If the hope of all my life were to fail me, if I lost you, I should not kill myself, I should not make myself a priest, for the thought of you would give me strength to endure my life; but I would go to some lonely corner of France, in the Pyrenees, or the Ariège, and slowly die, doing and knowing nothing more in this world; I should go at long intervals to see Anna and talk of you at my ease with her. I should write no more. Why should I? Are you not the whole world to me? Examining what I feel in merely waiting for a letter, and what I suffer from a day's delay, it seems proved to me that I should die of grief. Oh! take care of yourself! Think that there is more than one life bound to yours. Take care in everything! Each day my double egotism increases; each day hope adds to her treasury dreams, longings, expectations. Oh! remain what I saw you on the Neva!
If you ask me, Madame la comtesse, why I yield myself up to this verbiage, which, some day soon, will bring a frown to that Olympian brow, if you would know why I have launched with such a flow upon the letter-tide, I shall tell you that I have just re-read your letter, that this is Mardi-gras, and I am taking the sole pleasure that I seek from the carnival.
Now I must talk health; you will not pardon me if I forget it in writing to you. I am well, in spite of a slight grippe, and I think I shall be able to master the enormous work that I must do between now and March 20. Do not dwell too much upon my troubles and my toils; do not pity me too much; without this avalanche to sweep away I should die, consumed by an indefinable ill, called absence, fever, consumption, nerves, languor—what Chénier has described in his "Jeune Malade." Therefore I bless heaven for the obligations which misfortune has placed upon me. I do not count, as I think I toldyou, on a theatre success to pay my debts; I count only on the fifty folios ofLa Comédie Humainewhich I have to do, and which will give me about fifty thousand francs. It is true that I also expect to bring to a good conclusion the affair of illustrating "Eugénie Grandet" and the "Physiologie;" and those two things represent twenty thousand at least. So I shall fully have enough, and over, for my journey and stay in Dresden.
Adieu until to-morrow. To-morrow I continue my journal after putting this one into the post. If you knew what emotion seizes me when I throw these packets into the box! My soul flies to you with the papers; I tell them a thousand foolish things; like a fool, I fancy they are going to repeat them to you; it is impossible to me to comprehend that these papers impregnated with me should be in eleven days in your hands and yet that I stay here. Well, you will see that during the last fourteen days I have been much driven about; I have worked little, I have thought of you, I have been agitated by the expectation of work for Frédérick. "Les Mystères" which, thanks to him, have had a success, little durable however, have cast me on the deserted boards of the "Gymnase." I am chasing Henri Monnier; you can, on reading these pages, scribbled in haste, tell yourself that your poor servant is working desperately; every moment is precious; a scene must be written, a proof corrected, copy sent. You will therefore have but little from me as writing, but much as thought in the journal which will follow the present one.
Adieu. Yesterday I was sad; to-day, thanks to your adorable letter, I am gay, happy. You are my life, my strength, my consolation; I have learned through disappointments and bitterness that I have but you in this world.
Adieu, then; be sure that I live more at the feet of your chair than in my own.
Paris, February 28, 1844.
Dear countess; I have decided to finish the seventh volume ofLa Comédie Humainewith "Le Lys dans la Vallée" which can certainly go under the head of "Scènes de la Vie de province." This arrangement spares me the writing of three volumes which I should not have time to publish separately first; besides I wish not to have a single line to write between now and October 1.
In spite of what you tell me of your plans for Dresden, I hardly believe in them. You leave Petersburg about the middle of May; you will be at home, at Wierzchownia, by the end of June; how can you expect between July and October (four months) to be put in possession of your rights, to have received the accounts of administration and guardianship, and to have re-established thestatus quoof your personal government? Oh! if you only knew with what sadness I count upon my fingers and add up all these difficulties: the time required for the journey, the accounts to examine and verify, the current affairs, and the unexpected hindrances! Such thoughts bring me dreadful, pitiless, implacable hours. You are my whole life; the infinitely little incidents as well as the gravest events of that life depend on you, and solely on you; the two months that I spent in Petersburg have, alas! sufficiently enlightened me as to that. No, you can never leave in October, for I know your anxious tenderness for your child; you would never let her travel in winter,—I have the certainty of conviction as to that. Do you understand what there is of despair in those words? Existence was endurable with the hope of Dresden; it overwhelms me, it annihilates me if I have to wait longer.
You ought to profit by your stay in Petersburg to obtain recovery of the administration from Anna's guardians, so that there be no one but you and her uncle tomanage her affairs. You will do this, I am sure, unless you think it simpler and easier to manage at home, I mean in the chief town of your department, or I should say government, inasmuch as your provinces are divided into governments, not departments, as they are in France.
In any case, dear countess, when you return to Wierzchownia examine well theifsandbuts, theforsand theyes and nos, and decide whether I may go to you. If your high wisdom decides that I cannot, I shall ask of toil its absorption and its excitements in default of the resignation which I cannot promise you.Mon Dieu, one year lost! It is a lifetime for a being who finds a life in a day, when that day is passed with you.
I leave you to dine with M. de Margonne and to pay a little visit to the Princesse Belgiojoso, who lives next door to him.
February 29.
I had yesterday, after writing to you, a violent rush of blood to the head. From three in the morning till three in the afternoon I corrected without pausing six folios ofLa Comédie Humaine("Les Employés"), into which I inserted passages taken from the "Physiologie de l'Employé," a little book, written in haste, about which you know nothing. This work, which was equivalent to writing in twelve hours an 8vo volume, brought on the attack. My nose bled from yesterday until this morning. But I feel myself more relieved than weakened by this little natural bleeding,—beneficial, I make no doubt.
I have been to fetch the proofs of what I have so far done on "Les Petits Bourgeois." The printing-office is close to Saint-Germain-des-Prés; the idea came to me to enter the church, where they are painting the cupola, and I prayed for you and your dear child at the altar of the Virgin. Tears came into my eyes as I asked God to keep you both in life and health. My thoughtstreamed even to the Neva. Perhaps, returning from those heights, I have brought back a gleam from that ideal throne before which we kneel. With what fervour, what ardour, what abandonment of myself, do I feel bound to you forever,—"for time and for eternity," as the devout people say.
On my way home I bought, for fifteen sous on the quay, the "Mémoires de Lauzun," which I had never read.[1]I looked them over in the omnibus, returning to Passy, where your serf, having reintegrated himself into his arm-chair, is writing this to you while awaiting dinner. What a strange thing that an honourable, courageous man, who seems to have had plenty of heart on all occasions when he needed it, could dishonour with such levity the women he professed to love! I think conceit, being the dominant feature of his character, smothered what was really good and generous within him. Does he not sub-suggest to us that he would not have Marie-Antoinette in the flower of her youth and the prestige of her grandeur? It was an odious calumny and a useless cruelty, when we think of the position of that poor queen at the period when these Memoirs were being written, In other respects this poor Lauzun makes one pity him; he never so much as suspects, while believing himself adored, that he was never loved, even feebly. A man so vain is not endured by the majority of women, who want an exclusive worship for themselves, and will not accept, unless for a moment, the presence of a rivalry as aggressive as it is insatiable—that of a lover ofhimself. So, we see how Princesse C... quickly quitted him; it is frightful.
After reading and closing that bad book, I cried out to myself, "How happy he is who loves but one woman!" I persist in that opinion; it is both a cry ofthe heart and the result of reasoning and observation; for I analyze you with the utmost coolness, and I recognize, with conviction and joy, that none can be compared to you. I do not know in this world a finer intellect, a nobler heart, a gentler or more charming temper, a nature more straightforward, a judgment more sure, based on reason and virtue. I will say no more, for fear of being scolded; and yet,thisis what explains and justifies an enthusiasm stronger to-day than it was in 1833; which sends the blood in waves to my heart at sight of that page of poor Töpfer, which will lie on my table all my life; which transports me as I look at the Daffinger. Ah! you do not know what passed within me when, in that courtyard,—every stone of which is engraved in my memory, with its planks, its coach-house, etc.,—I saw your sweet face at the window. I no longer felt my own body, and when I spoke to you I was stultified. That stultification, that arrested torrent, arrested in its course to bound with greater force, lasted two days. "What must she think of me?" was a madman's phrase that I said and resaid in terror. No, truly, and believe it absolutely, I am not yet accustomed to know you after all these years. Centuries would not suffice, and life is short! You saw the effect during those two months in Petersburg. I left you in the same ecstasy in which I was the day I saw you once more. Of all the faces you made me see and know in Petersburg none remain in my memory. All have fled, evaporated, leaving no trace. But I can tell with certainty the smallest little detail of everything about you, even to the number of steps to your staircase, and the flower-pots that are massed at its angles. Of my apartment at Madame Tardif's, nothing remains in my mind; nothing of Petersburg either, unless it be the bench on which we sat in the Summer Garden, and the steps of the Imperial Quay where I gave you my hand. Oh! if you knew how precious to me is that pinwhich rolled along the quay! I have fastened to my mantel-piece, on the red velvet which drapes the side of it, a leaf of your ivy, that lustrous ivy which frightened you! Well, that leaf casts me into endless reveries. My dinner is brought; I must stop until to-morrow.
[1]Armand Louis de Gontant Biron, Duc de Lauzun; born 1747, executed 1793.—TR.
[1]Armand Louis de Gontant Biron, Duc de Lauzun; born 1747, executed 1793.—TR.
March 1.
On waking at two this morning, I took up your journal number 10, which I read very rapidly yesterday and have now re-read; I have given one hour to it; it is now three o'clock—can it be one hour? It is a thousand hours of paradise! What a strange thing! you say to me regarding the month of October the very fears I expressed to you a short time ago. Have we two thoughts? You tell me of the pain in your heart, and I was praying for your health in Saint-Germain-des-Prés! You are surely not ignorant that your life is my life, your death would be mine; your joys are my joys, your griefs my griefs. There was never in the world an affection like it; space has no part in it; I have felt my heart beat violently when I read your account of the throbbing of yours. And that page in which you say such gracious truths about my deep, unalterable, infinite attachment to you leaves me with moist eyes. No, such a letter makes all acceptable, burdens, griefs, all miseries! Yes, dear, distant yet present star, rely on me as you would on yourself; neither I nor my devotion will fail you more than the life in your body. At my age, dear fraternal soul, what I say of life may be believed; well, then, believe that for me there is no other life than yours. My plan is made. If harm happens to you, I shall bury myself in some hidden corner of the world, unknown to all; this is no vain saying.
If happiness for a woman is to know herself alone and singly in a heart, filling it in a manner indispensable, certain of shining in a man's intellect as its light, certainof being his life's blood pulsing in his heart, of living in his thought as the substance of that thought, and having the certainty that this is and ever will be—ah! then, dear sovereign of my soul, you can say that you are happy, happysenza brama, for such you are to me—till death. We may feel satiety for things human, there is none for things divine; and that last word alone expresses what you are to me.
No letter has ever made me feel more enjoyments than the one I have just read. It is full of a dear, delicate wit, so graceful, of an infinite kindness, wholly without paltriness. That forehead of a man of genius which I have so admired is visible everywhere. Yet, I have been to blame; how could I ever have thought that what you would do would not be well done, and properly done? From the point of view of the world, that jealousy was pretty, and perhaps flattering to some women, but from the point of view of an affection as exceptional as mine, it was a distrust for which I blame myself and entreat you to pardon me.
The idea of your novel is so pretty that, if you want to give me an immense pleasure, you will write it and send it to me; I will correct it and publish it under my own name. You shall not change the whiteness of your stockings, nor stain your pretty fingers with ink to benefit the public, but you shall enjoy all the pleasures of authorship in reading what I will preserve of your beautiful and charming prose. [This book was "Modeste Mignon."]
In the first place you must paint a provincial family, and place the romantic, enthusiastic young girl in the midst of the vulgarities of such an existence; and then, by correspondence,make a transitto the description of a poet in Paris. The friend of the poet, who continues the correspondence, must be one of those men of talent who make themselves the kite-tails of a fame. A pretty picture, could be made of thecavaliere serventi, whowatch the newspapers, do useful errands, etc. But the dénouement must be in favour of this young man against the great poet. Also there must be shown, with truth, the manias and the asperities of a great soul which alarm and rebuff inferior souls. Do this, and you will help me; you will make me win the sympathy of certain choice minds by this employment of a leisure I lack so much. What a temptation for a soul like yours!
Adieu for to-day; leisure lacks and toil is calling. To-morrow I will re-read your adorable letter and answer it.
March 2.
Yesterday I had that tiresome judge from Bourges to dinner. The vote of the Chamber on Queen Pomaré kept him late; and it followed that having been up since two in the morning I went to bed at half-past eight and slept all night like a dormouse. So my work is compromised, and I am heavy, without ideas, without activity. The regularity of my hours saves me. I am expecting the Florentine furniture; meantime, I have re-read that adorable letter. Suzette's death seems to me a small calamity. She was gay, she loved you, and that is a great claim to my remembrance, in which she will remain eternally, if only for her arrivals at the Arc with your missives. Dear countess, I entreat you, never fight my battles, either for me or for my works. I am afraid of some trap set for your good friendship and your gracious, sympathetic partiality. The best way to hoax critics is to satirically agree with them; carrying the matter farther than they reckoned or wished, and when you have enticed them into absurdity, leave them there. The more I think of it the more charming do I find the idea of your novel. Write it out for me and I will use it.
Nodier died as he had lived, with grace and good-humour; in full possession of his mind and sensibility, of his head, in short; and religiously,—he confessed anddesired to receive the sacraments. He died not only with calmness, but with joy. Five minutes before his death he asked for news of all his grandchildren, and said: "Are none of them ill? Then all is well." He wished to be buried in his daughter's marriage veil. Mass was said in his room, and he heard it with great collectedness. In short, his conduct was becoming, gay, charming, gracious to the last moment. He sent me word that he had been deeply touched by my letter, that he regretted dying before he had brought the Academy to repair its injustice towards me, that he had always wished I might be his successor there and hoped I should be. I give you these details, knowing the interest that you will take in them.
You may have thought me a little cool about the announcement of your suit being won; and, in truth, if I am glad of it, it is especially in knowing that you are at last delivered from legal annoyances. Believe that though I am little solicitous of fortune for myself (no matter what is said of me), I am too devoted to you not to wish you all the comforts of ease; because one cannot enjoy life or what it offers of good and charming if forced to struggle against ill fortune. If I am destined to live always apart from you, I shall not think the less, with childlike joy, that you are free from cares in the present and in the future, that you are enabled to do good to those about you according to the compassionate and generous instincts of your kindness, and I shall say, with the satisfaction of Pehméja, "I have nothing, but Dubreuil is rich." Let us believe, however, that the future will not be gloomy for me either, from this point of view at least; and that, my debts once paid, I can give myself up to the leisure and repose so awaited, so longed-for, so dearly bought, before I sleep the eternal sleep in which we rest from all, especially from ourselves.
Meantime, my garden is greening; there are fresh young shoots; before long there will be flowers; I will put somein my letter before closing it. The page of your letter produced by that engraving of Töpfer, and the infinite pleasure the latter caused me have given fresh impetus and new vigour to my courage. With such support and such words, waiting is no longer heroism, it becomes a duty. Yes, I suffer much, more perhaps than you can believe, to be nailed, chained here, while you, free in all your actions, are absent and so far away. But hope rocks us ever! so persuasive, so obliging is she that she succeeds in reassuring me, and even in convincing me that the reality will not forever escape me.
When I am thus calmed, and the inspiration and enthusiasm of work takes part in it, all goes fairly well; but it does not continue. Alas! there are moments when discouragement is so strong and lassitude so complete that work becomes impossible to me; my faculties are no longer free; I am distracted from my thoughts by something imperative, inexplicable, arbitrary, which rules my brain and grasps my heart. There is a form, I know not what, which goes and comes, which crosses my room and returns, which lays its finger upon me and says: "Why work? what folly! why wear yourself out in this way? Think that a few months more and you will see her. Amuse yourself while waiting!" I am not romancing, believe me; I am telling this as it happens, be it revery, hallucination, or no matter what phenomenon of a wearied brain that wanders. But I soon return to myfixed idea; I take up the past, crumb by crumb; I make myself happy in it; I am with the future like children with the white cloth that hides their New Year's gifts, and I return to your letters as to the pasture of my soul.
I entered a church to-day, to pray and to ask God for your health, with an ardour full of egotism—as all fanaticisms are. I was afraid; I dared not pray. I said to myself, "This is so full of selfish interest perhaps I shall irritate him." And I stopped suddenly, like a bigoted old woman,or a silly schoolgirl. To this are we brought by force of preoccupation, or to speak more truly, obsession. This is what we become when we have but one idea in the brain and one sole being in the heart.
March 4.
I don't know whether it is a phase of the brain, but I have no continuity of will. I plot, I conceive books, but when it comes to execution, all escapes me. I have turned over and over a hundred times your idea for a novel, which is a very fine thing; it is the duel between poesy and reality, between the ideal and the practical, between physical poesy and that which is a faculty, an effect of the soul. I will do that work; it may become something grand and noble. But at this moment all has fled me; there is some evil influence, as if a sirocco had swept across the strings of a harp; a memory, a nothing, a turning backward, the caprice of some elf that wants a prey—all dissolves my energy and beats me down, body and soul. Well, why not let it consume a portion of my time, that sacred and sublime passion? I am so happy in loving thus! But it is a frightful extravagance! I am royally a spendthrift! "Les Petits Bourgeois" is there, on my desk, the "Débats" has announced it; you know in whose name the book is written; yet I dare not touch it. That mountain of proofs terrifies me, and I rush to the banks of the Neva, where there are no Petits Bourgeois, and I plunge into a blue arm-chair, so enticing to thefar niente.
What reading can ever give me the pleasure of those dry, academic notices of Mignet, or any of those books that I picked up at random on the table of your salon, while awaiting the rustle of a silk gown. If I could draw I would make from memory a sketch of the moujik lighting the stove! I see that little bit of cord unsewn from the back of the causeuse under the ivy—such are my grand occupations! Now and then I go over in memory thegowns I have seen you wear, from the white muslin lined with blue that first day at Peterhof to the magnificence of a robe all covered with lace, with which you adorned yourself to go to parties. Ah! 'tis the best poem known by heart that ever was or will be—the verses, stanzas, cantos of those two months!
Yes, I shall never have loved but once in my life, and, happily, that affection will fill my whole life. But I must leave these sacred orgies of memory, for I desire to appear with éclat in the journal.
I put into this packet the first flower that has bloomed in my garden; it smiled to me this morning, and I send it laden with many thoughts and impulses that cannot be written. Do not be astonished to find me so garrulous, saying the same thing for the millionth time; I have no other confidant than you, you only. Never in my living life have I said one word of you, nor of my worship, nor of my faith; and probably the stone which will some day lie above my body will keep the silence I have kept in life. Therefore, there was never in this world a fresher, more immaculate feeling in any soul than that you know of. I hope that the Cyclop of toil will soon return, but not to chase away entirely the Ariel of memory.
Adieu; try to think a little of him who thinks of you at every moment, as the miser of his hidden hoard; as the pious heart of its saint.
Passy, October 11, 1844[1]
Dear countess, I have received your letter of September 25; it came last night, that is, in fifteen days only. I am not very well; yesterday I went to the doctor; the neuralgia must be fought with leeches and a little blister; that will take three or four days. I have been doing "César Birotteau" with my feet in mustard, and I am now writing "Les Paysans" with my head in opium.Within ten days I have written six thousand lines for the "Presse;" I must get through by October 30. Your letter is still another reason for haste; for if you travel, I must be ready.
My illness has reached a height. This inflammation of the coating of the nerves, caused undoubtedly by a strong draught, produces pain effects just as scene painters produce scenic effects. For fifteen nights I have worked at "Les Paysans" in spite of my sufferings. So you see there has been no journey to Belgium. Do not be uneasy, dear countess; your advice as to the travelling lady is not needed; I had already told myself that, for your sake, I ought to pay attention to the follies of public opinion; we have, as usual, thought alike.
It is four in the morning; I must go to bed and put leeches into my right ear; but I would not let these three days be added to your expectation. Before M. Gavault's departure, thirty thousand francs had been offered for Les Jardies; but the value of land in the Allée des Veuves is increasing, and I have told the notary to stop the negotiation. Was this wise? I shall wait; perhaps I shall find a house, ready built and cheap. This neuralgia hinders me very much; for I have to do a work for Chlendowski, who is a great wrangler, just as you predicted; you were right, as usual; I may be paid, but one thing is very certain, I will do no more business with him.
How right you were to give me some hope for Dresden or Frankfort, because, during these last days, I have been so unhappy while working; I wanted to quit everything and go to you at Wierzchownia. Leave me hope; is it not all I have? Ah! if you have understood the sad and tender words I say to you, you must look upon yourself, if not with pride at least with a certain complacency. The greatness of my affection renders petty all the great difficulties of my life. I have amazed everybody by saying that I shall do the twenty thousand lines of "LesPaysans" during the month of October. No one believed me; not even the newspaper. But when they saw me writing six thousand lines in ten days they were awe-struck. The compositors are reading the work, a thing that does not happen once in a hundred times; a murmur of admiration runs through them; and this is the more extraordinary because the work is directed against the multitude and democracy.
Your letter has been much delayed; in my impatience I demanded the head of all the Rzewuskis, except yours; do not frown that aristocratic brow, but think of my toil, my sufferings without comfort!
I am glad you have seen clearly about the poor nun![2]She abandoned you only for God; and that was a little your fault; your example, your reading, your advice, led her there forcibly. Do not be uneasy about her; she is happy where she is; she hopes to be soon received as novice. I hope that if you wish to send her anything you will make use of me. At the present moment I can easily give her in your name one or two thousand francs without embarrassing myself in the least. I am a rich pauper just now.
You say you have still time to receive a letter from me before your departure. I hasten, as you see, to send you my news of mind and body. I have not been out of the house for twenty days. In point of fact I live in the condition of stupidity produced by forced labour. I have, besides, my little Hetzel articles to do. That poor fellow wants to sell twenty thousand copies of "Le Diable," and he has printed fifteen thousand. Your serf has contributed thereto a quantity of that sly nonsense which pleases the masses. To have paid twenty thousand francs of debt, and to find myself in December on the roadto Dresden, "Les Paysans" finished, that is my dream, and a dream that must, and will, be realized; otherwise, I don't know how I could live through 1845. There comes a moment for themadnessof hope; and I have reached it. I have so strained my life to this end that I feel all within me cracking. I would I did not think, and did not feel. Oh, how can I tell you of the hours I have sat, during these twenty days, leaning on my elbow, and looking at the salon in Petersburg and at Wierzchownia, those two poles of my thought, of which the south pole was before me in its frame. Hope and reality, the past, the future, jostled one another in a medley of memories that gave me a vertigo. Ah! you stand there indeed, in my life, in my heart, in my soul; there is hardly a motion of my pen, nor a thought of my mind that is not a ray from the one centre, you, you only, you too well beloved—whatever you may say to it.
The death of your cousin Thaddeus grieves me. You have told me so much of him that you made me love one who loved you so well. You have doubtless guessed why I called Paz Thaddeus, and gave him the character and sentiments of your poor cousin. But while you weep for his loss tell yourself that I will love you for all those whose love you lose. Poor, dear countess, the situation in which you are and which you depict so well has made me smile, because it was exactly my own before your last letter. "Shall I or shall I not do 'Les Paysans'?" "Shall I or shall I not start?" "What ought I to do? Ought I to bind myself to my work? Ought I to refuse it?" and so forth. I cut the knot by going to work, saying to myself, "If I do go, I will drop all as at Lagny in 1843." Nacquart said to me brutally yesterday, while writing his prescriptions, "You will die." "No," I said, "I have a private God of my own; a God stronger than all diseases." "I hope," he said, "that if you marry, you will take two years for rest." "Two years,doctor!—why, I shall rest till my last breath, if by rest you mean happiness."
[1]To Madame Hanska, at Wierzchownia.
[1]To Madame Hanska, at Wierzchownia.
[1]Madame Hanska's governess and companion, Mlle. Henriette (Lirette) Borel; who became a convert to the Roman Catholic Church, and took the veil in Paris, as will be seen later—TR.
[1]Madame Hanska's governess and companion, Mlle. Henriette (Lirette) Borel; who became a convert to the Roman Catholic Church, and took the veil in Paris, as will be seen later—TR.
October 16.
This interruption, dear, is the result of the doctor's prescriptions. I have not left my bed; leeches were necessary and blisters for three or four days; but this morning the symptoms and the atrocious pain of this inflammation have ceased. In three days, at the latest, I can resume my work. These few days given to doctoring have been days of pleasure to me; for, when I am not working with that absorption of all the mental and physical faculties I can think unceasingly of 1845; I arrange houses, I furnish them, I see myself in them, I feel myself happy there. I go over in my mind all those moments, so few, that we have spent together; I quarrel with myself for not having prolonged those hours of sweet and intimate converse.
Dear, ungrateful one; you have hardly noticed my persistency in satisfying your little wish for autographs. I send you to-day one of Peyronnet; I shall try to get you those of all the ministers who signed the duly ordinances.
Are you really satisfied with this young man?[1]Examine him well, and without predilections, for such excellent prospects for your child will certainly contribute to make the suitor seem perfect. But I don't know why I should advise prudence and shrewdness to one who has stolen all the wits of the Rzewuskis, and has eyes at the tips of her little white-mouse paws. At any rate, dear countess, manage your affairs wisely, and, above all, soften the Governmental dragon of the North.
I am exactly like a bird on a branch; it is necessary that I should leave the rue Basse and go elsewhere, where I can be more suitably lodged. I am like my dear traveller, with her packages and provisions. I dare not doanything; for if I go to Dresden for four months I ought to postpone incurring expenses; besides, I would rather incur them definitively then than provisionally now. My nature abhors change; that is an aspect of my character you have already been forced to recognize, and will recognize more and more; you will even admire it, and end by no longer thanking me for the things of the heart; discovering that this vast devotion is warranted by the Rzewuski intellect and the charms of the person whom you see in your mirror.
How could you recommend me your perfumer? I have thought much about him. I anathematize Viardot for not having told me of his arrival; you should have had your supply before now. But if we meet in Dresden, dear countess, you shall have perfumes for the rest of your days, I will answer for that. We have the same vices, for I too carry the passion for delicate scents to a fault.
Alas! I must bid you adieu; but remember that you have left me nearly a month without letters, that you are not in Paris and have no feuilletons to excuse you. Apropos, I have been three times to the Arsenal, but have not yet obtained Nodier's autograph; but I shall have it.
They tell me that David has finished my bust in marble, and that the marble is not less fine than the cast. It will be, no doubt, in the next Exhibition. You can hardly imagine how I regret not having bought that malachite vase; I have found, for three hundred francs, a magnificent pedestal which would have spared me the immense cost of the one I had made here in bronze.
I am still ill and must now stop. Perhaps I shall be able to give you better news before closing this letter.
[1]Count Georges Mniszech, a suitor to her daughter, and subsequently Anna's husband—TR.
[1]Count Georges Mniszech, a suitor to her daughter, and subsequently Anna's husband—TR.
October 17.
All is well; the neuralgic pains have disappeared as if by magic, and if I have not finished my letter it isbecause I have slept twelve hours running under the quietude of non-suffering.
Adieu, dear beloved sovereign. Examine well that young Count Mniszech; it concerns the whole life of your child. I am glad you have found the first point, that of taste and personal sympathy, so necessary for her happiness and yours, satisfactory. But study him; be as stern in judgment as if you did not like him. The things to be considered above all are principles, character, firmness. But how stupid of me to be giving this advice to the best and most devoted of mothers!
I resume work to-morrow. I cannot give you any news of Lirette, having been unable to go to her convent while my illness and its prescriptions lasted.
I hunger and thirst for your dear presence, star of my life, far away, but ever present. Perhaps you think thus of me, sometimes. Who knows? But alas! you have written to me very little of late. I, so occupied by work, so often ill, I write to you nearly every day. Ah! the reason is that I love you. I feel your indifference, I was going to say ingratitude, deeply; so exasperated am I by this interval of a whole long month. You would be frightened if you knew what ideas plough through me. And then, when the letter comes at last, all is forgotten. I am like a mother who has found her child. But I must not let my letter end with reproaches.
Find here all my heart, all my faith, all my thought, and all my life.
Passy, October 21, 1844.
I am perfectly well again and have gone back to work. This is a piece of good news worth telling you at once. But oh! dearest, a year is a year, don't you see? The heart cannot deceive itself; it suffers its own pains in spite of the false remedies of hope—Hope! is it anything else than pain disguised? I look at that Colmann sketch of the salon, and every look is a stab; the thoughtof it enters my heart like a sharp blade. Between that sketch and the picture of Wierzchownia is the door of my study,—and that door represents to me infinite space, spreading away among the memories attached to that furniture, to those blue hangings. "We were there together; she is now there and I am here!" That is my cry, and each look, each stab redoubles it. Why did not Colmann paint the other side of the salon? Why not have done the stove and the little table before the stove, beside which you said to me things so compassionate, so sweet, so fraternally reasonable? Ah! I would give my blood to hear them once again.
Madame Bocarmé has returned. Bettina adores your serf, in all honour and propriety. She tells me that Colmann's fifty water-colours are masterpieces, and he is to Russia what Pinelli is to Rome.
I went out for the first time yesterday. I bought a clock of regal magnificence, and two vases of celadon not less magnificent. And all for nearly nothing. Great news! a rich amateur has a desire for my Florentine furniture. He is coming here to see it. I want forty thousand francs for it. Another piece of news! The Christ of Girardon, bought for two hundred francs, is estimated at five thousand, and at twenty thousand with Brustolone's frame. And yet you laugh, dear countess, at my proceedings in the Kingdom of Bricabracquia. Dr. Nacquart is violently opposed to my selling, even at a great price, these magnificent things. He says: "In a few months you will be out of your present position by this dogged work of yours; and then those magnificences will be your glory." "I like money better," I replied. So, you see, Harpagon played poet, and the poet Harpagon.
Dear, believe me, I cannot always suffer thus. Do you reflect upon it? Another delay! When "Les Paysans" is finished, and the articles for Chlendowski also, Iclaim a word from you permitting me to join you in your steppes, that is, if your difficulties in obtaining a passport still continue and are permanent.
I have found a most splendid pedestal for David's bust, which every one says is an amazing success. This beautiful thing cost me only three hundred francs, and the late Alibert, for whom it was made, paid fifteen or sixteen thousand francs for it.
Dear countess, I should like your advice on something I want to do. It is impossible for me to remain where I am. A few steps from my present lodging is a house which could be hired for a thousand to fifteen hundred francs, where one could live as well on fifteen hundred francs a year as on fifty thousand. I am inclined to hire it for a number of years and settle in it. I could very well economize and lay by enough to buy a small house in Paris, if I did not live in it for some years. One can come and go between Passy and Paris as one likes, with a carriage. But to settle myself in it would cost very nearly six thousand francs, and I would not make that outlay for the King of Prussia, when I have twenty thousand francs to pay between now and January 1. All could be made smooth by the sale of that Florentine furniture. The "Musée des Familles" does not publish the engravings of it and Gozlan's article till December, so that public attention will not be aroused till January. The bidding will be between thedilettantiand capitalists as soon as they see and know what it is.
As to your plan, I would rather renounce tranquillity than obtain it at that price. When a man has troubled his country and intrigued in court and city, like Cardinal Retz, he may evade paying his debts at Commercy; but in our bourgeois epoch a man cannot leave his own place without paying all he owes; otherwise he would seem to be escaping his creditors. In these days we may be less grand, less dazzling, but we are certainly more orderly,perhaps more honourable than the great seigneurs of the great century. This comes, probably, from our altered understanding of what honour and duty mean; we have placed their meaning elsewhere, and the reason is simple enough. Those great seigneurs were the actors on a great stage, who played their parts to be admired; and they were paid for doing so.Weare now the paying public which acts only for itself and by itself. Do not, therefore, talk to me of Switzerland or Italy, or anything of that kind; my best, my only country is the space between the walls of theoctroiand the fortifications of Paris. If I leave it, it will only be to see you, as you well know. I should have done so already had you permitted it. Therefore, work with your little white-mouse paws to enlarge the hole of your jail, so that the hour of your liberation may come the sooner. Formerly I lived by that hope: now I die of it. I have feverish impatiences, doubts; I fear everything,—war, the death of Louis-Philippe, an illness, a revolution; in short, obstacles are ever springing up in my agonized imagination. I see how your personal affairs hamper and weary you; and your inexhaustible kindness wearies also.
Thinking sadly of all this, looking out into the void for your interests and those of your child, I have thought of an admirable affair in which one hundred thousand francs risked might make colossal returns. I mean the publication of an encyclopedia for primary instruction. If well planned, the fame of a Parmentier is in it; for such a book is like a potato of education, a necessity, a fabulous bargain. I have faith in such an affair, and I am at this moment considering the manuscript. Oh! if you were here, or at least in the same city, how well things would go! what new courage I should have! what fresh sources would gush up! But absence gives drouth and sterility to ideas as well as to existence.
I am glad that young Mniszech pleases you as well asthe dear child. Keep meau courantof matters so important for the future of both of you. In heaven's name, write me regularly three times a month. Think of my work and how you are everywhere in my study. When I look at your surroundings I cannot help taking a pen and scribbling a few words as full of affection as they are of murmurs. If I go to Dresden, I shall postpone the affair of the house.
Adieu; take care of your health, your child, your property, since they preoccupy you to the point of making you forget your most faithful friends.
Passy, February 1, 1845.[1]
Could I write to you safely before receiving your counter-order, for your last letter told me not to write to you at Dresden? Since that letter I have only had a few lines written in haste, in which thestatus quowas maintained and to which there was no way of answering.
I have even a certain uneasiness in observing that you do not speak of my last letters. One of them contained an article entitled "Les Boulevards," and I asked your advice about it. There is one observation that I wish to make, merely for the sake of clearing the matter up. I am sure that you send your letters to the post by some unfaithful hand, for the two last were not prepaid, and you had doubtless given the order to do so. Therefore, either prepay them yourself or do not prepay them at all. Let us begin, as we did at Petersburg, in each paying our own letter. Take, I entreat you, habits of order and economy. In travelling, you will have incessant need of your money; it is bad enough to be robbed by innkeepers, without letting others do so. For the twelve years that I have now known you I have posted all my letters to you with my own hand.
Poor dear countess! how many things I have to say toyou! But first of all, let us talk business. Without your inexorable prohibition I should have been in Dresden a month ago, at the Stadt-Rom, opposite to the Hotel de Saxe, and if you have raised it let me know by return mail. As you are fully resolved, and your child also, to see Lirette again, there is but one means of doing so, and that is to come to Paris. And the only way to make that journey is as follows: Come to Frankfort and establish yourself there; then propose a trip on the Rhine; begin with Mayence, where you will find me with a passport for my sister and niece. From there you take the mail-cart and go to Paris, where you can stay from March 15 to May 15, without a word to any one. After which you can return to Frankfort, where I will join you later. As you will have seen no one during the few days you are first in Frankfort, you will attract no attention, and no one will notice you on your return. Only be sure you get from your ambassador a passport for Frankfortandthe banks of the Rhine.
I shall have found, meantime, for both of you, a small furnished apartment at Chaillot, not far from Passy. You can see the great city at your easeincognito. There are a dozen theatres for Anna, as she likes them so much, and you want to amuse her. That will give you plenty to do, without counting your visits to the convent, which would be more frequent than those to the theatre if you consulted your own tastes; but your tastes are so mingled with those of your daughter, and you spend your lives in each sacrificing to the other so much, that it is impossible to tell which of you wants a thing or does not want it. You need spend very little, if you are willing to travel like a bachelor, and keep a total silence on the escapade.[2]You will see the Exhibition, the theatres,and the public buildings, and I will have tickets for the concerts at the Conservatoire; in short, I shall arrange that you shall enjoy all that can be put into two months. There is my plan.
But in such things, boldness and secrecy, little luggage, only the simple necessaries, are required. You will find what you want here, of better quality and cheaper than elsewhere,—that is, comparatively to the prices I have seen you pay for your gowns and chiffons in Italy and Germany. At Chaillot you shall find a nice little apartment and servants—cook, maid, and valet—for two months. In the morning you can go about Paris on foot, or in afiacre, to diminish distances. In the evening you would have a carriage of your own. If you follow this programme and do not go into society, there is no possibility of your meeting any one.
Nevertheless, my good angels, reflect well, and do not let your affection for your friend entice you too much. Weigh all the inconveniences and dangers of this journey; however immense would be to me the pleasure of showing Paris to both of you, explaining it to you, and initiating you into its life, I would rather renounce it all than expose you to anything that might cause regret. Examine, therefore, all I have foreseen, and if you think the risks too great, renounce our mirage. We must not give ourselves eternal regrets for two months of a pleasure that is only delayed,—that of seeing the face of a friend through the bars of a convent.