[1]To Madame Hanska, at Rome.
[1]To Madame Hanska, at Rome.
June 15.
Yesterday I wrote eight pages; the heat was so intense that I put myself into a cold water bath. M. F...came to see me, and I did not go to bed till half-past seven. But I had to be waked out of my first sleep, for at half-past nine the carriers brought the "Adam and Eve" and the "Saint Peter," and my presence was necessary. The concierge had paid sixty francs too much, and I had to explain the error. The discussions as to this lasted till half-past eleven, and I did not get to sleep again till midnight. I had nothing to pay with but a thousand-franc note, for which it was difficult at that hour to get change; and besides, I opened the packages to amuse M. F. and an artist who was with us. The Natoire is charming, signed and authentic. But Holbein's Saint Peter was held to be sublime. The artist, who is a fine connoisseur, said that at public sale it ought to bring three thousand francs.
Now I have paid out one thousand and forty francs. I have only the cases from Rome and the one from Geneva to receive, which will not be more together than five hundred francs, and a third from Genoa, five hundred more. So that leaves me still fifteen hundred francs, and the Chemin du Nord pays a dividend in July; therefore, you see, I am not at all embarrassed.
My situation is even better than I thought. With ten thousand francs all will be brought to an end by M. F..., and my principal creditors perfectly agree to the broad manner in which I am settling my accounts with them.
I can easily suffice to pay all. My health is excellent, and my talent—oh! I have recovered it in all its bloom. My various treaties are to be concluded this week.
Write me the time when you will permit me to come and see you again, so that I may get myself in readiness.
Among the serious paintings that I have in my study, it must be owned that the Natoire [Adam and Eve] looks a little too mincing. I hope to sell that false Breughel for five hundred francs, and that will pay for Genoa, while returning me the cost of the picture.
Here is what I am now going to write: "L'Histoire des Parents pauvres," consisting of "Le Bonhomme Pons"[1](which will make two or three folios ofLa Comédie Humaine) and "La Cousine Bette" which will make sixteen; also "Les Méfaits d'un Procureur-du-roi," making six more; in all, twenty-five folios, or twenty thousand francs, newspapers and publishers combined; then, to conclude all, "Les Paysans." All that surpasses my payments. I have besides, for this winter, "Les Petits Bourgeois," and the regulating ofLa Comédie Humaine; also the reprinting of the "Contes Drolatiques" and my comedy. I shall thus have acquired, I think, the right to travel a little. I shall have no debts, and a little house of my own.
But much work is still necessary; if I do eight pages to-day that will be a good deal, for the weather seems threatening to be hotter than ever. I am now going to do a number of errands in Paris, and send you the "Presse" and the "Débats." The Chemin du Nord will not be in full activity for three weeks yet, and that is the cause of the fall in stock which unnecessarily disturbs you. I have so much hope in it that, had I the money, I would again buy into it. The great banking-houses are not anxious, for they are buying it. If the railway has a hundred thousand travellers in July, there will be a rise of two hundred francs; for the funds are placed at ten per cent. I should like to keep five or six hundred francs in the bank so as to buy thirty-five more shares—in case they fall lower, be it understood.
No news from Rome. But I am not uneasy; I am ina phase of hope and confidence which surprises myself; for nothing is really changed in my position; yet I feel, I don't know how or why, less sad, less discouraged than usual. It is as if currents, waves, floods of affection came at moments through my heart for you; it seems to me to be a sympathetic effect between us, and as if at that moment you were thinking of me. You are indeed the principle of the new courage and talent that I feel within me; if I strive to be free and esteemed, it is for you. The world is nothing to me; I do not care for it. I seek to pay all, to make my place clean, to have a home that is dignified and suitable. I devote myself to that result, so often preached to me by you, and the sense of the good I do for the future represses for the moment the pain of an absence which your ideas consider necessary. Moreover, the subjects I am now to write of please me, and can be done with extreme rapidity. The publishing business is at this moment in a bad state. This morning I am going to see Véron, Furne, and Charpentier; but to-day is Monday, and to-morrow is the inauguration of the Chemin de fer du Nord; so it is possible I may postpone these visits till the day after.
[1]In "Le Bonhomme Pons," afterwards called "Le Cousin Pons," will be found a description of Balzac's own passion for collecting antiquities and bric-à-brac. This passion was partly his natural instinct, and partly his desire to fill with treasures the home for which he longed. His collection is described in "Le Cousin Pons." See Memoir p. 323.—TR.
[1]In "Le Bonhomme Pons," afterwards called "Le Cousin Pons," will be found a description of Balzac's own passion for collecting antiquities and bric-à-brac. This passion was partly his natural instinct, and partly his desire to fill with treasures the home for which he longed. His collection is described in "Le Cousin Pons." See Memoir p. 323.—TR.
June 16.
It is now a week since I returned from Tours and I have only a dozen pages done, when I ought to have many more. But, as you know, one does not easily resume either hours of work or the faculty of working. Every day I go out for two hours to attend to business. I have not yet seen Émile de Girardin, or Véron, or M. Deshayes.
M. Buquet has sent me a great many insects; show the list of them to Georges, and send it back to me when he has chosen those he wants. Tell him to mark in pencil against them. Tell him also how keenly and deeply I have felt for his misfortune [the death of his father]. And this is very sincere; for there are but youthree in whom I take an interest in this world. The others are not worth naming; and it is that I may no longer be shackled, but wholly a thing all yours, that I throw myself up to my chin into work. I am now finishing "Les Paysans" and "Les Petits Bourgeois," and beginning to invent "Le Vieux Musicien" ["Cousin Pons"] and "La Cousine Bette."
Those four works will pay my last debts, and this winter "L'Éducation du Prince" and "La Dernière Incarnation de Vautrin" will give me the first money which will be really mine, and the beginning of my fortune. The times require that I should do two or three masterly works to overthrow the false gods of our bastard literature, and prove that I am younger, fresher, more fruitful than ever.
The "Vieux Musicien" is a poor relation, crushed by insults and humiliations, full of heart, forgiving all, and avenging himself by benefactions. "La Cousine Bette" is another poor relation, overwhelmed by insults and humiliations, living in the homes of three or four families, and meditating vengeance for her bruised self-love and her wounded vanity. These two histories with that of "Pierrette" constitute the "Histoire des Parents pauvres." I shall try to put "Le Vieux Musicien" into the "Semaine," "La Cousine Bette" into the "Constitutionnel," at the same time that "Les Paysans" appears, and that the "Débats" prints "Les Petits Bourgeois."
I will send my letters Thursdays and Sundays; next Sunday you will receive a packet. On that day I shall have begun "La Cousine Bette," and "Les Paysans" will be in full blast. Bertin does not want "Les Petits Bourgeois" till next September. No, to be far from you now is to be crucified daily. If you only knew under what heat I am working you would pity me. May your letters give me courage and hope.Au revoirandà bientôt, I trust.
Passy, July 13, 1846.
Dear countess, a disagreeable thing has happened to me which will take much time; a creditor to satisfy for a very small sum; but the course he is taking is dangerous for me, and will annoy me much and necessitate a multitude of steps. You see, the end of liquidations is always difficult; it is not enough to have the money, the settlement must be negotiated. That is what crushes me and hinders my work. This new creditor will take a whole week of my time. I can't help it. M. F... is in Brussels, pursuing a bankrupt. Besides, the creditor in question refuses an intermediary, and insists on treating with me. When this is over I will tell you what he has done to me. It is written above that I shall know all the horrors of debt.
July 14.
I have nothing new to tell you, except that I am much fatigued. I have passed the night in hunting for receipted bills and memoranda. It is an excessive bore. Buisson has returned; we are not agreed as to figures. If I do not settle this affair now it will become onerous in the future and more difficult to terminate. I am fully aware that I must attend to my liquidation before all else. I am really frightened to see very honest men asking in good faith for money that has already been paid to them and become stupefied when they have their own receipts before their eyes. M. Picard, my lawyer, says it happens every day.
You have no idea what a hunted hare's life I have led from 1836 to 1846. The state of my papers expresses it in a lamentable fashion; it is enough to break one's heart! It will take six months at least to put them in order. In the hurry of my various movings the business papers have been piled up without care, stuffed into boxes, twisted, pressed, crushed, torn. I need a vast library with numerous drawers in which to classify and put themaway. Space is wanting here; I smother. The furniture, which is fine, is getting spoiled; a house is a necessity as urgent as the payment of my debts. I am really as much hurried as I was in 1837, and it is an inexplicable miracle, to me how I ever did those sixteen volumes ofLa Comédie Humainebetween 1841 and 1846.
Two years of calmness and tranquillity in a home like the Beaujon house are absolutely necessary to heal my soul after sixteen years of successive catastrophes. I feel, I do assure you, very weary of this incessant struggle, as keen to-day in paying my last debts as when it concerned the total of them. And always my crushing literary labour in the midst of these worrying affairs! Were it not for the new causes of courage which have come into my heart, I should, like that shipwrecked man whose strength surmounted for one whole day the fury of the seas, succumb to waves less rough and gentler within sight of port. To be torn perpetually from calmness and works of the mind by vexations and worries that drive ordinary men mad—is that living, I ask you?
No, I have not lived in these last years, except at Dresden, Carnstadt, Baden, Rome, or in travelling. Thanks be to you, O dear and tender consoling angel, who alone have poured into my desolate life some drops of pure happiness, that marvellous oil which does at times give courage and vigour to the fainting wrestler. That alone should open to you the gates of paradise, if indeed, you have any sins with which to reproach yourself—you, wife so perfect, mother so devoted, friend so kind and compassionate. It is a great and very noble mission to console those who have found no consolation upon earth. I have, in the treasure of your letters, in the still greater treasure of my recollections, in the grateful and constant thought of the good you have done to my soul by your counsel and your example, a sovereign remedy against allmisfortunes; and I bless you very often, my dear and beneficent star, in the silence of night and in the worst of my troubles. May that blessing, which looks to God as the Author of all good, reach you often. Try to hear it sometimes in the murmuring sounds that whisper in the soul though we know not whence they come. My God! without you, where should I be!
With what ever increasing gratitude do I look at the casket in which are your letters, those treasures of intelligence, and kindness, thinking how you have ever been to me a beneficent friend, gentle and kind, without failure or deception of any sort, without reproaches or regrets—like a spring ever flowing, so that, even now, in the midst of your personal anxieties, you are still concerned for me, for my literary and financial interests, for my future, in short!—
Ah! how well I comprehend the tears shed by Teano when the memory of Caliste came back too powerfully to his sickened heart! It is a noble thing, admit it, the sacred chrism of tears shed on a head, on a brow irreproachable by a poor man who adores them and says, "Would that I could love you more!"
July 15.
Yesterday the affair of that creditor took my whole day. I also went to fetch my proofs at the "Constitutionnel." Alas! here it is July 15, and it is doubtful if by the 31st I can have finished "Les Parents pauvres." "Les Paysans" will take August and September; especially with the journey I am to make [that to Wiesbaden]. There's the naked truth; but if "Les Paysans" bring twenty-five thousand francs, that will be thirty-five thousand in four or five months; that's a great deal. When I am paid forLa Comédie Humaine, you see, my liquidation will be well advanced; so I shall put off all solution till the month of November. The Beaujon housewill not be free till then; then I shall know what to expect from the Chemin du Nord and from myself. I have my apartment here till August 1; so I must be patient, work, and liquidate. To-day I have to go again to the Palais de Justice about the affair of that creditor; it is a day lost. I will write you another line to-night before dinner. I have all my proofs to put in order.
July 16.
Yesterday I came in late and too tired to write you the promised line; moreover, I found the picture restorer waiting for me. He is the cleverest of his trade in Paris; a former pupil of David and of Gros; he is a great connoisseur. He thinks "Le Jugement de Paris" superb, and attributes it to Giorgione. He accepts the "Chevalier de Malte" for a Sebastian del Piombo; he thinks it a very fine thing, and deplores the accident to the Bronzino, which he considers a work of the first order; the hand especially enchanted him. He will restore them all, and also the flower-picture, which has been badly cleaned. He is a very good little man, much of a connoisseur, and has promised me his help on all occasions. He is to come back Saturday and make the toilet of the "Chevalier de Malte," supposed to have a layer of church grease upon him,—the smoke of candles and other disagreeable ecclesiastical glaze.
You see, dear countess, what Paris is. I sent for the little man in question two weeks ago and it has taken him that time to get here. And my frames! ordered a month ago and not yet begun. That is Paris! it needs time and will to get the simplest and most trifling things; imagine therefore what is needed for serious matters. "La Femme" by Mireveldt, which you gave me, my restorer considered an admirable thing, a real marvel. He consoled me for my false Breughel, and did not despise it as Chenavard did. But no matter, I don't wish to keep it,nor the landscape by Krug-Miville, nor "Les Sorciers." I want good things or none.
Now just imagine that a pretended creditor,—I have his receipts,—a mechanician, took an idea to complain of me at the office of theprocureur-du-roi, and I was troubled by a letter requesting me to go there to answer a complaint; I! that is telling you all. I could not understand what it meant; I was too sure of myself to be uneasy; but I feared the malignancy of the newspapers, for I know of what they are capable when it concerns me. You remember that story of Brussels in 1843. However, yesterday at half-past three, the substitute-procureur gave my pretended creditor a good lecture, and showed him his own receipt. He is a bad man, the accomplice of servants I had at Les Jardies; and they no doubt plotted this fine thing among them. I owe him nothing but some unimportant costs, for which he may try to sue me. You see, of course, I can easily pay him those fifty francs (at the most), but I want to give him a lesson and not pay him on account of his complaint, for others might try the same means. I have a project of making him pay five hundred francs to get his fifty. It is vengeance; but I think it is permissible in such a case.
I am going valiantly to work, and with what ardour! I have now spent two whole nights on "Les Parents pauvres." I think it will be really a fine work, extraordinary among those with which I am most satisfied. You shall see. You know it is dedicated to our dear Teano, and I want it to be worthy of him.
It is seven in the morning; I have been at my proofs for three hours. It is very arduous, for this history is something between "César Birotteau" and the "Interdiction." The question is how to give interest to a poor and simple-minded man, an old man. I have just been reading the papers. "L'Époque" has passed over, skipped, forgotten to print the twenty finest lines in Esther's letterto Lucien. I am in despair because of you. I must get them replaced if possible.
You ought to be pleased with Méry's novel; it is enchanting! What wit the fellow has! Too much, perhaps; it is like a shopful of crystals. He breakfasts with me to-day, and we shall regale ourselves by talking of you. I want also to communicate to him the idea of my farce on the army, and propose to him to write it between us for Frédérick.
Must I bid you adieu, dear valiant soul, sister of my soul. I would I could send you back the good you do me from those heights where you shine, but that is impossible: I am a man, and you are an angel; I can only equal myself to you by the reflection of your intelligence, so powerful, yet at the same time so simple and so candid; to you, in whom all gracious details attract yet without detriment to theensemblewhich charms and binds for life. If I did not fear to displease you I could go on thus forever; but if I wish to satisfy you I must work, work on, work ever. Besides, is not that being occupied with you? So I leave you for my "Parents pauvres," and I hope you will reward me by one of those exquisite letters of which you alone possess the secret.
Passy, July 17, 1846.
Yesterday, dear countess, I had Bertin[1]to breakfast, which was delicate, fine, superfine, I'll answer for it. He was charming, and he stayed a long time, talking and looking at my pictures and bric-à-brac. My whole day was taken up, or very nearly; and I profited by what remained of it to go and see Véron, whom I did not find, and Gavault on business. I dine to-day with Madame de Girardin; I want to confer with her husband about"Les Paysans." You will receive three newspapers: the "Presse," "Débats," and "Époque." I wish also to make you read an Opposition journal.
Bertin was stupefied at my riches. He thought that tête-à-tête of old Sèvres delicious; and declared I could sell my beautiful Chinese porcelain service for three or four thousand francs. He told me he had given commissions to one of the cleverest and most influential men of our embassy to China; he wanted fine vases of old porcelain, but was told there was nothing now to be bought in China but the modern. Old china is all bought up by the mandarins, the court, and the rich; and the prices are ten times higher than ours in Paris. All their admirable productions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are now in Europe. There is nothing left in Nankin or in Canton, and nothing in the interior of the Empire, except what belongs to the emperor and private persons.
I am notified that the pictures from Rome will be here in five or six days, and the picture from Heidelberg in three or four. They were very reasonable in Rome. I had only to pay twenty-five Roman crowns in duties (about one hundred and fifty francs), but the total expense is more than three hundred. So if the other Italian pictures arrive, what will become of me? I must make preparations, for I have received no letter from the consul-general, which seems to me ominous.
I asked Bertin to send you the beginning of Charles de Bernard's novel. Tell me if you have received all, and whether you are satisfied. I re-read yesterday, according to your sovereign orders, "L'Instruction criminelle." You are right, as usual; it is a fine thing.
Your semi-compatriot Walewski is to marry, they say, Mademoiselle Ricci, grand-daughter of Stanislas Poniatowski, and descendant of Macchiavelli through the women. She has, I am told, a hundred thousand francsasdot, and three hundred thousand in expectation. Walewski was madly in love with her, and, in his quality of dandy he found no other way of proving it to her than to marry her. What will become of the son of the great man,le grand Colonna Walewskiwith such a poor little civil list?
I leave you to return to my old musician. I am very well; my head is full of ideas; I work easily, for I have the hope of going to see you at Kreuznach as soon as I have finished my three volumes: there's the secret of my courage.
[1]Armand Bertin; his father, Louis-François, founded the "Journal des Débats;" after the latter's death in 1841, Armand Bertin edited the paper.—TR.
[1]Armand Bertin; his father, Louis-François, founded the "Journal des Débats;" after the latter's death in 1841, Armand Bertin edited the paper.—TR.
July 18.
No letters, dear countess! that is not nice of you. Here I am very uneasy, very much worried, not to say quite discouraged. It is midday; I got back at one in the morning from Madame de Girardin's. The dinner was given for a Madame de Hahn, a famous German actress, whom a gentleman endowed with fifty thousand francs a year withdrew from the stage and married, in spite of all the petty magnates of his family and caste. Madame de Girardin had her two great men, Hugo and Lamartine, the two Germans, husband and wife, Dr. Cabarrus and his daughter (the doctor is the son of Ouvrard and Madame de Tallien, and a friend from childhood of Émile de Girardin), and your servant. The dinner was over by ten o'clock. At the end of a political disquisition by Hugo I let myself go to an improvisation in which I fought him and beat him, with some success I do assure you. Lamartine seemed charmed and thanked me effusively. He wants me more than ever to go to the Chamber; but do not be anxious, I will never cross the threshold of mine to enter there.
I won Lamartine by my appreciation of his last speech (on Syrian affairs); I was sincere, as I always am, for, truly, the speech was magnificent from end to end. Lamartine has been very great, very dazzling during thissession. But what destruction from the physical point of view! That man of fifty-six looks to be fully eighty; he is destroyed, ended; he has but a few years of life in him; he is consumed by ambition, and worn-out by the bad state of his pecuniary affairs. Émile de Girardin went off to the Chamber, so I had no chance to speak of "Les Paysans;" it must be for another time. As to Véron, he takes my novel of "La Cousine Bette;" but we have not yet agreed as to price and quantity. I am expecting the editor of "La Semaine" M. Hippolyte Castille. Beside "Les Paysans" to finish, I have eighteen more folios to do forLa Comédie Humaine.
July 19.
I went to bed at half-past six last evening and slept the deepest sleep, in spite of the 32 degrees of heat which we have here. I am now ready to work from two to ten in the morning, when Dubochet and Furne are to breakfast with me. We are to have a conference about theComédie Humaine, and God knows what will come of it; new griefs and worries perhaps! So I shall count only on my work and what I earn from the newspapers for my financial solutions. If I spend the whole of the month of August in doing "Les Paysans," Véron must have the manuscript of "La Cousine Bette" the first days of the same month. I shall correct "Cousine Bette" while I do "Les Paysans."
I wish that all my cases were unpacked, and all my beautiful things visible; for the anxiety to know in what state they are reacts upon me too vehemently, especially in the state of irritation I am in from a continued fever of inspiration and insomnia. I hope to have finished "Le Vieux Musicien" on Monday, by rising daily at half-past one in the morning, as I did to-day, being quite re-established in my working hours. I will tell you to-morrow how many pages I have done to-day; it must be twelve to satisfy me.
July 20, 1846.
I received your letter yesterday at half-past six o'clock and I could not answer then, for I had to dine, and after dinner Cailleux (to whom I had written about the furniture, the Salomon de Caux, etc., and about the portraits of the king and Madame Adélaïde, which are at Geneva) chose the hour between eight and nine to come and see my collection. I had scarcely time to read your letter in the street, and none in which to answer it.
"Le Vieux Musicien," that novel of fifty sheets, will be finished Tuesday. Wednesday I take up the other part of "Les Parents pauvres." This morning I treat with Méry and an editor of "Le Messager." In spite of the intolerable heat (30 degrees at nine in the morning!) my activity has never been more violent or my work more desperate; I am determined to pay integrally the sum total of my debts and win my independence and peace.
I am very well satisfied with "Le Vieux Musicien;" but "La Cousine Bette" is only a formless sketch; it is not yet a question of perfecting it; much has still to be invented.
Well, I must go and do the amount of "copy" I ought to do every morning. I send you my letters very regularly twice a week, but your answers are, alas! short and rare. Oh! I entreat you, on my knees, be less miserly of letters and details; scold me, tell me disagreeable things, but write me! the sight of your pretty little writing softens the bitterness of your wrath, which is never very terrible; for no matter how much you are displeased or even wounded, the angel of peace and mildness, who pardons and does not punish, is always in you.
Ballard, an editor of the "Messager," and Méry came to breakfast with me this morning. I need the "Messager;" for thirty thousand francs are not drawn too easily out of the well of the Parisian press. It is needful to have the support in the "Débats" of Bertin, inthe "Constitutionnel" of Véron, in the "Presse" of de Girardin, in the "Messager" of the Minister of the Interior, in the "Musée des Familles" of Picquée. I have also some other newspapers without any leading personal influence. Now these articles are more difficult than you think; they are all invention, labour, drama; the payment is the object. As for the publishing of books, that is dying out, they say. The Public is going to sleep; it is necessary to wake up that bored despot by things that interest and amuse him. Just now, I am very well content with my "Vieux Musicien." When you read this letter it will be finished, for I have now reached the thirty-fourth sheet, and there are but forty-eight. Next week I shall work at "La Cousine Bette" for the "Constitutionnel;" and as soon as those two manuscripts are delivered to the compositors I shall finish "Les Paysans." In April I shall do "Les Méfaits d'un procureur-du-roi;" and this coming winter "Les Petits Bourgeois" and "L'Éducation du Prince." Will not this have been a well-employed year, specially when one considers a moving like mine? I am now searching in the faubourg Saint-Germain, or the rue Royale, for a house.
And now let me beg of you to drive away all useless and unwholesome reflections; do not be sad, do not even be pensive; be what you always are, the providence and joy of your home; be its mind, its heart, its blessing at all moments; a line of sadness, a word of anxiety in your letters gives me such pain. I want you happy; that is my special ambition; and my will is so strong in all which concerns you that I do not doubt its success in this. There is not a day or a moment in my life when I would not fling myself into a gulf to save you from care. That is not a form of speech, it is a sentiment of the heart, deep and true, and you have always seen it manifested in acts when occasion offered;what has been done in the past will not fail you in the future.
Write me often and gaily, and do not tell me you are "obsessed" as an excuse; I am obsessed, too, by business, work, tramping; compare the obsession of the world with yours; yet I write to you every day as one makes one's prayer on rising; but this is because you are my whole life, you are my very soul, and the slightest, vaguest of your depressions casts its shadow upon me. Continue to relate to me your life and all its impressions; hide nothing from me; tell me all,—the good, the bad, and even the involuntary thoughts.
C... came to see me yesterday; he is bitterly dull; I am alarmed when I see that the king takes him and M. Fontaine with him five times out of ten wherever he goes. The king commits the same fault that Napoleon committed; that is, in wishing to beallhimself. There comes a day when empires perish because the man they rest on perishes or neglects to supply his substitute. What is certain is that the peace and tranquillity of Europe hang upon a thread, and that thread is the life of an old man of seventy-six.
You speak of complications in your affairs; what are they? But, as you say, we must trust in Providence, for all is danger when we sound the earth beneath us. I acknowledge that nothing surprises me more than to see you so troubled about things that you cannot change, you, whom I have always seen so submissive to the divine will, you, who have always walked straight before you without looking to one side or to the other, and still less behind you, where the past like a corpse is buried. Why not let yourself be led by the hand of God through the world and through life as you have done hitherto, advancing towards the future with that serenity, that calmness, that confidence, which a faith like yours should inspire? I must admit that in thisfact of seeing my star which shines with so pure a lustre thus concerned about material interests there is something, I know not what, that I do not like and which makes me suffer. You have already given too much of your time and your beautiful youth. In spite of your instincts and your repugnances, you have been mastered by necessity, the welfare of your child, and your sense of duty. Now that you have fulfilled with such scrupulous and meritorious thoroughness your obligations to your adorable daughter, who understands so well all that she owes to you, and now that you have established her according to the choice of her heart and in accordance with your own ideas and sympathies, you have nothing further to do than to let yourself rest in that quietude of repose which you have so fully earned, giving the burden of business affairs into the hands of your children, who will continue the work of your patient and laborious administration. What can you fear for them, so wise, so enlightened, so sensible, so perfectly united, so exactly suited to each other? Why foresee events that are hostile to their safety?—why fear catastrophes which, I like to believe, will never happen? By spending your strength in creating imaginary dangers you will have none to defend you against real danger—should any ever threaten you, which I do not believe will happen.
Doesn't it seem to you rather strange and odd—-you who have so often consoled and sustained me in my troubles and strengthened my beliefs—that I should insolently take my turn in daring to give you counsel, I who have constant and incessant need of being sustained, guided, and sometimes scolded by your high wisdom?
I don't know if you can decipher this shorthand scribbling in haste, which, according to our agreement, I do not take the trouble to read over.
Be very tranquil on the subject of nostalgia; I haveforbidden my heart to have any more; it is crushed by toil. Do the same with your dark ideas; disperse them by confiding them to me and permitting me to combat them.
Adieu for to-day; to-morrow the continuation of this scribbled conversation. My tenderest regards to your dear children; you know well what is in my heart to both of them. Adieu andau revoir.
Passy, July 27, 1846.
I hope my wandering and vagabond troupe will not be alarmed by a thing which will bring us nearer to each other. For the last five days I have not felt well, and this morning I went to see my doctor, who told me an epidemic of severe cholerine was raging, due to the excessive heat we are suffering at this moment; he has prescribed a strict diet, and gum-water to drink. I intend, therefore, to rest myself by going to meet you at Kreuznach and spending three or four days with you if the mail-cart permits. This illness will be absolutely nothing, and therefore do not disturb yourself about it; but if not taken in time it might develop into a case of sporadic cholera. I have given up fruits, which I ate in abundance. I had no strength, I slept incessantly, and had to give up all work.
It is probable that I shall buy the Beaujon house. I will bring you the plan of it. In August and September they are to make the repairs, put in the heaters and do the painting. In October the upholsterer will do his work, and in November I can move in. If my affairs go well, I shall have a year to buy a bit of adjoining ground for a greenhouse and the indispensable stable and coach-house. Then, perhaps, I shall stay in this species of chartreuse for the rest of my days, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot," as Chénier says.
Ah! dear luminous and sovereign star, this time lastyear we were at Bourges when posting; but you were ill and sad, even while seeing those beautiful things. To suffer amid happiness, that is my lot; for am I not happy in loving you?—yet I suffer here, when I know you to be at Kreuznach. But it must be, when fettered by work and business as I am now.
July 28.
This day year we were at Montrichard; and you saw for a few hours the beautiful valley of the Cher. Ah! how I feel, in thus turning back to the past, that there is no happiness for me without you; since yesterday, when I began to rest, I am a prey to one fixed idea,—see her, listen to her! Do not be affronted, I entreat you, but I need to see you as we need food when hungry; it is odious, it is brutal, it is all that is most revolting, perhaps, but it is true. My thought carries me to Kreuznach at every moment. I must finish my work for the "Constitutionnel," and then go and book my place in the mail. Shall I have a letter this morning? I dare not hope it.
July 29.
I found in the post a letter from your children. Anna had put in a little line which makes me very uneasy. She writes: "Mamma is sad and ill; you ought to come and help us to cheer her." I went at once and took my place as far as Mayence, and I shall be there punctually to meet you; you will not do me the wrong to doubt it, I am sure. Adieu for to day.
July 30.
The king has again been shot at; you will see it in the papers. It is truly odious! it will make our unhappy country impossible and hateful to foreigners. I am very much better; the doctor was a prophet; in two days all was over and restored in good order; I am still dieting, but to-morrow I can resume my usual food andmy work. The heat has become more frightful than ever; as I write I am afloat; every pore, every hair, has its drop of moisture; I am soaked as if I were just out of a bath.
Last night I saw the fireworks; I had slept all day, so much had weakness and heat reduced me. The illuminations were very fine; I doubt if Peterhof ever showed anything finer (in spite of your admirations). How I wished for you here! and how many times I said to myself that, positively, you should see it with me next year. In spite of the heat and the diet, I feel so recovered that I shall go this evening to the first representation of "Le Docteur noir," and to-morrow I shall return to my usual ways and my nocturnal work, minus coffee, be it understood; and on the 17th you will see me at Kreuznach, rely upon it.
The end of "Esther" has had a great success. The letter was like an electric shock, everybody is talking of it. The profound truth about our judiciary morals, made dramatic, has startled the men of the robe. Expect now "L'Histoire des Parents pauvres," and you will see that I shall make a very fine work of it—but don't feel too much confidence, for I may deceive myself about it.
So all goes well, and will go better and better. But I love you so much that there is no other misfortune possible for me than that which might come toyoueither in health or feelings. Tears come into my eyes as I recall certain gestures, certain motions of your dear person in the dim chamber of my brain where are pictured all your features, your adorable nature, your heart infinite in goodness, your mind, your walks with me, our walks along the roadsides, even to your gentle scoldings—in short, our whole history, in which you have always been the noblest, purest, most saintly, and most excellent of human creatures.
July 31.
Forty degrees of heat in my apartment! My weakness is extreme, on account of the strict diet the doctor ordered me. This will explain to you the brevity of my talk with you this morning.
Last night I saw "Le Docteur noir;" it is the height of stupidity, of mediocrity in its saturnalia. I got to bed at one o'clock and did not rise till nine. I have just returned from the post-office; no letters, alas! 'Twas a soldier of the "Medusa," looking out on the horizon and seeing nothing, who came back without letters just now! Well, I must read and correct my proofs.
Passy, August 1, 1846.[1]
I have your letter! it is the great event of my life. In it I see two atrocities; 1st, "Do not come, you would be so bored;" 2nd, "You do not think enough of your health; you let yourself be worn-out by frantic work; do take a little more diversion; amuse yourself."Bored with you! amuse myself without you!Is that enough insult and injustice? Am I required to refute them?
I am quite well again this morning and I wish to announce that news for a beginning, so that my dear troupe may feel no more uneasiness about its illustrious leader.
My doctor is coming to dinner to-day with Méry (one of your believers), Léon Gozlan and Laurent-Jan. That ought to fully reassure you; I am now only a man without strength, food, or appetite. But the intestines are all right again, I believe; and next week I shall finish with the "Constitutionnel."
[1]To Madame Hanska, at Kreuznach.
[1]To Madame Hanska, at Kreuznach.
August 2.
Dear fraternal soul, I have just finished "Le Parasite," for such will be, as I told you, the definitive title of what I have hitherto called "Le Bonhomme Pons,""Le Vieux Musicien," etc. It is—to me at least—one of those fine works of extreme simplicity which contain the whole of the human heart; it is as grand as the "Curé de Tours," but more clear and quite as heart-breaking. I am enchanted with it; I will bring you the proofs, and you must tell me your impressions. Now, I am going to work on "La Cousine Bette," a terrible novel, for the principal character is a composition of my mother, Madame Valmore and your aunt. It is the history of many families.
Yesterday my dear star seemed veiled for me; I had many annoyances. "Le Messager" was ready to reproduce, for one thousand francs, "Madame de la Chanterie," the proofs of which you and I corrected together at Lyon; but the publisher, assignee of Chlendowski, was inexorable; he would not consent to the publication, even in receiving part of the price. The "Messager" is sent gratuitously to peers and deputies; it prints a thousand copies. So I failed through the greatest piece of ill-will I ever met with in my life. This will show you what the business of literature and publishing is. I am going to send you the "Courier," in which George Sand is bringing out a novel; for I perceive that you are reading only the ministerial newspapers, and you ought also to read a little of the Opposition ones, in order to understand something of our political mess.
August 4.
At last I have your letter; and now that I have it after wishing for it so much, I fear that it tired you to write it in such heat. Be tranquil in mind, as you ought to be in heart; I only bought the Greuze and the Van Dyck because I have a purchaser at a higher price for two of my pictures,—namely, "Les Sorcières" by Paul Brill, and the sketch that Miville sold to me at Bâle. I have exchanged the little picture bought for fifty francs,which Chenavard said was not worth two sous, for a delicious little sketch of the birth of Louis XIV., called an "Adoration of the Shepherds," in which the shepherds are bewigged in the fashion of the times. Louis XIII. and his ministers are represented. Well, well! I shall win your confidence sooner or later, in bric-à-brac at any rate. You can't imagine to what point I am fretted and what anxiety fills my mind when I discover that I have something inferior as a matter of art in my collection. Therefore set your mind at rest; I follow your good advice exactly; I continually deny myself; I never yield to any spontaneous fancy; I buy nothing without consulting, examining, reflecting; and that is the same as telling you I buy nothing but fine things.
I write to you in 50 degrees of heat, as you will have seen by the "Débats." My study is 15 degrees higher than that; for the laundry-man below me keeps a coal fire like that of a locomotive, and above my head is a zinc roof; in short, I live in a stove. But in spite of this heat my health gets better and better; nourishment no longer distresses me; and the intestines are coming back to a normal state. The doctor says my illness came only from heat, which is to me what it is to you. One must cling to doing one's duty, as I do, in order to work under this physical dissolution.
Adieu; proofs are calling me, and I have not, as at Lyon, an intelligent comrade to correct them cleverly and gaily. I have still twenty-six sheets to write.
August 5.
I met Potier in the Passy omnibus; I questioned and sounded him, and gained the certainty that he has another purchaser in view for the Beaujon house, and considers me only as apis aller; but I cannot put myself in the way of offering more than I have for the last year.
I saw Véron yesterday, who wants as many folios as I can write. He told me that the public was not content with Sue's publication; it was thought repulsive and shameful. The pretty sinners of the great world think to rehabilitate themselves by making an outcry against "such revolting immorality," as they call it. On the other hand, Véron made me many compliments on "L'Instruction Criminelle." At the Palais de Justice both magistrates and lawyers think it splendidly true and irreproachably accurate. If they only remembered Popinot, they would see that Popinot and Camusot are two aspects of the Judge.[1]
I see with joy, by your letter, that you are rather better; also that you have had an earthquake, which must make Germany uneasy. Suppose a crater were to open expressly to prove Georges' theories! Oh! how I wish I knew when you will be really in possession of a prolongation of your passport. I hope to leave here by the 15th or 20th, but I absolutely must finish "Les Parents pauvres" first. I have booked my place for the 15th, but I can exchange it for the 20th if necessary.
Ah! so you are not content with my title of "Le Parasite;" you think it a comedy title of the eighteenth century, like "Le Méchant," "Le Glorieux," "L'Indécis," "Le Philosophe marié," etc. Well, it shall be as your autocratic and supreme will decides, and inasmuch as you declare that the pendant to "La Cousine Bette," can only be "Le Cousin Pons," "Le Parasite" will disappear fromLa Comédie Humaineand give place to "Le Cousin Pons."
Work, occupation, difficulties in regulating the payments of the last sixty thousand francs of debt, all that mass of fixed or floating cares, repress within my heartthe desire to see you, and the need of consulting you and talking over with you my literary and pecuniary affairs. But as you will not permit me to go to you until I have finished "Les Paysans," or at least "La Cousine Bette," I endeavour to obey you. It is the order of the day to me; and it bestows upon me a strength for work I have never yet known. "Le Cousin Pons" and "La Cousine Bette" will give me ten thousand francs; that will pay Hetzel, and the seven thousand francs to my mother. If I can be with you next winter, counting from September, I shall do three works: "Les Petits Bourgeois," "Le Théâtre comme il est," and "Le Député d'Arcis," which, according to my calculation, are worth, taken together, forty thousand francs. So you see that not only will everything be paid, but I shall even have money in hand for the rest of the winter. Dear sovereign star, be very tranquil about my conduct; how do you suppose that at my age any enthusiasm could make me compromise the result of fifteen to sixteen years' labour? I shall not ruin myself in buying pictures any more than I will "bind myself to write novels against the sum that would free me entirely." In spite of that lofty wisdom of yours, you are no more prudent and reasonable than I am. I am really ashamed to repeat these things so often.
No news from Rome; I think there are as many reasons to fear as to rejoice. To-morrow I write again; butà bientôt. I hope to see you.
It is Laurent-Jan and Achard who are doing Grimm's letters; and it is Laurent-Jan who is just now publishing "Jeunesse" in the "Époque."