, and which impassions them; for I loveyou as we love that which is beyond our reach; I love you as we love God, as we love happiness.