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Title: Letters to Madame Hanska
       1833-1846

Author: Honoré de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Release Date: April 1, 2017 [EBook #54466]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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LETTERS

TO

MADAME HANSKA

BORN COUNTESS RZEWUSKA

AFTERWARDS MADAME HONORÉ DE BALZAC

1833-1846

By

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

TRANSLATED BY KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY

HARDY, PRATT AND COMPANY

3 SOMERSET STREET

BOSTON

1900




CONTENTS.


TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE


LETTERS:

       I.   LETTERS DURING 1833
      II.   LETTERS DURING 1834
     III.   LETTERS DURING 1835
      IV.   LETTERS DURING 1836
       V.   LETTERS DURING 1837
      VI.   LETTERS DURING 1838
     VII.   LETTERS DURING 1839, 1840, 1841
    VIII.   LETTERS DURING 1843, 1844, 1845
      IX.   LETTERS DURING 1846

APPENDIX




TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.


In 1876 M. Calmann Lévy published Balzac's Correspondence in the
twenty-fourth volume of the Édition Définitive of his works. These
letters are prefaced by a short memoir written by his sister Laure,
Madame Surville, which she had already published in 1856, six years
after her brother's death, under the title of "Balzac, sa vie et ses
écrits, d'après sa correspondance."

In this Correspondence given in the Édition Définitive, the first
letter addressed by Balzac to Madame Hanska is dated August 11, 1835,
and to it is appended the following foot-note:--

      "At this period Balzac was, and had been for some time,
      in correspondence with the distinguished woman to whom he
      was later to give his name; but, unfortunately, a part
      of this correspondence was burned in Moscow in a fire
      which occurred at Madame Hanska's residence. It must,
      therefore, be remarked that in the letters of this series
      two or three gaps occur, all the more regrettable because
      those which escaped the fire present a keen interest."
      (Éd. Déf., vol. xxiv., p. 217.)

       *       *       *       *       *

The present publication of Letters (of which this volume is a
translation) bears upon its title-page the words: "H. de Balzac.
Œuvres Posthumes. Lettres à l'Étrangère. 1833-1842." No explanation is
given of how these letters were obtained, and no proof or assurance is
offered of their authenticity. A foot-note appended to the first letter
merely states as follows:--

      "M. le Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, in whose
      hands are the originals of these letters, has related
      the history of this correspondence in detail, under the
      title of 'Un Roman d'Amour' (Calmann Lévy, publisher).
      Madame Hanska, born Countess Evelina (Eve) Rzewuska,
      who was then twenty-six or twenty-eight years old,
      resided at the château of Wierzchownia, in Volhynia. An
      enthusiastic reader of the 'Scènes de la Vie privée,'
      uneasy at the different turn which the mind of the author
      was taking in 'La Peau de Chagrin,' she addressed to
      Balzac--then thirty-three years old, to the care of the
      publisher Gosselin, a letter signed, 'l'Étrangère,' which
      was delivered to him February 28, 1832. Other letters
      followed; that of November 7 ended thus: 'A word from
      you in the "Quotidienne" will give me the assurance
      that you have received my letter, and that I can write
      to you without fear. Sign it: "To l'É--h. de B."' This
      acknowledgment of reception appeared in the 'Quotidienne'
      of December 9. Thus was inaugurated the system of 'Petite
      correspondance' now practised in divers newspapers, and,
      at the same time, this correspondence with her who was,
      seventeen years later, in 1850, to become his wife."

Balzac himself gives the date of his reception of l'Étrangère's first
letter in a way that puts it beyond all controversy. In a letter to
Madame Hanska, written January 1, 1846 (Éd. Déf., p. 586), he says:--

      "One year more, dear, and I take it with pleasure,
      for these years, these thirteen years which will be
      consummated in February on the happy day, a thousand
      times blessed, when I received that adorable letter,
      starred with happiness and hope, seem to me links
      indestructible, eternal. The fourteenth will begin in two
      months."

Thirteen years _consummated_ in February, 1846, the fourteenth year
_beginning_ in February, 1846, make the date of the reception of that
first letter February 28, 1833, not 1832. This fact not only puts an
end to the tale about the advertisement in the "Quotidienne" [contained
in the note to first page of present volume, quoted above, and in
pages 31 to 39 of "Roman d'Amour"], but it falsifies the dates of
the present volume. The first letter given, which is evidently not
the first of Balzac's replies, is dated January, 1833, a month or
more before the first letter of "l'Étrangère" was written. Throughout
the volume other dates can be shown to be false, proving arbitrary
arrangement of some kind, and casting justifiable doubt on the
authenticity of a certain number of these letters.

"Un Roman d'Amour" is a book made up of conjectures, insinuations,
hypotheses, and errors, in which one, and one only, _fact_ is
presented. That fact is a letter from Balzac to his sister, Madame
Surville.

This letter Madame Surville first published in 1856 in her memoir of
her brother (pp. 139, 140), introducing it in the following words:
"Being absent from Paris in the month of October of the same year
[1833], I received from my brother the following letter:"--

      "Gone, without a word of warning [_sans crier gare_]. The
      poor toiler went to your house to make you share a little
      joy, and found no sister! I torment you so often with my
      troubles that the least I can do is to write you this
      joy. You will not laugh at me, you will believe me, _you_
      will!

      "I went yesterday to Gérard's; he presented me to
      three German families. I thought I was dreaming; three
      families!--no less!--one from Vienna, another from
      Frankfort, the third Prussian, I don't know from where.

      "They confided to me that they had come faithfully for
      a month to Gérard's, in the hope of seeing me; and they
      let me know that beyond the frontier of France (dear,
      ungrateful country!) my reputation has begun. 'Persevere
      in your labours,' they added, 'and you will soon be at
      the head of literary Europe.' Of Europe! they said it,
      sister! Flattering families!--How I could make certain
      friends roar with laughter if I told them that. _Ma foi!_
      these were kind Germans, and I let myself believe they
      thought what they said, and, to tell the truth, I could
      have listened to them all night. Praise is so good for
      us artists, and that of the good Germans restored my
      courage; I departed quite gaily [_tout guilleret_] from
      Gérard's, and I am going to fire three guns on the public
      and on envious folk, to wit: 'Eugénie Grandet,' 'Les
      Aventures d'une idée heureuse,' which you know about, and
      my 'Prêtre catholique,' one of my finest subjects.

      "The affair of the 'Études de Mœurs' is well under way;
      thirty thousand francs of author's rights in the reprints
      will stop up large holes. That slice of my debts paid, I
      shall go and seek my reward at Geneva. The horizon seems
      really brightening.

      "I have resumed my life of toil. I go to bed at six,
      directly after dinner. The animal digests and sleeps till
      midnight. Auguste makes me a cup of coffee, with which
      the mind goes at one flash [_tout d'une traite_] till
      midday. I rush to the printing-office to carry my copy
      and get my proofs, which gives exercise to the animal,
      who dreams as he goes.

      "One can put a good deal of black on white in twelve
      hours, little sister, and after a month of such life
      there's no small work accomplished. Poor pen! it must be
      made of diamond not to be worn out by such toil! To lift
      its master to reputation, according to the prophecy of
      the Germans, to pay his debts to all, and then to give
      him, some day, rest upon a mountain,--that is its task!

      "What the devil are you doing so late at M....? Tell
      me about it, and say with me that the Germans are very
      worthy people. Fraternal handshake to Monsieur Canal.
      [_Poignée de main fraternelle à M. Canal_]; tell him that
      'Les Aventures d'une idée heureuse' are on the ways.

      "I send you my proofs of the 'Médecin de Campagne' to
      read."

When, twenty years later, Balzac's Correspondence appeared in the
Édition Définitive (Calmann Lévy, 1876) Madame Surville's little memoir
was made the Introduction to the volume. On page lv (Introduction) the
above letter is given. On page 176 the letter is again given (in its
place in the Correspondence), and it is there identically the same as
the letter given above, down to the words: "What the devil are you
doing so late at M....?" after which, the following additions are
given:--

      "However, you are free, and this is not a reproach, it is
      curiosity; between brother and sister that is pardonable.

      "Well, adieu. If you have a heart you will reply to me.
      A fraternal handshake to _M. Canal_; tell him that the
      'Aventures d'une idée' are on the ways, and that he can
      soon read them.

      "_Addio! Addio!_ Correct 'le Médecin' well; point out to
      me all the passages which may seem to you bad; and _put
      the great pots into the little pots_; that is to say, if
      a thing can be said in one line instead of two, try to
      make the sentence."

Three points are here to be observed and borne in mind, namely:--

1. These discrepancies are additions in one version, and omissions in
the other; they are _not_ changes in the phraseology.

2. Balzac's playful nickname for Madame Surville's husband, who was
government engineer of bridges, canals, and highways, is given in both
versions.

3. The first point shows conclusively that the letter given in the
Correspondence is not a mere copy from that in Madame Surville's
memoir, but is _taken from the original letter_, inasmuch as the
version of 1876, though identical to a certain point with that of 1856,
gives additions to it.

Twenty years later, in 1896, forty years after its first publication
by the person who received it, the same letter appears in "Un Roman
d'Amour," introduced by the following words (pp. 76, 77, 78):--

"Happily, a unique document, and exceptionally precious in relation
to this first interview, that at Neufchâtel [with Madame Hanska], is
in our hands. It is precise, and fixes, from Balzac's own pen, his
immediate impressions of Madame Hanska and the five days he spent near
her. This document consists of an autograph letter, almost entirely
unpublished, addressed to his sister, Madame Surville; this letter
is certainly the most important which, until now, has been brought
to light on the opening of that celebrated passion. We shall quote
it here. In it will be found many other unknown details of the most
extreme interest, which confirm what we have already said as to the
rôle which the feminine element always played in the life of the
master.... Here is the complete text [_texte complet_] of this letter,
certainly written very rapidly, for we find several words omitted, and
more than one obscurity. To make the meaning clearer we have made,
according to our custom in such cases, some additions [_adjonctions_],
placed, as usual, between brackets."[1]

[Footnote 1: One of these "adjonctions" is the signature!--TR.]

      [PARIS] Saturday, 12 [October, 1833].

      MY DEAR SISTER,--You understand that I could not speak to
      you before Eugénie, but I had all my journey to relate to
      you.

      I have found down there all that can flatter the thousand
      vanities of that animal called man, of whom the poet is
      certainly the vainest species. But what am I saying?
      vanity! No, there is nothing of all that. I am happy,
      very happy in thoughts, in all honor as yet. Alas! a
      damned husband never left us for one second during five
      days. He kept between the petticoat of his wife and my
      waistcoat. [Neufchâtel is] a little town where a woman,
      an illustrious foreigner, cannot take a step without
      being seen. I was, as it were, in an oven. Constraint
      does not suit me.

      The essential thing is that we are twenty-seven years
      old, beautiful to admiration; that we possess the
      handsomest black hair in the world, the soft, deliciously
      delicate skin of brunettes, that we have a love of a
      little hand, a heart of twenty-seven, naïve; [in short,
      she is] a true Madame de Lignolles, imprudent to the
      point of flinging herself upon my neck before all the
      world.

      I don't speak to you of colossal wealth. What is that
      before a masterpiece of beauty, whom I can only compare
      to the Princess Belle-Joyeuse, but infinitely better?
      [She possesses] a lingering eye [_œil traînant_] which,
      when it meets, becomes of voluptuous splendor. I was
      intoxicated with love.

      I don't know whom to tell this to; certainly it is not
      [possible] either _to her_, the great lady, the terrible
      marquise, who, suspecting the journey, comes down from
      her pride, and intimates an order that I shall go
      to her at the Duc de F.'s [Fitz-James], [nor] is it
      [possible to tell it either] _to her_, poor, simple,
      delicious bourgeoise, who is like Blanche d'Azay. I am a
      _father_,--that's another secret I had to tell you,--and
      at the head of a pretty little person, the most naïve
      creature that ever was, fallen like a flower from heaven,
      who comes to me secretly, exacts no correspondence, and
      says: "Love me a year; I will love you all my life."

      It is not [either] _to her_, the most treasured, who
      has more jealousy for me than a mother has for the milk
      she gives her child. She does not like _L'Étrangère_,
      precisely because _L'Étrangère_ appears to be the very
      thing for me.

      And, finally, it is not _to her_ who wants her daily
      ration of love, and who, though voluptuous as a thousand
      cats, is neither graceful nor womanly. It is to you, my
      good sister, the former companion of my miseries and
      tears, that I wish to tell my joy, that it may die in the
      depths of your memory. Alas, I can't play the fop with
      any one, unless [apropos of] Madame de Castries, whom
      celebrity does not frighten. I do not wish to cause the
      slightest harm by my indiscretions. Therefore, burn my
      letter.

      As it will be long before I see you,--for I shall go, no
      doubt, to Normandy and Angoulême, and return to _see her_
      at Geneva,--I had to write you this line to tell you I am
      happy at last. I am [joyous] as a child.

      _Mon Dieu!_ how beautiful the Val de Travers is, how
      ravishing the lake of Bienne! It was there, as you may
      imagine, that we sent the husband to attend to the
      breakfast; but we were in sight, and then, in the shadow
      of a tall oak, the first furtive kiss of love was given.
      Then, as our husband is approaching the sixties, I swore
      to wait, and _she_ to keep her hand, her heart for me.

      Isn't it a pretty thing to have torn a husband--who looks
      to me like a tower--from the Ukraine, to come eighteen
      hundred miles to meet a lover who has come only four
      hundred, the monster![1]

      I'm joking; but knowing my affairs and my occupation
      here, my four hundred count as much as the eighteen
      hundred of my _fiancée_. She is really very well. She
      intends to be seriously ill at Geneva, which require
      [will require the care of] M. Dupuytren to soften the
      Russian ambassador and obtain a permit to come to Paris,
      for which she longs; where there is, for a woman, liberty
      on the mountain. However, I've enchanted the husband;
      and I shall try next year to get three months to myself.
      I shall go and see the Ukraine, and we have promised
      ourselves a magnificent and splendid journey in the
      Crimea; which is, you know, a land where tourists do not
      go, a thousand times more beautiful than Switzerland or
      Italy. It is the Italy of Asia.

      But what labor between now and then! Pay our debts!
      Increase our reputation!

      Yesterday I went to Gérard's. Three German families--one
      Prussian, one from Frankfort, one from Vienna--were
      officially presented to me. They came faithfully to
      Gérard's for a month past to see me and tell me that
      nothing was talked of but me in their country [_chez
      eux_]; that amazing fame began for me on the frontier of
      France, and that I had only to persevere for a year or
      two to be at the head of literary Europe, and replace
      Byron, Walter Scott, Goethe, Hoffmann!

      _Ma foi!_ as they were good Germans I let myself believe
      [all] that. It restored to me some courage, and I am
      going to fire a triple shot on the public and on the
      envious. During this fortnight, at one flash [I shall]
      finish "Eugénie Grandet," and write the "Aventures d'une
      idée [heureuse]" and "Le Prêtre catholique," one of my
      finest subjects. Then will come the fine third _dizain_,
      and after that I shall go and seek my reward at Geneva,
      after having paid a good slice of debts. There, sister. I
      have now resumed my winter life. I go to bed at six, with
      my dinner in my mouth, and I sleep till half-past twelve.
      At one o'clock Auguste brings me a cup of coffee, and I
      go at one flash, working from one in the morning till an
      hour after midday. At the end of twenty days, that makes
      a pretty amount of work!

      Adieu, dearest sister. If your husband has arrived, tell
      him the "Aventures d'une idée [heureuse]" are on the
      ways, and he will perhaps read them at Montglat, for I
      will send you the paper in which they appear if you stay
      till the end of the month.

      The affair of the "Études de Mœurs" is going on well.
      Thirty-three thousand francs of author's rights will
      just stop all the big holes. I shall [then] only have to
      undertake the repayment to my mother, and after that,
      faith! I shall be at my ease. I hope to repay you the
      remaining thousand francs at the end of the month; but
      if my mother wants all her interests [at once] I shall
      be obliged to put you off [till] the first fortnight in
      November.

      Well, adieu, my dear sister. If you have any heart, you
      will answer me. What the devil are you doing at Montglat?
      However, you are free; this is not a reproach, it is
      curiosity. Between brother and sister it is pardonable.
      Much tenderness. You won't say again that I don't write
      to you.

      Apropos, the pain in my side continues; but I have such
      fear of leeches, cataplasms, and to be tied down in a way
      that I can't finish what I have undertaken, that I put
      everything off. If it gets too bad we will see about it,
      I and the doctor, or magnetism.

      _Addio, addio._ A thousand kind things. Correct carefully
      the "Médecin [de Campagne]," or rather tell me all the
      places that seem to you bad, and _put the great pots into
      the little pots_; that is to say, if a thing can be said
      in one line instead of two, try to make the sentence.

      Adieu, sister. [HONORÉ.]

[Footnote 1: Monsieur Hanski hired the house in Neufchâtel early in
the spring of 1833 and took his family there in May. Balzac was not
invited, or, at any rate, did not go there till September 25th.]

Now there are three points here to be noticed and studied:--

1. The letters all state the purpose for which they were written. The
versions of 1856 and 1876 give the same purpose. That given in "Roman
d'Amour" is totally different.

2. The "Roman d'Amour" letter claims to be the complete text [_texte
complet_]. How comes it, therefore, to have such variations from
the original letter published by the sister who received it, and
republished authoritatively in the Édition Définitive?

3. These variations are not merely omissions or additions of passages;
they are the total reconstruction of many, and very characteristic,
sentences.

Some one _must_ have rewritten the letter. Some one has garbled it.
There can be no question about this; the fact is there. It is not
necessary for the vindication of Balzac's honour to inquire who did it;
but it is plain that it was done.

It is therefore legitimate to suppose that the hand which garbled parts
of the letter added the slanderous language of the first part.

Three years ago, in 1896, when "Roman d'Amour" first appeared, I added
to the new edition of my "Memoir of Balzac" an appendix entitled "A
Vindication of Balzac." It goes into more details connected with this
slander than I can suitably put into this Preface, and I respectfully
ask my readers to read it in the Memoir.

Now, to me who have lived in Balzac's mind for the last fifteen years
as closely, perhaps, as any one now living, it is plain that the same
hand that garbled the letter of October, 1833, has been at work on some
of the letters in the present volume.

The simple story of these letters is as follows: In February, 1833,
Balzac received a letter, posted in Russia, from a lady who signed
herself "l'Étrangère" ["Foreigner"]. This letter is not known to exist;
nor is there any authentic knowledge of its contents; but it began
a correspondence between its writer and Balzac which ended in their
marriage in 1850. It does not appear at what date Madame Hanska gave
her name; it must have been quite early in the correspondence, although
he never knew it exactly until the day he met her in September, 1833,
at Neufchâtel.

The first reply from Balzac which is given is the first letter in the
present volume, misdated January, 1833, a month _before_ l'Étrangère's
first letter was written; but it is plainly not the first reply he had
made to her.

Eleven letters from Balzac follow the first, ending on the day
(September 26, 1833) when he met Madame Hanska for the first time at
Neufchâtel.

These twelve letters to an unknown woman are romantic; they are the
letters of a poet, creating for himself an ideal love, and letting his
imagination bear him along unchecked. From our colder point of view
they seem, here and there, a little foolish, as addressed to a total
stranger, but the impression conveyed of his own being, his nature,
the troubles of his life and heart, is affecting and full of dignity.
They are, moreover, the letters of a gentleman to a woman he respects.
Owing to their false dates and to a forgery in the first letter (done
undoubtedly to bring them into line with "Roman d'Amour"), they are
open to suspicion; but Balzac's characteristics are in them, and I
believe them to be, in spite of some interpolations, genuine.

But from the time that he meets Madame Hanska at Neufchâtel, a date
which corresponds precisely with the garbled letter in "Roman d'Amour,"
the tone of the correspondence changes. For six months (from October to
March) it becomes out of keeping with the respect which the foregoing
letters, and the letters of all the rest of his life show that he
felt for her. More especially is this true of the letters of January,
February, and March. They are not in Balzac's style of writing; they
present ideas that were not his, expressed in a manner that was not
his; they contradict the impression given by all the other letters
of his life; they contradict the letters of romantic ideal love that
precede them; they contradict what every friend who knew Balzac closely
has said of him; they contradict the known facts of the history of
himself and Madame Hanska; they are, moreover, disloyal to friendship
in a manner that Balzac's whole conduct in life, as evidenced in his
correspondence, shows to have been impossible.

To bring the question home to ourselves--which of us, after reflection
and comparison, can suppose that the paltry, immature, contemptibly
vulgar stuff of the letters here designated as spurious ever came from
the brain of the man who thought and wrote the "Comédie Humaine"?

There is such a thing as _true literary judgment_,--as unerring as
the science that sees a mammoth in a bone. To that judgment, if to no
other, this question may be left. The letters are here in this volume,
and the reader can judge them for himself. In my opinion they have
been garbled in various places; expressions, passages, and many whole
letters have been interpolated, with the vulgarity of the hand that
garbled the letter in "Roman d'Amour," for the purpose of supporting
the slander suggested in that book.

This is, necessarily, opinion and judgment only; but a very remarkable
circumstance appears in this volume, which should be studied and judged
by readers thoroughly informed about Balzac, his nature, his character,
and his writings.

September 16, 1834, Balzac writes to Monsieur Hanski, asking him to
explain to Madame Hanska how he came to write to her two love-letters;
these letters are not given. He asks her pardon, he is grieved, he
is mortified (and justly so); but the letter is characteristic of a
man who was honest and brave; the defence rings true. Monsieur Hanski
must have thought so, for he accepted the commission and so performed
it that Balzac's next letter to Madame Hanska thanks her for her
pardon, and is written in a tone of boyish glee which was eminently
characteristic of him, and could not have been counterfeited.

From this time there is not a trace of embarrassment in his letters;
he does not feel himself withheld from expressing his ardent but
respectful feelings for Madame Hanska; he assures her, again and again,
of her influence upon his life, and he sends friendly messages to
Monsieur Hanski, which are returned in an evidently kind and cordial
way.

To the translation of the "Lettres à l'Étrangère" I have added that
of all the letters to Madame Hanska during the rest of Balzac's life
which are contained in the volume of Correspondence in the Édition
Définitive. The "Lettres à l'Étrangère"--those, I mean, that are
genuine--ought, if published at all, to have been shortened. They were
written to give vent to the emotions of a heart and soul under violent
pressure; perhaps no letters exist that ever came so hot from the inner
being; they lay bare a soul that little dreamed of this exposure, for
the man who wrote them never read them over. For this reason, this lack
of editing, the reader will surely find them too monotonous in their
one long cry; and yet, without them, the world would not have known a
tragedy too great for tears, nor the true history of a hero.

I should not have consented to translate these letters unless I had
been allowed by my publishers to preface them with these remarks, and
give my name and what weight my long, close intercourse with Balzac may
possess in his just defence.

KATHARINE P. WORMELEY.

THE SÄTER,

THORN MOUNTAIN.




LETTERS.




I.


LETTERS DURING 1833.



TO MADAME HANSKA.


PARIS, January, 1833.

MADAME,--I entreat you to completely separate the author from the
man, and to believe in the sincerity of the sentiments which I have
vaguely expressed in the correspondence you have obliged me to hold
with you. In spite of the perpetual caution which some friends give
me against certain letters like those which I have had the honour to
receive from you, I have been keenly touched by a tone that levity
cannot counterfeit. If you will deign to excuse the folly of a young
heart and a wholly virgin imagination, I will own that you have been
to me the object of the sweetest dreams; in spite of my hard work I
have found myself more than once galloping through space to hover above
the unknown country where you, also unknown, live alone of your race.
I have taken pleasure in comprehending you among the remains almost
always unfortunate of a dispersed people, a people scattered thinly
over the earth, exiled perhaps from heaven, but of whom each being
has language and sentiments to him peculiar and unlike those of other
men,--delicacy, choiceness of soul, chasteness of feeling, tenderness
of heart, purer, sweeter, gentler than in the best of other created
beings. There is something saintly in even their enthusiasms, and calm
in their ardour. These poor exiles have all, in their voices, their
words, their ideas, something, I know not what, which distinguishes
them from others, which serves to bind them to one another in spite of
distance, lands, and language; a word, a phrase, the very sentiment
exhaled in a look are like a rallying call which they obey; and,
compatriots of a hidden land whose charms are reproduced in their
memories, they recognize and love one another in the name of that
country toward which they stretch their arms. Poesy, music, and
religion are their three divinities, their favourite loves; and all
these passions awake in their hearts sensations that are equally
powerful.

I have clothed you with all these ideas. I have held out to you my
hand, fraternally, from afar, without conceit, without affectation,
but with a confidence that is almost domestic, with sincerity; and
could you have seen my glance you would have recognized within it both
the gratitude of a lover and the religions of the heart,--the pure
tenderness that binds the son to a mother, the brother to a sister, the
respect of a young man for woman, and the delightful hopes of a long
and fervent friendship.

'T was an episode wholly romantic; but who will dare to blame the
romantic? It is only frigid souls who cannot conceive all there is of
vast in the emotions to which the unknown gives full scope. The less
we are restrained by reality, the higher is the flight of the soul. I
have therefore let myself gently float upon my reveries, and they are
ravishing. So, if a star darts from your candle, if your ear should
catch a distant murmur, if you see figures in the fire, if something
sparkles or speaks beside you, near you, believe that my spirit is
wandering among your panels.

Amid the battle I am fighting, amid my heavy toil, my endless studies,
in this agitated Paris, where politics and literature absorb some
sixteen or eighteen hours of the twenty-four, to me, an unfortunate
man, widely different from the author that people imagine, come
charming hours which I owe to you. So, in order to thank you, I
dedicated to you the fourth volume of the "Scènes de la Vie privée,"
putting your seal at the head of the last "Scene," which I was writing
at the moment when I received your first letter. But a person who is
a mother for me, and whose caprices and even jealousy I am bound to
respect, exacted that this silent testimony of secret sentiments should
be suppressed. I have the sincerity to avow to you both the dedication
and its destruction, because I believe you have a soul sufficiently
lofty not to desire a homage which would cause grief to a person as
noble and grand as she whose child I am, for she preserved me in the
midst of griefs and shipwreck where in my youth I nearly perished. I
live by the heart only, and she made me live! I have saved the only
copy of that dedication for which I was blamed as if it were a horrible
coquetry; keep it, madame, as a souvenir and by way of thanks. When you
read the book say to yourself that in concluding it and revising it
I thought of you and of the compositions which you have preferred to
all the others. Perhaps what I am doing is wrong; but the purity of my
intentions must absolve me.[1]

Lay the things that shock you in my works, madame, to the account
of that necessity which forces us to strike powerfully a _blasé_
public. Having undertaken, rashly no doubt, to represent the whole of
literature by the whole of my works; wishing to erect a monument more
durable from the mass and the amassing of materials than from the
beauty of the edifice, I am obliged to represent everything, that I may
not be accused of want of power. But if you knew me personally, if my
solitary life, my days of study, privation, and toil were told to you,
you would lay aside some of your accusations and perceive more than one
antithesis between the man and his writings. Certainly there are some
works in which I like to be myself; but you can guess them; they are
those in which the heart speaks out. My fate is to paint the happiness
that others feel; to desire it in perfection, but never to meet it.
None but those who suffer can paint joy, because we express better that
which we conceive than that we have experienced.

See to what this confidence has drawn me! But, thinking of all the
countries that lie between us, I dare not be brief. Besides, events are
so gloomy around my friends and myself! Civilization is threatened;
arts, sciences, and progress are threatened. I myself, the organ of
a vanquished party representing all noble and religious ideas, I am
already the object of lively hatred. The more that is hoped from my
voice, the more it is feared. And under these circumstances, when a man
is thirty years old and has not worn out his life or his heart, with
what passion he grasps a friendly word, a tender speech!...

Perhaps you will never receive anything from me again, and the
friendship you have created may be like a flower perishing unknown in
the depths of a wood by a stroke of lightning. Know, at least, that it
was true, and sincere; you are, in a young and stainless heart, what
every woman must desire to be--respected and adored. Have you not shed
a perfume on my hours? Do I not owe to you one of those encouragements
which make us accept hard toil, the drop of water in the desert?

If events respect me, and in spite of excursions to which my life as
poet and artist condemn me, you can, madame, address your letters "Rue
Cassini, No. 1, near the Observatory"--unless indeed I have had the
misfortune to displease you by this candid expression of the feelings I
have for you.

Accept, madame, my respectful homage.

[Footnote 1: This publication of the "Scènes de la Vie privée" took
place in May, 1832, nine months _before_ Mme. Hanska's first letter
reached Balzac. The above passage must therefore have been forged and
interpolated here; probably to bring this letter into line with a
tale in "Roman d'Amour" (pp. 55-59), which the same dates prove to be
false.--TR.]



PARIS, end of January, 1833.

Pardon me the delay of my answer. I returned to Paris only in December
last, and I found your letter in Paris awaiting me. But once here, I
was sharply seized by crushing toil and violent sorrows.[1] I must be
silent as to the sorrows and the toil. None but God and myself will
ever know the dreadful energy a heart requires to be full of tears
repressed, and yet suffice for literary labours. To spend one's soul in
melancholy, and yet to occupy it ever with fictitious joys and sorrows!
To write cold dramas, and keep within us a drama that burns both heart
and brain! But let us leave all this. I am alone; I am now shut up at
home for a long time, possibly a year. I have already endured these
voluntary incarcerations in the name of science and of poverty; to-day,
troubles are my jailers.

I have more than once turned my thought to you. But I must still be
silent; these are follies. I have one regret; it is to have boasted
to you of "Louis Lambert," the saddest of all abortions. I have just
employed nearly three months in remaking that book, and it is now
appearing in a little 18mo volume, of which there is a special copy for
you; it will await your orders and shall be given, with the Chénier, to
the person who calls for them; or they shall be sent wherever you write
to me to forward them.

This work is still incomplete, though it bears this time the pompous
title of "Histoire Intellectuelle de Louis Lambert." When this edition
is exhausted, I will publish another "Louis Lambert" more complete.

I tell you naïvely all that you want to know about me. I am still
waiting for you to speak to me with equal confidence. You are afraid
of ridicule? And of whose? That of a poor child, victim yesterday and
victim to-morrow of his feminine bashfulness, his shyness, his beliefs.
You have asked me with distrust to give an explanation of my two
handwritings; but I have as many handwritings as there are days in the
year, without being on that account the least in the world versatile.
This mobility comes from an imagination which can conceive all and yet
remain virgin, like glass which is soiled by none of its reflections.
The glass is in my brain. But my heart, my heart is known but to one
woman in the world as yet,--the _et nunc et semper dilectæ dicatum_ of
the dedication of "Louis Lambert." Ties eternal and ties broken! Do not
blame me. You ask me how we can love, live, and lose each other while
still loving. That is a mystery of life of which you know nothing as
yet, and I hope you never may know it. In that sad destiny no blame can
be attached except to fate; there are two unfortunates, but they are
two irreproachable unfortunates. There is no fault to absolve because
there is no cause to blame. I cannot add another word.

I am very curious to know if "La Femme abandonnée," "La Grenadière,"
the "Lettre à Nodier" (in which there are enormous typographical
errors), the "Voyage à Java," and "Les Maranas" have pleased you?...

Some days after receiving this letter you will read "Une Fille d'Ève,"
who will be the type of the "La Femme abandonnée," taken between
fifteen and twenty years of age.

At this moment I am finishing a work that is quite evangelical, and
which seems to me the "Imitation of Jesus Christ" poetized. It bears
an epigraph which will tell the disposition of mind I was in when
writing the book: _To wounded hearts, silence and shade_. One must have
suffered to understand that line to its full extent; and one must also
have suffered as much as I have done to give birth to it in a day of
mourning.

I have flung myself into work, as Empedocles into the crater, to stay
there. "La Bataille" will come after "Le Médecin de campagne" (the book
I have just told you of); and is there not something to shudder at when
I tell you that "La Bataille" is an impossible book? In it I undertake
to initiate the reader into all the horrors and all the beauties of a
battle-field; my battle is Essling, Essling with all its consequences.
This book requires that a man, in cold blood, seated in his chair,
shall see the country, the lay of the land, the masses of men, the
strategic events, the Danube, the bridges; shall behold the details and
the whole of the struggle, hear the artillery, pay attention to all the
movements on the chess-board; see all, and feel, in each articulation
of the great body, Napoleon--whom I shall not show, or shall only
_allow to be seen_, in the evening, crossing the Danube in a boat! Not
a woman's head; cannon, horses, two armies, uniforms. On the first page
the cannon roars, and never ceases until the last. You read through
smoke, and, the book closed, you have seen it all intuitively; you
remember the battle as if you had been present at it.

It is now three months that I have been measuring swords with that
work, that ode in two volumes, which persons on all sides tell me is
impossible!

I work eighteen hours a day. I have perceived the faults of style
which disfigure "La Peau de Chagrin." I corrected them to make it
irreproachable; but after two months' labour, the volume being
reprinted, I discover another hundred faults. Such are the sorrows of a
poet.

It is the same thing with "Les Chouans." I have rewritten that book
entirely; but the second edition, which is coming out, has still many
spots upon it.

On all sides they shout to me that I do not know how to write; and
that is cruel when I have already told myself so, and have consecrated
my days to new works, using my nights to perfect the old ones. Like
the bears, I am now licking the "Scènes de la Vie privée" and the
"Physiologie du Mariage;" after which I shall revise the "Études
Philosophiques."

As all my passions, all my beliefs are defeated, as my dreams are
dispersed, I am forced to _create myself_ passions, and I choose that
of art. I live in my studies. I wish to do better. I weigh my phrases
and my words as a miser weighs his bits of gold. What love I thus
waste! What happiness is flung to the winds! My laborious youth, my
long studies will not have the sole reward I desired for them. Ever
since I have breathed and known what a pure breath coming from pure
lips was, I have desired the love of a young and pretty woman; yet
all has fled me! A few years more and youth will be a memory! I am
eligible to the Chamber under the new law which allows us to be men at
thirty years of age, and certainly in a few years the recollections of
youth will bring me no joys. And then, what hope that I could obtain
at forty that which I have missed at twenty? She who is averse to me,
being young, will she be less reluctant then? But you cannot understand
these moans,--you, young, solitary, living a country life, far from our
Parisian world which excites the passions so violently, and where all
is so great and so petty. I ought still to keep these lamentations in
the depths of my heart....

You have asked my friendship for _a_ youth; I thought of you yesterday
in fulfilling a promise of the same kind and devoting myself to a young
man whom I hope to embark upon a fine and noble life. You are right;
there is a moment in the life of young men when a friendly heart can
be very precious. In the park of Versailles is a statue of "Achilles
between Vice and Virtue," which seems to me a great work, and I have
always thought, when looking at it, of that critical moment in human
life. Yes, a young man needs a courageous voice to draw him to the
life of manhood while allowing him to gather the flowers of passion
that bloom along the wayside.

You will not laugh at me, you, who have written to me so noble a page
and lines so melancholy, in which I have believed. You are one of those
ideal figures to whom I give the right to come at times and nebulously
pose amid my flowers, who smile to me between two camellias, waving
aside a rosy heather, and to whom I speak.

You fear the dissipations of the winter for me? Alas! all that I know
of the impressions I can produce, comes to me in a few letters from
kind souls which set me glowing. I never leave my study, filled with
books; I am alone, and I listen and wish to listen to no one. I have
such pain in uprooting from my heart my hopes! They must be torn out,
one by one, root by root, like flax. To renounce Woman!--my sole
terrestrial religion!

You wish to know if I ever met Fedora; if she is true. A woman of cold
Russia, the Princess Bagration, is supposed in Paris to be the model
of her. I have reached the seventieth woman who has the coolness to
recognize herself in that character. They are all of ripe age. Even
Madame Récamier is willing to _fedorize_ herself. Not a word of all
that is true. I made Fedora out of two women whom I have known without
ever being intimate with them. Observation sufficed me, and a few
confidences.

There are also some kind souls who will have it that I have courted the
handsomest of Parisian courtesans and have hid, like Raphael, behind
her curtains. These are calumnies. I have met a Fedora; but that one I
shall not paint; besides, the "La Peau de chagrin" was published before
I knew her.

I must bid you adieu, and what an adieu! This letter may be a month on
its way; you will hold it in your hands, but I may never see you,--you
whom I caress as an illusion, who are in my dreams like a hope, and
who have so graciously embodied my reveries. You do not know what it
is to people the solitude of a poet with a gentle figure, the form of
which attracts by the very vagueness which the indefinite lends it. A
solitary, ardent heart takes eagerly to a chimera when it is real! How
many times I have travelled the road that separates us! what delightful
romances! and what postal charges do I not spend at my fireside!

Adieu, then; I have given you a whole night, a night which belonged
to my legitimate wife, the "Revue de Paris," that crabbed spouse.
Consequently the "Théorie de la Démarche," which I owed to her must be
postponed till the month of March, and no one will know why; you and
I alone are in the secret. The article was there before me--a science
to elucidate; it was arduous, I was afraid of it. Your letter slipped
into my memory, and suddenly I put my feet to the embers, forgot
myself in my arm-chair,--and adieu "La Démarche;" behold me galloping
towards Poland, and re-reading your letters (I have but three)--and
now I answer them. I defy you to read two months hence the "Théorie de
la Démarche" without smiling at every sentence; because beneath those
senseless foolish phrases there are a thousand thoughts of you.

Adieu. I have so little time that you must absolve me. There are but
three persons whose letters I answer. This sounds a little like French
conceit, and yet it is really most delicate in the way of modesty. More
than that, I meant to tell you that you are almost alone in my heart,
grandparents excepted.

Adieu. If my rose-tree were not out of bloom I would send you a petal.
If you were less fairy-like, less capricious, less mysterious, I would
say "write to me often."

P. S. The black seal was an accident. I was not at home, and the friend
with whom I was staying at Angoulême was in mourning.

[Footnote 1: This letter is inconsistent with the preceding one, also
dated January, 1833. A system of arbitrary dating is thus shown.--TR.]



PARIS, February 24, 1833.

Certainly there is some good genius between us; I dare not say
otherwise, for how else can one explain that you should have sent me
the "Imitation of Jesus Christ" just when I was working night and day
at a book in which I have tried to dramatize the spirit of that work by
conforming it to the desires of the civilization of our epoch. How is
it that you had the thought to send it to me when I had that of putting
its meditative poesy into action, so that across wide space the saintly
volume, accompanied by an escort of gentle thoughts, should have come
to me as I was casting myself into the delightful fields of a religious
idea; coming too, at a moment when, weary and discouraged, I despaired
of being able to accomplish this magnificent work of charity; beautiful
in its results--if only my efforts should not prove in vain. Oh! give
me the right to send you in a month or two my "Médecin de campagne"
with the Chénier and the new "Louis Lambert," in which I will write the
last corrections. My book will not appear till the first of March. I
do not choose to send you that ignoble edition. A few weeks after its
appearance I shall have still another ready, and I can then offer you
something more worthy of you. The same line of thought presented itself
to me in all of them,--poesy, religion, intellect, those three great
principles will be united in these three books, and their pilgrimage
toward you will be fulfilled; all my thoughts are assembled in them,
and if you will draw from that source there will be for you, in me,
something inexhaustible.

Now I know that my book will please you. You send me the Christ upon
the cross, and I, I have made him bearing his cross. There lies the
idea of the book: resignation and love; faith in the future and the
shedding of the fragrance of benefits around us. What joy for a man
to have at last been able to do a work in which he can be himself,
in which he may pour out his soul without fear of ridicule, because
in serving the passions of the mob he has conquered the right, dearly
bought, of being heard in a day of grave thought. Have you read
"Juana"? Tell me if she pleases you.

You have awakened many diverse curiosities in me; you are capable
of a delightful coquetry which it is impossible to blame. But you
do not know how dangerous it is to a lively imagination and a heart
misunderstood, a heart full of rejected tenderness, to behold thus
nebulously a young and beautiful woman. In spite of these dangers, I
yield myself willingly to hopes of the heart. My grief is to be able
to speak to you of yourself as only a hope, a dream of heaven and of
all that is beautiful. I can therefore tell you only of myself; but I
abandon myself with you to my most secret thoughts, to my despairs, to
my hopes. You are a second conscience; less reproachful perhaps and
more kindly than that which rises so imperiously within me at evil
moments.

Well, then! I will speak of myself, since it must be so. I have met
with one of those immense sorrows which only artists know. After three
months' labour I re-made "Louis Lambert." Yesterday, a friend, one of
those friends who never deceive, who tell you the truth, came, scalpel
in hand, and we studied my work together. He is a logical man, of
severe taste, incapable of doing anything himself, but a most profound
grammarian, a stern professor, and he showed me a thousand faults.
That evening, alone, I wept with despair in that species of rage which
seizes the heart when we recognize our faults after toiling so long.
Well, I shall set to work again, and in a month or two I will bring
forth a corrected "Louis Lambert." Wait for that. Let me send you,
when it is ready, a new and fine edition of the four volumes of the
Philosophical tales. I am preparing it. "La Peau de chagrin," already
corrected, is to be again corrected. If all is not then made perfect,
at least it will be less ugly.

Always labour! My life is passed in a monk's cell--but a pretty cell,
at any rate. I seldom go out; I have many personal annoyances, like all
men who live by the altar instead of being able to worship it. How many
things I do which I would fain renounce! But the time of my deliverance
is not far off; and then I shall be able to slowly accomplish my work.

How impatient I am to finish "Le Médecin de campagne," that I may know
what you think of it--for you will read it no doubt before you receive
your own copy. It is the history of a man faithful to a despised love,
to a woman who did not love him, who broke his heart by coquetry; but
that story is only an episode. Instead of killing himself, the man
casts off his life like a garment, takes another existence, and in
place of making himself a monk, he becomes the sister of mercy of a
poor canton, which he civilizes. At this moment I am in the paroxysm of
composition, and I can only speak well of it. When it is finished you
will receive the despairs of a man who sees only its faults.

If you knew with what force a solitary soul whom no one wants springs
toward a true affection! I love you, unknown woman, and this fantastic
thing is only the natural effect of a life that is empty and unhappy,
which I have filled with ideas only, diminishing its misfortunes by
chimerical pleasures. If this present adventure ought to happen to any
one it should to me. I am like a prisoner who, in the depths of his
dungeon, hears the sweet voice of a woman. He puts all his soul into a
faint yet powerful perception of that voice, and after his long hours
of revery, of hopes, after voyages of imagination, the woman, beautiful
and young, kills him--so complete would be the happiness. You will
think this folly; it is the truth, and far below the truth, because the
heart, the imagination, the romance of the passions of which my works
give an idea are very far below the heart, the imagination, the romance
of the man. And I can say this without conceit, because all those
qualities are to me misfortunes. After all, no one attaches himself
with greater love to the poesy of this sentiment at once so chimerical
and so true. It is a sort of religion, higher than earth, less high
than heaven. I like to often turn my eyes toward these unknown skies,
in an unknown land, and gather some new strength by thinking that
_there_ may be sure rewards for me, when I do well.

Remember, therefore, that there is here, between a Carmelite convent
and the Place where the executions take place, a poor being whose joy
you are,--an innocent joy according to social laws, but a very criminal
one if measured by the weight of affection. I take too much, I assure
you, and you would not ratify my dreamy conquests if it were possible
to tell you my dreams, dreams which I know to be impossible, but which
please me so much. To go where no one in the world knows where I
am,--to go into your country, to pass before you unknown, to see you,
and return here to write and tell you, "You are thus and so!" How many
times have I enjoyed this delightful fancy--I, attached by a myriad
lilliputian bonds to Paris, I, whose independence is forever being
postponed, I, who cannot travel except in thought! It is yours, that
thought; but, in mercy and in the name of that affection which I will
not characterize because it makes me too happy, tell me that you write
to no one in France but me. This is not distrust nor jealousy; although
both sentiments prove love, I think that the suspicions they imply
are always dishonouring. No, the motive is a sentiment of celestial
perfection which ought to be in you and which I inwardly feel there. I
know it, but I would fain be sure.

Adieu; pitiless editors, newspapers, etc., are here; time fails me
for all I have to do; there is but a single thing for which I can
always find time. Will you be kind, charitable, gracious, excellent?
You surely know some person who can make a sepia sketch. Send me a
faithful copy of the room where you write, where you think, where you
are _you_--for, you know well, there are moments when we are more
ourselves, when the mask is no longer on us. I am very bold, very
indiscreet; but this desire will tell you many things, and, after all,
I swear it is very innocent.

In the month of May two young Frenchmen who are going to Russia can
leave with the person you may indicate, in any town you indicate, the
parcel containing André Chénier, my poor "Louis Lambert" and your copy
of "Le Médecin de campagne." Write me promptly on this subject. They
are two young men who are not inquiring; they will do it as a matter
of business. Objects of art are not exposed to the brutalities of
the custom-house and you will permit a poor artist to send you a few
specimens of art. They are only precious from the species of perfection
that artists who love each other give to their work for a brother's
sake. At any rate, allow Paris the right to be proud of her worship of
art. You will enjoy the gift because none but you and I in the world
will know that this book, this copy is the solitary one of its kind.
The seal I had engraved upon it is lost. It came to me defaced by
rubbing against other letters. You will be very generous to send me an
impression inside of your reply.

All this shows that I am occupied with you, and you will not refuse to
increase my pleasures; they are so rare!



PARIS, end of March; 1833.

I have told you something of my life; I have not told you all; but
you will have seen enough to understand that I have no time to do
evil, no leisure to let myself go to happiness. Gifted with excessive
sensibility, having lived much in solitude, the constant ill-fortune of
my life has been the element of what is called so improperly _talent_.
I am provided with a great power of observation, because I have been
cast among all sorts of professions, involuntarily. Then, when I
went into the upper regions of society, I suffered at all points of
my soul which suffering can touch; there are none but souls that are
misunderstood, and the poor, who can really observe, because everything
bruises them, and observation results from suffering. Memory only
registers thoroughly that which is pain. In this sense it recalls great
joy, for pleasure comes very near to being pain. Thus society in all
its phases from top to bottom, legislations, religions, histories,
the present times, all have been observed and analyzed by me. My one
passion, always disappointed, at least in the development I gave to it,
has made me observe women, study them, know them, and cherish them,
without other recompense than that of being understood at a distance by
great and noble hearts. I have written my desires, my dreams. But the
farther I go, the more I rebel against my fate. At thirty-four years
of age, after having constantly worked fourteen and fifteen hours a
day, I have already white hairs without ever being loved by a young
and pretty woman; that is sad. My imagination, virile as it is, having
never been prostituted or jaded, is an enemy for me; it is always in
keeping with a young and pure heart, violent with repressed desires,
so that the slightest sentiment cast into my solitude makes ravages.
I love you already too much without ever having seen you. There are
certain phrases in your letters which make my heart beat. If you knew
with what ardour I spring toward that which I have so long desired! of
what devotion I feel myself capable! what happiness it would be to me
to subordinate my life for a single day! to remain without seeing a
living soul for a year, for a single hour! All that woman can dream of
that is most delicate, most romantic, finds in my heart, not an echo
but, an incredible simultaneousness of thought. Forgive me this pride
of misery, this naïveté of suffering.

You have asked me the baptismal name of the _dilecta_ [Mme. de Berny].
In spite of my complete and blind faith, in spite of my sentiment for
you, I cannot tell it to you; I have never told it. Would you have
faith in me if I told it? No.

You ask me to send you a plan of the place I live in. Listen: in one
of the forthcoming numbers of Regnier's "Album" (I will go and see him
on the subject) he shall put in my house for you, oh! solely for you!
It is a sacrifice; it is distasteful to me to be put _en évidence_.
How little those who accuse me of vanity know me! I have never desired
to see a journalist, for I should blush to solicit an article. For
the last eight months I have resisted the entreaties of Schnetz and
Scheffer, author of "Faust" who wish extremely to make my portrait.

Yesterday I said in jest to Gérard, who spoke to me of the same thing,
that I was not a sufficiently fine fish to be put in oils. You will
receive herewith a little sketch made by an artist of my study. But I
am rather disturbed in sending it to you because I dare not believe
in all that your request offers me of joy and happiness. To live in
a heart is so glorious a life! To be able to name you secretly to
myself in evil hours, when I suffer, when I am betrayed, misunderstood,
calumniated! To be able to retire to you!... This is a hope that goes
too far beyond me; it is the adoration of God by monks, the Ave Maria
written in the cell of a Chartreux,--an inscription which once made me
stand at the Grande-Chartreuse, beneath a vault, for ten minutes. Oh!
love me! All that you desire of what is noble, true, pure, will be in
a heart that has borne many a blow, but is not blasted!

That gentleman was very unjust. I drink nothing but coffee. I have
never known what drunkenness was, except from a cigar which Eugène Sue
made me smoke against my will, and it was that which enabled me to
paint the drunkenness for which you blame me, in the "Voyage à Java."
Eugène Sue is a kind and amiable young man, a braggart of vices, in
despair at being named Sue, living in luxury to make himself a great
seigneur, but for all that, though a little worn-out, worth more than
his works, I dare not speak to you of Nodier, lest I should destroy
your illusions. His artistic caprices stain that purity of honour which
is the chastity of men. But when one knows him, one forgives him his
disorderly life, his vices, his lack of conscience for his home. He
is a true child of nature after the fashion of La Fontaine. I have
just returned from Madame de Girardin's (Delphine Gay). She has the
small-pox. Her celebrated beauty is now in danger. This distresses me
for Émile, her husband, and for her. She had been vaccinated; present
science declares that one ought to be vaccinated every twenty years.

I have returned home to write to you under the empire of a violent
annoyance. Out of low envy the editor of the "Revue de Paris" postpones
for a week my third number of the "Histoire des Treize." Fifteen days'
interval will kill the interest in it, and I had worked day and night
to avoid any delay. For this last affair, which is the drop of water
in too full a cup, I shall probably cease all collaboration in the
"Revue de Paris." I am so disgusted by the tricky enmity which broods
there for me that I shall retire from it; and if I retire, it will be
forever. To a certain degree my will is cast in bronze, and nothing can
make me change it. In reading the "Histoire" in the March number, you
will never suspect the base and unworthy annoyances which have been
instigated against me in the inner courts of that review. They bargain
for me as if I were a fancy article; sometimes they play me monkey
tricks [_malices de nègre_]; sometimes insults upon me are anonymously
put into the Album of the Revue; at other times they fall at my feet,
basely. When "Juana" appeared, they inserted a notice that made me pass
for a madman.

But why should I tell you these miserable things? The joke is that
they represent me as being unpunctual; promising, and not keeping
my promises. Two years ago, Sue quarrelled with a bad courtesan,
celebrated for her beauty (she is the original of Vernet's Judith). I
lowered myself to reconcile them, and the consequence is the woman is
given to me. M. de Fitz-James, the Duc de Duras, and the old court, all
went to her house to talk, as on neutral ground, much as people walk
in the alley of the Tuileries to meet one another; and I am expected
to be more strait-laced than those gentlemen! In short, by some fatal
chance I can't take a step that is not interpreted as evil. What a
punishment is celebrity! But, indeed, to publish one's thoughts, is it
not prostituting them? If I had been rich and happy they should all
have been kept for my love.

Two years ago, among a few friends, I used to tell stories in the
evening, after midnight. I have given that up. There was danger of
my passing for an _amuser_; and I should have lost consideration. At
every step there is a pitfall. So now I have retired into silence and
solitude. I needed the great deception with which all Paris is now busy
to fling myself into this other extremity. There is still a Metternich
in this adventure; but this time it is the son, who died in Florence. I
have already told you of this cruel affair, and I had no right to tell
you. Though separated from that person out of delicacy, all is not over
yet. I suffer through her; but I do not judge her. Only, I think that
if you loved some one, and if you had daily drawn that person towards
you into heaven, and you became free, you would not leave him alone
at the bottom of an icy abyss after having warmed him with the fire
of your soul. But forget all that; I have spoken to you as to my own
consciousness. Do not betray a soul that takes refuge in yours.

You have much courage! you have a great and lofty soul; do not tremble
before any one, or you will be unhappy; you will meet in life with
circumstances that will make you grieve that you did not know how to
obtain all the power which you ought to have had and might have had.
What I tell you now is the fruit of the experience of a woman advanced
in years and purely religious. But, above all, no useless imprudence.
Do not pronounce my name; let me be torn in pieces; I do not care for
such criticism, provided I can live in two or three hearts which I
value more than the whole world beside. I prefer one of your letters to
the fame of Lord Byron bestowed by universal approbation. My vocation
on this earth is to love, even without hope; provided, nevertheless, I
am a little loved also.

Jules Sandeau is a young man. George Sand is a woman. I was interested
in both, because I thought it sublime in a woman to leave everything
to follow a poor young man whom she loved. This woman, whose name is
Mme. Dudevant, proves to have a great talent. It was necessary to
save Sandeau from the conscription; they wrote a book between them;
the book is good. I liked these two lovers, lodging at the top of a
house on the quai Saint-Michel, proud and happy. Madame Dudevant had
her children with her. Note that point. Fame arrived, and cast trouble
into the dove-cote. Madame Dudevant asserted that she ought to leave
it on account of her children. They separated; and this separation is,
as I believe, founded on a new affection which George Sand, or Madame
Dudevant, has taken for the most malignant of our contemporaries, H.
de L. [Henri de Latouche], one of my former friends, a most seductive
man, but odiously bad. If I had no other proof than Madame Dudevant's
estrangement from me, who received her fraternally with Jules Sandeau,
it would be enough. She now fires epigrams against her former host, so
that yesterday I found Sandeau in despair. This is how it is with the
author of "Valentine" and "Indiana," about whom you ask me.

There is no one, artist or literary person, whom I do not know in
Paris, and for the last ten years I have known many things, and things
so sad to know that disgust of these people has seized my heart. They
have made me understand Rousseau, they cannot pardon me for knowing
them; they pardon neither my avoidance of them nor my frankness. But
there are some impartial persons who are beginning to speak truth. My
name is Honoré, and I wish to be faithful to my name.

What mud all this is! and, as you write me, man is a perverse animal.
I do not complain, for heaven has given me three hearts: _la dilecta_
[Madame de Berny], the lady of Angoulême [Mme. Carraud] and a friend
[Auguste Borget] who is at this moment making a sketch of my study for
you, without knowing for whom it is; and these three hearts, besides
my sister and you,--you who can now do so much for my life, my soul,
my heart, my mind, you who can save the future from a past given over
to suffering,--are my only riches. You will have the right to say that
Balzac is diffuse, not quoting from Voltaire, but of your own knowledge.

At this moment of writing, you must have read "Juana," and have,
perhaps, given her a tear. In the last chapter there are sentences in
which we can well understand each other: "melancholies not understood
even by those who have caused them," etc., etc.

Do you not think that I have said too much good of myself and too much
evil of others? Do not suppose, however, that all are gangrened. If
H..., married for love and having beautiful children, is in the arms of
an infamous courtesan, there is in Paris Monsieur Monteil, the author
of a fine work ["L'Histoire des Français des divers états aux cinq
derniers siècles"], who is living on bread and milk, refusing a pension
which he thinks ought not to be given to him. There are fine and noble
characters; rare, but there are some. Scribe is a man of honour and
courage. I should have to make you a whole history of literary men; it
would not be too beautiful.

I entreat you to tell me, with that _kittenish_, pretty style of yours,
how you pass your life, hour by hour; let me share it all. Describe
to me the places you live in, even to the colours of the furniture.
You ought to keep a journal and send it to me regularly. In spite of
my occupations I will write you a line every day. It is so sweet to
confide all to a kind and beautiful soul, as one does to God.

To put a stop to some of your illusions, I shall have a sketch made of
the "Médecin de campagne" and you will find in it the features, perhaps
a little caricatured, of the author. This is to be a secret between
you and me. I have been thinking how to send you this copy when it is
ready. I think I have found the most natural way, and I will tell it to
you, unless you invent a better.

Grant my requests for the details of your life; so that when my thought
turns towards you it may meet you, see that work-frame, the flower
begun, and follow you through all your hours. If you knew how often
wearied thought needs a repose that is partly active, how beneficent to
me is the gentle revery that begins: "She is there! now she is looking
at such or such a thing." And I--I can give to thought the faculty to
spring through space with force enough to abolish it. These are my only
pleasures amid continual work.

I have not room to explain to you here what I have undertaken to
accomplish this year. In January next you can judge if I have been
able to leave my study much. And yet I would like to find two months
in which to travel for rest. You ask me for information about Saché.
Saché is the remains of a castle on the Indre, in one of the most
delicious valleys of Touraine. The proprietor, a man of fifty-five,
used to dandle me on his knee. He has a pious and intolerant wife,
rather deformed and not clever. I go there for him; and besides, I am
free there. They accept me throughout the region as a child; I have no
value whatever, and I am happy to be there, like a monk in a monastery.
I walk about meditating serious works. The sky is so pure, the oaks so
fine, the calm so vast! A league away is the beautiful château d'Azay,
built by Samblançay, one of the finest architectural things that we
possess. Farther on is Ussé, so famous from the novel of "Petit Jehan
de Saintré." Saché is six leagues from Tours. But not a woman! not a
conversation possible! It is your Ukraine without your music and your
literature. But the more a soul full of love is restricted physically,
the more it rises toward the heavens. That is one of the secrets of
cell and solitude.

Be generous; tell me much of yourself, just as I tell you much of
myself. It is a means of exchanging lives. But let there be no
deceptions. I have trembled in writing to you, and have said to myself:
"Will this be a fresh bitterness? Will the heavens open to me once more
only to drive me out?"

Well, adieu, you who are one of my secret consolations, you, towards
whom my soul, my thoughts are flying. Do you know that you address
a spirit wholly feminine, and that what you forbid me tempts me
immensely? You forbid me to see you? What a sweet folly it would be
to do so! It is a crime which I would make you pardon by the gift of
my life; I would like to spend it in deserving that pardon. But fear
nothing; necessity cuts my wings. I am fastened to my glebe as your
serfs to the soil. But I have committed the crime a hundred times in
thought! You owe me compensation.

Adieu! I have confided to you the secrets of my life; it is as if I
told you that you have my soul.



PARIS, May 29-June 1, 1833.

I have to-day, May 29, received your last letter-journal, and I have
made arrangements to answer it as you wish. In the first place I have
finally discovered a paper thin enough to send you a journal the
weight of which shall not excite the distrust of all the governments
through which it passes. Next, I resign myself, from attachment to your
sovereign orders, to assume this fatiguing little handwriting, intended
for you specially. Have I understood you, my dear star? for there are
fearful distances between us, and you shine, pure and bright, upon my
life, like the fantastic star attributed to every human being by the
astrologers of the middle ages.

Where are you going? You tell me nothing about it. To have all the
requirements of a sentiment so grand, so vast, and not to have its
confidence, is not that very wrong? You owe me all your thoughts. I am
jealous of them.

If I have been long without writing to you it is because I have
awaited your answer to my letters, being ignorant as to whether you
received them. Even now I do not know where to address the letter I am
beginning. Then, this is what has happened to me: from March to April
I paid off my agreement with the "Revue de Paris" with a composition
entitled, "Histoire des Treize," which kept me working day and night;
to this were joined vexations; I felt fatigued, and I went to spend
some time in the South, at Angoulême; there I remained, stretched on
a sofa, much petted by a friend of my sister, of whom I think I have
already told you; and I became sufficiently rested to resume my work.

I found in my new _dizain_ and in the "Médecin de campagne" untold
difficulties. These two works (still in press) absorb my nights
and days; the time passes with frightful rapidity. My doctor [Dr.
Nacquart], alarmed at my fatigue, ordered me to remain a month without
doing anything,--neither reading, writing letters, nor writing of any
kind; to be, as he expressed it, like Nebuchadnezzar in the form of
a beast. This I did. During this inaction vainglory has had its way.
MADAME [the Duchesse de Berry] has caused to be written to me the most
touching things from the depths of her prison at Blaye. I have been her
consolation; and "l'Histoire des Treize" had so interested her that
she was on the point of writing to me to be told the end in advance,
so much did it agitate her! And an odd thing! M. de Fitz-James writes
me that old Prince Metternich never laid the story down, and that he
devours my works. But enough of all that. You will read Madame Jules,
and when you reach her you will regret having told me to burn your
letters. The "Histoire des Treize" [this refers only to one part,
"Ferragus"] has had an extraordinary success in this careless and busy
Paris.

Forgive my scribbling; my heart and head are always too fast for
the rest, and when I correspond with a person I love I often become
illegible.

I have just read and re-read your long and delightful letter. How glad
I am that you are making the journal I asked of you. Now that this is
agreed upon between us I will confide to you all my thoughts and the
events of my life, as you will yours to me. Your letter has done me
great good. My poor artist [Auguste Borget] is one of my friends. At
this moment he is roaming the shores of the Mediterranean, or you would
have had by this time a sketch of my chamber or my little salon. I
cannot yet tell you his name; but he will perhaps put it on a landscape
he is to make in the copy of the "Médecin de campagne" which is
destined for you, but cannot be ready before next autumn. He is a great
artist, still more a noble heart, a young man full of determination
and pure as a young girl. He was not willing to _exhibit_ this year
some magnificent studies. He wants to study two years longer before
appearing, and I praise the resolution. He will be great at one stroke.

Regnier, who is making the collection of the dwellings of celebrated
persons, was here yesterday; my house will be (for you) in the next
number, and, to finish up the quarter, he will put in the Observatoire,
on the side where M. Arago lives. That is the side I look upon; it is
opposite to me.

I hope "Le Médecin de campagne" will appear within the next fortnight.
This is the work that I prefer. My two counsellors cannot hear
fragments of it without shedding tears. As for me, what care bestowed
upon it!--but what annoyances! The publisher wanted to summons me to
deliver the manuscript more rapidly! I have only worked at it eight
months; yet to all the world this delay--put it in comparison with the
work--will seem diabolical. You shall have an ordinary copy, in which I
want you to read the composition. Do not buy it; wait, I entreat you,
for the handy volume I intend for you, besides the grand copy. You know
how much I care that you shall read me in a copy that I have chosen.
It is a gospel; it is a book to be read at all moments. I desire that
the volume in itself shall not be indifferent to you; there will be a
thought, a caress for you on every page.

Before I can hear from you where to address my letters, much time must
elapse. I can therefore talk to you at length. To-morrow I will speak
of your last letter, which I have near me, very near me, so that it
perfumes me. Oh! how a secret sentiment brightens life! how proud it
renders it! If you knew what part you have in my thoughts! how many
times during this month of idleness, under that beautiful blue sky of
Angoulême, I have delightfully journeyed toward you, occupying my mind
with you, uneasy about you, knowing you ill, receiving no answers,
and giving myself up to a thousand fancies. I live much through you,
perhaps too much: betrayed already by a person who had only curiosity,
my hopes in you are not devoid of a sort of terror, a fear. Oh! I am
more of a child than you suppose.

Yesterday I went to see Madame Récamier, whom I found ill, but
wonderfully bright and kind. I had heard she did much good, and very
nobly, in being silent and making no complaint of the ungrateful
beings she has met. No doubt she saw upon my face a reflection of
what I thought of her, and, without explaining to herself this little
sympathy, she was charming to me.

In the evening I went to see (for I have been only six days in Paris)
Madame Émile de Girardin, Delphine Gay, whom I found almost well of her
small-pox. She will have no marks. There were bores there, so I came
away,--one of them that enemy to all laughter, the bibliophile X...,
about whom you ask me for news. Alas! I can tell you all in a word. He
has married an actress, a low and obscure woman of bad morals, who, the
week before marrying him, had sent to one of my classmates, S..., the
editor of the "National," a bill of her debts, by way of flinging him
the handkerchief. The bibliophile had said much harm of this actress;
he did not then know her. He went behind the scenes of the Odéon, fell
in love with her, and she, in revenge, married him. The vengeance is
complete; she is the most dreadful tyrant I ever knew. She has resumed
her actress allurements, and rules him. There is no talent possible to
him under such circumstances. He calls himself a bibliophile and does
not know what bibliography is; Nodier and the amateurs laugh at him. He
needs much money, and he stays in literature for want of funds to be a
banker or a merchant of fashions. Hence his books,--"Divorce," "Vertu
et Tempérament," and all that he does. He is the culminating point of
mediocrity. By one of those chances that seem occult, I knew of his
behaving horribly to a poor woman whose seduction he had undertaken as
if it were a matter of business. I have seen that woman weeping bitter
tears at having belonged to a man whom she did not esteem and who had
no talent.

Sandeau has just gone to Italy; he is in despair; I thought him
crazy....

As for Janin, another alas!... Janin is a fat little man who bites
everybody. The preface to "Barnave" is not by him, but by Béquet, on
the staff of the "Journal des Débats," a witty man, ill-conducted, who
was hiding with Janin to escape his creditors. Béquet was a school-mate
of mine; he came to me, already an old man from his excesses, to weep
over his trouble. Janin had taken from him a poor singer who was all
Béquet's joy. The "Chanson de Barnave" is by de Musset; the infamous
chapter about the daughters of Sejanus is by a young man named Félix
Pyat.

For mercy's sake, leave me free to be silent about these things when
they are too revolting. They run from ear to ear in the salons, and one
must needs hear them. I have already told you about H...; well! married
for love, having wife and children, he fell in love with an actress
named J..., who, among other proofs of tenderness, sent him a bill of
seven thousand francs to her laundress, and H... was forced to sign
notes of hand to pay the love-letter. Fancy a great poet, for he is a
poet, working to pay the washerwoman of Mademoiselle J...! Latouche
is envious, spiteful, and malicious; he is a fount of venom; but he
is faithful to his political creed, honest, and conceals his private
life. Scribe is very ill; he has worn himself out in writing.

General rule: there are few artists or great men who have not had their
frailties. It is difficult to have a power and not to abuse it. But
then, some are calumniated. Here, except about the washerwoman's bill,
a thing I have only heard said, all that I have told you are facts that
I know personally.

Adieu for to-day, my dear star; in future I will only tell you of
things that are good or beautiful in our country, for you seem to me
rather ill-disposed towards it. Do not see our warts; see the poor and
luckless friends of Sandeau subscribing to give him the needful money
to go to Italy; see the two Johannots, so united, so hard-working,
living like the two Corneilles. There are good hearts still.

Adieu; I shall re-read your pages to-night before I sleep, and
to-morrow I will write you my day. This day I have corrected the
fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of the "Médecin de campagne" and
signed an agreement for the publication of the "Scènes de la Vie
Parisienne." I wish I knew what you were doing at the moments when my
mind is occupied with you.

During my absence a horse I was fond of died, and three beautiful
unknown ladies came to see me. They must have thought me disdainful.
I opened their letters on arriving. There was no address; all was
mysterious as a _bonne fortune_. But I am exclusive; I write to none
but you, and chance has sent my answer to those inquisitive women.



PARIS, July 19-August 8, 1833.

You have not been either forgotten or less loved; but you yourself have
been a little forgetful. You have not written to me how long a time you
were to stay in Vienna, so that I might know if my reply would reach
you there. Then you have written the name of your correspondent so
illegibly that I copy it with fear that there may be some mistake.

That said, I have written you several letters which I have burned for
fear of displeasing you, and I will now sum up for you in very few
words my recent life.

An odious lawsuit was instituted against me by a publisher, _à propos_
of "Le Médecin de campagne." The work was finished to-day, July 19, and
will be sold by a publisher appointed by the court. As for that book, I
have buried therein since I last wrote to you more than sixty nights.
You will read it, you, my distant angel, and you will see how much of
heart and life has been spent in that work, with which I am not yet
very content.

My work has so absorbed me that I could not give you my thoughts; I
am so weary, and for me life is such a desert! The only sentiment
apparently true that dawns in my real life is a thousand leagues away
from me. Does it not need all the power of a poet's heart to find
consolation there; to say to itself amid such toil: "She will quiver
with joy in seeing that her name has occupied me, that she herself
was present to my thought, and that what I dwelt on as loveliest and
noblest in that young girl I have named for her"? You will see in
reading the book that you were in my soul as a light.

I have nothing to tell you about myself, because I have been working
night and day without seeing any one. Nevertheless, a few unknown
ladies have rapped at my door and have written to me. But I have not
a vulgar soul, and, as _la dilecta_ says, "If I were young and pretty
I should come, and not write this." So I drop all that into the void.
There is something of you in this feminine reserve. A crown of the
nature of that to which I aspire is given in its entirety; it cannot be
divided.

Well, still some days, some months of labour, and I shall have ended
one of my tasks. I shall then take a brief repose and refresh my brain
by a journey; friends have already proposed to me Germany, Austria,
Moravia, Russia. _Non so._ I do not yet know what I shall do. You are
so despotic in your orders that I am afraid to go your way; there would
be a double danger there for me.

Your letters delight me; they make me love you more and more; but this
life, which turns incessantly toward you, is consumed in efforts and
returns to me no richer. To love one another without personal knowledge
is torture.


August 1, 1833.

Twelve days' interval without being able to resume my letter! Judge my
life by that. It is a perpetual combat, without relaxing. The wretches!
they don't know what they destroy of poesy.

My lawsuit will be decided to-morrow. "L'Europe Littéraire" has quoted
the "Story of the Emperor" told by a soldier of the Imperial Guard
to peasants in a barn (one of the chief things in the "Médecin de
campagne"). Bah! And here are speculators who for the last week have
stolen me, printed me without my permission, and have sold over twenty
thousand copies of that fragment! I could use the law with rigour,
but that's unworthy of me. They neither give my name, nor that of
the work; they murder me and say nothing; they rob me of my fame and
my pittance,--me, a poor man! You will some day read that gigantic
fragment, which has made the most unfeeling weep, and which a hundred
newspapers have reproduced. Friends tell me that from end to end of
France there has risen a cry of admiration. What will it be for the
whole work!

I send herewith a scrap of a former letter which I had not entirely
burned.

Since the 19th of last month I have had nothing but troubles,
anxieties, and toil. To finish this little letter, I have to take part
of a night, and I think it a gentle recreation.

I leave in a week for the country so as to finish in peace the third
_dizain_ of the "Contes Drolatiques" and a great historical novel
called "Privilège." Always work! You can, I think, without blushing,
allow yourself to read the third _dizain_. It is almost pure.

I await, assuredly with anxiety, your letter relating to "Le Médecin de
campagne." Write me quickly what you think of it; tell me your emotions.

_Mon Dieu!_ I would fain recount to you a thousand thoughts; but there
is a pitiless somebody who hurries and commands me. Be generous,
write to me, do not scold me too much for a seeming silence; my heart
speaks to you. If a spark flames up in your candle at night, consider
the little gleam as a message of the thoughts of your friend. If your
fire crackles, think of me who think often of you. Yes, dream true in
saying to yourself that your words not only echo, but they remain in
my memory; that in the most obscure corner of Paris there is a being
who puts you into all his dreams, who counts you for much in his
sentiments, whom you animate at times, but who, at other times is sad
and calls to you, as we hope for a chance that is well-nigh impossible.


PARIS, August 8, 1833.

I have received your letter from Switzerland, from Neufchâtel.

Will you not be much dissatisfied with yourself when you know that you
have given me great pain at a moment when I already had much? After all
that I have said to you, was not my silence significant of misfortunes?
I now inclose to you the letters begun before I received this letter
from Switzerland in which you give me your exact address.

I will not explain to you the troubles that overwhelm me; they are
such that I thought yesterday of quitting France. Besides, the lawsuit
which troubles me so much is very difficult to explain even to the
judges; you will feel therefore that I cannot tell you anything about
it in a letter. _Mon Dieu!_ if you have never thought that I might have
untold troubles, your heart should have told you that I did not enter
your soul to leave it as you suppose me to have done, and that I did
not forget you. You do not know with what strength a man who has met
with nothing but toil without reward, sorrows without joy, fastens to
a heart in which for the first time he finds the consolations that he
needs. The fragments of letters which I now send you have been under my
hand for the last three months, but for three months past I have not
had a day, an hour, to write to the persons I love best. But you are
far away; you know nothing of my life of toil and anguish. At any rate,
I pardon you the _badnesses_ which reveal such force in your heart for
him whom you love a little.

Later, I will write you in detail; but to-day I can only send you these
beginnings of letters, assuring you of my constant faith. I intend to
plead my case myself, and I must study it.

Nothing can better picture to you the agitated life which I lead than
these fragments of letters. I have not the power or the faculty to give
myself up for an hour to any connected subject outside of my writings
and my business matters. When will this end? I do not know. But I am
very weary of this perpetual struggle between men and things and me.

I must bid you adieu. Write to me always, and have faith in me. During
the hours of release that come to me I shall turn to you and tell you
all there is of good and tender sentiments in me for you. Adieu; some
day you will know how unhappy I was in writing you these few lines, and
you will be surprised that I was able to write them.

Adieu; love him who loves you.



PARIS, August 19, 1833.

What would I not pardon after reading your letter, my cherished angel?
But you are too beloved ever to be guilty of a fault; you are a spoilt
child; to you belong my most precious hours. See, I answer you alone.
_Mon Dieu!_ do not be jealous of any one. I have not been to see
Madame Récamier or any one else. I do not love Madame de Girardin;
and every time I go there, which is rare, I bring away with me an
antipathy.[1]... It is ten months since I have seen Eugène Sue, and
really I have no male friends in the true acceptation of the word.

Do not read the "Écho de la Jeune France." The second part of "Histoire
des Treize" ought to be in it, but those men have acted so badly
towards me that I have ceased to do what, out of extreme good-will to a
college friend interested in the enterprise, I began by doing. You will
find a grand and beautiful story just begun; the first chapter good,
the second bad. They had the impertinence to print my notes, without
waiting for the work I always undertake as it goes through the press,
and I shall now not complete the history till I put it in the "Scènes
de la Vie Parisienne" which will appear this winter.

I have only a moment in which to answer you; I live by chance, and by
fits and starts. _Perdonatemi._

Since I last wrote to you in such a hurry I have had more troubles than
I ever had before in my life.

My lawyers, my solicitors, everybody, implore me not to spend eight
months of my life in the law-courts, and yesterday I signed a
compromise allowing all questions in litigation to be sovereignly
decided by two arbitrators. That is how I now stand. The affair will be
decided by the end of the week, and I shall then know the extent of my
losses and my obligations.

Of the three copies I have had made of "Le Médecin de campagne" nothing
exists that I can send you, unless it be the first volume. But here
is what I shall do: I shall have duplicate proofs made of the second
volume, and you shall read them ten days hence, before the rest of the
world. I have already found many blemishes, therefore it is a copy of
the second edition only that I wish to give you; which will prove to
you my tenderness, for I don't know for whom else I would take the
trouble to write myself the title for printing [_le titre en regard de
l'impression_].

The extreme disorder which this lawsuit and the time taken in making
this book has brought into my affairs, obliges me to take service once
more in the newspapers. For the last week I have been very actively
working on "L'Europe littéraire" in which I own a share. Thursday next
the "Théorie de la Démarche" will be finished. It is a long and very
tiresome treatise. But by the end of the month there will be a "Scène
de la Vie de province," in the style of "Les Célibataires," called
"Eugénie Grandet," which will be better. Take "L'Europe littéraire" for
three months.

You have not told me whether you have read "Juana" in the "Revue de
Paris," nor whether you have found the end of "Ferragus." I would like
to know if I ought to send you those two things. As for the _dizains_
of the "Contes Drolatiques," do not read them. The third you might
read. The first two belong, like those which follow the third, to a
special literature. I know women of exquisite taste and lofty devotion
who do read them; but in truth I never reckoned on such rare suffrages.
It is a work that cannot be judged until completed, and ten years
hence. It is a literary monument built for a few connoisseurs. If you
do not like La Fontaine's Tales, nor those of Boccaccio, and if you are
not an adorer of Ariosto, let the "Contes Drolatiques" alone; although
they will be my finest meed of fame in the future. I tell you this once
for all, not to return to it.

I send to you, to the address of Henriette Borel,[2] by to-morrow's
carrier, a unique "Louis Lambert" on Chinese paper, which I have had
printed for you, believing my work perfect. But I have the grief to
tell you that there is now a new manuscript for the future edition of
the "Études Philosophiques." You will also find in the package the
first volume of "Le Médecin de campagne," and I will send you the
second as soon as there is a copy. I hope to make you wait not more
than eight or ten days for it. _Evelina_ is in the second volume. If
you receive these volumes safely I will send you the Chénier I have
here for you.

Now that what I regard as business is ended, let us speak of
ourselves--Ourselves! Who told you about the little Metternich? As to
the services I have rendered Eugène Sue, I do not understand. But,
I entreat, do not listen to either calumny or gossip; I am the butt
of evil tongues. Yesterday one of my friends heard a fool relating
that I had two talismans in my house, in which I believed; two
drinking-glasses; on one of which depended my life, on the other my
talent. You cannot imagine what nonsense is told about me, calumnies,
crazy incriminations! There is but one thing true--my solitary life,
increasing toil, and sorrows.

No, you do not know how cruel and bitter it is to a loving man to ever
desire happiness and never meet it. Woman has been my dream; yet I
have stretched my arms to none but illusions. I have conceived of the
greatest sacrifices. I have even dreamed of one sole day of perfect
happiness in a year; of a woman who would have been as a fairy to
me. With that I could have been content and faithful. And here I am,
advancing in life, thirty-four years old, withering myself with toil
that is more and more exacting, having lost already my finest years and
gained nothing real.

You, you, my dear star, you fear--you, young and beautiful--to see me;
you overwhelm me with unjust suspicions. Those who suffer never betray;
they are the betrayed.

Benjamin Constant has made, as I think, the arraignment of men of the
world and intriguers; but there are noble exceptions. When you have
read the Confession in the "Médecin de campagne" you will change your
opinion, and you will understand that he who, for the first time,
revealed his heart in that book ought not to be classed among the
cold men who calculate everything. O my unknown love, do not distrust
me, do not think evil of me. I am a child, that is the whole of it--a
child, with more levity than you suppose, but pure as a child and
loving as a child. Stay in Switzerland or near France. In two months
I must have rest. Well, you shall hear, perhaps without terror, a
"Conte Drolatique" from the lips of the author. Oh! yes, let me find
near you the rest I need after this twelvemonth of labour. I can take
a name that is not known, beneath which I will hide myself. It will be
a secret between you and me. Everybody would suspect M. de Balzac, but
who knows M. d'Entragues? Nobody.[3]

_Mon Dieu!_ what you wish, I wish. We have the same desires, the same
anxieties, the same apprehensions, the same pride. I, too, cannot
conceive of love otherwise than as eternal, applying that word to the
duration of life. I do not comprehend that persons [_on_] should quit
each other, and, to me, one woman is all women. I would break my pen
to-morrow if you desired it; to-morrow no other woman should hear my
voice. I should ask exception for my _dilecta_, who is a mother to me.
She is nearly fifty-eight years old, and you could not be jealous of
her--you, so young. Oh! take, accept my sentiments and keep them as a
treasure! Dispose of my dreams, realize them? I do not think that God
would be severe to one who presents herself before him followed by an
adorable cortège of beautiful hours, happiness, and delightful life
given by her to a faithful being. I tell you all my thoughts. As for
me, I dread to see you, because I shall not realize your preconceived
ideas; and yet I wish to see you. Truly, dear, unknown soul who animate
my life, who bid my sorrows flee, who revive my courage during grievous
hours, this hope caresses me and gives me heart. You are the all in
all of my prodigious labour. If I wish to be something, if I work, if
I turn pale through laborious nights, it is, I swear to you, because I
live in your emotions, I try to guess them in advance; and for this I
am desperate to know if you have finished "Ferragus;" for the letter
of Madame Jules is a page full of tears, and in writing it I thought
much of you; offering to you there the image of the love that is in my
heart, the love that I desire, and which, in me, has been constantly
unrecognized. Why? I love too well, no doubt. I have a horror of
littlenesses, and I believe in what is noble, without distrust. I have
written in your "Louis Lambert" a saying of Saint Paul, in Latin: _Una
fides_; one only faith, a single love.

_Mon Dieu!_ I love you well; know that. Tell me where you will be
in October. In October I shall have a fortnight to myself. Choose a
beautiful place; let it be all of heaven to me.

Adieu, you who despotically fill my heart; adieu. I will write to you
once every week at least. You, whose letters do me so much good, be
charitable; cast, in profusion, the balm of your words into a heart
that is athirst for them. Be sure, dear, that my thought goes out to
you daily; that my courage comes from you; that one hard word is a
wound, a mourning. Be good and great; you will never find (and here I
would fain be on my knees before you that you might see my soul in a
look) a heart more delicately faithful, nor more vast, more exclusive.

Adieu, then, since it must be. I have written to you while my solicitor
has been reading to me his conclusions, for the case is to be judged
the day after to-morrow, and I must spend the night in writing a
summary of my affair.

Adieu; in five or six days you will have a volume that has cost much
labour and many nights. Be indulgent to the faults that remain in spite
of my care; and, my adored angel, forget not to cast a few flowers of
your soul to him who guards them as his noblest wealth; write to me
often. As soon as the judgment is rendered I will write to you; it will
be on Thursday.

Well, adieu. Take all the tender regards that I place here. I would
fain envelop you in my soul.


[Footnote 1: This is not true. The antipathy, if any, was to Émile de
Girardin, and it put an end for a time to Balzac's visits to the house.
See Éd. Déf., vol. xxiv., p. 198.--TR.]

[Footnote 2: Mlle. Henriette Borel was governess in the Hanski family.
She was a native of Neufchâtel, and M. Hanski employed her to select
and engage a furnished house there for himself and family, to which
they went in May, 1833. She was the "Lirette" who took the veil in
Paris (December, 1845); of which ceremony Balzac gives a vivid account
in one of the following letters.--TR.]

[Footnote 3: If Balzac ever wrote this paragraph (which I believe to
be an interpolation made to fit the theory in "Roman d'Amour") he
fell ludicrously short of his design; for he wrote letters to friends
about this journey, two from Neufchâtel during the five days he stayed
there (pp. 181-183, vol. xxiv., Éd. Déf.); he stopped half way to see
manufacturers and transact business with them in his own name; he
took with him to Neufchâtel his artist-friend, Auguste Borget; and
he made the acquaintance, not of Madame Hanska only, but of Monsieur
Hanski, who remained his friend through life and his occasional
correspondent.--TR.]



PARIS, end of August, 1833.

My dear, pure love, in a few days I shall be at Neufchâtel. I had
already decided to go there in September; but here comes a most
delightful pretext. I must go on the 20th or 25th of August to
Besançon, perhaps earlier, and then, you understand, I can be in the
twinkling of an eye at Neufchâtel. I will inform you of my departure by
a simple little line.

I have given to speculators a great secret of fortune, which will
result in books, blackened paper,--salable literature, in short.[1]
The only man who can manufacture our paper lives in the environs of
Besançon. I shall go there with my printer.

Ah! yes, I have had money troubles; but if you knew with what rapidity
eight days' labour can appease them! In ten days I can earn a hundred
louis at least. But this last trouble has made me think seriously of no
longer being a bird on a branch, thoughtless of seed, fearing nought
but rain, and singing in fine weather. So now, at one stroke, I shall
be rich--for one needs gold to satisfy one's fancies. You see I have
received your letter in which you complain of life, of your life, which
I would fain render happy.

Oh! my beloved angel, now you are reading, I hope, the second volume
of "Le Médecin de campagne;" you will see one name written with joy on
every page. I liked so much to occupy myself with you, to speak to you.
Do not be sad, my good angel; I strive to envelop you in my thought. I
would like to make you a rampart against all pain. Live in me, dear,
noble heart, to make me better, and I, I will live in you to be happy.
Yes, I will go to Geneva after seeing you at Neufchâtel; I will go and
work there for a fortnight. Oh! my dear and beloved Evelina, a thousand
thanks for this gift of love. You do not know with what fidelity I love
you, unknown--not unknown of the soul--and with what happiness I dream
of you. Oh! each year, to have so sweet a pilgrimage to make! Were it
only for one look I would go to seek it with boundless happiness! Why
be displeased about a woman fifty-eight years old, who is a mother to
me, who folds me in her heart and protects me from stings? Do not be
jealous of her; she would be so glad of our happiness. She is an angel,
sublime. There are angels of earth and angels of heaven; she is of
heaven.

I have the contempt for money that you profess; but money is a
necessity; and that is why I am putting such ardour into the vast and
extraordinary enterprise which will burst forth in January. You will
like the result. To it I shall owe the pleasure of being able to travel
rapidly and to go oftener toward you.

_Una fides_; yes, my beloved angel, one sole love and all for you. It
is very late for a young man whose hairs are whitening; but his heart
is ardent; he is as you wish him to be, naïve, childlike, confiding. I
go to you without fear; yes, I will drive away the shyness which has
kept me so young, and stretch to you a hand old in friendship, a brow,
a soul that is full of you.

Let us be joyous, my adored treasure; all my life is in you. For you I
would suffer everything!

You have made me so happy that I think no longer of my lawsuit.
The loss is reckoned up. I have done like _le distrait_ of La
Bruyère--established myself well in my ditch. For three thousand eight
hundred francs flung to that man, I shall have liberty on a mountain.

I will bring you your Chénier, and will read it to you in the nook of a
rock before your lake. Oh, happiness!

What a likeness between us! both of us mismanaged by our mothers.
How that misfortune developed sensitiveness. Why do you speak of a
"cherished lamb"? Are you not my dear Star, an angel towards whom I
strive to mount?

I have still three pages on which to talk with you, but here comes
business, lawyers, conferences. _À bientôt_, A thousand tendernesses of
the soul.

You speak to me of a faithless woman; but there is no infidelity where
there was no love.

[Footnote 1: This was one of his amusing visions of making a
fortune.--TR.]



PARIS, September 9, 1833.

Winter is already here, my dear soul, and already I have resumed my
winter station in the corner of that little gallery you know of. I have
left the cool, green salon from which I saw the dome of the Invalides
over twenty acres of leafage. It was in this corner that I received
and read your first letter, so that now I love it better than before.
Returning to it, I think of you more specially, you, my cherished
thought; and I cannot resist speaking a little word to you, conversing
one fraction of an hour with you. How could it be that I should not
love you, you, the first woman who came across the spaces to warm a
heart that despaired of love. I had done all to draw to me an angel
from on high; fame was only a pharos to me, nothing more. Then you
divined all,--the soul, the heart, the man. And yesterday, re-reading
your letter, I saw that you alone had the instinct to feel all that is
my life. You ask me how I can find time to write to you. Well, my dear
Eve (let me abridge your name, it will tell you better that you are all
the sex to me, the only woman in the world, like the first woman to the
first man),--well, you alone have asked yourself if a poor artist to
whom time lacks, does not make sacrifices that are immense in thinking
of and writing to her he loves. Here, no one thinks of that; they take
my hours without scruple. But now I would fain consecrate my whole life
to you, think only of you, and write for you only.

With what joy, if I were free of cares, would I fling all palms, all
fame, and my finest works like grains of incense on the altar of love.
To love, Eve,--that is my life!

I should long ago have wished to ask you for your portrait if there
were not some insult, I know not what, in the request. I do not want it
until after I have seen you. To-day, my flower of heaven, I send you a
lock of my hair; it is still black, but I hasten it to defy time. I am
letting my hair grow, and people ask why. Why? Because I want enough to
make you chains and bracelets!

Forgive me, my dearest, but I love you as a child loves, with all the
joys, all the superstitions, all the illusions of its first love.
Cherished angel, how often I have said to myself: "Oh! if I were loved
by a woman of twenty-seven, how happy I should be; I could love her all
my life without fearing the separations that age decrees." And you, my
idol, you are forever the realization of that ambition of love.

Dear, I hope to start on the 18th for Besançon. It depends on
imperative business. I would have broken that off if it did not concern
my mother and many very serious interests. I should be thought a
lunatic, and I have already trouble enough to pass for a man of sense.

If you will take "L'Europe littéraire" from the 15th of August you will
find the whole of the "Théorie de la Démarche" and a "Conte Drolatique"
called "Perseverance d'amour," which you can read without fear. It will
give you an idea of the first two _dizains_.

You have now read "Le Médecin de campagne." Alas! my critical friends
and I have already found more than two hundred faults in the first
volume! I thirst for the second edition, that I may bring the book to
its perfection. Have you laid down the book at the moment when Benassis
utters the adored name?

I am working now at "Eugénie Grandet," a composition which will appear
in "L'Europe littéraire" when I am travelling.

I must bid you adieu. Do not be sad, my love; it is not allowable that
you should be when you can live at all moments in a heart where you
are sure of being as you are in your own, and where you will find more
thoughts full of you than there are in yours.

I have had a box made to hold and perfume letter-paper; and I have
taken the liberty to have one like it made for you. It is so sweet to
say, "She will touch and open this little casket, now here." And then,
I think it so pretty; besides, it is made of _bois de France_; and it
can hold your Chénier, the poet of love,--the greatest of French poets,
whose every line I would like to read to you on my knees.

Adieu, treasure of joy, adieu. Why do you leave blank pages in your
letters? But leave them, leave them. Do nothing forced. Those blanks
I fill myself. I say to myself, "Her arm passed here," and I kiss the
blank! Adieu, my hopes. _À bientôt._ The mail-cart goes, they say, in
thirty-six hours to Besançon.

Well, adieu, my cherished Eve, my eloquent and all-gracious star.
Do you know that when I receive a letter from you a presentiment,
I don't know what, has already announced it. So to-day, 9th, I am
certain I shall get one to-morrow. Your lake--I see it; and sometimes
my intuition is so strong that I am sure that when I really see you I
shall say, "'Tis _she_!"--"_She_, my love, _is thou_!"

Adieu; _à bientôt_.



PARIS, September 13, 1833.

Your last letter, of the 9th, has caused me I cannot tell what keen
pain; it has entered my heart to desolate it. It is now three hours
that I have been sitting here plunged in a world of painful thoughts.
What crape you have fastened on the sweetest, most joyous hopes which
ever caressed my soul! What! that book, which I now hate, has given
you weapons against me? Do you not know with what impetuosity I spring
to happiness? I was so happy! You put God between us! You will not
have my joys, you divide your heart: you say, "There, I will live
with him; here, I will live no more." You make me know all the agonies
of jealousy against ideas, against reason! _Mon Dieu_, I would not
say to you wicked sophisms; I hate corruption as much as violation;
I would not owe a woman to seduction, nor even to the power of good.
The sentiment which crowns me with joy, which delights me, is the free
and pure sentiment which yields neither to the grace of evil nor to
the attraction of good; an involuntary sentiment, roused by intuitive
perception and justified by happiness. You gave me all that; I lived in
a clear heaven, and now you have flung me into the sorrows of doubt. To
love, my angel, is to have nothing in the heart but the person loved.
If love is not that, it is nothing. As for me, I have no longer a
thought that is not for you; my life is you. Griefs?--I have had none
to speak of for several days. There are no longer griefs or pains to me
but those you give me; the rest are mere annoyances. I said to myself,
"I am so happy that I ought to pay for my happiness." Oh! my beloved,
she who presents herself in heaven accompanied by a soul made happy by
her can always enter there! I have known noble hearts, souls very pure,
very delicate; but these women never hesitated to say that to love is
the virtue of women. It is I who ought to be the good and the evil for
you. Confess yourself? Good God! to whom, and for what? My angel, live
in your sphere; consider the obligations of the world as a duty imposed
upon your inward joys; live in two beings; in the _unknown you_, the
most delightful, and the _known you_--two divisions of your time; the
happy dreams of night, the harsh toils of day.

If what I say to you here is evil, my God! it is without my knowledge.
Do not put me among the Frenchmen whom people believe they have the
right to accuse of levity, fatuity, and evil creeds about women. There
is nothing of that in me. To betray love for a man or an idea is one
and the same thing. Oh! I have suffered from this betrayal! A glacial
cold has seized me at the mere apprehension of new sorrows. I shall
resist no more; I am not strong enough. I must be done with this life
of tender sentiments, exalted feelings, happiness dreamed of, constant,
faithful love which you have roused for the first and the last time
in all its plenitude. I have often risen to gather in the harvest,
and have found nothing in the fields, or else I have brought back
unfructifying flowers. I am more sad than I have told you that I am,
and from the nature of my character, my feelings go on increasing. I
shall be the most unhappy man in the world until your answer comes;
I can still receive it here before my departure for Besançon and
consequently for Neufchâtel. I leave Saturday, 21st; I shall be at
Besançon 23rd, and on the 25th at Neufchâtel. My journey is delayed
by the box I am taking to you. There are many things to do to it. I
have sought for the cleverest workman in Paris for the secret drawer,
and what I wish to put into it requires time. With what joy I go about
Paris, bestir myself, keep myself moving for a thing that will be
yours! It is a life apart, it is ineffable! The Chénier is impossible;
we must wait for the new edition.

You ask me what I am doing. _Mon Dieu!_ business; my writings are laid
aside. Besides, how could I work knowing that Saturday evening I shall
be going towards you? One must know how the slightest expectation
makes me palpitate, to understand all the physical evil that I endure
from hope. God has surely given me iron membranes if I do not have an
aneurism of the heart.

Here all the newspapers attack "Le Médecin de campagne." Every one
rushes to give his own stab. What saddened and angered Lord Byron makes
me laugh. I wish to govern the intellectual life of Europe; only two
years more of patience and labour, and I will walk upon the heads
of those who strive to tie my hands, retard my flight! Persecution,
injustice give me an iron courage. I am without strength against kind
feelings. You alone can wound me. Eve, I am at your feet; I deliver to
you my life and my heart. Kill me at a blow, but do not make me suffer.
I love you with all the forces of my soul; do not destroy such glorious
hopes.

Thank you a thousand times for the view; how good and merciful you are!
The site resembles that of the left bank of the Loire. The Grenadière
is a short distance away from that steeple. There is a complete
resemblance. Your drawing is before my eyes until there is no need of a
drawing.

_À bientôt._

In future my letters will be always _poste restante_; there is more
security for you in that way.



PARIS, September 18, 1833.

DEAR, BELOVED ANGEL,--I have a conviction that in coming to Neufchâtel
I shall do more than all those heroes of love of whom you speak to me;
and I have the advantage over them of not talking about it. But that
folly pleases me.

I cannot leave till the 22nd; but the mail-cart, the quickest vehicle,
more rapid than a post-chaise, will take me in forty hours to Besançon.
The 25th, in the morning, I shall be at Neufchâtel, and I shall remain
there until your departure.

Unhappily, I do not know if your house is Andrea or Andrée. Write me a
line, _poste restante_, at Besançon on this subject.

A thousand heart-feelings, a thousand flowers of love. Dear, loved one,
in two years I shall be able to travel a thousand leagues, and pass
through the dangers of Arabian Tales to seek a look; but that will be
nothing extraordinary in comparison with the impossibilities of all
kinds that my present journey presents. It is not the offering to God
of a whole life; no, it is the cup of water which counts in love and in
religion for more than battles. But what pleasures in this madness! How
I am rewarded by knowing proudly how much I love you!

I start Sunday, 22nd, at six in the evening. I should like to stay
three days at Neufchâtel. Do not leave till the 29th.

Adieu, cherished flower. What thoughts, solely filled with you,
throughout the hours of this journey! I will be yours only. I have
never so truly lived, so hoped!

_À bientôt._



NEUFCHÂTEL, Thursday, September 26, 1833.

_Mon Dieu!_ I have made too rapid a journey, and I started fatigued.
But all that is nothing now. A good night has repaired all. I was four
nights without going to bed.

I shall go to the Promenade of the faubourg from one o'clock till four.
I shall remain during that time looking at the lake, which I have
never seen. Write me a little line to say if I can write to you in all
security here, _poste restante_, for I am afraid of causing you the
slightest displeasure; and give me, I beg of you, your exact name [_et
donnez-moi, par grâce, exactement votre nom_].

A thousand tendernesses. There has not been, from Paris here, a moment
of time which has not been full of you, and I have looked at the Val de
Travers with you in my mind. It is delightful, that valley.

_À bientôt._



PARIS, October 6, 1833.[1]

My dearest love, here I am, very much fatigued, in Paris. It is the
6th of October, but it has been impossible to write to you sooner. A
wild crowd of people were all the way along the road, and in the towns
through which we passed the diligence refused from ten to fifteen
travellers. The mail-cart was engaged for six days, so that my friend
in Besançon could not get me a place. I therefore did the journey on
the imperial of a diligence, in company with six Swiss of the canton
de Vaud, who treated me corporeally like cattle they were taking to
market, which singularly aided the packages in bruising me.

I put myself into a bath on arriving and found your dear letter. O
my soul! do you know the pleasure it gave me? will you ever know it?
No, for I should have to tell you how much I love you, and one does
not paint that which is immense. Do you know, my dearest Eva, that I
rose at five in the morning on the day of my departure and stood on
the "Crêt" for half an hour hoping--what? I do not know. You did not
come; I saw no movement in your house, no carriage at the door. I
suspected then, what you now tell me, that you stayed a day longer, and
a thousand pangs of regret glided into my soul.

My angel, a thousand times thanked, as you will be when I can thank you
as I would for what you send me.

Bad one! how ill you judge me! If I asked you for nothing it was that
I am too ambitious. I wanted enough to make a chain to keep your
portrait always upon me, but I would not despoil that noble, idolized
head. I was like Buridan's ass between his two treasures, equally
avaricious and greedy. I have just sent for my jeweller; he will tell
me how much more is needed, and since the sacrifice is begun, you shall
complete it, my angel. So, if you do have your portrait taken, have it
done in miniature; there is, I think, a very good painter in Geneva;
and have it mounted in a very flat medallion. I shall write you openly
by the parcel I am going to send.

My dear wife of love, let Anna [her daughter] wear the little cross I
shall have made of her pebbles; I shall engrave on the back, _Adoremus
in eternum_. That is a delicious woman's motto, and you will never see
the cross without thinking of him who says to you ceaselessly those
divine words from the young girl's little talisman.

My darling Eva, here then is a new life delightfully begun for me. I
have seen you, I have spoken to you; our persons have made alliance
like our souls, and I have found in you all the perfections that I
love. Every one has his, and you have realized all mine.

Bad one! did you not see in my eyes all that I desired. Be tranquil!
all the desires that a woman who loves is jealous of inspiring, I have
felt them; and if I did not tell you with what ardour I wished that you
might come some morning it was because I was so stupidly lodged. But in
Geneva, oh! my adored angel, I shall have more wits for our love than
it takes for ten men to be witty.

I have found here everything _bad_ beyond my expectations. Those who
owed me money and gave me their word to pay it have not done so. But my
mother, whom I know to be embarrassed, has shown me sublime devotion.
But, my dear flower of love, I must repair the folly of my journey, a
folly I would renew to-morrow if you wrote me that you had twenty-four
hours' liberty. So now I must work day and night. Fifteen days of
happiness at Geneva to earn; those are the words that I find engraved
inside my forehead, and they give me the proudest courage I have ever
had. I think there will come more blood to my heart, more ideas to my
brain, more strength to my being from that thought. Therefore I do not
doubt that I shall do finer things inspired by that desire.

During the next month, therefore, excessive toil,--all to see you. You
are in all my thoughts, in all the lines I write, in all the moments of
my life, in all my being, in my hair that is growing for you.

After to-morrow, Monday, you will receive my letters only once a week;
I shall post them punctually on Sundays; they will contain the lines I
write to you every evening; for every evening before I go to bed, to
sleep in your heart, I shall say to you my little prayer of love and
tell you what I have been doing during the day. I rob you to enrich
you. Henceforth there is nothing but you and work, work and you; sleep
in peace, my jealous one. Besides, you will soon know that I am as
exclusive as a woman, that I love as a woman, and that I dream all
delicacies.

Yes, my adored flower, I have all the fears of jealousy about you;
and behold, I have come to know that guardian of the heart, jealousy,
of which I was ignorant because I was loved in a manner that gave no
fears. _La dilecta_ lived in her chamber, and you, everybody can see
you. I shall only be happy when you are in Paris or at Wierzchownia.

My celestial love, find an impenetrable place for my letters. Oh! I
entreat you, let no harm come to you. Let Henriette be their faithful
guardian, and make her take all the precautions that the genius of
woman dictates in such a case.

I begin to-morrow, without delay, on "Privilège," for I must work. I
am frightened about it. I do not wish to start for Geneva until I have
returned Nodier's dinner, and I cannot help making it splendid. Thus I
have to work as much for the necessary superfluities of luxury as for
the superfluous necessity of my existence.

To-morrow, Monday, I begin a journal of my life, which will only stop
during the happy days when my fortunate star permits me to see you. The
gaps will show my happiness. May there be many of them! _Mon Dieu!_
how proud I am to be still of an age to appreciate all the treasures
that there are in you, so that I can love you as a young man full of
beliefs, a man who has a hand upon the future. Oh, my mysterious love!
let it be forever like a flower buried beneath the snow, a flower
unseen. Eva, dear and only woman whom the world contains for me, and
who fills the world, forgive me all the little wiles [_ruses_] I shall
employ to hide the secret of our hearts.

_Mon Dieu_, how beautiful I thought you, Sunday, in your pretty violet
gown. Oh! how you touched me in all my fancies! Why do you ask me so
often to tell you what I would fain express only in my looks? All such
thoughts lose much in words. I would communicate them, soul to soul, by
the flame of a glance only.

Now, my wife, my adored one, remember that whatever I write you,
pressed by time, happy or unhappy, there is in my soul an immense love;
that you fill my heart and my life, and that although I may not always
express this love well, nothing can alter it; that it will ever flower,
more beautiful, fresher, more graceful, because it is a true love,
and a true love must ever increase. It is a beautiful flower, of many
years, planted in the heart, which spreads its branches and its palms,
doubling each season its clusters and its perfume; and you, my dear
life, tell me, repeat to me, that nothing shall gall its bark or bruise
its tender foliage, that it shall grow in our two hearts, beloved,
free, treasured as a life within our lives--a single life! Oh! I love
you! and what balm that love sheds all about me; I feel no sorrows
more. You are my strength; you see it.

Well adieu, my cherished Eva, I must bid you adieu--no, not adieu, _au
revoir_, and soon,--at Geneva on the 5th of November. If you are coming
to Paris tell me so quickly.

After all, I have told you nothing of what I wished to say: how true
and loving I thought you; how you answered to all the fibres of my
heart, and even to my caprices. _Mon Dieu!_ often I was so absorbed,
in spite of the general chatter I had to make, that I forgot to answer
when you asked me if they did not bind books well in Saint-Petersburg.

Well, _à bientôt_. Work will make the time that separates us short.
What beauteous days were those at Neufchâtel! We will make pilgrimages
there some day. Oh, angel! now that I have seen you I can re-see you in
thought.

Well, a thousand kisses full of my soul. Would I could enclose them.
The sweetest of all, I dream of it still.


[Footnote 1: Here the tone of the letters changes, as told in the
preface to this translation; and, as if to show its connection with
the tale of the "Roman d'Amour," parts of the garbled letter in that
book are given here in a foot-note in the French volume. From this time
until March 11 all the letters (except twelve little notes written in
Geneva) use the _tutoiement_. As it is impossible to put that form into
readable English, the extreme familiarity of the tone of these letters
is not given in the translation.--TR.]


PARIS, October 13, 1833.

My dearest love, it is now nearly three days since I have written to
you, and this would be bad indeed if you were not my beloved wife.
But work has been so enthralling, the difficulties are so great! Poor
angel, I prefer to tell you the sweetness of which my soul is full
for you than to recount to you my tribulations. As for my life it is
unshakably fixed, as I have told you already, I believe. Going to bed
at six after my dinner, rising at midnight, here I am, bending over
the table that you know of, seated in this arm-chair that you can
see, beside the fireplace which has warmed me for six years, and so
working until midday. Then come rendezvous for business, the details
of existence which must be attended to; often at four o'clock, a bath;
five o'clock, dinner. And then I begin over again intrepidly, swimming
in work, living in that white dressing-gown with the silk sash that
you must know about. There are some authors who filch my time, taking
from me an hour or two; but more often obligations and anxieties are
fixtures; returns uncertain.

I am now in the midst of concluding an agreement which will echo
through our world of envy, jealousy, and silliness; it will jaundice
the yellow bile of those who have the audacity to want to walk in my
shadow. A firm of rather respectable publishers buy the edition of the
"Études de Mœurs au XIXe Siècle" for twenty-seven thousand francs;
twelve volumes 8vo, including the third edition of the "Scènes de la
Vie privée," the first of the "Scènes de la Vie de province," and the
first of the "Scènes de la Vie Parisienne." Besides which, the printer,
who owes me a thousand _écus_, pays them in the operation. This will
give me ten thousand _écus_. That's enough to make all idlers, barkers,
and the _gens de lettres_ roar! Here I am, barring what I owe to my
mother, free of debt, and free in seven months to go where I please! If
our _great affair_ succeeds I shall be rich; I can do what I wish for
my mother, and have a pillow, a bit of bread, and a white handkerchief
for my old days.

Alas! my beloved, to secure that treaty I have had to assume
engagements, trot about, go out in the morning at nine o'clock after
working all night. Nevertheless, I shall not be without anxiety as
to the payments, for one always has to grant credit to publishers.
My vigils, my work, all that there is most sacred in the world may
be compromised. This publisher is a woman, a widow [Madame Charles
Bêchet]. I have never seen her, and don't know her. I shall not send
off this letter until the signatures are appended on both sides, so
that my missive may carry you good news about my interests; but there
are two other negotiations pending which are not less important, too
long to explain to you, so that I shall only tell you results.

The "Aventures d'une idée heureuse" are one-quarter done, and I am well
in the mood to finish them; "Eugénie Grandet," one of my most finished
works, is half done. I am very content with it. "Eugénie Grandet" is
like nothing that I ever did before. To invent "Eugénie Grandet" after
Madame Jules--without vanity, that shows talent.

Did I tell you that our paper cannot be made at Angoulême? I received
this answer yesterday from my friend in Angoulême. I am going there in
a few days. I am obliged to rush to Saintes, the capital of Saintonge,
to study the faubourg where Bernard de Palissy lived; he is the hero of
the "Souffrances d'un Inventeur" ["David Séchard"], which I shall write
very quickly at Angoulême, on my return from Saintes. Saintes is twelve
leagues from Angoulême, farther on among the hills. I will bring you
your _cotignac_ [quince marmalade] from Orléans myself. I have already
got your peaches from Tours. I am waiting till my jeweller allows me to
write to you openly, but Fossin is a king, a power, and when one wants
things properly done one must kiss that devil's spur that men call
patience.

I don't say that I received with great pleasure the letter in which
you are no longer grieved, and in which you tell me the story of that
monster of an Englishman. That's what husbands are; a lover would have
wrung his neck. A duel? May the avenging God make him meet some inn
servant girl who will render him diseased and cause him a thousand
ills! Considering the nature of the gentleman, my wish will, I hope, be
accomplished.

At least there is love in your letter, my dear love. The other was so
gloomy. _Mon Dieu!_ how can you give way for a moment to doubt, or have
a fear? _À propos_, friends have been here to tell me that the rumour
is all about that I have been to Switzerland in search of a woman
who positively came from Odessa. But happily other people say that
I followed Madame de Castries, and others again that I have been to
Besançon on a commercial enterprise. The author of the invention of the
rendezvous is, I think, Gosselin, the publisher, who sent me a letter
from Russia five months ago. And finally, others say that I never left
Paris at all, but was put in Sainte Pélagie [prison], _where they saw
me_. That is Paris.

My dear, idolized one, adieu! Nevertheless, I ought to tell you the
thoughts on which I gallop for the last three days, the good little
quarters of an hour which I give myself when I have done a certain
number of pages. I rebehold the Val de Travers, I recommence my five
days, and they fill the fifteen minutes with all their joys; the
least little incidents come back to me. Sometimes a view of that fine
forehead, then a word, or, better still, a flame lighted by Sev.... Oh!
darling, you are adorably loving, but how stupid you are to have fears.
No, no, my cherished Eva, I am not one of those who punish a woman for
her love. Oh! I would I could remain half a day at your knees, my head
on your knees, telling you my thoughts lazily, with delight, saying
nothing sometimes, but kissing your gown. _Mon Dieu!_ how sweet would
be the day when I could play at liberty with you, as a child with its
mother. O my beloved Eva, day of my days, light of my nights, my hope,
my adored, my all-beloved, my sole darling, when can I see you? Is it
an illusion? Have I seen you? Have I seen you enough to say that I have
seen you?

_Mon Dieu!_ how I love your rather broad accent, your mouth of
kindness, of voluptuousness--permit me to say it to you, my angel of
love!

I work night and day to go and see you for a fortnight in December. I
shall cross the Jura covered with snow, but I shall think of the snowy
shoulders of my love, my well-beloved. Ah! to breathe your hair, to
hold your hand, to strain you in my arms! that's where my courage comes
from. I have friends here who are stupefied at the fierce _will_ I am
displaying at this moment. Ah! they don't know my darling [_ma mie_],
my soft darling, her, whose mere sight robs pain of its stings! Yes,
Parisina and her lover must have died without feeling the axe, as they
thought of one another!

A kiss, my angel of earth, a kiss tasted slowly. Adieu. The nightingale
has sung too long; I am allured to write to you, and Eugénie Grandet
scolds.


Saturday, 12, midday.

The protocols are exchanged, our reflections made, to-morrow the
signature. But to-morrow all may be changed. I have scarcely done
anything to "Eugénie Grandet" and the "Aventures d'une idée." There
are moments when the imagination jolts and will not go on. And then,
"L'Europe littéraire" has not come. I am too proud to set foot there
because they have behaved so ill to me. So, since my return I am
without money. I wait. They ought to have come yesterday to explain
matters; they did not. They ought to come to-day. At this moment
the price of "Eugénie Grandet" is a great sum for me. So here I am,
rebeginning my trade of anguish. Never shall I cease to resemble
Raphael in his garret; I still have a year before me to enjoy my last
poverty, to have noble, hidden prides.

I am a little fatigued; but the pain in my side has yielded to quiet
sitting in my arm-chair, to that constant tranquillity of the body
which makes a monk of me.

For the time being, my fancies are calmed; when there is famine in
the house I don't think of my desires. My silver chafing-dishes are
melted up. I don't mind that. No more dinners in October. But I enjoy
so much in thought the things I have not, and these desires make them
so precious when I do possess them. It is now two years that, month by
month, I counted on a balance for my dishes, but they vanish. I have
a crowd of little pleasures in that way. They make me love the little
nest where I live; it is what makes me love you--a perpetual desire.
Those who call me ill-natured, satirical, deceptive, don't know the
innocence of my life, my life of a bird, gathering its nest twig by
twig and playing with a straw before it uses it.

O dear confidant of my most secret thoughts, dear, precious conscience,
will you some day know, you, the companion of love, how you are
loved,--you, who, coming on faithful wing toward your mate, did not
reject him after seeing him. How I feared that I might not please
you! Tell me again that you liked the man, after liking his mind and
heart--since the mind and heart have pleased you, I could not doubt it.
My idol, my Eva, welcomed, beloved, if you only knew how all that you
said and did laid hold upon me, oh! no, you would have no doubts, no
dishonouring fears. Do not speak to me as you did, saying, "You will
not love a woman who comes to you, who, who, who--" you know what I
mean.

Angel, the angels are often forced to come down from heaven; we cannot
go up to them. Besides, it is they who lift us on their white wings to
their sphere, where we love and where pleasures are thoughts.

Adieu, you, my treasure, my happiness, you, to whom all my desires fly,
you, who make me adore solitude because it is full of you.

Adieu, till to-morrow. At midday my people are coming for the
agreement. This letter will wait to carry you good or bad news, but it
will carry you so much love that you will be joyous.


Sunday, 13, nine o'clock.

My cherished love, my Eva, the business is completed! They will all
burst with envy. My "Études de Mœurs au XIXe Siècle" has been bought
for twenty-seven thousand francs. The publisher will make that ring.
Since Chateaubriand's twenty-five volumes were bought for two hundred
thousand francs for ten years there has not been such a sale. They take
a year to sell....

Ah! here comes your letter. I read it.

My divine love, how stupid you are! Madame de S...!--I have quarrelled
with her, have I, so that I never say a word to her; I will not even
bow to her daughter? Alas! I have met her, Madame de S..., at Madame
d'Abrantès' this winter. She came up to me and said: "_She_ is not
here" (meaning Madame de Castries); "have you been so severe as you
were at Aix?" I said, pointing to her lover, former lover of Mme. d'A.,
a Portuguese count, "But _he_ is here." The duchess burst out laughing.

Oh! my celestial angel, Madame de S...--if you could see her you would
know how atrocious the calumny is.... Your Polish women saw too much
of Madame de C... to pay attention to Madame de S... who was paying
court to her. But I was at Aix with Madame de C... and we were dining
together. As for the marquise, faith, the portrait you draw of her
makes me die of laughing. There is something in it, but changed now.
Fresh, yes; without heart, yes, at least I think so. She will always be
sacred to me; but in the chatter of your Polish women there was just
enough truth to make the slander pass.

My idolized love, no more doubts; never, do you understand? I love but
you and can love none but you. Eva is your symbolic name. Better than
that; I have never loved in the past as I feel that I love you. To you,
all my life of love may belong.

Adieu, my breath. I would I could communicate to these pages the virtue
of talismans, that you might feel my soul enveloping you. Adieu, my
beloved. I kiss this page; I add a leaf of my last rose, a petal of my
last jasmine. You are in my thought as the very base of intellect, the
substance of all things.

"Eugénie Grandet" is enchanting. You shall soon have it in Geneva.

Well, adieu, you whom I would fain see, feel, press, adieu. Can I not
find a way to press you? What impotent wishes imagination has! My dear
light, I kiss you with an ardour, an embrace of life, an effusion of
the soul, without example in my life.

My angel, I don't answer about the cry I gave apropos of Madame de C...
and the son M... dying for his mother-in-law. To-morrow for all that.
You must have laughed at my pretended savagery.

Do not put _poste restante_ any longer.



PARIS, Sunday, October 20, 1833.

What! my love; fears, torments? You have received, I hope, the first
two letters that I wrote you after my return. What shall I do not to
give you the slightest trouble, to make you clear skies? What! could
you not have reckoned on a day's delay, an hour of weariness. _Mon
Dieu! Mon Dieu!_ what shall I do?

I write to you every day; if you want to receive a letter every third
day instead of every eighth day, say so, speak, order. I will do all
not to let a single evil thought come into your heart.

If you knew the harm your letter has done me. You do not know me yet.
All that is bad. But I pardon the little grief your letter has caused
me, because it is one way of telling me you love me.

I have good news to tell you. I think that the "Études de Mœurs"
will be a settled business by Tuesday next, and that I shall have as
debtor one of the most solid firms of publishers in the market. That is
something.

Forgive me, my Eva of love, if I talk to you of my mercantile affairs;
but it is my tranquillity; it will no doubt enable me to go to Geneva.
Alas! I may not go till December, because I cannot leave till I have
finished the first part of these "Études."

Adieu; I must return to "Eugénie Grandet," who is going on well. I have
still all Monday and a part of Tuesday.

Adieu, my angel of light; adieu, dear treasure; do not ill-treat me.
I have a heart as sensitive as that of a woman can be, and I love you
better or worse, for I rest without fear on your dear heart, and kiss
your two eyes--all!

Adieu; _à demain_.



PARIS, Wednesday, October 23, 1833.

To you, my love, to you a thousand tendernesses. Yesterday I was
running about all day and was so tired that I permitted myself to sleep
the night through, so that I made my idol only a mental prayer. I went
to sleep in thy dear thought just as, if married, I should have fallen
asleep in the arms of my beloved.

_Mon Dieu!_ I am frightened to see how my life belongs to you; with
what rapidity it turns to your heart. Your arteries beat as much for
me as for yourself. Adored darling, what good your letters do me! I
believe in you, don't you see, as I believe in my respiration. I am
like a child in this happiness, like a _savant_, like a fool who takes
care of tulips. I weep with rage at not being near you. I assemble all
my ideas to develop this love, and I am here, watching ceaselessly
that it shall grow without harm. Does not that partake of the child,
the _savant_, and the botanist? Thus, my angel, commit no follies.
No, don't quit your tether, poor little goat. Your lover will come
when you cry. But you make me shudder. Don't deceive yourself, my dear
Eve; they do not return to Mademoiselle Henriette Borel a letter so
carefully folded and sealed without looking at it. There are clever
dissimulations. Now, I entreat you, take a carriage that you may
never get wet in going to the post. Besides, it is always cold in the
rue du Rhône. Go every Wednesday, because the letters posted here on
Sunday arrive on Wednesday. I will never, whatever may be the urgency,
post letters for you on any day but Sunday. Burn the envelopes. Let
Henriette scold the post-office man who delivered her letter, which was
_poste restante_; but scold him laughing, for officials are rancorous.
They would be capable of saying some Wednesday there were no letters,
and then delivering them in a way to cause trouble. O my angel,
misfortunes only come through letters. I beg you, on my knees, find a
place, a lair, a mine to hide the treasures of our love. Do it, so that
you can have no uneasiness.

Now, the Countess Potoçka, is she not that beautiful Greek, beloved
by P..., married to a doctor, married to General de W..., and then
to Count L... P...? If she is, don't confide to her a single thing
about your love, my poor lamb without mistrust. If she has proofs,
then own to her; but such an avowal must not be made until you cannot
do otherwise, and then, make a merit of a forced confession. You must
judge of the opportunity; but when I am in Geneva, you understand that
people who run two ideas and who suppose evil when it does not exist,
will know well how to divine when true.

Now, when I read your letters I am in Geneva, I see all. _Mon Dieu_,
what grace and prettiness in your letters! Eh! my angel of love, I
shall be in Geneva precisely when you choose. But calculate that it
takes your letter four days to reach me, and four days for me to
arrive; that makes eight days.

My cherished angel, do not share my troubles more than you must in
knowing them; heaven has given me all the courage necessary to support
them. I would not have a single one of my thoughts hidden from you, and
I tell you all. But do not give yourself a fever about them. Yes, the
sending of the newspapers was an indignity. Tell me who was capable of
such a joke. There will be a duel between him and me. Whoever wounds
you is my head enemy; but an enemy Arab fashion, with an oath of
vengeance.

My dear happiness, there is not a voice here in my favour; all are
hostile. I must resign myself. They treat me, it is true, like a man
of genius; and that gives pride. I must redouble cares and courage to
mount this last step. I am preparing fine subjects of hatred for them.
I work with unexampled obstinacy.

I can only write the ostensible letter to you next week, for I wish the
package to be full. So much the better if I am blamed; the recollection
will be all the more precious.

My darling, you can very well say that you saw me at Neufchâtel, for
that can no more be concealed than the nose upon one's face. It will be
known; it should therefore be told, soul of my soul.[1]

You see I answer all you write to me, but hap-hazard. I am in haste to
finish what I call the business of our love, to talk to you of love.

What! you have read the "Contes Drolatiques" without the permission of
your husband of love? Inquisitive one! O my angel, it needs a heart as
pure as yours to read and enjoy "Le Péché véniel." That's a diamond of
naïveté. But, dearest, you have been very audacious. I am afraid you
will love me less. One must know our national literature so well, the
grand, majestic literature of the seventeenth century, so sparkling
with genius, so free in deportment, so lively in words which, in
those days, were not yet dishonoured, that I am afraid for myself. I
repeat to you, if there is something of me that will live, it is those
Contes. The man who writes a hundred of them can never die. Re-read
the epilogue of the second _dizain_ and judge. Above all, regard these
books as careless arabesques traced with love. What do you think of the
"Succube"? My dear beloved, that tale cost me six months of torture. I
was ill of it. I think your criticisms without foundation. The trial
of the supposed poisoners of the Dauphin was held at Moulin's, by
Chancellor Paget, before the captivity of François I.; I have not the
time to verify it. Catherine de' Medici was Dauphine in 1536, I think.
Yes, the battle of Pavia was in 1525; you are right. I think you are
right as to the Connétable; it was Duc François de Montmorency who
married the Duchesse de Farnese. But all that is contested. I will
verify it very carefully, and will correct it in the second edition.
Thank you, my love; enlighten me, and for all the faults you find,
as many tender thanks. Nevertheless, in these Contes there must be
incorrectnesses; that's the _usage_; but there must not be lies.

Enough said, my beloved love, my darling Eva. Here is nearly half a
night employed on you, in writing to you. _Mon Dieu_, return it to me
in caresses! I must, angel, resume my collar of misery; but it shall
not be until I have put here for you all the flowers of my heart, a
thousand tendernesses, a thousand caresses, all the prayers of a poor
solitary who lives between his thoughts and his love.

Adieu, my cherished beauty; one kiss upon those beautiful red lips, so
fresh, so kind, a kiss which goes far, which clasps you. I will not
say adieu. Oh! when shall I have your dear portrait? If, by chance you
have it mounted, let it be between two _plaques_ of enamel so that the
whole may not be thicker than a five-franc piece, for I want to have
it always on my heart. It will be my talisman; I shall feel it there;
I shall draw strength and courage from it. From it will dart the rays
of that glory I wish so great, so broad, so radiant to wrap you in its
light.

Come, I must leave you; always with regret. But once at liberty and
without annoyances, what sweet pilgrimages! But my thought goes faster,
and every night it glides about your heart, your head, it covers you.

Adieu, then. _À demain._ To-morrow I must go to the Duchesse
d'Abrantès; I will tell you why when I get back.

[Footnote 1: This sentence alone would show the falseness of these
letters. On pp. 182, 183, vol. xxiv., Éd. Déf., are two letters of
Balzac written from Neufchâtel; one to Charles de Bernard, the other
to Mme. Carraud. In the latter he says: "I have just accompanied the
great Borget to the frontier of the sovereign states of this town....
I conclude here (Paris) this letter, begun at Neufchâtel. Just think
that, at the moment when I had ensconced myself by my fire to answer
you at length and reply to your last good letter, they came for me to
go and see views [_sites_]; and that lasted till my departure." A man
who goes about sight-seeing with a family party would not have written
the sentence in the text.

The writer of it himself makes a slip, and forgets that he has said in
the "Roman d' Amour" letter that on one of these excursions (to the
Lake of Bienne) the husband was sent to order breakfast while they gave
themselves a first kiss. Murder will out in small ways.--TR.]


Thursday, 24.

This morning, my cherished love, I have failed in an attempt which
might have been fortunate. I went to offer to a capitalist, who
receives the indemnities agreed upon between us for the works promised
and not written, a certain number of copies of the "Études de Mœurs."
I proposed to him five thousand francs _à terme_ for three thousand
_échus_. He refused everything, even my signature and a note, saying
that my fortune was in my talent and I might die. The scene was one
of the basest I ever knew. Gobseck was nothing to him; I endured, all
red, the contact with an iron soul. Some day, I will describe it. I
went to the duchess that she might undertake a negotiation of the same
kind with the man who had the lawsuit with me, her publisher, who cut
my throat. Will she succeed? I am in the agonies of expectation, and
yet I must have the serenity, the calmness, that are necessary for my
enormous work.

My angel, I cannot go to Geneva until the first part of the "Études de
Mœurs" appears published, and the second is well under way. That done,
I shall have fifteen days to myself, twenty perhaps; all will depend
on the more or less money that I shall have, for I have an important
payment to make the end of December. I am satisfied with my publisher;
he is active, does not play the gentleman, takes up my enterprise as a
fortune, and considers it eminently profitable. We must have a success,
a great success. "Eugénie Grandet" is a fine work. I have nearly all
my ideas for the parts that remain to do in these twelve volumes. My
life is now well regulated: rise at midnight after going to bed at
six o'clock; a bath every third day, fourteen hours of work, two for
walking. I bury myself in my ideas and from time to time your dear head
appears like a beam of sunlight. Oh, my dear Eva, I have but you in
this world; my life is concentrated in your dear heart. All the ties of
human sentiment bind me to it. I think, breathe, work by you, for you.
What a noble life: love and thought! But what a misfortune to be in the
embarrassments of poverty to the last moment! How dearly nature sells
us happiness! I must go through another six months of toil, privation,
struggle, to be completely happy. But how many things may happen in six
months! My beautiful hidden life consoles me for all. You would shudder
if I told you all my agonies, which, like Napoleon on a battlefield,
I forget. On sitting down at my little table, well, I laugh, I am
tranquil. That little table, it belongs to my darling, my Eve, my wife.
I have had it these ten years; it has seen all my miseries, wiped away
all my tears, known all my projects, heard all my thoughts; my arm has
nearly worn it out by dint of rubbing it as I write.

_Mon Dieu!_ my jeweller is in the country; I have confidence in him
only. Anna's cross will be delayed. That annoys me more than my own
troubles at the end of the month. Your quince marmalade is on its way
to Paris.

My dear treasure, I have no news to give you; I go nowhere, and see no
one. You will find nothing but yourself in my letters, an inexhaustible
love. Be prudent, my dear diamond. Oh! tell me that you will love me
always, because, don't you see, Eva, I love you for all my life. I
am happy in having the consciousness of my love, in being in a thing
immense, in living in the limited eternity that we can give to a
feeling, but which is an eternity to us. Oh! let me take you in thought
in my arms, clasp you, hold your head upon my heart and kiss your
forehead innocently. My cherished one, here, from afar, I can express
to you my love. I feel that I can love you always, find myself each day
in the heart of a love stronger than that of the day before, and say to
you daily words more sweet. You please me daily more and more; daily
you lodge better in my heart; never betray a love so great. I have but
you in the world; you will know in Geneva only all that there is in
those words. For the moment I will tell you that Madame de C[astries]
writes me that we are not to see each other again; she had taken
offence at a letter, and I at many other things. Be assured that there
is no love in all this. _Mon Dieu!_ how everything withdraws itself
from me? How deep my solitude is becoming! Persecution is beginning for
me in literature! The last obligations to pay off keep me at home in
continual gigantic toil. Ah! how my soul springs from this person to
join your soul, my dear country of love.

I paused here to think of you; I abandoned myself to revery; tears came
into my eyes, tears of happiness. I cannot express to you my thoughts.
I send you a kiss full of love. Divine my soul!


Saturday, 26.

Yesterday, my beloved treasure, I ran about on business, pressing
business; at night I had to correct the volumes which go to press
Monday. No answer from the duchess. Oh! she will not succeed. I am too
happy in the noble regions of the soul and thought to be also happy
in the petty interests of life. I have many letters to write; my work
carries me away, and I get behindhand. How powerful is the dominion
of thought! I sleep in peace on a rotten plank. That alone expresses
my situation. So much money to pay, and to do it the pen with which I
write to you--. Oh! no, I have two, my love; yours is for your letters
only; it lasts, usually, six months.

I have corrected "La Femme Abandonnée," "Le Message," and "Les
Célibataires." That has taken me twenty-six hours since Thursday. One
has to attend to the newspapers. To manage the French public is not a
slight affair. To make it favorable to a work in twelve volumes is an
enterprise, a campaign. What contempt one pours on men in making them
move and seeing them squabble. Some are bought. My publisher tells
me there is a tariff of consciences among the feuilletonists. Shall
I receive in my house a single one of these fellows? I'd rather die
unknown!

To-morrow I resume my manuscript work. I want to finish either "Eugénie
Grandet" or "Les Aventures d'une idée heureuse." It is five o'clock;
I am going to dinner, my only meal, then to bed and to sleep. I fall
asleep always in thoughts of you, seeking a sweet moment of Neufchâtel,
carrying myself back to it, and so, quitting the visible world, bearing
away one of your smiles or listening to your words.

Did I tell you that persons from Berlin, Vienna, and Hamburg had
complimented me on my successes in Germany, where, said these gracious
people, nothing was talked of but your Honoré? This was at Gérard's.
But I must have told you this. I wish the whole earth would speak of
me with admiration, so that in laying it on your knees you might have
the whole world for yourself.

Adieu, for to-day, my angel. To-morrow my caresses, my words all full
of love and desires. I will write after receiving the letter which
will, no doubt, come to-morrow. Dear, celestial day! Would I could
invent words and caresses for you alone. I put a kiss here.


Sunday, 27.

What! my dear love, no letters? Such grief not to know what you think!
Oh! send me two letters a week; let me receive one on Wednesdays and
the other on Sundays. I have waited for the last courier, and can only
write a few words. Do not make me suffer; be as punctual as possible.
My life is in your hands:

I have no answer to my negotiations.

Adieu, my dear breath. This last page will bring you a thousand
caresses, my heart, and some anxieties. My cherished one, you speak of
a cold, of your health. Oh, to be so far away! _Mon Dieu!_ all that is
anguish in my life pales before the thought that you are ill.

To-morrow, angel. To-morrow I shall get another letter. My head swims
now. Adieu, my good genius, my dear wife; a thousand flowers of love
are here for you.



PARIS, Monday, October 28, 1833.

I have your letter, my love. How much agony in one day's delay. _À
demain_; I will tell you then why I cannot answer to-day.


Tuesday, 29.

My cherished Eva, on Thursday I have four or five thousand francs
to pay, and, speaking literally, I have not a sou. These are little
battles to which I am accustomed. Since childhood I have never yet
possessed two sous that I could regard as my own property. I have
always triumphed until to-day. So now I must rush about the world of
money to make up my sum. I lose my time; I hang about town. One man
is in the country; another hesitates; my securities seem doubtful to
him. I have ten thousand francs in notes out, however; but by to-morrow
night, last limit, I shall no doubt have found some. The two days I am
losing are a horrible discount.

I only tell you these things to let you know what my life is. It is a
fight for money, a battle against the envious, perpetual struggles with
my _subjects_, physical struggles, moral struggles, and if I failed to
triumph a single time I should be exactly dead.

Beloved angel, be a thousand times blessed for your drop of water,
for your offer; it is all for me and yet it is nothing. You see what
a thousand francs would be when ten thousand a month are needed. If I
could find nine I could find twelve. But I should have liked in reading
that delicious letter of yours to have plunged my hand in the sea and
drawn out all its pearls to strew them on your beautiful black hair.
Angel of devotion and love, all your dear, adored soul is in that
letter. But what are all the pearls of the sea! I have shed two tears
of joy, of gratitude, of voluptuous tenderness, which for you, for me,
are worth more than all the riches of the whole world; is it not so, my
Eva, my idol? In reading this feel yourself pressed by an arm that is
drunk with love and take the kiss I send you ideally. You will find a
thousand on the rose-leaf which will be in this letter.

Let us drop this sad money; I will tell you, however, that the two
most important negotiations on which I counted for my liberation have
failed. You have made me too happy; my luck of soul and heart is too
immense for matters of mere interest to succeed. I expiate my happiness.

Celestial powers! whom do you expect me to be writing to, I who have no
time for anything? My love, be tranquil; my heart can bloom only in
the depths of your heart. Write to others! to others the perfume of my
secret thoughts! Can you think it? No, no, to you, my life, my dearest
moments. My noble and dear wife of the heart, be easy. You ask me for
new assurances about your letters; ask me for no more. All precautions
are taken that what you write me shall be like vows of love confided
from heart to heart between two caresses. No trace! the cedar box is
closed; no power can open it; and the person ordered to burn it if I
die is a Jacquet, the original of Jacquet, who is named Jacquet, one of
my friends, a poor clerk whose honesty is iron tempered like a blade
of Orient. You see, my love, that I do not trust either the _dilecta_
or my sister. Do not speak to me of that any more. I understand the
importance of your wish; I love you the more for it if possible, and
as you are all my religion, an idolized God, your desires shall be
accomplished with fanaticism. What are orders? Oh! no, don't go to
Fribourg. I adore you as religious, but no confession, no Jesuits. Stay
in Geneva.

My jeweller does not return; it vexes me a little. My package is
delayed: but it is true that the "Caricature" is not yet bound and I
wish you to receive all that I promised to send.

_Mon Dieu!_ your letter has refreshed my soul! You are very ravishing,
my frolic angel, darling flower. Oh! tell me all. I would like more
time to myself to tell you my life. But here I am, caught by twelve
volumes to publish, like a galley-slave in his handcuffs.

I have been to see Madame Delphine de Girardin this morning. I had to
implore her to find a place for a poor man recommended to me by the
lady of Angoulême, who terrified me by her silent missive. The sorrows
of others kills me! Mine, I know how to bear. Madame Delphine promised
me to do all she could with Émile de Girardin when he returns.

Apropos, my love, "L'Europe littéraire" is insolvent; there is a
meeting to-morrow of all the shareholders to devise means. I shall go
at seven o'clock, and as it is only a step from Madame Delphine's I
dine with her, and I shall finish the evening at Gérard's. So, I am all
upset for two days. Moreover, in the mornings I run about for money.
Already the hundred louis of Mademoiselle Eugénie Grandet have gone off
in smoke. I must bear it all patiently, as Monsieur Hanski's sheep let
themselves be sheared.

My rich love, what can I tell you to soothe your heart? That my
tenderness, the certainty of your affection, the beautiful secret life
you make me dwarfs everything and I laugh at my troubles--there are no
longer any troubles for me. Oh! I love you, my Eva! love you as you
wish to be loved, without limit. I like to say that to myself; imagine
therefore the happiness with which I repeat it.

I have to say to you that I don't like your reflected portrait, made
from a copy. No, no. I have in my heart a dear portrait that delights
me. I will wait till you have had a portrait made that is a better
likeness after nature. Poor treasure, oh! your shawl. I am proud to
think that I alone in the world can comprehend the pleasure you had in
giving it, and that I have that of reading what you have written to
me,--I who do these things so great and so little, so magnificent and
so _nothing_, which make a museum for the heart out of a straw!

My beloved, my thoughts develop all the tissues of love, and I would
like to display them to you, and make you a rich mantle of them. I
would like you to walk upon my soul, and in my heart, so as to feel
none of the mud of life.

Adieu, for to-day, my saintly and beautiful creature, you the principle
of my life and courage. You who love, who are beautiful, who have
everything and have given yourself to a poor youth. Ah! my heart will
be always young, fresh, and tender for you. In the immensity of days I
see no storm possible that can come to us. I shall always come to you
with a soul full of love, a smile upon my lips, and a soft word ready
to caress you in the ear. My Eva, I love you.


Thursday morning, 31.

No more anxieties, all is arranged! Here are six thousand francs found,
five thousand five hundred paid! There remains to the poor poet five
hundred francs in a noble bank-bill. Joy is in the house. I ask if
Paris is for sale. My love, you'll end by knowing a bachelor's life!

Yesterday, all was doubtful. In two hours of time all was settled. I
started to find my doctor, an old friend of my family, seeing that I
had nothing to hope from bankers. Ah! in the course of the way I met
R... who took me by the hand and led me to his wife. They were getting
into a carriage. Caresses, offers of service, why did they never see
me? why...? A thousand questions, and Madame R... began to make eyes at
me as she did at Aix, where she tried to seize my portrait on the sly.

Can't you see me, my love, in conference with a prince of money,--me,
who couldn't find four sous! Was anything ever more fantastic? A single
word to say, and my twelve thousand francs of notes of hand went into
the gulf. I said nothing about it, and certainly he would not have
taken a sou of discount. I laughed like one of the blest, as I left
him, at the situation.

I resume; seeing that I had nothing to hope from bankers, I reflected
that I owed three hundred francs to my doctor; I went and paid them
with one of my commercial notes, and he returned me seven hundred
francs, less the discount. From there I went to my landlord, an old
wheat-dealer in the Halle; I paid him my rent, and he returned me
on my note, which he accepted, seven hundred more francs, less the
discount. From there I went to my tailor, who at once took one of
my thousand-franc notes and put it in his memorandum of discount
[_bordereau d'escompte_--cash account?] and returned me a thousand
francs!

Finding myself in the humour, I got into a cabriolet and went to see
a friend, a double millionnaire, a friend of twenty years' standing.
He had just returned from Berlin. I found him; he turned to his desk
and gave me two thousand francs, and took two of my notes from Madame
Bêchet without looking at them. Oh! oh! I came home, I sent for my wood
merchant and my grocer to come and settle our accounts, and to each I
paid, in bank-bills, five hundred francs! At four o'clock I was free,
my payments for to-day prepared. Here I am, tranquil for a month. I
resume my seat on my fragile seasaw and my imagination rocks me. _Ecco,
signora!_

My dear, faithful wife, did I not owe you this faithful picture of
your Paris household? Yes, but there are five thousand francs of the
twenty-seven thousand eaten up, and I have, before I can go to Geneva,
ten thousand francs to pay: three thousand to my mother, one thousand
to my sister, and six thousand in indemnities. "Yah! monsieur, where
will you get all that?" In my inkbottle, dearly beloved Eva.

I am dressed like a lord, I have dined with Madame Delphine, and,
after being present at the death agony of "L'Europe littéraire," I
went joyously to Gérard's, where I complimented Grisi, whom I had
heard the night before in "La Gazza ladra" with Rossini, who, having
met me Tuesday on the Boulevard, forced me to go to his opera-box to
talk _un poco_; and as on that Tuesday your poor Honoré had dined with
Madame d'A[brantès] who had to render him an account of the great
negotiation (which missed fire) with Mame, he had, your poor youth, to
drown his sorrows in harmony. What a life, _ma minette_! What strange
discordances, what contrasts!

At Gérard's I heard the admirable Vigano. She refused to sing, snubbed
everybody; I arrived, I asked her for an air; she sat down at the
piano, sang, and delighted us. Thiers asked who I was; being told,
he said, "It is all plain, now." And the whole assembly of artists
marvelled.

The secret of it is that I was, last winter, full of admiration for
Madame Vigano; I idolize her singing; she knows that, and I am a
Kreizler to her. I went to bed at two o'clock after returning on
foot through the deserted, silent streets of the Luxembourg quarter,
admiring the blue sky and the effects of moon and vapour on the
Luxembourg, the Pantheon, Saint-Sulpice, the Val-de-Grâce, the
Observatoire, and the boulevards, drowned in torrents of thought and
carrying two thousand francs upon me--though I had forgotten them; my
valet found them. That night of love had plunged me in ecstasy; you
were in the heavens! they spoke of love; I walked, listening whether
from those stars your cherished voice would fall, sweet and harmonious,
to my ears, and vibrate in my heart; and, my idol, my flower, my life,
I embroidered a few arabesques on the evil stuff of my days of anguish
and toil.

To-day, Thursday, here I am back again in my study, correcting proofs,
recovering from my trips into the material world, resuming my chimeras,
my love; and in forty-eight hours the charms of midnight rising, going
to bed at six in the evening, frugality, and bodily inaction will be
resumed.

We have had, for the last week, an actual summer; the finest weather
ever created. Paris is superb. Love of my life, a thousand kisses are
committed to the airs for you; a thousand thoughts of happiness are
shed during my rushing about, and I know not what disdain in seeing
men. They have not, as I have, an immense love in their hearts, a
throne before which I prostrate myself without servility, the figure of
a madonna, a beautiful brow of love which I kiss at all hours, an Eve
who gilds all my dreams, who lights my life.

Adieu, my constant thought, _à demain_. I may not be so talkative;
to-morrow comes toil.


Friday.

I have worked all day at two proofs which have taken me twenty hours;
then I must, I think, find something to complete my second volume of
"Scènes de la Vie de province" because to make a fine book the printers
so compress my manuscript that another Scene is wanted of forty or
fifty pages. Nothing to-day, therefore, to her who has all my heart;
nothing but a thousand kisses, and my dear evening thoughts when I go
to sleep thinking of you.

To-morrow, pretty Eve.


Saturday.

Certainly, my love, you will not act comedy. I have not spoken to you
of that. I have just re-read your last letter. It is a prostitution to
exhibit one's self in that way; to speak words of love. Oh! be sacredly
mine! If I should tell you to what a point my delicacy goes, you would
think me worthy of an angel like yourself. I love you in me. I wish
to live far away from you, like the flower in the seed, and to let my
sentiments blossom for you alone.

To-day I have laboriously invented the "Cabinet des Antiques;" you will
read that some day. I wrote seventeen of the _feuillets_ at once. I
am very tired. I am going to dress to dine with my publisher, where I
shall meet Béranger. I shall get home late; I have still some business
to settle.

My cherished love, as soon as the first part appears and the second
is printed I shall fly to Geneva and stay there a good three weeks. I
shall go to the Hôtel de la Couronne, in the gloomy chamber I occupied
[in 1832]. I quiver twenty times a day at the idea of seeing you. I
meant to speak to you of Madame de C[astries], but I have not the time.
Twenty-five days hence I will tell you by word of mouth. In two words,
your Honoré, my Eva, grew angered by the coldness which simulated
friendship. I said what I thought; the reply was that I ought not to
see again a woman to whom I could say such cruel things. I asked a
thousand pardons for the "great liberty," and we continue on a very
cold footing.

I have read Hoffmann through; he is beneath his reputation; there is
something of it, but not much. He writes well of music; he does not
understand love, or woman; he does not cause fear; it is impossible to
cause it with physical things.

One kiss and I go.


Sunday.

Up at eight o'clock; I came in last night at eleven. Here are my hours
upset for four days. Frightful loss! I awaited the old gentleman
on whose behalf I implored Delphine. He did not come. It is eleven
o'clock,--no letter from Geneva. What anxiety! O my love, I entreat
you, try to send me letters on regular days; spare the sensibility of
a child's heart. You know how virgin my love is. Strong as my love is,
it is delicate, oh! my darling. I love you as you wish to be loved,
solely. In my solitude a mere nothing troubles me. My blood is stirred
by a syllable.

I have just come from my garden; I have gathered one of the last
violets in bloom there; as I walked I addressed to you a hymn of love;
take it, on this violet; take the kisses placed upon the rose-leaf.
The rose is kisses, the violet is thoughts. My work and you, that is
the world to me. Beyond that, nothing. I avoid all that is not my Eva,
my thoughts. Dear flower of heaven, my fairy, you have touched all
here with your wand; here, through you, all is beautiful. However
embarrassed life may be, it is smooth, it is even. Above my head I see
fine skies.

Well, to-morrow, I shall have a letter. Adieu, my cherished soul! Thank
you a thousand times for your kind letters; do not spare them. I would
like to be always writing to you; but, poor unfortunate, I am obliged
to think sometimes of the gold I draw from my inkstand. You are my
heart; what can I give you?



PARIS, Wednesday, November 6, 1833.

The agonies you have gone through, my Eve, I have very cruelly felt,
for your letter arrived only to-day. I cannot describe all the horrible
chimeras which tortured me from time to time; for the delay of one of
your letters puts everything in doubt between you and me; the delay of
one of mine does not imply so many evils to fear.

As to the last page of your letter, endeavour to forget it. I pardon
it, and I suffer at your distress. To be unjust and ill-natured! You
remind me of the man who thought his dog mad and killed him, and then
perceived that he was warning him not to lose his forgotten treasure.

You speak of death. There is something more dreadful, and that is pain;
and I have just endured one of which I will not speak to you. As to
my relations with the person you speak of, I never had any that were
very tender; I have none now. I answered a very unimportant letter,
and, apropos of a sentence, I explained myself; that was all. There are
relations of politeness due to women of a certain rank whom one has
known; but a visit to Madame Récamier is not, I suppose, _relations_,
when one goes to see her once in three months.

_Mon Dieu!_ the man who seems to be justifying himself has just been
stabbed to the heart. He smiles to you, my Eve, and this man does not
sleep--he, rather a sleepy man--more than five hours and a half. He
works seventeen hours, to be able to stay a week in your sight; I sell
years of my life to go and see you. This is not a reproach. But you may
say to me, you, that perhaps I love the pages I write _from necessity_
better than my love. But with you I am not proud, I am not humble. I
am, I try to be, you. You have suffered; I suffer,--you wished to make
me suffer. You will regret it. Try that it may not happen again; you
will break the heart that loves you, as a child breaks a toy to look
inside of it. Poor Eva! So we do not know each other? Oh, yes, we do,
don't we?

_Mon Dieu!_ to punish me for my confidence! for the joy that I feel
more and more in solitude! I don't know where my mother is; it is two
months that no one has any news of her. No letters from my brother. My
sister is in the country, guarded by duennas fastened on her by her
husband, and he is travelling. So I have no one to tell you about. The
_dilecta_ is with her son at Chaumont, with the devil. I am myself in a
torrent of proofs, corrections, copies, works. And it is at the moment
when I expected to plunge into all my joys that, after your first
pages, I find the pompous praise of ..., _mon Dieu!_ and my accusation
and condemnation, which will bleed long in a heart like mine.

I am sad and melancholy, wounded, weeping, and awaiting the serenity
that never comes full and complete. If you wished that, if you wished
to pour upon my life as much pain as I have toil (impossible now), Eva,
you have succeeded. As to anger, no; reproaches? what good are they?
Either you are in despair at having pained me, or you are content to
have done so. I do not doubt you. I would like to console you; but
you have cruelly abused the distance that separates us, the poverty
that prevents my taking a post-chaise, the engagements of honour which
forbid me to leave Paris before the 25th or 26th of this month. You
have been a woman; I thought you an angel. I may love you the better
for it; you bring yourself nearer to me. I will smile to you without
ceasing. Ever since I knew the Indian maxim, "Never strike, even with
a flower, a woman with a hundred faults," I have made that the rule
of my conduct. But it does not prevent me from feeling to the heart,
more violently than those who kill their mistresses feel, insults, and
suspicions of evil. I, so exclusive, tainted with commonness! made
petty enough to be lowered to vengeance! What! that love so pure, you
stain it with suspicion, with blame, with doubt! God himself cannot
efface what has been; he may oppose the future, but not the past!

I cannot write more; I rave; my ideas are confused. After twelve hours
of toil I wanted a little rest, and to-day I must rest in suffering.
Oh! my only love, what grief to look on what I write to you, to weigh
my words, and not say all that is without evasion, because I am without
reproach. Oh! I suffer. I have not a passing passion, but a one sole
love!



November, 10, 1833.

I posted a letter last night, not expecting to be able to write again;
I suffered too much. My neuralgia attacked me. That is a secret between
me and my doctor; he made me take some pills, and I am better this
morning. But, can I help it? your letter burns my heart. I will go to
Geneva, I will pass my winter there. At least you shall not have the
right to emit suspicions. You shall see my life of toil, and you will
perceive the barbarity there is in arming yourself with my confidence
in opening my heart to you. I, who want to think in you! I, who detach
myself from everything to be more wholly yours!

Deceive you! But, as you say yourself, that would be too easy. Besides,
is that my character? Love is to me all confidence. I believe in you
as in myself. What you say of that compatriot [Madame de Castries is
meant] makes me surfer, but I do not doubt it. I shall not speak to you
of the cause of your imprecation, "Go to the feet of your marquise"
[_Va aux pieds de ta marquise_], except verbally.[1]

I have five important affairs to terminate, but I shall sacrifice
all to be on the 25th in Geneva, at that inn of the Pré-l'Évêque.
But we shall see each other very little. I must go to bed at six in
the evening, to rise at midnight. But from midday till four o'clock
every day I can be with you. For that I must do things here that seem
impossible; I shall attempt them. If they cause me a thousand troubles
I shall go to Geneva, and forget everything there to see but one thing,
the one heart, the one woman by whom I live.

I would give my life that that horrible page had not been written. To
reproach me for my very devotion! Do you believe that I would not
leave all, and go with you to the depths of some retreat? You arm
yourself with the phrase in which I sacrifice (the word meant nothing,
there is no sacrifice) to you all!

Why have you flung suffering into what was so sweet? You have made me
give to grief the time that belonged to the toil which facilitates my
means of going to you sooner.

I await, with an impatience beyond words, a letter, a line; you have
completely upset me. No, you do not know the childlike heart, the
poet's heart, that you have bruised. I am a man to suffer, then!

Adieu. Did I tell you the story of that man who wrote drinking-songs
in order to bury an adored mistress? To work with a heart in mourning
is my fate till your next letter comes. You owe me your life for this
fatal week. Oh! my angel, mine belongs to you. Break, strike, but love
me still. I adore you as ever; but have mercy on the innocent. I do not
know if you have formed an idea of what I have to do. I must finish
with the printing of four volumes before I can start, I must compound
with five difficulties, pay eight thousand francs; and the four volumes
make one hundred _feuilles_, or one hundred times sixteen pages, to be
revised each three or four times, without counting the manuscripts.

Well, I will lose sleep, I will risk all, but you will see me near you
on the 20th at latest.

To-morrow I shall write openly to Madame Hanska to announce my parcel.

May I put here a kiss full of tears? Will it be taken with love? Make
no more storms without cause in what is so pure.

It is midday. That you may get this in time, I send it to the general
post-office.

[Footnote 1: This whole presentation of Madame Hanska justifies, and
even demands, a few words here. Judging her by the genuine letters in
this volume,--which are, so far as I know, our only means of judging
her at all at this distance of time,--she was a woman of principle,
dignity, intelligence, and good-breeding; with a strong sense of duty,
and a certain deliberateness of nature, shown in the fact that it was
eight years after M. Hanski's death before she consented to marry
Balzac. Her love for him was plainly much less than his for her; but
she was proud of his devotion, and always unwilling to lose it. That a
woman of her position and character ever wrote to Balzac those words,
"_Va aux pieds de ta marquise_," is an impossibility. There are certain
things that a woman of breeding cannot do or say; though some who do
not know what such women are do not perceive this.

Writing a few weeks later than the above letter (from Geneva in
January, 1834) to his intimate friend, Madame Carraud, Balzac bears the
following little testimony to Madame Hanska's feeling to his friend:
"I hope you know what the security of friendship is, and that you will
not say to me again, 'Bear me in memory,' when some one here [Madame
Hanska] says to me, 'I am happy in knowing that you inspire such
friendships; that justifies mine for you.'" (Éd. Déf. vol. xxiv, p.
192). This is the woman whose memory a few men are now endeavouring to
smirch.--TR.]



PARIS, Thursday, November 12, 1833.

It is six o'clock; I am going to bed, much fatigued by certain errands
[_courses_] made for pressing affairs; for I have hope, at the cost of
three thousand francs in money, of compromising on the litigious affair
which causes me the most anxiety. On returning home I found your letter
sent Friday, with that kind page which effaces all my pain.

O my adored angel, as long as you do not fully know the bloom of
sensitiveness which constant toil and almost perpetual seclusion have
left in my heart, you will not understand the ravages that a word, a
doubt, a suspicion can cause. In walking this morning through Paris I
said to myself that commercially the most simple contract could not be
broken without attainting probity; but have you not broken, without
hearing me, a promise that bound us forever?

This is the last time that I shall speak to you of that letter except
when, in Geneva, I shall explain to you what gave rise to it. Fear
nothing; I have finished all my visits, and shall not go again to
Gérard's. I refuse all invitations, I hibernate completely, and the
woman most ambitious of love could find nothing to blame in me.

But alas! all that I have been able to do has been to take one more
hour from sleep. I must sleep five hours. My doctor, whom I saw this
morning, and who knows me since I was ten years old (a friend of the
house), is always fearful on seeing how I work. He threatens me with an
inflammation of the integuments of my cerebral nerves:--

"Yes, doctor," I told him, "if I committed excess upon excess; but for
three years I have been as chaste as a young girl, I never drink either
wine or liquors, my food is weighed, and the return of my neuralgia
comes less from work than from grief."

He shrugged his shoulders and said, looking at me:--

"Your talent costs dear! It is true; a man doesn't have a flaming look
like yours if he addicts himself to women."

There, my love, is a very authentic certificate of my sobriety. The
doctor is alarmed at my work. "Eugénie Grandet" makes a thick volume. I
keep the manuscript for you. There are pages written, in the midst of
anguish. They belong to you, as all of me does.

My dear love, listen; you must content yourself with having only a few
sentences, a line perhaps, per day, if you wish to see me in November
at Geneva. Apropos, write me openly in reply to my open letter, to come
to the inn on the Pré-l'Évêque, and give me its name. I shall come for
a month, and write "Privilège" there. I shall have to bring a whole
library.

My love, _à bientôt_. Nevertheless, I have a thousand obstructions.
The printers, and there are three printing-offices busy with these
four volumes, well, they do not get on. I, from midnight to midday, I
compose; that is to say, I am twelve hours in my arm-chair writing,
improvising, in the full meaning of that term. Then, from midday to
four o'clock I correct my proofs. At five I dine, at half-past five I
am in bed, and am wakened at midnight.

Thank you for your kind page; you have removed my suffering; oh!
my good, my treasure, never doubt me. Never a thought or a word in
contradiction of what I have said to you with intoxication can trouble
the words and thoughts that are for you. Oh! make humble reparations
to Madame P... Bulwer, the novelist, is not in Parliament; he has a
brother who is in Parliament, and the name has led even our journalists
into error. I made the same mistake that you did, but I have verified
the matter carefully. Bulwer is now in Paris,--the novelist, I mean.
He came yesterday to the Observatoire, but I have not seen him yet.

You make me like Grosclaude [an artist]. What I want is the picture he
makes for you, and a copy equal to the original. I shall put it before
me in my study, and when I am in search of words, corrections, I shall
see what you are looking at.

There is a sublime scene (to my mind, and I am rewarded for having it)
in "Eugénie Grandet," who offers her fortune to her cousin. The cousin
makes an answer; what I said to you on that subject was more graceful.
But to mingle a single word that I have said to my Eve in what others
will read!--ah! I would rather fling "Eugénie Grandet," into the fire.
Oh, my love! I cannot find veils enough to veil it from everyone. Oh!
you will only know in ten years that I love you, and how _well_ I love
you.

My dear _gentille_, when I take this paper and speak to you I let
myself flow into pleasure; I could write to you all night. I am obliged
to mark a certain hour at my waking; when it rings I ought to stop, and
it rang long ago.

Till to-morrow.


Wednesday.

After the 22nd, including the 22nd, do not post any more letters; I
shall not receive them. Oh! I would like to intoxicate myself so as not
to think during the journey. Three days to be saying to myself, "I am
going to see her!" Ah! you know what that is, don't you? It is dying of
impatience, of pleasure! I have just sent you the licensed letter, and
I am now going to do up the parcel and arrange the box. I have returned
the remainder of the pebbles; I had not the right to lose what Anna
picked up; and I would not compromise Mademoiselle Hanska by keeping
them.

Oh! let me laugh after weeping. I shall soon see you. I bring
you the most sublime masterpiece of poesy, an epistle of Madame
Desbordes-Valmore, the original of which I have; I reserve it for you.
To-morrow, Thursday, I hope to be delivered of "Eugénie Grandet." The
manuscript will be finished. I must immediately finish "Ne touchez pas
à la hache."

I do not know how it is that you can go and put yourself so often into
the midst of that atmosphere of Genevese pedantry. But also I know
there is nothing so agreeable as to be in the midst of society with a
great thought, oh! my beautiful angel, my Eva, my treasures, of which
the world is ignorant.

Nothing could be more false than what that traveller told you about
Madame C... You understand, my love, that the ambitious manner in which
I now present myself in society must engender a thousand calumnies,
a thousand absurd versions. To give you an example: I have a glass I
value, a saucer, out of which my aunt, an angel of grace and goodness
who died in the flower of her age, drank for the last time; and my
grandmother, who loved me, kept it on her fireplace for ten years.
Well, my lawyer heard some man in a literary reading-room say that my
life was attached to a talisman, a glass, a saucer; and my talent also.
There are things of love and pride and nobleness in certain lives which
others would rather calumniate than comprehend.

Latouche has said a frightful thing of hatred to one of my friends. He
met him on the quay; they spoke of me,--Latouche with immense praises
(in spite of our separation). "What pleases me about him," he said, "is
that I begin to believe he will bury them all."

_Mon Dieu!_ how I love your dear letters; not those in which you scold,
but those in which you tell me minutely what happens to you. Oh! tell
me all; let me read in your soul as I would like to make you read in
mine. Tell me the praises that your adorable beauty receives, and if
any one looks at your hair, your pretty throat, your little hands, tell
me his name. You are my most precious fame. We have, they say, stars in
heaven; you, you are my star come down,--the light in which I live, the
light toward which I go.

How is it that you speak to me of what I write. It is what I think and
do not say that is beautiful, it is my love for you, its _cortège_ of
ideas, it is all that I fain would say to you, in your ear, with no
more atmosphere between us.

I do not like "Marie Tudor;" from the analyses in the newspapers, it
seems to me nasty. I have no time to go and see the play. I have no
time to live. I shall live only in Geneva. And what work I must do even
there! There, as here, I shall have to go to bed at six o'clock and get
up at midnight. But from midday to five o'clock, O love! what strength
I shall get from your glances. What pleasure to read to you, chapter by
chapter, the "Privilège" or other tales, my cherished love!

Do not think that there is the least pride, the least false delicacy
in my refusal of what you know of, the golden drop you have put
angelically aside. Who knows if some day it might not stanch the blood
of a wound? and from you alone in the world I could accept it. I know
you would receive all from me. But no; reserve all for things that I
might perhaps accept from you, in order to surround myself with you,
and think of you in all things. My love is greater than my thought.

Find here a thousand kisses and caresses of flame. I would like to
clasp you in my soul.



PARIS, Wednesday, November 13, 1833.

MADAME,--I think that the house of Hanski will not refuse the slight
souvenirs which the house of Balzac preserves of a gracious and most
joyous hospitality. I have the honour to address you, _bureau restant_
at Geneva, a little case forwarded by the Messageries of the rue
Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. You have no doubt been accusing the frivolity
and carelessness of the "Frenchman" (forgetting that I am a Gaul,
nothing but a Gaul), and have never thought of all the difficulties of
Parisian life, which have, however, procured me the pleasure of busying
myself long for you and Anna. The delay comes from the fact that I
wanted to keep all my promises. Permit me to have some vanity in my
persistence.

Before the sublime Fossin deigned to leave the diadems and crowns
of princes to set the pebbles picked up by your daughter, I had to
entreat him, and be very humble, and often leave my retreat, where I am
busy in setting poor phrases. Before I could get the best _cotignac_
[quince marmalade] from Orléans, inasmuch as you want to be a child
again and taste it, there was need of correspondence. And foreseeing
that you would find the marmalade below its reputation, I wanted
to add some of the clingstone peaches of Touraine, that you might
feel, gastronomically, the air of my native region. Forgive me that
Tourainean vanity. And finally, in order to send you a "La Caricature"
complete, I had to wait till its year was ended and then submit to the
delays of the binder,--that high power that oppresses my library.

For your beautiful hair nothing was more easy, and you will find what
you deigned to ask me for. I shall have the honour to bring you myself
the recipe for the wonderful preservative pomade, which you can make
yourself in the depths of the Ukraine, and so not lose one of your
beauteous black hairs.

Rossini has lately written me a note; I send it to you as an offering
to Monsieur Hanski, his passionate admirer. You see, madame, that I
have not forgotten you, and that if my work allows I shall soon be in
Geneva to tell you myself what sweet memories I preserve of our happy
meeting.

You admire Chénier; there is a new edition just published, more
complete than the preceding ones. Do not buy it; arrange that I may
read to you, myself, these various poems, and perhaps you will then
attach more value to the volumes I shall select for you here. That
sentence is not vain or impertinent; it is the expression of a hope
with wholly youthful frankness.

I hope to be in Geneva on the 25th; but, alas! for that I have to
finish four volumes, and though I work eighteen hours out of the
twenty-four, and have given up the music of the opera and all the joys
of Paris to stay in my cell, I am afraid that the coalition of workmen
of which we are now victims will make my efforts come to nought. I
wish, as I have to make this journey, that I might find a little
tranquillity in it, and remain away from that furnace called Paris for
a fortnight, to be employed in some _far niente_. But I shall probably
have to work more than I wish to.

Give the most gracious expression of my sentiments and remembrances
to Monsieur Hanski, kiss Mademoiselle Anna in my name, and accept for
yourself my respectful homage. Will you believe me, and not laugh at
me if I tell you that, often, I see again your beautiful head in that
landscape of the Île Sainte-Pierre, when, in the middle of my nights,
weary with toil, I gaze into my fire without seeing it, and turn my
mind to the most agreeable memories of my life? There are so few pure
moments, free of all _arrière-pensées_, naïve as our own childhood, in
this life. Here, I see nothing but enmities about me. Who could doubt
that I revert to scenes where nothing but good-will surrounded me? I do
not forget either Mademoiselle Séverine or Mademoiselle Borel.

Adieu, madame; I place all my obeisances at your feet.



PARIS, Sunday, November 17, 1833.

Thursday, Friday, and yesterday it was impossible for me to write
to you. The case does not start till to-morrow, Monday, so that you
will hardly get it before Thursday or Friday. Tell me what you think
of Anna's cross. We have been governed by the pebbles, which prevent
anything pretty being made of them. The _cotignac_ made everybody send
me to the deuce. They wrote me from Orléans that I must wait till the
fresh was made, which was better than the old, and that I should have
it in four or five days. So, not wishing it to fail you as announced,
I rushed to all the dealers in eatables, who one and all told me they
never sold two boxes of that marmalade a year, and so had given up
keeping it. But at Corcelet's I found a last box; he told me there was
no one but him in Paris who kept that _article_, and that he would have
some fresh _cotignac_ soon. I took the box; and you will not have the
fresh till my arrival, _cara_.

As for Rossini, I want him to write me a nice letter, and he has just
invited me to dine with his mistress, who happens to be that beautiful
Judith, the former mistress of Horace Vernet and of Eugène Sue, you
know. He has promised me a note about music, etc. He is very obliging;
we have chased each other for two days. No one has an idea with what
tenacity one must will a thing in Paris to have it. The smaller a thing
is, the less one obtains it.

I have now obtained an excellent concession from Gosselin. I shall not
do the "Privilège" at Geneva. I shall do two volumes of the "Contes
Philosophiques" there, which will not oblige me to make researches; and
this leaves me free to go and come without the dreadful paraphernalia
of a library. I am afraid I cannot leave here before the 20th, my poor
angel. Money is a terrible thing! I must pay four thousand francs
indemnities to get peace; and here I am forced to begin all over again
to raise money on publishers' notes, and I have ten thousand francs to
pay the last of December, besides three thousand to my mother. It is
enough to make one lose one's head. And when I think that to compose,
to work, one needs great calmness, to forget all!

If I have started on the 25th I shall be lucky. Of one hundred
_feuilles_ wanted to-day, Sunday, I have only eight of one volume and
four of another printed, eleven set up of one and five of the other.
I am expecting the _fabricators_ this morning to inform them of my
ultimatum. Why! in sixteen hours of work--and what work?--I do in one
hour what the cleverest workmen in a printing-office cannot do in a
day. I shall never succeed!

In the judgment of all men of good sense, "Marie Tudor" is an infamy,
and the worst thing there is as a play.

_Mon Dieu!_ I re-read your letters with incredible pleasure. Aside
from love, for which there is no expression, we are, in them, heart
to heart; you have the most refined of minds, the most original, and,
dearest, how you speak to all my natures! Soon I can tell you more in a
look than in all my letters, which tell nothing.

I put in a leaf of sweet-scented camellia; it is a rarity; I have cast
many a look at it. For a week past, as I work I look at it; I seek the
words I want, I think of you, who have the whiteness of that flower.

O my love, I would I could hold you in my arms, at this moment when
love gushes up in my heart, when I have a thousand desires, a thousand
fancies, when I see you with the eyes of the soul only, but in which
you are truly mine. This warmth of soul, of heart, of thought, will
it wrap you round as you read these lines? I think of you when I hear
music. _Adoremus in æternum_, my Eva,--that is our motto, is it not?

Adieu; _à bientôt_. What pleasure I shall have in explaining to you the
caricatures you cannot understand.

Do you want anything from Paris? Tell me. You can still write the day
after you receive this letter. The camellia-leaf bears you my soul; I
have held it between my lips in writing this page, that I might fill it
with tenderness.



PARIS, November 20, 1833, five in the morning.

My dear wife of love, fatigue has come at last; I have gathered the
fruit of these constant night-watches and my continual anxieties.
I have many griefs. In re-reading "Les Célibataires" which I had
re-corrected again and again, I find deplorable faults after printing.
Then, my lawsuits have not ended. I await to-day the result of a
transaction which will end everything between Mame and me. I send him
four thousand francs, my last resources. Here I am, once more as poor
as Job, and yet this week I must find twelve hundred francs to settle
another litigious affair. Oh! how dearly is fame bought! how difficult
men make it to acquire her! No, there is no such thing as a cheap great
man.

I could not write to you yesterday, or Monday; I was hurrying about.
Hardly could I re-read my proofs attentively. In the midst of all this
worry I made the words of a song for Rossini.

I was Sunday with Bra, the sculptor; there I saw the most beautiful
masterpiece that exists; and I do not except either the Olympian
Jupiter, or the Moses, or the Venus, or the Apollo. It is Mary, holding
the infant Christ, adored by two angels. If I were rich I would have
that executed in marble.

There I conceived a most noble book; a little volume to which "Louis
Lambert" should be the preface; a work entitled "Séraphita." Séraphita
will be two natures in one single being--like "Fragoletta," with this
difference, that I suppose this creature an angel arrived at the last
transformation, and breaking through the enveloping bonds to rise to
heaven. This angel is loved by a man and by a woman, to whom he says,
as he goes upward through the skies, that they have each loved the
love that linked them, seeing it in him, an angel all purity; and he
reveals to them their passion, he leaves them love, as he escapes our
terrestrial miseries. If I can, I will write this noble work at Geneva,
near to you.

But the conception of this multi-toned Séraphita has wearied me; it has
lashed me for two days.

Yesterday I sent Rossini's autograph, extremely rare, to Monsieur
Hanski, but the song for you. I am afraid I cannot leave here before
27th; seventeen hours of toil do not suffice. In a few hours you will
receive my last letter, which will calm your fears and your sweet
repentance. I would now like to be tortured--if it did not make me
suffer so much. Oh! your adorable letters! And you believe that I will
not burn those sacred effusions of your heart! Oh! never speak of that
again.

To-day, 20th, I have still one hundred pages of "Eugénie Grandet" to
write, "Ne touchez pas à la hache" to finish, and "La Femme aux yeux
rouges" to do, and I need at least ten days for all that. I shall
arrive dead. But I can stay in Geneva as long as you do. This is how:
if I am rich enough I will lose five hundred francs on each volume to
have it put in type and corrected in Geneva; and I will send to Paris
a single corrected proof, and they will reprint it under the eyes of
a friend who will read the sheets. It is such a piece of folly that I
shall do it. What do you say to it?

Yesterday my arm-chair, the companion of my vigils, broke. It is the
second I have had killed under me since the beginning of the battle
that I fight.

When people ask me where I am going, and why I leave Paris, I tell them
I am going to Rome.

Coffee has no longer any effect upon me. I must leave it off for some
time that it may recover its virtues.

My dearest Eva, I should like to find in that inn you speak of, a very
quiet room where no noise could penetrate, for I have truly much work
to do. I shall work only my twelve hours, from midnight to midday, but
those I must have.

I cannot tell you how these delays of the printer annoy me; I am ill of
them. All the day of Monday was occupied by an old man of sixty-five,
a man belonging to the first families of Franche-Comté, fallen into
poverty, for whom I was entreated by the lady in Angoulême to find a
situation. My heart is still wrung at the sight of him. I took him to
Émile de Girardin, who gave him a place at a hundred francs a month. A
man with white hair who lives on bread only, he and his family, while
I, I live luxuriously, my God! I did what I could. People call these
good actions; God thinks of those who compassionate the miseries of
others. Just now God is crushing me a good deal. But it is true that
you love me, and I worship you, and that enables me to bear all. I had
to dine with Émile and his wife, and lose a day and a night; what a
sacrifice! Ten years hence to give away a hundred thousand francs would
be less.

Adieu for to-day. I have rested myself for a moment on your heart, oh,
my dear joy, my gentle haven, my sole thought, my flower of heaven!
Adieu, then.


Saturday, 23rd.

From Thursday until to-day I have often thought of you, but to write
has been impossible. I have a weight of a hundred thousand pounds on
my shoulders. Yes, my angel, I am quit of that publisher at the cost
of four thousand francs. My lawyer, my notary, and a _procureur du
Roi_ have examined the receipt. All is ended between us; agreements
destroyed; I owe him neither sou nor line. I have deposited the
document, precious to me, with my notary.

The next day I completed, also at a cost of three thousand francs
(making seven thousand in a week), my other transaction. But as I had
not enough money I drew a note for five days, and by Wednesday, 27th, I
must have twelve hundred francs! I have, besides, a little _procillon_
to compound for, but that is only for money not yet due. I have still
two other matters concerning my literary property to bring to an end
before I can start. I am absolutely without a sou; but, at least, I am
tranquil in mind. I shall always have to work immensely.

Now in relation to the Mind manufactory, this is where I am: I have
still twenty-five _feuilles_ to do to finish "Eugénie Grandet;" I have
the proofs to revise. Then "Ne touchez pas à la hache" to finish, with
the "Femme aux yeux rouges" to do; also the proofs of two volumes
to read. It is impossible for me to start till all that is done. I
calculate ten days; this is now the 24th, for it is two o'clock in
the morning. I cannot get off till the 4th, arrive the 7th, and stay
till January 7th. Moreover, in order that I may stay, the "Médecin de
campagne" must be sold, I must write a "Scène de la Vie de campagne" at
Geneva, and the other "Scènes de la Vie de campagne" must be published,
during my absence, in Paris. However, I want to start on the 4th at
latest. Therefore, you can write to me till the 30th. After the 30th of
this month do not write again.

_Mon Dieu!_ What time such business consumes!--when I think of what I
do, my manuscripts, my proofs, my corrections, my business affairs! I
sleep tranquil, thinking that I have to pay two thousand four hundred
francs of acceptances for six days, for which I have not a sou! I
have lived like this for thirty-four years, and never has Providence
forgotten me. And so, I have an incredible confidence. What has to
be done is always done; and you can well believe that to pay seven
thousand francs with 0 obliges one to sign notes.

There's my situation, financial, scriptural, moral, of author, of
corrections, of all in short that is not love, on Sunday, the 24th, at
half-past one o'clock in the morning. I write you this just as I get
to the eleventh _feuillet_ of the fifth chapter of "Eugénie Grandet,"
entitled, "Family Griefs;" and between a proof of the eleventh sheet
of the book, that is to say, at its 176th page. When you have the
manuscript of "Eugénie Grandet," you will know its history better than
any one.

For the last two days I have had some return of my cerebral neuralgia;
but it was not much, and considering my toil and my worries, I ought to
think myself lucky to have only that.

Now, do not let us talk any more of the material things of life, which,
nevertheless, weigh so heavily upon us. How you make me again desire
riches!

My cherished love, have you tasted your marmalade? do you like the
peaches? has Anna her cross? have you laughed at the caricatures? I
have received your open letter, and it has all the effect upon me of
seeing you in full dress, in a grand salon, among five hundred persons.

Oh! my pretty Eve! _Mon Dieu!_ how I love you! _À bientôt._ More than
ten days, and I shall have done all I ought to do. I shall have printed
four volumes 8vo in a month. Oh! it is only love that can do such
things. My love, oh, suffer from the delay, but do not scold me. How
could I know, when I promised you to return, that I should sell the
"Études de Mœurs" for thirty-six thousand francs, and that I should
have to negotiate payments for nine thousand francs of suits? I put
myself at your darling knees, I kiss them, I caress them; oh, I do in
thought all the follies of earth; I kiss you with intoxication, I hold
you, I clasp you, I am happy as the angels in the bosom of God.

How nature made me for love! Is it for that that I am condemned to
toil? There are times when you are here for me, when I caress you and
strew upon your dear person all the poesy of caresses. Oh! there is
nobody but me, I believe, who finds at the tips of my fingers and on my
lips such voluptuousness.

My beloved, my dear love, my pearl, when shall I have you wholly mine
without fear? If that trip to Fribourg of which you speak to me had
taken place,--oh! say,--I think I should have drowned myself on the
return.

How careful I am of your Chénier; for, this time, I will read you
Chénier. You shall know what love is in voice, in looks, in verses, in
pages, in ideas. Oh! he is the man for lovers, women, angels. Write
"Séraphita" beside you; you wish it. You will annihilate her after
having read it.

I am very tired; my pen will hardly hold in my fingers; but as soon as
it concerns you and our love I find strength.

I have satisfied a little fancy this week; I gave myself, for my
bedroom, the prettiest little chimney-piece sconces that I ever saw;
and for my banquets, two candelabra. _Mon Dieu!_ a folly is sweet to
do! But I meditate a greater, which will, at any rate, be useful. It is
too long to write about.

Angel of love, do you perfume your hair? Oh, my beauty, my darling, my
adored one, my dear, dear Eve, I am as impatient as a goat tethered to
her stake--though you don't like that phrase. I would I were near you;
you have become tyrannical, you are the idea of every moment. I think
that every line written brings me nearer to you, like the turn of a
wheel, and from that hope I gather infernal courage.... So the 10th, at
latest, I shall see you. The 10th! I know that the immense amount of
work I have to do will shorten the time a little.

_Mon Dieu, mon Dieu_, God in whom I believe, he owes me some soft
emotions at the sight of Geneva, for I left it disconsolate, cursing
everything, abhorring womankind. With what joy I shall return to it, my
celestial love, my Eva! Take me with you to your Ukraine; let us go
first to Italy. All that will be possible, when the "Études de Mœurs"
are once published.


Sunday, 23rd, midday.

So, then, at l'Auberge de l'Arc! I shall be there December 7th or 8th
without fail. You see I have received your little note.

After writing to you last night I was obliged to go to bed without
working. I was ill. It is five days now since I have been out of my
apartments; I am not very well just now, but I think it is only a
nervous movement caused by overwork.

From our windows we shall see each other!--that is very dangerous.

Well, _à bientôt_. I put in for you a kissed rose-leaf; it carries
my soul and the most celestial hope a man can have here below. Oh!
my love, you do not know yourself how wholly you are mine. I am very
greedy.

Adieu, my beautiful life; there are only a few days more. I imagine we
can travel to Italy and stay three or six months together.

Adieu, angel, whom I shall soon see face to face.



PARIS, December 4th, four in the morning.

My adored angel, during these eight days I have made the efforts of a
lion; but, in spite of sitting up all night, I do not see that my two
volumes can be finished before the 5th, and the two others I must leave
to appear during my absence. But on the 10th I get into a carriage,
for, finished or not, neither my body nor my head, however powerful my
monk's life makes them, can sustain this steam-engine labour.

So, the 13th, I think, I shall be in Geneva. Nothing can now change
that date. I shall have the manuscript of "Eugénie Grandet" bound, and
send it ostensibly to you.

I have great need of rest, to be near you,--you, the angel; you, the
thought of whom never fatigues; you, who are the repose, the happiness,
the beautiful secret life of my life! It is now forty-eight hours that
I have not been in bed. I have at this moment the keenest anxieties
about money. I stripped myself of everything to win tranquillity, of
which I have such need, and to be near you for a little while. But,
relying on my publisher, yesterday, for my payments at the month's end,
he betrays me in the midst of my torrent of work.

Oh! decidedly, I will make myself a resource, I will have a sum in
silver-ware which my poetic fancies will never touch, but which I can
proudly carry to the pawn-shop in case of misfortune. In that way one
can live tranquil, and not have to endure the cold, pale look of one's
childhood's friends, who arm themselves with their friendship to refuse
us. On the 10th I start; I do not know at what hour one arrives, but,
whatever be my fatigue, I shall go to see you immediately.

I have worked steadily eighteen hours a day this week, and I could only
sustain myself by baths, which relaxed the general irritation.

What vexations, what goings to and fro! I had to give a great dinner
this week, Friday, 29th. I discovered I had neither knives nor glasses.
I don't like to have inelegant things about me. So I had to run in debt
a little more; I tried to do a stroke of business with my silversmith.
No. However, I will economize in Geneva by working and keeping quiet.

How I paw, like a poor, impatient horse! The desire to see you makes me
find things that, ordinarily, would not occur to me. I correct quicker.
You not only give me courage to support the difficulties of life, but
you give me talent, or at least, facility. One must love, my Eve, my
dear one, to write the love of "Eugénie Grandet," a pure, immense,
proud love. Oh! dear, dearest, my good, my divine Eve, what grief not
to have been able to write you every evening what I have done, said,
and thought!

Soon, soon, in ten minutes, I can tell you more than in a thousand
pages, in one look more than in a hundred years, because I shall give
you all my heart in that first look, O my delicate, beauteous forehead!
I looked at that of Madame de Mirbel, the other day; it is something
like yours. She is a Pole, I think.



PARIS, Sunday, December 1, 1833, eleven o'clock.

My angel, I have just read your letter. Oh! I long to fall at your
knees, my Eve, my dear wife! Never have a second of melancholy thought.
Oh! you do not know me! As long as I live I will be your darling, I
will respect in myself the heart you have chosen; I no longer belong
to myself. There are no follies, no sacrifices; no, no, never! Oh! do
not be thus, never talk to me of laudanum. I flung aside the proofs of
"Eugénie Grandet" and sprang up as if to go to you. The end of your
letter has made me pass over the pain of its beginning.

My love, my dear love, I shall be near you in a few days; when you hold
this paper full of love for you, to which I would like to communicate
the beatings of my heart, there will be but a few days; I shall
redouble my cares, my work, I shall rest down there.

Besides, I shall arrange to stay a long time. O my love! make your
skies serene, for there is nothing in my being but affection, love,
tenderness, and caresses for you.

You ought to curse that Gaudissart. The printer took a type which
compressed the matter, and to make out the volume I had to improvise
all that _in one night_, darling, and make eighty pages of it, if you
please.

My pretty love, you will receive a fine letter, very polite,
submissive, respectful, with the manuscript of "Eugénie Grandet," and
you will find in pencil on the back of the first page of manuscript
the precise day for which I have engaged my place in the diligence.

Yes, I live in you, as you live in me. Never will God separate what he
has put together so strongly. My life is your life. Do not frighten
me thus again. Your sadness saddens me, your joy makes me joyous. I
am in your heart; I listen to your voice at times. In short, I have
the eternal, imperishable, angelic love that I desired. You are the
beginning and the end, my Eve,--do you understand?--_the Eve!_ I am as
exclusive as you can be. In short, _Adoremus in æternum_ is my motto;
do you hear me, darling?

Well, it is getting late. I must send this to the general post-office,
that you may get it Wednesday.

My love, why make for yourself useless bitterness? What I said to you,
I will repeat: "It would be too odd if that were she," was my thought
when I saw you first on leaving the Hôtel du Faucon [at Neufchâtel].

Adieu; I have no flowers this time; but I send you an end of a cedar
match I have been chewing while I write; I have given it a thousand
kisses.

_Mon Dieu!_ I don't know how I shall get over the time on the journey,
in view of the palpitations of my heart in writing to you. You will
receive only one more letter, that of Sunday next; after that I shall
be on the way. O my darling, to be near you, without anxieties; to have
my time to myself, to be free to work well and read to you by day what
I do at night! My angel, to have my kiss,--the greatest reward for me
under heaven! Your kiss!

No, you will only know how I love you ten years from now, when you
fully know my heart, that heart so great, that you fill. I can only say
now, _à bientôt_.

Well, adieu, dear. Thanks for the talisman. I like it. I like to have
a seal you have used. My love, do not laugh at my fancies. Ah? if you
could see Bra's "Two Angels," and "Mary with the child Jesus." I have
in my heart for you all the adoration he found in his sublime genius
to express angels. You are God to me, my dear idol. Adieu!



PARIS, Sunday, December 8.

My dearest, no, not a line for you in eight days! But tears, effusions
of the soul sent with fury across the hundred and fifty leagues that
part us.

If I get off Thursday next, 12th, I shall regard myself as a giant. No,
I will not soil this paper full of love which you will hold, by pouring
money troubles on it, however nobly confided they be. The printers
would not work; I am their slave. The calculations of the publisher, of
the master-printers, and my own have been so cruelly frustrated by the
workmen that my books announced as published yesterday will not appear
till Thursday next. I am in a state of curious destitution, without
friends from whom I can ask an obole, yet I must borrow the money for
my journey on Tuesday or Wednesday, but I do not know where. I will
tell you all about it.

I have no time to write. I have been forty-eight hours this week
without sleeping. Old Dubois told me yesterday I was marching to old
age and death. But how can I help it? I have considered nothing but
my pleasure, our pleasure, and I have sacrificed all--even you and
myself--to that object.

Alas, my dearest, I have not the time to finish this letter. The
publisher of "Séraphita" is here. He wants it by new year's day.
Nevertheless, I shall be on Sunday near you.

Adieu, my love; _à bientôt_, but that _bientôt_ will not be till
Sunday, 15th, for I have inquired, and the diligence starts only every
other day, and takes three days and a half to get there. I have a world
of things to tell you, but I can only send you my love, the sweetest
and most violent of loves, the most constant, the most persistent,
across space. O my beloved angel, do you speak to me again of our
promise? Say nothing more to me about it. It is saintly and sacred like
our mutual life.

Adieu, my angel. I cannot say to you "Calm yourself,"--I, who am so
unhappy at these delays. You must suffer, for I suffer.



GENEVA, December 25th, 1833.

I shall tell you all in a moment, my beloved, my idolatry. I fell in
getting into the carriage, and then my valet fell ill. But we will not
talk of that. In an instant I shall tell you more in a look than in a
thousand pages. Do I love you! Why, I am near you! I would it had been
a thousand times more difficult and that I should have suffered more.
But here is one good month, perhaps two, won.

Not one, but millions of caresses. I am so happy I can write no more.
_À bientôt._

Yes, my room is very good, and the ring is like you, my love, delicious
and exquisite.[1]

[Footnote 1: At the end of this year, as this vitiated portion of the
correspondence draws to a close, I shall venture to make a few comments
on it.

Very early in life Balzac formed for himself a theory of woman and of
love. See Memoir, p. 261. When I wrote that Memoir I was not aware of
the character of these letters. I now see from certain of them (those
from the time he received Mme. Hanska's first letter till he met her
at Neufchâtel) that he kept that ideal before him up to his 34th year,
making, apparently, various attempts to realize it, which failed (if
we except one lifelong affection) until he met with Mme. Hanska. No
one, I think, can read those letters, without recognizing that they are
the expression of an ideal hope, in a soul striving to escape from the
awful (it was nothing less than awful) struggle between its genius and
its circumstances into the calmer heaven for which all his life he had
longed. They are imaginative, rash to folly, but they are in keeping
with his nature, his headlong need of expansion, and the elsewhere
recorded desires of his spirit. That mind must be a worldly one, I
think, that cannot see the truth about this man, clinging, through the
turmoil of his life and of his nature, to his "star," and dying of
exhaustion at the last. But what shall we think of the men who have
not only shut their eyes to the purity of this story, the strongest
testimony to which is in this very volume, but have used it to cast
upon this man and this woman the glamour of "voluptuousness"?

Enough has been told in the Preface to prove: (1) deception; (2) the
forgery of one passage; (3) the falsification of dates. Coupling those
facts with the literary impossibility that Balzac ever wrote a portion
of the letters just given, we are justified in believing that a certain
number of the letters that here follow are forgeries.

I class them as follows:--

During Balzac's stay in Geneva (from Dec. 25 to Feb. 8) nineteen
letters are given; all dated indiscriminately "Geneva, January, 1834."
Eleven of these are friendly little notes, such as would naturally
pass between friends in daily intercourse. The remaining eight contain
matters so disloyal that I place in an Appendix a letter from Balzac to
his friend Madame Carraud, _written at the same time_, and leave the
reader to form his own judgment.

Next follow twelve letters (from Feb. 15 to March 11, 1834) which I
characterize as infamous forgeries. But their refutation is not far to
seek; it is _here_, in this volume,--in letters from Balzac that bare
his soul in the tragic struggle of his life; letters that show the deep
respect of his heart and of his mind for the woman whom he held to be
his star and the guide of his spirit.--TR.]




II.


LETTERS DURING 1834.



GENEVA, January, 1834.

MADAME,--I do not know if I had the honour to tell you yesterday that
I might, perhaps, not have the pleasure of dining with you to-day. I
should be in despair if you could think I did not attach an extreme
value to that favour by making you wait for me in vain. Your cousin has
engaged me for Thursday next; I have accepted so as not to seem absurd
in my seclusion. I hope you will see nothing "French" in this sentiment.

I hope this continual rain has not made you sad, and I beg you to
present my most distinguished sentiments to M. Hanski, and accept my
most affectionate homage and obedience.

DE BALZAC.



GENEVA, January, 1834.

MADAME,--Here is the first part of your _cotignacian_ poems. But you
will presently see a man in despair. I do not like to bring you the
Chénier, and yet I hesitate to send it back. Of all that I ordered,
nothing has been done. Binding execrably ugly, covering silly. One
should be there one's self to have things done. If you accept it you
must remember only the good intentions with which I took charge of your
book; that is the only way to give it value.

I have been into town; I made myself joyous; I thought I had found
something that would give you pleasure. I have _deranged_ myself. If
you permit it, I will compensate my annoyance by coming to see you
earlier.

A thousand graceful homages.

HONORÉ

I considered the _cotignac_ so precious I would not delay your
gastronomic joys.



GENEVA, January, 1834.

MADAME,---Will you exchange colonial products? Here is a little of my
coffee. My sister writes that I shall have more to-morrow; therefore,
take this. You shall have your coffee-pot to-morrow. Will you give me
_a little_ tea for my breakfast? I want strictly a little.

Have you passed a good night? Are you well? Have you had good dreams?
I hope your health is good, so that we can go and take a walk [_nous
promener, bromener_]. The treasury? ... _Furth!_



TO HER MAJESTY RZEWUSKIENNE, MME. HANSKA.

GENEVA, January, 1834.

Very dear sovereign, sacred Majesty, sublime queen of Paulowska and
circumjacent regions, autocrat of hearts, rose of Occident, star of the
North, etc., etc., etc., fairy of _tiyeuilles_.[1]

Your Grace wished for my coffee-pot, and I entreat your Serene Highness
to do me the honour to accept one that is prettier and more complete;
and then to tell me, to fling me from your eminent throne a word full
of happiness, amber, and flowers, to let me know if I am to be at Your
sublime door in an hour, with a carriage, to go to Coppet.

I lay my homage at the feet of your Majesty, and entreat you to believe
in the honesty of your humble moujik, HONORESKI.

[Footnote 1: _Bromener_ and _tiyeuilles_ (_tilleuls_ lindens), make fun
of her pronunciation.--TR.]



GENEVA, January, 1834.

Never did an invalid less merit that name. He is ready to go to walk,
to fetch his proofs, and when his business is finished, which will be
in about a quarter of an hour, he will go and propose to Madame _la
doctrice_ to profit by this beautiful day to take an air-bath on the
Crêt of Geneva, along the iron railings; unless the laziness of the
Hanski household concurs with that of the poor literary moujik who lays
at your feet, madame, his strings of imaginary pearls, the treasure of
his heroes, his fanciful Alhambra, where he has carved, everywhere, not
the sacred name of God, but a human name that is sacred in other ways.
But all this immense property may not be worth, in reality, the four
games won yesterday.



GENEVA, January, 1834. I have slept like a dormouse, I feel like a
charm, I love you like a madcap, I hope that you are well, and I send
you a thousand tendernesses.



GENEVA, January, 1834.

If I must come this evening, and dress myself because you have your
_charaders_, permit me to come a little earlier. There is a dinner
here; they are singing and making such a noise while I write that it is
enough to drive the devil away. _Ecco._ I can calculate. Wednesday I
shall be _encandollé_ [dinner with M. de Candolle]. Thursday is taken.
To-morrow I work without intermission, for I shall have proofs. So, out
of five days, when one has but one in prospect, it is no flattery to
add a few hours. Yes? Very good.

Allow me to return your "Marquis" by a good "Maréchale."


GENEVA, January, 1834.

_Willingly_, but you will bring me back to your house, will you
not?--for I can't get accustomed to be two steps away from you, doing
nothing, without better employing my time.

If you go into the town I will ask you to be so kind--No, I will go
myself.



GENEVA, January, 1834.

MADAME,--To a man who considers happy moments as the most profitable
moments of existence, it is permitted to wish not to lose any part of
the sums he amasses. It is only in the matter of joy that I wish to be
Grandet.

If I take this morning the time that you would give me, from three to
ten o'clock, would you refuse me? No? Good. If you love me?--yes--you
will be visible at twelve or one o'clock.

Forgive my avarice; I possess as yet nothing but the happiness which
heaven bestows. Of that I may be avaricious, since I have nothing else.
To you, a thousand affectionate respects, and my obeisances to the
honourable Maréchal of the Ukraine and noble circumjacent regions.



GENEVA, January, 1834.

I cannot come because I am more unwell than I expected to be, and going
out might do me harm. If you would have the kindness to send me back a
little orgeat you would do me a real service, for I don't know what to
drink, and I have a consuming thirst.

I have spent my day very sadly, trying to work, and finding myself
incapable of it. So, I think I shall go to bed in a few hours.

A thousand thanks, and present my respects to the Grand Maréchal.


GENEVA, January, 1834.

MADAME,--If it were not that I get impatient and suffer at losing so
much time, both for that which gives me pleasure and also for my work,
I should be this morning well, and like a man who has had a fever. I
don't know whether I had better go out or keep my room; but I frankly
own that here, alone, I worry horribly.

A thousand thanks for your good care, and forgive me that, yesterday, I
was more surprised than grateful at your visit, which touched me deeply
after you had left. I don't know if you know that there are things that
get stronger as they get older.

A thousand thanks and grateful regards to M. Hanski. How stupid I am
to have made you anxious for so slight a matter; but how happy I am to
know that you have as much friendship for me as I for you.



GENEVA, January, 1834.

My love, this morning I am perfectly well. I was embarrassed yesterday
because there were for you, under the things you moved about, two
letters I send with this.

_Mon Dieu!_ my love, I am afraid that step of yours (your visit to my
room) may be ill taken, and that you exposed the two letters. For other
reasons, _Mon Dieu!_ certainly, I wanted to see you here! I have such
need to cure my cold that if I go out it cannot be till this evening.

I am up; I could not stay in bed longer, I am too uncomfortable. I must
talk or have something to do. Inaction kills me. Yesterday, I spent a
horrible evening thinking of what I had to do. I am this morning like a
man who has had a fever.

A thousand tender caresses. _Mon Dieu!_ how I suffer when I don't see
you. I have a thousand things to tell you.


GENEVA, January, 1834.

What have I done that last evening should end thus, my dear, beloved
Eve? Do you forget that you are my last hope in life? I don't speak
of love, or human sentiments, you are more than all that to me. Why
do you trample under your feet all the hopes of our life in a word?
You doubt one who loves you freely with delights; to whom to feel you
is delirious happiness, who loves you _in æternum_, and you do not
doubt...!

O my love! you play very lightly with a life you chose to have, and
which, moreover, has been given to you with an entire devotion which I
should have given you if you had not demanded it. I like better that
you did wish for it.

I love you with too much constancy that such disputes should not be
mortal to me. _Mon Dieu!_ I have told you the secrets of my life, and
you ought, in return for such unlimited confidence, to spare him who
lives in you the torture of such doubts. You hold me by the hand, and
the day you withdraw that adored hand you alone will know the reason of
what becomes of me.

My beloved Eve, I commit extravagance on extravagance. It is impossible
to think of anything but you. It is not a _desire_, though I have fully
the right to desire pleasure more keenly than other men, and this
desire renders me stupefied at times; no, it is a need to breathe your
air, to see you, and yesterday you gave me eternal memories of beauty.

If I had no sacred pecuniary obligations (and I commit the folly of
forgetting them sometimes), we would not think of the rue Cassini. No.
Yesterday at Diodati I said to myself: "Why should I quit my Eve; why
not follow her everywhere?" I wish it, myself. I accept all sufferings
when I see you; and you, you wounded me yesterday.

But you do not love as I do; you do not know what love is; I, for
my sorrow, have known its delights, and I see that from Neufchâtel
to my death I can reach the end desired through my whole youth, and
concentrate my life and my affections on a single heart!

Dearest, dearest, I am too unhappy from the things of life not to make
it a cruelty in her I love and idolize to cause me a shadow of grief. I
would like better the most horrible of agonies to causing you pain.

Must I come and seek a kiss?



GENEVA, January, 1834.

Your doubts do me harm. You are more powerful than all. Angel of my
life, why should I not follow you everywhere? Because of poverty. _Mon
Dieu_, you have nothing to fear. From the day on which I told you that
I loved you, nothing has altered this delicious life; it is my only
life. Do not dishonour it by suspicions; do not trouble our pleasures.
There was no one before you in my heart; you will fill it forever. Why
do you arm yourself with thoughts of my former life? Do not punish me
for my beautiful confidence. I wish you to know all my past, because
all my future is yours. Break your heart! Sacrifice you to anything
whatever! Why, you don't know me! I am ashamed to bring you sufferings.
I am ashamed not to be able to give you a life in harmony with the
life of the heart. I suffer unheard-of woes, which you efface by your
presence.

Pardon, my love, for what you call my coquetries. Pardon a Parisian
for a simple Parisian talk; but what you will shall be done. I will go
to see no one. Two visits of a quarter of an hour will end all. Perish
a thousand times the society of Geneva rather than see you sad for a
quarter of an hour's conversation. It would be ridiculous (for others)
that I should occupy myself with you only. I was bound to respect you,
and in order to talk to you so much it was necessary that I should
talk with Madame P... Besides, what trifles! Before the Ocean of which
you talk, are you going to concern yourself about a miserable spider?
_Mon Dieu!_ you don't know what it is to love _infinitely_.

What I wrote you this morning is of a nature to show you how false are
your fears. I never ceased to look at you while talking to Madame P...

Ah! dearest, my dear wife, my Eva, I would willingly sell my talent for
two thousand ducats! I would follow you like a shadow. Do you wish to
go back to Wierzchownia? I will follow you and stay there all my life.
But we must have pretexts, and, unfortunate that I am, I cannot leave
Paris without satisfying editors and creditors.

I have received two letters; one from that good Borget, the other from
my sister. Troubles upon troubles. To have at all moments the sight of
paradise and the sufferings of hell,--is that living?



GENEVA, January, 1834.

My love, my only life, my only thought, oh! your letter! it is written
forever on my heart.

Listen, celestial angel, for you are not of this earth. I will reply to
you on these things once for all. Fame, vanity, self-love, literature,
they are scarcely clouds upon our sky. You trample all that twenty
times a day beneath your feet, which I kiss twenty times.

Oh, my angel, see me at your knees as I tell you this: if I have had
the most fugitive of reputations it has come when I did not want it.
I was drunk for it till I was twenty-two. I wanted it as a pharos to
attract to me an angel. I had nothing with which to please; I blamed
myself. An angel came; I let myself suffer in her bosom, hiding from
her my desires for a young and beautiful woman. She saw those desires
and said to me: "When she comes I will be your mother, I will have the
love of a mother, the devotion of a mother."[1]

Then one day the misery of my life grew greater. The toils of night and
day began. She who had offered me, on her knees, her fortune, which I
had taken, which I was returning at the peril of my life, she watched,
she corrected, she refined, as I refined, corrected, watched. Then all
my desires were extinguished in work. It was no longer a question of
fame, but of money. I _owed_, and I had nothing.

Three years I worked without relaxation, having drawn a brass circle
around me from 1828 to 1831. I abhor Madame de C[astries], for she
broke that life without giving me another,--I do not say a comparable
one, but without giving me what she promised. There is not the shadow
of wounded vanity, oh! but disgust and contempt.

You alone have made me know the vanities of fame. When I saw you at
Neufchâtel I wanted to be something. In you then begins, more splendid
than I dreamed it, that dreamed life.

Oh! my Eve, you alone in my life to come!--Alas! like Louis Lambert I
wish that I could give you my past. Thus, nothing that is _success,
fame, Parisian distractions_, moves me. There is but one power that
makes me accept my present life: _Toil_. It calms the exactions of my
fiery temperament. It is because I fear myself that I am chaste.

As for this seclusion that you want, hey! I want it as much as you. It
is not being a fop to tell you that since Neufchâtel three ravishing
women have come to the rue Cassini, and that I did not even cast a
man's glance on seeing them.

My Eve, I love you better than you love me, for I am alone in the
secret of what I lose, and you know nothing of love but the sentiments
of love. Besides, I love you better, for I have more reasons to love
you. If I were free I would live near you, happy to be the steward
of your fortune and the artisan of your wealth, as Madame Carraud's
brother is for Madame d'Argout. I have a security of love, a plenitude
of devotion, which you will only know with time. It needs time to
fathom the infinite. To suffer the whole of life with you, taking a few
rare moments of happiness, yes! To have a lifetime in two years, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years, and die, yes! Never to
speak to a woman, to refuse myself to all, to live in you, oh, angel!
but that is my thought at all hours. The ... which I told you about
Madame P... was because she had vexed you, and before your suffering I
became besotted, as you before mine.

_Mon Dieu!_ if we lived together, if I had twenty ducats a month, to
you should belong my poems. I would write books, and read them to
you, and we would burn them in our fire. My adored _minette_, I weep
sometimes in thinking that I sell my ideas, that people read me! Ah!
you do not know what I could be if, free for one evening, I could speak
to you, see you, caress you by my thoughts and by myself. Oh! you would
then know that your thoughts of purity, of exclusive tenderness are
mine. Angel of my life, I live in you, for you, by you. Only, if I am
mistaken, tell me so without anger. There is never any false or bad
intention in me. I obey my heart in all that is sentiment. I have never
known what a calculation is. If I mistake, it is in good faith.

My love, let us never separate. In six months I shall be free. Well,
then, no power on earth can disunite us. _La dilecta_ was forty-six
when I was twenty-two. Why talk about your forty years? We have thirty
years before us. Do you think that at sixty-four a man betrays thirty
years' affection?

What! you think that the opera, the salons, fame can distract me from
you? Then you don't know how I love you. I shall be more angry at that
than you at Madame P... No, believe me, I love you as a woman loves and
as a man loves. In my life to come there is nothing but you and work.
My dear gift, my dear star, my sweet spirit, let yourself be caressed
by hope, and say to yourself that I am not amorous or passionate; all
that passes. I love you, I adore you _in æternum_. I believe in you
as I do in myself. _Mon Dieu!_ I would like to know words which could
infuse into you my soul and my thought, which could tell you that you
are in my heart, in my blood, in my brain, in my thought,--in short,
the life of my life; that each beating of my heart gives birth to
a desire full of thee. Oh! you do not know what are three years of
chastity, which spring at every moment to the heart and make it bound,
to the head and make it palpitate. If I were not sober and did not
work, this purity would drive me mad. I alone am in the secret of the
terrible emotions which the emanations from your dear person give me.
It is an unspeakable delirium which, by turns, freezes my nature by the
omnipotence of desire, and makes me burn. I resist follies like those
of the young seigneur cut down by the Elector.

We have, both of us, our sufferings; do not let us dispute that. Let us
love each other, and do not refuse me that which makes all accepted.
In other respects, in all things, angel, I am submissive to you as to
God. Take my life, ask me to die, order me all things, except not to
love you, not to desire you, not to possess you. Outside of that all is
possible to me in your name.

[Footnote 1: Madame de Berny is meant, and the invention of this letter
is infamous. See letter to Madame Carraud in Appendix, written _at the
same time_ as this spurious letter.--TR]



GENEVA, January, 1834.

If you only knew the superstitions you give me! When I work I put the
talisman on my finger; I put it on the first finger of the left hand,
with which I hold my paper, so that your thought clasps me. You are
there, with me. Now, in seeking from the air for words and ideas,
I ask them of that delicious ring; in it I have found the whole of
"Séraphita."

Love celestial, what things I have to say to you, for which one needs
the sacred hours during which the heart feels the need of baring
itself. The adorable pleasures of love are the only means of arriving
at that union, that fusion of souls. Dear, with what joy I see the
fortunes of my heart and the fate of my soul secured to me. Yes, I will
love you alone and solely through my life. You have all that pleases
me. You exhale, for me, the most intoxicating perfume a woman can have;
that alone is a treasure of love.

I love you with a fanaticism that does not exclude the quietude
of a love without possible storms. Yes, say to yourself well that
I breathe by the air you breathe, that I can never have any other
thought than you. You are the end of all for me. You shall be the young
_dilecta_--already I call you the _pre dilecta_.

Do not murmur at this alliance of the two sentiments. I should like to
think I loved you in her, and that the noble qualities which touched me
and made me better than I was were all in you.

I love you, my angel of earth, as they loved in the middle ages, with
the most complete fidelity, and my love will always be grand, without
stain; I am proud of my love. It is the principle of a new life. Hence,
the new courage that I feel under my last adversities. I would be
greater, be something glorious, so that the crown to place upon your
head should be the most leafy, the most flowery of all those that great
men have nobly won!

Never, therefore, have fear or distrust; there are no abysses in
heaven! A thousand kisses full of caresses; a thousand caresses full of
kisses! _Mon Dieu!_ shall I never be able to make you see how I love
you, you, my Eve!

_À bientôt_; a thousand kisses will be in my first look.



GENEVA, January, 1834.

My loved love, with a single caress you have returned me to life.
Oh! my dearest, I have not been able to either sleep or work. Lost
in the remembrance of that evening, I have said to you a world of
tendernesses. Oh! you have that divine soul to which one remains
attached during a lifetime. My soul, you have, through love, the
delicious language of love which makes all griefs and annoyances
fly away on wings. Loved angel, do not obscure with any doubt the
inspirations of love of which your dear caress is but the interpreter.
Do not think you can ever enter into comparison with any one, no matter
who. But, my loved darling, my flower of heaven, do you not understand,
you, all charm and all truth, that a poor poet can be struck at finding
the same heart, at being loved beyond his hopes? My adored wife, yes,
it was for you that the heart of the most delicate and sweetest woman
that ever was brought me up. I shall be permitted to say to her: "You
wished to be twenty years old to love me better and give me even the
pleasures of vanity. Well, I have met with what you wished me." She
will be joyous for _us_. Dear eternal idol, my beautiful and holy
religion, I know how the memories of another love must wound a proud
and delicate love. But not to speak of it to you would be to deprive
you of nameless fêtes of the soul, and joys of love. There are such
identities of tenderness and soul that I am proud for you, and I know
not if it is you I loved in her. Then, an ungovernable jealousy has so
habituated me to think with open heart, and say all to her in whom I
live, that I could never hide from you a thought. No, you are my own
heart.

Yes, to you all is permitted. I shall tell you naïvely all that I
think that is fine, and all that I think that is bad. You are an I,
handsomer, prettier.

My love has neither exaltation, nor more, nor less, nor anything that
is terrestrial. Oh! my dear Eve, it is the love of the angel always at
the same degree of force, of exaltation. To feel, to touch your hand of
love, that hand of soft, _proud_ sentiments,--do you understand me, my
angel, tender, kind, passionate,--that hand, polished and relaxed of
love, that is a happiness as great as your caress of honey and of fire.

This is what I wished to say to my timid angel, who thought that
all caresses were not _solidaire_. One, the lightest as the most
passionate, comprises all. In that you see to the bottom of my soul. A
kiss on your cherished lips,--those virgin lips that have no souvenirs
yet (which makes you in my eyes as pure as the purest young girl),--a
kiss will be a talisman for the desires of love, when it contains all
the caresses of love. Our poor kiss, still disinherited of all our
joys, only goes to your heart, and I would that it enwrapped all your
person. You would see that possession augments, enlarges love. You
would know your Honoré, your husband; and you would know that he loves
you more daily.

My dearest Eva, never doubt me, but doubt yourself less. I have
told you that there is in you, in your letters, in your love, in
its expression, a something I know not what that is more than in
other letters and expressions that I thought inimitable. But you are
twenty-eight years old,--that is the grand secret. But, dear treasure,
you have the most celestial soul that I know, and you have intoxicating
beauties. _Mon Dieu!_ how shall I tell you that I am drunk at the
faintest scent of you, and that had I possessed you a thousand times
you would see me more intoxicated still, because there would be hope
and memory where now there is only hope.

Do you remember the bird that has but one flower? That is the history
of my heart and my love. Oh! dear celestial flower, dear embalming
perfumes, dear fresh colours, my beautiful stalk, do not bend, guard
me always. At each advance of a love which goes and ever will go on
increasing, I feel in my heart _foyers_ of tenderness and adoration.
Oh! I want to be sure of you as I am of myself. I feel at each
respiration that I have in my heart a constancy that nothing can alter.

I wept on the road to Diodati, when, after having promised me all the
caresses that you have granted me, a woman was able, with a single
word, to cut the woof she seemed to have taken such pleasure in
weaving. Judge if I adore you, you who perceive nothing of these odious
manœuvres, who deliver yourself up with candour and happiness to love,
and who speaks thus to all my natures.

There is my confession made. I think that you have all the noblenesses
of the heart, for, adored angel, one should respect the weakness and
even the crimes of a woman, and if I hide nothing from your heart, it
is that it ought always to be _mine_. So I send you my sister's chatter
and the letter of Madame de C[astries] on condition that you burn all,
my angel. I know you so true, so great; ah! I would not hesitate to
read you the letter of the _dilecta_ if you wish it, for you are really
myself. I would not hide from you the shadow of a thought, and you
ought, at all hours, to enter my heart, as into the palace you have
chosen to spread your treasures in, to adorn it, and find pleasure in
it. All should there be yours.

If Madame C...'s letter displeases you, say so frankly, my love.
I will write to her that my affections are placed in a heart too
jealous for me to be permitted to correspond with a woman who has her
reputation for beauty, for charm, and that I act frankly in telling her
so. I wish to write this letter from myself. I would like well that you
should tell it to me.

As for my money troubles, do not be uneasy about them. It is the basis
of my life, till the end of July, love, which makes everything easy to
me to bear.

Pardon me for having made known to you yesterday's trouble. Oh, dear,
always beautiful flower, I am ashamed to have made you know the extent
of your mission, but you are an inexhaustible treasury of affection, of
love, of tenderness, and I shall always find in you more consolations
than I have troubles. You have put into my thoughts and all my hours a
light, a gleam, which makes me endure all.

I wake up happy to love you; I go to bed happy to be loved. It is the
life of angels; and my despair comes from feeling in it the discord
which my want of fortune and of liberty puts between the desires of
my heart, the impulses of my nature, and the works which keep me in
an ignoble cabin like the moujiks of Paulowska. If I were only at
Paulowska! I would that you were I for a moment to know how you are
loved. Then I would be sure that seeing so much love, so much devotion,
such great security of sentiment, you would never have a doubt, and you
would love _in æternum_ a heart that loves you thus.

A thousand kisses, and may each have in itself a thousand caresses to
you like that of yesterday to me.



GENEVA, January, 1834.

Dear soul of my soul, I entreat you, attach yourself solely--your
cares, your thoughts, your memory--to what will be in my life a
constant thought. Let the piece of malachite become by you alone an
inkstand. I will explain the shape. It should be cut six-sided; the
sides should be about the dimensions of the sides of your card-basket,
except that they ought to end, at the top, squarely, as at the base;
they should go up, enlarging from the base to the top, and, to decide,
logically, the conditions of the stand, the pot for the ink (hollowed
out in the malachite) must have at its surface a diameter equal to this
line [drawn]. The cover, shaped like a _marchepain_, must be round,
and sunk in the pot; it should be simple, and end in a silver-gilt
knob. Let the stand have a handle, fastened on by simple buttons,
and this handle, of bronzed silver-gilt, should be like that of your
card-basket. Have engraved upon it our motto: _Adoremus in æternum_,
between the date of your first letter and that of Neufchâtel.

The inkstand should be mounted on a pedestal, also of six sides,
suitably projecting; and on each side, at the junction of the
pedestal and the stand, there should be, in art-term, a moulding of
silver-gilt, which is simply a round cordon, which must harmonize with
the proportions of the inkstand. Then I think that at the top of the
sides this moulding should be repeated. In the middle of each side of
the pedestal put a star; then, in small letters, in the middle of each
large side, these words: _Exaudit,--Vox,--Angeli_, separated by stars
(which makes "Eva").

If you want to be magnificent you will add a paper-knife of a single
piece of malachite and a powder-pot, the shape of which I will explain
to you.

Not to displease that person I will give him Décamp's drawing which you
can get back, and I will ask him, in exchange, for a piece of malachite
for my alarm-clock.

Here is Susette. I can only say that this will make me renounce the
pleasure of making you pick up on the shores of the lake the pebbles
I intended to have made into an alarm-clock. I went, yesterday, to
see if we could walk along the shore. I wanted to connect you with
these souvenirs, to make you see that one can thus enlarge life and
the world, and have the right to surround you with my thought through
a thousand things, as I would like to surround myself with yours. Thus
sentiment moulds material objects and gives them a soul and a voice.

What! _bébête_, did you not guess that the dedication was a surprise
which I wished to give you? You are, for longer than you think, the
thought of my thought.

Yes, I shall try to come to-night at nine.



GENEVA, January 19, 1834.

My loved angel, I am almost mad for you, as one is mad. I cannot put
two ideas together that you do not come between them. I can think of
nothing but you. In spite of myself my imagination brings me back to
you. I hold you, I press you, I kiss you, I caress you; and a thousand
caresses, the most amorous, lay hold upon me.

As to my heart, you will always be there, _willingly_; I feel you there
deliciously. But, _mon Dieu!_ what will become of me if you have taken
away my mind. Oh! it is a monomania that frightens me. I rise every
moment, saying to myself, "Come, I'll go there!" Then I sit down again,
recalled by a sense of my obligations. It is a dreadful struggle. It is
not life. I have never been like this. You have consumed the whole of
me. I feel stupefied and happy when I let myself go to thinking of you.
I roll in a delicious revery, where I live a thousand years in a moment.

What a horrible situation. Crowned with love, feeling love in all my
pores, living only for love, and to find oneself consumed by grief and
caught in a thousand spider's-webs.

Oh! my dearest Eva, you don't know. I have picked up your card; it
is there, before me, and I speak to it as if you were there. I saw
you yesterday, beautiful, so admirably beautiful. Yesterday, all the
evening, I said to myself, "She is mine!" Oh! the angels are not as
happy in Paradise as I was yesterday.



GENEVA, February, 1834.

MADAME,--Bautte [chief clock-maker in Geneva] is a great seigneur who
is bored by small matters; and as you deign to attach some importance
to the chain of your slave, I send you the worthy Liodet, who will
understand better what is wanted, and will put more good-will into
doing it. I have told him to put a link to join the two little chains.

Accept a thousand compliments, and the respectful homage of your moujik,

HONORÉ.



GENEVA, February, 1834.

The Sire de Balzac is very well indeed, madame, and will be, in a few
moments, at your fireside for a chat; he is too avaricious of the few
moments that remain to him to spend in Geneva, and if he had not had
some letters to answer, he would have gone there already this morning.
A thousand affectionate compliments to M. Hanski, and to you a thousand
homages full of friendship.



PARIS, Wednesday, February 12, 1834.

I prefer saying nothing more than that. I love you with increasing
intoxication, with a devotion that difficulties increase, to telling
you imperfectly my history for the last three days. Sunday I will post
a complete journal. I have not a minute to myself. Everything hurries
me at once, and time presses. But, adored angel, you will divine me.

The _dilecta_ [Madame de Berny] is better, but the future seems bad to
me. I wait still before despairing.

_Mon Dieu!_ may my thoughts of love echo in your ears and cradle you.



PARIS, Thursday, February 13, 1834.

MADAME,--I arrived much fatigued, but I found troubles at home, of
which you can conceive the keenness. Madame de Berny is ill, and
seriously ill,--more ill than she is aware of. I see in her face a
fatal change. I hide my anxiety from her; it is boundless. Until my own
doctor or a somnambulist reassure me, I shall not feel easy about that
life which you know to be so precious.

I have delayed a day in writing to you, because on Wednesday morning
I had to rush to the rue d'Enfer, and when I could write to you there
was no longer time; the public offices closed earlier on account of
Ash-Wednesday.

The sight of that face so gracious, aged in a month by twenty years,
and horribly contracted, has greatly increased the grief I felt. Even
if the health is restored, and I hope it, it will be always painful
to me to see the sad change to old age. I can say this only to you.
It seems as if nature had avenged herself suddenly, in a moment, for
the long protestation made against her and time. I hope most ardently
that the life may be saved; but I recognized symptoms that I saw with
horror in my father before the irreparable loss. So, I have sorrow
upon sorrow.[1] Now, after confiding to you these distresses, I can,
madame, give you some consoling news. The publisher has understood my
delay, and is not angry with me. I have, certainly, to work enormously,
but, at least, I shall not have the annoyance of being blamed. As
for M. Gosselin, that is only a loss of money. So, you who felt such
affectionate fears lest the prolongation of my stay would prove a
burden may be reassured. I shall have had complete joy, and no remorse;
and now that there is no remorse, I should like a little. It is so
sweet to bear something for those whose friendship is precious to us.
I can tell you from afar, with less trembling in my voice and redness
in my eyes, that the forty-four days I spent in Geneva have been one
of the sweetest halts that I have made in my life of a literary
foot-soldier. That rest was necessary for me, and you have made it into
a joy. It was a sleep with the sweetest dreams,--dreams which will be
realities. True friendship, sweet, kind, noble and good sentiments are
so rare in life that there must mingle a little gratitude in the return
we owe, and I feel as much gratitude as friendship.

I shall forget nothing of our affectionate little agreements: neither
the album, nor the coffee, nor anything. To-day I can only tell you
that I arrived without any hindrance, except great fatigue. The cold
was keen. Saturday morning I crossed the Jura on foot through the
snow, and on reaching the stone where two years ago I sat down to look
at the wonderful spectacle of France and Switzerland separated by a
brook, which is the Lake of Geneva, and a ditch, which is the valley
between the Mont Blanc and the Jura, I had a moment of joy mingled
with sadness. Two years ago I wept over lost illusions [refers to his
rupture with Mme. de Castries], and to-day I had to regret the sweetest
things that have ever come to me, outside of family feelings,--hours of
friendship, the value of which a poor writer from necessity must feel
more keenly than others, because there is in him a great poet for all
that is emotion of the heart.

Yes, I am proud of my personal feelings, but it is a great grief to
know the joys of friendship to their full extent, and lose them, even
momentarily.

To-day I replunge into work, and it is crushing. I have promised that
the second Part of the "Études de Mœurs" shall appear February 25th.
That is only ten days for completing you know how much. My punctuality
must excuse the delays. You see that in writing I am as indiscreet as
when I went to see you.

Well, adieu, madame; believe that I am not "French" in the matter of
memory, and that I know all that I leave of good and true beyond the
Jura. In the hours when I am worn-out I shall think of our evenings;
and the word _patience_, written in the depths of my life, will make me
think of our games. You know all that I would say to the Grand Maréchal
of the Ukraine, and I am certain that my words will be more graceful
from your lips than from my pen. Tell Anna that _her horse_ sends her
his remembrances and kisses her forehead. A thousand affectionate
compliments to Mademoiselle Séverine; inform Mademoiselle Borel that
I have _not_ broken my neck, and keep, I entreat you, madame, at your
feet, my most sincere and most affectionate homage; your noble beauty
assures you of sincerity, and as to the affection, I wish I could prove
it to you in some way that would not involve misfortune.

"Do not forget _to-morrow_," was one of your recommendations when I
told you that I did not believe in morrows; but now I do believe in
them, for, by chance, I have a future, and my publisher has proved it
to me. He is jubilant at the sale of "Eugénie Grandet," and said to me
solemnly, "It sells like bread." I tell this to you who think you see
cakes in it, while most people expect to see me _faire brioches_ of it
[fiasco]. Excuse this studio jest, you who like artists.

Devotion and friendship.

[Footnote 1: Madame de Berny was the friend of his parents, and
twenty-four years older than himself. When the family lived at
Villeparisis the de Bernys lived near them in a hired house, their
own estate being at Saint-Firmin. Madame de Berny recognized Balzac's
genius in his early youth, when parents and friends denied it. For a
time, while at Villeparisis, he taught her son with his own brother
Henry. When Balzac's father opposed his literary career, it was she
who, with Mme. Surville and her husband, induced the old man to advance
him part of his inheritance for the printing-office, and later another
portion to avoid bankruptcy. When the crisis came, in 1828, and his
father would do no more for him, Madame de Berny lent him money from
time to time to meet his load of business debts. The total amount lent
by her, at five per cent interest, was 45,000 francs, the last 6,000
of which he paid in full in 1836. Madame de Berny had cruel trials of
her own. Two of her children were insane, one idolized son and two
daughters died before her in the prime of their youth. The illness here
mentioned was one form of heart disease, from which she rallied for
a time, but died in July, 1836, in the sixty-first year of her age.
Of Balzac's grief at this event his sister says: "My brother was then
(1836) overwhelmed by a great heart-sorrow ... the death of a person
very dear to him.... I have never read anything so eloquent as his
expression of that grief."

Writing, himself, to a friend at that time, he says: "She whom I have
lost was more than a mother, more than a friend, more than any creature
can be to another creature. I can explain her only by divinity. She
sustained me during great storms by words, by actions, by devotion.
If I live, it was through her. She was all to me; and though for the
last two years illness and lapse of time had separated us, yet we were
visible to each other from a distance. She re-acted upon me. She was,
as it were, my moral sun. Madame de Mortsauf in the _Lys_ is a pale
expression of her noble qualities; it is but a distant reflection of
her, for I have a horror of prostituting my own emotions."--TR.]



PARIS, February 15, 1834, eleven o'clock.

My darling Eva, to you belongs this part of my night. Since Wednesday
morning of this week I have been like a balloon; but as I went and
came, and bustled through this Paris, I walked along, exciting myself
with one fixed idea,--the idea of being forever near to you.

My dear idol, I have never had so much courage in my life; or rather,
I have a new life. I read your name in me, I see you; everything seems
easy to me to attain to seeing you again. I am afraid of nothing. My
tears, my regrets, my sadness of love,--all that falls upon my heart
at the moment when I get into bed. Then, alone with myself, I am all
grief not to be at the "Arc," not to have seen my darling, and I go
over in memory the smallest details of those days when, for all grief,
I had that of being waked three hours too soon, hours that separated my
rising from the moment when I set out to go to you.

The next day I work with an ardour of enthusiasm. What shall I tell
you of these four days? I had to see two editors (they came) and
the printer, to finish my proofs, to nurse Mme. de Berny, who is
better,--but what a change! she is still a little feeble, incapable of
correcting my proofs. Everything will suffer for that, but what does it
matter? I want to see that life out of danger.

I felt there how I loved you. A horrible sensation told me that I could
not bear any danger to you. All that recalled my terror at the time of
your nervous attack. Oh, _mon Dieu!_ to see you seriously ill, you,
who sum up and hold all my affections in your heart, my life in your
life,--why! I should die, not of your death, but of your sufferings.
No, you do not know what you are to me. Near you, I feel too much to
tell you egotistical thoughts; here I talk to you all day long. You are
woven into my thought. I find no word but that to express my situation.
As soon as I found myself in Paris I thought of the means of going to
see you for a single day in Geneva.

Here I find violent family troubles. To-day I have had my
brother-in-law and my mother to dinner. That tells you that from five
o'clock to half-past ten I have been given up to them. Yesterday I had
to dine with my sister, my mother, and my brother-in-law; then I was
forced to give them from four to eleven o'clock. Those poor heads are
distracted. I must have courage, ideas, energy, _economy_ for all of
them.

The morning of this Friday I set myself to learn all that has happened
here. I had to go out early, to see the doctor, negotiate a payment
for to-day, 15th, and consult him. So you see the employment of to-day
and yesterday. Thursday was taken up by the publishers, a little
sleep and a bath, also by Madame de Berny, to whom I wished at any
rate to read "Ne touchez pas à la hache." Wednesday, the day after my
arrival, I wrote you in the evening, I ran about all the morning, set
my affairs in order, attended to a thousand little things,--which I
don't particularize, as they are all mere necessary nothings,--made up
my accounts, wrote, etc. After this avalanche of small things here I
am, not much rested, rather less anxious about the _dilecta_, before a
pile of proofs and enormous debts for the end of the month. Madame D...
has urgent need of half her money by the end of February. It is now the
15th, the month is a short one, I must finish my two volumes; I must
finish "Ne touchez pas" and write "La Femme aux yeux rouges."

My adored, my darling _minette_, I tell you things that are terrifying,
but do not be alarmed. Vienna is traced out before me; all will be
well. Your desire to see me, your love, all _you_ hovers above me. I
believe in you only; I want new successes, new fame, new courage; I
_will_ in short, that you shall be a thousand times prouder of your
husband of love than of your lover. Yes, dear celestial Eva, I am
melancholy because I am here and you are down there, but I have no
more discouragements, no more depressions. When I raise my eyes I see
something better than God, I see a sure happiness, a tried happiness.
Oh! you do not know, my treasure, my dear life, what such sweet
certainty is to my soul. You don't know what you did with your infernal
jesting, you remember? You tried upon a most loving heart a weapon you
did not know was loaded. A moment more, and I was lost. My eternal
love could be placed on you alone; I see it, I know it now, for now I
desire you more than ever. My dearest soul, I have for myself all the
efforts that I make to meet you again; I materialize my hope. But, my
beautiful myself, you, what are you doing? Ah! my beautiful, saintly
creature, I know it is not on him of Paris that the burden is heaviest;
it is our Geneva love, it is you who, bearing all our happiness, feel
most our pains, our sorrows. Neither do I ever look _at us two_ without
a smile full of hope, but also slightly tainted with sadness. Oh! my
idolized angel, you in whom all my future resides, all my happiness,
and for whom I desire all the fine glories that make a happy woman, you
whom I love with all the ardour of a young sentiment, of a first and a
last love in one, yes, know it well, no sufferings, ideas, joys, which
can agitate your soul fail to come and agitate mine.[1]

At this moment when I write to you, having left all to plunge into
your heart, to come nearer to you, no, I feel space no longer; we are
near one to the other; I see you, and one of my senses is intoxicated
by the memory of one of those little voluptuous moments which made me
so happy! I am very proud of you. I cry out to myself that I love you!
You see, a poet's love has a little madness in it. None but artists are
worthy of women, because they are somewhat women too. Oh! what need I
have always to hear myself told that I am loved, to hear you repeat
it! You, you are all. You will know only when you hear my voice how
ardently I tell you that you are the only well-beloved, the only wife.
Now I shall rush there more amorously than the two preceding times.
You know why, my dear, naïve wife? Because I know you better, because
I know all there is of divine and girlish in your dear, celestial
character, because--. No, I never dreamed so ambitiously the perfections
that are agreeable to me because I know that I can love ever. Going
to Neufchâtel I _wanted to_ love you; returning from Geneva it is
impossible not to love you!

Who will ever know what the road to Ferney is at the spot where, having
to leave on the morrow, I stood still at the sight of your dear,
saddened face. _Mon Dieu!_ if I tried to tell you all the thoughts
there are in my soul, the voluptuous pleasures which my heart contains
and desires, I should never cease writing, and, unfortunately, the word
"Vienna" is there. I am cruel to both of us in the name of a continued
happiness; yes, _one year_ passed together will prove to you that you
can be better loved each day, and I aspire to September...

My dearest, I have many griefs; this flaming happiness is surrounded by
briars, thorns, stones. I cannot speak to you of family troubles; they
are endless. You will know them from one word, you who feel through
a sister what, in another order of things, I feel through my mother.
My mother has committed, with good intentions, follies that bring a
person into disrepute. Here am I, I, so busy, forced to undertake the
education of my mother, hold her in check, make a child of her.[2] Dear
angel, what a sad thing to think that if the world has accumulated
obstacles in my life, my family have done worse in being of no use to
me, and secretly hampering me. One day or other the world counts us as
a victor to have beaten it. But family griefs are between _us_ and God.

I told Borget that September would see me in Vienna, and a whole year
in the Ukraine and the Crimea, and you know I wrote him that he could
meet you in Italy. I send you a scrap of a letter from that excellent
friend; it will please you; you will see in it that nobility of soul,
that beauty of sentiment, that make us love him. What rush of love
he has to those who love his friend! But do not go and love him too
much, _Madame_. He will take to you _your chain_, the sketches of my
apartment, and your seal, if it is done, without knowing what he hands
to you. So tell me the day you will be in Venice; he will go there. He
is my Thaddeus, you see. What he does for me, I should do for him. One
is never jealous of fine sentiments. As much as _death_ entered cold
into your husband's heart when you spoke of a coquetry to Séverine, so
much should I go joyously to accomplish in your name a service to your
Thaddeus.

From to-day, Sunday, I shall write to you every day a word, on a little
diary. Yes, the Würtemberg Coquebin shall alone touch the manuscript
of "Séraphita," which will be coarsely bound in the gray cloth which
slipped so easily on the floors. Am I not a little of a woman, hey,
_minette_? Have I not found a pretty use for what you wanted destroyed,
and a souvenir? Nothing can be more precious, or simpler. Book of
celestial love, clothed in love and in joys terrestrial as complete as
it is possible to have here below. Yes, angel, complete, full! Yes, my
ambitious one, you fill all my life! Yes, we can be happy every day,
feeling every day new joys.

_Mon Dieu!_ Friday at dinner I saw in my sister's home one of those
scenes which prove that inspired love, that jealous love, that nothing
in Paris can resist continued poverty. Oh! dear angel, what a terrible
reaction in my heart, thinking of the little home in the rue Cassini.
How I swore to myself then, with that iron will, never to expose the
flowers of my life to be in the brown pot in which were the pinks of
Ida's mother,--you know, in "Ferragus." No, no, I never could have that
experience, for never shall I forget the 14th of February, 1834, any
more than the 26th of January; there is a lesson in it for me. Yes, I
want too much; there exists in my being an invincible need to love you
always better, that I may never expose my love to any misunderstanding.
Oh, my heart, my soul, my life, with what joy I recognize at every
step that I love you as you dream of being loved. The most indifferent
things enter into this circumference.

No, your young girl's chain shall remain pure. I would like to employ
it. It is too pretty for a man. That is why I wanted your head by
Grosclaude. What a delicious border I could have made of it, and what
a delicious thought to surround you, you, my dear wife, with all the
superstitions of your childhood which I adore. Your childhood was mine.
We are brothers and sisters through the sorrows of childhood.

There is one of your smiles of happiness, a ravishing little
contraction, a paleness that takes you at the moment of joy, which
returns to stab me with intoxicating memories. Oh! you do not know with
what depth you correspond to the caprices, the loves, the pleasures,
the poesies, the sentiments of my nature!

Come, adieu. Think, my beloved, that at every instant of the day a
thought of love surrounds you; that a light more brilliant and secret
gilds your atmosphere; that my thought is all about you; that my
interior eyes see you; that a constant desire caresses you; that I work
in your name and for you. Take good care of yourself; and remember
that the only serious order that is given to you by him who loves you
and whom you have told me you wished to obey is to _walk_ a great deal
whatever the weather may be. You must. Ah! the doctor laughed at my
fears. Nevertheless, there are baths to be taken, and some precautions,
"fruits of my excessive labour," he said. "So long as you lead your
chaste, monkish life and work your twelve hours a day, take every
morning an infusion of _wild pansy_." Isn't his prescription droll?

You know all the caressing desires that I send you. Well, I hope that
every Wednesday you will know how to draw my letter from the claws
of the post. From now till the end of the month I shall work only my
twelve hours, sleep seven, and spread out the five others in rest,
reading, baths, and the bustle of life. Your Bengali is wise. Well, a
thousand flowers of the soul. All reflection made, I shall send your
ostensible letter by Borget.

[Footnote 1: This ridiculous stuff is carefully translated word for
word. The reader must make what he can of it. It is ludicrous to
suppose that Balzac ever wrote those vapourings of a shop-boy to his
female kind.--TR.]

[Footnote 2: His whole correspondence, and all that we know and can
gather of his life go to prove that he never could have written
this. His family then consisted of his mother and Mme. Surville. His
affection for M. and Mme. Surville appears in every part of his life.
His mother seems to have been at times irritating, and very injudicious
with him, but not in the way suggested. At one period he intrusted her
with all his affairs, and she was his business agent. He shows in his
life and writings a strong respect for the Family bond, and his last
letter to his mother is signed "Ton fils soumis"--"Your submissive
son."--TR.]



PARIS, February 17--February 23, 1834.

No letter to-day, my dearest Eve. _Mon Dieu!_ are you ill? What
tortures one has at such a distance! If you are ill, and they have
taken your letters! A thousand thoughts enter my brain and make me
desperate.

To-day I work much, but get on little. To-morrow I am forced to go
and dine with M. de Margonne, the lord of Saché. Nevertheless, I get
up at half-past one in the morning and go to bed at half-past six. My
habits of work are resumed and the fatigues of toil; but I bear them
well. I find unheard-of difficulties in doing well what I have to do
at this moment. At every instant of the day my thought flies to you. I
have mortal fears of being less loved. I adore you with such complete
abandonment! I have such need of knowing myself loved! I can be happy
only when I receive a letter from you, not every day, but every two
days. Your letters refresh my soul; they cast into it celestial balm.

You cannot doubt me; I work night and day, and every line brings me
nearer to you. But you, my beloved angel, what are you doing? You
are idle; you still see a little company. _Mon Dieu!_ what ties are
between us! They will not break, say! You do not know how much I am
attached to you by all the things that you thought would detach me.
There is not only ungovernable love, passions, happiness, pleasures,
there is also, from me to you, I know not what profound esteem of moral
qualities. Your mind will always please me; your soul is strong; you
are fully the _wife_ I desire for mine. I go over deliciously within
me those forty-five days, and everything proves to me that I am right
in my love. Yes, I can love you always; always hold out to you a hand
full of true affection and receive you in a heart that is always full
of you. I like to speak to you of your superiority because it is real.
Every sound your soul gives out is grand, strong, and true. I am very
happy through you in thinking that you have all the qualities which
perpetuate attachment in life.

My dear flower of love, I wrote in my last letter that I wished you to
walk; but I wish more, I also wish you to give up coffee _au lait_ and
tea. I wish you to obey me, and I desire that you shall only eat dark
meats. Above all, that you bring yourself gradually to using cold water
when you dress. Will you not do all that when it is asked of you in
the name of love? Do not depart in any way from that regimen. As for
walking, begin by short walks and increase every day till you can do
six miles on foot. Take your walk fasting, getting up, and coming back
to breakfast on a little meat, but dark and always roasted. If you love
me you will manage yourself in this way with a constancy that nothing
hinders. Then your beauty will remain the same; you will get slightly
thinner, your health will be good, and you will prevent many illnesses.
Oh! I implore you, follow this regimen, and when you are near the sea
take sea-baths. You do not know how I love you.


Tuesday, 18.

Still no letter; what anguish! I have just returned from Madame de
C[astries], whom I do not want for an enemy when my book comes out,
and the best means of obtaining a defender against the faubourg
Saint-Germain is to make her approve of the work in advance; and she
greatly approved of it. I carried to Madame Appony Madame Potoçka's
letter. The ambassadress [of Austria] was at her toilet; I did not see
her, and, on the whole, I am content; I do not want to be disturbed, I
wish to go nowhere, and the singular idea has come to me of shaving my
head like a monk so as to be unable to go out of the house. I have to
go to a ball Saturday at Dablin's; he has done me services, and I am
forced to have some gratitude.

Do you know there is some question of my taking my mother, sister,
and brother-in-law to live here? I await a family council upon it. I
see many inconveniences; the lessening of my liberty, though nothing
would prevent my going to the Ukraine and Vienna and absenting myself
two years. But, for the last two days, my reason tells me to refuse
this union; and yet it is the only means to prevent my mother from
committing follies. What vexations and impediments! I have worked
little to-day and have rushed about much.


Wednesday, 19.

Furious work. The "Duchesse de Langeais" costs me more than I can
tell you. In my opinion it is colossal in work, but it will be little
appreciated by the crowd. My publisher refuses me any money for my
month's bills; here I am constrained to a thousand annoying efforts,
and shall I succeed? he is right; he represents Madame Bêchet, and
tells me he can't ask her to pay in advance; the new Part must
absolutely be brought out. So I send you a thousand tendernesses. Here,
reading this line, you must think that the heart of your lover was
full of love, that he had _need_ to write to you a thousand gracious
things, but that he must be silent and work! Till to-morrow.


Thursday, 20, five o'clock.

My mother, sister, and brother-in-law are coming to dinner to talk
over affairs. I have worked since one hour after midnight till three
hours after midday without leaving off. Now, angel of mine, decidedly
you will shudder, you will palpitate, when you read the "Duchesse de
Langeais," for it is the greatest thing in women that I have so far
done. No woman of this Faubourg resembles her.

You have a thousand thoughts of love, a thousand caresses, a thousand
prettinesses. I think of you and your pleasure when I hear my name
uttered gloriously everywhere. I wish to become great for a sentiment
greater still.

Till to-morrow. A kiss to the wife, a little _pigeonnerie_ to Eve. A
thousand souls for you in my soul.


Friday, 21.

I have your letter, the second letter written to your dearest one. _Mon
Dieu!_ how I love you! The thousand desires, the hopes of happiness
which fired my heart at each turn of the wheel as I went to Neufchâtel,
the certain delights that I went to find in Geneva and which made you
sublime, ravishing, in short a wife, forever mine,--well, I have felt
all those divers emotions once more, augmented by dear joys, by the
adorable security of an angel in his sky.

Oh! my love, what rapid wings have borne me near to you! Yes, my
thought has kissed your magnificent forehead, my heart has been in your
heart, my thought in your beautiful hair, and my mouth--I dare not say,
but certainly it breathed love and kissed you with unheard-of ardour.
Oh! dear Eve, dear treasure of happiness, dear, noble soul, dear
light, dear world, my only happiness, how shall I tell you fully that
I felt there that I loved you _in æternum_? I ought to have read that
letter on my knees before your portrait! What courage you communicate
to me!

_Eh bien_, I am glad at what you inform me of. To have it so, it must
be the fruit of conscientious thought. Oh! dear darling, I want that
this other _you_, this other _we_, well, I wish he may have all that
can flatter the vanities of a mother, that he may be tall, that he
have your forehead, my energy, that he be handsome and noble, a great
heart and a fine soul. For all that, wisdom! At Vienna, my love, at
Vienna, we will try. What delights in chastity, in fame, in work that
has an object. Fidelity, fame, toil, all that for a woman, one only,
for her whose love shines already upon me for all my life. Yes, Eva,
Eva of love, my beautiful and noble mistress, my pretty, naïve servant,
my great sovereign, my fairy, my flower, yes, you light all things!
Persist in your projects; be a woman as superior in your conduct as you
are in your plans. Be as strong in your house as you are in your love.

Oh! your letters, they ravish me, they stir me; oh! you make me dote
upon you! What a soul, what a heart, what a dear mind! You crown
my ambitions, and yesterday I was saying to Mme. de B... that you
were--you, the unknown of Geneva and Neufchâtel--the realization of the
ambitious programme I had made of a woman.

Ah! my love, it is something, after the triumph that all women desire
to obtain over the senses and the heart of their lovers, to obtain also
the complete and entire assurance that they are admired from afar,
that we can always esteem them, cherish them, take pleasure beside
them. Such as you have seen me near you, such I shall ever be. To you
all my smiles, to you the flowers of heart and love, inexhaustible in
their bloom. To you the candour and freshness of my sentiments, to
you all. To you, who understand the mind, the gaiety, the melancholy,
the grandeur, the transports of the ever diverse love of a poet! Oh! I
stop, kissing your eyes.

To-morrow I rush, about; I have tiresome business matters; but this
is the last time. I shall finish at one blow the difficulty about the
"Physiologie du Mariage," and by the end of March I shall not owe a
sou to Madame Delannoy. After? Well, I shall resume work to accomplish
the rest. I tell you nothing of these tramps, but they take much time,
weary me, exhaust me, and my love, as much as necessity, cries to me
every morning, "March!"

My love, my Eve, night and day I go to sleep and wake in your heart,
in your thought. To suffer, to work for you, these are pleasures. Till
to-morrow.


Saturday, 22.

I have just received your ostensible letter and have answered it. I
spoke _stupidly_ of your chain, but I have not the heart to throw the
letter into the fire and write it over again. I am tired. To-night I
must go to a ball; I, at a ball! But, my love, I must. It is at the
house of the only friend who has ever gallantly served me. I will
send you the pattern of a chain, that of Vaucanson; have it made
solid, and Liodet can send it to me and draw on me for the cost. Tell
me if bronze-gilt things can enter Russia. I have had an admirable
three-branched candelabrum made here, and I should like to send you
one; also an inkstand and an alarm-clock (a very useful thing to a
woman), in short, all that I use here to be the same with you. If I had
been richer do you think I would not have substituted to you a chain
like yours and taken yours, in order that you might say to yourself
while playing with it, "He plays with that chain!" But I can make such
joys for ourselves later. Answer me about the bronze, because I want
you to have that masterpiece before your eyes. Think, what happiness to
see as you write to me, _Exsultat vitam angelorum_, which I shall see
in writing to you. Oh! I am greedy, hungry for such things, which put
two lovers unceasingly in each other's hearts! I shall have your room
at Wierzchownia made just like mine here. I want you to have the same
carpet.

Oh! I adore you. Just now I wept on thinking of the floor of your house
in Geneva. How lucky to have the strength not to cough! These tears
have told me that I shall be at Vienna, September 10, and that I shall
press you, happy one, on this heart that is all yours.

_Bébête_, in ten years you will be thirty-seven and I forty-five, and,
at that age we can love, marry, and adore each other for a lifetime.
Come, my noble companion, my dear Eve, never any doubts,--you have
promised me. Love with confidence. Séraphita is we two. Let us spread
our wings with the same movement, and love in the same way. I adore
you, looking neither before nor behind. _You_ are the present, all my
happiness at every moment.

Do not be jealous of Madame P...'s letter; that woman must be _for us_.
I have flattered her, and I want her to think that you are disdained.
All that I read you in the "Duchesse de Langeais" has been changed. You
will read a new book.

Dear angel, no, we will never quit the sphere of happiness where you
have made me a happiness so complete. Love me always, you will see me
always happy; oh, my life, oh, my beautiful life! Here, I no longer
know what an annoyance is in seeing my whole life ardent with one sole
love. Tell me what you are doing. Your visit to Genthod delighted me.
Never let any woman bite you without biting her deeper. They will fear
you and esteem you.

Thanks for the violet; but an end of white ribbon would please me
better; it has no longer any smell. I send you a violet from my garden.



Sunday, 23.

Adieu, soul of my soul; will this letter tell you how you are loved?
Will it tell it to you really? No; never really. _Il faut mes coups de
bec là où est l'amour_.

I hope to finish my volume this week. You will receive it in Geneva. I
will attend to your orders, and do blindly what you tell me. But write
_names_ legibly in all business.

Would you believe that two young men dined with me yesterday and
told me that several men, two of them friends of theirs, said _they
were I_ at the [masked] ball at the Opera, and obtained the favours
of well-bred women while I was at Geneva, and that I have been thus
calumniated. There are women who boast they have been mine, and that
they come to me, to me, who see only _la dilecta_, who receive nobody,
who want to live in your heart! I learned that last night.

Well, adieu my love; no, not adieu, but _à bientôt_, at Vienna, _cara
mia_, my treasure. I have to work horribly, still; seven or eight
proofs to a sheet. Ah! you will never know what the volume you will
soon read has cost.

I hope to be in funds for my payments; I hope that on March 25th the
third Part will appear. So, all goes well. I lose five hundred francs
more by Gosselin, but pooh! The violet will tell you a thousand things
of love. The Würtemberg Coquebin will bind "Séraphita" marvellously
with the gray cloth; do you understand, treasure?

I go to-day at three o'clock to Madame Appony. Perhaps I shall wish to
go to Madame Potoçka of Paris. I will speak to you of that.



PARIS, March 2, 1834.

My salvation! For my salvation! No, let me believe that between the two
persons of whom you are thinking and me, you have not hesitated, you
have condemned me. At least, there is in that all the grandeur of true
love.

I was working night and day to go to you. Now I shall certainly work
as much, for it is not possible for me to take the slightest resolution
till my mother is physically happy. I have still a year to suffer.

Let us say no more of me. So you have been cruelly agitated? A
sentiment which gives such remorse was feeble, and it is my heart that
was blamed!--I, to whom _adoremus in æternum_ meant something!

Fate is about to take from me a true affection, and to-day I lose all
my beliefs in happiness, without anything being able to disengage me
from myself. Ah! you have not known me! All those who have suffered
forgive, you know. I shall stay as I am; I cannot change. You said
yourself: "The Jules women love faithfully, in spite of desertion."
Am I therefore not a man? Is this another test? It costs me more than
life; it costs me my courage.

I cannot oppose to this blow either disdain, contempt, or any of the
egotistical sentiments that console. I remain in my stupor, without
understanding. Ah! I knew not that I was writing for myself: _To
wounded hearts, silence and, shade_.

_Mon Dieu!_ my book is finished; I am not rich enough to destroy it,
but I lay it at your knees, begging you not to read it: Eve should not
open a book in which is the "Duchesse de Langeais." You might, though
certain of the entire devotion of him who writes to you, be wounded,
as one is pricked by bushes. I shall always weep at being unable to
suppress it.

I cannot bid you adieu; I shall never quit you more, and, from this
day, I shall not allow myself even the sight of a woman. But you have
not told me all! I have been odiously calumniated. You have given ear
to impostors. There is room for many blows in a heart like mine; you
cannot kill it easily. It is eternally yours, without division.

I tell you nothing of what is in my soul; I have neither strength
nor ideas. I suffer through you. So long as it is from your hand, why
should I complain? Ah! you shall see that I know how to love. Our
hearts will always understand each other.



PARIS, March 9, 1834.

My angel returns to me; ah! I will hide my anguish from you, my
griefs, my terrible resolutions of a week in which all things have
come together to rend my heart. You, Monday; Tuesday. I quarrelled,
perhaps to fight, with Émile de Girardin,--that was happiness. There's
a society I shall never see again and never want to see. My enemies
are setting about a rumour of my liaison with a Russian princess;
they name Madame P... I have seen since my return only Madame Appony,
Madame de C..., Madame de G..., and, for one hour, Madame de la B...
That rumour can come only from Geneva, and not from me, who have never
opened my mouth about my journey. Here I am, on bad terms with Madame
de C[astries] on account of the "Duchesse de Langeais"--so much the
better. But all this happens at once. So, no _solitude_ shall ever be
more complete than mine.

I have but an hour in which to answer you. Oh! my love, I swear to you
I wrote to Madame P... only to prevent the road to Russia being closed
to me. It would be poor cleverness to have it said here, in Paris, that
I am starting for Russia. That is the way to have passports refused to
me when I ask for them. I have not seen Zaluzki. Is it he who talks?
_Mon Dieu!_ I, in my hole, to be subjected to such griefs. Read the
"Duchesse de Langeais." You will read it with delight. As true as that
I love and adore you, I never said more than two sentences to Madame
Bossi, and I never looked at her.

You desire, oh, my angel, that I shall not again be coquettish except
with men. But between now and Vienna there is only toil and solitude.
Give me the means to send you my book, and your coffee, in which will
be your hair-chain. Therefore, undo the parcel yourself.

Never give yourself such anxieties again; yesterday, Saturday, without
_la dilecta_, I should have killed myself. Oh! I entreat you, if you
wish that I should esteem you and adore you to the end of our days,
do not change; be solely mine. I, do you see? have none but you. The
superhuman efforts that I make are the greatest proofs of love a man
can give. Oh, dear, adored one, my Eve, my Eva, to give his life, what
is that? Nothing. Each time that I saw you I gave it without regret. I
sacrificed all to you. But to rise every day at midnight to plunge into
a crater of work, and to do it with one name upon my lips, one image in
my heart, one woman before me!--_strength and constancy_; I live only
by the sentiment of grandeur which a mysterious love conveys to me.
This is loving. Oh! be my true Beatrice, a Beatrice who gives herself,
but remains an angel, a light! All that your jealousy can demand,
all that your caprice can exact shall be done with joy. Except the
_dilecta_, who corrects my proofs and who, I swear to you, is a mother,
no woman shall hear me, shall see me.

My mother and sister have decided. They will live together, and not
come to me. I am still free.

Oh, my love, my love, dear and adored, forgive me my answer to your
letter; but to sacrifice a love like mine to a child, to a husband,
to reject it for any interest whatever; that kills me. Oh, my angel,
to think that you are a fancy, after all that you said to me, after
all that you exacted, all that I accomplished,--it is enough to die
of it! I am proudly a poet; I live by the heart, by sentiments only,
and I have but one sentiment. My _dilecta_, at sixty years of age,
is no longer anything but a mother; she is all my family, as you are
all my heart, all my future! I have to work hard; the "Duchesse"
will appear on the 15th; she excites all Paris already. _Mon Dieu!_ a
thousand kisses; may each be worth a thousand. Oh, my angel, I hope I
may not again have to tell you that to betray me in the name of any one
whatever is to put me to death. I kiss you with transport. The Bengali
is virtuous. He is dead under his toil.

Put _Ave_ on the inkstand. The "Contes Drolatiques" will tell you why.

I have said nothing. I had a thousand effusions of the soul; I am
forced to keep them back. This letter must go to the post at one
o'clock. I received yours at midday.



PARIS, March 11, 1834.

My flower, my one sole love, I have just received the letter you
wrote me after having received the letter of _badnesses_. Oh! what
happiness to be able to write to you once more so that you can leave
Geneva without a regret! Since the letter in which you return to me,
you cannot imagine how beautiful, grand, sumptuous, has been the fête
in my heart at the recovery of your cherished heart. What joy, what
intoxication of thought, what forgetfulness of pain, or rather how
sweet its memory is, since it tells me how much you are loved, adored,
as you wish to be. Oh! if you had seen all that, never a suspicion, nor
a doubting word, nor a written phrase would dishonour the purity, the
blue immensity of this love that dyes all my soul, fills all my life,
is become the foundation of all my thoughts.

For the last two days I am drunk with happiness, glad, joyous, dancing,
when I have a moment, jumping like a child. Oh, dear talisman of
happiness, darling Eva, _minette_, wife, sister, family, light, all! I
live alone in delights; I have said a sincere farewell to the world, to
all. _Mon Dieu!_ forgive what you call my coquetries; I kneel at your
beloved knees, dimpled, loved, kissed, caressed; I lay my head against
you, I ask pardon, I will be solitary, a worker, I will walk with none
but Madame de B..., I will work without ceasing. Oh! blessed be the
Salève, if the Salève gives me my happy Eve! Ah! dearest, I adore you,
don't you see? I have no other life, no other future.

I received yesterday a letter from Madame P... I shall not answer it,
to end the correspondence. Besides, I can write only to you. My time is
taken up in a frightful manner. For the last ten days I have not varied
it; to bed at six o'clock, rising at midnight. I shall do this till
April 20. After which I shall take two weeks' liberty to rest. My book
will appear on the 16th, the day of your departure from Geneva. You
will find it addressed to you, _bureau restant_, at the coach office in
Genoa.

I wrote you in great haste on Sunday. Incredible tales are being told
about me. While I am sitting up all night they say an Englishwoman
has eloped with me. It is no longer a Russian princess; it is an
Englishwoman. Oh! my dear treasure, I implore you, never let your dear
celestial forehead be clouded by the effect of a "they say," for you
will hear it gravely said that I am crazy, and a thousand absurdities.
Write to me and expect an answer. I never keep you waiting. Your dear
writing overcomes me; it shines in my eyes like the sun. I _feel_ you,
I breathe you when I see it.

You will travel surrounded by the thoughts of love; I accompany you in
idea, I never leave you. At each correction made, at each page written,
I cry, "Vienna!" That is my word of joy, my exclamation of happiness.
Why do you speak of God? There are not two religions, and you are mine.
If you totter, I shall believe in nothing. Oh! my love, you have given
me _yourself_; you will never withdraw it. One alone cannot break that
which belongs to two. You are all nobleness, be all constancy. I shall
be that without effort, with joy; I love you like my breath, and _in
æternum_; oh, yes, for all my life.

I cannot tell you the sufferings of my week of passion, of my desire
to go and end my days at your house in Neufchâtel. I told Borget to
come at once. I withdrew "Séraphita" from the printers, and meant to
send you a sole copy (without the manuscript), bound with your gifts
of love. In short, a thousand follies, a thousand tempests agitated my
heart cruelly. Oh! I am much of a child! It is a crime to torment a
love so true, so pure, so unutterable! Oh! how angry I was with you! I
cursed your _analyzing_ forehead, on which I place a thousand kisses
of love. Oh! my good treasure, make me no more bitterness. In writing
a few sweet things to Madame P... I had in view to stand well with the
dear ambassadress, because, through her, I shall have Pozzo di Borgo,
and I do not want any hindrance to my year in the Ukraine, the first
complete happiness of my life. So, if your cousin shows you my letter
triumphantly, play the disdained, I entreat you. To see the Ukraine,
eighteen good months! and no money interests to hamper me! I can even
die for you without wronging any one. Listen, my love; this is the
secret of my nights: that I may be happy without a thought to tarnish
my joy! After that, I can die happy, if I have lived one year beside
you. Every hour would be the most beautiful poem of love. At every
hour I should be happy with the happiness of a child, a schoolboy, who
believes with delight in the love of a woman. If heaven marries us some
day, at whatever moment of my life it be, it will be the union of two
souls in one. You are a dear, loved spirit. You please me in all ways,
and you are, far-off or near, the superior woman, the mistress always
desired, each of us sustaining the other. It is so sweet to a man to
find that the mind, the heart, the soul, the understanding of the woman
who pours out to him his pleasures, is not narrow.

Oh! dearest, all is in you. I believe in you, I love you, and as I have
known you better I have found a thousand reasons for eternal attachment
in esteem and in the thousand things of your heart and mind. There is
no evil possible for me when I think of the life that you can make me
by your love. In writing this, which you will read in that room of
love before quitting it, I wish to cast upon this paper which you will
hold all my soul, all the tangible qualities of a being who is yours
forever; never withdraw from me the heart I have pressed, the adorable
charms of that cherished soul--yourself in short.

Adieu, soul of my soul, my faith, strength, courage, love--all the
great sentiments that make a great man, and a happy life. Adieu; _à
bientôt_, and sooner than you think, dearest.

Yes, I will love you better than any woman was ever loved, and our
"Chêne" will be better than that you picture to me. Coquette, indeed!
You know well that my heart will rest in yours without other clouds to
our love than those you make.

Come, Auguste, carry this to the general post-office.[1]

[Footnote 1: This is the last but one of these spurious letters. There
is one other which plainly belongs to this series, but it has been
placed at a later date for a purpose which will appear farther on.--TR.]



PARIS, March 30--April 3, 1834.

I have not written to you sooner, madame, because I presumed that you
would not be in Florence before the 1st of April. I have sent to the
address of MM. Borri & Co. a little package containing your copy of the
second part of the "Études de Mœurs au XIXe Siècle," and I have added
the Prologue of the third _dizain_ of the "Contes Drolatiques" for M.
Hanski, inasmuch as there is something in it about a famous inkstand,
and things that will make him laugh; for I do not insult you with my
Prologue, pay attention to that. It is to M. Hanski, and not to you,
that this proof belongs.

You will see at the end of the "Duchesse de Langeais" that I have
preserved a remembrance of the Pré-l'Évêque by dating the work from
that revolutionary and military spot where we saw such warlike
intentions. The third _dizain_ is also dated from the Eaux Vives, and
the Hôtel de l'Arc.

I have many things to tell you, but little time to myself. My
third Part is in the press, and I ought to make up for time lost.
Nevertheless, Madame Bêchet is a very good person.

Forgive the want of order in my letter, but I will tell you the events
that have happened to me as they come into my memory.

In the first place, I have said adieu to that mole-hill of Gay, Émile
de Girardin and Company. I seized the first opportunity, and it was so
favorable that I broke off, point-blank. A disagreeable affair came
near following; but my susceptibility as man of the pen was calmed by
a college friend, ex-captain in the ex-Royal Guard, who advised me. It
all ended with a piquant speech replying to a jest.

Another thing I must tell you is that I have recently quarrelled also
with the Fitz-James. And here I am, as much alone as the woman most
ambitious of love could desire, if any woman could wish for a man whom
excessive work is withering more and more. It is two months to-day that
I have been working eighteen hours a day.

The "Médecin de campagne" will be completely sold off in a few days.
I am in all the fuss and worries of getting out a new edition of that
book, which I want to sell at thirty sous, in order to popularize it.



Thursday, April 3.

From March 30, the day on which I began to write to you, until this
evening, I have been lying on my pallet unable to write, read, or work,
or do anything at all. A prostration of all my forces made me very
anxious; but to-day I am quite well, and I am going for a week to the
Pavilion in the forest of Fontainebleau. I have ordered all my letters
to be kept in Paris. I want change of air, and to work at one thing
only; for I have just suffered very much, but, thank God, it is all
over. I resume my letter.

I invited your cousin Bernard ... to dinner, with Zaluski, and
Mickiewicz, your dearest poet, whose face pleased me much. Bernard is
very handsome and was very witty.

I entreat you, madame, to send me word, by return of post, if you will
still be in Florence May 10th, how much time you stay in Rome, when you
arrive, and when you will leave; because when my third Part is done I
shall have twenty days to myself. I want to use them in travelling and
doing nothing, and I shall accompany Auguste Borget to Florence. We
shall leave May 1st and it takes only eight days from Paris to Florence.

Do not blame me too much for the unpunctuality of my correspondence.
In the extreme desire for LIBERTY which possesses me, I don't consult
human forces, I work exorbitantly. I have at this moment in press: two
volumes of my third Part of the "Études de Mœurs," two volumes of "Les
Chouans," and the third _dizain_; then, in a week from now, two volumes
for Gosselin. It is enough to terrify one. But there are two magic
words which make me able to do all: _liberty_ on the 1st of September;
_Vienna_ on that day; and I shall not regret my nights or my tortures,
for pen-receipts will tally with expenses.

_Mon Dieu!_ what a charming project,--to be in Florence May 10, and
back in Paris for the 20th! To see Florence with you! Write me quickly;
for after these terrible toils through the month of April I must have
twenty days' rest, and I know nothing more delightful than to see an
Italian city while accompanying a friend.

I think of you very often, and I much regret Geneva, where I worked
so much, all the while amusing myself. Except for a few worries, my
affairs are going well. Some flatterers say that my fame is increasing,
but I know nothing of that, for I live in my chimney-corner, working
for citizen rights in the Ukraine. Your poor "Séraphita" is laid aside.
What is promised must be done before all else. You yourself, without
knowing it, tell me to work. I keep before me the _bon à tirer_ [order
to print] which you gave for one sheet in Geneva, and it seems to me
a perpetual counsel. Do you know, it is rather melancholy to think
of you only with regrets. You do not know that for twelve or fifteen
years, Neufchâtel and Geneva are the two sole periods when I have been
permitted, by what grace of heaven I know not, to look neither forward
nor back; to live beneath the sky without thinking of griefs, or
business, or poverty; you have been to me something beneficent. There
is more gratitude in my remembrance than you know. And now that I have
been nailed to an insatiable table for two months, and shall be for
another month, leaving it only to sleep, I cannot think without emotion
of the walks to Sacconex, to Coppet, and of your house, and my hunger
which made us leave the garden where we were sitting under the willows
and you discovered that good smell in the Indian chestnut, macerated in
water. There are none of those tranquil pleasures in Paris. But I am
not in Paris now.

Here I am alone, much alone. I have parted from society, and have
returned to my former fruitful solitude. Before all things else, I must
finish a book, and the "Études de Mœurs" ought to be finished this
year. My liberty will be to go and come and remain where I please to go
and remain. Nevertheless, I do not know a more agreeable trip than to
Florence to see you for five days, and hear you for one single evening
say "tiyeuilles" or "Iodet." That, I think, would restore my courage
for another three months.

Perhaps I shall bring M. Hanski the third _dizain_ to laugh away his
"blue devils;" at any rate, he must be very ill if he resists my wild
joy. It is two months since I laughed; one more will make three; but
_then_ he shall die of laughing. Tell him that as Geneva was so base
in the matter of the poor Poles, I will never speak well of Geneva
again. Are you comfortable in Italy? How did you cross the mountains?
I follow you in thought. Have you thought of your poor, humble moujik
and his _blonde capricieuse_ at Aix? You ought to have thought of him
at Aiguebelles, where the servants at the inn are so gracious, and at
Turin, where he wished to go. Thank you, madame, if you think a little
of him who thinks much of you.

I have not seen Grosclaude. Our Exhibition is detestable. There are
five to ten fine pictures in three thousand five hundred canvases.

How is your dear Anna? You will tell me, won't you, how your little
caravan rolls on? M. Bernard ... came yesterday to make me compliments
on the "Duchesse de Langeais," and was very gracious.

_Mon Dieu!_ you will forgive me--me, a poor hermit toiler--for talking
to you so much of myself, because I am calling for your egotism in
reply; to talk to me solely of yourself would be doing well by me. I
can tell you only two things: I work constantly, I pay, I think of my
friends. I have in my heart a happy corner, and that ought to suffice
to make a noble life. My "blue devils" have no time to rise to the
surface.

Do you still intend to play Grandet at Wierzchownia? for in that case I
shall await thirty invitations before going there, to save provisions.
Do you want anything in Paris? I hope that you and M. Hanski will not
employ any other correspondent than me. But Borget and I will arrive
laden with cotignac, peach preserves, and Angoulême and Strasburg
pâtés. You ought to give me a commission; you don't know what pleasure
it is to me to busy myself for something a friend asks of me, how
it brightens my life. A fancy--that's myself only; but the fancy of
another, whom I love, is a double fancy.

Spachmann [binder] has done your album, and I am beginning to collect
the autographs. It will take long, but you shall have it, with
patience. I begin with the oldest. Pigault-Lebrun is eighty-five years
old; he shall begin it.

Adieu, madame, I would like to keep on writing to you always, just
as when I was by your fireside I did not want to go away. But I must
bid you adieu--no, not adieu, but au revoir. I shall await with great
impatience your answer, to know if you will be in Florence May 10. Do
be there! The shorter the journey, the longer time I shall have to see
you; I have twenty days to myself, no more. The twenty-first I must
resume the _yoke of misery_.

Madame de G[irardin] has made many efforts to get me back again,
but your obstinate moujik--he would not be moujik if he did not say
"nie"--has said nay as elegantly as he could, for he is a little
civilized, your devoted moujik.[1]

HONORÉ DE BALZAC.

You know that all I wish to say to those about you; my regards, my
respects, will have more value by passing through your lips.

[Footnote 1: Delphine de Girardin made many attempts to recover him,
and did so, finally. In spite of his estrangement from her house she
was always loyal to him; and during the time of his quarrel with her
husband she wrote many kind things of him in "La Presse."--TR.]



FRAPESLE, near ISSOUDUN, April 10, 1834.

MADAME,--Since I had the pleasure of writing to you I have been very
ill. My night work, my excesses, have been paid for. I fell into a
state of prostration which did not allow me to read or write or even
to listen to a sustained discussion. My bodily weakness equalled
the intellectual weakness. I could not move. What has frightened me
most is that for the last two years these attacks of debility have
increased. At first, after a month of toil, I would feel one or two
hours' weakness; then five hours, then a whole day. Since then the
weakness has become excessive, lasting two days, three days. This time
it came near death; but for the last ten days I am convalescent.[1] The
doctor ordered me change of air, absolute repose, no occupation, and
nourishing food. So I am here for ten days in Berry, at Issoudun, with
Madame Carraud.

To-day, April 10th, I am better; I can write to you and tell you of my
little death-struggle, my despair, for, feeling no force, no thought
within me, I wept like a child. But to-day I recover courage; _passato,
pericolo, gabbato il santo_. I shall laugh at the doctor who said to
me:--

"You will die like Bichat, like Béclard, like all those who abuse by
their brain the human forces; and what is so extraordinary in this
is that you--you the most energetic _forbidder_ of emotion, you the
apostle who preach the absence of thought, you who pretend that life
goes off in the passions and by the action of the brain more than by
bodily motions,--you will be dead for having neglected the formulas you
formulated!"

From all this has resulted, madame, a good and beautiful project of
opposing to each month of toil a full month of amusement. So, from the
10th or 12th of May, I shall take twenty days in which to go and see
you for two or three days wherever you are in Italy. If you are willing
to see Saint Peter's at Rome in June, we will see Rome together. Then,
after admiring Rome for five days, I will come back and take up my
yoke. Next, having spent July and August on new _pensums_, I will go
to see Germany, and salute you once more in Vienna, for I don't know
anything sweeter than to give a purpose of friendship to a journey of
pure amusement, to go in search of two or three gentle evenings, and
make you laugh, and chase away the "blue devils."

You have not written to me; do you know that there is ingratitude in
you? it is you who have a "French" heart. What! not the smallest little
line! Nothing from Genoa, nothing from Florence. You received, I hope,
in Florence, my third Part, and the third _dizain_ to make M. Hanski
laugh.

Just now I am completing the third Part, and doing a
master-work,--"César Birotteau,"--the brother of him whom you know,
victim like his brother, but victim of Parisian civilization, whereas
his brother is the victim of a single man. It is another "Médecin de
campagne," but in Paris; it is Socrates _stupid_, drinking, in shadow
and drop by drop, his hemlock; an angel trodden underfoot, an honest
man misjudged. Ah! it is a great picture; it will be grander, more vast
than anything I have yet done. I want, if you forget me, that my name
should be cast to you by Fame, as a reproach.

Do you know, madame, that you are very seriously in my prayers of night
and morning,--you and all those you care for? You do not truly know
the heart which chance has made you meet. A desire to boast possesses
me--but no; time will be to you a too constant, too noble eulogy on me.
I do not wish to add to it.

As soon as "Birotteau" is printed, the third Part out, the _dizain_ in
the light, I shall rush joyously to Italy to seek your approbation as a
sweet reward. Maître Borget cannot come with me; you will see him, no
doubt, in Venice; but the artist moves slowly, he sips all, whereas I
am forced to go like the wind and return like a vapour. Borget is here,
and returns with me to Paris, April 20.

Poor Madame Carraud is very unwell, and is causing alarm to her
friends. She confided to me the secret of her sufferings. She is
perhaps pregnant, and another child would be her death. She has hardly
strength to live.

I beg of you, write me in detail about your travelling life, that I
may know all your joys and even your disappointments. I have so much
admired the splendid face of Mickiewicz; what a noble head! Write me
what you think of the "Duchesse de Langeais." Kiss Anna on the forehead
for me, her poor _horse_. Present my regards to M. Hanski; how does
Italy suit him? My respects to Mademoiselle Séverine. To you, madame,
my most affectionate thoughts.

I must bid you adieu for to-day, because work calls me. In ten days,
after "Birotteau" is done, I will write you a long letter and make up
arrears. I will tell you my past troubles, my sufferings laid to rest,
and my sensations, inasmuch as you deign to take an interest in your
poor literary moujik. Your beautiful Séraphita is very mournful; she
has folded her wings and awaits the hour to be yours. I will not have
a single rival thought disturb that thought you have adopted. Perhaps
I will bring her to Rome that she may be done, little by little, under
your eyes. Each day enlarges the picture and _magnifies it_.

I have not had time to answer Madame Jeroslas ...; she cannot be
pleased with me; truly it is not possible for me to write except to you
and the persons who are nearest to my heart. One has but three friends
in the world, and if one is not exclusive for them, what good is it to
love? When I have an instant to myself I am too tired to write; but
I think; I carry my thoughts back to Geneva, I utter, mechanically,
"tiyeuilles," and I illusion myself. Then a proof arrives, and I return
to my sad condition of workman, of manual labour.

Well, adieu. Be happy; see the beautiful scenery, the fine pictures,
the masterpieces, the galleries, and say to yourself if some gnat hums,
or the fire sparkles, or a flame darts up, it is a friend's thought
coming from my heart, from my soul toward you; and that I, too,--I
would like my share in those beautiful enjoyments of art, but that I am
here in my galley, having nought to offer you except a thought--but a
constant thought.

I wrote you on the day I felt recovered; therefore have no fear if you
take an interest in my health. I have no more weakness except in the
eyes.

[Footnote 1: This letter in the French volume is dated April 10, which
is, of course, wrong, or else the previous letter is misdated.--TR.]



PARIS, April 28, 1834.

MADAME,--I have just received your good letter of the 20th, written in
Florence; and you know by this time that it is impossible for me to go
there. You must have received my little line from Issoudun, in which I
asked you with great cries for Saint Peter's in Rome. For that trip I
can answer. At that time all my affairs will be arranged. But Madame
Bêchet needs me and my Parts, otherwise she will be compromised.

I hope you have not mingled anything personal in your reflections on:
"it was only a poem" [conclusion of the "Duchesse de Langeais"]. You
feel, of course, that a _Thirteener_ must have been a man of iron. You
would not accuse an author of thinking all he writes?

If painters, poets, artists were sharers in all they represent, they
would die at twenty-five. No, my duchess is not my Fornarina. When
I have her--but _I have_ a Fornarina--I shall never paint her. Her
adorable spirit may animate my soul, her heart may be in my heart, her
life in my life, but paint her, show her to the public!--I would sooner
die of hunger, for I should die of shame.

I am very glad that you do not yet know me fully; because now you may,
perhaps, love me better some day. _Mon Dieu!_ what you tell me of your
health and that of Monsieur Hanski made me bound in my chair. Madame,
in the name of the sentiment, the sincere affection I bear you, I
implore you when you or Monsieur Hanski or your Anna are ill, write
to me. Don't laugh at what I am going to say to you. Recent facts at
Issoudun proved to me that I possess a great magnetic power, and that
either by a somnambulist, or by myself, I can cure those who are dear
to me. Therefore, have recourse to me. I will leave everything to go to
you. I will devote myself with the pious warmth of true devotion to the
care that illness needs, and I can give you undeniable proofs of that
singular power. Therefore, put me in the way of knowing how you are.
Don't deceive me, and don't laugh at this.

Your _romances_ afflict me. Why have such dark suppositions? _Mon
Dieu!_ as for me, when I dream, I dream of happiness only.

Yesterday, some one told me the secret of my journeys was discovered,
and that I had been to join Queen Hortense. I laughed much at that.

You make me weep with rage when I read what you say of Florence. Shall
I ever meet with all that again? Oh! make me very supplicating to M.
Hanski for the eight days I can be in Rome. See! it is possible. Saint
Peter's day is the 23rd of June. I can leave Paris on the 12th for
Lyon, and reach Marseille the l5th, whence a steamboat takes you in
forty-eight hours to Civita Vecchia. I could stay eight or ten days
in Rome without doing any harm to my affairs; for all, doctors and
somnambulists, are unanimous in beseeching me to balance a month's work
by a month's amusement. Now there is nothing that takes me so out of
my work as music and travel--in Paris no interest excites my soul; I
live in a desert; I am, as it were, in a convent; the heart is moved
by nothing. Rome would be a grand and beautiful distraction if I were
there alone, but with you for _cicerone_ what would it be! And this is
not said from gallantry, _à la_ "charming Frenchman." No, it is said
from heart to heart, to the woman of the North, to the barbarian!

I have broken with everybody; I was tired of grimaces. I have but two
unalterable friendships here which are true, and to which I at times
confide. Then, I have work into which I fling myself daily.

This letter will still reach you in Florence. It will tell you feebly
my regrets, which are boundless. This heavy material life, which I so
largely escaped in Geneva, oppresses me here. I thirst for my liberty,
for freedom, and if you knew what prodigies of will, what creating
persistence is needed to secure no more than my twenty-four days in
June and July, you would say, like one of my friends who has perceived
a little of the intellectual working of my furnace (and you know more
than a mere acquaintance), that Napoleon never showed as much will, or
as much courage.

What you have written me about Montriveau [in the "Duchesse de
Langeais"] worries me, for you are _a little_ epigrammatic, and it
would be a great grief to me to be ill judged or misunderstood by you.
You are the second person to whom I have shown my mind in its truth. I
like to let no one penetrate it, because if they do, what is there to
give to those we love? You did not mean to wound me, did you?

I like your judgments on Florence and works of art much; and I would
greatly like, if you will be so good to your moujik, that you should
study Rome, so that when I come I may not stop to look at bagatelles,
but see in my eight days all that there is of really fine, and good,
and masterly, which goes to the soul. Do not say "Montriveau" to me
again. Remember that I have the life of the heart and the life of the
brain; that I live more by sentiments than by the caprices of the mind;
that I would rather feel than express ideas; and that neither way does
wrong to the other. One needs a little intellect to love.

I write you as it comes, without premeditation; for I must tell you
that I am in the midst of "Les Chouans," which I am printing with
extreme rapidity, _causa metalli_, to put an end to some debts. But
no matter! my scribbling will surely tell you that a loving thought
follows you wherever you go, and that there is at a fireside near the
Observatoire a poet who takes interest in your steps, is troubled by
your cough, and made uneasy by Monsieur Hanski's illness. I was already
uneasy enough at receiving no letters from you. I belong to you like a
moujik, and if M. Hanski gives wheat to his, you owe to me, moujik of
Paulowska, a few straws of affection, here and there. You might have
written to me _three times_ since Turin.

I will tell you nothing of my combats; I am occupied solely by my work
and by a life which is also a work for me; not a poem, madame, but all
that there is of good and beautiful upon this earth. Thus, everything
here, politics, men, and things, seem to me very paltry beside what I
feel in heart and brain.

I am every day more grieved to have been forced to abandon "Séraphita;"
but in Rome it shall be the work of my choice. It belongs to you and
it ought to be done beneath your eyes.

_Mon Dieu!_ if you are better, tell me so quickly. Throw into the post
these words only: "I am," or "We are better." It is so good to see
the writing, the painting, of a thought escaped from the heart of a
friend! You don't know how, in the evening, when I am very weary, my
castle in the air, my novel, my own, is Diodati; but a Diodati without
the deceptions of your novels; a Diodati without bitterness in its
dénouement. Of us two, am I indeed the younger and the one most full
of illusions? There are days when I say _tiyeuilles_, laughing like a
child, and those who take me for a grave man would be stupefied. Come,
don't knock down my dreams, my castles. Let me believe in a cloudless
sky. Since I exist I have lived by unalterable beliefs only, and you
are one of those beliefs. Don't cough and look dark; may the troubles
of _spleen_ never come either to you or to M. Hanski, to whom my letter
is half addressed; take it only as a talk full of affection.

Our Exhibition has nothing regrettable. M. Hanski would not have bought
much there; but if I were rich I should like to send you one picture,
an Algiers interior, which seems to me excellent. Borget is preparing
for his journey; you will see him in Venice perhaps, for he moves
slowly.

I beg of you, madame, tell me whether, according to this new
arrangement, we can meet in Rome; for I begin to perceive that I am
writing to you to know that. You would be very good if you would
torment M. Hanski in order to obtain it. In the first place, if you
torment him you will amuse him; you will substitute for his blue devils
real annoyances; next, you will create a little conjugal drama, in
which you will be victorious; and it is so good to triumph, especially
over a husband.

Well, once more adieu. To all those who are near you give the
remembrances of a poor workman in letters, who subscribes himself your
affectionate, your wholly devoted servant and friend,

HONORÉ DE BALZAC.

I am reading over your letter to see if I have forgotten anything. No;
I have answered all, and only omitted to tell you one thing, because
it is too daily: it is that I press, across space, the pretty hand you
hold out to me so graciously, and wish a thousand pleasures to your
caravan.

_À bientôt_ in Rome; for work, alas! will make me consume the time with
terrifying rapidity. Adieu, I cannot quit my pen any better than I
could quit your house in Geneva.

You chose to laugh, _à la_ Française, at my "beautiful marquise, whose
fine eyes make me die of love." I will play the Frenchman and tell you
to turn that speech round, except as to the beauty of the eyes. Fie!
it is not nice to be always showing me the rock on which my vanity was
wrecked. Come, admit that you have not been frank, or it will be the
ground of a quarrel in Rome--if one could quarrel with you on meeting
again.



PARIS, May 10, 1834.

I have this moment received, madame, your letter of April 30. Alas! I
have buried my hopes of the Rome trip. It always costs me horribly to
renounce an illusion; all my illusions seem to be one and inseparable.

I have but a moment to answer you, for in order that you may get this
letter before you leave Florence, on the 20th, it must be posted
to-day, and it is now twelve o'clock. You do not tell me where you are
going. Is it to Milan? What will be your address? How long shall you
stay? I could see you there if I went with Borget. But at any rate, in
September, at Vienna. That is more reasonable.

_Mon Dieu!_ yes, the advice you give is impossible to follow. With the
certainty of risk, I risk myself. There are no thanks worthy of the
kindness you show in speaking to me so frankly of what I do; and you
will not know, except in course of years, how grateful I am for this
frankness. Do not be afraid; go on, blaming boldly.

You tell me to go to Gérard's; have I the time? Time melts in my
fingers. To bring to an end my crushing liabilities I have undertaken
a tragedy, in prose, called, "Don Philippe et Don Carlos." It is the
old subject of Don Carlos already treated by Schiller. All must march
abreast; the little literature of copper coins, the puerilities, the
studies of manners and morals, and the great thoughts that are not
understood,--"Louis Lambert," "Séraphita," "César Birotteau," etc.

My life is always the same. I rise to work, I sleep little. Sometimes
I let myself go to gentle reveries. Since I last wrote to you, I have
had but one recreation; I heard Beethoven's symphony in C minor at
the Conservatoire. Ah! how I regretted you. I was alone in a stall--I
alone! It was suffering without expression. There exists in me a need
of expansion which toil beguiles, but which the first emotion brings to
the surface like a gush of tears. Yes, I am alone, deplorably alone. To
find happiness I need the evening hour, silence, not work, but solitude
and my inmost thoughts.

Write me quickly where I shall send you "Les Chouans," which will
appear on the 15th, five days hence. Florence will certainly see me;
you have been happy there. I shall go and pick up your thoughts in
seeing those beautiful places, those noble works. I am only jealous of
the illustrious dead: Beethoven, Michel Angelo, Raffaelle, Poussin,
Milton,--all that was ever grand, noble, and solitary stirs me.

All is not said about me yet; I am only at the little details of a
great work. When a man has undertaken what I have to do,--ah! madame,
permit me to confide this to your heart,--it is impossible to fall into
the petty and base intrigues of this world; sentiments ought to be as
great as the works desire to be great. My ambition is even stronger on
the side of sentiments than it is for a fame which, after all, shines
only upon graves! So, I live alone, more alone than ever; nothing
drags me from my contemplations: to love and to think, to act and to
meditate. To develop all one's strength on two great things,--work and
the richest emotions of the soul,--what can one ask more than that? A
drop of friendship, a little sunshine; to press a hand by which we can
support ourselves.

Your advice upon my writings proves to me that on one point you have
crowned my ambition. I would that I could send into your soul by this
paper the emotions of pleasure your letter has caused me. But that is
difficult.

So I cannot see you again until Vienna! Till then I shall not listen
again to the only person who has made me hear a language completely
poetical and largely generous. I must stop, for you will take truth
for flattery. What a hindrance is writing; how often one look has more
meaning than all words. Well, you will divine whatever I think that is
good, and all that time prevents me from saying. You wall tell yourself
that it is impossible for a solitary man--a man often crushed by work
and lost in Paris--not to think, every day, of persons who love him
truly; you will know that I am occupied with you, and am gathering for
you those autographs.

_Mon Dieu!_ what a number of things to tell you! How the Academy wanted
to give the Montyon prize to the "Médecin de campagne," and what I
did to avoid being put in the competition,--as many applications and
proceedings were needed as the other competitors made to obtain the
prize. And about my tragedy, and my other works in hand! But it is very
difficult not to forget one's self in thinking of you.

If you go to Milan, if you stay some time, if I can go and say
_bonjour_ to you for a few days, tell me; for from the 20th to the 30th
of June I should be very glad of an object for a trip, and I know none
that would give me such keen happiness. I will inquire about Bartolini;
but I see plainly you do not know our sculptors. In the Exhibition
there was a statue of Modesty which might crush the antique; in
sculpture we have great talents that are real. You like Bartolini, so I
will like him, and I will make Gérard like him. But you think no longer
of Grosclaude; do you know that your admirations have something which
might alarm any other heart than a sincerely friendly one?

You have shown such exquisite feeling for my poor "Chouans" that, to
make it less unworthy of you and me, I have delivered myself up to
patient toil such as my printer alone has an idea of. You will re-read
the book in Milan, no doubt. The third Part of the "Études de Mœurs"
will not be ready before the first days of June. I should much like to
have Susette take them to you from the author, who would then solicit
an audience and recover from the fatigues of the journey through the
hope of seeing you.

Alas! I have such business on hand that the devil and his horns could
not get away. But I am a three-horned demon, of the race, rather
degenerated, of Napoleon.

A thousand gracious thoughts and memories. Find here all that you can
wish in a heart full of gratitude and devotion.

What! will you really be in Vienna in July? So soon! These distances
placed between us seem to me like farewells. But I shall go to Germany
in September. I shall arrive rich with some successes; which please
me now only because you take an interest in them; you make them more
essential to me for this reason.

Well, here is the hour. I do not know where to write to you, but I
shall write all the same, and when your new box comes I will send it to
you. There is no lake at Vienna, therefore give me the hope of seeing
the Lago Maggiore with you. At Vienna I shall do my reconnoitring on
the Danube, in order to paint the battle of Wagram, and the fight
at Essling, which are to be my work during the coming winter in the
Ukraine, if you will have me. But I must also see the countries through
which Prince Eugène marched from Italy across the Tyrol.

Adieu, adieu, you whom one does not like to leave. You know as well as
I all that I think, and you must be kind enough to give expression to
my sentiments to your travelling companions. Oh! how I wish I could
have seen with you the city of flowers!



PARIS, June 3rd--June 21, 1834.

I have this moment received, madame, the last letter you did me the
honour to write to me from Florence; I hope, therefore, that this one
will find you in Milan in time to prevent false hopes, as you are so
kind as to interest yourself in my excellent Borget. He is still at
Issoudun, and will take Italy by way of the Tyrol, beginning by both
banks of the Rhine; therefore he will have no chance of meeting you. I
am sorry. His is one of those fine souls one needs to know in order to
judge of man and have some ideas of the future.

I myself renounce with sorrow the pleasure I had planned, of bidding
you good-day in Milan. You put such grace and urgency into your
inquiries as to my situation that I cannot help speaking of it to
you after summing it up for myself. I still owe six thousand ducats
[sixty to eighty thousand francs]; this will be comprehensible to you
if turned into your currency. Between now and the last of October, I
must pay off two thousand. The remaining four thousand are owing to my
mother. But until the end of October I have five hundred ducats to pay
monthly; and since my return from Geneva my pen and my courage have
sufficed until now to pay that sum. If by the end of September I am
free, I shall have done marvels. But until then neither truce nor rest.
My tranquil, joyous winter must be won at this cost. The doctor thinks
well of the Baden waters. This is my situation.

For the last two months I have worked night and day at the work
you honour with your preference. You have had much influence on my
determination relating to that work ["Les Chouans"]. In the desire to
make it worthy of your friendship I have re-made it. It is not yet
perfect, because, absorbed in the faults of the _ensemble_, I have let
pass faults of detail and several mistakes. But, such as it is, it
may now bear my name and you can avow your charitable protection. It
has needed a courage no one will give me credit for; but the secret
of my perseverance and my love for this work has been in my desire to
be agreeable to you, and to deserve one of those approbations which
intoxicate me with pleasure, and to hear from your lips, when I have
shaken off the enormous weight of my troubles, that the work pleases
you. I shall send it to Florence to M. Borri, requesting him to forward
it to you in Milan; and I shall also send it to Trieste, so that this
poor first flower may be certain to receive your friendly glances. I
have been delighted with it, and I have let myself be persuaded that
you are right in liking it. I have tried to justify your preference.
Marie de Verneuil is much finer, and the work has been well cleaned up;
but, as the printer said to me: "It is not forbidden to put butter on
spinach,"--a saying worthy of Charlet.

Great news! Pichot is dismissed from the "Revue de Paris;" I return
there with several pecuniary advantages, which will help me to get
free. "Séraphita" serves me to re-enter with great éclat. The work has
surprised Parisians. When the last number appears I shall add a letter
of _envoi_ to you, in which you will find the dedication, which I shall
try to make worthy of you, simple and grand. It was not put in the
beginning because I did not wish to dedicate to you a book not finished.

Here is a whole long month that I have worked to pure loss on my third
Part. I am dissatisfied, vexed with what I do. Nevertheless, you will
find it at Trieste. I must make a composition in the style of "Eugénie
Grandet," to sustain this Part [of the Études de Mœurs].

My affairs are, at this moment, complicated by a transaction I have
proposed to M. Gosselin, to annul our contracts, which will require
six thousand francs in cash paid to him, for which he will return my
agreements. That point obtained, I shall have no engagements except
with Madame Bêchet; and by three months of great labour I could, by
the end of September, take the road to Germany, poor, but without
anxieties, carrying my tragedy to do, and idleness to enjoy near you.
If you knew what cares, debates, labours were necessary to reach this
result! But what happiness to recover liberty, what pleasure to do what
one likes!

Spachmann is no longer Coquebin. By my efforts, and those of my sister,
he has just married a young and pretty girl who will have some fortune.
She brings him five hundred ducats, which make him rich, and she has
four thousand more in expectation. Mademoiselle Borel was quite wrong;
here's a happy man made. I thought of you in marrying this poor binder,
about whom we laughed and talked at your fireside in Geneva.

The greatest sorrows have overwhelmed Madame de Berny. She is far from
me, at Nemours, where she is dying of her troubles. I cannot write you
about them; they are things that can only be spoken of ear to ear. But
I am all the more alone, deplorably alone,--as much alone, that is, as
I can be, for treasures are in my thought during the hours of repose
and calmness which I take with delight. All is hope for me, because all
is belief.

If you knew how much there is of you in each rewritten phrase of
the "Chouans"! You will only know it when I can tell you in the
chimney-corner at Vienna, in some hour of calm and silence when the
heart has neither secrets nor veils.

The correction of the second edition of "Le Médecin de campagne"
draws to a close, and I am half-way on with the third _dizain_,--so
that I now am driving abreast nine volumes. My life is sober, silent,
self-contained. Nevertheless, a _lady_ has crossed the straits and
written me a beautiful letter _in English_, to which I have answered
that I only understand French, and that I respect ladies too much to
give it out for translation. The affair stopped there. I received
a letter from Madame Jeroslas ..., delightful in style and quite
surprising. I have not yet replied.

Those are all the events of my life since I wrote you last.

"Philippe le Réservé" is put aside. Nevertheless, the literary world
is very curious about my play. In reply to what you deign to write
me about it, I must tell you that Carlos was so deeply in love with
the Queen that there is sufficient proof that the child of which she
died pregnant ("treated for dropsy, for God took pity on the throne
of Spain, and blinded the doctors," says the sensitive Mariano) was
the Infant's. So in my play the Queen is guilty, according to received
ideas. Carlos idem; Philippe II. and Carlos are fooled by Don John
of Austria. I conform to history and follow it step by step. However,
according to all appearance, this work will be done under your eye, for
it is the only thing that can be done while travelling, and you shall
then judge of the political depths of that awful tragedy. It needs a
lead well guarded by ropes to gauge it! Two of my friends are ardently
rummaging historical manuscripts that I may miss nothing. I want to
obtain even the plans of the palace and the rules of etiquette of the
Spanish court under Philippe II.

MM. Berryer and Fitz-James wish to have me nominated for deputy, but
they will fail. The matter will be decided within a month, and you
will know it, no doubt, at Trieste. If I were nominated I should have
myself ordered to Baths, for the portfolio of prime minister would not
induce me to renounce the dear use I mean to make of the first moment
of liberty I have ever won in my life.

The farther I go on, the higher is the ideal I form of true happiness.
For me, a happy day is more than worlds. When I want to give myself
a magnificent fête I shut my eyes and lie down on a sofa, and absorb
myself in remembering the silly things I said to you with my _pa'ole
d'ôneû panachée_,[1] beside the Lake of Geneva, and I go over again
that good day at Diodati, which effaced a thousand pangs I had felt
there a year before. You have made me know the difference between a
true affection and a simulated affection, and for a heart as childlike
as mine there is cause there for eternal gratitude.

Yesterday I went to see my mother and found her much changed, very
ill and quite resigned. I have been sad ever since. In settling and
clearing up our accounts a fortnight ago she fretted greatly about what
would happen to me if she died, and that constant foresight pained me.
Yesterday I was far more sad. She is very good to me. She has sent for
me, but to-day I cannot go because I am expecting an arbitrator to whom
I must explain the Gosselin affair. But to-morrow I shall go quickly. I
have now only fifteen days in which to do a volume which is impatiently
demanded, and never did I have less warmth of imagination.

[Footnote 1: Fashionable speech of the "Incroyables."--TR.]


June 20.

You are at Milan. I am not there! This letter, begun seventeen days
ago, has remained unfinished by force of circumstances. In the first
place, the return of my brother from the West Indies with a wife (was
it necessary to go five thousand miles to find a wife like that?); then
annoyances, vexations without number, besides work. The publisher of
"Les Chouans" has not paid me. Here I am, with notes falling due. Then,
M. Gosselin demands ten thousand francs, nearly a thousand ducats,
to break our contract; I am trying to find them. But the greatest
misfortune is this: after much trouble I had succeeded in finding a
subject for my third Part; but after doing _half a volume_ I flung
it into the box of embryos, and have begun anew with a grand, noble,
magnificent subject, which will give you, I hope, both honour and
pleasure. According to my ideas, and according to my critics, it is
above everything else. But I have had to make up for time lost. Ah!
madame, what hours of despair and terrible insomnia between the 3rd and
the 20th of June. There must have been sympathy!

Believe in me, I entreat you. Whether you go to Vienna or to
Wierzchownia, my winter is destined to you. I want to flee Paris; I
want absolutely to dig out in silence my Philippe II. You will see me
arrive with the rapidity, the fidelity of a swallow.

I shall go, in July, to Nemours to write, away from Paris, which is
intolerable in summer, my fourth and fifth Parts of the "Études de
Mœurs." If I can end them in September I shall make untold efforts to
get the last printed by the beginning of November. Perhaps you will
still be in Vienna the first fifteen days of that month. I would like
to know your itinerary, for I shall take, as soon as I can, fifteen
days' liberty, and shall go, naturally, to the country you are in.

I send to-day, to Trieste, the "Chouans" for you, and the second
edition of the "Médecin de campagne" for Monsieur Hanski, as you have
yours. I will send my third Part later, for I am very impatient to have
your opinion about this new production. When "Séraphita" is finished
I will bring her to you, bound by the husband of the pretty girl of
Versailles. You will see he had not the heart to continue Coquebin to
do that savage binding of cloth and satin. But if I could know how long
you stay at Trieste, I could leave here July 10th and be at Trieste the
16th, see you for three days, and get back again. I have a thousand
things to bring you; the _cotignac_, the perfumes, and _tutti quanti_.

I shall end this letter by saying: _à bientôt_. The hope of crossing
many countries to find you at the end of the journey gives me courage.
I work, now, twenty consecutive hours. Well, I must bid you adieu,
saying, as gracefully as I can, that you are less a memory to me than
a heart-thought, and that you would be very unkind to fling in my face
forever that I am a Frenchman. Remember, madame, that I am a Coquebin
who does not marry, or at least only marries with the Muses. I have
been alarmed by reading in Hoffmann (article on Vows) a severe judgment
on Polish women; still, I had, to tell the truth, a pleasurable
evening in thinking that the article was true for you in all that was
flattering, and false in all that was cruel.

Our poor Sismondi has been roughly demolished (the word is true) in the
"Revue de Paris" of last Sunday. His "Histoire des Français" has been
rased, destroyed--from garret to cellar.

Poor Madame de Castries is going away, dying, and so dying that I
blame myself for not having been there for a month, for those infamous
Parisians have deserted her because she suffers. What a sad sentiment
is that of pity. Therefore!--Ah!


Friday, 21.

I have been for several days sad and distressed. I did not tell you
this yesterday. The post hour went by, and I kept this letter. Yes, I
have failed in hope, I who live only by hope, that noble virtue of the
Christian life. "Le Médecin de campagne" reappears to-morrow. What will
be its fate?

I have been very happy this morning; you could never, perhaps, guess
why. I should have to paint to you the state of a poor solitary who
stays in his cell, rue Cassini, and whose only rejoicing is in a tiny
winged insect which comes from time to time. The poor little gleam was
late in coming, and I was horribly afraid, saying to myself: "Where
is she? Is anything amiss with her? She has been eaten up!" At last
the pretty little creature came. Once more I saw my _bête à bon dieu_,
iridescent, a little mournful; but I put it on my paper and asked it,
as if it were a person: "Have you come from Italy? How are my friends?"

You will take me for a lunatic--no, for I have heart and intellect, and
only trespass through excess, not want, of sensibility. That is how a
man who wrote the "Treize" can weep with joy on again beholding the
scales of his little insect.

Well, adieu. I wish that _you_ might have the same quiverings. That
is only saying that one is still young, that the heart beats strong,
that life is beautiful, that one feels, one loves, and that all the
riches of the earth are less than one hour of sensuous joy such as I
had with my little insect. And, also, do you know how much of joy,
amber, flowers, grace of the countries it flies through, that little
creature can bring back? See all that poesy can invent about a _bête à
bon dieu_, and what lunatics are hermits and dreamers!

Well, adieu; be happy on your journey; see all those fine countries
well. As for me, I am furious at being nailed to this little mahogany
table, which has been so long the witness of my thoughts, sorrows,
miseries, distresses, joys--of all! Thus I will never give it except
to ----. But I will not tell you all my secrets to-day.

To-day I am gay. I have been so sad nearly all this month! There are my
beautiful blue flowers in the barren fields between the Observatoire
and my window drooping their heads. It is hot. Nevertheless, if I want
to see you this winter I must mind neither weariness, nor heat, nor
weakness.

Would you believe that the second edition of the "Physiologie du
Mariage" does not appear, that those men will not pay me, and that I
shall have another lawsuit on my hands? _Mon Dieu!_ What have I done to
those fellows!

Kiss Anna on the forehead. Oh! how I wish I were her horse again.
Offer my regards to M. Hanski. Put all that is most flowery in French
courtesy at the feet of your two companions, and keep for yourself,
madame, whatever you will of my heart.



PARIS, July 1, 1834.

Ah! madame, nature is avenging herself for my disdain of her laws; in
spite of my too monastic life my hair is falling out by handfuls, it is
whitening to the eye! the absolute inaction of my body is making me fat
beyond measure. Sometimes I remain twenty-five hours seated. No, you
won't recognize me any more! The moments of despair and melancholy are
more frequent. Griefs of all sorts are not lacking to me.

I wrote three half-volumes before finding anything suitable for the
third Part of the "Études de Mœurs." It will at last appear on the
20th of this month. (Be satisfied, it is not I who am elected deputy.)

You will tell me, will you not? where I am to send my third Part. Do
not deprive me of the happiness of being read by you, which is one of
my rewards. I still have three months' arduous labour before me; shall
I finish before October? I don't know. I am like the bird flying above
the face of the waters and finding no rock on which to rest its feet. I
should be unjust if I did not say that the flowery island where I could
repose is in sight of my piercing eyes; but it is far, far-off.

I should like to write to you only good news; but, although arranged,
my compromise with M. Gosselin is not yet signed. I must find a
thousand ducats, and in our book business nothing is so scarce; for
_books_ are not _francs_--and not always _français_!

I laugh, but I am profoundly sad. "La Recherche de l'Absolu" will
certainly extend the limits of my reputation; but these are victories
that cost too dear. One more, and I shall be seriously ill. "Séraphita"
has cost me many hairs. I must find exaltations that do not come at the
cost of life. But that work which belongs to you ought to be my finest.

Tell me to what Baths you are going, for it is possible
if--if--if--that I may myself bring you various little things, such as
a faultless new edition of the "Médecin de campagne," my third Part,
and the manuscript of "Séraphita," which will be finished in August.
Yes, stay at some place where I can go till September l5th.

If I compromise with Gosselin, I can free myself only by alienating
an edition of the "Études Philosophiques." That will be work added to
work. In the total solitude in which I live, sighing after a poesy
which is lacking to me and which you know, I plunge into music. I have
taken a seat in a box at the Opera, where I go for two hours every
other day. Music to me is memories. To hear music is to love those we
love, better. It is thinking with joys of the senses of our inward
joys; it is living beneath eyes whose fire we love; it is listening to
the beloved voice. So Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from half-past
seven to ten o'clock, I love with delight. My thought travels.

Well, I must say _<au revoir_; as soon as my compromise is made I will
write to you about it in detail. Never find fault with my devoted
friendship; it is independent of time and space. I think of you nearly
all day, and is not that natural? The only happy moments I have known
for a year, moments when there was neither work nor the worries of
material life, were enjoyed near you; I think of you and of your
wandering colony as one thinks of happiness, and since I left you I
have lived only the burning life of unfortunate artists.

Was M. Hanski gratified by my attention? You shall have, madame, an
edition for yourself; an edition which I shall try to make ravishing,
and in which there will be a secret coquetry. Ah! if I had had your
features I would have pleased myself in having them engraved as La
Fosseuse. But though I have memory enough for myself, I should not have
enough for a painter.

Day before yesterday, I had a visit from Wolff, the pianist from
Geneva. I could have thrown the house out of windows for joy. Was it
not he who asked me: "Who is that admirable lady?" So the poor lad
found me very cordial, very splendidly hospitable. To see him was to
fancy myself back in Pré-l'Évêque, ten steps from your house, and
breathing the Genevese air.

I hope to be able to write you more at length a few days hence. I
reserve to myself the right to write my tragedy at Wierzchownia. I
have amused myself like a boy in naming a Pole M. de Wierzchownia, and
bringing him on the scene in the "Recherche de l'Absolu." That was a
longing I could not resist, and I beg your pardon and that of M. Hanski
for the great liberty. You couldn't believe how that printed name
fascinates me.

What a good winter to be far from the annoyances of Paris, absorbed in
a tragedy, struggling with a tragedy, laughing every evening with you
and making the master laugh, for whom I'll invent "Contes Drolatiques"
expressly for him! If I have to get to you through driving snow-storms
I shall come! And after that, I'll go to the Emperor Nicholas himself
to obtain permission for you to come to Paris and see the fiasco of my
play!

Adieu, you who are seeing every day new countries, while I can see but
one! I hope Anna is well, and that M. Hanski has none of his _black
dragons_, that Mademoiselle Borel smiles, that Susette sings, that
Mademoiselle Séverine still retains her graceful indifference, and you,
madame, that vigorous constitution which is a principle of living joys;
but also of pains; my desire is that God shall take all sorrow from
your cup. Do not forget to tell me where you will stay after Trieste.

I send you a thousand flowers of the soul and of affection.



PARIS, July 13, 1834.

It is now a long time, madame, since I beheld your pretty writing,
and my solitude seems to me deeper, my toil more heavy. I gaze with a
gloomy air at that box in which you sent me jujubes, which now holds my
wafers.

Are you in Venice? Are you at Trieste? Are you travelling? Are you
resting? You see, I think of you, and I do not want to waste all the
reveries into which I plunge, so I send you one. Oh! I am so bored in
Paris! Never did its atmosphere so weigh upon me. I breathe in fancy
the air you breathe with an enthusiastic jealousy! It is, they say, so
light, it would suit my lungs so well. _Mon Dieu!_ work is crushing
me, and for all hippogriff I have only that jujube-box and Anna's
dog-inkstand, poor little dear!

I am writing at this moment a fine work, the "Recherche de l'Absolu;" I
tell you nothing about it; I want you to read it without bias, and with
all the freshness of ignorance of its subject. Where will you be then?

My business affairs are cursed. Nothing comes to a conclusion. That
ambulating roast-beef, into whom God has thrown all the thoughts that
make for silliness, called Gosselin, stops us by petty things. Next
Tuesday we may end the matter, perhaps; I will immediately write to
you. Put on one side thirty-seven thousand francs to pay, and on the
other side twenty-eight francs' worth of paper, a bottle of ink, and
a few quill-pens I have just bought, and you will have an idea of my
position, assets, and debts. To reach an equilibrium, I need iron
health, not talent, but _luck_ in my talent. Six volumes more for the
said Bêchet to publish, and twenty-five 12mos for the first edition of
the "Études Philosophiques"! After all that is done, I shall have a few
crowns left and "liberty on the mountain." When I say on the mountain,
I mean plain, for the Ukraine is, you say, a flat country.

There are my affairs, madame. As for sentiments, they are, by reason of
restraint, a thousand times more violent than you ever knew them since
you have consented to be my confidant. But that person would be very
content if she knew all that I hide from her, for it is very difficult
to express sentiments that lie at the bottom of one's heart. They
need, not only a tête-à-tête, but a heart-to-heart. Mingle with this
fury of work a _furia d'amore_ and a fury of business and a few good
memories which come to me when I listen to good music--trying not to
hear the Duke of Brunswick, who germanizes in my box sometimes; for
this dethroned prince, being no longer a lion, makes himself a tiger
with us. (You will not catch that poor joke if I did not tell you that
our box is called the _tiger_ box. Forgive the digression, but I know
how you like to know all the little details of Parisian life.) So now
you have an exact view of the meagre existence your moujik lives;
he is, for the rest, as virtuous as a young girl. The "Recherche de
l'Absolu" will tell you that; "Séraphita" better still.

Truly, I am writing with a gay pen, and I am sad; but my sadness
is so great that I am afraid to send you the expression of it. I
would sell my fame and all my literary baggage (if I had no debts)
for the pebbles on the road to Ferney. If you would buy my books in
bulk I would write them for you little by little, or tell them to
you in the chimney-corner. Make M. Hanski buy a principality, for I
should not like to be jester to any but a prince; self-loves should
be conciliated. You could give me such pretty caps and bells! As for
salary, I would take it in the laughs that would come from your lips.
But you would be expected to give me eulogies and lodgings, cakes and
bells. No Barkschy; I make conditions. But a fool would have to hide
his heart. Well, well, you would not want me. _Mon Dieu!_ how often in
my life I have envied Prince Lutin! [Puck.]

I wish you all enjoyments of your journey. I must now go and finish a
"Conte Drolatique" while you are getting into the carriage and saying,
perhaps: "I did not think that this Frenchman whom I accused of levity
on our way to the lake of Bienne was so sincere when he told me he was
capable of attachment." Ah! madame, poor men have only a heart, and
they give it; I am a poor man, a manual labourer who works in phrases
as others carry a hod.

If I were free, I should bathe to-night in the Adriatic, and then go
and tell you some joyous tale, review the ducal houses in the "Almanach
de Gotha," or play patience. You made me adore patience--and I live by
patience. But I drudge, I suffer much.



PARIS, July 15, 1834.

I wish you to find this letter on your arrival in Vienna. Day before
yesterday I posted a letter to you in Trieste, and ten minutes
later your good long letter from Trieste came. Ah! that, indeed, is
writing! That is making some one happy! Boor Alphonse Royer, who wrote
"Venezia la bella," did not tell me in two volumes what you have told
me about Venice in two pages. I said to a friend who came in just
as I was putting your letter into the pretty box I have had made to
hold them,--for to me your letters are beings, fairies which bring
me a thousand delights; I am dainty for my fairy-letters,---I said
to him: "We are ninnies, we who think we can write. We ought to kiss
the slippers of certain women, the side where the slippers touch the
ground, for within, none but the angels are worthy of that!"

Thanks for your letter; how many things I want to answer and must put
off to another day, not wishing to speak now, except of things I have
much at heart.

You have not understood me about "Séraphita." I declare to you that
I have more jealousy of heart than you accuse me of; for if, after
promising me a testimonial of friendship, you were to forget it, I
should suffer in all that is most sensitive in heart and soul and body.
Therefore, I wanted to avoid the same suffering to you by explaining
that the _envoi_ would be in the last article, to make my happiness
the more transcendant. That last chapter, the "Transfiguration," is to
me what, in its own degree, the picture was to Raffaelle. Leave me the
right to put your name upon my picture at the moment when the almost
gigantic conception of that work is about to be comprehended. But,
after reading your letter, I think there was conceit in my thinking you
would suffer. _Basta!_ I will say no more about it.

The second number of "Séraphita" has been, for three weeks, in the
printing-office, and I have worked ten hours a day upon it. I will send
you the whole of it to Vienna, addressed to M. Sina. It will all be out
by the end of September.

Another quarrel. I would rather be happy in a corner than be Washington
in France, seeing that we have dozens of Washingtons in every street.
That means that I would rather be at Wierzchownia in January than
sputtering politics in the tribune of the Palais-Bourbon. This is by
way of answer to your sublime _retrocessa_, when you wish to efface
yourself behind France. As for me, I efface France beneath your sublime
forehead. France, madame, is never short of great orators, great
ministers, and great men in everything.

Well, the Gosselin affair is signed; I am quit to-day of that nightmare
of foolishness. The illustrious Werdet (who slightly resembles the
illustrious Gaudissart) buys from me the first edition of the "Études
Philosophiques,"--twenty-five 12mo volumes,--in five Parts, each of
five volumes, to appear, month by month, August, September, October,
November. You see that to carry this through, and do three Parts of
the "Études de Mœurs," still due to Madame Bêchet, requires Vesuvius
in the brain, a torso of iron, good pens, quantities of ink, not
the slightest blue devil, and a constant desire to see, in January,
Strasburg, Cologne, Vienna, Brody, etc., and to fight with snow-drifts.
I do not mention that bagatelle called _health_, nor that other
bagatelle called _talent_.

Now you know the programme of my life, and if I had _a lady of my
thoughts_ you must own she would be much to be pitied, unhappy woman!
Fortunately, she is, very sadly, the lady of my thoughts only; and I
know she is very joyful to find me hindered.

For all this fine work M. Werdet is to give me fifteen thousand francs,
and whatever of glorification I can catch above the bargain. This,
joined to the rest of the "Études de Mœurs," will free me entirely,
and leave me with a few crowns, which are in this low world, the wings
on which we fly o'er distances.

Do you know why I am so gay that there is gaiety in my grumblings?
It is that I have seen once more the pretty little scribble of your
writing; that I know you to be, except for the sufferings of travel,
perfectly well, and Anna too.

Adieu, a thousand tender feelings of the heart. Ah! be reassured.
Madame de C... insists that she has never loved any one but M. de M...,
and that she loves him still, that Artemisia of Ephesus. This evening I
say good-bye, at Liszt's, to Wolff, that young face from Geneva--where
I was so young!

When you write to me from Vienna, tell me, I entreat you, how long you
stay. Something tells me that I shall see Vienna with you; that means
that I shall like Vienna. You must tell me what the Germans think of
"Séraphita." You will receive, in Vienna, the third Part of the "Études
de Mœurs," which leaves here, addressed to M. Sina (_mon Dieu!_ how I
do like that name!), about the end of this month. So you will have it
during the first ten days of August.

A thousand tender regards.



PARIS, July 30, 1834.

Oh! my angel, my love, my life, my happiness, my strength, my treasure,
my beloved, what horrible restraint! what joy to write to you heart to
heart! what shame to me if you do not find these lines at the time and
place! I have been into the country for six days to finish something in
a hurry.

_Ohimé_, I cannot start for the Baths of Baden before August 10; but
I will go like the wind; it is impossible to tell you more, for to be
able to go there needs giant efforts. But I love you with superhuman
force.

So from the 10th to the 15th I shall be on the road. I shall have only
three or four days to myself, but I bring you that drop of my ardent
life with a happiness which the infinite of heaven can alone explain.

_Mon Dieu!_ what hours full of you, of which you have only
presentiments! How I have followed you everywhere! How I have, at all
hours, desired you! Yes, my cherished Eve, my celestial flower, my
beautiful life, stay at the Baths till September. If it takes eight
days to get there, and I leave here August 15th, I shall only arrive
on the 23rd, and I must be here for the first days in September. All
depends on my work and my payments. The desire to be free, to be yours,
has made me undertake things beyond my strength. But my love is so
great; it sustains me.

Your "Séraphita" is beautiful, grand, and you will enjoy that work in
three months. I need three months for the last chapter; but perhaps
I will finish it near you. You warmed up my heart for the first; you
ought to hear the last song!

Oh! dear, dearest adored one, tell yourself well that the love you
have inspired in me is the infinite. Have neither fear nor jealousy.
_Nothing_ can destroy the charm under which I wish to live. Yes, there
have been many melancholies, many sadnesses: I was a displanted tree.
To see you in August restores to me happiness and courage.

Now, to come to Baden I must bring out in the "Revue de Paris" "Le
Cabinet des Antiques," of which you know the beginning. To work to go
to see you, oh, what enjoyment! There is no work, there is joy in every
line.

Did you receive the "Chouans" at Trieste? But you cannot answer me.
You will receive this August 8 in Vienna, and the 10th I shall start.
What are Neufchâtel and Geneva in comparison with Baden? Were there six
months of desires, of repressed love, of works written in your name,
oh, my life, my thought? One must be strong to sustain a joy so long
awaited. Oh, yes, be alone!

It is impossible to write you a long letter; it would take a day more,
as I only arrived this morning, and I feared that Marie de Verneuil
might not find it and be vexed with him who adores her as an angel
loves God. To be separated from you by only eighteen days; it is all,
and it is nothing. Your little letter has made me crazy. It will be a
great imprudence to go to Baden, for I have a thousand ducats to pay in
September, but to see you one day, to kiss that idolized forehead, to
smell that loved hair, which I wear about my neck, to take that hand so
full of kindness and love, to see you! that is worth all glories, all
fortunes. If it were not upon us, upon a longer time of separation that
this folly falls, it would not be a folly, it would be quite simple.

Dear angel, do you know what happiness there is for me in these
eighteen days, and the journey, _mon Dieu!_ I adore you night and
morning, I send you all the thoughts of my soul, I surround you with
my heart,--do you feel nothing? And my sufferings in not going to
Florence, in short, I will tell you all.

Dear angel, be happy if the most ardent love, the most infinite that
man can feel, is the life you have desired to have, give, receive.

_À bientôt_, then. Oh! what a word! Three or four days of happiness
will make the months of absence more supportable. Oh! my treasure, what
an abyss for me is tenderness. You are the principle of this frightful
courage. Will you love my white hairs? Every one is astonished that any
one can produce what I produce, and says that I shall die. No; three
days near you is to recover life and strength for a thousand years!

Adieu; a thousand kisses. I have held this bit of vinca between my lips
while writing. To thee, my white _minette_, and soon. A thousand tender
caresses, and in each a thousand more![1]

[Footnote 1: This is the last of these odious and ridiculous letters.
It belongs properly to the series which ended March 11, 1834. In my
opinion it has been concocted and placed under this date to convey the
idea that it is one of the letters which Balzac mentions in his letter
to M. Hanski of September 16 (see p. 199); and, furthermore, this is
done with the intention of convincing the reader that the whole series
of forged letters (which are plainly identical in character with this
letter) were written by Balzac.

Putting aside, for a moment, the _proofs_ of deception which I have
produced, I must say in conclusion that I think no one of literary
judgment will believe that the author of the "Comédie Humaine" wrote
these spurious letters.

From this date the letters go on in Balzac's characteristic
manner,--expansive, impulsive, boyish at times, and too full,
certainly, of his debts and his troubles; but with it all is the strong
underflow of a great and dauntless soul allied to things pure and
noble. The story is tragic; and not the least tragic part of it is the
wicked present attempt of degenerate men to degrade a hero.

I here place a letter of the same date from Monsieur Hanski to Balzac,
which will serve to show the sort of man he was, and how he regarded
his own and his wife's friendship for Balzac.

I now leave the whole subject to the judgment of the reader.--TR.]



FROM M. HANSKI TO M. HONORÉ DE BALZAC.

VIENNA, August 3, 1834.

I have just received, monsieur, the copy of the "Médecin de
campagne,"--that one of your works which I like best; the real merit
of which I could wish were felt and recognized at its just value. I
allowed myself, some time ago, to write to you fully on the impression
this book made upon me; therefore I will not return to it, but simply
beg you to receive my thanks for so precious a souvenir of your good
friendship. My wife has told you, no doubt, of the way I was taken in
by the "Moniteur." But explain to us who your legitimist homonym is who
is made deputy from Villefranche? We thought there was for France, as
for us, only one M. de Balzac; and, in that conviction, I was preparing
a long letter of congratulation. In it I spoke of a _certain cause_
[he means that of the Duchesse de Berry, then imprisoned at Blaye], of
which, knowing your generous heart, I hoped to see you the champion.
But, at the sweetest moment of these illusory dreams, my wife brought
me your letter, and told me that you were not a deputy. Disappointed,
I cursed the fatality that presides over the things of this world; I
consigned my fine epistle to the flames, and the blue devils returned
in troops to assail me.

But adieu, monsieur; my wife is, no doubt, writing you a long gossip.
More at this time would bore you. I therefore end, assuring you of all
my friendship.

VENCESLAS HANSKI.



To MADAME HANSKA.


PARIS, August 1--August 4, 1834.

I have received your letter, written from Vienna, madame. You have
probably received two from me, addressed to J. Collioud, with the
"Chouans" and the "Médecin de campagne." Distances are so little
calculable. I believe that up to the present time I have had such
true sympathies that my inspirations have always been like those of my
friends. I have forgotten nothing,--neither Marie de Verneuil, nor your
"Chouans," nor M. Hanski, who will have his "Médecin de campagne."

I am a little chagrined. The imbeciles of Paris declare me crazy in
view of the second number of "Séraphita," whereas the elevated minds
are secretly jealous of it. I am worn out with work. Too much is too
much. For three days past I have been seized by unconquerable sleep,
which shows the last degree of cerebral weariness. I dare not tell you
what an effort I am making now to write to you. I have a plumophobia,
an inkophobia, which amount to suffering. However, I hope to finish my
third Part by August 15. It will have cost me much. And for that reason
I am afraid of some heaviness in the style and in the conception. You
must judge.

The "Cabinet des Antiques" will appear in the "Revue de Paris," between
the second number of "Séraphita" and the last, for the "Revue" makes
the sacrifice of holding the latter back till I can finish it. You know
the beginning of the "Cabinet des Antiques." It made one of our good
evenings in Geneva.

Let M. Hanski console himself; I shall be deputy in 1839, and then I
can better, being free of all care and all worries, act so as to render
my country some service, if I am worth anything. Between now and then I
expect to be able to rule in European questions by means of a political
publication. We will talk about that.

I have had many troubles. My brother made a bad marriage in the Indies,
and the poor boy has neither spirit, energy, nor talent. Men of will
are rare!

I shall go to see you in Vienna if I can get twenty days to myself; a
pretty watch given at the right moment to Madame Bêchet may win me a
month's freedom. I am going to overwhelm her with gifts to get peace.

I have many troubles, many worries. The kind M. Hanski would not
have his black butterflies if he were in my place. My second line of
operations is now to be drawn out. I shall have the first Part of the
"Études Philosophiques" printed within ten days. It will appear at the
same time as the third Part of the "Études de Mœurs." There is but God
and I, and the third person, who is never named, who are in the secret
of these works which affright literature. I have sixty thousand volumes
this year in the commerce of publishers, and I shall have earned
seventy thousand francs. Hence, hatreds. But, alas! of those seventy
thousand francs nothing will remain to me but the happiness of being
free of all debt after being ruined by it.

You are very fortunate, madame, to be able to take the Danube baths;
but write me soon if they are removing those frightful nervous
headaches which frightened me so much. Do not suffer. Preserve your
health. When you walk, do not wear those little shoes that let in
water, as they did the day we went to Ferney.

Do you know I feel a little vexed with you that you can think that a
man who has _my faith and my will_ can change, after all I have written
to you. In the matter of money alone I do not do all I would; but in
whatever belongs to the heart, to the feelings, in all that is _the
man_ you can have few reproaches to make to me.

Write me, very legibly, your addresses in Vienna and Baden, for I find
it impossible to make out the name of the hotel where you are now.

I am to see, some day soon, an illustrious Pole, Wronsky, great
mathematician, great mystic, great mechanician, but whose conduct
has irregularities which the law calls swindling; though, if closely
viewed, they are seen to be the effects of dreadful poverty and a
genius so superior that one can hardly blame him. He has, they say, one
of the most powerful intellects in Europe.


Monday, 4.

I have been forced to interrupt my letter for a day and a half; I have
not had two minutes to myself to collect my thoughts. There has been a
deluge of hurried proofs and corrections; ouf! I beg you to recall me
to the memory of all who compose your caravan.

Our Paris is very flat, very sad. MM. Thiers and Rigny have, they say,
lost five millions at the Bourse, in consequence of the invasion that
Don Carlos has made all alone. Every one talks war here, but no one
believes in it. The king has dismissed Soult in order to remain at
peace.

Adieu. I hope, madame, that you will amuse yourself at the Baths, and
gain health; but you must walk a little. My life is so monotonous that
I can tell you little of myself that is worth telling. One thought and
work, that is the life of your moujik. You--you are seeing countries,
you have the movement of travel which occupies and diverts. Ah! if I
could travel, I would go to Moravia.

Adieu. If you hear anything in the air, if a pebble rolls at your feet,
if a light sparkles, tell yourself that my spirit and my heart are
frolicking in Germany. Wholly yours,

HONORÉ.



PARIS, August 11, 1834.

Thank you, madame, for your good and amiable letter of the 3rd of this
month. The envelope delighted me with its hieroglyphics, in which you
have put such religious ideas.

I have many answers to give you. But a thousand million wafts
of incense for your ideas on "Philippe le Discret." You share my
sentiments on Schiller and my ideas of what I ought to do.

Oh! spend the winter in Vienna? I shall be there, yes--You have the
books? Good.

No, I see no one, neither man nor woman. My _tigers_ bore me; they have
neither claws nor brains. Besides, I seldom go to the Opera now.

How sweet your letter is! with what happiness I have read it! that
description of your house, the flowers, the garden, your life so well
arranged, even the blue devils on the watch for M. Hanski. Thank you
for all the details you give me.

At the moment when I was reading the religious part of your letter,
that where the good thoughts went to my heart, my Carmelite nuns, who
had opened the windows of their chapel on account of the heat, began
to sing a hymn which crossed our little street and my courtyard. I was
strangely moved. Your writing gleamed in my eyes and softly entered
my heart, more living than ever. This is not poesy, but one of those
realities that are rare in life.

"La Recherche de l'Absolu" kills me. It is an immense subject; the
finest book I can do, say _some_. Alas! I shall not be through with
it before the 20th of this month, in nine days. After that, I spread
my wings and take a three weeks' furlough, for my head cannot sustain
another idea. On the 21st I shout: "Vive l'Almanach de Gotha!" God
grant that ten days later I present to you myself the "Absolu." I will
not tell you anything about it. That's an author's coquetry, which you
will pardon when you lay down the book.

My life, it is fifteen hours' toil, proofs, author's anxieties, phrases
to polish; but, there's a distant gleam, a hope which lights me.

At last, France is beginning to bestir itself about my books. Fame
will come too late; I prefer happiness. I want to be something great
to increase the enjoyments of the person loved. I can only say that to
you. You understand me and you will not be jealous of that thought.

Madame de Castries is dying; the paralysis has attacked the other leg.
Her beauty is no more; she is blighted. Oh! I pity her. She suffers
horribly and inspires pity only. She is the only person I go to see,
and then for one hour every week. It is more than I really can do, but
that hour is compelled by the sight of that slow death. She lives with
a cataplasm of Burgundy pitch from the nape of the neck to the loins. I
give you these details because you ask for them.

So, constant labour, sundry griefs, the condition of Madame de Berny,
who, on her side, droops her head like a flower when its calyx is heavy
with rain. She cannot bear up under her last sorrows. Never did a woman
have more to endure. Will she come safely out of these crises? I weep
tears of blood in thinking that she is necessarily in the country,
while I am necessarily in Paris. Great sorrows are preparing for me.
That gentle spirit, that dear creature who put me in her heart, like
the child she most loved, is perishing, while our affection (that of
her eldest son, and mine) can do nothing to allay her wounds? Oh!
madame, if death takes this light from my life, be good and generous,
receive me. I could think only of going to weep near you. You are the
only person (Borget and Madame Carraud excepted) in whom I have found
the true and sanctifying friendship. In case she dies, France would be
horrible to me. Borget is away; Madame Carraud has not, in herself,
the feminine softness that one needs. Hers is an antique rectitude, a
reasoning friendship which has its angles. You _feel_, you!

Yes, I am overwhelmed by this sorrow which approaches; and that divine
soul prepares me for it, so to speak, in the few lines she is able to
write to me. Yes, I have only your heart into which I can shed the
tears that are in my eyes while writing this in Paris.[1] I am horribly
alone; no one knows the secrets of my heart. I suffer, and before
others I smile. Neither my sister nor my mother comprehend me.

These are sad pages. I have some hope. Mme. de Berny has such a rich
constitution; but her age makes me tremble; a heart so young in a body
that is nearly sixty, that is, indeed, a violent contrast. She has
dreadful inflammations between the heart and lungs. My hand, when I
magnetize her, increases the inflammation. We were obliged, therefore,
to renounce that means of cure; for, as I wrote you, I was able to
spend ten days with her the last of July. Oh! be well yourself! you and
yours! Let me not tremble for the only beings who are dear to me, for
all, at once!

I needed your letter this morning, for this morning I received a
letter from a mutual friend of Madame Bêchet and me, telling me of her
commercial distresses. If my book is not ready to appear she wants
compensation for the delay; the "Absolu" _ought_ to have been finished
in two months! That irritated me. I was weeping with rage--for he does
weep, this _tiger_; he cries out, this eagle!--when your letter came.
It fell into my heart like dew. I blessed you. I clasped you like a
friend. You serened me, you refreshed my soul. Be happy. Shall I ever
cause you a like joy? No, I shall always be your debtor in this way.

I have had other griefs. My Boileau [M. Charles Lemesle], my
hypercritic, my friend, who judges and corrects me without appeal,
has found a good many blunders in the first two 12mo volumes of the
"Médecin de campagne." That makes me desperate. However, we will take
them out. The work shall, some day, be perfect. I was ill for two days
after he showed me those blunders. They are real. We are washing up
between us "La Peau de Chagrin." There must be no faults left on that
edition. Add to all this money anxieties, which will not leave me
tranquil till January, 1835, and there you have all the secrets of my
life. There is one about which I do not speak to you. That one is the
very spring of my life; it is my azure heaven, my hope, my courage, my
strength, my star; it is all that one cannot tell, but it is that which
you will divine. It is the oleander, the rose-bay tree, a lovely form
adored beneath it, the twilight hour, a revery!

Adieu; I return to my furrow, my plough, my goad, and I shout to my
oxen, "Hue!" I am just now writing the _death of Madame Claës_. I write
to you between that scene of sorrow entitled the Death of a Mother,
and the chapter entitled, Devotions of Youth. Remember this. Remember
that between these two chapters your greeting, your letter, full of
friendship, came to give me back a little courage and drive away a
thousand gloomy phantoms. _There_ you were, shining like a star.

The happy husband, no longer _coquebin_ Spachmann, will bind the
manuscript which you must put with that of "Eugénie Grandet." As for
that of the "Duchesse de Langeais," it has been dispersed, I don't know
how. I am very careless about my manuscripts. You had to set a value
upon them which made me proud, in order to make me keep them for you.
So with those of "Séraphita," I am like a mother defending her young.

Do you know what courage there is in calling one's self legitimist?
That party is very abject. The three parties that divide France have
all descended into the mud. Oh! my poor country! I am humiliated,
unhappy at all this. We shall rise out of it, I hope.

I send you no commonplaces. To tell you that I keep in reserve a
thousand sincere and gentle, tender feelings would be nothing; a
feeble portion, indeed, of a friendship which makes me conceive of the
infinite. May the Danube make you strong and give you health; I love
the Danube better than I love the Seine.

I have seen Prince Puckler Muskau here, and he seemed to me a little
Mephistophelean, sprinkled with Voltaireanism. He told me that I was
much appreciated in Berlin, and that if I went there--Ha! ha! bravi!
brava!--But what I like in foreign lands is the good nonsense that I
shall talk in the chimney-corner of 73 Landstrasse.

Adieu; distribute my friendship, regards, and remembrances to those
about you as you will.

[Footnote 1: Compare this with the shameful letter supposed to have
been written about her to Mme. Hanska, Jan. 1834. See p. 112.--TR.]



PARIS, August 20, 1834.

Yesterday I had an inflammation of the brain, in consequence of my too
hard work; but, by the merest chance, I was with my mother, who had
a phial of _balm tranquil_, and bathed my head with it. I suffered
horribly for nine or ten hours. I am better to-day. The doctor wants me
to travel for two months. My unfortunate affairs allow me only twenty
days. I have still ten days' work on the "Recherche de l'Absolu," which
has, like "Louis Lambert," two years ago, very nearly carried me off.
But on the 1st or 2nd of September I shall be on my way to see Vienna.
Impossible to give myself a more agreeable object for a journey. So,
between the 7th and 10th, I shall have the pleasure, you will let me
say happiness, of seeing you.

No, I have had no more letters from your cousin. Something that I do
not know must have made her quarrel with me.

I think as you do on Lamennais' work, "Les Paroles d'un Croyant." I
nearly got myself devoured for saying that from a literary point of
view the form was mere silliness, and that Volney and Byron had already
employed it, and that as to doctrines, they were all taken from the
Saint-Simonians. Really, those kings on a slimy, evil-smelling rock are
only fit for children.

Adieu; you will be indulgent to a poor artist who rattles on with the
intention of having no thought, of being very boyish, and desires only
to let himself go to the one affection that never wearies: friendship
and the sweetest things of the heart. Thank M. Hanski in advance for
his good little letter. At this moment I have no strength to write more
than what I do here. That strength is what in the eighteenth century
they would have called "force of sentiment."

I am so glad to know that you are well lodged and pleased with your
house.



PARIS, August 25, 1834.

I may have alarmed you, madame, but Madame de Berny is better. She
is not recovered, however. No, she remains in a condition of cruel
weakness.

Two days ago I wrote that I should start for Germany; but that was
folly, for it takes ten or twelve days to get to Vienna, as much to
return, and I have but twenty to dispose of. No, it is not possible in
the situation in which I am. "La Recherche de l'Absolu" consumes so
much time that I find myself in arrears in all my deliveries of copy,
consequently in all my payments.

On another hand, I cannot go without leaving the end of "Séraphita" for
the "Revue de Paris," and how can I determine the time it will take me
to finish that work, angelical to some, diabolical to me?

All this worries me; I cannot have my liberty till the month of
November, and then will you still be in Vienna? Yes. But I shall have
only a month to myself, and the question will still be the same. I see
how it is; I must wait till "Philippe II. is done."

I have the weakness and the species of physical melancholy that comes
from abuse of toil. The life of Paris no longer suits me; and while I
feel in my heart a veritable childhood, all that is exterior is aging.
I begin to understand Metternichism in whatever is not the sole and
only sentiment by which I live.

A book has just appeared, very fine for certain souls, often
ill-written, feeble, cowardly, diffuse, which all the world has
proscribed, but which I have read courageously, and in which there are
fine things. It is "Volupté" by Sainte-Beuve. Whoso has not had his
Madame de Couaën is not worthy to live. There are in that dangerous
friendship with a married woman beside whom the soul crouches, rises,
abases itself, is undecided, never resolving on audacity, desiring the
wrong, not committing it, all the delicious emotions of early youth.
In this book there are fine sentences, fine pages, but nothing. It is
the nothing that I like, the nothing that permits me to mingle myself
with it. Yes, the first woman that one meets with the illusions of
youth is something holy and sacred. Unfortunately, there is not in
this book the enticing joyousness, the liberty, the imprudence which
characterize passions in France. The book is puritanical. Madame de
Couaën is not sufficiently a woman, and the danger does not exist. But
I regard the book as very treacherously dangerous. There are so many
precautions taken to represent the passion as weak that we suspect it
of being immense; the rarity of the pleasures renders them infinite in
their short and slight apparitions. The book has made me make a great
reflection. Woman has a duel with man: if she does not triumph, she
dies; if she is not right, she dies; if she is not happy, she dies. It
is appalling.

I have real need of seeing Vienna. I must explore the fields of Wagram
and Essling before next June. I specially want engravings which show
the uniforms of the German army, and I must go in search of them. Have
the kindness to tell me merely if such things exist.

To-day, 25th, it is almost twelve days since I have received any
letters from you. I live in such isolation that I count upon and look
eagerly for the pleasures that come into my desert. Alas! Madame de
Berny's illness has cast me into horrible thoughts. That angelic
creature who, since 1821, has shed the fragrance of heaven into my
life is transformed; she is turning to ice. Tears, griefs, and I can
do nothing. One daughter become insane, another daughter dead, a third
dying, what blows!--And a wound more violent still, of which nothing
can be told. And at last, after thirty years of patience and devotion,
she is forced to separate from her husband under pain of dying if she
remains with him. All this in a short space of time. This is what I
suffer through the heart that created me.

Then, in Berry, Madame Carraud's life is in peril through her
pregnancy. Borget is in Italy. My mother is in despair about my
brother's marriage; she has aged twenty years in twenty days. I am
hemmed in by enormous, obligatory work, and by money cares, also by two
little lawsuits which I have brought to solve the last difficulties of
my literary life.

For all this one needs, as my doctor says, a skull of iron. Unhappily,
the heart may burst the skull. I counted on the trip to Vienna as the
traveller counts on the oasis in the desert; but the impossibility of
it faces me. I must be in Paris from the 20th to the 30th of September.
I have then to pay five hundred ducats, and when one digs the soil with
a pen gold is rare. However, labour will suffice. I shall be free in a
few months, if the abuse of study does not kill me. I begin to fear it.


Tuesday, 26.

To-day I have finished "La Recherche de l'Absolu." Heaven grant that
the work be good and beautiful. I cannot judge of it; I am too weary
with toil, too exhausted by the fatigues of conception. I see only
the reverse side of the canvas. Everything in it is pure. Conjugal
love is here a sublime passion. The love of the young girl is fresh.
It is the Home, at its source. You will read it. You will also read
"Souffrances inconnues," which have cost me four months' labour. They
are forty pages of which I could not write but two sentences a day. It
is a horrible cry, without brilliancy of style, without pretensions
to drama. There are too many thoughts in it, and too much drama to
show on the outside. It is enough to make you shudder, and it is all
true. Never have I been so stirred by any work. It is more than "La
Grenadière," more than "La Femme abandonnée."

At the present moment I am making the final corrections of style on the
"Peau de Chagrin." I reprint it and remove the last blemishes. Oh! my
sixteen hours a day are well employed! I go to the Opera only once a
week now.

Day before yesterday Madame Sand, or Dudevant, just returned from
Italy, met me in the _foyer_ of the Opera, and we took two or three
turns together. I was to breakfast with her the next day, but I could
not go. To-day I have had Sandeau to breakfast, who told me that the
day after that woman abandoned him he took such a quantity of acetate
of morphia that his stomach rejected it, and threw it up without there
having been the slightest absorption. I was sorry I had not received
the confidences of Madame George Sand. He regretted it too,---Jules
Sandeau. The poor lad is very unhappy at this moment. I have advised
him to come and take Borget's room, and share with me until he can
make himself an existence with his plays. That is what has most struck
me the last few days.

Well, I must bid you adieu, and this adieu, in place of the _au revoir
bientôt_ on which I had counted, saddens me to a point I cannot
express. Remember me to all about you. I shall write next to M. Hanski
to thank him for his letter, and explain to him that the present
parliament will be, for the next five years, insignificant. All the
European questions in connection with France are postponed till 1839.

A thousand constant regards.



FROM H. DE BALZAC TO M. HANSKI.

PARIS, September 16, 1834.

MONSIEUR,--I should be in despair if you would not undertake my defence
towards Madame Hanska, though I feel, indeed, that even if she would
deign to forget two letters which she has the right to think more
than improper, the friendship she would then have the goodness to
give me would never be like that with which she honoured me before my
culpability. Nothing restores a broken tie, the join shows always; an
indelible distrust remains.

But permit me to explain to you, the only person to whom I can speak of
this, the mistake which gave rise to what I shall always regard in my
life as a misfortune. But consider for a moment the boyish, laughing
nature that I have, and on which I would not now intrench myself if I
had not made you know it; it is because I have been with you as I am
with myself, with the person I love best, that I justify myself.

Together with this hearty boyishness there is pride. From any other I
would rather receive a sword-thrust, were it even mortal, than lower
myself to explain what I have done. But to mend the chain, to-day
broken, of an affection that was dear to me, I don't know what I would
not do.

Madame Hanska is, indeed, the purest nature, the most childlike, the
gravest, the gayest, the best educated, the most saintly and the most
philosophical that I know, and I have been won to her by all that I
love best. I have told her the secret of my affections, so that I could
always be with her as I wished.

One evening, in jest, she said to me that she would like to know what
a love-letter was. This was said wholly without meaning, for at the
moment it referred to a letter I had been writing that morning to
a lady whom I will not name. But I said, laughing: "A letter from
Montauran to Marie de Verneuii?" and we joked about it.

Being at Trieste, Madame Hanska wrote me: "Have you forgotten Marie
de Verneuii?" (I saw she referred to the "Chouans," for which she
was impatient) and I wrote those two unfortunate letters to Vienna,
supposing that she remembered our joke, and replying to her that she
would find Marie de Verneuii in Vienna.

You could never believe how shocked I was at my folly when she answered
me coldly on account of the first, when I knew there was a second; and
when I received the three lines that she wrote me, of which, perhaps,
you are ignorant, I was truly in despair.

For myself, monsieur, I would give you satisfaction; it is very
indifferent to me to be or not to be (from man to man); but I should
be, for the rest of my days, the most unhappy man in the world if this
childish folly harmed, in any way, Madame Hanska; and that is what
makes me write to you thus.

Therefore, on my part there was neither vanity nor presumption, nor
anything whatever that is contemptible. I wrote (admitting myself to
blame) things that were unintelligible to Madame Hanska. I am here
in a situation of dependence that excludes all evil interpretation;
besides which, Madame Hanska's negligence is a very noble proof of my
folly and her sanctity. That is what consoles me.

I earnestly desire, monsieur, that these explanations, so natural,
should reach you; for though Madame Hanska has forbidden me to write to
her, and said that she was leaving for Petersburg, I imagine that you
will still be in Vienna to receive this letter, or that M. Sina will
send it to you.

Tell her from me, monsieur, how profoundly humiliated I am--not to be
grossly mistaken, for I never thought to do more than continue the
jokes we made on the shores of the lake of Geneva when we talked of the
Incroyables, but--to have caused her the slightest grief. She is so
good, so completely innocent, that she will pardon me perhaps for what
I shall never pardon myself. I am becoming once more truly a moujik.

As for you, monsieur, if I had to justify myself to you, you will
understand that I should not do it. _Mon Dieu!_ I was so seriously
occupied that I lost precious moments in writing those two letters I
now desire to annihilate.

If friendship, even if lost, still has its rights, would you have the
kindness to present to Madame Hanska, from me, the third Part of the
"Études de Mœurs," which I finished yesterday, and which will appear
Thursday, September 18? You will find the manuscripts and the volumes
with M. Sina, to whom I addressed them.

If Madame Hanska, or you, monsieur, do not think this proper, I beg you
to burn the manuscripts and the volumes. I should not like that what I
destined for Madame Hanska at a time when she thought me worthy of her
friendship should exist and go into other hands.

"Séraphita," which belongs to her also, will be finished in the "Revue
de Paris," September 25. I dare not send it to her without knowing
whether she would accept it. I shall await your answer, and silence
will be one. As "Séraphita" will be immediately published in a volume,
I shall, if she is merciful, make her the humble dedication of this
work by putting her arms and name on the first leaf, with these simple
words: "This page is dedicated to Madame H... by the author;" and she
shall receive, at any place you indicate, the volume and the manuscript.

However it be, and even if Madame Hanska offers me a generous and
complete pardon, I feel that I shall always have I know not what in
my soul to embarrass me. So, though I have made to this precious
friendship the greatest of sacrifices in writing the present
letter--for it contains things humiliating to me, and which cost me
dear--I am destined, no doubt, never to see you again, and I may
therefore express to you my keen regrets. I have not so many affections
round me that I can lose one without tears. I was never so young, so
truly "nineteen years old," as I was with her. But I shall have the
consolation to grow, to do better, to become something so powerful, so
nobly illustrious, that some day she can say of me: "No, there was no
wicked intention, and nothing small in his error."

In whatever situation we may hold to each other when you receive this
letter, permit me to thank you for the kind things you have said to me
about my false election and the "Médecin de campagne." Yes, if I ever
enter the tribune, and seize power, the thing you speak of would crown
my desires and be, in my political life, the object of my ambition. I
can say this without flattery, inasmuch as it was a fixed determination
before I ever knew you. I consider the primary cause a shame to France
of the eighteenth century as much as to that of the nineteenth.

I have much work to do, monsieur; and I am overwhelmed by it. I did
not expect this additional grief, for which I can only blame myself.
Express to Madame Hanska all my sorrow, and, though she may reject
them, I send her my respects, mingled with repentance and the assurance
of my obedience. But perhaps she has punished me already by one of
those forgettings from which there is no return, and will not even
remember what occasioned my error.

Adieu, monsieur; accept my sentiments and my regrets. DE BALZAC.

In case you are no longer in Vienna, I have notified M. Sina of the
parcel.



To MADAME HANSKA.

PARIS, October 18, 1834.

MADAME,--I went to spend a fortnight at Saché, in Touraine. After the
"Absolu" Dr. Nacquart thought me so debilitated that, not wishing (as
he said in his flattering way) that I should die on the last step of
the ladder, he ordered me my native air, and told me to write nothing,
read nothing, do nothing, and think nothing--if I could, he said,
laughing.

I went to Touraine, but I worked there. My mother came here and took
charge of my letters. On arriving this morning I found a heap of them,
but I sought for one only. I recognized the Vienna postmark and your
handwriting, which brought me, no doubt, a pardon that I accept without
any misplaced pride. Had I the wings and freedom of a bird you would
see me in Vienna before this letter, and I should have brought you the
most radiantly happy face in the world. But here I can only send you,
on the wings of the soul, a respectful effusion. In my joy I saw three
Vienna postmarks, just as Pitt, drunk, saw two orators in the tribune,
while Sheridan saw none at all.

I resume my correspondence according to the orders of your Beauty
(capital B, as for Highness, Grace, Holiness, Excellency, Majesty,
for Beauty is all that); but what can I tell you that is good? I am
gay in my distress, gay because my thoughts can fly, rainbow-hued and
fearless, to you; but I am, in reality, fatigued and overwhelmed with
work and obstacles. Do you really care much to know about this life
of a bloody crater? How can I send to you, so fresh, so pure, the
tale of so many sorrows? Do you know, can you know, what sufferings a
publisher can cause us by launching badly into the world a book which
has cost us a hundred nights, like "La Recherche de l'Absolu." Two
members of the Academy of Sciences taught me chemistry that the book
might be truly scientific. They made me correct my proofs for the
tenth or twelfth time. I had to read Berzelius, toil to be right as to
science, and toil to maintain style so as not to bore with chemistry
the cold French reader by making a book in which the interest is based
on chemistry,--in point of fact, there are not eight pages in all of
science in the four hundred pages of the book.

Well, these gigantic labours which, done within a given time, have worn
out twenty printers, who call me a "slayer of men," because when I sit
up ten nights they sit up five--well, these lion toils are compromised!
The "Absolu," ten times greater, in my opinion, than "Eugénie Grandet,"
will go without success, and my twelve volumes will not be exhausted
(as I am in making them); my freedom is delayed! Do you understand
my wrath? I hoped to finish "Séraphita" in Touraine; but I have worn
myself out, like Sisyphus, in useless efforts. It is not every day that
we can go to heaven.

I began in Touraine a great work,--"Le Père Goriot." You will see it
in the coming numbers of the "Revue de Paris." I put in _tiyeuilles_,
laughing like a maniac; but not in the mouth of a young woman, no; in
that of a horrible old one. I would not allow you to have a rival.

I come back here; I have my two last lawsuits to compound, my first
part of the "Études Philosophiques" to launch; happily Werdet is an
intelligent man and most devoted; but he has very little money. I must,
under pain of seeing him fail, do "César Birotteau" by December 15;
besides which, Madame Bêchet must have her fourth Part of the "Études
de Mœurs" by the 1st to the 15th of November.

My pecuniary obligations are coming due, and my payments are made with
difficulty. Besides which I have taken J. Sandeau to live with me; I
must furnish for him, and pilot him through the literary ocean, poor
shipwrecked fellow, full of heart. In short, one ought to be ten men,
have relays of brains, never sleep, be always blest with inspiration,
and refuse all distractions.

It is now three months since I last saw Madame de Berny; judge of my
life by that feature of it. Ah! if I were loved, my mistress might
sleep in peace; there is no place in my life---I won't say for an
infidelity, but--for a thought. It wouldn't be a merit; I am even
ashamed of myself. I should have to do six hundred leagues on foot, go
to Wierzchownia on a pilgrimage, to present myself in youthful shape,
for I am so fat that the newspapers joke me, the wretches! That is
France, _la belle France_; they laugh at ills produced by toil; they
laugh at my "abdomen." So be it! they have nothing else to say. They
cannot find in me either baseness or cowardice, or anything of what
dishonours them; and, as Philippon of "La Caricature" said to me: "Be
happy; _all who do not live by writing_ admire your character as much
as your works." I grasped his hand well that day. He gave me back my
strength.

You know by the announcement of the fourth Part, that I am busy with
the second volume of the "Scènes de la Vie privée," but what you did
not know of is "Le Père Goriot," a master work! the painting of a
sentiment so great that nothing can exhaust it, neither rebuffs, nor
wounds, nor injustice; a man who is _father_, as a saint, a martyr is
Christian. As for "César Birotteau," I have told you about him.

Yes, I inhaled a little of the autumn in Touraine; I played _plant_ and
_oyster_, and when the skies were clear I thought it was an omen, and
that a dove was coming from Vienna with a green leaflet in her beak.

I am now in my winter condition, in my study, with the Chartreuse
gown you know of, working for the future. As for my joys, they are
innocent,--the refurnishing of my bedroom, a cane that has made all
Paris gabble, a divine opera-glass which my chemists have had made for
me by the optician of the Observatoire; besides which, gold buttons
on my blue coat; buttons chiselled by fairy hands,--for the man who
carries, in the nineteenth century, a cane worthy of Louis XIV. cannot
keep upon his coat ignoble pinchbeck buttons. It is these little
innocent crotchets that make me pass for a millionaire. I have created
the sect of Canophilists in the fashionable world, and they take me for
a frivolous man. It is very amusing.

It is a month now since I have set foot at the Opera. I have, I
think, a box at the Bouffons. Is not that, you will say to me, very
comfortable poverty? But remember that music, chased gold canes,
buttons, and opera-glasses, are my sole amusements. No, you will not
blame them.

Shall I send you the corrected "Peau de Chagrin"? Yes. Ten days hence
that Baron Sina, who fills my mind on account of his name, will
receive, addressed to him, a package containing five 12mo volumes,
in the style of the four of "Le Médecin de campagne," which Maître
Werdet calls pretty little volumes. They are frightful; but this
edition is an edition intended to fix, definitively, the type of the
grand general edition of the work which, under the title of "Études
Sociales," will include all these fragments, shafts, columns, capitals,
bas-reliefs, walls, cupolas, in short, the building, which will be ugly
or beautiful, which will win me the _plaudite cives_ or the gemoniæ.
Be tranquil; in that day, when the illustrated edition comes, we shall
find asses on whose skin to print you a unique copy, enriched with
designs. That shall be the votive offering of the _pardoned one._ Well,
forget my fault, but I shall never forget it myself.

Do not fear, madame, that Zulma-Dudevant will ever see me attached to
her chariot.... I only speak of this because more celebrity is fastened
on that woman than she deserves; which is preparing for her a bad
autumn.

Madame de Berny does not like "Volupté;" she condemns the book as full
of rhetoric and empty of feeling. She was revolted by the passage where
the lover of Madame de Couaën goes into evil places, and thinks that
character ignoble. She has made me come down from my judgment; but
there are, nevertheless, fine pages, flowers in a desert.

"Jacques," Madame Sand's last novel, is advice given to husbands who
inconvenience their wives to kill themselves in order to leave them
free. The book is not dangerous. You could write ten times better if
you made a novel in letters. This one is empty and false from end to
end. An artless young girl leaves, after six months of marriage, a
_superior_ man for a popinjay; a man of importance, passionate and
loving, for a dandy, without any reason, physiological or moral. Then,
there is a love for mules, as in "Lélia" for unfruitful beings; which
is strange in a woman who is a mother, and who loves a good deal in
the German way, instinctively. All these authors roam the void, astride
of a hollow; there is no truth there. I prefer ogres, Tom Thumb, and
the Sleeping Beauty.

M. de G... has made a decent little failure. Those who have wounded me
never prosper; isn't that singular? Decidedly, fate wills that I shall
not see Madame de Castries. Each time that I rustle against her gown
some misfortune happens to me. The last time, I went to Lormois, the
residence of the Duc de Maillé, to see her, I came back on foot (to
get thin). Between Lonjumeau and Antony, a sharp point inside my boot
pushed up and wounded my foot. It was half-past eleven at night,--an
hour at which a road is not furrowed with vehicles. I was just about
to go to bed in a ditch, like a robber, when the cabriolet of one of
my friends came by, empty. The groom picked me up and took me home. I
believe in fate. It is in their harshness that we judge women. This one
showed me a dry heart. As Eugène Sue says, the viscera were tinder;
they would have stopped the blood instead of making it circulate.
Pardon me; this is the remains of the nail in my boot.

Fancy, I am going to give myself the pleasure of seeing myself acted.
I have imagined a buffoonery that I want to enjoy: "Prudhomme,
bigamist." Prudhomme is miserly; keeps his wife very short; she does
the household work and is a servant disguised by the title of wife.
She has never been to an Opera ball. Her neighbour wants to take her,
and being informed of the conjugal habits of Joseph Prudhomme, she
assists the wife in making a lay figure resembling Madame Prudhomme,
which the women put in the bed, and go off to the masked ball.
Prudhomme comes home, says his monologues, questions his wife, who is
asleep, and finally goes to bed. At five o'clock the wife returns; he
wakes, and finds himself with two wives. You can never imagine the
fun our actors will make of that sketch; but I swear to you that, if
it takes, Parisians will come and see it a hundred times. God grant
it! It will only cost me a morning, and may perhaps be worth fifteen
thousand francs. It is the best of buffoonery! But all depends on so
many things. Some one must lend me a name; the theatres are sinks
of vice, and my foot is virgin of stain. Perhaps the first and last
representation will be in this letter. Better one fine page not paid
for than a hundred thousand francs for a worthless farce. I have
never separated fame from poverty,--poverty with canes, buttons, and
opera-glasses, be it understood, and a fame easy to carry. That will be
my lot.

Have I hid my real griefs? have I chattered gaily enough? Would
you believe that I suffer,--that this morning I took up life with
difficulty, I rebelled against my solitude, I wanted to roam the world,
to see what the Landstrasse was, to put my fingers in the Danube, to
listen to the Viennese stupidities--in short, to do anything but write
pages; to be _living_ instead of turning pale over phrases?

I await, with impatience, till your white hand writes a few lines in
compensation of my toil; for to him who counts suffrages and estimates
them, yours are worth millions. I await, as Bugeaud said, "my peck;"
then I shall start off, joyous once more, on a new course across the
fields of thought. Who will unfasten my bridle and take off my bit;
who will give me my freedom; when shall I begin to write "Philippe le
Discret," to work at my ease--to-day, a scene; to-morrow, nothing,--and
date my work Wierzchownia?

Do you know what a _doublion_ is? It is the key of the fields,--it is
freedom! Come, come! another day, my sadness! to-day the moujik is all
gaiety at having kissed the hand of his lady, as in church they kiss
the golden pax the priest holds out. I am well of opinion of those who
love Musset; yes, he is a poet to put above Lamartine and V. Hugo; but
this is not yet the gospel.

I place on you the care of thanking M. Hanski for his last letter. But
I am sorry in my joy. I wish it had been any other cause than the dear
little Anna's illness that detained you in Vienna. Kiss her for me, on
the forehead, if that proud infant suffers it. And finally, remember me
to all about you.

You cannot have the bound "Séraphita" until New Year's day. I would
like to know if I may send Anna a little souvenir without fear of the
inquisitive nose and hands of the German custom-house.

Adieu; I have given you my hours of sleep so as not to rob Werdet, or
Madame Bêchet; a thousand respectful affections, and deign to accept my
profound obedience.


Sunday, 19th, three in the morning.

I have not slept; I had not read all my letters. My last two
difficulties are arrangeable. Two thorns less in my foot.

I have read over my scribblings. I am afraid you cannot read them; what
shall I do? Have I told you all? Oh! no. There are many things that are
never told.

My mother is very proud of the "Absolu;" my sister writes that she wept
with joy in reading it and in saying to herself that I was her brother.
Madame de Berny finds some spots upon it. She does not like that
Claës should turn out his daughter; she thinks that forced. Madame de
Castries writes me that she wept over it. I am sorry for the distance
between Paris and Vienna. I would have liked to have your opinion first.

Ah! I may go to England for a few days (in all, ten, to go and return).
My brother-in-law has just invented something wonderful, he says,
relating to railroads, which might be sold for a good little million to
the English. I shall try.

Did I speak to you of Prince Puckler-Muskau, and of my dinner with him
at the house of a species of German monster who calls herself the widow
of Benjamin Constant, but has all the air of being a good woman? Well,
if I did not speak of it it will be the subject of a conversation when
I am on the estates of your Beauteousness.

On my way to England I shall stop one week at Ham. The illustrious
Peyronnet has expected me there for six months, and the trip has always
been delayed. The Duc de Fitz-James writes to invite me to Normandy;
refused.

_Mon Dieu!_ forty letters read; it is a sort of drunkenness. Among
them are two unknown ladies. One modestly asks me to make her portrait
and write her life. She has green eyes and she is a widow--that's the
physical and the moral of her. The other sends me execrable verses. At
last I understand the _cachets_ of Voltaire. They were not vanity; they
were simply to avoid any but the letters of friends. This is what it
is to have--I, a poor devil--neither Ferney, nor two hundred thousand
francs income, nor one hundred francs for postage.

Sandeau will be lodged like a prince. He can't believe in his luck. I
embark him on a career of masterpieces by a thousand crowns of debt,
which we hypothecate on a bottle of ink. Poor lad! He does not know
what duty is. He is free. I chain him. I am sorry for it. He is at this
moment loved. A pretty young woman casts upon his wounds the balm of
her smiles.

Re-adieu.



PARIS. October 6, 1834.

I have been for the last few days so busy in settling Sandeau and
furnishing him with everything, for he is a child, that I have not
been able to write to you; and now I shall have to do so by fits and
starts, according to the order of my ideas and not that of logic.

Ah! in the first place, can you conceive that they are finding fault
with me for the name MARGUERITE in the "Recherche de l'Absolu." It is a
Flemish name, and that is all there is to say about it. I must be very
irreproachable when they have to find fault with me for that!

Next Saturday I give a dinner to the Tigers of my opera-box, and I am
preparing sumptuosities out of all reason. I shall have Rossini and
Olympe, his _cara donna_ [afterwards his wife], who will preside. Next
Nodier; then five _tigers_, Sandeau, and a certain Victor Bohain (a man
of great political talent, unjustly smirched), the most exquisite wines
of Europe, the rarest flowers, the best cheer; in short, I intend to
distinguish myself.

I don't know who told me that your bitter-sweet cousin expected me in
Geneva! _Mon Dieu!_ how queer! If I wanted to be gallant I should tell
you that I would not cross the Jura in winter for any one in the world
after having had the Maison Mirabaud [Mme. Hanska's house] for joy
during that stay in Geneva. Well, believe it.

I have worked much at "Père Goriot," which will be in the "Revue de
Paris" for November. My first part of the "Études Philosophiques,"
the pieces of which have been corrected with excessive severity, will
appear in a few days. I shall then busy myself with the "Mémoires d'une
jeune Mariée," a delightful composition, and with "César Birotteau,"
which is taking immense proportions. Also Emmanuel Arago and Sandeau
are going to do a great work in five acts, in which I have a third,--a
fine subject, which will pay Sandeau's debts and mine; a drama,
entitled "Les Courtisans." It will go first to the Porte-Saint-Martin;
but it will certainly get to the Français. It is magnificent! (I am a
little like Perrette and her jug of milk.) If we win the stage, and our
anonymous society, under the title of E. J. San-Drago (Sand-Arago),
is successful, I shall be free all the sooner, and Sandeau, trained
by me to keep house, will allow me to travel. It is impossible that a
man who destines himself to politics should not see Europe, not judge
fundamentally of manners, morals, and interests. The struggle between
France and other countries will always be decided by the North. I must
know the North at any cost, and, as M. de Margonne says, one has to be
young to travel. Therefore, my liberty! oh, how I long for it!

I shall go to Ham about November 5, and, perhaps, from there to
England; but I shall return for the 15th in Paris. My life is varied
only by ideas; physically, it is monotonous. I speak confidentially
with no one but Madame de Berny or with you. I find that one should
communicate but little with petty minds; one leaves one's wool
there, as on bushes. I am vowed to great sentiments, unique, lofty,
unalterable, exclusive, and it _is_ an odd contrast with my apparent
levity. I assure you it would take at least five or six years to
know to what point solitude has made me susceptible, and of how many
sacrifices I am capable without ostentation. What of sentiments,
feelings, I have made visible in my work is but the faint shadow of
the light that is in me. Up to the present time one woman only, Madame
de Berny, has really known what I am, because she has seen my smile,
always otherwise expressive, never cease.[1] In twelve years I have
had neither anger nor impatience. The heaven of my heart has always
been blue. Any other attitude is, to my thinking, impotence. Strength
should be a unit; and after having for seven years measured myself with
misfortune and vanquished it, and risen, to gain literary royalty,
every night with a will more determined than that of the night before,
I have, I think, the right to call myself strong. Thus inconstancy,
infidelity are _incomprehensibilities_ for me. Nothing wearies me;
neither waiting nor happiness. My friendship is of the race of the
granites; all will wear-out before the feeling I have conceived. Madame
de Berny is sixty years old; her griefs have changed and withered her.
My affection has redoubled. I say it without pride, because I see no
merit in it. It is my nature; which God has made oblivious of evil,
while ceaselessly in presence of the good. A being who loves me always
makes me quiver. Noble sentiments are so fruitful; why should we go in
search of bad ones? God made me to smell the fragrance of flowers, not
the fetor of mud. And why too, should I entangle myself in meannesses?
All within me tends toward what is great. I choke in the plains, I live
on the mountains! And then, I have undertaken so much! We have reached
the _era of intelligence_. Material monarchs, brutal forces are passing
away. There are worlds intellectual, in which Pizarro, Cortez, Columbus
must appear. There will be sovereigns in the kingdom of thought. With
this ambition no baseness, no pettiness is possible. Nothing wastes
time like petty things; and so, I need something very great to fill my
mind outside of this circle where I find the infinite. There is but one
thing--to the infinite, the infinite--an immense love. If I have it,
should I go in search of a Parisian woman, a Madame de ----? (Some one
told me yesterday that she wished a scandal; that her husband left her
free, but her vanity is such--I believe it--that she wants to be talked
about.) I have such a horror of the women of Paris that I camp upon my
work from six in the morning till six at night. At half-past six my
hired coupé comes for me, and takes me one day to the Opera, another to
the Italians, and I go to bed at midnight. Thus I have not a minute to
give to any one. I receive visitors while I dine; I talk of our plans
for the plays during dinner. I correspond with no one but you, Madame
de Berny, my sister, and my mother. All other letters wait till Sunday,
when I open them, and all that are not on business are handed over to
Sandeau, who offers me his hand as secretary.

So doing, I shall end by extinguishing this fire of debt and
accomplishing my promised work. Without it, no salvation, no liberty.
The deuce! you will get the proof of what I now have the pleasure of
writing to you, and of my firmness, when you see my books; for a man
can't coquet and amuse himself, and bring out such publications. Toil
and the Muse; that means that the toiling Muse is virtuous,--she is a
virgin. It is deplorable that in this nineteenth century we are obliged
to go to the images of Greek mythology; but I have never been so struck
as I am now by the powerful truth of those myths.

Do not think that what I have been writing is a round-about way of
telling you that, whatever be your age and face, my affection for you
would be the same. I should not take circuitous ways to tell you a
thing it would give me pleasure to express if I did not think you had
enough perspicacity to have felt it, divined it. No; I was examining
myself in good faith without any intention of showing myself off. I
wish to be so great by intellect and fame that you can feel proud of my
true friendship. Each of my works, which I want to make more and more
extended, better thought, better written, will be a flattery for you,
a flower, a bouquet that I shall send you! Distance alone admits of
flowers of rhetoric.

My brother-in-law has just discovered a process which, in his opinion,
solves on railways the problem of inclined planes, and will save
great costs in construction and traction. It is possible to sell this
invention to the English; here he has taken out a patent, and the
English purchaser can take out an export patent. My brother-in-law does
not want to go to London, and I am going to attempt this affair in the
interests of my sister. That is the history of my journey to London.

We are not satisfied with our brother in Normandy. His wife is
pregnant. He has complicated, still further, the difficulties of his
life, poor creature. My mother is not well; I wish I could see her in
good health to enjoy what I am preparing for her. But, good God! she
has had many trials. To-day she turns to me, and heartily; she seems
to recognize, without admitting it, the great wrong of her slight
affection for my sister and me; she is punished in the child of her
choice in a dreadful way. Henry is nothing, and will be nothing. He has
spoiled the future his brother-in-law or I might have made for him by
his marriage. All this is horribly sad.

Yesterday I re-read your letters. As I was putting them away, pressing
them together to arrange them better, they exhaled a fragrance, I know
not what, of grandeur and distinction that could not be mistaken. Those
who talk of your forehead are not in error. But what is surprising in
your letters is a turn of phrase, all your own, which issues from your
heart as your glance from your eyes; it is our language written as
Fénelon wrote it. You must have read Fénelon a great deal, or else you
have in your soul his harmonious thought. When these letters come I
read them first like a man in a hurry to talk with you; I do not really
taste them till the second reading, which happens capriciously. When
some thought saddens me I have recourse to you. I bring out the little
box in which is my elixir, and I live again in your Italian journey. I
see Diodati; I stretch myself on that good sofa of the Maison Mirabaud
I turn the leaves of the "Gotha," that pretty "Gotha;" and then, after
an hour or two, all is serene. I find something cool within me. My soul
has rested on a friendly soul. No one is in my secret. It is something
like the prayer of the mystic, from which he rises radiant. Will you
think me very poetic? But it is true.

My Sandeau has brought out a book which is already sold. It is "Madame
de Sommerville." Read it, this first book of a young man. Hold out
your hand to him; do not be severe. Keep your severities for me; they
are my privilege. Madame de Berny pays me no more compliments. From
her, criticisms. Criticisms are sweet when made by a friendly hand; we
believe them; they sadden because they are, no doubt, true, but they do
not rend.

Well, adieu. You ought to be reading my last letter at the moment I am
writing this. If you wrote to me so that I should receive your letters
on Sundays, I would answer on Mondays. We should gain by not crossing
each other.

I shall send, without letter of advice, to Sina's address, the first
part of the "Études Philosophiques." You know all that; but let me
believe that you take an interest in these enormous corrections _à la_
Buffon (he corrected immensely), which ought to make my work, when
completed ("Études Sociales," about which I told you), a monument in
our fine language.[2] I believe that in 1838 the three parts of this
gigantic work will be, if not wholly finished, at least built up, so
that a judgment can be formed of the mass.

The "Études de Mœurs" will represent all social effects, without a
single situation in life, physiognomy, character of man or woman,
manner of living, profession, social zone, French region, or anything
whatever of childhood, maturity, old age, politics, justice, or war,
having been forgotten.

That done, the history of the human heart traced thread by thread, the
social history given in all its parts, there is _the base_. The facts
will not be imaginary; they will be what is happening everywhere.

Then, the second structure is the "Études Philosophiques;" for
after the _effects_ will come the _causes_. I shall have painted
in the "Études de Mœurs" sentiments and their action, life and
its deportment. In the "Études Philosophiques" I shall tell _why_
the sentiments, _on what_ the life; what is the line, what are
the conditions beyond which neither society nor man exist; and,
after having surveyed society in order to describe it, I shall
survey it again in order to judge it. So, in the "Études de Mœurs"
_individualities_ are typified; in the "Études Philosophiques" _types_
are individualized. Thus I shall have given life everywhere: to the
type by individualizing it, to the individual by typifying him. I shall
have given thought to the fragment; I shall have given to thought the
life of the individual.

Then, after _effects_ and _causes_, will come the "Études Analytiques,"
of which the "Physiologie du Mariage" is a part; for after _effects_
and _causes_ we must search for _principles. Manners_ and _morals
[mœurs]_ are the play; _causes_ are the _coulisses_ and the
_machinery. Principles_ are the _maker_. But in proportion as the work
winds spirally up to the heights of thought, it draws itself in and
condenses. Though twenty-four volumes are required for the "Études de
Mœurs," only fifteen are needed for the "Études Philosophiques," and
only nine for the "Études Analytiques." Thus man, society, humanity
will be described, judged, analyzed, without repetitions, and in a work
which will be like an "Arabian Nights" of the West.

When all is done, my Madeleine scraped, my pediment carved, my last
touches given, I shall have been _right_, or I shall have been _wrong_.
But, after having made the poesy, the demonstration of a whole system,
I shall make the science of it in an Essay on Human Forces ["Essai
sur les Forces Humaines"]. And, on the cellar-walls of this palace I,
child and jester, shall have drawn the immense arabesque of the "Contes
Drolatiques."

Do you think, madame, that I have much time to lose at the feet of a
Parisian woman? No; I had to choose. Well, I have now shown you my
real mistress; I have removed her veils. There is the work, there
is the gulf, there is the crater, there is the matter, there is the
woman, there is she who takes my nights, my days, who puts a price on
this very letter, taken from hours of study--but taken with delight.
Ah! I entreat you, never attribute to me anything petty, low, or
mean,--_you_, who are able to measure the spread of my wings!

Well, re-adieu. Recall the carver, the founder, the sculptor, the
goldsmith, the galley-slave, the artist, the thinker, the poet,
the--_whatever you will_, to the memory of those about you who love
him, and think of the power of a lonely affection, that of a palm-tree
in the desert, a palm-tree that rises to the skies for refreshment,
if you would know the part that you have in it. Some day, when I have
finished all, we will laugh heartily over it. To-day one must work!

[Footnote 1: Probably misprinted in the French; but I leave it verbatim
as it is given.--TR.]

[Footnote 2: He changed the title to "La Comédie Humaine," which is
indeed a monument, and his monument.--TR.]



PARIS, November 22--December 1, 1834.

_Mon Dieu!_ I have to bear the burden of my own giddiness. I have not
been to London; my brother-in-law changed his mind. You think me in
England and you have not written. I am here without knowing what has
become of you, or what you are doing. A thousand anxieties have seized
me the last few days. Are you ill? Is M. Hanski ill? Is Anna? In
short, I am making dragons for myself about you. I expected a letter,
and the letter not coming I began to search out _why_. The why is your
belief in my departure.

I have no good things to tell you. I am mortally sad. In spite of the
consolations of work and the forced activities of poverty, there is
a void in my life that weighs upon me. In moments of depression I am
solitary. Madame de Berny still suffers cruelly, and she remains in the
country. I have been to see her for a few days. Those few days are all
I have been able to give her for five months. You can judge by that
what my life has been,--a desert to cross. Shall I reach the happy land
where streams and verdure and the gazelles are?

My poor mother is extremely ill. I expect her here to-morrow;
consultations as to her health are necessary. My brother's household
is more and more disheartening, and toward the close of every year
business affairs are generally difficult. You see that all conspires to
sadden me.

We have, Sandeau and I, begun a great comedy: "La Grande Mademoiselle,"
history of Lauzun, his marriage, and, for culmination, "Marie, pull off
my boots." But with a subject of this kind we may fail before a public
blasé with horrors. Whatever is merely witty seems pale. However!

I was writing this when your letter came, and I will answer it point
by point. You know my character very little if you think that I ever
abandon a sentiment, or an idea, or a friend. No, no, madame; it takes
many wounds, many blows of the axe to cut down what is in my heart.
Borget is in Italy; Borget is roving, painting, and does not write to
me. I have had news of him only indirectly; nevertheless, he is always
fresh in my thoughts, though we have known each other for several
years.

I am not _infatuated_ about Sandeau; but I held out a pole to a poor
swimmer who was going under. Where you are right is in believing firmly
that I will let no one penetrate to the depths of my heart. For that,
the "Open, Sesame" that you have uttered is necessary. Few persons
know those sacramental words. I should be the most unhappy man in the
world if the secrets of my soul were known. Conjectures, however, are
not lacking. But I have too great a powder of jesting to allow of
anything I wish to hide becoming known. In France, we are obliged to
veil depths by levity; without it we should be ruined here.

Your letter re-animates me a little, much, extremely. You have put a
balm into my heart, like the Fosseuse. I will send you, immediately,
the five volumes of the "Études Philosophiques," my "Lettre à la
littérature," and "Le Père Goriot" in manuscript; together with the two
numbers of the "Revue de Paris" in which it will appear.

"César Birotteau" is getting on, and the "Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée"
are on the ways. I work now twenty hours daily. Luxury will never
prevent me from realizing my project of solitude at Wierzchownia, for I
see plainly, on one hand, the impossibility of being here in presence
of the literary discussions about me which are beginning to arise
violently, and the need of preparing, far from pin-pricks, two great
bludgeon blows,--the tragedy of "Philippe II." and "L'Histoire de la
succession du Marquis de Carabas," in which the political question will
be plainly decided in favour of the power of absolute monarchy. But
without this reason I should still have the keenest desire for travel;
and even without this cause, again, there is a greater reason than all
others, which would make me surmount every obstacle. Do you know it?
Will you have it? Do you care for it? Well, I know nothing sweeter,
more endearing, grander, more delightful than your friendship. To go in
search of it, to enjoy it for eight days, one could well travel eight
hundred leagues and not mind the labour of the journey.

No, no, the _tigers_ will not pervert me. Alas! they are too stupid. I
am compromised. I must give up my box on account of that neighbourhood.
It is a stable of tigers!

I saw at the Opera, in a box near mine, Delphine P..., poor thing!
withered, changed, faded, mistress of M. de F... _Mon Dieu!_ what a
skeleton! What a wearied and wearying air! with a species of dead-leaf
skin! No, that woman is not a woman! She looks like a corpse about to
fall into putrefaction. On the other hand, behind our box is that of
the Comtesse Comar, or Komar, or Komarck, for it was Zaluski who told
me the name, and I don't know the spelling of it; never did I see a
more amiable, more seductive old woman. She is Madame Jeroslas ... plus
heart and frankness. She had two pretty creatures with her. Zaluski is
to present me. You don't know how I like to be with persons of your
country. A name in _ka_ or _ki_ goes to my heart.

Oh! if you are kind, _if you love me_ (I wish I could say that
gracefully and irresistibly, as you say it), you will never leave
me fifteen days without a letter. Whether you be in Vienna or at
Wierzchownia, you do not know how sweet a true friendship is to the
heart of a poor toiler who lives in the midst of Paris like a labourer
in the Swedish mines. I have cut loose from everything. I have no duty
to fulfil to society. I have a horror of false friends and grimaces. I
am alone, like a rock in mid-ocean. My perpetual labour is not to the
taste of any one. My poor sister Laure is angry at not seeing me. I
want to triumph over the remainder of the distresses that envelop me;
and I have not been strong, constant, and courageous for five years to
fail in the sixth.

Should I get a month to myself at the beginning of the year, you will
not be displeased if I bring my New Year's gifts to the pretty little
Anna myself, inasmuch as the Custom-house is so malicious? I shall
have the pleasure of going five hundred leagues to dine with you. But
so much work must be done to attain this result that I only speak of
it as one of those impossibilities that spur me to work and redouble
my courage; something results from it. The "Recherche de l'Absolu" was
only written through a hope of this kind. The compromise with Gosselin
took the profits of that arduous labour. Oh! you do not know me. In
your letters there are complaints, doubts, and polite accusations that
dishearten me.

"Le Père Goriot" is a fine work, but monstrously sad. To make it
complete, it was necessary to show the _moral sink-hole_ of Paris; and
it has the effect of a disgusting sore.


Wednesday, 26.

I must tell you that yesterday (my letter has been interrupted) I
copied out your portrait of Mademoiselle Céleste, and I said to two
uncompromising judges: "Here is a sketch I have just flung on paper. I
wanted to paint a woman under given circumstances, and launch her into
life through such and such an event."

What do you think they said?--"Read that portrait again." After which
they said:--

"That is your masterpiece. You have never before had that
_laisser-aller_ of a writer which shows the hidden strength."

"Ha, ha!" I answered, striking my head; "that comes from the forehead
of _an analyst_."

I kneel at your feet for this violation; but I left out all that
was personal. Beat me, scold me, but I could not refuse myself the
enjoyment of this praise; and I tasted the greatest of pleasures,--that
of secretly hearing a person praised who is unknown and to whom one
bears a deep affection. It is enjoyment twice over.

I am convinced of the immense superiority of your mind, and I am
confounded to find in you such feminine graces, together with the force
of mind which Madame Dudevant has and Madame de Staël once had; and I
say this very loud, that you may not make yourself small behind that
tall steeple you have so often boasted of to me. The opinion that I
express upon you is a matured opinion. I am here, far from the prestige
of your presence. I go over in my mind, impartially, your sayings, your
opinions, your studies, and I write you these lines with a sort of joy,
because Madame Carraud and Madame de Berny have made other women seem
very small to me; and because, in the matter of grace, amenity, and the
science hidden under the frivolity of smiles, I am a great connoisseur,
having lovingly inhaled those flowers of womanhood, and what I say of
you is conscientious and true. Besides, you are too _grande dame_ to be
proud of it. What you should be proud of is your kindness, and those
qualities which are acquired only by the practice of Christian virtues,
at which I never jest now.

Forgive me the disconnectedness of my letters, the incompleteness of my
sentences. I write to you at night before I begin to work. My letters
are like a prayer made to a good genius.

Go to the Prater with M. Hanski! _Mon Dieu!_ you trample the world
underfoot, and you do not set in the light that which is good!

Ah! I must tell you that literature, seeing my cane, my chiselled
buttons, has decided that I am the Benjamin of an old English woman,
Lady Anelsy (I write the name badly), whom I met at Madame d'Abrantès,
and who has a box at the Opera, near mine (she separates me from
Madame Delphine P...), and to whom I bow. I have answered friends
(friends who are tigers in the guise of doves) that, not being able
to bear the features of the old lady in my heart, I have had them
carved on the knob of my cane. You have no idea what a fuss my movable
property creates. I have much more success through that than through my
works. That is Paris!

My dinner? Why, it made an excitement. Rossini declared he had never
seen, eaten, or drunk anything better among sovereigns. It sparkled
with wit. The beautiful Olympe was graceful, sensible, and perfect.
Lautour-Mézeray was the wittiest of men; he extinguished the cross-fire
of Rossini, Nodier, and Malitourne by an amazing artillery vigour. The
master of the feast was the humble lighter who put the match to each
sun in this array of fireworks. _Ecco._

I told you that "La Recherche de l'Absolu" would astonish you; well,
you will be as little prepared for "Père Goriot." After that will come
the glorious end of "Séraphita." Never will imagination have been in so
many different spheres. I do not speak of the perfumer Birotteau, or of
the "Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée;" those will be supporting the battle
with fresh troops.

Do you know for whom is this success? Well, I want you to hear my name
gloriously, respectfully pronounced. I want to give you the sweetest
enjoyments of friendship; I want to have you say to yourself: "He
laughed like a boy at Geneva, and he made campaigns into China!" For
you think he is a moralist, a toiler, a cynic, a--I don't know what.
But he _is_ a child who loves pebbles, and talks nonsense, and does it;
who reads "Gotha," plays patience, and makes M. Hanski laugh.

Geneva is to me like a memory of childhood. There I quitted my chain;
there I laughed without saying to myself, "To-morrow!" I shall always
remember having tried to dance a galop down the long salon at Diodati,
where Byron got drunk. And the country about la Bellotte! I must not
think too much about all that; I should go to Vienna! I have such
superstition, such veneration for persons with whom I can be _myself_.
How has that come about among us? I don't know, but so it is. I can
talk of my griefs, my joys, before you and Monsieur Hanski; here I
am myself only with my sister and Madame de Berny,--probably because
you resemble the latter, and are very much my sister. At this moment
I would fain tell you, honourably, all graceful and sweet things,
and send you, gathered one by one in the fields of friendship, the
prettiest flowers,--those you like best; for I wish never again to lie
for one moment under your displeasure.

If you ordain it, Lucullus will retreat into the skin of Diogenes in
order not again to read these words: "Your goings-on as Lucullus will
retard your freedom."

I dine to-day with one of those who _took_ Algiers, the
commissary-general Denniée, who for the last three years is in love
with an admired creature (rather a fool), Mademoiselle Amigo, of the
Italian Opera. There, came Rossini, in dishabille and not sarcastic.
Yesterday, at the first representation of "Erani," Olympe said to me,
motioning to Rossini:--

"You cannot imagine how beautiful and sublime the soul of that being
is; how kind he is, and to what point he is kind. To reserve his heart
and its treasures for her he loves, he wraps himself in sarcasm to the
eyes of others; he makes himself prickly."

I took Rossini's hand and pressed it joyfully.

_Mio maestro_," I said to him; "then we can understand each other."

"What, you too!" he said, smiling.

I lowered my head; then I showed him all that brilliant Paris which was
present, and said:--

"To cast one's diamonds and pearls into that mud--"

And at that moment my eyes fell upon "Delmar's" box.


Monday, December 1.

My letter has remained for eight days on, in, and underneath "Le Père
Goriot." I have had a thousand money worries, but I am getting out of
them. Never have I been so powerful to get through this business by my
firm will. Another few months, and I am saved.

Within a few days a little joy has come to me. After much pressing,
and receiving no for an answer for the last three years, they have
consented to sell me "La Grenadière." So I shall have a retreat for
study, and the furniture, books, and arrangements I should make will
remain mine. I could live there six months, incognito, without seeing
any one. So here I am, very happy--so far as a material thing can give
happiness.

You have been proud of "Père Goriot." My friends declare that it is
comparable to nothing, and is above all my other compositions.

Do you know that I am uneasy on what your last letter said relating to
depth of heart, to which no man could ever attain. Those few words make
me think you do not know me well, and it grieves me, because you cannot
love me as well as I might be loved if I were known better. _Mon Dieu!_
I am the object of a thousand calumnies, each more ignoble than the
others, and I pay no more attention to them than he who is above the
Jura listens to Pictet. Is that a merit? But a word from you puts alarm
into my brain, into my heart.

Well, adieu. It is now eight days that I have been conversing with
you. I will write a little more regularly in future. The doctors have
obtained that I shall change my way of life. I am going to bed at
midnight to rise at six in the morning, and work from then till three
in the afternoon. I shall have from three to five for my pleasures, and
I will write you each day a little line. After which I am ordered to go
and amuse myself for six hours till midnight.

_Mon Dieu!_ I have the same difficulty in quitting my pen that I had in
quitting the Maison Mirabaud when the master forced me to go by going
to bed himself. A thousand prettinesses to Anna, my friendly regards to
M. Hanski, if you don't keep them all for yourself.



PARIS, December 15, 1834.

Oh! how long it is since I have seen your writing! Have I fallen again
into disgrace? Are you displeased with my long letters written at
intervals? I can only give you--offer you a day here and there; it is
a day of respite in the midst of my long combat. It is the moment when
I, poor dove without a branch, rest my feet beside the living spring,
the source where she dips her thirsty beak into the pure waters of
affection.

Yes, all is enlarging--the circus and the athlete. To face all, I must
imitate the French soldier during the first campaigns in Italy: never
recoil before impossibilities, and find in victory the courage to beat
back the morrow's enemy.

Last week I took in all but ten hours' sleep. So that yesterday and
to-day I have been like a poor foundered horse on his side,--in my
bed, not able to do anything, or hear anything. The fact is, the
first number of "Père Goriot" made eighty-three pages in the "Revue
de Paris," equivalent to half an octavo volume. I had to correct the
proofs of those eighty-three pages three times in six days. If it is
any glory, I alone could make that tremendous effort. But none the less
must my other works be carried on.

Forgive me, therefore, the irregularity of my correspondence. To-day
one flood, to-morrow another flood sweeps me along. I bruise myself
against one rock, I recover, and am thrown upon a reef. These are
struggles that no one can appreciate. No one knows what it is to change
ink into gold!

I have begun to tremble. I am afraid that fatigue, lassitude, impotence
may overtake me before I have erected my building. I need, from time to
time, good little words said out of France, some great distractions,
and the greatest come from the heart, do they not?

However, "Père Goriot" is an unheard-of success; there is but one
voice: "Eugénie Grandet," the "Absolu," are surpassed. I am, so far, at
the first number only, and the second is beyond that. _Tiyeuilles_ has
made people laugh. I return you that success.

But you, what has become of you? No letters! nothing! A few days
more, and I hope my work will be rewarded by reaching your ear like
a reproach. I did believe you would periodically cast me a smile,
a letter, a gracious dew of words written to refresh the brow, the
heart, the soul, the will of your moujik. Which of us can dispose of
our time? You. Who writes oftenest? I. I have most affection, that is
natural; you are the most lovable, and I have more reasons to bear you
friendship than you have to grant it to me. There is but one thing
that pleads for me; misfortune, misery, toil; and as you have all the
compassions of woman and of angel, you should think of me a little
oftener than you do. In that, I am right. Write to me every week, and
do not be vexed with me if I can only answer you twice a month. This
torrential life is my excuse. Once I am freed, and you shall judge of
me. Yes, forgive much to him who loves and toils much. Reckon to me
as something nights without sleep, days without pleasures, without
distractions. Madame Mitgislas ... invited me, but I did not accept; I
have neither the time nor the wish to do so. Society gives so little
and wants so much! and I am so ill at ease in it! I am so embarrassed
on receiving silly compliments, and _true sounds_ of the heart are so
rare!

Since I wrote to you there has been nothing but work in my life,
slashed with a few little good debauches of music. We have had "Moïse"
and "Semiramide" mounted and executed as those operas have never
been before, and every time that either is given I go. It is my only
pleasure. I do not meddle in politics. I say, like some grammarian,
I don't know who, "Whatever happens, I have six thousand verbs
conjugated." I bring daily, like an ant, a chip to my pile. There
are days when the memory of the Île Saint-Pierre gives me frenzies;
I thirst for a journey, I writhe in my chains. Then, the next day, I
think that I have fifty ducats to pay at the end of the month, and I
set to work again!

Will you like me with long hair? Everybody here says I look ridiculous.
I persist. My hair has not been cut since my sweet Geneva. In order
that you may know what I mean by "my sweet Geneva," you ought to see
Chariot's caricature on "my sweet Falaise": a conscript on Mount Blanc,
not seeing an apple-tree, calls it "Land of evil!"

At this moment I am working at two things: "La Fleur du Poix," and
"Melmoth réconcilié." Then I have also to do the counterpart of "Louis
Lambert," "Ecce Homo," and the end of the "Enfant Maudit," besides that
of "Séraphita" (which belongs to you), and that of "Le Père Goriot,"
which will end the year 1834, just as the end of "Séraphita" began it.

You understand that all my time is fully employed, nights and days;
for, besides these things, I have proofs of my reprints which are
always going on. Sandeau is horrified. He says that fame can never pay
for such toil, and that he would rather die than undertake it. He has
no other feeling for me than the pity we give to sick people.

I shall see you, no doubt, in Vienna. I have very solidly determined
within myself to go there in March, so as to be able to make a
reconnoissance of the battlefields of Wagram and Essling. I shall start
after the carnival.

Did I tell you that I am to have the Grenadière?

_Mon Dieu!_ I return to your silence; you do not know how uneasy I am
about you, your little one, and M. Hanski. It would not cost you much
just to say: "We are all well, and we think of you."

Well, I must say adieu, send you a thousand gracious thoughts, and beg
you to offer my respects to M. Hanski, keeping my homage at your feet.




III.


LETTERS DURING 1835.



PARIS, January 4, 1835.

I have had the happiness to receive two letters from you within a
few days of each other, while you have doubtless received both mine.
I return to _mes moutons_ by asserting that you can write to me
regularly, and that it is not permissible in you to deprive me of my
sun.

Bah! I have not seen either K... or T... again. Why do you scold me?
Don't take my magic-lantern views for realities.

All is much changed since my last letter. Alas! I had the ambition to
be near you on the 20th of January, and I began to work eighteen hours
a day. I stood it for fifteen days, from my last letter till December
31; then I risked an insomnia; and I am now waking from a sleep of
seventeen hours, taken at intervals, which has saved me. What has the
public gained? "Le Père Goriot," on which these stupid Parisians dote.
"Père Goriot" is put above everything else.

I wait till I have finished "Séraphita" to send it at the same time as
the manuscript of "Séraphita," in its binding of cloth and silk as you
wished, simple and mysterious as the book itself; also the manuscript
of "Le Père Goriot" with the printed book, the first Part of the
"Études Philosophiques," and the fourth of the "Études de Mœurs."

My works are beginning to be better paid. "Père Goriot" has brought me
seven thousand francs, and as it will go into the "Études de Mœurs" in
a few months, I may say that it will bring me a thousand ducats. Oh!
I am very deeply humiliated to be so cruelly fastened to the glebe of
my debts, to be able to do nothing, never to have the free disposal of
myself. These are bitter tears, shed day and night in silence; they are
sorrows inexpressible, for the power of my desires must be known, to
comprehend that of my regrets.

So you fatigue yourself by going into society,--you, flower of
solitude, and so beauteous in worldly inexperience! Your letter brought
the whole social life of Vienna into this study where I work without
ceasing. I became a worldling with you.

Alas! I am threatened with a grief that will spread over all my life.
I went for two days to see Madame de Berny, who is eighteen leagues
from here. I was witness of a terrible attack. I can no longer doubt
it, she has aneurism of the heart. That life, so precious, is lost.
At any moment death may take from me an angel who has watched over me
for fourteen years; she, too, a flower of solitude, whom the world has
never touched, and who has been my star. My work is not done without
tears. The attentions due to her cast uncertainty upon any time of
which I could dispose, though she herself unites with the doctor in
advising me some strong diversions. She pushes friendship so far as to
hide her sufferings from me; she tries to seem well for me. You will
understand that I have not drawn Claës to do as he did. Great God! what
changes in her have been wrought in two months! I am overwhelmed. To
feel one's self well-nigh mad with grief, and yet to be condemned to
toil! To lose that grand and noble part of my life and to know you so
far away from me is enough to make one throw one's self into the Seine!
The future of my mother which rests upon me, and that hope which
shines afar, so far! are like two branches to which I cling. Therefore
your _scolds_ about the K.s and the P.s and my dissipations make me
smile sadly. Nevertheless, I have put your letter next to my heart,
with that profound sense of egotism which makes us clasp the last
friend who is left to us. You will be, if this person is taken from me,
the only and sole person who has opened my heart. You alone will know
the Sesame, for the feeling of Madame Carraud of Issoudun is in some
sort the double of that of my sister.

You will never know with what power of cohesion I have recourse to the
memories of that young friendship, while weeping to-day over a feeling
which death is about to destroy, leaving all its ties behind it in me.

The reading of the second number of "Père Goriot" gave Madame de Berny
such pleasure that she had an attack of the heart. So I, who did not
suspect the gravity of the harm, was the innocent cause of suffering.

I began a letter quite gaily, after having received yours of the 12th;
but I threw it into the fire. Its gaiety hurt me. You will forgive me,
will you not, for that chastity of feeling?--.you, so like to _her!_
you in whom I find so many of the ideas, graces, noblenesses, which
have made me name that person: my conscience.

Between this sorrow and the distant light I love, what are men, the
world, society! There is nothing possible but the constant work into
which I throw myself--work, my saviour, which will give me liberty,
and return to me my wings. I quivered on reading your reasoning: "No
letters; he is coming." That idea naturally came to you; I have too
often been tortured by it. I am seized with periodic furies to leave
all behind me, to escape, to spring into a carriage! Then the chains
clang down; I see the thickness of my dungeon. If I come to you it
will be as a surprise, for I can no longer make decisions on that
subject. I must finish for Madame Bêchet the fifth Part of the "Études
de Mœurs," finish the second part of the "Études Philosophiques" for
Werdet, finish "Séraphita," and provide the necessary money to pay
all here in my absence, and I have not a single friend of whom I can
ask a farthing; it has all to be drawn from my inkstand. _There_ is
my Potosi; but to work it I must do without sleep and lose my health.
Poverty is a horrible thing. It makes us blame our own heart; it
denaturalizes all things. In my case it is necessary that talent or
power of writing be as punctual to time as the falling due of my notes.
I must not be ill, or suffering, or ill-disposed for work. I must be,
like the scales of the Mint, of iron and steel, and coining always!
Yet I exist only by the heart. And so I suffer! Oh! I suffer, as much
as any creature can suffer who is all independence, feeling, open to
happiness, but clogged and groaning under the iron weight of the chain
with which necessity crushes him!

At this time last year I was without my chain, far from my worries,
near you. What a looking back to the past! Then I did not think about
being able to release myself, I was thoughtless about my debts. To-day
I believe in my liberation; I have nearly reached it. Six months more
of sacrifices and I am saved, I become myself, I am free! I shall go
and eat with you the first bit of bread that belongs to me, that will
not be steeped in tears and ink and toil.

I do not want to sadden you, I only want to tell you that if I am
oppressed I feel as keenly the happiness there is in being able to tell
of it. But you neglect me as if you were nothing to me; you write me
seldom. Why will you not give me, to me alone, one day in the week for
a letter. Suppose I were in Vienna and went to see you every Sunday, I,
poor workman, you would give me that day. Well, I declare to you that
if I am not in Vienna in the body I can be there in thought. Write me
therefore on that day. I shall then have a letter every week when this
rolling of letters is once established. I will answer you. You have not
written me a single letter to which I have not instantly replied.

I offer you no special New Year's wishes. Those wishes I make daily for
you and yours.

I shall send by diligence to-day the first Part of the "Études
Philosophiques" so that you may not wait but may always keep the run
of my work. You will easily guess that the Introduction has cost me as
much as it has M. Félix Davin, whom I had to teach and recorrect until
he had suitably expressed my thought.

I do not know if the "Revue de Paris" reaches Vienna. You will have
seen in it a "Letter" of mine to the French authors of our century, in
which I expose our ills. If you have not seen it, tell me, and I will
send you a copy.

The end of "Séraphita" is a work of great difficulty. The Germans have
sent translators to Paris to get it hot.

Adieu; do not leave me again without letters, or I shall think myself
abandoned for society, which returns you nothing. To whom do you think
I should repeat your judgment on M. Anatole de Th...? You always
think that I go and come and belong in the world of idlers. That is
an opinion rooted in your mind; and because you are going and coming
yourself you want me to be your accomplice in that grand conspiracy of
ennui.

All your judgments on Vienna have been confirmed by Alphonse Royer, who
stayed there. Thanks to you, I know Vienna by heart; but as long as you
are there nothing could disgust me with it, were it a hundred times
more stupid and more gluttonous. Ah! they still have reserved sofas,
but they reserve nothing in their hearts.



PARIS, January 16, 1835.

In spite of constant work and the greatest efforts of concentrated
will, I have not been able to finish what I ought to do in order to
have the power to leave to-day, to profit by this mild weather (which
reminds me of the winter of Geneva), and reach Vienna on the 26th.
Everything is against it. The "Revue de Paris" would not double its
number so that "Père Goriot" could be finished. I have still my "Cent
Contes Drolatiques" on my hands, the purchase of them being delayed for
a few days. I have not failed about anything, but men have failed me.
If I finish all by the middle of February I shall count myself lucky,
and have about a month during which the journey will be to me the
sweetest of necessities.

I have, however, sacrificed everything, even writing to you, to that
object.

You will receive, by diligence, the manuscript of "Père Goriot" and
the two numbers printed in the "Revue." Here, every one, friends and
enemies, agree in saying that this composition is superior to all else
that I have done. I know nothing about it. I am always on the wrong
side of my tapestry. But you will tell me your opinion.

Now I have to finish "L'Enfant Maudit" and "Séraphita," which will
appear during the first ten days in February. Next, to finish "La Fille
aux yeux d'or," and do "Sœur Marie des Anges." The latter is a female
"Louis Lambert" [it was never written]. You will read it. It is one of
my least bad ideas. The abysses of the cloister are revealed; a noble
heart of woman, a lofty imagination, ardent, all that is grandest,
belittled by monastic practices; and the most intense divine love so
killed that Sœur Marie is brought to no longer comprehend God, the
love and adoration of whom have brought her there. Then I have to do
"La Fleur des Pois" and the counterpart of "Louis Lambert," entitled
"Ecce Homo."

I am much fatigued, much tormented, much worried, especially about
money. That wire, which pulls one back at every moment from on high
into this heap of mud, is intolerable; it saws my neck.

I have dined with Madame Delphine P..., but I left nothing there of my
sentiments. A pretty little creature was present, a Princess Galitzin,
and I made her laugh by telling her there was a silly, stupid creature
at Genthod who did her great wrong by synonymy. I thought Madame
Delphine neither affectionate, nor kind, nor _grande dame_. I made a
rapid turn to you and burned incense before you, recalling to mind
certain of those perfections about which you will not let me speak to
you. A few intonations in M. Mitgislas ...'s voice, vaguely reminded me
of yours and made my heart beat.

How cold society is! I came home joyfully to my hermitage, of which you
will find a drawing some day at Wierzchownia; for did you not tell me
that you had subscribed to "Les Maisons de personnages célèbres"? Well,
I am in it; which does not prove that I am a personage or celebrated,
when you see what silly folk are there made famous.

A year without seeing you! How many times the desire has seized me to
drop everything, to laugh at publishers, and flee away! Then I said to
myself that though you might be glad to see me, you might, perhaps,
blame me also, and that what makes us worthy of esteem and grand, ought
never to make us less friends, you and me. Reassure me, tell me that
you do not love me less because I have not been able to find a month
in a year. The proof of my seclusion is in what I have _done_, which
astonishes even publishers. Yet there are people who still say, "He
brings nothing out."

But all this labour will seem nothing, so long as it gives me liberty,
independence. When I think that I still need seventy thousand francs
for that, and to get them I must spread six bottles of ink on
twenty-four reams of paper, it makes me shudder. They offered me
yesterday twelve thousand francs for the "Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée."
But I prefer the four thousand of the "Revue de Paris" and the four
thousand for a thousand copies bought by a publisher, to putting the
three thousand copies on the public market. I tell you my little
affairs.

Madame de Berny is better. She declares that the worst symptoms have
ceased, but I am going there to assure myself of the truth of what may
be a divine lie, of which I know her capable. To help me bear my burden
she would fain take from me all anxieties and dry my tears. Oh! she is
a noble angel! There is none but you to continue her to me. So, all
these days, during my grief, my eyes, my hopes turn ever to you with a
force that might make me believe you have heard me.

Oh! leave me, to me so far away from you, the sad privilege of telling
you how sweet and good and precious your friendship is to me. What
proud courage it gives me here against many a snare, what a principle
of laborious constancy it has put into my life! But I lack a collar on
which is printed, "Moujik de Paulowska."

Well, adieu; think a little of him who always thinks of you, of a
Frenchman who has the heart of which you are all so boastful across the
Danube, who never forgets you, who will bring you from here his white
hairs and his big monk's face subdued by a cloister regimen,--a poor
_solitary_, who pines for the talks, and would like to cast at your
feet a thousand glorious crowns to serve you as floor, as pillow!

Well, re-adieu. Kiss Anna's forehead for me; remember me to all about
you and those I had the pleasure to know. They seem to me so happy
in being near you. Remind M. Hanski of his lively guest, who has now
laid up a fine stock of hearty laughs, for he has been sad enough this
long time. Write me always a little. I don't know how it is I have
not had a line these ten days. Does society absorb you? Alas! your
moujik has been himself _un poco_ into that market of false smiles and
charming toilets; he has made his début at Madame Appony's,--for the
house of Balzac must live on good terms with the house of Austria,--and
your moujik had some success. He was examined with the curiosity
felt for animals from distant regions. There were presentations on
presentations, which bored him so that he went to collogue in a corner
with Russians and Poles. But their names are so difficult to pronounce
that he cannot tell you anything about them, further than that one was
a very ugly dame, friend of Madame Hahn, and a Countess Schouwalof,
sister of Madame Jeroslas ... Is that right? The moujik will go every
two weeks, if his lady permits him.

Among the autographs sent, have I included one from Bra, who is one of
our present sculptors? He is a curious man in this, that he was led to
mysticism by the death of his wife, and for two months he went to evoke
her from her grave. He told me that he saw her every evening. He has
now remarried. Here is a saying of Stendhal: "We feel ourselves the
intimate friend of a woman when we look at her portrait in miniature;
we are so near to her! But oil-painting casts us off to a great
distance." What shall we say of sculpture?



PARIS, January 26, 1835.

To-day I have finished "Le Père Goriot."

I leave to-morrow for a week, to work beside my dear invalid. She is
better, she says, but I shall not really know anything until I have
been with her a week.

On my return, I hope that "Père Goriot" will be reprinted. "Séraphita"
will come to you later. But perhaps I shall bring you these things
myself, accompanying the pomade, Anna's ring-case, and all the other
things with which you have deigned to commission me. I have accepted
too much of the sweets of hospitality that you should hesitate to use
me as you please.

Yes, I have the possibility of resting for a month from March 2 to
April 2. I must; and besides, my money affairs are becoming less hard.
I shall have won this month of freedom by five months' exorbitant
labour. But, if I have been sad, troubled, without heart-pleasure, at
least my efforts have all succeeded. "Le Père Goriot" is a bewildering
success; the most bitter enemies have bent the knee; I have triumphed
over all, friends as well as enemies. When "Séraphita" has spread her
glorious wings, when the "Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée" has shown the
last lineaments of the human heart, when "Les Vendéens" has snatched
a palm from Walter Scott, then, then I shall be content in being near
you; you will not then have a friend without some value. As to the man
himself, you will never find him anything but good, and a child.

I will not speak to you of the sadness mingled with joy that took
possession of me this morning. To be at once so far off and so near!
What is a year? This one has been long, agonizing within the soul,
short through work. If gleams of a promised land did not shine as
through a twilight, I think that my courage would abandon me at the
last effort. It needs my sober, patient, equable, monkish life to
resist it all. A woman is much in our life when she is Beatrice and
Laura, and better still. If I had not had a star to see when I closed
my eyes, I should have succumbed.

I have been, out of curiosity, to the Opera masked ball for the first
time in my life. I was with my sister, who had committed the imprudence
of going there against her husband's wishes. Knowing this, I went to
fetch her and bring her home without giving her time to go round the
hall. As I was leaving, and waiting for the carriage, a very elegant
gentleman with a mask on his arm stopped me, and putting himself
between me and the door whispered that the masked lady he had on
his arm wished to speak to me. I rebuffed the mask; I think a woman
has little dignity to come down to such trickery, and I said to the
gentleman:--

"You know the laws of a masquerade; I obey the mask you see here, I am
bound to do so."

The masked woman then said, in French mangled by an English tongue:--

"Oh! Monsieur de Balzac!"

But in such a lamentable accent that I was struck by it. Then she
turned to my sister, who was laughing heartily, and said:--

"Well, then, between you and me, madame."

My sister told me afterwards that this mask was neither well dressed
nor well shod.

There's my adventure, the sole and only one I shall probably ever have
at a masked ball; for I have never before gone to one, and, doubtless,
shall never go to another. I do not see what good they are. If two
people love each other, the ball is useless. If they go in search of
what are called _bonnes fortunes_ I think them very bad, and I ask
myself if it isn't rather Jeroslas, that is to say, Jesuitical (this
between ourselves), to satisfy, under a mask, a passion we will not own.

If I can leave on the first days of March, the sovereign of Paulowska
will have had letters enough from me to let her know it. God grant that
for one month more I may not be ill or ill-inspired! I shall make my
preparations joyously. Be kind enough to write me a line in answer to
the following: I should like, in order to go quickly and without care,
to have no luggage. If I clear in the custom-house here for Vienna, to
the address of Baron Sina, my personal effects, books, manuscripts,
etc., will they be opened in Vienna without my presence? Will they
get there without being opened on the way? Can I, without fear, put
in all the things I want for my own use? And finally, how many days
does it take for packages to go from Paris to Vienna? I would like to
travel without stopping, and have only my own person to fling from one
carriage to another till I get there.

Adieu; forty days are almost nothing to me now, and I tell myself that
forty days hence I shall be in the mail-cart for Strasburg. I shall see
Vienna, the Danube, the fields of Wagram, the island of Lobau; I don't
say anything about the Landstrasse. As a faithful moujik I know nothing
that is grander than those who inhabit it.

Do you still go into society? But of us two, the one who is busiest and
the least rich in time is the one who writes oftenest. I growl, like a
poor neglected dog, but to whom it suffices to say, "Here, Milord!" to
make him happy.



PARIS, February 10, 1835.

Though I have scarcely time to write, I cannot be silent about the
pleasure I felt yesterday at a fête given by Madame Appony, when
Prince Esterhazy, having asked to see me, began to talk of a certain
Madame Hanska, _née_ Rzewuska, whose mind, graces, and knowledge had
astonished him, and who had given him the desire to see me. With what
joy I said before seven or eight women, who all have pretensions,
that I had never met in my life but two women who could match you for
learning without pedantry, womanly charm, and lofty sentiments--I will
not tell you all I said; I should seem to be begging a favourable
glance from the sovereign of Paulowska. But all the women made faces,
especially when the prince agreed with me about your beauty, and told
how everybody knew that your wit did not make you spiteful, for you
were graciously kind. I could have hugged that good little prince!

Well, a few days more, and I shall have the pleasure of seeing you.

I have just returned from Nemours. Alas! Madame de Berny is no better.
The malady makes frightful progress, and I cannot express to you how
that soul of my life was grand, and noble, and touching in those days
measured by illness, and with what fervour she desires that another
should be to me what she has been. She knows the inward spring and
nobility that the habit of carrying all things to an idol gives me. My
God is on earth. I have judged myself hourly by her. I say to myself
in everything, "What would she think of this?" and this reflection
corroborates my conscience, and prevents me from doing anything petty.

However violent attacks and calumnies may be, I march higher up. I
answer nothing. Oh! madame, there was a memory, and a sense of horrible
pain which rent me during the ten days I rested after "Père Goriot."
I will tell you that that work was done in forty days; in those forty
days I did not sleep eighty hours. But I must triumph.

I am going once more to risk, as the doctor says, my "intelligential
life" in order to finish the second delivery to Werdet, the fourth to
Madame Bêchet, and "Séraphita." As soon as that is done, I shall buy
La Grenadière, and, the deeds signed, I shall fly to Vienna, see the
battle-field of Essling, and from there, something of the Landstrasse,
where you are. I shall come in search of a little praise--if you think
that my year of toil deserves any; and you know that the words that
escape you are put where I put those of _la dilecta_. Though she is
ill, her children will stay with her during my absence, and she could
not have me then, so I make this journey without remorse. Besides, she
knows it is necessary, as diversion, for the weariness of my head.

So, unless I am ill between now and the 20th of March, which is not
probable, I shall work with the sweet interest of going, my work
accomplished, toward that Vienna where all my troubles will be
forgotten. The atmosphere of Paris kills me; I smell toil, debt,
enemies! I need an oasis. On the other hand, "Le Père Goriot" has
created an excitement; there never was such eagerness to read a
book; the booksellers advertise it in advance. It is true that it is
grandiose. But you will judge.

As for the "Lettre aux Écrivains," alas! I cannot look at it without
pain, for _la dilecta_ thought it so fine, so majestic, so varied, that
she had palpitations of the heart which injured her, and I don't like
those pages any more.

You know that one of the qualities of the bengali is illimitable
fidelity. Poor bird of Asia, without his rose, without his peri, mute,
sad, but very loving, the desire seizes me to write his story. I have
begun it in the "Voyage à Java."

Adieu; this scrap of a letter is scribbled on a pile of proofs that
would frighten even a proof-reader. A thousand homages, and kindly
present my obeisances to M. Hanski. I return to my work with fury, and
I wish you the realization of all the wishes you make. Find here the
expression of the most sincere and most respectful of attachments.



PARIS, March 1, 1835.

I have received, madame, the letter in which you announce to me your
departure for your lonely Wierzchownia. I shall therefore not see you
in Vienna. I shall delay my trip to Essling and Wagram till the end of
the summer, so that when I go, I can push on to the Ukraine.

Well, you will be accompanied by the sincerest prayers for your
happiness and for that of those about you. As for me, after a few days'
diversion, necessitated by lassitude, I have just returned to the
deepest seclusion, in order to finish up my two agreements with Madame
Bêchet and Werdet, and to grow, to enlarge myself, to raise my name
to the height of the esteem you give to it, that you be not proud in
vain of having granted me a few days of gracious friendship; my pride,
mine, will ever be legitimate enough. I tell you once more, with a sort
of religious emotion, that you are, together with her of whom I have
so often spoken, the most beauteous soul, the noblest heart, the most
attractive person that I have seen in this world, the most superior
mind and the best instructed. Let me tell you this that I think, at the
moment when you are about to put as great a distance of time between us
as there is already.

I have been measuring the amount of work that remains for me to do;
it will take six months to finish it. For six months, therefore,
I shall try to rise higher, to send you fine works, the flowers
of my brain,--the only flowers that can cross that great distance
unwithered,--which will reach you, like those I have sent already, in
their coarse germ and their first dress. Accept them always as a proof
of my respect and admiration, as a proof of that constancy that you
yourself advise, as the pledge of a pure and holy friendship, and as a
testimony in favour of calumniated France, accused of levity, but where
are still to be found chivalrous souls, lofty, strong, who do not treat
lightly true affections. You have given me the desire to raise, to
improve myself; let me be grateful in my own way.

On returning to my retreat, I found Grosclaude on the threshold. He
asked me to let him make my portrait, full length, in my working-dress.
He told me that in case he did it, you and Monsieur Hanski had asked
for a copy. You will not refuse the person painted when you already
possess the first impulsion of his thought in manuscript. I am so happy
in this friendship of which you and M. Hanski do not reject the proofs.
We are so far off! Let me approach you as materially as I can. You will
say yes, will you not?

I have just broken all the threads by which Lilliput-Paris held me
garoted; I have made myself a secret retreat, where I shall live six
months [rue des Batailles, Chaillot]. I was seized with profound
emotion on entering it; for it is here that my last battle will be
fought, here that I must grasp the sceptre. If I succumb! If I should
not succeed! If (in spite of a regimen prescribed by doctors who have
traced me a manner of living so that I may struggle without danger
through my work), _if_ I fall ill! A crowd of such thoughts seized me,
inspired by the gravity of the things I am undertaking. At last, in the
early morning, I went to the window, and I saw, shining above my head,
the star of that delicious hour. I had confidence, I was joyful as a
child, after being feeble as a child; I went back to my table, crying
out the "Ha, ha!" of the horse of Scripture. Then I determined to begin
by writing you these lines. Bring me luck, you and the star, will you?
The second thing I have to do is the end of "Séraphita," an immense
work, that I have meditated for three or four months, and which rises
ever higher. I have now only to write it. You know it belongs to you.

You ought, at this moment when I am writing, to have read "Le Père
Goriot." How shall I send you my manuscripts when you are in Russia?
You must tell me. As for the books, it will be equally difficult. You
must give me your instructions. Mine to you are that you shall be well
in health, that M. Hanski be gay, have no black butterflies, that his
enterprises shall prosper, that Anna shall jump and laugh and grow
without accidents; and that all about you be well and happy.

At the beginning of the autumn, therefore, if it please God, and if I
have fruitfully worked, you will see a pilgrim arriving and ringing
at your castle gate, asking for a few days' hospitality, who would
fain repay you by laying at your feet the laurels won in the literary
tournament--as if glory could ever be anything else than a grain of
incense on the altar of friendship! One word is worth more than these
puffs of wind; and that word of gratitude I shall ever say to you.

The inclosed autograph is that of a friend of mine who may become
something some day; there is one remarkable thing about him which will
recommend him to your _heraldicomaniacal_ favour; he is descended from
Jeanne d'Arc, through her brother Gautier. His name is Edouard Gautier
d'Arc, Baron du Lys, and he bears the arms of France, supported by
a woman, on his shield. Is not that one of the finest things in the
present day? Well, of a man whom we ought to make peer of France with
a fine entailed estate, we have made a consul at Valentia! He has
ambition.



PARIS, March 11, 1835.

I have just received your good letter of the 3rd instant. It has given
me pleasure and pain. Pleasure, you are better; pain, you have been
ill. You see, I had the time to go to Vienna, and now I cannot. I
shall go and see you at Wierzchownia for after taking measures for "La
Bataille" at Wagram, I shall not think anything of a few hundred more
leagues to say good-day to you.

You are always so good you will let me take you for confessor, tell you
all, be confiding, and have in you a soul?

You will find inclosed the dedication of "Séraphita." Have the kindness
to answer me by return courier, that I may know if you approve it.
In a thing of this kind there must be no point left to object to;
dedications cannot be _corrected_. "Séraphita" will be finished by the
first Sunday in April, therefore you have time to throw a "yes" into
the post on receiving this letter. Your silence will mean disapproval.
The "Revue de Paris" is horribly anxious to get this end; it has
received complaints without number.

When the number is out I will send it to you through Sina; but I own
that I do not like to risk the manuscript. What shall I do, therefore?
You will receive the fourth Part of the "Études de Mœurs," the second
edition of "Goriot," "Melmoth réconcilié," the manuscripts of "La
Fille aux yeux d'or," and the "Duchesse de Langeais," and, perhaps,
that of "Séraphita;" perhaps also the second Part of the "Études
Philosophiques."

What shall I tell you about all this? The finishing of "Séraphita"
kills me, crushes me. I have fever every day. Never did so grand a
conception rise before any man. None but myself can know what I put
into it; I put my life into it! When you receive this letter the work
will have been cast.

There never was a success equal to that of "Goriot." This stupid Paris,
which neglected the "Absolu," has just bought twelve hundred copies of
the first edition of "Goriot" [in book form], before its announcement.
Two other editions are in press. I will send you the second.

Here I am, with piles of gold, compared to my late situation; for I
still have seven thousand ducats to pay [70,000 frs.], but in three
months "Goriot" gives one thousand ducats. During the last three months
I have regularly paid off four thousand ducats a month with the product
of my pen![1]

Besides "Séraphita," I am finishing "L'Enfant Maudit," remaking
"Louis Lambert," and completing "La Fille aux yeux d'or." I have
finished a rather important work, entitled, "Melmoth réconcilié,"
and I am preparing a great and beautiful work, called "Le Lys dans
la Vallée," the figure of a charming woman, full of heart and having
a sulky husband, but virtuous. This will be, under a form purely
human, terrestrial perfection, just as "Séraphita" will be celestial
perfection. The "Lys dans la Vallée" is the last picture in the "Études
de Mœurs," just as "Séraphita" will be the last picture in the "Études
Philosophiques." Then, the third _dizain_.

You will have received the letter in which I tell you of my seclusion.
It is deep. No one comes here. No, no more Lormois. Why do you trouble
yourself about things I pay no heed to? I have renounced pleasures.
No more Opera, no more Bouffons, no more anything; solitude and work.
Séraphita! There, will be my great stroke; there, I shall receive the
cold mockery of Parisians, but there, too, I shall strike to the heart
of all privileged beings. In it is a treatise on prayer, headed "The
Path to God," in which are the last words of the angel, which will
surely give desire to live by the soul. These mystical ideas have
filled me. I am the artist-believer. Pygmalion and his statue are no
longer a fable to me. "Goriot" could be done every day; "Séraphita" but
once in a lifetime.

So, then, since my last letter I have had no events in my material
life, but many in the life of my heart, because my heart is involved in
this majestic occupation.

I have to do the "Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée," a work in filagree,
which will be a wonder to the little women who find the pinions of
"Séraphita" incomprehensible.

No, I cannot buy La Grenadière as yet; I need seven or eight thousand
francs for that, which I don't possess. Though my cane with its
ebullition of turquoises has made me notorious as a new Aboulcasem,
I have nothing but debts. When I am free of those, I will see about
getting the money for La Grenadière.

If I were in Vienna, I would make you laugh; oh, yes! I don't laugh
now except with those who love me. Judge, therefore, how precious our
friendship has become to me. Other laughs are compromising. I am taken
seriously; so much so that Dantan has caricatured me. Would you like to
see it? I will send it with the volumes I have for you. I have never
lost any time in transmitting to you those of my poor works that you
have the goodness to like.

My sobriety and regularity of life can alone save me under the ardent
work I have to complete to win that liberty so longed-for. It is
now twenty days that I have risen at midnight and gone to bed at
six o'clock. I shall persevere until I am delivered from the Bêchet
contract, and the fourth Part is given to Werdet.

I hope I can send the box to you April 17. I shall address it, in any
case, to Baron Sina.

Madame Delphine P... was at the Opera Sunday, and gave birth to a child
Monday.

I thank you for your glimpses of Viennese society. What I have learned
about Germans in their relations elsewhere confirms what you say of
them. Your story of General H... comes up periodically. There has been
something like it in all countries, but I thank you for having told it
to me. The circumstances give it novelty.

I respect your wishes in sending you the manuscript of "Goriot" in its
dirty condition. It bears the trace of many worries and much fatigue.

Madame de Berny is a little better, but alas! this is only obtained
by digitalis. I hope I may still keep that light of my life, that
conscience so pure, that tenderness so delicate.

Madame Carraud is safely confined of a son.

I saw Borget this morning, returned from Italy, and I have your letter;
so this has been a good day.

Well, I must say adieu; but remember that while writing a book that
bears your name, I do not quit you.

The Emperor of Russia has prohibited "Goriot;" probably on account of
Vautrin.

There is pleasure in breaking all one's bonds to society; one has no
remorse; society does not cling to you, and one can only pity those who
cling to it. I am happy. I can march on in solitude, led by a beautiful
and noble thought.

I am sorry you have not seen the satirical preface I put to "Goriot;"
you shall have it later. I won't make a package of that only.

I have a hundred thousand things to say, but when I begin to talk with
you I seem to see you; I forget my ideas. However, I intend to begin a
journal-letter, and put in every day some of my ideas.

At this moment I am a little drunk with work; my hand is tired; the
heart is full, but the head is empty; you will get neither mind nor
gaiety, but all that affection has of truest, all that memory has of
freshest, and the tenderest gratitude.

You ask me what becomes of Madame de Nucingen. She will be, and so will
her husband, a most comic dramatic personage in "Une Vue du Monde" long
advertised by the "Revue de Paris." It is called "La Faillite de M. de
Nucingen." But I need time for all these conceptions, and especially
for their execution; above all when (as for Séraphita) I work often
a year or two in thought before taking a pen. _Adoremus in æternum_
means for me, "Toil ever."

You speak of the stage. The stage might bring me in two hundred
thousand francs a year. I know, beyond a doubt, that I could make my
fortune there in a short time; but you forget that I have not six
months to myself, not one month; and if I had I should not write a
play, I should go and see you. Six months of my time represent forty
thousand francs; and I must have that money in hand before I can do
either "La Grande Mademoiselle" or "Philippe le Discret." Where the
devil am I to get it? Out of my ink-pot. There is no Leo X. in these
days. Work is the artist's bank.

If you knew the annoyances that Madame Bêchet's business embarrassments
cause me. She cannot pay unless my numbers appear. So, when I am
inspired for "Séraphita," when I listen to the music of angels, when I
am sick with ecstasy, I must come down to corrections, I must finish
that stupidity "La Fille aux yeux d'or," etc. It is horrible suffering.
I would like to do the comedy of "La Grande Mademoiselle," but no!
I must work for Werdet, who is ripping himself open to give me the
money for my payments, my livelihood. Honesty has made a galley of my
study. That is something you ought to know well. I have not a minute
to myself, and I never take any distraction except when my brain comes
down like a foundered horse.

You know all that my heart contains of affection and good wishes for
yours. Affectionate compliments to M. Hanski, and take all you will for
yourself of my most devoted feelings.

Grosclaude is coming to make my full-length portrait. I have never
dared to ask for a sketch of yours.

This is the dedication:--


"MADAME,--Here is the work you asked of me; and to you I dedicate it,
happy in being able thus to prove the respectful and constant affection
which you permit me to feel for you. But read it as some bad transcript
of a hymn dreamed from my childhood; the fervent rhythm of which,
heard on the summits of the azure mountains, and its prophetic poesy,
revealed here and there at times in Nature, it is impossible to present
in human language.

"If I have risked being accused of impotence in thus attempting a
sacred book which demands the light of Orient beneath the translucent
veil of our noble language, was it not you who urged me to the effort,
by saying that the most imperfect drawing of that figure would still be
something that would please you? Here, then, it is, that something. I
could wish that this book were read by none but minds preserved, like
yours, from worldly pettiness by solitude; such as they alone know how
to complete this poem; to them it may be, perhaps, a stepping-stone,
or else a rough and humble flag on which to kneel and pray within the
temple!

"I am, with respect, your devoted servant."

[Footnote 1: Ducat: gold coin, value from ten to twelve francs,
according to country (Littré).--TR.]



PARIS, March 30, 1835.

Do not be vexed with me for the irregularity of my letters. I am
overwhelmed with work, and I feel the necessity of getting through
with it if I want my dear liberty. Madame Bêchet has become singularly
ill-natured and will hurt my interests much. In paying me, she charges
me with corrections which amount on the twelve volumes to three
thousand francs, and also for my copies, which will cost me fifteen
hundred more. Thus four thousand five hundred francs less, and my
discounts, diminish by six thousand the thirty-three thousand. She
could not lose a great fortune more clumsily, for Werdet estimates at
five hundred thousand francs the profits to be made out of the next
edition of the "Études de Mœurs."

I find Werdet the active, intelligent, and devoted editor that I
want. I have still six months before I can be rid of Madame Bêchet;
for I have three volumes more to do, and it is impossible to count on
less than two months to each volume. Thus you see I am held here till
September. Between now and then I ought to give Werdet three Parts
of the "Études Philosophiques," and do much work for the Revues. For
the last twenty days I have worked steadily twelve hours a day on
"Séraphita." The world is ignorant of this immense toil; it only sees,
and should only see, results. But I have had to master the whole of
mysticism to formulate it. "Séraphita" is a consuming work for those
who believe. Unhappily, in this sad Paris the Angel may chance to
furnish the subject for a ballet. I shall meet with sarcasm, but I will
not go into society. I will stay here tranquilly and do "La Fleur des
Poix," "L'Enfant Maudit," "Sœur Marie des Anges," and "Les Mémoires
d'une jeune Mariée."

What has tired me horribly the last few days is the reprinting of
"Louis Lambert," which I have tried to bring to a point of perfection
that would leave me in peace as to that work; and Lambert's thoughts
when he was at Villenoix remained to be done. I had put, as it were,
a hat on that place to keep it, or the cover on a dish at a meal.
However, it is all done now; it is a new formula for humanity, which is
the tie that binds "Louis Lambert" to "Séraphita."

Next, I have twenty days' work in remaking the "Comtesse à deux Maris"
["Colonel Chabert"]. I think it detestable, wanting in taste and truth;
and I have had the courage to begin it all over again on the press. It
was in that way I did my last work on the "Chouans." At this rate my
hair turns frightfully white. No, you will never recognize me.

Madame de Berny is rather better,--much better, she says. But she still
has sudden attacks which show that the cause is there. I have wept much
over her; I have prepared myself for a grief which will act upon my
whole life. In May I shall go and spend a month with her.

I need seven or eight thousand francs to buy the Grenadière, and I
cannot yet put my hand on that sum. If I finish "La Fleur des Poix"
in April and go to Touraine in May, I may possibly return with the
sacred title of land-owner. On the 20th of May (my birthday) or the
16th of May (my fête-day) we shall baptize my brother's child. I am
godfather, with my niece Sophie as godmother. I always swore I would
never be godfather to any child; but my brother is so unfortunate it is
impossible to refuse. I should like to complete the fête by buying the
Grenadière. It would be a first sign of prosperity.

I will put into my parcel of April 17th the two caricatures of me in
plaster by Dantan, who has caricatured all the great men. The chief
point of mine is the famous cane bubbling with turquoise on a chased
gold knob, which has had more success in France than all my works.
As for me, he has caricatured my stoutness. I look like Louis XVIII.
These two caricatures have had such success that I have not as yet been
able to get them. It is true that I go out little, and sit at my work
for twenty hours. You can't imagine what success this jewelled cane
has had; it threatens to become European. Borget, who has returned
from Italy, and who did not say he was my friend, told me he heard of
it in Naples and Rome. All the dandies in Paris are jealous, and the
little journals have been supplied with items for six months. Excuse
me for telling you this, but it seems to me it is biographical; and if
they tell you on your travels that I have a fairy-cane, which summons
horses, erects palaces, and spits diamonds, do not be surprised, but
laugh as I do. Never did the tail of Alcibiades' dog wag harder. But I
have three or four other tails of the same kind for the Parisians.

Our exhibition of paintings is quite fine this year. There are seven
or eight leading masterpieces. Grosclaude's picture is much liked.
He is honourably hung in the large Salon. But they think he has only
colour and drawing, and lacks soul and composition. Gérard, however,
thinks he is really a man of talent. He told him so sincerely; and
repeated the same to me, adding that there was nothing for a man like
him to do but to produce; he calls this a good and fine picture. There
is much good luck for him in appearing without disadvantage in the
large Salon, where there are ten or twelve splendid pictures. There is
a landscape by Brascassat in which is a bull, which could be bought
for six thousand francs, and may be worth a hundred thousand. It is,
like Pagnest's "Portrait," the despair of artists. Brascassat is,
like Pagnest, a poor young consumptive. He is a shepherd, taken, like
Foyatier the sculptor, from his flocks, and, if he lives, he will be
a great painter. Our nineteenth century will be great. We cannot doubt
it. There is a deluge of talent here.

I regretted you much. I should have liked to see you in Paris this
winter. The Exhibition, and the Italian opera have offered an
unheard-of combination: Lablache, Tamburini, Rubini. Then Beethoven,
executed at the Conservatoire as he is nowhere else. Besides which,
Paris is being cleaned and completed, thanks to Louis-Philippe's
trowel. But there's a hundred years' work still to do at the Louvre.
When I pass along the quay of the Tuileries, my artist-heart bleeds
to see the stones placed by Catherine de' Medici, corroded by the sun
before being carved--and this for three hundred years.

Adieu! it is two in the morning. Here is an hour and a half stolen from
"Séraphita." She groans, she calls; I must finish her, for the "Revue
de Paris" groans too; it has advanced me nineteen hundred francs, and
"Séraphita" must settle the account.

Adieu! imagine how I think of you in finishing the work that is yours.
It is time it appeared. Literature here has decided that I shall never
finish that work; they say it is impossible.

Graceful things to Anna, my respects to Mademoiselle Séverine, my
regards to M. Hanski; and to you nothing, for all is yours. It would be
giving you a bit of your own property to send you anything, and I have,
in this low world, too few friendships to diminish the truest of them
all.



PARIS, May 1, 1835.

MADAME,--I greeted M. le Prince de Schonberg as I never did any one,
for he came from you. "Séraphita" exacts more work. I had hoped to send
you the manuscript by the prince, but it cannot be finished before my
fête-day, May 16, and the prince starts to-day or to-morrow. I cannot
even profit by his journey to write you in detail about my life and
occupations. I have perhaps presumed too far upon my strength in
supposing I could do so many things in so little time. I shall be lucky
indeed if I can get off and divert myself in September. But nothing
shall hinder me when my obligations have been met.

When I have finished with Madame Bêchet and Werdet, yes, then I shall
have six months before me. On that day I shall owe nothing to any
one, for the approaching reissue of the "Études de Mœurs" enlarged
by what will be added to them, will release me of all, even my debt
to my mother. Wealth will come both for her and for me, in 1837, when
my works will be issued as the "Études Sociales." There is my future
sketched out. There is my hope and my toil.

If sometimes the grief of not possessing the happiness that I dream
saddens and consumes me, the hope of one day seeing my mother happy
through me, and my fortune built up, all by myself, without help,
sustains me. But what are the hopes of material life compared to the
disappointment of the prayers of the heart? And so, now that I advance
toward the graver life, and doubt at times of affections, finding
myself so changed by toil, there come moments of cruel melancholy and
gray hours. Then the weather clears; the azure sky we saw upon the Alps
comes back; Diodati, that image of a happy life, reappears, like a star
for a moment clouded, and I laugh--as you know I can laugh. I tell
myself that so much work will have its recompense, and that I shall
some day have, like Lord Byron, my Diodati, and I sing in my bad voice:
"Diodati! Diodati!"

What grief for me to delay that glorious apparition of "Séraphita."
I tremble lest you should have left Vienna before the prince arrives
there. But if so, Sina will forward all.

Be happy on your journey; may no untoward event distress you; return
to your penates, and I, under my pressure here, I see that dwelling as
an object ... [The letter is unfinished.]



PARIS, May 3, 1835.

I have this instant received yours of April 24. I have written you by
the Prince de Schonberg, who was to carry to you all that remains of
the manuscript of the "Duchesse de Langeais," of which part was lost
in the printing-office, the part I cared for most, that which I did in
Geneva beside you, laughing and explaining to you proof corrections.

How many things I have to answer in your last letter. But before doing
so I must tell you something that is the best of all answers. You do
not leave till May 15th; well, don't leave till the 25th. I have my
passports, and you will receive my farewells. I cannot let you plunge
back into your desert until I have pressed your hand. I will not commit
to any one the manuscript of "Séraphita." I shall bring it to you
myself. I want ten days more to print the rest. The 16th, my fête-day,
I shall start for Vienna; I can get there in ten days; I shall be there
on the 25th or 26th. If I can arrive sooner, I shall be there sooner.
Wait for me; give credit for ten days to a friend. I shall stay four
days in Vienna, see Essling and Wagram, and return.

I cannot tell you more, for I must spend the days and nights in getting
all things in order here, and in finishing the books begun. "Séraphita"
must have eight days and nights for herself alone.

I say nothing to M. Hanski, as I shall see you all so soon. I am
joyous as a child at the escapade. Quit my galley and see new lands!
Well, well, _à bientôt_. I send my things to Sina. Ask him, if they
arrive before me, to wait till I come before opening my trunk at the
custom-house. It is proper that you should see the cane for which you
blame me, and I confide it to the customs.

_Addio._ Kiss Anna on the forehead for her horse.



VIENNA, May, 1835.

Can you lend me your _valet de place_ again this morning?--for I still
have not obtained one.

I think you have not read "Obermann;" I send it to you; but I shall
want it in two or three days. It is one of the finest books of the
period.

A thousand heart compliments.



VIENNA, May, 1835.

My cold is precisely the same. It is nothing at all. I have just
received a letter from M. Hammer. I think he is annoyed, for he uses
towards me that wealth of civility which is often the irony of great
souls.

Did you know that the French are very _coustumiers_ to the fact of
bartering Austrian uniforms against victories, but that this ruins
young empires?

I shall stay in town only the time necessary to fulfil your Majesty's
orders.

I entreat you don't worry about me. People are never ill when they are
happy. I do nothing; I let myself go to the happiness of living, and
that is so rare with me that when it is so I don't know what could hurt
me.

A thousand heart assurances.



VIENNA, May, 1835.

The heat has so prostrated me that I don't know what will become of me;
but as for the illness itself, it has ceased. A thousand thanks for
your kindness.

I shall rush with the celerity of your valet, who is a veritable kid,
and this is difficult for a Mar [Balzac's nickname among his friends
was Dom Mar] whose paunch is worthy of all the illustrious paunches
your cousin used to laugh at.

I have dreamed _ta_, I have dreamed _ti_, I have dreamed _tchef_, and
of his _casalba_. I have come to breathe in the Walter-garten, and I
send you "Lauzun" to convince you of the reality of the comedy that
could be made of his amours with Mademoiselle, for I think you do not
know the book.



VIENNA, May, 1835.

You know, madame, that if anything can equal the respectful attachment
that I feel for you it is the will that I am forced to display to keep
within the limits that my work imposes on my pleasures.

Here, as in Paris, my life must be completely _inharmonious_ with the
life of society. To get my twelve hours of work, I must go to bed at
nine o'clock in order to rise at three; and this truly monastic rule,
to which I am compelled, dominates everything. I have yielded something
of my stern observance to you, by giving myself three hours' more
freedom here than in Paris, where I go to bed at six; but that is all I
can do.

However sweet and gracious are the invitations, and however flattering
the eagerness of which I feel the full value, I am obliged to be the
enemy of my dearest pleasures. You know that the persons who love me,
and who have every right to be exacting, conform to my ways of going
nowhere; and treat me as a spoilt child.

These explanations have a conceited aspect which I dislike, and which
would make me ridiculous if you did not constrain me to give my true
reasons.

So, I count upon your precious friendship to explain them, and save
me from their accompanying dangers. You have long known that I am a
soldier on a battlefield, swept onward, without other liberty than that
of fighting the enemy and all the difficulties of my position.

You will give--will you not?--what value you can to my regrets, and
I shall thus have another obligation to add to the hundred thousand
I already owe you. But you are so noble there is no fear in being
indebted to you.

Yes, I am altogether better. I have recovered from the fatigues of the
journey, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your dear and
delicate attentions. A thousand affectionate compliments to M. Hanski.
As for you, I should have to express too many things, and, as you see,
paper is lacking. Here begin the things of the heart.



VIENNA, May, 1835.

It is impossible for me to work if I have to go out, and I never work
merely for an hour or two. You arranged so well that I did not go to
bed till one o'clock. Consequently, I did not rise till eight; so from
nine till one I have only time to pay you a visit in order to put
the visit to the prince between two good things which may weaken the
diplomatic influence.

I want to go and see the Prater in the morning, in its solitude. If
you will, it would be very gracious; for by not beginning on the "Lys
dans la Vallée" till to-morrow I must then work fourteen hours to make
up for time lost. I have sworn to myself to do that work in Vienna, or
else--throw myself into the Danube.

So, in twenty minutes I shall be with you to ask counsel. As for the
seductions of the prince, he caught me once, but I have too much pride
to be caught again; I should pass for a ninny.

A thousand heart-felt regards.



VIENNA, May, 1835. I am incapable of writing the nothings that I see
come naturally to very intelligent persons; I simply put down just what
comes into my head; and what came into my head was one of the things
that I have at heart. Excuse me to the countess, and assure her that
this is the second time I have failed over an album, and that not
having the habit--and even having a horror--of them, I hope she will be
indulgent to me.

Though I am not dirty, I am decidedly stupid, for I don't understand a
word of what you do me the honour to say about Madame Sophie. I entreat
you, have pity on my mental infirmities, and, when you make romances,
put them on the level of my intellectual faculties. This may seem
impertinent--it is only artless.

I have still another hour to work, and then I will come. I am busy with
planning rather than writing, and I can see you _while thinking_; which
is not the same as thinking of other things than you while _seeing_ you.

A thousand gracious and humble thoughts before your August Despotism.



VIENNA, May, 1835.

I cannot wait till one o'clock to know if you are better, whether your
hoarseness and oppression have lessened, whether the foot-bath was
efficacious--in short, whether all is well. Have the charity to send me
a word on these important matters--for it is important to subjects to
know how their princes are.

Affectionate compliments, and accept my obeisances



VIENNA, June, 1835.

You know well, my dear beloved, that my soul is not narrow enough to
distinguish what is yours from what is mine. All is ours--heart, soul,
body, sentiments, all, from the least word to the slightest look; from
life to death. But do not ruin us, for I should send you back a hundred
Austrians for your one, and you would cry out at the folly.

My Eve, adored, I have never been so happy, I have never suffered so
much. A heart more ardent than the imagination is vivid is a fatal
gift when complete happiness does not quench the daily thirst. I knew
what I came to seek of sufferings, and I have found them. In Paris,
those sufferings seemed to me the greatest of pleasures, and I was not
mistaken. The two parts are equal.

For this you had to be more lovely, and nothing is truer. Yesterday you
were enough to render mad. If I did not know that we are bound forever,
I should die of grief. Therefore, never abandon me; it would be murder.
Never destroy the confidence which is our sole complete possession in
this love so pure. Have no jealousies, which never have foundation. You
know how faithful the unhappy are; feelings are all their treasure,
their fortune, and we cannot be more unhappy than we are here.

Nothing can detach me from you; you are my life, my happiness, all my
hopes. I believe in life only with you. What can you fear? My toil
proves to you my love; it was preferring the present to the future
to come here now; it was the folly of impassioned love, for by it I
postponed for many months, that I might enjoy this moment, the days
when you think we shall be free--more free, for _free_, oh! I dare not
think of that. God must will it! I love you so much, and all things
unite us so truly that it must be; but when?

A thousand kisses; for I have a thirst those little sudden pleasures
but increase. We have not an hour, nor a minute. And these obstacles
fan such ardour that, believe me, I do right to hasten my departure.

I press you on all sides to my heart, where you are held but mentally.
Would that I held you there living![1]

[Footnote 1: This letter in itself shows the falseness of those which
purport to have been written in January, February, and March. It is
that of a man true to himself in one of the greatest struggles of
humanity; for, it must be remembered, such trials were not negative in
a man of Balzac's nature.--TR.]



MUNICH, June 7, 1835.

I arrived here in Munich at eleven o'clock last night; but I might have
come in thirty-six hours instead of forty-eight if it had not been for
three bad postilions, whom no human power could make go, and who, each
of them, lost me three hours apiece. I slept seven hours, and have just
waked to keep the promise I made of writing you a line. Then, at ten
o'clock, after seeing the exterior of the public buildings, I shall
start again with the same celerity.

I have nothing romantic to tell you of the journey, always sad on
leaving kind friends. I had no other adventure than two horses
accustomed to fetch sand, who nearly flung me into a quarry, the
postilion being unable to prevent them from keeping to their habits. I
jumped out in time, and began, like the horses, to go back to Vienna;
but it was proved to the horses, by the whip, that they had to go to
Hohenlinden, and to me, by necessity, that I had to go to Paris. The
postilion was afraid I should scold him. But he did not know that the
horses and I were equally faithful to our habits in spite of duty. I
made many sad reflections on the manner in which horses and men have
no liberty, on the various curbs that are put upon them, on the blows
of fate, and the lashing of whips. But I spare you all that. You will
tell me that my sadness is too humorous to be believed; whereas, in
me, great disappointed affections turn always to a sort of rage, which
I express by expending it on some one, as I did Thursday evening at
Prince R...'s, where, because I could not do what I wished, I talked
magnetism.

In heaven's name, don't forget, I entreat you, to explain to M.
Vatischef how it happened that he received neither my card nor my
visit; you do not know how much I care about fuelling the duties of
politeness punctually.

Though I did not like your _valet de place_, he was useful to me on
several occasions. I gave money to all, except to him, and he was not
there. Do me the kindness to give him a ducat for me. I will return
it in my next letter. One should be neither unjust nor forgetful.
Otherwise, nothing is ever great.

I should have liked to go through Munich without stopping; but you
asked me to write you a line from here, and so I have stopped. I don't
like to stop in this way. The noise and motion of the carriage, the
business of paying, and of making the postilions get on, all divert and
excite me. But to stop is to think; and there are but sad thoughts on
leaving you.

Don't you recognize me, the man of debts, in my leaving two behind me
for you to pay--Koller and the _valet de place_? Ask M. Hanski to tell
the carriage-maker not to take me for a swindler, and to give me credit
till my return, an epoch at which I will order a carriage. You see I
mean to return soon.

Well, adieu until Paris; there, I will give you my news. Meanwhile
accept a thousand tender thanks.



PARIS, June 12, 1835.

I arrived on the 11th, at two in the morning. So, deducting the time
I stayed in Munich, I did the journey in five days. But I am sure
now that it can be done in four, and that I can go in eleven days to
Wierzchownia.

I arrived horribly tired, brown as a negro, and only able to fling
myself on a bed and sleep. I write to you this evening, according to
promise.

You will receive from M. de la Rochefoucauld (to whom I beg you to
write a line) by the first embassy opportunity,--that of Austria, if
M. le Comte Maurice Esterhazy is a good fellow, and will do me this
service,--a parcel containing, first, "Le Père Goriot," third edition,
in the first volume of which you will find a pen-holder worthy of
you, and in the second volume a paper-knife to thank you for the one
you gave me; second, a copy of the "Livre des Conteurs," in which is
"Melmoth réconcilié."

I will attend to your pearls at the earliest moment.

I find my affairs in horrible disorder. Werdet had paid the bill of
exchange, but he had not been able to pay my notes falling due on the
15th and the 31st of May, so that my sister, to whom such affairs
are not familiar, being terrified, took--not my diamonds, but--my
silver-ware and pawned it. So now I must work night and day to repair
the stupidities they have done me.

I have therefore three or four months at "hard labour," during which I
must ask you to have indulgence for me. I can't write to you as often
as I would like. I must produce, one after another, "Le Lys," "Les
Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée," the Part for Werdet, and that for Madame
Bêchet. They are all complaining of me horribly. But feel no remorse; I
shall never regret the journey, however short it was, nor, above all,
the time, brief as it was, society left us to ourselves.

I am not pleased with Munich. There are too many frescos, and too many
bad frescos. Those of the upper ceiling of the Pinakothek, and those
of the lower halls of the Kœnigsbaugh(?), are alone of value. All the
rest is not above the level of our café decorations in Paris.

Adieu, for to-day. Kiss Anna's pretty little knuckles for me, offer my
regards to M. Hanski, and recall me to the memory of all about you.

You will find the ducat for Jean, the _valet de place_, in the first
volume of "Père Goriot."



CHAILLOT [rue des Batailles], July 1, 1835.

What I send you will decidedly be subjected to the chances that
politics may have of sending a courier to M. de la Rochefoucauld; for
the lucky attaché was married and gone before I knew it.

Since I last wrote you time has elapsed; but that time was taken up
by enormous troubles, such as whiten or thin the hair. The person who
is with my mother writes me, confidentially, that it is a question of
saving her life or her reason, for that if she does not die, grief may
make her crazy. My brother, incapable in every way, reduced to the
deepest distress, talks of blowing out his brains, instead of trying to
do something for himself. My sister is in a state that grows worse; her
illness had made frightful advances. All this is killing my mother.

So, in four days there is added to the difficulties created by my
journey, my financial crisis and delayed work, that of two existences
to guide and providentially manage!

It is a gloomy evening. I am seated at my window; I have gazed through
space at the lands I have just quitted, and where I went to seek,
near you, youth, rest, strength--to refresh both heart and head, to
forget the hell of Paris; and sitting here, a few tears fall. I measure
the extent of the abyss; I weigh the burden; I seek in the depths
of my heart the corner where lies the principle of my power; and I
resign myself. Of these great scenes, the secret lies between God and
ourselves. My God!--If you could see me you would know why I was so
sad in leaving you, you would comprehend the meaning of what I said
when I cried out with apparent gaiety: "I go to plunge back into the
vat and renew my miseries."

By what sweet destiny is it that for two years past I owe to you the
only calm and peaceful intervals in my life?

Now, I have begun to raise a barrier, not to be surmounted, between my
mother and her children, between her and the world of self-interests
that come roaring round her. I have secured to her the peace and
calmness of her retreat. Next, I have formed a plan of liquidation for
my brother, and another plan to provide for two years for his family
subsistence. In fifteen days all this will be settled. Then in the
course of those two years I shall be able to find him a position.

If you will think for a moment that small interests are more
complicated and more difficult to handle than great ones, you will
divine the goings and comings, the difficulties, the conferences of
all this. I had my own financial crisis to overcome. The continual
calumnies in the newspapers piling lampoons upon me--that I had
absconded, that I was in Sainte-Pélagie--found credence in the stupid
part of Paris; and that belief has paralyzed the resources of credit
that I had. But, at the hour of my present writing I have vanquished
all for myself as well as for my mother and for my brother. Still a day
or so, and I shall be astride of the prettiest winged courser I ever
mounted in the fields of the classic valley; and I shall fire away in
both Revues in July and August, while my two Parts--of the "Études de
Mœurs" and the "Études Philosophiques"--will appear simultaneously.
The purely pecuniary damage done by my journey will be repaired. Then I
shall work deliciously once more, thinking that my reward will be the
journey to Wierzchownia without a care.

It was under these circumstances that I busied myself about your
paper-knife and your pen-holder; I thought those trifles would be the
dearer to you, and that M. Hanski would suffer friendship to impinge
upon his rights. So, into the midst of my troubles a sweet thought
glided when I went to Lecointe, the jeweller. Oh! preserve me, very
pure and very bright, that affection which, you see, is a source of
consolation amid the tortures of life.

I presume your long silence comes from your journey to Ischl.
Nevertheless, I had news of you yesterday. It was not good. From
the 27th to the 28th you were ill, harassed. You saw Madame de
Lucchesi-Palli [Duchesse de Berry]. A somnambulist whom I had put to
sleep told me that. She must have told the truth, for she spoke of
certain annoyances which you feel, and of which she could know nothing
except from you. The last experiments that I have made here in Paris
since my return decide me to always have somnambulists at hand. This
one told me that you wrote to Paris (or intended to write to Paris) for
information about me. But she saw this so confusedly that it proved
nothing clearly. She thought your heart was larger than it ought to
be, and advised me earnestly to tell you to avoid painful emotions and
live calmly; but she said there was no danger. Your heart is, like your
forehead, an organ largely developed. I was much moved when she said
to me with that solemn expression of somnambulists: "These are persons
very much attached to you, who love you very truly."

What an imposing and awful power! To know what is passing in the soul
of others at a great distance! To know what they do! I will try to give
you a proof of this. Tell M. Hanski to write me a letter, calculate
the day I shall receive it, and then remember all he says, and does,
and thinks on that day, so that he may know whether I, in Paris, have
seen Ischl. It will be the finest of our experiments. A month hence I
shall have several somnambulists. It is one means not to be cheated
by anyone. I have nothing of Anna's, so I cannot know anything about
her. If you are curious to consult, send me a little piece of linen or
cotton, which you must put on her stomach during the night, and which
she must put _herself_ (without any one touching it) into a paper which
_she_ must put inside your letter.

I have to-day resumed my great labours. Madame de Castries seems
satisfied with what I did for her; but I did well to put my relations
with her on the footing of social politeness. If you have read, or if
you should read "Léone Léoni," you must know that Madame Dudevant has
been far beneath d'U..., the husband of the Wallachian. I have heard
strange things about that household, but I cannot write them; they
go beyond the limits of a letter. I will keep them for an evening at
Wierzchownia. Good God! what a life!

Yesterday the most horrible thing happened to me. You know, or you
don't know, that waiting in expectation is dreadful torture to me.
Sandeau went to the rue Cassini, and there heard that a package had
come by post from Vienna, and, the postage being thirty-six francs,
Rose had refused to take it in, not having the money. My head gave
way. I felt that no one but you could be sending to me from Vienna. I
sent Auguste off in a cabriolet, told him where to get the money, and
to bring me the package, living or dead. Auguste was gone four hours.
I was four hours in hell, inventing dramas. What do you suppose he
brought? That copy of "Père Goriot," which I asked you to give to any
one who might like it, and it was returned to me from Vienna!--by the
post! They may refuse me entrance to paradise, "Philippe le Discret"
may be a failure--such would be mere misfortunes, but this! I did as
the possessor of slippers did in the Arabian Nights,--I burned that
copy lest it might cause me some other misfortune.

I have had another grief. A little Savoyard, whom T call Anchises
[Grain-de-mil], who was zeal, discretion, honesty, intelligence
personified,--my little groom, to whom I was singularly attached,--died
at the Hôtel-Dieu on the twenty-first day after an operation performed
by M. Roux, Dupuytren's successor, and done with great success,--the
removal of a large tumour on the knee. The-putrid reaction of so large
a wound set in violently. I am grieved. He decided on the operation,
which became necessary in my absence, in order that I might find him
cured and relieved of an infirmity which would in the end have carried
him off. Poor child! all those who knew him regret him; he pleased
every one.

After a few more words to you I must go and put myself to finishing
"l'Enfant Maudit." I am in a suitable frame of mind to do that work
of melancholy. Now that I have returned to my life of eighteen hours'
daily toil I shall write you a species of journal every day, and send
you the whole weekly. This is written Sunday, June 28, twenty-four days
after leaving you, and fifteen days since I last wrote to you. But
these fifteen days have been fatally full of griefs, occupations, and
difficulties of all sorts; such things cannot be told. It would need
volumes to explain what is done and thought in an hour. You have it
in bulk. Werdet has been to London to see about our counterfeits and
translations.


Monday, 29.

It was midnight when I finished. I said adieu to you in my heart and
went to bed. I should like to change something in my way of life. I
should like to get up at four in the morning, and go to bed at nine in
the evening. I would then sleep seven hours and work fifteen. It is
difficult to change, for my hours are so inverted.

Here Auguste comes in and tells me that all the arrangements I had made
for my payments to-morrow, 30th, are overturned by a discounter who
sends me back, not accepting it, a note of Spachmann's for one thousand
francs. So I must dress and rush out. Conceive of such a life! I was
about to begin, in peace, a work of melancholy, and here's a bombshell
fallen into my study! But it is not a despatch I have to write, and I
can't say, like Charles XII., "What has a bombshell to do with L'Enfant
Maudit?" Adieu, for to-day.


Tuesday, 30.

I got to bed late, but I managed my affair and shall have the money,
less a few ducats, to-day.

In my tramps I went to see a somnambulist; she told me you were on
the road to Ischl, thus contradicting the other, who said you had
seen Madame Lucchesi-Palli. But I know how this happened. It would
take too long to explain it to you. I have, unfortunately, too little
time to myself to study these effects according to my new ideas, and
to classify my observations. The difficulty of getting subjects, the
necessities imposed on a magnetizer, all interfere with what I would
like to do. Here, as in the case of writing a play, one must have time
and quiet; now time and quiet are for me the two causes of fortune, and
fortune is that which stops me in all things. Recapitulation made: I
must have a year of toil and much luck in that toil to be entirely free
and liberated.

Well, adieu; I have before me one whole month of tranquillity, for I
have nothing to pay before July 31.

_Mon Dieu!_ how I wish I had two good somnambulists! I should know
every morning how you are, what you are doing; and this small
satisfaction joined to my constant work would keep me happy.


July 1st.

Yesterday I had to rush about to complete the payments, which was only
done this morning. These 30ths of a month bring strange commotions!

To-night I am very sad. The east wind blows, I have no strength. I have
not yet recovered my power of work; I have neither inspiration nor
anything fructifying. Nevertheless, the necessity is great. I shall
take to coffee again. When one has no illusions as to fame and looks
for one's reward elsewhere, it is very grievous to be alone with one's
work.

A thousand tender affections. Write me often, for your writing is a
talisman. You know what belongs to all those about you. Don't walk too
much, only a little. At Ischl the air suffices. Besides, a carriage
in any case suits you best; I have observed that; so the great doctor
says: "No more walking."



CHAILLOT, July 18, 1835.

I have no time to write to you. Calumny has ruined my credit. Men who
would never have thought of coming to ask for money and everybody else
have swooped down upon me. My omnipotent pen must coin money; and yet
nothing must be sacrificed to necessity at the expense of art. Do you
know what I am doing? I am working twenty-four hours running. Then I
sleep five hours; which gives me twenty-one hours and a half to work
per day.

Your letter grieves me, for you make me responsible for Liszt's letter.
_Mon Dieu!_ how is it that with such a splendid forehead you can think
little things. I do not understand why, knowing my aversion for George
Sand, you make me out her friend.

You have not given me your address at Ischl. I send this to Sina. Pray
let me know how long you stay there, that I may send you a package of
books. "Louis Lambert" is finished. I have also finished a volume for
Madame Bêchet, and in eight days more I shall have only two to finish.
Werdet will also get his two Parts of the "Études Philosophiques"
within twenty days. I go on by the grace of God; when I fall--well, I
shall have fallen; but one must fight and grow greater.

You tell me to write to the Countess Loulou.[1] But how can I? Explain
to her yourself my involuntary tardiness. I can't attend to my own
affairs, I do not go out, I only write pages. In all conscience, I
cannot seek for the impossible. No one here would accept the small
salary the prince offers and _three hundred_ francs for the journey!
A reader who _knows how to read_ is not an ordinary man, and yet the
prince denies him a seat at his table. A man of intelligence can earn
more here than three hundred francs a month by literature, and to read
_well_ is literature. I do not undertake the impossible. Every one,
even those who die of hunger, laugh in my face. Leave Paris for Vienna
for such pay as that! They had rather die of hunger in Paris, with
hopes, than live without cares elsewhere. I will write to the princess
and to the countess when I can, but I must provide for the defence of
all points attacked, and I am firing from the three batteries of the
Revues and my "Études."

Tell the countess that the novel by Madame de Girardin, "The Marquis de
Pontanges," is worth reading. It is the only one in six months.

Adieu; I will write when I have done something, and obtained results
which will put your soul at rest about my works and my vigils. These
strivings of a man with his thought, ink, and paper, have nothing very
poetic about them. It is silence; it is obscurity. Lassitude, efforts,
tension, headaches, weariness, all go on between the four walls of that
rose-and-white boudoir which you know by its description in the "Fille
aux yeux d'or." And I have nothing to console me but that distant
affection,--which is angry with me at Ischl for a few words written
foolishly while I was in Vienna,--and the prospect of going to seek
harshness at Wierzchownia, when I shall be, in six or seven months,
dying as a result of my efforts! I ought to say, like some general, I
don't know who, "A few more such victories and we are beaten."

Adieu; I kiss Anna on the forehead, and send you and M. Hanski a
thousand assurances of affection. Think of me as much as I think of
you; that will content me. But from you no letter since June 26, and
here it is July 18. You are punishing me.

[Footnote 1: Countess Louise Turheim, chanoinesse, whose
brother-in-law, Prince Rasumofski, had asked Balzac to send him a
reader from Paris.]



PARIS, August 11, 1835.

I have just returned from Berry, where I went to see Madame Carraud,
who had something to say to me, and I find on my return your last
letter, the one in which you speak of the visit you paid to MADAME [the
Duchesse de Berry] at the moment when our newspapers were representing
her as inventing the infernal machine of Fieschi and awaiting its
success at Aix, where she conferred about it with Berryer! Try to
govern a people who, for twenty-four hours and over two hundred square
leagues, can be made to believe such things as that!

You complain very amiably of the rarity of my letters, but you know I
write as often as I can. I work now twenty hours a day. Can I endure
it? I do not know.

I do not understand why you did not receive my parcel. The Austrian
embassy took it under their protection, and it is addressed to M. de la
Rochefoucauld. Inquire for it, I beg of you.

I am surprised at your enthusiasm for Lherminier. It is plain that you
have not read his other works. They have prevented me from reading "Au
delà du Rhin," the fragments of which published in the "Revue des Deux
Mondes" did not seem to me very strong. Do not confound Lherminier and
Capefigue with the roses and lilies. Leave them among the thistles,
which are dear, for more reasons than one, to their Excellencies. You
will oblige me to read "Au delà du Rhin;" but I fear--in spite of your
fine forehead.

I did not "chant marvels" to you about Madame de Girardin's book. It is
better than what she has so far done; it is not a very remarkable work,
but it is literature, and not dogmatic politics.

_Mon Dieu!_ have I not already written to you that the two
somnambulists forbid you to walk? Why, then, do you walk?

Your letter saddens me; it seems cold and indifferent, as if the ice on
which thrones rest had invaded you. I like it better when you quarrel
with me, find fault with me. If you do not stay long in Vienna, how
shall I send you the manuscripts of "Séraphita," and the "Lys dans la
Vallée"? The end of "Séraphita" will not appear in the "Revue de Paris"
till the third, or perhaps fourth Sunday in October. If you leave, give
me some certain address at Brody; you will there find the precious
package.

_Mon Dieu!_ I need an almost exaggerated tenderness on the part of my
friends, for I assure you that a cruel conviction is laying hold of
me: I do not hope to bear up under such heavy toil. One may indeed
be broken down by violent efforts in art, sciences, and letters, and
in this increase of labor which has come upon me, driven as I am by
necessity, nothing sustains me. Work, always work; nights of flame
succeeding nights of flame, days of meditation to days of meditation,
execution to conception, conception to execution. Little money in
comparison with what I need, immensity of money in relation to the
thing done. If each of my books were paid like those of Walter Scott,
I could bring myself safely out of this. But, although well paid, I
do not come out of it. I shall have earned twelve thousand francs
in August. The "Lys" has brought me eight thousand,--half from the
"Revue des deux Mondes," half from the publishers. The article in
the "Conservateur" will receive three thousand francs. I shall have
finished "Séraphita," begun the "Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée," and
finished the last Part for Madame Bêchet. I don't know that brain, pen,
and hand have ever done such a feat of strength. And there exists a
dear person, sacredly beloved, who complains that the correspondence
languishes, although I answer scrupulously all her letters.

It is impossible for me to speak to you in letters of Fieschi and his
machine. The wise men in politics, and I myself, who am not without a
certain gift of second-sight, believe that it is neither the Republic
nor Carlism which is the author of the attempt. _Fieschi has told
nothing_; of that you may be sure. He will probably never speak.
Lisfranc, the surgeon, who is taking care of him in prison, told this
to my sister whom he is attending. He has had much money given him.
Perhaps he himself does not know _who_ made him act.

I am on the eve of beginning a political existence. I am cowardly
enough to wish to hold back in order not to risk my journey to
Wierzchownia. The two Revues form a large party, for the "Revue des
Deux Mondes" has fifteen hundred subscribers, five hundred being in
Europe; it becomes, therefore, a power. They unite in me, take me
as head, for I have vanquished many men and things by my _Bedouck_!
They support me. I shall make two other newspapers. That will give us
four, and we are to-day in treaty for a fifth! We think of calling
ourselves the party of the _Intelligentials_, a name which lends
itself but little to ridicule, and will constitute a party to which
many will feel flattered to belong. To be head of this in France, that
is worth thinking of. For a long time these principal lines of our
work have been discussed between me and a man powerful by his will,
who organized four years ago and directed the "Revue des Deux Mondes"
[Charles Rabou]. We have had several conferences. The two newspapers,
the two Revues enable us to skim the cream of the salons, to assimilate
them, to unite the seriously able intellects; and nothing can resist
this amicable league of a press which will have nothing blind, nothing
disorganized about it.

You see that as I advance in my own work I act on another and parallel
line, important and broader; in a word, I shall not stop short in
politics any more than in literature. Time presses, events are
complicating. I should have been stopped for want of a hundred thousand
francs; but I think I am about to write a drama, under the name of
my future secretary, to procure them. I must be done with this money
question which strangles me.

You see that, in spite of your coldness, I keep you informed of the
great operations of your devoted moujik. But if the law passes, the new
law which requires that political articles be signed, I shall have to
renounce a great deal in order to go to Paulowska. In short, we cannot
have intellect for nothing!

To speak to you of my every-day affairs would be to tell you of too
many great miseries. I have always an infinite number of errands,
goings and comings to pay my notes and meet my engagements, without
ever being able to end them. In Paris everything involves a frightful
loss of time, and time is the great material of which life is made.

So, when I am bending over my paper in the light of my candles in the
salon of the "Fille aux yeux d'or," or lying, weary, on the sofa, I am
breathless with pecuniary difficulties, sleeping little, eating little,
seeing no one,--in short, like a republican general making a campaign
without bread, without shoes. Solitude, however, pleases me much. I
hate society. I must finish what I have begun, and whatever turns me
from it is bad, especially when it is wearisome.

You ask me, I think, about Madame de C... She has taken the thing, as
I told you, tragically, and now distrusts the M... family. Beneath
all this, on both sides there is something inexplicable, and I have
no desire to look for the key of mysteries which do not concern me. I
am with Madame de C... on the proper terms of politeness and as you
yourself would wish me to be.

Do not make any comparison between the affection which you inspire,
and that which you grant; for in that, those who love you have the
advantage. Never believe that I cease to think of you, for even though
I be occupied as I am now, it is impossible that in hours of fatigue
and despair, hours when our energy relaxes, and we sit with pendent
arms and sunken head, body weary and mind distressed, the wings of
memory should not bear us back to moments when we refreshed our soul
beneath green shades, to her who smiled to us, who has nothing in her
heart that is not sincere, who is to us a spirit, who reanimates us,
and renews, so to speak, by distractions of the soul, those powers to
which others give the name of talent. You are all these things to me,
you know it; therefore never jest about my feelings; I fear lest there
mingle in it too much of gratitude.

Adieu. At Wierzchownia! I must cross Europe to show you an aging face,
but a heart that is ever deplorably young, which beats at a word,
at a line ill-written, an address, a perfume, as though it were not
thirty-six years old.

I hope when you are regularly settled in your Wierzchownia, that
you will write me the journal of your daily life and be to me more
faithfully a friend, so that we shall be as if we had seen ourselves
yesterday when I arrive. A thousand kind things to M. Hanski. Write
me whether the parcel is lost or you received it. I am afraid it went
to Ischl after you had left. Also write me by return of courier,
inclosing in your letter a seal in red wax of your arms, which are to
be engraved on the title-page of "Séraphita," in the edition of the
"Études philosophiques" and "Le Livre Mystique." Isn't it a piece of
gallantry to sound the heraldic chord which you have within you, I know
not where, for it is not in your heart? Kiss Anna on the forehead for
me. All tender sentiments, and recall me to the recollection of the
Viennese, to whom I owe memories.



PARIS, August 24, 1835.

My letters are becoming short, you say, and you no longer know whom I
see. I see no one; I work so continually that I have not a moment for
writing. But I do have moments of lassitude for thinking. Some day you
will be astonished at what I have been able to do, and yet write to a
friend at all.

Listen: to settle this point, reflect on this: Walter Scott wrote
two novels a year, and was thought to have luck in his labour; he
astonished England. This year I shall have produced: (1) "Le Père
Goriot;" (2) "Le Lys dans la Vallée;" (3) "Les Mémoires d'une jeune
Mariée;" (4) "César Birotteau." I have done three Parts of the
"Études de Mœurs" for Madame Bêchet; and three Parts of the "Études
Philosophiques" for Werdet. And, finally, I shall have finished the
third _dizain_, and "Séraphita." But then, shall I be living, or in
my sound mind in 1836? I doubt it. Sometimes I think that my brain is
inflaming. I shall die on the breach of intellect.

These efforts have not yet saved me from my financial crisis. This
fearful production of books, involving as it does such masses of
proofs, has not sufficed to liquidate me. I must come to the stage; the
returns of which are enormous compared to those we get from books. The
intellectual battle-fields are more fatiguing to work than the fields
where men die or the fields where they sow their corn; know this.
France drinks brains, as once she cut off noble heads.

Yes, I can only write you a few pages, and soon I may only send you
despairing ones; for courage is beginning to desert me. I am weary
of this struggle without rest, of this constant production without
productive success. A fine thing truly to excite moral sympathies when
a mother and a brother are needing bread! A fine thing to hear silly
compliments on works that are written with one's blood and do not sell,
while M. Paul de Kock sells three thousand copies of his, and the
"Magasin Pittoresque" sixty thousand! We shall see each other again if
I triumph, but I doubt success!


Monday, 24.

Forgive me for having uttered that cry of pain, and do not be too much
alarmed by it. But if I perish, carried off by excess of toil, it must
not surprise you. The end of "Séraphita" cannot appear in the "Revue
de Paris" before September. The corrections, the efforts are crushing.
Already there have been one hundred and sixty hours' work on the first
proof; and I don't know what the others will cost.

If you are kind you will write me oftener. It seems as though the air
were fresher about me, my brain cooler, as if I were in an oasis, when
I have read your letters. They make me think I am at some wayside
haven. Fifteen days had passed without one when I received the last
from Ischl. I am well advanced in corrections of the "Lys dans la
Vallée." It will appear in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" while you are
travelling. I think I have not done a finer work as painting of an
interior. I have rewritten and finished "Gobseck." In "La Fleur des
Pois" I have swung round upon myself. Hitherto, I have painted the
misfortunes of wives; it is time to show also the sorrows of husbands.

Here is something singular: it is that I was composing this work while
you were thinking of its leading idea, and during the time it took
your letter in which you spoke of the sufferings that fall upon men
to reach me! Is it not enough to make one believe that space does not
exist and that we had talked together?

Adieu, I have no more time to write. But, as I told you, I have time to
think, and I think of you in all my hours of recreation. I must earn
money to go to the Ukraine, for in order to travel tranquilly I cannot
owe anything here.

Adieu; remember me to all about you.



CHAILLOT, October 11, 1835.

Do not be surprised at my silence; it is easily explained by the
abundant work I have done. For the last forty days I have risen at
midnight and gone to bed at six o'clock. Between those periods there
has been nothing but work, ardent, passionate work,--the desperate
struggle of battle-fields.

Do me the favour not to believe that the friendship you grant me is the
common friendship of women; consider _quand même_ to be the noblest of
mottoes. Yes, I shall not perish; yes, I shall triumph!

But you ought to have received two letters through Sina, one of which
carried to you the dedication. By the first of next March I shall owe
nothing to any one. And thus will end this horrible battle between
misfortune and me. My wealth will be my pen and my liberty.

Yesterday, returning along the quays on foot, meditating the
corrections of "Séraphita," I saw, in a carriage that went by rapidly,
Madame Kisseleff. Imagine my astonishment! She was returning no doubt
from Bellevue, the residence of the Austrian embassy.

Another piece of news. By getting up at midnight and going to bed
at six o'clock for forty days I am beginning to get thin during my
eighteen hours' vigil and toil. I wish the "Lys" and "Séraphita" and
the new "Louis Lambert" to be the culminating points of my literary
life so far.

We are reprinting the "Médecin de campagne." I am having a
travelling-carriage built; and I think of buying a house, so that when
you come to Paris I can offer you a whole one to yourself, in thanks
for the hospitality you promise me at Wierzchownia. M. de Custine is in
Paris, faithless man!

Will you permit me to have a watch made for you in Geneva? I will bring
it to you with the manuscripts that belong to you. I will thus repair
the disaster of your journey; you are too far from Geneva to do it
yourself.

Take care of yourself. Play Grandet and Benassis. I will be your critic
when I come, as you are mine on my works.

Oh! I entreat you, have confidence in me. Do not be vexed with me
for anything, neither the brevity, nor the careless scribbling of my
letters. I must work on,--nothing can be allowed to wait; and I have
always around me three or four volumes in proofs to read; and besides
this, financial matters. In truth, I do not live; but, in my most weary
hours, I can rest my head upon the mantel-piece and lose myself in
dreams, like a woman.

A thousand kind memories to all, and to _you_ all the friendships.
I expect to hear from you on "Le Lys dans la Vallée." I worked long
over that book. I wanted to use the language of Massillon, and that
instrument is heavy to wield.

Ardent wishes for all that is dear to you; my friendship to the Grand
Marshal.



CHAILLOT, October, 1835.

I have received your letter from Brody, and thank you from the bottom
of my heart. The more you forbid me to go to Wierzchownia, under
pretext of too great fatigue, the quicker I shall go. But be easy;
I cannot breathe the air of liberty, or feel myself free of chains,
before April, May, or June. But I shall surely go and do "Philippe II."
and "Marie Touchet" at Wierzchownia tranquilly; or a few good works
which will give me my financial independence,--the three francs a day
that the dethroned Napoleon wanted.

Yes, Madame Kisseleff is in Paris. Happy Monsieur E...! I am out of
society; until my liberation I see no one, and I work as I told you.
You will not read till you reach Wierzchownia "Le Livre Mystique,"
which is composed of my new "Louis Lambert" and "Séraphita." The
Emperor Nicholas will not forbid those books.

I should like to be able to buy the house of which I spoke to you. It
would be a good investment, and I should be forced to be economical.

I am getting a bad opinion of your firmness. In proportion as you
approach your _caret patria_ your sublime resolutions as to government
vanish, and you are becoming once more the great lady, creole and
indolent. Come, be queen of Wierzchownia; do not be an unpublished
Benassis at Paulowska. Be, rather, an intellectual growth, develop that
fine forehead where shines the most luminous of divine lights.

I wish to reach Wierzchownia by travelling through Germany,--that
country worthy of the renown against which we lie so much. From now
to seven months hence I shall have accomplished great works. "César
Birotteau" will have been followed by many others. But the "Lys"! If
the "Lys" is not a female breviary, I am nothing. The virtue in it is
sublime, and not wearying. To be dramatic with virtue, to be ardent and
use the language and style of Massillon,--let me tell you, that is a
problem, to solve which, in the first number, cost three hundred hours
of corrections, four hundred francs to the "Revue" and to me a trouble
in my liver. Dr. Nacquart put me into a bath for three hours a day,
on ten pounds of grapes, and wanted me not to work; but I do work all
night.

Madame de Berny is much better; she has borne a last shock, the illness
of a beloved son whose brother has gone to bring him home from Belgium.
I was there to lessen her sorrows. She told me she could say but one
word about my "Lys": that it was indeed the Lily of the Valley. From
her lips that is great praise; she is very hard to satisfy. The first
number is finished and I have two others; at twenty days apiece, that
makes forty days. Sainte-Beuve worked four years at "Volupté." Compare
that!

I send you many heartfelt wishes, and beg you to recall me to the
memory of all. Your paper-knife broke in my hand; it almost cut me; I
felt grieved about it. Besides which, I don't know where the little
pencil-case of Geneva has hid itself; I am grieved about that also; but
it may be found in some pocket. I am so full of ideas and work that
here is distraction beginning. But the heart has none, only the head.



CHAILLOT, November 22, 1835.

Do not be surprised at the number of days since I have written to
you. This interruption is due to the sharpness of the conflict,
the necessity of a work that takes days and nights. I am in fear
of succumbing. Also, events have become very serious in my family.
Something had to be done about my brother,--get him off to India, or
induce him to go.

You, so little concerned about money, you will never know, until I
relate them to you by the fireside in your steppe, the difficulties
there are in paying ten thousand francs a month, without other resource
than one's pen. Still, I have almost the hope of arriving, if not
free, at least with honour safe and no misfortune, at December 31.

You will comprehend nothing of these two months until you see the
frightful labour on "Séraphita" and the "Lys" bound in green and placed
upon your bookshelves. Then you will ask yourself, seeing that mass of
proofs and corrections, if there were years in those months, days in
those hours.

Madame Bêchet has paid us our thirty-three thousand francs; and we are
offered forty-five thousand for the thirteen following volumes, which
will complete, in twenty-five volumes, the first edition of the "Études
de Mœurs." That is how our affairs stand now. We owe thirty-five
thousand francs, and we possess, in expectation, fifty thousand.
There's the account of our household. The sole point now is, not to die
of fatigue on the day when the burden becomes endurable!

To-morrow, Sunday, 22, the first number of the "Lys dans la Vallée"
appears in the "Revue de Paris." But learn from one fact the nature
of my struggle and my daily combats. Since my return from Vienna
the "Revue de Paris" made immense sacrifices for "Séraphita." After
six months of toil and money spent, "Séraphita," finished, was
to have appeared to-morrow. Suddenly the director told me it was
incomprehensible, and that he preferred not to publish it on account
of the long interruption which had occurred between the first numbers
and the end, with a hundred other reasons which I spare you. I at once
proposed to pay him his costs and take back my article. Accepted.
I rushed to Werdet, and told him about it. He rushed to Buloz with
the money; and the wrath of publisher and author is such that
"Séraphita" has gone from one printing-press to the other and that
the "Livre Mystique," will appear on Saturday, 28th. The literature
of the periodical press will seize upon the singular anecdote of this
refusal; it will make such an uproar, inasmuch as the editor of the
"Revue" is not liked, that Werdet feels sure of selling "Séraphita"
in a single day.[1] There is a copy on Chinese paper for you, besides
the collection of manuscripts and proofs. But such displays of force
require prodigious efforts: they are like the campaigns of Italy.

You understand that in a literary campaign like mine society is
impossible. Therefore I have openly renounced it. I go nowhere, I
answer no letter and no invitation. I only allow myself the Italian
opera _once_ a fortnight. Thursday last I saw Madame Kisseleff
there. Alas! how little effect her beauty made! If you only knew how
everything becomes belittled in Paris! In spite of her protecting
passion for Poggi, she understands what I tried to tell her in
Vienna, and Poggi now gives her the impression of a full stop in the
Encyclopædia after hearing Rubini.

I cannot tell you the memories that assailed me when I found myself
beside some one from Vienna, a friend of yours, and listening to the
"Somnambula" which recalled to me two of our evenings. The Princess
Schonberg was there also. I paid a visit of politeness to her; and I
shall also go and see Madame Kisseleff once.

So, my life is a strange monotony, and your letters are so rare that I
have no longer the regular event that varied it,--your letters, that
always came of a Monday. I have no longer my good Monday. I can only
tell you about my work and my payments,--a chant as monotonous as that
of the waves of ocean surging upon a granite rock.

I am going to dine in town to get you an autograph of Sir Sidney Smith,
the hero of Saint-Jean-d'Acre. I will also send you one of Alphonse
Karr.

[Footnote 1: Werdet gives a long account of this affair ("Portrait
intime de Balzac" pp. 147-169). On it, he bases a bitter complaint
against Balzac of unfairly and to his, Werdet's, injury, delaying the
publication fifteen months; which charge falls to the ground under
the above evidence that M. Buloz returned "Séraphita," November 21,
1835 (not 1834 as Werdet says), and Werdet published the book two
weeks later, December 2, 1835, on which day every copy was sold, and
two hundred and fifty were promised. The second edition was published
December 28, 1835.--TR.]


Sunday, 22.

I beg of you to number your letters, beginning with the year 1836, as
I do myself with this one; so that we may mutually know if our letters
reach us safely; and when we want special answers to any question, the
mention of the number will settle everything.

I have had, and I still have, violent griefs on the side of Nemours.
Madame de Berny was decidedly better; her dreadful palpitations were
relieved. There were hopes of saving her. Suddenly, the only son who
resembles her, a young man handsome as the day, tender and spiritual
like herself, like her full of noble sentiments, fell ill, and ill of a
cold which amounts to an affection of the lungs. The only child out of
_nine_ with whom she can sympathize! Of the nine, only four remain; and
her youngest daughter has become hysterically insane, without any hope
of cure. That blow nearly killed her. I was correcting the "Lys" beside
her; but my affection was powerless even to temper this last blow. Her
son (twenty-three years old) was in Belgium, where he was directing
an establishment of great importance. His brother Alexandre went to
fetch him, and he arrived a month ago, in a deplorable condition. This
mother, without strength, almost expiring, sits up at night to nurse
Armand. She has nurses and doctors. She implores me not to come and
not to write to her. You know how at moments, when all within us is
tension, the slightest shock, whether it comes from tried affection or
from clumsiness, breaks us down. What a situation! So that I have a
double anxiety in that direction, where I live so much.

My mother and my brother give me other anxieties of so cruel and
disastrous a kind that I do not speak to you of them, for they are not
of a nature to be written. One must have much faith in the future to
live thus,--to take up, every morning, one's heavy burden. My friends
have all limited means, and cannot relieve my financial situation,
which twenty-five thousand francs would render endurable, were they
only lent to me for six months. I must still march on to the last
moment in triple distresses,--those of my family, those of my work,
those of my finances. I don't speak of calumnies or of the wretches who
throw sticks between my legs when I run. That is nothing. That which
would kill an artist I scarcely consider an annoyance.

I have of late been twenty-six hours in my study without leaving it. I
get the air at that window which commands all Paris, which I will some
day command.

I have received your last letter written from your desolate land. I
reckon that by this time you have reached Wierzchownia, reviewed your
wheat-fields, resumed your habits, and that you can surely write to me
twice a month. Following your custom, you have given me your address
very imperfectly, and that of the Chanoinesse with a perfection quite
hieroglyphic. Write and tell her that for me it is as impossible to
write to her as it would be to take the moon in my teeth. Society
people, the rich, the idle, imagine nothing of the busy lives of
artists and poor men. It is humorous to a degree. Especially do they
believe in our ingratitude, our forgetfulness; they never view us
as toiling night and day. To explain myself wholly, think of those
seventeen volumes manufactured by me without help; compute that that
makes three hundred _feuilles_ [4800 octavo pages], each read more
than ten times, and that makes three thousand [48,000], besides the
conception and the writing; and also that beyond the will to do I must
have _du bonheur_ [the luck of inspiration].

So, whatever they tell you of me, laugh at it, and think of this, the
proof of which exists. One of my bitterest literary enemies says of me:
"Talent, genius, his incredible power of will, I can understand, I can
believe it; _but where, and how, does he manufacture_ TIME?"

Ah! madame, I have brought myself, I, such a sleeper, to do without
sleep; I sleep only four hours; and I, so eager, so much a child, I
have resolved my whole life into dreams of hope. I live by suffering,
work, and hope only. My fortune will be made by three months spent at
Wierzchownia without care, without anxieties, in writing two fine plays.

By the singular will of Providence your friendship is joined to the
three halts I have made during the last three years. Neufchâtel,
Geneva, Vienna, have been to me three oases. There, I thought of
nothing; I renewed my strength. You will see me arrive dying at
Wierzchownia, and I shall leave it living.

Adieu; my friendly regards to the Benassis of Wierzchownia. My
compliments to the three young ladies. A kiss on Anna's forehead. Be
without anxiety as to the manner in which I shall make the journey.
I shall come alone, without anything to contest at the custom-house,
without books, without papers,--only linen and clothes. I will write
you, in advance, the names of the books I shall need, to see if you
have them in your library; that is the only tax I shall place upon you.
I shall not bring a score of heavy books. I have all my intellectual
riches in my head, and all my treasures in my heart. You must have
indulgence for my one coat, my poet's wardrobe. I shall go light as an
arrow, rapid as an arrow, but heavy with hopes, with pleasures to take
in that chimney-corner by which you entice me.



CHAILLOT, November 25, 1835.

If "Séraphita" is not for sale on Saturday there will be no winter for
me in Russia; Werdet is ruined if "Séraphita," that is to say, "Le
Livre Mystique," is not a great success, and if the second and third
Parts of the "Études Philosophiques" do not appear in December and
January. I lose six thousand francs with Madame Bêchet if her last Part
does not appear in February. Keep the above before your eyes so that
you may not blame me. I must fulfil my engagements or I die, killed at
last by grief. To write a letter is impossible. People who lead a fixed
life, by whom the want of money is never felt, are unable to judge of
the lives of those who work night and day, and have to beg for the
money they earn.

I had forty thousand francs to pay after my return from Vienna, and
before this coming December. Therefore judge what efforts and resources
I needed to make head against that without credit; so that what you
say to me in the letter I received to-day seems to me very singular.
You do not know the bitterness of the epigram which your fear has made
upon a poor artist, in hiding on account of the National Guard, who for
five months has gone to bed at six o'clock (with rare exceptions) to
rise at midnight, and who is working superhumanly to earn a few months'
freedom in order to go and see you. To ask me for letters under these
circumstances is as if you had been a Frenchman and asked some colonel
to write to you during the retreat from Moscow--with this difference,
that the warmth of my soul can never lessen, and triumph will take the
place of defeat.

_Mon Dieu!_ I can't foresee any peace under three months, unless
through fortunate events that are impossible: exhausted editions that
would give me money, or falling ill myself. Then I would write to you.
But would you not rather have my silence, which tells you I am working
fruitfully, and bringing nearer the happy day of my freedom? Have I
made you too great in counting on your intelligent friendship to divine
these things?

Here comes Werdet with _ten feuilles_, one hundred and sixty pages, to
correct! I have, since I wrote letter No. 1, now on its way, quarrelled
with the Revues, for the same causes that I quarrelled with Pichot; you
know them.

Well, adieu. I have lived a few minutes with you in the pretty home of
your sister, for you are indeed a good painter.

Though I am not ill, I am horribly fatigued,--more than I have ever
been. I have not been able to go and breathe my native air of Touraine,
which would revive me.

A thousand caressing things. Never doubt your poor future guest again.

P. S. I have lost in a diligence my Geneva pencil-case with the _Ave_.
I did not have the luck that you had with your watch. I have not
recovered it.



CHAILLOT, December 18, 1835.

I receive to-day the letter in which you tell me you have read the
first number of the "Lys." When you receive this letter you will
doubtless have read the second. (Shameful cheatery has sold them to
Bellizard, and I shall prosecute such thefts; that is, if I have the
courage to protest against a fraud which hastens the enjoyment that you
say you take in my things.)[1] You will understand better the three
hundred hours. I leave the enervating corrections of the third number
to write to you.

You are right in your philological criticisms. I perceive my faults
every day, and correct them. You will find, some day, a great
difference between the acknowledged work and all preceding editions.

Imagine my happiness! Thomassy [a collaborator of Augustin Thierry]
came to embrace me after reading "Séraphita." He told me that he
regarded the "Livre Mystique" as one of the masterpieces of the French
language, and that he saw no fault to find with it.

There must be some faults still in "La Grenadière;" but these last
stains upon the white robe shall be removed by the soap of patience
and the wash-board of courage, which love of art for art's sake gives.
It is useless to tell you what the "Lys" has cost me. I have now spent
fifteen days on the third number, and I need eight more.

A dreadful misfortune has happened to me. The fire in the rue du
Pot-de-Fer destroyed the hundred and sixty first pages, printed at
my cost, of the third _dizain_ of the "Contes Drolatiques," and five
hundred volumes, which cost me four francs each, of the first and
second _dizains_. Not only do I lose an actual amount of three thousand
five hundred francs in money and interest, but I also lose an agreement
for six thousand francs, on which I counted to pay my expenses at the
end of the year, which is now broken, because I have nothing to give
Werdet and an associate in this affair who bought the three _dizains_.

I must face this misfortune, which comes at the moment when _hope_ was
no longer a vain word, when gleams of blue were lighting up my heaven,
beside the lovely form so rarely seen there. Well! I have always shown
an iron front to trouble; there's nought but happiness which breaks me
down--for I ill know how to bear it. Madame de Berny has kept silence
since this fatal event. That is another trouble. And my journey to
Wierzchownia recedes.

You have no idea of our civilization; the trouble it is to do business;
what distances, what visits wasted on moneyed people; their caprices,
which make the promise of one day withdrawn the next! My life is a
torrent. I sleep only five hours. To go and see you would be a rest, no
matter how fatiguing a rapid journey might be.

I have few events to tell you. I have dined once with Madame Kisseleff;
and once at the Austrian embassy, and I went to a rout at the latter
place. One must keep up relations there. I have seen Princess
Schonberg. But I do no more than is necessary.

I am to have two secretaries, two young men who espouse the hopes of
my political life, which, alas! is dawning. I am embarrassed how to
tell you when, how, and why, because you have forbidden the subject;[2]
but you will guess all when I tell you that five days ago I bought a
political newspaper. These young men are: (1) The Comte de Belloy,
friend of Sandeau, nephew of the cardinal; twenty-four years old,
face happy, wit abundant, conduct bad, poverty dreadful, talent and
future rich, confidence and devotion entire, nobility immemorial. (2)
A Comte de Gramont, one of whose ancestors went security for a Duc de
Bourgogne. He does not belong to the family of the Ducs de Grammont. I
know him less than I do de Belloy. These are my two aides-de-camp.

You will be surprised to see Sandeau excluded. But Sandeau is not,
like these gentlemen, legitimist; he does not share my opinions. That
says all. I have done everything to convert him to the doctrines of
absolute power, he is as silly as a propagandist.

You see that here is a second mine; a second cause for arduous work.
You see also that _Bedouck_ is not a talisman without force in me. But
it needs much money, and still more talent. I don't know where to get
the money.

You are very right to economize; and I do not understand why you do
not beat M. Hanski into sending away forty out of his eighty workmen.
Shickler and all our great seigneurs here do not employ more than forty.

Reserve your sublime analytical thoughts to act like your neighbour,
the Countess Branicka. Money can do everything to vanquish material
obstacles. Be miserly by juxtaposition; miserly with an object.

My brother-in-law is negotiating the purchase of my house. I desire
it extremely. It fulfils all the conditions that you require in a
dwelling. How I wish that you could so arrange your affairs that you
might be in it three years hence, without M. Hanski having one anxiety.
Is not M. Mitgislas P... happy as a king? He has all the wealth that
he wants, and possesses enough in the public funds to bring down the
stock by a sale! Nothing is easier to administer and collect than such
revenues, nothing harder than _literary revenues_, although they are so
simple that nothing is simpler!

"If you love me" (Anna's style) you will make me a pretty little daily
journal, not a periodical one; so that every eight days I shall receive
your letter, and mine will cross yours. Can you do less for a man who
writes only to you in all the world?

As for my present life, I have returned to the rue des Batailles. I
go to bed at seven and get up at two; between those two periods see
me in the boudoir of the "Fille aux yeux d'or," seated at a table
and working without other distraction than to go to my window and
contemplate that Paris which I will some day subjugate. And here I am
for three months, until my house is bought, and my new arrangements for
lodging and living made.[3]

I imagine that Anna is well, that you flourish in _la cara patria_,
that M. Hanski is busy, that Mesdemoiselles Séverine and Denise are at
their best, that Mademoiselle Borel has restored her good graces to the
author of "Séraphita," and prays God for him after praying for you and
Anna, that all goes well, even Pierre, that the confectioner makes you
delicious things, and, in short, that nothing is lacking in your Eden
but a poor foreigner who glides there in thought. At night, when the
fire crackles or a spark darts from a candle, say to yourself, "'Tis
he!" Think, then, that a too ardent memory has crossed the spaces and
fallen on your table like an aërolite detached from a distant sphere.

Farewell again. I would that I could say _à bientôt_. When you begin
the third number of the "Lys" you will know that if the first pages are
bad it is because you have taken the time necessary to make them good,
and that nothing is sweeter to me than to abandon for you my author's
vanity and the public.

[Footnote 1: The publication of "Le Lys dans la Vallée" in Russia. See
"Memoir of Balzac," pp. 160, 161, 231-237.--TR.]

[Footnote 2: All his political interests and occupations were excluded
from his letters to Russia, in fear of the censorship.--TR.]

[Footnote 3: It seems, at first sight, rather astonishing that a man
so deeply in debt should talk of buying property. But in a letter to
his sister respecting his building of "Les Jardies," he says it is
as an investment for his mother, who was one of his creditors. The
same statement is made by Théophile Gautier in his record of Balzac.
From this point of view, a purchase of real estate was safety, not
extravagance.--TR.]




IV.


LETTERS DURING 1836.



CHAILLOT, January 18, 1836.

In spite of my entreaty, your letter, which I received to-day, after
nearly one month's interregnum, is neither dated nor numbered; so
that it is impossible to answer each other understandingly at such a
distance.

Your letter contains two reproaches which have keenly affected me; and
I think I have already told you that a few chance expressions would
suffice to make me go to Wierzchownia, which would be a misfortune in
my present perilous situation; but I would rather lose everything than
lose a true friendship.

In the first place, as for letters, count up those that you have
written me, and my replies; the balance will be much in my favour. When
you speak of the rarity of my letters you make me think that some must
be lost, and I feel uneasy. In short, you distrust me at a distance,
just as you distrusted me near by, without any reason. I read quite
despairingly the paragraph of your letter in which you do the honours
of my heart to my mind, and sacrifice my whole personality to my brain.

I laughed much at your reckoning of my work by quantity, not quality.
I laughed, because I thought of your analytical forehead; I laughed,
because I thought that at the moment when I was reading those falsely
accusing pages, you, perhaps, were holding in your hand "Séraphita"
and making me in the depths of your heart some honourable amends.

Ah! _cara_, if you were in the secret of those work-sessions, which
begin at midnight and end at midday, if you knew that the new edition
of the "Médecin de campagne" and the second of the "Livre Mystique"
have cost me six hundred hours, that I must deliver February 1 the
manuscripts of two new octavo volumes, and that I have business and
lawsuits besides, you would see, with pain, that you have accused a
_friend_ falsely, that "Marie Touchet" is going on, and that--that--etc.

To-day, I have so much on my hands that I am compelled to extreme
rapidity. I am irreconcilably parted from the two Revues. I have in
my own hands "La Chronique de Paris," a newspaper that comes out
twice a week, and expresses my royalist sympathies. I have begun
the year by "La Messe de l'Athée," a work conceived, written, and
printed in a single night. I must deliver in February a work entitled
"L'Interdiction," which is equivalent to seventy pages of the "Revue
de Paris." This is over and above what I have to do for Madame Bêchet
and Werdet. In two months I shall have ended the agreement with Madame
Bêchet, and be free of her.

In the enumeration which you make of my works you count as nothing the
enormous corrections which the reprints cost me. Is it not sad to have
to count up with you,--to make for friendship calculations such as I
have to make with my publishers? You took amiss what I said to you in
asking you not to cause me false sorrows, because I was bending beneath
the weight of real ones. To tell you those, I should have to write
you volumes. They are such that the success of "Séraphita" did not
bring into my soul the slightest joy. Did there not come a moment when
Sisyphus neither wept nor smiled, but became of the nature of the rocks
he was ever lifting?

My life is becoming too much that of a steam-engine. Toil to-day, toil
to-morrow; always toil, and small results. 1836 is begun. I shall soon
be thirty-seven years old. I have six months before me, during which I
have accumulated fifty thousand francs to pay. Those paid, I shall have
paid off what I owe to strangers. There remains my mother. But I shall
have spent nine years of life at the edge of a table, with an inkstand
before me. I have had but three diversions, permit me to say three
happinesses: my three journeys,--three recreations snatched, stolen,
perilously torn from the midst of my battles, leaving the enemy to make
headway; three halts, during which I breathed!

And you find fault with the poor soldier who has resumed his life of
abnegation, his life militant, the poor writer who has not taken a
penful of ink these two years without looking at your visiting card
placed below his inkstand.

No, surely, I would not have you hide from me a single one of the sad
or gay thoughts that come to you; but while I sympathize keenly with
all that is of you, believe that I suffer horribly from the worries
that you make for yourself about me, by supposing facts or sentiments
that are false or foreign to my nature. Then it is that I measure the
distance that parts us, and drop my head. The wound is given, here, at
the moment when at Wierzchownia you ought, on receiving a letter from
me, to regret having been too quick to blame a heart which is wholly
devoted to you. Here are explanations enough.

I am very desirous that you should have the second edition of the
"Livre Mystique" in which I have made some changes, but all is not
done yet in the matter of corrections. Madame de Berny sent me her
observations too late, and I could not rewrite the second chapter,
entitled "Séraphita." She alone had the courage to tell me that the
angel talked too much like a grisette; that what seemed pretty so long
as the end was not known is paltry. I see now that I must _synthesize_
woman, as I have all the rest of the book. Unhappily, I need six months
to remake this part, and during that time noble souls will all blame me
for that fault which will be so obvious to their eyes.

I send Hammer a copy of the second edition, in memory of his kind deeds
and his friendly reception.

Did I tell you that the Princess Schonberg has put her child here in
the house where I am, on account of its vicinity to the Orthopædic
hospital? Yesterday I met her in the garden and we talked Vienna; she
did not tell me a word about you, but much about Loulou. She said
that Lady ... had again run away with a Greek, that Prince Alfred had
prevented her from getting beyond Stuttgard. The husband arrived,
fought a duel with the Greek, and took back his wife. What a singular
wife!

Forgive me this gossip. I was so happy in the solitude of this house,
rue des Batailles! The landlord said to me one morning that a Prince
Schudenberg had come. I replied, "No, there are only Counts of
Schuttenberg." The next day on the staircase I saw a German valet, who
looked at me, smiling, and three days later Prince Schonberg told me,
at Madame Appony's, that he had put his heir under the care of our good
air and garden.

If the play of "Marie Touchet" succeeds I can buy the house I have
in view. With what delight I shall enjoy a home of my own! But the
damned seller will not accept my terms of payment; he wants twenty-five
thousand francs down, and I don't know when I shall have them. If I
earn them in six months the house may then have been sold. Well, one
must submit.

I have still twenty days' more work on the "Médecin de campagne;" only
one volume is printed; I must finish the second. I hope that this time
the text will be definitive, and that it will be pure, without spot or
blemish.

You see, nothing can be more monotonous than my life in the midst of
this whirling Paris. I refuse all invitations; laboriously I do my
work; I amass--to win a few days' freedom. One more journey that I
want to make! Some nights more of toil and perhaps I can go and see
you about the middle of this year. It cannot be until after I clear
my debt. I would not show you even once that anxious face that so
struck you the day you were singing and I was looking out across the
Waltergarten.

No, you never spoke to me of that Roger. You commit little sins, which,
like spoilt children, you do not own till a long time afterwards.

At this moment I am a prey to the horrible spasmodic cough I had at
Geneva, and which, since then, returns every year at the same time. Dr.
Nacquart declares that I ought to pay attention to it, and that I got
something, which he does not define, in crossing the Jura. The good
doctor is going to study my lungs. This year I suffer with it more than
usual. If I am at Wierzchownia this time next year you will have an old
man to nurse.

I am in despair at the delay the "Revue de Paris" makes in bringing out
the "Lys dans la Vallée." No work ever cost more labour. The "Lys,"
"Séraphita," the "Médecin de campagne" are the three gulfs into which I
have flung the most nights, money, and thoughts. The finest part, the
end, is that which has not yet appeared.

We are reprinting at this moment the fourth volume of the "Scènes de
la Vie privée," in which I have made great changes in relation to the
general meaning in "Même Histoire;" so that Hélène's flight with the
murderer is rendered more probable. It took me a long time to make
these last knots.

To sum up your questions: my health is not good just now; business
matters are multiplying; work also; I am under suspicion by you,
whereas I am exterminating myself to earn money here. No pleasures,
many annoyances. Nothing has varied since my last letter, neither my
heart nor my occupations. I am awaiting some news. I have imagined a
thousand evils; I fancied that Anna, or you, or M. Hanski were ill.
I now learn that you really are suffering with your heart. Remember
all that I have written to you about it. Avoid emotions, do not make
violent exertions, and no harm will come of it. As for the cure, when
you come to Paris it will be completed; we have physicians very learned
on that point. It needs digitalis in doses adapted to the temperament.


January 22.

Since the night I last wrote to you, this letter has lain here without
my having one moment in which to finish or close it. This wheel, this
machine of a life must be seen to be understood. Werdet saw the mother
of the woman who is near him burned on New Year's day. He tried to put
out the flames and burned his hands. The poor old woman died in ten
minutes; and Werdet has had to keep his bed twenty days to cure his
burns. I had to do his business for him, for Werdet is I. I had to
obtain five thousand francs for myself and eight thousand for him. We
have ten months' distress before us, both he and I. The last four days
have been spent in marches and countermarches. What hours lost! I am
never at home except to sleep a few hours. I have a dreadful month of
February before me, full of work that will not return me a farthing.

Well, I must bid you adieu, to you and all those about you; work is
waiting; the case of proofs is full, and I am in arrears with several
folios of copy still to do. I have more work than generals on a
campaign, but such work is obscure. You can imagine that a soldier
on a campaign cannot write, and yet you expect a writer forced along
on four lines of combat to be liberal of his letters. I assure you
that the problem of my time is more than ever insoluble. When I am
with you, ask me why, and I will tell you. As for writing it, it would
take volumes, and I must now rely on the confidence that should exist
between friends to take my devotion, my testimonies of heart and soul
under their simplest expression; certain that that expression will
suffice, in spite of distance, to make us comprehend each other. Is
that true? Say yes--"if you love me."

Adieu; accept the wishes that I make for your happiness such as you
wish it. If I were God! Ah!

You are not ignorant of how rare lofty sentiments are; I do not speak
here of talents; no, I mean sentiments enlightened by pure intelligence.

Did I tell you that the little silver pencil-case for which I cared
so much, and on which I had the _Ave_ engraved, that gracious and
religious Faber, I lost from my pocket while asleep in a public
conveyance? I will not have another; I cared for that one so much! It
fell from my pocket; it needed a chain; I thought of that too late.
The lizard chain of my watch is taken off. It was so easily broken; it
caught in everything. I return it to you in idea; Lecointe has put a
_cassolette_ upon it. I shall keep it for you preciously, and you will
some day wear it.

Excuse me for talking of such trifles, but I wanted to explain the
absence of the _Ave_--a prayer I often make.

Dear, I would that when looking at your flowers you heard the gentle
words my heart is saying at this moment to you; I would that in
breathing their perfume you might feel the spirit that consoles; I
would that the silence were eloquent; that all Nature in what she has
that is most endearing were my interpreter. But these, perhaps, are not
all the things we should require; we should live too happy in their
contact. We need to flee to loftier regions, to the bare and stormy
summits, where all will make us humble by its grandeur and by the
demonstration of vast struggles. You could find in what I do not tell
you of myself something analogous. But I have not the sad courage to
uncover all my wounds.

Well, adieu. Like the fisherman in Walter Scott's "Antiquary," I must
saw my plank without risking the blunder of an inch; I must write. Oh!
_cara_, write! when one's soul is mourning, and when the sister-soul is
mourning also, and something is lost to us of our faith in losing the
soul that inspired it!--Let us bury that secret in our hearts.

There is an autograph for you in the envelope of this letter. It is
that of Silvio Pellico.

A thousand greetings to M. Hanski and to those about you. May heaven
dictate to them the honey words, the tender silences, the grace of
heart, the religious efforts of the mind, which are so needed in those
terrible transition days which we call bad days, sad days.

Accept a very affectionate pressure of the hand.



PARIS, January 30, 1836.

_Cara_, I have this moment received yours of December 24 (old style),
in which you speak to me of Princess G..., "that little stupid." I
should have laughed at your suspicions, if you had not revealed your
displeasure in those three furious pages, the fury of which I adore.
I have never but once set foot in the house of that "little stupid,"
for, without having read your adorable advice relative to society, I
have followed it to the letter. All that you say convinces me that our
thoughts are identical. Let me repeat, for the last time, that in the
situation in which I am placed I am the subject of gossip and calumnies
without foundation, and that those who wish to pull me down will never
know the secrets of my heart. I can deliver up my works to them, I
can let them say all they like about my person, and about my business
affairs; but _all that you do not hear directly from me_ about the
matters that trouble you, believe it to be false. I hasten to write
you these few words so as not to delay this letter, so important to
friendship.

I saw Madame Kisseleff at the Opera, and she talked to me of you and of
your brother; she begged me to remember her to you with many amiable
expressions. She has never said any harm of you; on the contrary, she
praised me much for my attachment to you, without saying anything to
lessen it. But she did say of your brother what you told me yourself
in Vienna. I share the grief you express to me on the fatal event; but
I am not entirely of your opinion. Among _specialists_, judgments go
more to the root of things. If Count Henry is all that you say of him,
you should consider the nervous disposition of poets, of men who live
in thought. Yes, the whole world will condemn him, and especially for
the last phases of the affair. But believe that there are some souls
who, without absolving him--for a man cannot be absolved for a failure
of moral character--will pity him as they pity "Louis Lambert," of
whom you speak. Without comparing your brother to a _seer_, there are
in the nature of men of mobile and changeable impressions, lacunæ,
lassitudes, solutions of continuity under the pressure of misfortunes,
of which we should take account. As judge, I should cut him off, as
you do, from communion with the faithful; but I should open to him my
poet's heart and comfort him, as you are doing. Yes, _cara_, the union
of talent, genius, poesy, love, and a great, indomitable character,
a rectangular will, is a miracle of nature--possibly an effect of
temperament. I will not go farther on this dolorous subject.

The "Chronique de Paris" takes all my time. I sleep only five hours.
But if your affairs and M. Hanski's are doing well, mine are beginning
to prosper. Subscriptions are received in miraculous abundance, and
the shares I possess have risen to a value of ninety thousand francs
capital in one month.[1] It is impossible for me to go into society;
I am even uncivil. I hardly see my most intimate friends. If you were
a witness of my life you would pity it. But my thirst for work is in
direct ratio to my thirst for independence. I have renewed negotiations
for the Beaujon house. My lawsuit will be called before the court
to-morrow. It is now five o'clock in the morning. I am preparing the
means of defence for my lawyer. I thank you much for your good long
letter. There's a letter--a pretty letter--in in which affection
scolds, and caresses as it scolds, but tells me all that you are doing!

I have broken the last frail relations of politeness with Madame
de Castries. She makes her society now of MM. Jules Janin and
Sainte-Beuve, who have so outrageously wounded me. It seemed to me bad
taste, and now I am happily out of it.

"Marie Touchet" is getting on. You ought to have "Séraphita" by this
time. The second edition of the "Livre Mystique" appears on February
1. I am sorry you should read the bad edition before this one, though
this has faults and must still undergo some changes. Werdet is quite
pleased; yesterday he sold a hundred and fifty copies to foreign
countries; he hopes to sell as many more from that advertisement. I
have ten days more of corrections on the "Médecin de campagne," third
edition, 8vo. Ask for it; it is fine, in type, printing, and paper;
except for a few imperceptible blemishes, the text is settled, fixed,
as that of "Louis Lambert" is fixed. "Louis Lambert" is much changed;
it is now complete. The last thoughts accord with "Séraphita;" all is
co-ordinated. Moreover, the gap between college and Blois is filled up;
you will see that.

The "Messe de l'Athée" has had the greatest success in the "Chronique
de Paris." To-morrow the first chapter of the "Interdiction" will
appear. And you think I court society! I think it is you who are the
"little stupid."

A thousand pretty flowers of affection; take them, gather them, wear
them on that intelligent brow, which refuses only one comprehension,
that of understanding the extent of the affections you inspire. You saw
them in Vienna, you doubt them in Paris. Oh! that is not right; above
all, when it concerns one who is devoted to you at all points, like
your poor moujik.

Do not fail to remember me to every one about you; and M. Hanski will
find here affectionate compliments, and all friendly things.

[Footnote 1: For a brief account of this enterprise, see Memoir, pp.
164, 165.--TR.]



PARIS, March 8, 1836.

Nothing can describe my anxiety. It is now more than a month since I
have heard from you. A silence of a month can only have been caused by
some grave event. Is M. Hanski ill? Is it Anna? Is it you? What has
happened? Are you so busy at Kiew that you have not found a single
little moment to give to so old and devoted a friendship? Has a letter
been lost? Has some foolish story reached you, like that of a journey
to Saint-Petersburg?--for, in my presence, a person who did not know
me, but who said he did, declared I was there.[1] Others assert that I
am in Naples.

The truth being, that I work more now than I ever did in my life; and
that never before have I had such a desire for independence. Rossini
encouraged me by telling me he had never breathed at his ease until the
day when he was certain of having bread. I am not there yet.

My suit with the "Revue" gives me many worries. I must sustain the
"Chronique," master my financial crisis, work for Werdet, and work for
Madame Bêchet. It is enough to die of! And, speaking literally, I _am_
killing myself. Physical strength is beginning to fail me. If I had the
money I should be on my way, for there is no other resource for me than
a journey of three months, at the least.

You have not said anything to me of "Séraphita." Another month, and
the true "Lys dans la Vallée" will be finished and out. In the opinion
of all critics, and mine, it will be my most perfect work in style,
regarding "Séraphita" and "Louis Lambert" as exceptions.

It appears that they are making from Dantan's bad caricature a horrible
lithograph of me for foreign countries, and "Le Voleur" has published
one also. This obliges me to have myself painted, and abandon my habit
of modesty. After examining the present condition of French art, and
in default of your dear Grosclaude, who left me in the lurch, I have
elected Louis Boulanger to _portray_ me. As you wished for a copy of
that which Grosclaude desired to do, I ask you candidly if you would
like a second original of the portrait which Boulanger is to make?
I ask this the more easily as the price is very much less. I think
he does not ask more than fifteen hundred francs, which will be full
length, the size of nature. If you would like the bust only, say so.

I am at this moment in a state of moral and physical exhaustion of
which I can give you no idea. I have even extreme sufferings. Every
evening an inflammation of the eyes warns me that I have gone beyond my
strength, and yet I was never so much in need of it.

Never have I gone through such extremes of hope and of despair.
Sometimes the affair of the "Cent Contes Drolatiques" (which would
wholly liquidate me) seems to be settled, sometimes it will not be
settled at all. Sometimes my money matters have an air of arranging
themselves, and then all fails. Around me my friends are in trouble.
Madame de Berny has not yet been willing since the death of her son to
see me. She sees no one but her eldest son. My heavy cold has returned.
Body and soul are wrung. The newspapers are full of redoubled hate and
malevolence. That is nothing to me, but there are many men who would
not be as philosophical.

And now, to crown this poesy of ill, this sorrowful situation,
you leave me one whole month without letters, to run the gamut of
suppositions and believe daily that some grievous news will reach me.
For several days past, life, thus made, seems odious. Nine years of
toil without immediate result, without means of living obtained--this
kills me, in addition to all the other causes of distress I have
enumerated.

I have not been out three times this winter. I dined with Madame
Kisseleff, and once with Madame Appony, and I went to a fancy ball
given by an Englishman, and, six times in all, to the Italian Opera.
But nothing distracts my mind or amuses me. Since the pleasure that
I had in travelling so rapidly to Vienna I have tasted the delights
of Nature seen on a grand scale; I have conceived the mightiest of
arts--that which puts into the soul the sentiment of Nature. To grasp
vast landscapes, to see the earth under its many colours, its thousand
aspects, and to have an object at the end of this kaleidoscopic
vision--I know nothing that equals that passage through space. There
are moments when I stand with my head buried on the chimney-piece,
engaged in recalling the vast incidents of that last journey.

I am going to order a carriage, and await my first bag of two thousand
ducats, and my first month of liberty.

I entreat you, whatever happens, never leave me a month again without
news, and, if you are ill, dictate one line to M. Hanski. You don't
know what troubles it puts into my poor solitary life.

Jules Sandeau has been one of my blunders. You cannot imagine such
indolence, such nonchalance. He is without energy, without will. The
noblest sentiments in words, nothing in action, or in reality. No
devotion of thought or of body. When I had spent on him what a great
seigneur would spend on a caprice, I said to him:

"Jules, here is a drama, write it. And after that another, and a
vaudeville for the Gymnase."

He answered that it was impossible for him to put himself in the train
of any one, no matter who. As that implied that I speculated on his
gratitude, I did not insist. He would not even put his name to a work
done in common.

"Well, then, get a living by writing books?"

He has not, in three years, written half a volume. Criticism? He
thinks that too difficult. He is a stable horse. He is the despair of
friendship, as he was the despair of love. That's over; as soon as I
get the La Grenadière, I shall leave the rue Cassini.

The two young men, de Belloy and de Gramont, have not the firm will
that enables a man to rise above adversity and men, and to make for
himself the events of his life. They will not subordinate themselves to
reach a result. In France, associations of men are impossible, partly
because of individual pretensions, partly because of wit, talent,
name, and fortune, four causes of insubordination. Since I have taken
Diogenes' lantern to look through this vaunted Paris for men of talent
I have heard many a cry of poverty; but when you offer to those who
utter the cry money for work well done, they "can't do it," and I have
not obtained the work.

Capefigue is my editor [on the "Chronique de Paris"] and takes
my directions. A good little political condottiere! _Mon Dieu_,
how heartily you would laugh if I were in the chimney-corner at
Wierzchownia explaining to you what I see here daily.

Well, here are piles of proof to send off, and much work to finish. My
spirit, one moment let loose to roam across your lands, must resume its
yoke of misery. I am in the rue Cassini; I have no autograph to send
you; I came near asking at the Court of Peers for one of Fieschi, but I
thought it might not be agreeable to you.

The other day I went to Frascati, out of curiosity, to see a
gambling-house. There I found a person of your acquaintance--one who
was the devoted, in Geneva, of Madame Marie. He told me he had come
there for the first time. He was playing _craps_ [a game of dice] with
incredible facility, practice, and cleverness; and all the women who
were present knew him. I laughed in my sleeve. Day before yesterday
he invited me to a magnificent dinner at the Rocher de Cancale, where
were Madame Kisseleff and Madame Hamelin, an elderly celebrity. Among
the guests was an illustrious friend of the present King of Sardinia,
who has just returned to power. I set a trap for the friend of the dear
Countess Marie. On leaving at eleven o'clock I said to him:--

"It is too late for the theatres, will you go and play?"

We went to the "Salon des Étrangers." He was as well known in that
place as Barabbas, and, to my great astonishment, I found there all the
most virtuous and _rangés_ men of the great world. And what did I see a
quarter of an hour later? The friend of the King of Sardinia, who had
told us he had a rendezvous to avoid coming out with us! And this dear
Italian said to me, pointing to our late Amphytrion:--

"You know the Italian proverb: 'gambler like a Pole.'"

The friend of the Countess Marie is henceforth to me a book in which I
can read at any time. Little Komar was there also. That young man, old
in the flower of his age, makes me ache to see him. I perceive that
in order to understand society I must go to such places three times a
year, to know the men with whom one has to do. These are the only two
times in my life that I have set foot in such dens. I shall return to
the Salon once more to see Hope play; he stakes a hundred thousand
francs with supernatural indolence, confronting chance, as one power
stands facing another power.

_Addio!_ I am awaiting a letter from you. Last night I dreamed that I
saw a letter and a parcel sent by you; in the parcel were apples. I
never had so real a dream. When Auguste came to wake me at five in the
morning, I said, "Where are the apples?" He saw I had been dreaming. I
wish I could explain these dreams.

[Footnote 1: This story, with details quite absurd on the face of them,
Werdet quotes from M. Philarète Chasles; which shows how even his
friends and gentlemen united with his enemies in creating myths about
him.--TR.]



PARIS, March 24, 1836.

At length I have received your last letter, numbered 5, a whole month
after its predecessor! Being in the rue Cassini, I cannot verify
whether I have received No. 4.

To what you ask of me, the friend says: No. But there is, in me,
another personage, too proud to answer otherwise than by a _yes_ when
the matter concerned is something that amuses you. There are two things
in my nature: childlike trust, and a total lack of egoism.

You are amusing yourself at Kiew, while I am interdicted even the
Italian Opera. Never was my solitude so complete, nor my work so
cruelly continuous. My health is so affected that I cannot pretend to
recover that air of youth to which I had the weakness to cling. All is
said. If, at my age, a man has never tasted pure, unshackled happiness,
Nature will later prevent its being possible for him to wet his lips
in the cup. White hairs cannot approach it. Life will have been for me
a most sorrowful jest. My ambitions are falling one by one. Power is a
small matter. Nature created in me a being of love and tenderness, and
chance has constrained me to write my desires instead of satisfying
them.

If between now and three years hence nothing is changed in my
existence, I shall retire, peacefully, to Touraine, living on the
banks of the Loire, hidden from all, and working only to fill the
empty hours. I shall even abandon my great work. My forces are being
exhausted in this struggle; it is lasting too long; it is wearing me
out.

And yet, the affair of the "Cent Contes Drolatiques" seems as if
it might be settled, and that would render my financial condition
endurable; but it drags along in a despairing way. It will save me when
I am dead. I have earned in the mass this year a sum much greater than
what I owe; but the debts have fixed dates for becoming due, and the
receipts are capricious.

Around me I have no one, or else only powerless friendships; for the
nature of certain souls is to attach themselves only to those who
suffer.

Frightened by this struggle, and not being willing even to see it,
Jules Sandeau has fled from here, leaving me his rent, and a few debts
on my hands. He is a man at sea, drifting, as they say of a vessel
wrecked in mid-ocean, and battered by the gale. Like Medea, I have
_myself_ only against all. Nothing is changed in my situation. I might
write you for six months, and say but one thing: I toil. I have no
longer any distractions, any amusements--the desert, and the sun!

I smiled in thinking that Madame Eve Hanska, to whom "Séraphita"
is dedicated, plays lansquenet, and that this solitary personage is
immersed in all mundane things.


Wednesday, 23.

My lawsuit with the "Revue de Paris" will be tried the day after
to-morrow, Friday. The verdict will enable me to fix the day for
putting out "Le Lys dans la Vallée" for sale. You can only know what
that book is by reading it in full in Werdet's edition, which makes
two handsome volumes, 8vo. The first is printed; I have just, before
writing to you, signed the order to print the last _feuille_ of that
volume. I had several sentences to re-write in a letter from Madame
de Mortsauf to Félix, which made Madame Hamelin weep--so she told
me. Nothing of all that was in your infamous "Revue;" nor was there
anything of all my labour, which turned my bad manuscript into a work
of style. You read the manuscript in Vienna.

Yesterday they brought me all the writings of "Séraphita" bound. The
manuscript is in gray cloth, with the inside of black satin, and the
back of Russia leather, to ward off worms. I have also all the writings
of the "Lys." But how can I send you these things? I can't understand
how it is that you have not received my letters, for I answer all
yours regularly; and I wrote you one, lately, full of anxiety, which
this one, just received, has calmed. But I imagine that having always
addressed them to Berditchef they are still at Wierzchownia, unless
they have sent them to you in a mass to Kiew.

I have been twice to the Exhibition at the Museum. We are not strong.
If you had money to spend on objects of art I should have asked you to
make a few fine purchases, for there are two or three things that are
really beautiful,--a Venus by Pradier, and one or two pictures. Your
friend Grosclaude has nothing in it, and I hear nothing more about him.

I am wholly taken up with the last work for Madame Bêchet, who, did I
tell you? is marrying, and quits publishing for happiness. Nothing will
be fully decided about my poor finances until after the publication
of the last volume for Madame Bêchet. That is, for me, one of the
culminating points of my fortune; for I can then begin the publication
of the thirteen succeeding volumes, and receive about twelve thousand
francs for the copies which belong to me.

I know nothing of you except from you, for of the country you are now
in I know nothing but that which you tell me; I imagine you welcomed,
fêted, as you would be wherever you went. But such pleasure, is it
really pleasure? You were tired of it in Vienna, but you renew it at
Kiew!

You would know how I love you if you had seen me searching through your
letter all at once, taking in, at a glance, each page, to see if Anna,
if you, if M. Hanski, if all, were well. Then, seeing that no one but
a niece was ill, and that she had recovered, I gave a great sigh of
relief. You would then have known how restricted are my affections;
how few beings interest me. This solitude is sad, because, believe me,
one wearies of the labours that fill it, and the heart never loses
its claims; it needs expansions. I often make sad elegies when, weary
of writing, I lie back in my chair, and rest my head upon it, and ask
myself why a soul like mine is here, alone, without other joy than
a few memories, as few as they are great. And when I see that what
remains to me of life is the least fortunate half, the least active,
the least loved, the least lovable, I am not exempt from a sadness that
sheds tears.

I will write you as soon as I have finally arranged a thing which may
settle my troubles; for I have resolved to sell some of my shares in
the "Chronique de Paris" in order to liquidate myself more rapidly.
To-day, I am in the greatest uncertainty and overwhelmed with claims.

Well, adieu. In a few days I may write to you of gayer things. But I
doubt it. My health is extremely bad. Coffee no longer procures me
mental force. I must be rich enough to travel.


Thursday, 21.

I open my letter to add several things.

The first is about your cramps. Have two irons made that you can grasp
at the moment the cramps seize you; have them made strongly magnetic.
Here is the shape: O. As soon as you hold them in your hand the cramps
will cease. If that does not stop them, write to me. But be sure the
irons are strongly magnetized, and keep them near you, at your bed's
head.

Fear nothing about corrections. In our language there are incontestable
things. Ask for the third edition of the "Médecin de campagne," just
out; read it. You will see if it is not improved. There are still a
hundred incorrectnesses. It will only be perfect in the fourth edition.
Re-read "Louis Lambert" in the "Livre Mystique,"--that is, if such work
pleases you; if not, it becomes wearisome.

No, no, style is style. Massillon is Massillon, and Racine is Racine.
According to the critics, the "Lys" is my culminating point. You will
judge of it.

In re-reading your letter I find some bitter little epigrams against
life; but, surely, there are enormous sufferings which you do not know,
and never can know. The openings of life are never delightful except in
the matter of sentiment. I will prove to you that there is something
more delightful: I mean the perfect quietude of a life beloved, of a
constancy intellectual enough to destroy monotony.

Adieu, re-adieu--if, indeed, that word is a friend's word. It should
be _au revoir_, for in writing to you I have, like all solitaries,
the gift of second sight, and I see you perfectly. Kiss Anna on the
forehead from me for the joys she gives you; have the irons made
at once, so that you may no longer curse life; which is a serious
insult to those who love you; amuse yourself without dissipation; for
dissipation fritters away the soul, and is to the detriment of all
affections.

Here is a return to the lansquenet, and for that I beg your pardon;
you have a soul rich enough to throw a little of it into cards if
it pleases you. As for me, who live under the despotic rule of a
Chartreux, I find I have not soul enough to suffice for my work and my
affections. But I have not the luck to be a woman.



PARIS, March 27, 1836.

I receive to-day your good packet, my dear number 7, in which you
tell me of two afflicting deaths, but in which you also give me much
pleasure by the exact detail of what happens to you. I am going,
therefore, to write you at length on all that you inquire about; but on
condition that you write to me punctually every week.

Your passage about fidelity, understood, after the Wronski manner, as
intuitive truth, made my heart bound with joy. We love to find our
own ideas expressed by a friend and to know that the moral sensations
of both are of equal purity. Is not this the sentiment that a fine
passage of Beethoven makes us feel, by representing to us, in its
purest expression, a whole sentiment, a whole nature? For myself, I
am convinced that in carrying very high our sentiments we multiply
a thousand-fold our pleasures; a little lower, and all would be
suffering; but in the heaven above us all is infinite. This is what
your "Séraphita" shows. How is it you have not received February 24
(old style) a book published here in December? It is no longer even
spoken of in France. What grief that I cannot obtain a permit for a
single parcel to Wierzchownia. I'll go myself to Saint Petersburg
and ask one of the Emperor! What! you, to whom the statue belongs,
you have not seen it! It is not in the temple for which it was made!
Everybody here has wondered over the dedication, and you have not read
it printed, when the author is your devoted moujik. The world is upside
down!

You are always talking to me of that detestable "Lys" which is not my
"Lys." Wait, in order to know "Le Lys dans la Vallée," for Werdet's
edition.

Your poor moujik will never be impertinent or defiant. But, writing
in great haste, from heart to heart, and never reading over a
letter, there may have been, apropos of Roger, a little too hearty a
laugh--which was not right. No, _cara_, Nature gave me a trustfulness
unbounded, a soul that is proof against everything. I have always
had in me a something, I don't know what, which leads me to do quite
otherwise than other people, and it may be that in me fidelity is
pride. Having no other point of support but myself, I have been forced
to magnify it, to reinforce _the myself_. All my life is there; a life
without vulgar pleasures. None of those who are near me would live it
"at the price of Napoleon's and Byron's fame united," de Belloy said to
me. But de Belloy saw only the hermit on his rock with his cruse and
his loaf not bestowing a glance on the siren tempters. He did not see
the ecstasy in the heavens, he did not know the revery, the evenings,
the chimney-corner, the poems of Hope! I am a gambler, poor to the eyes
of all; but I play my whole fortune once a year, when I gather in that
which others squander!

My lawsuit has been postponed for a fortnight. Chaix d'Estange, who
pleads against me, had to plead a case in the provinces. There's the
"Lys" delayed!

You ask for details about the "Chronique de Paris." I have
not given you any because it was a paper both _political_ and
literary--_Bedouck!_--I forget nothing that I ought to do. Did I not
tell you in Geneva that within three years I should begin to build the
scaffolding for my political preponderance? Did I not repeat it in
Vienna? Well, the "Chronique" is the old "Globe" (same idea) but placed
to the Right instead of being to the Left; it is the new _doctrine_ of
the Royalist party. We make the Opposition, and we preach autocratic
power; that means that on arriving at the management of affairs we
shall not be found in contradiction with what we have said. I am the
supreme director of this journal, which appears twice a week, in a
monstrous quarto form. It gives the amount of four _feuilles_ of the
"Revue de Paris," which makes eight a week; and we cost only sixty
francs a year, whereas the "Revue" costs eighty, and gives only four
_feuilles_ a week. The higher criticism of politics, literature, art,
sciences, administration, and a portion devoted to individual work,
novels, etc., that is the scheme of the paper.

We have obtained Gustave Planche, an immense and grand critic. We are
going to have Sainte-Beuve, and, perhaps, Victor Hugo. Capefigue is
charged with domestic politics, and does it pretty well. I have an
interest which is equivalent to thirty-two thousand francs capital, and
if the "Chronique" goes beyond two thousand subscribers it may bring
me in twenty thousand francs income, not counting my work, very dearly
paid, and my salary as director. We have enough funds to go on for two
years. We are between the "Gazette de France," the "Quotidienne," and
the Right Centre. These two newspapers are so placed that they can
make no concessions to the present régime, whereas we can, ourselves,
compromise. We are going to ask to be allowed to enter Russia, because
we are in favour of an alliance with Russia against an English
alliance, and for autocracy in the matter of government. Our doctrines
as to criticism of art and literature are in favour of the highest
moral expression. Is there not something grandiose in this enterprise?
So, for the three months that I have now directed it, it has gained
daily in respect and authority; only, the costs do crush us. Each
_feuille_ pays ten centimes tax to the treasury, and we have to go into
bonds for seventy-five thousand francs in specie.

Extraordinary thing! It is this very operation that will financially
save me. I hope to-morrow to sell sixteen of my shares (without cutting
into the thirty-two). Besides which, the affair of the "Cent Contes
Drolatiques," published in numbers and illustrated, appears on the
point of being concluded. Louis Boulanger will do the drawings, and
Perret the wood-cuts. Six thousand copies are to be struck off, which
will give me thirty thousand francs of author's rights. So, in a few
days from now, I shall have before me forty-five thousand francs,
without counting the twenty-four thousand awaiting me on the day when
Madame Bêchet gets her last Part. In all, seventy thousand francs. Now,
as I only owe fifty thousand (not counting the debt to my mother), I
shall see the end of my miseries.

But let me paint to you one of the thousand dramas of my life as artist
and soldier. On my return from Vienna (you know what disasters that
absence caused me), my silver-plate was pawned. I have never yet been
able to redeem it. I have to pay three thousand francs to do so, and
I have never had three thousand francs. I owe on the 31st about eight
thousand four hundred. In order to live honourably until now, and meet
all my obligations, I have used up my resources; all are exhausted.
I am, as it were, at Marengo. Desaix must come and Kellermann must
charge; then all is said. But, the men who are to give me sixteen
thousand francs for my sixteen shares in the "Chronique" are coming to
dine with me. You know that people lend and show confidence to none but
the rich. All about me breathes opulence, ease, the wealth of a lucky
artist. If at the dinner my silver is hired, all will fail; the man who
is arranging the affair is a painter,--an observing race, satirical,
deep, like Henri Monnier, in its _coup d'œil_; he will see the weak
spot in the cuirass, he will guess the Mont-de-Piété--which he knows
better than any one. Adieu, my affair. All my future lies in redeeming
that silver, which is worth five thousand francs and is pledged for
three thousand. I must have it to-morrow, or perish. Isn't it curious?
This is the 27th; on the 31st of March I must pay six thousand francs,
and I haven't a farthing. But on the 5th of April the signing of the
"Drolatiques" affair may give me fifteen thousand francs!

I cannot ask a single person in Paris to lend me money, for I am
thought rich and my prestige would fall, would vanish away. The affair
of the "Chronique" is due to the credit I enjoy. I was able to speak
_en maître_. Put oil on this flame by representing to yourself the
perpetual fire, the ardour of a soul that is consuming itself, and tell
me if that is not a drama. One ought to be a great financier, a cold,
wise, prudent man; one _must_ be!--I say no more, for yesterday one
of my friends said truly: "When your statue is made it ought to be in
bronze, to rightly picture the man."

My health is at this moment so greatly affected that Dr. Nacquart
issues an edict which has to be obeyed. Coffee is suppressed. Every
evening they put upon my stomach a linseed poultice. I am kept on
chicken broth, and eat nothing but white meat. I drink gum water, and
they give me inward sedatives. I have to follow this regimen for ten
days and then go to Touraine for a month, to recover life and health.
All the mucous membranes are violently inflamed; I cannot digest
without horrible suffering.

If my money matters could be well done, and done quickly, instead of
going to Touraine I would go and see you for a few days. Would it be
possible? I desire it so keenly. A journey would restore me. In any
case, do not be vexed with me; it is better to do my business and pay
my debts, to recover my sacred liberty, to be able to come and go as I
like, to owe neither sou nor line, and postpone the joy of seeing you.
Better to put one's fortune in a place inaccessible to storm, than to
discount it like a spendthrift.

I may tell you now that the dawn of my liberation begins to show, and
that all foretells the end of my troubles. The journey to Vienna was
the signal folly of my life. It cost five thousand francs and upset all
my affairs. We can laugh about it, and I do not tell it to you now to
give myself the smallest little merit, but only to prove to you that
if I do not go to see you it is from a wise calculation of friendship;
it is a proof of attachment; it will enable me to show you a friend
whom you have never yet known, the man a child, without cares, without
troubles that gnaw the heart, taking from him his grace, distorting his
nature, everything, even to his glance.

If you only knew how, after this solitary life, I long to grasp Nature
by a rapid rush across Europe, how my soul thirsts for the immense, the
infinite; for Nature seen in the mass, not in detail, judged on its
grand lines, sometimes damp with rain, sometimes rich with sun, as we
bound across space, seeing lands instead of villages! If you knew this
you would not tell me to come, for that redoubles my torture, it fans
the furnace on which I sleep.[1]

Grant heaven that I sell the sixteen shares of the "Chronique" and that
the matter of the "Drolatiques" may be decided. And then, then! Above
all, if Werdet can buy back from Madame Bêchet the "Études de Mœurs,"
then I could travel, I could go and spend a week at Wierzchownia.
You would find the heart of the intellectual moujik ever young,
but the moujik himself is deteriorating physically. "No one fights
with impunity against the will of Nature," Dr. Nacquart said to me
yesterday, ordering me his prescriptions and wanting things I refused:
such as not working, and taking much amusement--which the Wronski
theory forbids. As for me, I love the noble absolute. I don't forget
how indulgent you were in your advice at Vienna; but I have intolerant
superstitions.

I have long thought what I wrote to you about your brother; this is not
a consolation _ad hoc_, it is a sentiment of my own; there are none but
those that have an iron will who can be indulgent to such weaknesses,
for they have often been so near, they have so often measured the
depths of the gulf! But these thoughts are not social; they can only
be uttered in the ear of a friend; they would do us harm. One must be
Walter Scott to risk Connachar in the "Fair Maid of Perth." And yet,
I mean to go farther; I shall give in "Les Héritiers Boirouge" [never
published] a body to my thoughts. I shall there introduce a personage
of that kind, but to my mind, more grandiose. I was able to give
interest to Vautrin; I shall be able to raise fallen men and give them
an aureole by introducing common souls into those souls, whose weakness
is the abuse of strength, and who fall because they go beyond it.

The loss of your sister's child is a dreadful misfortune, about which
only mothers understand each other, for they alone are in the secret of
what they lose; but at your sister's age, such losses are reparable.
Children, considered in their vital future are one of the great social
monstrosities. There are few fathers who give themselves the trouble
to reflect on their duties. My father had made great studies on this
subject; he communicated them to me (I mean their results) at an early
age, and I gained fixed ideas which dictated to me the "Physiologie
du Mariage,"--a book more profound than satirical or flippant; which
will be completed by my great work on "Education" taken in its broad
meaning, which I carry up to before generation, for the child is in the
father. I am a great proof, and so is my sister, of the principles of
my father. He was fifty-nine years old when I was born, and sixty-three
when my sister was born. Now, through the power of our vitality we have
both failed to succumb; we have centenarian constitutions. Without that
power of force and life transmitted by my father I should be dead under
my debts and obligations.

I see the children of rich families all enervated by the situation
of their fathers and mothers. The mother is worn-out by society, the
father by his vices; their children are weakly. But these great and
fruitful ideas do not come within the epistolary domain. The question
is immense; it has innumerable ramifications. It often absorbs me.
It is not suitable to discuss here, but I refer it to Sterne, whose
opinions I share entirely. "Tristram Shandy" is, in this respect, a
masterpiece.

I cannot tell you anything of Paris; I live in a monk's round,
directing my newspaper, writing, contending, more occupied in divining
secrets of State than those surrounding me. I want power in France,
and I shall have it; but one must be well prepared for the battle,
and trained in all questions. When a man of a certain compass does
not absorb himself in the real and material joys of love, he must
either give himself up to ambition, or vow his life to obscurity. All
medium stations are ignoble and vulgar. My youth is near to extinction
without ever being fully satisfied by the only destiny that I had;
for Madame de Berny was not young, and, believe me, youth and beauty
are something. My dream of those days was always incomplete. If I
continue my present life without change for only six years more, I can
truly say that my life is a failure. My life was Diodati. Two years,
three years would suffice. The month of May, 1836, is approaching and
I shall be thirty-seven years old; as yet I am nothing; I have done
nothing complete or great; I have only heaped up stones. In that young
Coliseum now constructing there is no sun, or at least its rays come
from afar, so far that the soul has need of imagination to give being
to the monument. But neither fame nor fortune gives back the grace of
youth. Something superhuman is needed to meet with love when one is
past forty. What a measure of belief in one's self--I do not say in
others--to hope to escape the common law! And yet I am all faith. When
troubles have gone I shall be twenty years old once more. And then I
wish to be so good.

Well, adieu. I desire that this letter full of hope may be confirmed to
you by the next, for as soon as the two affairs are concluded, I will
write you a line.

Answer me quickly about the portrait. Louis Boulanger is to paint it.
He has just left me, with the intention of making a great work of it.

[Footnote 1: Here is one of his rare revelations of the soul of his
work, of that which produced it, which conceived, for instance, the
"Majesty of cold," the scene on the Falberg, the breaking of the
ice-bonds in "Séraphita." The reader must have perceived how little,
amid his overwhelming talk about his work, he revealed the mind behind
the work. That was partly because he never thought of it as a personal
thing. He did not weaken his work by a study of his own mind: that is
Genius.--TR.]



PARIS, April 23, 1836.

_Cara._ I receive to-day your number 8 with twenty days' interval. How
many things have happened in twenty days! Yes, I have delayed writing,
but intentionally. I wanted to send you only good news, and my affairs
have been getting worse and worse. I have none but dreadful combats to
relate to you, struggles, sufferings, useless measures taken, nights
without sleep. To listen to my life a demon would weep.

Reading the last paragraphs of your letter I said to myself, "Well, I
will write to her, even if to sadden her." Sorrow has a strong life,
too strong perhaps.

My lawsuit is not yet tried. I must wait six days more for a verdict,
unless the trial is still further postponed. The matter of the
"Contes Drolatiques" is not decided. The shares of the "Chronique"
are difficult to dispose of. So, my embarrassments redouble. For two
months, since I have had so much business, I have done little work;
here are two months lost; that is to say, the goose with the golden
eggs is ill. Not only am I discouraged, but the imagination needs rest.
A journey of two months would restore me. But a journey of two months
means ten thousand francs, and I cannot have that sum when, on the
contrary, I am behindhand with just that money. My liberation retreats;
my dear independence comes not.

"Le Livre Mystique" is little liked here; the sale of the second
edition does not go off. But in foreign countries it is very different;
there the feeling is passionate. I have just received a very graceful
letter from a Princess Angelina Radziwill, who envies you your
dedication, and says it is all of life for a woman to have inspired
that book. I was very pleased for you. _Mon Dieu!_ if you could have
seen how in my quivering there was nothing personal. How happy I was to
feel myself full of pride for you! What a moment of complete pleasure,
and all unmixed! I shall thank the princess for you and not for
myself--as we give treasures to a doctor who saves a beloved person.
Besides, this is the first testimony to my success which has reached me
from abroad.

_Cara_, write me quickly if you have any very trustworthy person in
Saint Petersburg, because I have the means, or shall have, to send
you those manuscripts through the French embassy. They can instantly
reach Saint Petersburg; but from there to you, you must find the
intermediary.

My letter was interrupted by the arrival of a commissary of police and
two agents, who arrested me, and took me to the prison of the National
Guard, where I am at this moment, and where I continue my letter
peacefully. I am here for five days. I shall celebrate the birthday of
the King of the French. But I lose the fine fireworks I intended to go
and see![1]

My publisher [Werdet] has come, and given me an explanation of the
non-arrival of the "Livre Mystique" to your hands. It is forbidden by
the censor. So now I don't know what we shall do. Is it not singular
that the person to whom it is dedicated should be the only one who has
not read it? You must find out what is proper to do about it. I await
your orders.

Here are all my ideas put to flight. This prison is horrid; all
the prisoners are together. It is cold, and we have no fire. The
prisoners are of the lowest class, they are playing cards and shouting.
Impossible to have a moment's tranquillity. They are mostly poor
workmen, who cannot give two days of their time to guard duty without
losing the subsistence of their families; and here and there are a
few artists and writers, for whom this prison is even better than the
guard-house. They say the beds are dreadful.

I have just got a table, a sofa, and a chair, and I am in a corner of a
great, bare hall. Here I shall finish the "Lys dans la Vallée." All my
affairs are suspended; and this happens on a day when my paper appears,
and almost on the eve of the 30th, when I have three thousand francs to
pay.

This is one of the thousand accidents of our Parisian life; and every
day the like happens in all business. A man on whom you count to do
you a service is in the country, and your plan fails. A sum that
should have been paid to you is not paid. You must make ten tramps
to find some one (and often at the last moment) for the success
of some important matter. You can never imagine how much agony
accompanies these hours, these days, lost. Many a time I have lain down
wearied,--incapable of undertaking to write a single word, of thinking
my most dear ideas!

I cannot too often repeat it--it is a battle equal to those of war; the
same fatigues under other forms. No real benevolence, no succour. All
is protestation without efficacy. I have vanquished for six years, even
seven; well, discouragement lays hold upon me when only one quarter of
my debt remains to be paid, the last quarter. I don't know what to do.
My life stops short before those last four thousand ducats.

[Footnote 1: Under Louis-Philippe all citizens were compelled to leave
their homes and do guard-duty, or, as Werdet says, paddle in the mud
with knapsacks on their backs and muskets on their shoulders, for one
or two nights every month. Many were the devices of worthy citizens
to escape this nuisance. Balzac retreated to Chaillot and fenced
himself in with a series of pass-words that made access to him nearly
impossible. He was, however, so Werdet says, summoned twelve times
before the authorities, and escaped only by bribing the agents. But the
thirteenth time he was "empoigné" and locked up in what was satirically
called the "Hôtel des Haricots." Werdet's account of this is very
amusing (pp. 247-272 of his book), but absolutely false, for he gives
an account of how the famous cane originated in the prison, whereas we
know that Balzac described it to Madame Hanska March 30, 1835, more
than a year earlier.--TR.]


Monday, 25th.

I have again interrupted my letter for forty-eight hours. Just as I
was writing the word _ducats_ Eugène Sue arrived. He is imprisoned
for forty-eight hours. We have spent them together, and I would not
continue this letter before him. He talked to me of his occupations, of
his fortune. He is rich, and sheltered from everything. He no longer
thinks of literature; he lives for himself alone; he has developed a
complete selfishness; he does nothing for others, all for himself;
he wants, at the end of his day, to be able to say that all that he
has done, and all that has been done was for him. Woman is merely an
instrument; he does not wish to marry. He is incapable of feeling
any sentiment. I listened to all this tranquilly, thinking of my
interrupted letter. It pained me for him. Oh! these forty-eight hours
were all I needed to prove to me that men without ambition love no
one. He went away, without thanking me for having sacrificed for him
the concession I had obtained of being alone in the dormitory; for his
admission came near compromising the little comforts a few friends had
extracted for me from the inflexible staff of grocers, anxious to club
all classes together in this fetid galley. I am going to bed.


Saturday, 30.

Great news! The bill for the lateral canal in the Lower Loire, which
will go from Nantes to Orléans, has passed the Chamber of Deputies, and
will be presented, May 3, to the Chamber of Peers, where the Marquis
de la Place, the friend of all pupils of the École Polytechnique, has
promised my brother-in-law to have it passed. So, there are my sister
and her husband attaining, after ten years' struggle, to their ends.
You know I told you at Geneva about that fine enterprise. Now, the only
point is to find the twenty-six millions. But that is nothing after
what has been done. The stock will be rated so high that money will not
be lacking.

At this moment I have a hope on my own account. That is to buy the
grant of the grantee, M. de Villevêque, and try to make something on it
by selling to a banker. My brother-in-law has just left my prison to
try and arrange this affair. If I have this luck, I might in two months
make a couple of hundred thousand francs, which would heal all my
wounds. It is especially in political warfare that money is the nerve.

Sue drew caricatures with pen and ink on a bit of paper to which he
put his name; so I send it to you as autograph. It will remind you of
my seven days in prison.

Here, I am dying of consuming activity, while, from what you say, you
are living in stagnation, without aliment, without your emotions of
travel, which makes you desire either travel or complete solitude.
What you tell me of Anna delights me; I had some fears for that frail
health, but the fears came from my affection, for I know that these
organizations, apparently weak, are sometimes of astonishing power.

I have just written to Hammer; he asked me for a second copy of "Le
Livre Mystique." I shall send him two; and as our dear Hammer is as
patient as a goat that is strangling herself, and thinks that books
can go as fast as the post, I shall request him to send you one by the
first opportunity. That's a first attempt, I'll try ten more, and out
of ten there may be a lucky chance.

I have the set of pearls for you. But how can I send them?

When I leave the prison I shall go and see Madame Kisseleff. That will
be number two of my chances.

Apropos, if you find a safe opportunity remember my tea, for there is
none good in Paris. I tasted yours (Russian, I mean) a few days ago,
and I am shameless enough to remind you of this. "Norma" has had little
success here.

The gracefulness you have put into your last letter received here,
to console me for the grief of knowing that the "Lys" was published
in its first proof [in Russia] I cannot accept as author. The French
language admits nothing that comforts the heart of M. Honoré de Balzac.
You will say so with me when you hold the book and read it. However it
be, the Apollo and the Diana are more beautiful than blocks of marble.
The young man, the Oaristes, is more graceful than a skeleton, and we
prefer the peach to the peach-stone, though that may contain a million
of peaches.

I have much distress, even enormous distress in the direction of Madame
de Berny; not from her directly, but from her family. It is not of a
nature to be written. Some evening at Wierzchownia, when the wounds are
scars, I will tell it to you in murmurs that the spiders cannot hear,
for my voice shall go from my lips to your heart. They are dreadful
things, that scoop into life to the bone, deflowering all, and making
one doubt of all, except of you for whom I reserve these sighs.

Oh! what repressions there are in my heart! Since I left Vienna all my
sufferings, of all kinds, of all natures, have redoubled. Sighs sent
through space, sufferings endured in secret, sufferings unperceived! My
God! I who have never done ill, how many times have I said to myself,
"One year of Diodati, and the lake!" How often have I thought, "Why not
be dead on such a day, at such an hour?" Who is in the secret of so
many inward storms, of so much passion lost in secret? Why are the fine
years going, pursuing hope, which escapes, leaving nought behind but an
indefatigable ardour of re-hoping? During this burning year, when at
every moment all seems ending, and no end comes, desires lay hold upon
me to flee this crater which makes me fear a withered end--to flee it
to the ends of the earth.

I am the Wandering Jew of Thought, always afoot, always marching,
without rest, without enjoyments of the heart, with nothing but that
which leaves a memory both rich and poor, with nothing that I can wrest
from the future. I beg from the future, I stretch my hands to it. It
casts me--not an obole, but--a smile that says, "To-morrow."



PARIS, May 1, 1836.

This is the day on which last year I said to myself, "I am going
there!" Last evening, I left my window for sadness overcame me. Sleep
drove away the grief.

I have worked much to-day. I shall close this letter this evening; I
will see if I have forgotten to tell you any facts of the last twenty
days, when I have been like a shuttlecock between two battledores.
I am going to set to work at the difficult passages in the "Lys." I
must finish the chapter entitled, "First Loves." I think that I have
undertaken literary effects that are extremely difficult to render.
What work! What ideas are buried in this book! It is the poetic
pendant of the "Médecin de campagne." I like all you write to me of
the little events of your existence at Kiew: the name of Vandernesse,
the little lady, etc. But I would like your letters still better if
you would write me ten lines a day; no, not ten lines, but a word, a
sentence. You have all your time, and I have only hours stolen from
sleep to offer you. You are the luxury of the heart, the only luxury
that does not ruin, but brings with it nature's own simplicity, riches,
poverty,--in short, all!

Alas! not being at home to-day I cannot enclose to you any autograph,
and I have some interesting ones: Talma, Mademoiselle Mars, all sorts
of people; I shall have one of Napoleon, one of Murat, etc. You
will see that when a matter concerns the documentary treasures of
Wierzchownia we have great constancy in our ideas.

To-day I have worked much; I shall spend the night on the completion
of the "Lys;" for I have still thirty _feuilles_ of my writing to
do, which is one quarter of the book. After that I must finish the
"Héritiers Boirouge" for Madame Bêchet, who is married and become
Madame Jacquillart; and next, give "La Torpille" in June to the
"Chronique," without which we go to the bad. You see it is impossible
that I should budge from here before September; there is nothing to
be said; those things must be done. After that I shall have no money,
I shall only have fulfilled my engagements. So I don't know which way
to turn; what with notes falling due, no receipts, and no friend to
advance me funds, what will become of me? Either some lucky chance or
perish. Hitherto luck has served me.

Just now I am particularly overwhelmed because I counted on the
conclusion of the affair of the "Cent Contes Drolatiques" which gave
me thirty thousand francs and would have quieted everything. But the
longer it goes, the less it ends. I am more than disheartened, I am
crazy about it.

There, then, are my affairs. Much work to finish, no money to receive,
much money to pay. Am I to be stopped in the midst of my career? What
can I attempt?

My brother-in-law came back this morning. M. Lainé de Villevêque asks
to reflect upon this sale, he asks three days; and that is the least
a man should take to decide so important a matter. I have offered him
twenty thousand ducats for his position as grantee, but in ready money.
I hope that Rossini will get Aguado to lend it to me, and that I can
then resell the position to Rothschild for the double or treble, out
of which those scamps will still make five or six millions. There's a
pretty smile; the first that fortune has bestowed upon me.

You see that in my next letter I shall have very interesting things to
tell you: the canal affair; my lawsuit and the "Lys," and finally "Les
Drolatiques," which will be either a complete failure or a piece of
business done; in such matters I must have a "yes" or a "no."

Adieu, _cara_; do not make yourself unhappy about all this. I have
broad shoulders, the courage of a lion, strength of character, and if,
at times, melancholy lays hold upon me, I look at the future, I believe
in something good--though the years do pass with cruel rapidity; and
what years! Ah, the beautiful years! Shall I ever again see the Lake of
Geneva, or Neufchâtel?

Well, adieu; till ten days hence. You will know all that should be said
for me and of me to those about you.



FROM MONSIEUR HANSKI TO H. DE BALZAC.

WIERZCHOWNIA, May 15, 1836.

MONSIEUR,--Having at last, after various attempts, succeeded in
procuring an inkstand in malachite, I hasten, monsieur, to send it to
you through the house of Rothschild. Have the kindness to inquire for
it and to keep it as the souvenir of a true friendship, which cannot
change, in spite of the vast distance that separates us; which thought
alone can cross, for the present.

If God wills it as I desire, perhaps some day we shall come to find
you. Meanwhile, if your literary occupations and the distractions
of the world leave you a moment at liberty, think sometimes of your
friends in the North, who, in spite of their frigid climate, know how
to feel and appreciate your sentiments and your talents.

Your works, monsieur, make us pass many agreeable moments in our
solitude. They give us even the illusion of seeing you playing with
Anna, who, day by day, grows prettier. She is already a great lady, who
begins to play the piano, and promises to have a distinguished talent
for it. She has also a taste, a decided passion for reading; I can
no longer find her books analogous to her age; we have exhausted the
book-shops of Saint Petersburg.

You could hardly believe, monsieur, the pleasure I have had in reading
"L'Interdiction." I was filled with the same sentiment I described
to you when reading for the first time at Neufchâtel "Le Médecin de
campagne." Give us as many as possible of such works; society expects
that service of you. The picture of the judge, and that of the nobleman
restoring the property which, according to his own conviction, he
illegally possessed, are of incomparable beauty and rare perfection.
They cannot but strongly influence the morals of this age. Men of
heart, of talent, of genius, it is your mission to blast vices, to give
the greatest brilliancy to virtue, and to repair the evil of which the
philosophy of the last century cast the germ.

But I perceive that I am out of my natural vocation, and becoming
diffuse. That is a defect communicated to me by the Châtelaine of
Wierzchownia and sovereign of Paulowska, who is quite enchanted to find
herself once more in her empire of flowers and verdure, who salutes
you, and is preparing to write you a long letter of I don't know how
many pages.

It can only be in two years hence that we shall propose to ourselves
to make a journey for the education of little Anna, and I have a
presentiment, monsieur, that we shall find you sitting in the Chamber,
and be present at some of your eloquent speeches. While awaiting the
realization of that dream, accept the assurance of a true and sincere
friendship.

VENCESLAS HANSKI.

P. S. I send you the design of the inkstand before you receive it; that
you may know if you receive the right thing.



To MADAME HANSKA.

PARIS, May 16-June 16, 1836.

One year ago to-day, I was at the Hôtel de la Poire, in Vienna, at one
o'clock, having made the journey in five days, and not having slept for
three nights! At two o'clock, after an hour's sleep, I gave myself the
_fête_ of going to the Walterische Haus. To-day, my only pleasure will
be, in the midst of my perpetual battle, a halt of two hours to write
you a line, _cara contessina_. But instead of sending you a bouquet of
rosy hopes, I have only sad things to tell you. All that I announced
to you of good has failed. Nothing of that which would have freed me
succeeds.

However, to-day Madame Bêchet may perhaps cede her rights in the
"Études de Mœurs" to Werdet; and this is more important than you know
to my tranquillity; for if I have but one publisher I can regulate my
work, I can manage to obtain a month's rest, and you know what I can
make of a month's rest. The "Contes Drolatiques" affair still drags on.

During the last few days a great change has taken place in me.
Ambition has disappeared. I no longer want to enter public life by the
Chamber or by journalism. So my efforts will now tend to rid me of the
"Chronique de Paris." This determination comes to me from the aspect
of the Chamber of Deputies. The folly of the orators, the silliness
of the debates, the little chance there is of triumphing against such
miserable mediocrity, have made me renounce the idea of mixing myself
in it otherwise than as a minister. Therefore, two years hence, I
shall try to open, with cannon-shot, the doors of the Academy; for
academicians can become peers, and I will endeavour to make a large
enough fortune to reach the Upper Chamber and enter power through power
itself.

"Le Lys dans la Vallée" is sapping me. Neither the lawsuit nor the
book is finished. I have ten more _feuilles_, one hundred and sixty
pages, to do wholly--to write and correct. I hope to finish in ten
days, though it is almost a quarter of the book; but it is the easiest
quarter. All is now settled, _posé_. I have only to conclude. The
striking character is decidedly M. de Mortsauf. It was very difficult
to draw that figure; but it is done now. I have raised the statue of
the Emigration. I have collected in one and the same creation all the
features of the _émigré_ returned to his estates, and perhaps all the
features of the husband; for married men do, more or less, resemble M.
de Mortsauf. The book will appear, I hope, by June 1. But how can I
send you your copy? I could send it by the embassy, but I must know the
address of some one who is devoted to you in Saint Petersburg.


June 16.

You could never understand what my life has been between these two
dates. This letter has lain a month on my table without my being able
to add a word. I have received two letters from you and one from M.
Hanski without being able to answer them, and to-day I must lock my
door and take a morning to write to you. I have so many things to tell
you! So many events have happened to me I do not know where to begin.
Besides, it is impossible to tell you all; it would fill volumes.

First, my lawsuit is won and my book is out. I have worked night and
day to finish the book in time to have it appear the very day the
verdict was given. You must know that the same sort of attack that was
made against my credit during my journey to Vienna, when they declared
me in prison for debt, my enemies have again made against my character
and my integrity. All the most ignoble and basest calumny, all the mud
that could be found has been heaped upon me. I had to write a defence,
for the public, _in a single night_. You can read it in the "Lys," to
which it forms an introduction [he suppressed it, later]. I won twice
over, once before the public, and once before the judges, who were
indignant. On what will they now attack me?[1]

Ah! you will never know how burning my life has been during this month.
I was alone to meet it, harassed by the newspaper people demanding
money; harassed by my own payments to meet; harassed by my book,
for which I had day and night to correct proof. No, I wonder I lived
through it. Life is too heavy; I have no pleasure in living.

You have grieved me much by sending back to me the foolish things your
aunt has said,--that I am married to a lady whose name and person I
do not know,--while I am laden here with the foolish things of Paris!
Those from Constantinople are too much! Keep, I beg of you your
credulity for good things. I really do not know what Madame Rosalie
[Rzewuska] means, or what Hammer writes me; he says you are going to
Constantinople, and that he has sent your "Livre Mystique" to your
aunt, who will deliver it to you in person. I am lost in all this
muddle of news.

Though I have won my suit and the "Lys" is out, my affairs do not
prosper; it is one of the victories that kill. Another such, and I am
dead. The production of books does not suffice to extinguish my debts;
I must have recourse to the stage, and there I shall encounter such
keen hatreds that they may bar my entrance, or deceive the public on
the value of the works I produce there.

I received Monsieur Hanski's letter during those days. I have a better
edition of the "Médecin de campagne" to send him. But I still do not
know how to send it, therefore I keep it for him.

I am so encumbered with delayed business, cares, tentatives, that I
write you with a sort of inebriated head that does not allow of logic;
so I hasten to close this letter and send it off. You will receive
another, acknowledging the reception of the inkstand, which from the
drawing seems to me of crushing magnificence for a poor devil.

Boulanger has made a very fine thing of my portrait. It will have,
I think, the honours of the King's corner in the coming Exhibition.
Don't trouble yourself about the money for the copy, which will
be an original, for I am to sit for yours as I did for this one. I
will pay him the five hundred francs, fifty ducats, and when I go to
Wierzchownia you can, if I am not rich, return them; if I am rich
I shall have no need of them. But all artists think that Boulanger
has done a fine thing, which, apart from its merit as a portrait, is
great as a painting. I have had to give sittings of seven and eight
hours--already ten of them--through the storms of this month.

At the moment when I am writing to you and when I need some repose to
revive my brain, which drops like a jaded horse (for it is impossible
not to see that there are organs the strength of which is limited),
the manager of our newspaper sends me missive after missive to pay him
thirteen thousand more francs, the last of the forty-five thousand
which I owe on my purchase. These are pin-pricks into one's spinal
marrow. So I must leave my letter a second time and rush about the city
to realize on certain shares; and I must at the same time finish the
"Ecce Homo" begun in the "Chronique" two days ago.

Again my letter is interrupted. Oh! this time it is too much! Do you
know by what? By a legal notice from Madame Bêchet, who summons me
to furnish her within twenty-four hours my two volumes in 8vo, with
a penalty of fifty francs for every day's delay! I must be a great
criminal and God wills that I shall expiate my crimes! Never was such
torture! This woman has had ten volumes 8vo out of me in two years, and
yet she complains at not getting twelve!

You will be some time without news of me, for I shall probably flee
into the valley of the Indre and there write in twenty days the two
volumes of that woman and get rid of her. For such an enterprise one
must have no distraction, no thought other than that of the work we
write. Yes, if I die for it, I must be done with these obligations.
But if you only knew what an absence of twenty days is to me in my
affairs. It is conflagration. I beg of you, do not be worried. If
I do not write to you, it is that I am either fighting for serious
interests, or working for something urgent, ardent, that brooks no
delay. Here I am, rebeginning a horrible struggle--that of money
interests and books to write! Put an end to the last of my contracts
by satisfying Madame Bêchet, and write a fine book! And I have twenty
days! And it shall be done! The "Héritiers Boirouge" and "Illusions
Perdues" will be written in twenty days!

I leave you, as you see, more harassed, more persecuted, more occupied
than ever. I have the sad presentiment that nothing can end well out of
all this. Human nature has its limits, the strong as well as the weak,
and I shall soon have attained my limit.

Well, adieu; you, one of the three persons who might know me, have you
many doubts, have you left any dark corners without penetrating them,
because I have not had the happiness to be long near you?

[Footnote 1: For a brief account of this lawsuit, which, though won,
left cruel effects upon his life, see his sister's narrative in the
Memoir of this edition, pp. 231, 232.--TR.]


June 16,----

My letter was again interrupted. Yesterday, I dined with the Abbé de
Lamennais, Berryer, and I don't know whom besides. I saw the abbé for
the first time; as for Berryer, we are old acquaintances. I was shocked
at the atrocious face of the Abbé de Lamennais; I tried to seize a
single feature to which one could attach one's self, but there was none.

Berryer takes a trip to Saint Petersburg. I advised him strongly to
return by land and pass through the Ukraine. I told him that I had
hopes of going to the Ukraine towards September; but I dare not yield
myself to any hope at all. On the 20th I start for Saché [a beautiful
estate near Tours, belonging to a family friend, M. de Margonne].

The "Chronique de Paris" is very well _posed_, politically speaking.
But it needs funds. Berryer told me how fruitful the idea of a Right
Centre was in results.

Madame de Berny is getting worse and worse. I hope to go and see her on
my return from Touraine. But she cannot bear the least emotion.

Adieu; you will pardon my silence when you know all my griefs and
pains. I send you many flowers of memory and affectionate homage.
Present my friendly remembrances to Monsieur Hanski, to whom I shall
write next, and recall me to the recollection of those about you.



SACHÉ, June, 1836.

I receive here your last letter in which you speak to me of Madame
Rosalie and of "Séraphita." In relation to your aunt, I own that I
am ignorant by what law it is that persons so well born and bred can
believe such base calumnies. I, a gambler! Can your aunt neither
reason, combine, nor calculate anything except whist? I, who work, even
here, sixteen hours a day, how should I go to a gambling-house that
takes whole nights? It is as absurd as it is crazy.

I went for the first time, at thirty-six years of age, and out of
curiosity, to Frascati, where I found Bernhard. One night Bernhard
presented me to the Cercle des Étrangers, where he invited me to
dinner. I went for the third time the day he gave the dinner. Since
then, though I have been invited several times, I have never returned
there. The last time, I asked Bernhard to include me in his stake for a
certain sum, which denotes the most profound ignorance of the passion.
In all, during my life, I have lost thirty ducats at cards. So much for
gambling. That vice will never catch me. I play for a stake far dearer
and nobler.

Let your aunt judge in her way of my works, of which she knows neither
the whole design nor the bearing; it is her right to do so. I submit to
all judgments. That is one of the evils through which we have to pass.
Resignation is one of the conditions of my existence.

Your letter was sad; I felt it was written under the influence of your
aunt. To comprehend is to equal, said Raphael; and as you yourself
declare that our poor age does not take the trouble to comprehend, it
follows that our equals are few. That which I can pretend to for myself
and my own person is the usage of a faculty given to man,--_reason_.
Your aunt makes me a gambler and a debauchee; she _has the proofs_, you
say. It is now seven or eight years that I work, as I have told you,
sixteen hours a day. If I am a gambler and a debauchee, the man who has
written thirty volumes in seven years must disappear. Both cannot live
in the same skin; or, if they do, it must have pleased God to make an
extraordinary creature--which I am not.

I was beginning to recover life and strength here, where I have been
for the last five days. On leaving I told them with regard to the
letters that might come, "Send me none but those from Russia;" and
your letter has crushed me more than all the heavy nonsense that
jealousy and calumny, lawsuit and money matters have cast upon me. My
sensibility is a proof of friendship; there are none but those we love
who can make us suffer. I am not angry with your aunt, but I am angry
that a person as distinguished as you say she is should be accessible
to such base and absurd calumny. But you yourself, at Geneva, when
I told you I was free as air, you believed me to be married, on the
word of one of those fools whose trade it is to sell money. I laughed.
Here I cannot laugh; I have the horrible privilege of being horribly
calumniated. A few debates like this, and I shall retire into Touraine,
isolating myself from everything, renouncing all, striving to make
myself an egoist, desiring neither sentiment nor happiness, and living
by thought, and for thought.

Your aunt makes me think of the poor Christian who, entering the
Sistine chapel just as Michel-Angelo had drawn a nude figure, asked
why the popes allowed such horrors in Saint Peter's. She judges a work
of at least the same range in literature, without putting herself at a
distance and awaiting its end. She judges the artist without knowing
him, and by the sayings of ninnies. All that gives me little pain for
myself, but much for her, if you love her. But that you should let
yourself be influenced by such errors, that _does_ grieve me and makes
me very uneasy, for I live by my friendships only.

This is enough about that, or you will think me an angry author, a
personage that does not exist in me. I forbade him ever to appear. Now
let us come to what you say to me of "Séraphita." It is strange that
no one sees that "Séraphita" is _all faith_. Faith affirms, and the
whole is said. The angel has descended from the angelic sphere to come
into the midst of the quibbles of reasoning; he opposes reasoning with
reasoning. It is not for him to formulate doubt. As to his answer, no
sacred author has ever more energetically proven God. The proof drawn
from the infinitude of numbers has surprised learned men. They have
lowered their heads. It was beating them on their own ground with their
own weapons.

As for the orthodoxy of the book. Swedenborg is diametrically opposed
to the Court of Rome; but who shall dare pronounce between Saint Peter
and Saint John? The mystical religion of Saint John is logical; it will
ever be that of superior beings. That of Rome will be that of the crowd.

As you say, one must try to penetrate the meaning of "Séraphita" in
order to criticise the work; but I never counted on a success after
"Louis Lambert" was so despised. These are books that I make for myself
and a few others. When I have to write a book for all the world I know
very well what ideas to appeal to, and what I must express. "Séraphita"
has nothing of earth; if she loved, if she doubted, if she suffered, if
she were influenceable by anything terrestrial, she would not be the
angel. No one in Paris has comprehended the vision of old David, when
he speaks of the efforts of all the elementary substances to recover
their creature _with_ the spirit she has conquered; whereas they can
have nought but her mortal remains. Séraphita is, as it were, a flower
of the globe; all that has nourished her yearns after her. The "Path
to God" is a far more lofty religion than that of Bossuet; it is the
religion of Saint Teresa, of Fénelon, of Swedenborg, of Jacob Boehm,
and of M. Saint-Martin.

But I am repeating myself. Your belief leads to it as much as mine.
I thought I was making a beautiful and grand work, but I may have
deceived myself. It is what it is; and it is now delivered over to the
disputes of this world.

At the moment when I write you have doubtless read the "Lys dans la
Vallée," another Séraphita, who, this one, is orthodox. But I will not
say anything more about them. Literature and its accompaniments bore
me. When a book is done, I like to forget it; I do forget it; and I
never return to it except to purge its faults a year or two later. You
will read the book in its flesh, not its skeleton, and I hope it may
give you pleasure.

I have undertaken to do here the two volumes for Madame Bêchet, as I
must have written you before I left Paris. Touraine has given me back
some health, but at the moment I was working most, with your letter
came a letter from a friend, who sent me a puff of vexations. Such
things dishearten one for living. Happily, the book I am now writing,
"Illusions Perdues," is sufficiently in that tone. All that I can put
into it of bitter sadness will do marvellously well. It is one of the
"novels" that will be understood. It is breast-high of all men.

I am at this moment in the little bedroom at Saché, where I have worked
so much! I see again the noble trees I have so often looked at when
searching out ideas. I am not more advanced in 1836 than I was in 1829;
I owe, and I work, always. I still have in me the same young life, the
heart, still childlike, though you ask me to say how many sentiments
a man's existence can consume. It seems as though, like gamblers,
I have an "angélique" which multiplies. My pretended successes are
still another of the agreeable fables fastened on me. I don't know
which critic it was who said that I had known very intimately all my
models. But I will never reply to these exaggerations. Berryer is of
my opinion, and I shall never forgive myself for having quitted my
silent attitude to descend into this arena of mud, as I did in the
Introduction to "Le Lys dans la Vallée."

I have, within the last few days, been contemplating the extent of my
work and what still remains to do. It is enormous. And, therefore,
looking at that immense fresco, I have a great mind to sell out the
"Chronique," renounce all species of political ambition, and make some
arrangements which would allow me to retire to a "cottage" in Touraine
and there accomplish peaceably, without anxieties, a work which will
help me to pass my life, if not happily, at least tranquilly. That my
life should be _happy_, many other circumstances are needed.

What! Anna has been ill? Do not nurse her too much; excess of care, a
great physician told me, is one of the evils that threaten the children
of the rich. It is a way of bringing the influence of evils to bear
upon them. But you know much already on this head. What I say is not
one of those commonplaces addressed to mothers; it is the cry of a deep
conviction. My sister adored a little girl whom she lost because she
gave ear to everything for her. Her little Valentine is, to-day, on the
contrary, left to herself and she is magnificent.

My brother still gives us much anxiety. My mother is consumed with
grief. But my brother-in-law is succeeding better. The lateral canal of
the Loire has been voted by both Chambers. Nothing is needed now but to
find the capital to build it. Also he has lately obtained the building
of a bridge in Paris, which is an excellent affair. So the skies are
brightening, at least for him. But he has needed, like myself, much
perseverance and courage.

In re-reading your letter, I think you make me out rather greater
than I am, and you demand more of me than I can give. The desire to
do well has brought me to certain means to produce that result, but
the exercise of intellectual faculties does not bring with it real
grandeur; one remains, humanly speaking, what one is: a poor being very
_impressible_, whom God had made for happiness, and whom circumstances
have condemned to the most wearying toil in the world.

At this moment I must leave you to complete my work; in five or six
days, when I am delivered of these two volumes, which will terminate
the hardest of the obligations I have ever contracted, I will write you
at length, with a heart more joyful; for just now things are causing me
more pain than pleasure. My soul and spirit are too strained by work. I
am as nervous as a fashionable woman, but I shall, perhaps, recover a
little gaiety when I feel myself the lighter by two volumes. Touraine
is very beautiful just now. The weather is extremely warm, which has
brought the vineyards into bloom. Ah! my God, when shall I have a
little place, a little château, a little park, a fine library! and
shall I ever inhabit it without troubles, lodging within it the love of
my life?

The farther I go, the more these golden wishes take the tint of dreams;
and yet to renounce them would be death to me. For ten years past I
live by hope only.

Well, adieu; a thousand kindly things to M. Hanski. I place on Anna's
forehead a kiss, full of good wishes, and I beg you to find here
those pretty flowers of the soul, those caressing thoughts, which you
awaken and which belong to you, sad or not; for mine is one of those
unalterable friendships which resemble the sky; clouds may pass beneath
it, the atmosphere may be more or less ardent, but above them the
heavens are ever blue. When you are sad, all you need do is to go up a
little higher.

I have thought of you much during these last days, not receiving any
letters; and now I regret having begun this letter with harshness
towards a person you love and who loves you, though from her portrait I
should judge her very cold.

Adieu again; I confide all I think to this little paper, which,
unfortunately, will be very discreet. You will talk to me about the
"Lys," and say a little more than you have said this time?



PARIS, August 22, 1836.

This date, _cara_, is not without significance. All will be explained
to you by three events which will leave their mark within my soul and
on the history of my misfortunes.

Madame de Berny is dead. I can say no more on that point. My sorrow is
not of a day; it will react upon my whole life. For a year I had not
seen her, nor did I see her in her last moments. This was why: at the
moment when I ought to have been at Nemours I was obliged to wind up
the affairs of the "Chronique" in Paris--in the midst of its greatest
success. We could not support competition with daily papers at forty
francs a year, while we cost sixty-four and appeared semi-weekly. To
keep on, we needed fifty thousand francs, and no one could or would
advance a farthing in the present circumstances of the press. I went to
see all the shareholders and guaranteed to them the integral payment
of what they had put in; so that at the moment when I received the
heaviest blow my heart has ever known--for never, since the death of
my grandmother, have I sounded so deeply the selfish gulf of eternal
separation--at that moment I was meeting a loss of forty thousand
francs. It was too much. Immediately after, Madame Bêchet, married, as
I told you, to a certain Jacquillart, was constrained by him to sue me
for my volumes; I was thus under the weight of a new suit which is all
clear loss to me, for by the deed itself I am condemned to pay fifty
francs for every day's delay, and I am now two months behind, since the
time I received the summons.

The last letter of the angel who has now escaped the miseries of life,
and who in her last days was not spared them,--for in two years her
two finest children, her best loved son, twenty-three years old, he
who was all _herself_, and her most beautiful daughter of nineteen,
are both dead; her youngest daughter of seventeen, mad; and her
remaining son the cause of her greatest grief,--well, her last letter
came in the midst of those worries of mine; and _she_, who was always
so lovingly severe to me, acknowledged that the "Lys" was one of the
finest books in the French language; she decked herself at last with
the crown which, fifteen years earlier, I had promised her, and, always
coquettish, she imperiously forbade me to come and see her, because
she would not have me near her unless she were beautiful and well.
The letter deceived me. I waited until I had, by dint of efforts,
conferences, and much ability, made Werdet buy the "Études de Mœurs"
from Madame Bêchet for thirty thousand francs before I started for
Nemours, and then, suddenly, the fatal news came, and almost killed me.

I do not speak to you here in detail of these forty and some days. I
have given you the chief features, the outline. Some day I will tell
you more. I will tell you how in this intelligent Paris we succumbed;
how in order to settle the affair of the "Études de Mœurs" and the
last lawsuit by which I can ever be threatened, the devotion of my
tailor and the savings of a poor workingman were needed,--two men who
had more faith in me than all the pompous admiration of men in high
places.

When all was over,--struck down in the clearest illusions of my heart,
ruined in money, undergoing a second Beresina such as befell me in
1828, and wearied out,--Werdet gave me twenty days' freedom, and we
arranged for my payments till August 20. Rothschild gave me a letter
of credit for Italy, and I seized a pretext of going to Milan to do
a service to a man with whom I had a box at the opera, M. Visconti
[Count Guidoboni-Visconti]. In twenty days I went there by the Mont
Cenis, returning over the Simplon, having for companion a friend of
Madame Carraud and Jules Sandeau [Madame Caroline Marbouty, to whom
he dedicated "La Grenadière"]. You will divine that I lodged in your
hotel Piazza Castello, and that in Geneva I stayed at the Arc with the
Biolleys, and went to see Pré-l'Évêque and the Maison Mirabaud.

Alas! It is not forbidden to those who suffer to go and breathe a
perfumed air. You alone and your memories could refresh a heart in
mourning. I went over the road to Coppet and to Diodati. _Cara_, the
Porte de Rive is enlarged, just as, suddenly, the affection I bear
you is enlarged by all that I have lost. One no longer waits to enter
Geneva; we can now come and go at any hour of the night. I stayed only
one day in Geneva, and saw no one but de Candolle, who came near dying,
but is better.

Here I am, returned, bearing a wound the scar of which will be ever
visible, but which you alone have soothed unconsciously.

You must have had much uneasiness in consequence of my silence. Forgive
me, dear. It was impossible for me to write, or think. I could only let
myself be drawn along in a carriage, led by an inoffensive hand, guided
like a dying man. My mind itself was crushed; for the failure of the
"Chronique" came upon me at Saché, at M. de Margonne's, where I was,
by a wise impulse, plunged in work to rid myself of that odious Bêchet
(it was that which kept me from going to Nemours!); in eight days I
had invented, composed, "Les Illusions Perdues," and I had written a
THIRD of it! Think what such work was. All my faculties were strained;
I wrote fifteen hours a day; I got up with the sun and wrote till the
dinner-hour without taking anything but coffee.

One day, after dinner, which I naturally made substantial, the letters
arrived, and I read that which announced to me the crisis of the
"Chronique." I went out with M. and Mme. de Margonne into the park,
and fell, struck down by a rush of blood to the head, at the foot of a
tree. I could not write a word, I saw all my prospects ruined. I said
to myself that nothing remained for me but to go and hide myself at
Wierzchownia, and amass enough work and money to come back some day
and pay all I owed. In short, I was stunned. Courage came back to me.
I flew to Paris; I struggled; then the rest came unexpectedly, blow
on blow. I was at Saché after the "Lys" appeared and my suit was won.
Touraine had cured my fatigue then and restored my brain. I was enabled
there to make a last effort.

The journey I have just made only did me good at Geneva. In seeing that
lake, finding myself again in places where I won a friendship that is
so sweet to me, I was wrapped in a delightful atmosphere which shed a
balm upon the bleeding wounds. You will find all in that sentence.

I wished to go to Neufchâtel; but the twenty days were too short. That
is what prevented me from going to you,--the little time and the little
money; for I am still in debt. All illness costs.

Here I am returned, in face of my obligations. To be able to make the
journey, I obtained the price of the "Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée;"
so that I have four volumes 8vo to do, on which I shall not receive
another sou. I have, besides, enormous engagements; and no resources
to sustain them. I must have recourse to credit; that means paying
enormous interest. What a position! Oh! _cara_, what a life! Apathy
saved me. If I had felt it all fully, I should have flung myself into
some torrent on the Simplon.

Yes, all the papers have been hostile to the "Lys;" they have all cried
shame, they have spit upon it. Nettement tells me that the "Gazette de
France" attacked it "because I do not go to mass." The "Quotidienne"
from a private vengeance of the editor; in short all, for some reason
or other. Instead of selling two thousand, as I hoped, for Werdet, we
are only as far as thirteen hundred. Thus all material interests are
endangered. There are some ignorant persons who cannot understand the
beauty of Madame de Mortsauf's death; they do not see the struggle of
matter with mind, which is the foundation of Christianity. They see
only imprecations of the disappointed flesh, of the wounded physical
nature; they will not do justice to the sublime placidity of the soul
when the countess confesses and dies a saint.

When I am thus hurt I spring toward you,--toward you alone now; toward
you who comprehend me, and who judge with enough critical mind to
give value to your praises. With what happiness we feel ourselves
appreciated, judged, by some one who loves us. A word, an observation
from the celestial creature of whom Madame de Mortsauf is a pale
representation made more impression upon me than the whole public, for
she was true; she wanted only my good and my perfection. I make you her
heir, you who have all her noble qualities; you who could have written
that letter of Madame de Mortsauf, which is but the imperfect breath of
her constant inspirations, you who could, at least, complete it.

I must plunge into stupefying work; I can live only in that way, for
where are my hopes? They are very distant. Happiness and material
tranquillity are very far from me. I shall go conscientiously before
me, striving to be sufficient for each day.

Only, _cara_, do not aggravate my griefs by dishonouring doubts;
believe that, to a man so heavily burdened otherwise, calumny is a
light thing, and that now I must let it all be said against me without
distressing myself. In your last letters, you know, you have believed
things that are irreconcilable with what you know of me. I cannot
explain to myself your tendency to believe absurd calumnies. I still
remember your credulity in Geneva when you thought me married.

I hope to go and see you next spring, wherever you are. Perhaps some
fortunate circumstances may happen. My brother-in-law's affairs are
doing pretty well. He has the building of a bridge in Paris, and of
a short railway, besides which the law on the lateral canal of the
Lower Loire is promulgated. It is only necessary to find the money for
it. At any rate it is an acquired right, and nothing can now destroy
it. In that direction I may be able to arrange some good matter of
business. The only thing which at this moment is serious is my double
condition,--that of a man wounded to the heart, who has not yet
recovered his vitality, and of a man garroted by material interests in
jeopardy.

In the midst of these storms, I have received M. Hanski's inkstand,
which has the misfortune of being far too magnificent for a man
condemned to poverty. It is of a style that demands a mansion, horses,
majordomos. Express to him, I beg of you, my admiring thanks for this
beautiful thing, which I can only use in one way, namely: by placing
it among my precious things, to remind me of our good days in Vienna,
Geneva, and Neufchâtel when, seeking for ideas, my eyes may light upon
it.

I do not think I commit sacrilege in sealing this letter to you with
the seal I used to Madame de Berny. I have mislaid the key of the
drawer where I keep my little articles. I made a vow always to wear
this ring on my finger.

I received a letter from you at Saché, of later date than a letter I
have since received in Paris. Perhaps this will make some confusion in
what I wrote to you about "Séraphita" in reply to what you said in the
letter received at Saché. Consider that I said nothing, if anything
that I did say pained you. I received your number 15 yesterday.

No one knows what has become of Mitgislas ... He has left Paris without
paying his debts, having sold everything, and allowing all sorts of
suspicions to hover over him. But I do not concern myself with such
things; I neither listen nor repeat.

You are right; I have no more serviceable friends than my enemies. The
violence and absurdity of the attacks made upon me have revolted all
honest men. Did I tell you that M. de Belleyme came to see me after the
trial? The Court blamed the lawyer on the other side, Chaix d'Estanges.

It seems to me that you have divined my situation in what you say of
sorrow, and also in what you say of those who, like Robert Bruce,
return ever to the light in spite of their defeats.

Adieu! it has done me good to write this long letter. But time does not
belong to me wholly. The most horrible wound of my life is to be never
able to give myself up to my affections, joyous or sad. It is always
work, under pain of perishing, and I have no right to perish. My death
would injure too many. I owe money to devoted friends who give me of
their blood. Therefore I am much misjudged.

Adieu; to you the most beautiful and richest flowers of my soul and
memory. I did not know all that the Pré-l'Évêque was to me, and the
hill from which we see the lake and the bridge; I had to see it all
again, alone and unhappy, to know the value of those memories.



CHAILLOT, October 1, 1836.

Friendship ought to be an infallible consolation in the great
misfortunes of life. Why should it aggravate them? I ask myself sadly
that question on reading to-night your last letter. In the first place,
your sadness reacts strongly upon me; then it betrays such wounding
sentiments. There were phrases in it that pierced my heart. Doubtless
you did not know what profound sorrow was in my soul, nor what sombre
courage accompanies this, my second great disaster, undergone in
middle life. When I was wrecked the first time, in 1828, I was only
twenty-nine years old and I had an angel at my side. To-day I am at an
age when a man no longer inspires the lovable sentiment of a protection
which has nothing wounding, because it is of the essence of youth to
receive it, and it seems natural that youth be aided. But to a man who
is nearer to forty than to thirty, protection must needs be wanting;
it would be an insult. A weak man, without resources at that age, is
judged in all lands.

Fallen from all my hopes, having abdicated wholly, forced to take
refuge here in Jules Sandeau's former garret at Chaillot on September
30, the day when, for the second time in my life, I failed to honour
my signature, and when to the lamentations of integrity, which weeps
within me, was added the sense of solitude,--for here, this time,
I am alone,--I thought, soothingly, that at least I lived complete
in certain chosen hearts. I thought of you. Your letter, so sad, so
discouraged, came. With what avidity I took it, with what tears I
locked it up before taking the little sleep I allow myself! But I
cling to your last words as to the last branch of a tree when the
current is bearing us away. Letters are endowed with a fatal power.
They possess a force which is either beneficent or fatal, according to
the sensations in the midst of which they come to us. I would that,
between two friends very sure of themselves, signs were agreed upon
by which from the aspect of a letter each might know if it was one of
expansive gaiety or plaintive moaning. We could then choose the moment
for reading it.

I had but nineteen days before me; I could not go to the Ukraine and
return. Talma's letter was given to me in Gérard's salon. What trifles
you lay hold of! Perhaps you will not even remember what you have
written to me on this subject when you receive this letter. Am I to
send you that of Mademoiselle Mars? Will you not think that she has
been _paid_? If you ever go to Italy and pass through Turin, I wish you
may see Madame la Marquise de Saint-Thomas. You would know then what
the autographs of Silvio Pellico and Nota _cost_.

You told me that your sister Caroline was the most dangerous of women;
and in your letter she is an angel, and you tell me she is about to do
what I call signal folly; for I have not forgotten what you wrote to me
about the colonel. She will be very unhappy.

I am cast down, but not without courage; what Boulanger has painted,
and what I am pleased with, is the persistence _à la_ Coligny, _à la_
Peter the Great, which is the basis of my character,--the intrepid
faith in the future.

Must I renounce the Italian Opera, the only pleasure that I have in
Paris, because I have no other seat than in a box where there is also a
charming and gracious woman [Countess Guidoboni-Visconti]? I was in a
box among men who were an injury to me, and brought me into disrepute.
I had to go elsewhere, and, in all conscience, I was not willing for
Olympe's box. But let us drop the subject.

The feeling of abandonment and of the solitude in which I am stings
me. There is nothing selfish in me; but I need to tell my thoughts, my
efforts, my feelings to a being who is not myself; otherwise I have no
strength. I should wish for no crown if there were no feet at which to
lay that which men may put upon my head. What a long and sad farewell
I have said to my lost years, engulfed beyond return! they gave me
neither complete happiness nor complete misery; they kept me living,
frozen on one side, scorched on the other! To be no longer held to life
by aught but the sentiment of duty!

I entered the garret where I am with the conviction that I should die
exhausted with my work. I thought that I should bear it better than I
do. It is now a month that I have risen at midnight and gone to bed at
six; I have compelled myself to the least amount of food that will keep
me alive, so as not to drive the fatigue of digestion to the brain.
Well, not only do I feel weaknesses that I cannot describe, but so much
life communicated to the brain has brought strange troubles. Sometimes
I lose the sense of vertically, which is in the cerebellum. Even in bed
my head seems to fall to right or left, and when I rise I am impelled
by an enormous weight that is in my head. I understand how Pascal's
absolute continence and his immense labour led him to see an abyss
around him, so that he could not do without two chairs, one on each
side of him.

I have not abandoned the rue Cassini without pain. To-day, I do not
know if I shall save some parts of my furniture to which I am attached,
or have my library. I have made, in advance, every sacrifice of lesser
pleasures and memories that I may keep the little joy of knowing that
these things are still mine. They would be trifles indeed to quench the
thirst of creditors, but they would slake mine during my march across
the desert, through the sands. Two years of toil would pay my debt in
full; but it is impossible that I should not succumb under two years of
such a life. Besides which, piracy is killing us. The farther we go,
the less my books sell. Have the newspapers influenced the sale of the
"Lys"? I do not know; but what I do know is that out of two thousand
copies Werdet sold only twelve hundred, while Belgium has sold three
thousand! I have the certainty, from that fact, that my works do not
find purchasers in France. Consequently, the success of sales that
might save me is still distant.

I am here with Auguste, whom I have kept. Can I still keep him? As yet
I know not.

To let you know how far my courage goes, I must tell you that "Le
Secret des Ruggieri" was written in a single night. Think of that
when you read it. "La Vieille Fille" was written in three nights. "La
Perle brisée," which ends at last the "Enfant Maudit," was written in
a single night. It is my Brienne, my Champaubert, my Montmirail, my
campaign of France! But it was the same with "La Messe de l'Athée" and
"Facino Cane." I wrote the first fifty _feuillets_ of the "Illusions
Perdues" in three days at Saché.

What kills me is the corrections. The first part of "L'Enfant Maudit"
cost me more than many volumes. I wanted to bring that part up to the
level of "La Perle brisée" and make them a sort of little poem of
melancholy in which there would be nothing to gainsay. That took me a
dozen nights. And now, at the moment of writing to you, I have before
me the accumulated proofs of four different works which ought to appear
in October. I must be equal to all that. I have promised Werdet to
bring out his third Part of the "Études Philosophiques" this month, and
also the third _dizain_, and to give him for November 15 "Illusions
Perdues." That makes five volumes 12mo, and three volumes 8vo. One
must surpass one's self, inasmuch as purchasers are indifferent; and
surpass one's self in the midst of protested notes, griefs, cruel
embarrassments, and solitude!

This is the last plaint that I shall cast into your heart. In my
confidences there has been something selfish which I must put an end
to. When you are sad I will not aggravate your sadness, for your
sadness aggravates mine. I know that the Christian martyrs smiled.
If Guatimozin had been a Christian he would have gently consoled his
minister, and not have said to him, "And I--am I on a bed of roses?" A
fine saying for a savage, but Christ has made us more courteous, if not
better.

I see with pain that you read the mystics. Believe me, such reading
is fatal to souls constituted like yours. It is poison; it is an
intoxicating narcotic. Such books have an evil influence. There is
madness in virtue as there is madness in dissipation. I would not deter
you if you were neither wife, nor mother, nor friend, nor relation,
because then you could go into a convent if it pleased you, though your
death would there come quickly. But, in your situation, such reading is
bad. The rights of friendship are too weak for my voice to be listened
to. I address you, on this subject, a humble prayer. Do not read
anything of that kind. I have been there; I have experience of it.

I have taken all precautions that your wishes shall be fulfilled
relating to the sternest of your requests, but under circumstances
which your intelligence will no doubt lead you to foresee. I am not
Byron; but I know this: Borget is not Thomas Moore; he has the blind
fidelity of a dog, as your faithful moujik has also.

Send me word exactly the way by which I must despatch Boulanger's
picture--about which no one will say to you what you heard about
that very wretched thing of Grosclaude's;--it is not enough to say
to Rothschild, "For Russia." To what house am I to address it?
Grosclaude is an artist, but nothing eminent. He sees form, but he goes
no farther; he has no style, he is common, without elevation. His
_Buveurs_ are good painting, but the nature is low. If he were in Paris
he would re-form himself. But in Geneva he will stay what he is. Your
portrait by him is an infamous daub. Daffinger, in Vienna, caught your
likeness much better; but I do not like miniature very much, unless it
is that of Madame de Mirbel. I saw some others in the last Exhibition,
and I perceived then that Daffinger was much beneath her. We must
still, if we want to have good portraits, spring back to the principles
of Rubens, Velasquez, Van Dyck, and Titian.

I am astonished that you have not yet received Werdet's "Lys;" the true
"Lys" in which there is a portrait. They say that I have painted Madame
Visconti! Such are the judgments to which we are exposed! You know that
I had the proofs in Vienna, and that portrait was written at Saché, and
corrected at La Boulonnière before I ever saw Madame Visconti. I have
received five _formal complaints_ from persons about me, who say that I
have unveiled their private lives. I have very curious letters on this
subject. It appears that there are as many Monsieurs de Mortsauf as
there are angels at Clochegourde; angels rain down upon me, but _they
are not white_.

A thousand, little cavillings of this kind make me take to solitude
with less regret. Yesterday, September 29, my sister, for her birthday,
gave herself the little pleasure of coming to see me, for we see each
other very little. Her husband's affairs move slowly, and her life
also; she is running to waste in the shade; her fine powers exhaust
themselves in a hidden struggle without credit. What a diamond in
the mud! The finest diamond that I know in France. For her fête we
exchanged our tears! And, poor little thing! she held her watch in her
hand; she had but twenty minutes. Her husband is jealous of me. For
coming to see a brother for a pleasure trip!

Adieu, the day is dawning, my candles pale. For three hours I have
been writing to you, line after line, hoping that in each you would
hear the cry of a true friendship, far above all petty and transitory
irritations, infinite as heaven, and incapable of thinking it can ever
change, because all other sensations are below it. Of what good would
intellect be if not to place a noble thing on a rock above us, where
nothing material can touch it?

But this would lead me too far. The proofs are waiting, and I must
plunge into the Augean stable of my style, and sweep out its faults.
My life offers nothing now but the monotony of work, which the work
itself varies. I am like the old Austrian colonel who talked about his
gray horse and his black horse to Marie Antoinette; sometimes I am on
one, sometimes on the other; six hours on the "Ruggieri," six hours on
"L'Enfant Maudit," six hours on "La Vieille Fille." From time to time
I rise, I contemplate that ocean of houses which my window overlooks,
from the École Militaire to the Barrière du Trône, from the Pantheon
to the Étoile; and then, having inhaled the air, I go back to my work.
My apartment on the second floor is not yet vacant; I play at garret;
I like it, like the duchesses who eat brown bread by chance. There
is not in all Paris a prettier garret. It is white and coquettish as
a grisette of sixteen. I shall make a bedroom of it to supplement
mine in case of illness; for below I sleep in the passage, in a bed
two feet wide which leaves only room to pass. The doctors say it is
not unhealthy; but I am afraid it is. I need much air; I consume it
enormously. My apartment costs me seven hundred francs. I shall be no
longer in the National Guard; but I am still pursued by the police and
the _état-major_ for eight days in prison. Not going out of the house,
they cannot catch me. My apartment is taken under another name than
mine [that of his doctor], and I am living ostensibly in a furnished
hotel.

Well, I wish I could send you some of my courage. Find it here with my
tender respects.



CHAILLOT, October 22, 1836.

I had great need of the letter I have just received from you, to efface
the grief your last had caused me; for, I may now tell you, it pained
me by the uncertainty it revealed, and perhaps that pain may have
acted on my answer, though I am tolerably stoic. But when an affection
as devoted, as pure of all storms, as that of Madame de Berny has
perished, and around us little else remains, if then, amid dreadful
misfortunes, the branch on which our beliefs are hanging breaks also,
the skies are very sombre, and the fall to earth is heavy.

That letter came, full of doubts and reproaches wrapped in your pretty
phrases, while I was in my garret, which I shall not quit until I owe
nothing; and was it not a cruelly facetious thing to be told that one
is dissipated in one's fortieth year, and when the doctors cannot
explain to themselves how it is that I bear such work? They see my
monkish life; they will not believe in it. They are like you.

A dreadful misfortune has come to crown my misery. Werdet, who never
had a sou, is about to fail, and drags me into the gulf; for, to
sustain him, I had the weakness to sign bills of exchange, the value of
which I never received, and notes to the amount of thirteen thousand
francs which I must honour. I have already taken precautions to weather
this storm.

To-morrow I shall have moved all from the rue Cassini, which I have
left never to return. My apartment here is taken in the name of a third
person. I did this to evade the National Guard; also my furniture is
secured from attachment, for I have to face the immediate payment of
fifty thousand francs without the resource of my own credit, or that of
a publisher.

Under these circumstances, which have made this month of October a true
Beresina for me, I longed to go and ask you for an asylum and bread
for two years, during which time I could earn, by working, the hundred
thousand francs I need. But my life would have been too stained by
that flight, although my most sensitive and upright friends advised
it. I have been greater than my misfortune. In fifteen days' time I
have sold fifty columns to the "Chronique de Paris" for a thousand
francs; one hundred and twenty columns to the "Presse" for eight
thousand; twenty columns to a "Revue Musicale" for one thousand; an
article to the "Dictionnaire de la Conversation" for a thousand. That
makes eleven thousand francs in fifteen days. I have worked thirty
nights without going to bed. I have written "La Perle brisée" (for the
"Chronique") "La Vieille Fille" (for the "Presse"). I have done the
"Secret des Ruggieri" for Werdet. I have sold for two thousand francs
my last _dizain_ (that makes thirteen thousand). And now I am doing
"La Torpille" for the "Chronique," and "La Femme Supérieure," and "Les
Souffrances d'un Inventeur" for the "Presse." At the same time I am
in process of selling the reprinting [in book form] of "La Torpille,"
"La Femme Supérieure," "Le Grand homme de Province à Paris," and "Les
Héritiers Boirouge," both begun; that will give me in all thirty-one
thousand francs. Then, having no longer that rotten plank Werdet to
rest on, I shall contract with a rich and solid firm for the last
fourteen volumes of the "Études de Mœurs," which ought to amount to
fifty-six thousand francs for author's rights, on which I want thirty
thousand at once. If that succeeds I shall have sixty-one thousand
francs, which will save me. Not only shall I then owe nothing, but I
shall have some money for myself. But I must work day and night for six
months, and after that at least ten hours a day for two years.

Rossini said to me yesterday:--

"When I did that myself, I was dead at the end of fifteen days, and
then I took fifteen to rest."

I said to him, "I have only a coffin in prospect for my rest; but work
is a fine shroud."

You can comprehend how, in the midst of these multiplied errands, these
torrents of proofs, of manuscripts to write, of this savage struggle,
it is dreadful to receive stones from heaven instead of rays of light.
Not only have I neither pleasure nor time, but I have not been able
since my return to take a bath or go to the Opera, two things (bath and
Opera) which are more essential to me than bread. Everything is going
to ruin within me to the profit of my brain. It makes one shudder.

For having three times in my life--I, feeble--interested myself in
unfortunate men, and taken them _en croupe_ upon my horse or in my
boat,--the printer, Jules Sandeau, and Werdet,--three times have they
broken the tiller, sunk the boat, and flung me into the water naked.
It is over. I will never interest myself again in feeble men. I have
too many obligations, which command me to employ the cold logic of a
banker's strong-box. I shut myself up, in my work and my garret. I grow
more solitary than ever.

See how the whole of society combines to isolate superiorities, how it
drives them to the heights! Affections which ought to be exclusively
kind and tender to us, never judge us, never make a mountain out of
nothing, and a nothing of a mountain, these very affections torture
us by fantastic exactions; they stab us with pin-pricks about silly
things; they want faith for themselves and have none for us; they
will not put into their sentiments that grandeur which separates them
from others. They do not abstract their sentiments, as we do, from
earthly soiling. The protections that we give to the weak are fresh
means by which we fling ourselves more rapidly into the inextricable
difficulties of material life. Indifferent people adopt calumnies which
enemies forge and envious men repeat. No one succours us. The masses do
not understand us; superior persons have no time to read us and defend
us. Fame illumines the grave only; posterity gives us no income, and
I am tempted to cry out, like that English country gentleman from his
place in parliament: "I hear much talk of posterity; I would like to
know what that power has so far done for England."

So you see, _cara_, that short of miracles, poor writers are condemned
to misfortunes under all forms; therefore, I entreat you, do not keep
from me any of your griefs, or your ideas, or anything regarding
yourself, but be indulgent and kind to me. Think always that what I do
has a reason and an object, that my actions are _necessary_. There is,
for two souls that are a little above others, something mortifying in
repeating to you for the tenth time not to believe in calumny. When you
said to me, three letters ago, that I gambled, it was just as true as
my marriage was at Geneva.

_Cara_, the life that I lead cannot endure that the sweet things of
friendship should be converted into constant explanations; the life of
the soul is not that.

You ask me again who is Charles de Bernard. I have already told you;
did you not get my letter? He is a gentleman of Besançon who, on my
passage through that town when I went to Neufchâtel, received me
like an honour, and in whom I found talent. As soon as I owned the
"Chronique de Paris" I sent for him; I advised him, directed him with
paternal affection, telling him that he was a man to gallop straight if
given a horse; and it was true. I conceived of making a newspaper only
by the help of superior men. I had already picked out Planche, Bernard,
Théophile Gautier. I should have unearthed others. But that is all over
now.

A Polish colonel, who returns to Saint-Petersburg by way of Warsaw,
a Monsieur Frankowski, will take to you the _cassolette_ attached to
my watch-chain. The chain, you know, was so delicate that the little
links were continually breaking. As I told you before, it will be safer
fastened to a ring; you will not then destroy it when playing with it.
Lecointe has tried to do it well. You gave me, in Vienna, the right to
recall myself to your memory by such little dainty things. Let Paris
send you, now and then, a few flowers of her industry. Ah! _cara_, if
I had not among so many waking nights the thought that one of them is
spent in sending to you a little thing the gold of which, as Walter
Scott's man says in the "Chronicles of the Canongate," is earned grain
by grain, to testify to you my gratitude, my toil would be too heavy.

M. Frankowski would have taken charge of my manuscripts and sent them
to you with Polish fidelity, but he feared the difficulties of the
custom-house. You have here a veritable library. You would be proud if
you knew the price the magistrates attached to this enormous collection
of manuscripts and proofs, which I was forced to show them in my
lawsuit with the "Revue de Paris." The rage for these things was quite
absurd. M. de Montholon wanted to buy for a hundred francs one of those
"orders to print" which you saw me write in Geneva. But any printer
who abstracted from Madame Hanska a single one of her proofs would be
quitted by me.

Well, _addio_. Take care of yourself. Alas! if I only had money! In
a few days I must have a month's rest, and then I could have gone
and spent a week in your Wierzchownia. But nothing is possible to
poverty--to that poverty which the world envies me!



CHAILLOT, October 28, 1836.

I have received your letter number 19, addressed to the widow Durand,
which ends with a dreadful "Be happy!" I would have preferred another
wish, though less Christian. I write in haste to tell you that I have
received all your letters; there is no reason why, though I am at
Chaillot, I should not get my letters from the rue Cassini.

_La Marchesa_ is a very agreeable old woman who had, they say, all
Turin at her feet thirty years ago. You are not, in spite of your
analytical mind, either generous or attentive; you write me a quantity
of phrases, to which I cannot answer; you even overwhelm me with them,
while I have to read them with my arms crossed, my lips silent, and my
heart sick. But on this point you will find a word in my last letter.

I write now only to say one thing. I have put many anxieties into
your heart, if you have for me all the affection that I have for
you. So, then, you must now be told that the end of so much misery
is approaching. Did I tell you that one day, when a mind astray led
me to the river so frequented by suicides (those are things that I
have hidden from you), I met the former head-clerk of my lawyer, who
was my comrade in legal days. He was the head of the lawyer's office
where Scribe and I were placed. This poor young fellow has, so he
says himself, a saintly respect for genius (that word always makes me
laugh), and he believed me to be at the summit of fortune and honours.
I, who would die like the Spartan with the fox at my vitals rather than
betray my penury, I had the weakness, at that moment when I was bidding
farewell to many things, to pour out a heart too full. It was at a spot
that I shall never forget; rue de Rivoli, before the iron gate of the
Tuileries. This poor man who is--remark this--a business man in Paris,
said, with moist eyelids:--

"Monsieur de Balzac, all that a sacred zeal can do, expect from me. I
ought only to speak to you by results. I shall try to save you."

And yesterday, this brave and devoted young man wrote me that he had
succeeded in making a loan which would liquidate my debts, lift off
the burden of anxiety, and leave me time to pay all. And something
finer still. When the lender heard the name of the borrower, he, who
wanted ten per cent and securities, would take only five per cent and a
mortgage on my works. May those two names be blest! _If this thing is
arranged_, for I own to you I have little faith in luck, I shall escape
a long suicide--that of death by toil.

Besides this loan, a company is to be formed for the management of
my works. I am following up this affair, about which I think I have
already spoken to you, very warmly. It will be done _col tempo_. I have
about forty thousand francs to pay immediately; but I shall have earned
nearly sixty thousand in a short time. Instead of working eighteen
hours, I shall then work nine, and I shall have won, after fourteen
years' labour, the right to come and go as I please. It is too fine; I
don't believe in it.

The five hundred francs sent as you sent them, now instead of a few
months later, have been, between ourselves, a benefit. Boulanger needed
the money; and I am now bestirring myself to get him a thousand francs
for the right to engrave the portrait. That outrageous miser Custine
paid him only three thousand francs for his picture of "Le Triomphe
de Pétrarque," while my portrait will thus have brought him fifteen
hundred francs. But can we get an engraver to pay one thousand for the
right of engraving? That is what I am trying to do.

Now, here is a grave question; I want you to have the original.
Boulanger wants to exhibit it. Though I shall pose for the copy, a
copy never has the indefinable beauty of a canvas on which the painter
has sought out, scrutinized, and seized the soul of his model. We must
therefore wait; for, to the artist, my portrait is a battle to win
before the eyes of his comrades. They are beginning to talk of this
canvas--which is magnificent. The copy will be ready in a month. You
could receive it in January. But if you permit me to send you the
original, it cannot leave till after the Exhibition. I have conferred
with Boulanger; though I pose for the copy, and though he wants to make
as good a thing, he always says to me, "A copy, even done by the artist
himself, is never worth the original."

Let me tell you that my mother, who will be on the Salon catalogue as
having ordered the portrait, will be quite indifferent about having
the copy or the original. (This is between ourselves.) You have time
to answer me about this. The newspapers are beginning to speak of the
portrait. The painters say of it, obligingly, what people said to me of
"Séraphita." I did not think that Boulanger was capable of making such
a picture. In style of art it is masterly. It has cost me two volumes
which I might have made during the last sittings--which I had to give
standing.

Whatever happens, let me confide to you a very bad feeling that I have:
it is that I don't like my friends to judge me; I want them to believe
that what I determine on doing is necessary. A sentiment discussed has
no more existence than a power controlled. Why couple pettiness with
greatness?

As I have added a second sheet to the single one which I intended
to cover with ink and friendship, I will tell you that Werdet is
horrible to me. Another deception about which I must keep silence,
another wound I must receive, more calumnies to listen to calmly.
There is no publisher possible for me so long as he is a publisher
of the publishing _race_. I made every sacrifice for that man, and
now he kills me, he refuses to join in taking measures for our common
interests. I must be willing to lose thirty thousand more francs and be
accused of having wrecked a man for whom I have used all my resources,
put my silver in pawn, lent my signature, etc., and written fifteen
12mo volumes and six 8vo volumes in the course of two years! He's a
sparrow's head on the body of a child!

I must now come to the selfishness of a man who works, not for himself,
but for his creditors. This is the third trial of my life. After this,
my experience ought to be complete. I am expecting Werdet on Sunday.
If he has good sense matters may still be arranged. But he's a perfect
child. After the third month I judged the man to whom I had intrusted
the material interests of my works. But these are secrets one keeps to
one's self. I hoped he would follow my advice; but no! he is like a
child with a sparrow's head, and, over and above it all, as obstinate
as a donkey. Moreover, he has the fatal defect of saying "yes" and
doing the contrary, or else he forgets what he promises.

I am much distressed; all this will help to publish calumnies which
Werdet is already assisting, for he finds it convenient to say that he
fails because of me.

Well, adieu. Remember that I never read over my letters; I have barely
time to write them between two proofs. If anything shocks you, pardon
it. A thousand tender regards. Do not forget to remember me to all.
Write me regularly. If you knew what one of your letters is to me in my
life of toil, you would write out of charity.



TOURS, November 23, 1836.

After the great struggle that I have just maintained, and of which you
have been sole confidant, I felt the need of returning to the _cara
patria_, to rest like a child on the bosom of its mother.

If you find a gap in my letters, you must attribute it to what has
just been taking place, of which you shall now be told in a few words.
_All my debts are paid_; I mean those that harassed me. The prospect
that promised good by a loan failed; everything about me became more
serious, more inflamed. During this month writs, protests, sheriffs,
crowded upon me; I truly think that a stout volume in-folio could be
made of that literature of misfortune.

Then, when flames surrounded me on every side, when all had failed me
on the side of succour, when no friend could or perhaps would save me,
before renouncing France and going to find a country in Russia, in the
Ukraine, I attempted a last effort; and that effort was crowned with
a success which will redouble the bitterness of my enemies. God grant
that you will divine all the agony that lies on this simple page, for
then you will indeed feel pity for your poor moujik.

Nothing still shone on the horizon in this great shipwreck of all my
ambitions but the _una fides_, the principle of which is _adoremus in
æternum_.

I went to find a speculator named Victor Bohain, to whom I had done
some very disinterested services. He immediately called in the man who
had drawn Chateaubriand out of trouble, and a capitalist who has of
late done a publishing business. Here is the agreement that came out of
our four heads:--

1. They gave me fifty thousand francs to pay my urgent debts.

2. They secure me, for the first year, fifteen hundred francs a month.
The second year, I may have three thousand monthly; and the fourth,
four thousand, up to the fifteenth year, if I supply them with a
certain number of volumes. We are in partnership for fifteen years.
We are not author and publishers, but associates, partners. I bring
to them the management of all my books made or to be made for fifteen
years. My three associates agree to advance all costs and give me half
the profits above the cost of the volume. My eighteen, twenty-four, or
forty-eight thousand francs a year and the fifty thousand francs paid
down are charged upon my profits.

Such is the basis of the treaty which delivers me forever from
newspapers, publishers, and lawsuits; these gentlemen being substituted
for me in all my rights as to management, sale, etc. They share the
profits of my pen with me, like all other profits of sale. It is
like a farm on shares, where my intellect is the soil, with this
difference,--that I, the owner, have no costs or risks, and that I
finger my profits without anxiety.

This agreement is a great deal more advantageous than that of M. de
Chateaubriand, beside whom speculation places me; for I sell nothing of
my future; whereas for one hundred thousand francs, and twelve thousand
francs a year, rising to twenty-five thousand when he published
anything, M. de Chateaubriand gave up everything.

I would not send you word of all this until the papers were signed.
They were signed on Saturday, 19th, and I started for Tours the 20th;
and now, after one day's rest, I send you this little scrap of a
letter, scribbled in haste.

I have no doubt that between now and spring we shall employ the means
I discovered of preventing piracy; and if I make a journey on that
account, God and you alone know with what rapidity I shall go to
Wierzchownia to tell you all that time, business, cares, and the narrow
limits of a letter, have prevented me from putting, as yet, into my
correspondence, smothered by so many causes!

I am very uneasy about you and yours. It is now an immense time since I
have received any word from you. It has been a torture the more to add
to all my other pains and distresses. You have moments of cruelty which
make me doubt your friendship; then, when I fancy you may be ill, that
your little Anna is a cause of anxiety, or that--that--etc, then my
head decamps!

I was all the more obliged to come here because the National Guard, for
whom I have ten more days of prison to do, worries me horribly. The
grocers and gendarmes are at my heels. I have not been able to go to
my dear Italian Opera for fear they should arrest me. At this moment I
must finish "Illusions Perdues" in order to be done with Werdet, and
the third _dizain_; also two works for the "Presse" and two for the
"Figaro." After which, my pen is free, and my new treaty will go into
execution. Now, as Werdet is much disposed to torment me, I must give
him his devil of a volume as soon as may be.

I shall have a hard year, because, to reach a tolerable condition, I
must complete what my pen already owes; and besides that, show a value
of ten volumes to my associates. Until I do that, I shall be miserable.

After having killed my janissaries (creditors), I must, like Mahmoud,
introduce a vast reform into my States. So here I am in my garret,
having paid all, evacuated the rue Cassini, and keeping no one but
Auguste and a boy for all service. I have resolved never to dine from
home and to continue my monk's life for three years.

I left Paris so hurriedly that I have not brought with me the sacred
seal, nor the autograph I wanted to send you; this will prove to you
the perturbations of my triumph.

Three days hence I shall go, I think, to Rochecotte, to see the
Duchesse de Dino, and the Prince de Talleyrand, whom I have never seen;
and you know how I desire to see the witty turkey who plucked the eagle
and made it tumble into the ditch of the house of Austria. As for
Madame de Dino, I have already met her at Madame Appony's.

I finished this very morning "L'Enfant Maudit." You will not recognize
that poor nugget; it is chased, mounted, and set with pearls. Read it
again in the "Études Philosophiques" with "Le Secret des Ruggieri" and
"Le Martyr Calviniste," and ask yourself what sort of iron head it was
that could fight and write and suffer all at once. I wrote "La Vieille
Fille" in the midst of these worries, struggles, and preoccupations.

Have you sometimes prayed God for me, with all the force of your
beautiful, ingenuous soul, that I might obtain some sort of
tranquillity?--for I still owe the sums I owed before. But I have no
longer to find them. This mode of payment leaves me my time free and
relieves me of worry. I spare you the details of the agreement, which
has been the object of long examination by my lawyers, and business
agents, very devoted men, who think it good and honourable.

You could never believe how I miss the bulletin of your calm and
solitary life, what interest I take in that life, and what peace the
contemplation of it sheds upon my agitated life. Either it is very bad
of you to cut me off, or you are ill; on each side anxiety, thinking
that you suffer or that your friendship diminishes.

Well, adieu. I meant to write you only one word: there is truce between
misfortune and me. But when once I begin to talk to you, the pen is
never heavy in my fingers. I wish you all mercies in your life, for
this letter and its wishes will reach you, I suppose, about Christmas
day. Many amiable things to M. Hanski, and a kiss to your dear Anna on
the forehead.

I return to my corrections, for I must finish "Illusions Perdues" for
December 10, in default of which I shall fall back into lawsuits.

La Grenadière has escaped me; it is sold; but the cruel event that has
weighed me down this year has changed my desire for that poor cottage.
I could not live in it if I had it. I am looking for a vineyard where I
could build without the cost being much.



PARIS, December 1, 1836.

I have just returned from Touraine, where I wrote you the letter of
a man of business. You will know, at the moment when this letter is
racing along the roads, that you have no more anxieties to share in
relation to the financial affairs of the monk of Chaillot. I kneel
humbly at your feet and beg you to grant me plenary indulgence for all
the tears I have heretofore shed upon them.

You made me smile when you reproached me in your good letter (number
20) for not reading your prose attentively. If I read the Holy
Scriptures as I read your letters I should have to go and stand by
Saint-Jérôme; and if I read my own books in that way, there would be
no faults in them. You say that I do not answer certain things. As to
that, I can only be silent.

Now, before all, business. Poor Boulanger is an artist both proud and
poor, a noble and kind nature. As soon as I got any money I carried him
the five hundred francs, pretending that I had received them; for from
me, perhaps, he would not have taken them. Now that the matter concerns
me only, there is no hurry, and to say it once for all, you need only
send me a bill of exchange on Rothschild to my order. Now that you
have sent me the proper address, all is well. You will receive the
picture after our Exhibition, which begins in February. I have not the
courage to allow the copy only to be exhibited. Poor Boulanger would
die of grief. He sees a whole future in it. Since I wrote to you about
it many stern judges have seen it, and they all put this work above
many others. There was question of a poor engraver for the picture.
Planche went to see Boulanger and advised him to despise the thousand
francs offered, and wait the effect the picture would produce in the
Salon,--assuring him he would then have the best engravers and a better
price at his command. There's a little of Titian and Rubens mingled in
it. The copy will be substituted for the original for my mother, who
will see no difference, and who, between ourselves, cares little for
it. You will therefore have the canvas on which Boulanger has put all
his strength and for which I posed thirty times.

What a misfortune that I cannot send you a beautiful frame that I
brought from Touraine and which is now being regilt! I got it for
twenty francs, and there is in it more than two hundred francs of days'
work paid fifty years ago to the carver who made it.

Since I wrote you I have been very ill. All these distresses,
discussions, toils, and fatigues produced, at Saché, a nervous,
sanguineous attack. I was at death's door for one whole day. But much
sleep and the woods of Saché put me right in three days.

In your letter I find a reproach which, between ourselves, is serious;
that relating to an evening at the Opera. You must know me very little
if you do not think that after the sorrow that fell upon me my mourning
is eternal, at every moment; that it follows me in all my joys, at
my work, everywhere. Oh! for pity's sake, since you alone can touch
that wound in my heart, never touch it roughly. My affections of that
kind are immutable; they are held in a part of my heart and soul where
nothing else enters. There is room there for two sentiments only; it
was needful for the first to terminate, as it has, before the other
could take all its strength; and now that other is infinite. Of what
good would be the power with which I am invested if not to make within
myself a sanctuary, pure and ever ardent, where nothing of outside
agitation can penetrate? The image placed on high upon that rock, pure,
inaccessible, can never be taken down; and if she herself descended
from it, she could never prevent her place from being marked there
forever.

Under this point of view, whether I go to hear "Guillaume Tell" or
remain to weep in my chimney-corner, all is immutable in that centre
where few words ever come. But, dear, remember also that I am not
worldly; I am so little that that the few steps I take in society
assume a gravity that alarms me. Once more, use your analytical mind
and ask yourself, writing down on paper the dates of my works, what
time I should have to write them if I allowed myself a pleasure, a
festivity, a distraction. Since the winter began, which is now two
months, I have been but twice to the Opera, and each time with Madame
Delannoy and her daughter, Madame Visconti being absent.

Now that I have gained the relief of having no more financial
anxieties, I have exchanged those cares for incessant labour. The ten
days a month that material struggle cost me will now be employed in
work; for, to gather the fruits of this new arrangement, I must not
leave for eighteen months this garret that you think so salubrious. It
is not. The dormer-window is too high up; I cannot look out of it. As
soon as I can, I shall go down to work on the second floor, where the
air is better, more abundant.

Any other than myself would be frightened at my _pen obligations_. I
must give within the next three months: "La Haute Banque" and "La Femme
Supérieure" to the "Presse;" "César Birotteau" and "Les Artistes" to
the "Figaro;" publish the "Illusions Perdues" and the third _dizain_,
and prepare for April the "Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée" without
counting what I have to do on the third and fourth Parts of the "Études
Philosophiques." Believe me, the man who achieves such work has no time
for puerile amusements. It is now three years that I have not taken a
_penful_ of ink without seeing your name; for accident made me keep
one of your visiting cards, and I placed it on my inkstand. You will
not believe that since that time I have never become _blasé_ on the
infantile pleasure of seeing your name married to all my thoughts.
I put it there to be able to write correctly your name and address,
and yet you reproach me with not reading your letters properly! You
understand that I respect too much the pure friendship that you allow
me to feel for you to talk to you about things that I despise; in the
first place, it would give me a conceited air; and you know whether I
have ever been accused of conceit.

Seriously, I live much at Wierzchownia. I am interested in all you
tell me; your visits to neighbours, your affairs, your pleasures,
your park which extends to right and left; all that occupies my mind.
Read this as I write it, with a childlike heart; for these affairs of
yours are my affairs, as, perhaps, you and M. Hanski make mine yours,
in the evenings, deploring my troubles--now over. If you are sad, I
am saddened; when your letter is gay I am gay. Solitude produces this
quick exchange of affections. The soul has the faculty of living on the
spot that pleases it. Certainly, it needed the desire to be with you,
at least in painting, to make me bear the loss of thirty days which
Boulanger required. You alone are in the secret of my affairs, as you
are in the secret of what Madame de Berny was to me. You alone know my
mourning and a loss which can never be repaired; for here the sky is
inclement, it "is too high," as you say in Poland, and you are too far
off. But keep me, very whole and without diminution, that affection
which makes me less sad in sad hours, and gayer in the bright ones.
Remember that I have no life but one of toil, that I am not in the
midst of the talk that is made about me, that the emotions of fame do
not reach me, that I live by a little hope and sun, in a hidden nest!

The autograph of Mademoiselle Mars is addressed to me. It relates
to her part in "La Grande Mademoiselle." There's the mysterious
simplified. As soon as I have the "George Sand" I will send it to you;
but I should like you also to have the "Aurore Dudevant," so that you
should possess her under both forms.

Continue, I beg you, to tell me all you think of me, without paying
heed to my laments. You are right; better any suffering than
dissimulation. But, seriously speaking, I see that you listen too much
to your first impulse; you are, forgive me, violent and excitable, and
in your first anger you are capable of breaking things without knowing
whether they can be mended. I have put the word _seriously_ to give
weight to my jesting. Do not therefore allow yourself to be carried
away by the tattle of calumny; if any one were to come and tell me--as
they did you--that you had married Alexandre Dumas, do you not think I
should have laughed heartily--all the while regretting that a life so
beautiful and noble should become a subject for tattle? Yes, seriously,
I should always regret to see calumny brush the noble forehead of a
woman, even if it left nothing behind it. In that I am just as positive
as M. Hanski in my opinions. We men, we can defend ourselves; we have
a stronger flight, which can put us above the rubbish of the press
and the slanders of society. But you! you, who live calm and solitary
within the precincts of a home, without our forum and our sword, truly
it pains me when I know that a woman who is indifferent to me is made
the object of calumny, or even ridicule. From you to me, you know
whether in my judgments I am actuated by the narrow sentiments with
which artists and writers usually speak of their comrades. I live apart
from all such matters. Well, D... is a smirched man, a mountebank, and
worse than that, a man of no talent. They have again offered me the
cross, and I have again refused it.

I flattered myself that the post would carry to you more quickly than
usual the letter in which I announced to you the end of the money
troubles that caused you so much pain. Have I sufficiently proved my
friendship in telling you sorrows that I concealed from the rest of the
world? Now, I shall have only my work to talk to you about.

When I see you I will tell you in detail about these days of penury,
these fights of which you know only the main features, for I sent you
merely bulletins. If there is some confusion in my letters it is that
their dates are irregular; I quit them and return to them as my hurried
occupations will allow. My way of working is still so difficult!

I entreat you, read each letter as if we were at the day on which it
was written; and remember that nothing can prevail against her to whom
it is addressed. It grieves me that, apropos of this joy set into the
brass of my work, you should speak of hopes being lost! We will explain
all that later, for, if I accomplish my tasks by the months of May or
June, I shall take my flight to your great plain, and you will see
your white serf otherwise than in painting. Then you shall see him
famous, for by that time I shall have published: "César Birotteau," "La
Torpille," the third _dizain_, "Illusions Perdues," "La Haute Banque,"
"La Femme Supérieure," "Les Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée,"--all great
and fine paintings added to my gallery.

What an outcry has been made against "La Vieille Fille"! When you laugh
on reading it, you will ask yourself what the manners and morals of
these French journalists are--the most infamous that I know of!

I cannot tell you much that is new about my life; for my life is
eighteen hours' daily work in a garret, where there is a bed (I never
leave it), and six hours' sleep. My health will require great care,
because it is beginning to be much impaired by the toil and the great
anxieties to which I have been a prey. What I say is based on serious
facts. I must submit to physicians, humbly, or I shall quickly be
destroyed.

Without vanity of author, _yes_, re-read the "Lys;" the work gains by
being read a second time. But I am not deceived about the blemishes
that are still in it. But they shall disappear; although the angel who
is no more declared it without a fault.

You must never forget, dear, that I have _all_ to paint, and that each
subject needs different colours. We can't relate Mademoiselle Cormon,
the Chevalier de Valois, Suzanne, and du Bousquier in the style of
Madame de Mortsauf, especially before a herd of envious beings who will
say that I am aging unless I differentiate myself.

You send me wishes for my happiness; pray for me only that God will
support me in my strength for work and in my resignation. Solitude
with one hope--that is my life; it was that of the Fathers in the
wilderness. Work is the staff with which I walk, indifferent to all,
except the thought that is placed in the sanctuary. _Una fides._
Outside of that, there are nought but distractions in which the heart
has no share. I mean the lifted heart, which is full of grief, but in
which lives a sacred hope. You do not wholly know that vast domain; if
you did you would not scold me.

In "Illusions Perdues" there is a young girl named Eve, who, to my
eyes, is the most delightful creation that I have ever made.

Adieu; here's a half-day stolen from proofs, business, work. But in
writing to you I see you, just as if I were studying the Almanach de
Gotha at your house in Geneva; and when I think of that halt made in my
sorrows, I fancy that all about me is gold and that I have nothing to
do.

I will tell you another time of the visit I paid to Madame de Dino
and M. de Talleyrand at Rochecotte in Touraine. M. de Talleyrand is
amazing. He had two or three gushes of ideas that were prodigious. He
invited me strongly to go and see him at Valençay, and if he lives I
shall not fail to do so. I still have Wellington and Pozzo di Borgo to
see, so that my collection of antiques may be complete.

Anna's dog is always on my desk. Tell her that her _horse_ commends
himself to her memory. A thousand compliments to the inhabitants
of your kingdom. Are your affairs doing well? is M. Hanski more at
liberty? are his enterprises successful? You cut me off too many
details of your proprietary mechanism. When you think of it, trace me a
few itineraries of how to go to you. I have my reasons for wishing to
know the various routes that lead there.

Well, again adieu, and tender wishes for all that concerns you. I am
in terror when I think of you on the roads where there are wolves and
Jewish coachmen.

This week I give Boulanger his last sitting. As soon as I have finished
"Illusions Perdues" I will write to you. Till then I am caught in a
vice, day and night.




V.


LETTERS DURING 1837.



PARIS, January 1, 1837.

To-day I have had a great happiness; some one came to see me whom I
have not seen for eternities, and who has given me such pleasure that
I have been sitting, all day long, dreamily talking to her;[1] I never
wearied of it. She has made a long journey, but a fortunate one. She
is not changed. Do you not think there are beings in whom resides a
larger portion of our life than in ourselves? You will know this being
some day. I will not have you like her better than I do, but you cannot
prevent yourself from being friendly, were it only on account of my
fanaticism for her. She is a being so good, so constant, so grand, of
so lofty a mind, so true, so naïve, so pure! These are the beings who
serve as foils to all that we see about us. I cannot prevent myself
from telling you of my joy as if you knew her, but I perceive that I
am talking Greek to you. Forgive me that folly. There are, as Chérubin
says, certain moments when we talk to the air, and it is better to talk
to the heart of a friend.

Then this good day came in the midst of my hardest work, for "Illusions
Perdues" must be finished under penalty of lawsuits and summons; at a
moment, too, when I am very weary of the toils of this hard year, so
hard!

I received some days ago your number 21. I have many things to say to
you. But time! when one has to pay fifty francs a day for every day's
delay. I see the moment when I shall escape this vile abyss; but my
wings are weary hovering over it.

You say so little of "La Vieille Fille" that I think the book must have
displeased you. Say so boldly; you have a voice in the chapter; and
I'll tell you my reasons.

It will be difficult to judge of "Illusions Perdues." I can only give
the beginning of the book, and three years must pass (as for "L'Enfant
Maudit") before I can continue it.

I have meditated bringing you my portrait in person. If you hear the
clack of a whip, the French clack, resounding in your courtyard, do
not be much surprised. I need a month's complete separation from
ideas, fatigues, in short, from all there is in France, and I long for
Wierzchownia as for an oasis in the desert. None but myself know the
good that Switzerland did me. Nothing but the question of money can
hinder me.

I was mistaken in my estimation of my debts. They gave me fifty
thousand francs; but I needed fourteen thousand more, and seven
thousand for an endorsement imprudently given to Werdet. But I feel
that the stage and two fine works will save me. To make the two plays,
I need to hide in some desert place that no one knows of; and this is
what I should like: to be one or two months buried in your snows. The
more snow there were, the happier I should be. But these are crazy
projects when I see the thickness of the cable that moors me here.

[Footnote 1: Madame Hanska's miniature by Daffinger, a copy of which
she had sent him.]


January 15, 1837.

I have received another letter from you, in which you manifest anxiety
about the letters you have written me. Do not fear, I have received
them all.

The interruption of this letter is easily explained. I have been ill
the whole time. Finally I had what I seemed to have been in search
of, an inflammation of the bowels, which is scarcely quieted to-day.
I still suffer, but that is a small matter. I have had constant
suffering, and I greatly feared an inflammation for my poor brain after
so painful a year, painful in so many ways, hard in toil, and cruel in
emotions, full of distresses. There was nothing surprising in such an
illness. However, though I can, as yet, digest only milk, all is well
and I resume my work.

"Illusions Perdues" appears this week. On the 17th I have a meeting
to close up all claims from Madame Bêchet and Werdet. So there is one
cause of torment the less. I am now going to work on "La Haute Banque"
and "César Birotteau," and after that it will be but a small matter
to free my pen. All will then be done; and I shall enter upon the
execution of my new conventions, which only oblige me to six volumes a
year,--to me an oasis from the moment that I have no longer the worry
of the financial struggle. As for the fifteen thousand francs I still
owe, I can quickly make head against them with a few plays. Besides,
I have always hopes of the London affair. But I won't count any more
except on that which _is_.

Your last letter did me a good for which I thank you; I was in the
calm state produced by forced confinement to my bed, and the details
of your life delighted me. I think you very happy to be alone. Would
you believe that, in spite of my illness, I was more harassed than ever
about business? But all will now be pacificated. I shall only have to
work, dear monitor. You speak golden words, but they have no other
merit than to tell me more elegantly just what I tell myself. Moreover,
you make me out little defects which I have not, to give yourself the
pleasure of scolding me. No one is less extravagant than I; no one is
willing to live with more economy. But reflect that I work too much
to busy myself with certain details, and, in short, that I had rather
spend five to six thousand francs a year than marry to have order in
my household; for a man who undertakes what I have undertaken either
marries to have a quiet existence, or accepts the wretchedness of La
Fontaine and Rousseau. For pity's sake, don't talk to me of my want of
order; it is the consequence of the independence in which I live, and
which I desire to keep.

To rid myself on this theme of all solicitation on the part of those,
men and women, who worry me about it, I have given out my programme,
and declared that, although I have passed the fatal age of thirty-six,
I wish a wife in keeping with my years, of the highest nobility,
educated, witty, rich, as able to live in a garret as to play the
part of ambassadress, without having to endure the impertinences of
Vienna--like a person you have known--and willing to live without
complaint as the wife of a poor book-workman; also I must be specially
adored, espoused for my defects even more than for my few good
qualities; and this wife must be grand enough, through intelligence, to
understand that in the dual life there must be that sacred liberty by
which all proofs of affection are voluntary and not the effect of duty
(inasmuch as I abhor duty in matters of the heart); and, finally, that
when this phœnix, this only woman who can render the author of the
"Physiologie du Mariage" unhappy, is found,--I'll think about it. So
now I live in perfect tranquillity; yet not without my griefs. When the
brain and the imagination are both wearied, my life is more difficult
than it was in the past. There's a blank that saddens me. The adored
friend is here no longer. Every day I have occasion to deplore the
eternal absence. Would you believe that for six months I have not been
able to go to Nemours to bring away the things that ought to be in my
sole possession? Every week I say to myself, "It shall be this week!"
That sorrowful fact paints my life as it is. Ah! how I long for the
liberty of going and coming. No, I am in the galleys!

Yes, I am sorry you have not written me your opinion of "La Vieille
Fille." I resumed my work this morning; I am obeying the last words
that Madame de Berny wrote me: "I can die; I am sure that you have upon
your brow the crown I wished to see there. The 'Lys' is a sublime work,
without spot or flaw. Only, the death of Madame de Mortsauf did not
need those horrible regrets; they injure that beautiful letter which
she wrote."

Therefore, to-day I have piously effaced about a hundred lines,
which, according to many persons, disfigure that creation. I have not
regretted a single word, and each time that my pen was drawn through
one of them never was heart of man more deeply stirred. I thought I
saw that grand and sublime woman, that angel of friendship, before
me, smiling as she smiled to me when I used a strength so rare,--the
strength to cut one's own limb off and feel neither pain nor regret in
correcting, in conquering one's self.

Oh! _cara_, continue to me those wise, pure counsels, so disinterested!
If you knew with what religion I believe in what true friendship says.

This counsel came to me several days after the enormous labour those
figures, enormous themselves, necessitated. I waited six months till
my own critical judgment could be exercised on my work. I re-read
the letter, weeping; then I took up my work and I saw that the angel
was right. Yes, the regrets should be only suspected; it is the Abbé
Dominis, and not Henriette, who should say the words that say all: "Her
tears accompanied the fall of the white roses which crowned the head
of that married Jephtha's daughter, now fallen one by one." Religion
alone can express, chastely, poetically, with the melancholy of the
Orient, this situation. Besides, what would be the good of Madame de
Mortsauf's testament if she expressed herself so savagely at death?
It was true in nature, but false in a figure so idealized. There are
several defects still in the work. They are in Félix. The animosity
of people in society has pointed them out to me; but they are very
difficult to obviate. I strive to; the character of Félix is sacrificed
in this work; much adroitness is needed to re-establish it. I shall
succeed, however.

_Cara_, I have still at least seven years' labour, if I wish to achieve
the work undertaken. I need some courage to embrace such a life,
especially when it is deprived of the pleasures which a man desires
most. Age advances! I have in my soul a little of the rage that I have
just taken out from that of Madame de Mortsauf.

Adieu; I shall now re-read your last two letters and see if I have in
this--so rambling in consequence of interruptions--forgotten to answer
any of your points; and I will see, too, if I have any fact to tell you
about my life.

We have suddenly lost Gérard. You will never have known his wonderful
salon. What homage was rendered to the genius, to the goodness of
heart, to the mind of that man at his funeral. All the most illustrious
persons were present; the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés could not
hold them. The first gentleman [the Duc de Maillé] and the first
painter of King Charles X. have quickly followed their master. There is
something touching in that.

I shall write to you on the day when I finish the terrible twelve
volumes I have written between our first meeting at Neufchâtel and this
year. Why can I not go and see you, that I might close this work, as I
began it, in the light of your noble forehead!

Adieu; Colonel Frankowski is still here. That grieves me, because you
will not have your pretty _cassolette_ for New Year's day. It is on my
mantelpiece for the last three months. Well, _addio_; grant heaven that
I may go to Germany on the same business that may take me to England.
I shall know as to this in February. I should not consider a matter of
two hundred leagues. If I go to Stuttgard I shall go to Wierzchownia.

You know all I have to say to your little world of the Ukraine. Good
health above all; that is the prayer of those who have just been ill.



PARIS, February 10, 1837.

I have received your last sad letter, in which you tell me of the
illness and convalescence of M. Hanski from the prostration of the
grippe. I have, as to my own health, barring all danger however, the
same thing to tell you. Nearly the whole of my month of January was
taken up by an attack of very intense cholerine, which deprived me
of all energy and all my faculties. Then, after getting over that
semi-ridiculous illness, I was seized by the grippe, which kept me ten
days in bed.

So you have been practising the profession of nurse, _cara_, and
M. Hanski has been ill to the point of keeping his bed for a long
time,--he who went into the deserts of the Ukraine to lead a
patriarchal life. If I joke, it is because I imagine that by the time
my letter reaches you his convalescence will be over and all will be
well with him, and with you--for I am not ignorant of the nursing you
have just done; I know how fatiguing it is. In such cares about a
patient's bed, the limbs swell and cause dull pains which affect the
heart; I have nursed my mother.

Before my grippe I had, luckily, finished the last Part of the "Études
de Mœurs," or God knows what difficulties I should have fallen into!
So that brings the first twelve volumes of the "Études," begun at the
time of my visit to Geneva in 1834, to an end in January, 1837. I
am much grieved not to be able to make you a little visit after this
accomplishment of one of my hardest tasks. You accompanied "Eugénie
Grandet" with a smile; I would have liked to see the same smile on
"Illusions Perdues"--on the beginning and on the end of the way.

You are very right, you who know the empire that my work exercises on
my life, to let drop into a bottomless abyss all the follies that are
said about me, whether they come from a princess or a fish-woman. Did
not some one come and ask me if it was true I had married one of the
Ellslers, a dancer,--I, who cannot endure any of the people who set
foot upon the stage? But here, in Paris, in the same town with me, not
two steps away from me, they tell the most unheard-of things about me.
Some describe me as a monster of dissoluteness and debauchery, others
as a dangerous and vindictive animal whom every one should attack. I
could not tell you all they say of me. I am a spendthrift; sometimes a
lax man, sometimes an intractable one.

But let us leave such nonsense; it is enough that it weighs on me; it
would be too much to let it weigh upon our dear correspondence.

So now I am delivered from the most odious contract and the most odious
people in the world. The last Part was published a few days ago. It
contains "La Grande Bretèche" rearranged; that is to say, better framed
than it was originally, and accompanied by two other adventures. Also
"La Vieille Fille," one of my best things (in my opinion), though it
has roused a cloud of feuilletons against me. But Du Bousquier is as
fine an image of the men who managed affairs under the Republic and
became liberals under the Restoration as the Chevalier de Valois is of
the old remains of the Louis XV. period. Mademoiselle Cormon is a very
original creation, in my opinion. That is one of the figures which are
almost unapproachable for the novelist, on account of the few salient
points they offer to take hold of. But difficulties like these are
little appreciated, and I resign myself in such cases to having worked
for my own ideas.

"Illusions Perdues" is the introduction to a much more extensive work.
These barbarous editors, impelled by money considerations, insist
on their three hundred and sixty pages, no matter what they are.
"Illusions Perdues" required three volumes; there are still two to do,
which will be called "Un Grand Homme de Province à Paris;" this will,
later, be joined to "Illusions Perdues," when the first twelve volumes
are reprinted; just as the "Cabinet des Antiques" will conclude "La
Vieille Fille."

I am now going to take up the last thirteen volumes of the "Études de
Mœurs," which I hope will be finished in 1840.

You will notice a considerable lapse of time between my last letter and
this one; it was taken up by the sufferings (without danger) which my
two little consecutive illnesses caused me. I thought one would save me
from the other, but it was no such thing. I am still very miserable;
the cough is a horrid difficulty; it shakes me and kills me.

I dine to-morrow with Madame Kisseleff, who has promised to make me
know Madame Z..., of whom you have told me so much that I asked for
this dinner, before my grippe, at a beautiful ball given by Madame
Appony to which I went. It is the only one, for I go nowhere--except to
Madame Appony's great soirées, and to those seldom. I do not even go
to the Opera, and I do not dine out, except at certain dinners which
cannot be refused without losing supporters some day; like those of the
Sardinian ambassador, for instance. But except for such things I have
not been ten times in six months outside of my own home.


February 12.

My letter has been interrupted for two days; I have had business to
attend to, for I have still enormous difficulties about the remainder
of the debts I have not been able to pay off.

Madame Z... was not at the dinner. She was taken with grippe the night
before. This grippe stops everything. There are more than five hundred
thousand persons gripped. I have it still. We had the adorer of Madame
P..., Bernhard, Madame Hamelin, the Pole who is seeking treasures by
somnambulism, and a young relation of Madame Kisseleff who squints
badly, also Saint-Marsan. The dinner was quite gay.

I had met Madame Kisseleff the previous evening at the Princess
Schonberg's. A discussion arose about beautiful hands, and Madame
Kisseleff said to me that she and I knew the most beautiful hands in
the world; she meant yours, and I had the fatuity to colour up to my
ears, very innocently, for I find in you so many beautiful qualities,
and something so magnificent in head and figure, that I could not say
at that moment what your hands were like, and I coloured at my own
ignorance. I only know that they are small and plump.

I am writing at this moment, with fury, a thing for the stage, for
_there_ is my salvation. I must live by the stage and my prose
concurrently. It is called "La Première Demoiselle." I have chosen it
for my début because it is wholly bourgeoise. Picture to yourself a
house in the rue Saint-Denis (like La Maison du Chat qui pelote), in
which I shall put a dramatic and tragic interest of extreme violence.
No one has yet thought of bringing the adultery of the husband on
the stage, and my play is based on that grave matter of our modern
civilization. His mistress is in the house. No one has ever thought
of making a female Tartuffe; and the mistress will be Tartuffe in
petticoats; but the empire of _la première demoiselle_ over the master
will be much easier to conceive than that of Tartuffe over Orgon, for
the means of supremacy are much more natural and comprehensible.

In juxtaposition with these two passionate figures, there are an
oppressed mother and two daughters equally victims to the perfidious
tyranny of _la première demoiselle_ [forewoman]. The elder daughter
thinks it wise to cajole the forewoman, who has her supporter in the
house, for the bookkeeper loves her sincerely. The tyranny is so odious
to the mother and daughters that the younger daughter, from a principle
of heroism, desires to deliver her family by immolating herself. She
determines to poison the tyrant; nothing stops her. The attempt fails,
but the father, who sees to what extremities his children will go,
sees also that the forewoman cannot live under his roof, and that, in
consequence of this attempt, all family bonds are broken. He sends her
away; but, in the fifth act, he finds it so impossible to live without
this woman that he takes a portion of his fortune, leaves the rest to
his wife, and elopes with _la première demoiselle_ to America.

Those are the main features of the play. I do not speak of the details,
though they are, I think, as original as the characters, which have
not been, to my knowledge, in any other play. There is a scene of
the family judgment on the young girl; there is the scene of the
separation, etc.

I hope to finish it by March 1 and to see it played early in May. On
its success my journey will largely depend; for the day when I owe
nothing I shall have that liberty of going and coming for which I have
sighed so long.

I await with keen impatience for another letter to tell me how you are,
you and M. Hanski. As soon as I have ended my work and my deplorable
affairs you shall know it; I will tell you if I am satisfied with my
play and with my last compositions, which are now to be done, and
will take my nights and days for two months, for I must immediately
do for the "Figaro" "César Birotteau" and for the "Presse" "La Haute
Banque,"--two books that are quite important.

_Addio, cara._ Be always confident in your ideas; walk with courage
in your own way. It seems to me that all trials have their object and
their reward; otherwise, human life would have no meaning. As for
me, the last pleasure I told you of--the coming of that friend so
unexpectedly--proved to me that the sufferings through which I have
passed were the price of that great pleasure. In all lives there must
be such things.

Adieu; I send you this time a precious autograph, Lamartine; you will
see that the verses are so chosen that they will not be ridiculous in a
collection.



FLORENCE, April 10, 1837.

In one month I have travelled very rapidly through part of France, one
side of Switzerland, to Milan, Venice, Genoa, and after being detained
by inadvertence in quarantine, here I am for the last two days in
Florence, where, before seeing anything whatever, I rushed to Bartolini
to see your bust. This was chiefly the object of this last stage of
my journey, for I must be in Paris ten days hence. The desire to see
Venice, and my quarantine made me spend more time than I could allow
on that trip, and also made me regret not having gone to you. But the
season [the condition of the roads] did not permit it, nor my finances.

The moment the publication of the last part of the "Études de Mœurs"
was over, my strength suddenly collapsed. I had to distract my mind;
and I foresee it will be so every fourth or fifth month. My health is
detestable, disquieting; but I tell this only to you. My mind feels
the effect of it. I am afraid of not being able to finish my work.
Everywhere the want of happiness pursues me, and takes from me the
enjoyment of the finest things. Venice and Switzerland are the two
creations, one human, the other divine, which seem to me, until now, to
be without any comparison, and to stand outside of all ordinary data.
Italy itself seems to me a land like any other.

I have travelled so fast that nowhere had I time to write to you. My
thoughts belonged to you wholly, but I felt a horror of an inkstand
and my pen. The loss I have met with is immense. The void it leaves
might be filled by a _present_ friendship, but afar, in spite of your
letters, grief assails me at all hours, especially when at work. That
other soul which counselled me, which saw all, which was always the
point of departure of so many things, is lacking to me. I begin to
despair of any happy future. Between that soul, absent for evermore,
and the hopes to which I cling in some sweet hours, there is, believe
me, an abyss above which I bend incessantly, and often the vertigo of
misfortune mounts to my head. Every day bears away with it some shred
of that gaiety which enabled me to surmount so many difficulties. This
journey is a sad trial. I am alone, without strength.

You will probably receive my statue in Carrara marble (half-nature,
that is, about three feet high, and marvellously like me) before the
portrait of that rascal Boulanger, who, after the Exhibition, still
wants three months to make the copy. I am vexed. He has five good
paying portraits and an order for Versailles of one hundred and twenty
feet of painting, which absorb him, and, as a friend, he makes me wait.
So it may be that I shall bring the portrait to you myself; for, as I
see it is impossible for me to work more than four months together,
I shall start for the Ukraine in August, through Tyrol and Hungary,
returning by Dresden.

I have a thousand things to tell you. But first, in return for my
statue, I beg M. Hanski to send me a little line authorizing Bartolini
to make me a copy of your bust. If M. Hanski will grant me this
permission, I shall ask Bartolini to make it half size, so as to put it
on my table in the study where I write. That dimension is the one in
which my statue is made, and all artists, Bartolini himself, think it
more favorable for physiognomy; it has more expression. It is better
for the imagination to enlarge a head than for the eyes to see it in
its exact proportions.

My statue has been a work of affection, and it bears the stamp of
it. It was done in Milan by an artist named Puttinati; he would take
nothing for it. I had great trouble to pay even the costs and the
marble. But I shall take him to Paris with me; I will show him Paris
and order a group of Séraphita rising to heaven between Wilfrid and
Minna. The pedestal shall be made of all the species and terrestrial
things of which she is the product. I shall put aside two thousand
francs a year during the three years of its execution, and that will
suffice to pay for it.

Venice, which I saw for only five days, two of which were rainy,
enraptured me. I do not know if you ever noticed on the Grand Canal,
just after the Palazzo Fini, a little house with two gothic windows;
the whole facade being pure gothic.[1] Every day I made them stop
before it, and often I was moved to tears. I conceived the happiness
that two persons might obtain,--living there together, apart from all
the world. Switzerland is costly, but in Venice one needs so little
money to live! The price of the house would not be more than two years'
rent of the Villa Diodati, which you admired so much on account of Lord
Byron. It would just suffice for a little household, such as that of
a poor poet, busy in the hours he must ravish from felicity, to keep
that felicity ever equal in its strength. The summers could be passed
on the Lake of Garda in a house as tiny. Twelve thousand francs a year
would give this luxury. May the angel who so fatally has departed
forgive me, but, now that all is over, I may say to you that the
happiness to which Nature puts an end in our lifetime is not complete
happiness. Twenty years, and more, of difference in age is too great.
We ought to be able to grow old together; and it was permissible in me,
before that house, to wish for the years that I once had, but with a
woman who would be like _her_, with youth added.

The future and the past are melted thus into one emotion, which is
something that of Tantalus, for I have the conviction that I alone am
an obstacle to that beautiful life. My engagements are, for at least
two years to come, a barrier of honour; and when I think that in two
years I shall be forty, and that until that age all my life will have
been toil, toil that uses up and destroys, it is difficult to believe
that I can ever be the object of a passion. Yes, the ice that study
heaps about us may be preservative, but each thought casts snow upon
our heads; and evening finds us with no flowers in our hands. Ah!
believe me, a poor poet as sincerely loving as I shed bitter tears
before that little house.

Yes, I cannot wrong Madame Delannoy, that second mother, who has
intrusted to me as much as twenty-six thousand francs, nor my own
mother whose life is mortgaged on my pen, nor those gentlemen who have
just invested in my inkstand nearly seventy thousand francs. Ah! if
I could win for myself two months of tranquillity at Wierzchownia,
where I might do one or two fine plays, all my life would be changed!
Those two months, so precious, I have just spent, you will tell me, in
travel. Yes, but I started only because I was without ideas, without
strength, my brain exhausted, my soul dejected, worn-out with my last
struggles, which, believe me, were dreadful, horrible! There came a
day of despair when I went to get a passport to Russia. There seemed
nothing for me but to ask you for shelter for a year or two, abandoning
to fools and enemies my reputation, my conscience, my life, which they
would have rent and blasted until the day that I returned to triumph.
But had they known where I was--and they would have known--what would
have been said! That prospect stopped me. I can own it to you, now
that the tempest is lulled, and I have only a few more efforts to
make to reach tranquillity. During this month, though my soul is not
refreshed, at least my brain is rested. I hope, on my return, that
"César Birotteau," the third _dizain_, and "La Haute Banque" may lift
my name to the stars, higher than before. I begin to have nostalgia for
my inkstand, my study, my proofs. That which caused me nausea before I
came away now smiles to me. Moreover, the memory of that little house
in Venice will give me courage; it has made me conceive that after
my liberation fortune will signify nothing; that I shall have enough
by writing one book a year,--and that I may then unite both work and
happiness in that Villa Diodati on the water!

[Footnote 1: Palazzo Contarini-Fasān.--TR.]


April 11.

I have just seen several of the _salas_ in the Pitti. Oh! that portrait
of Margherita Doni by Raffaelle! I stood confounded before it. Neither
Titian, nor Rubens, nor Tintoret, nor Velasquez--no brush can approach
such perfection. I also saw the Pensiero, and I understood your
admiration. I have had much pleasure in looking at what, two years ago,
you admired. I caught up your thoughts. To-morrow I am going to the
Medici gallery, though I have not fully seen the Pitti; I perceive that
one ought to stay months in Florence, whereas I have but hours. Economy
requires that I return by Livorno, Genoa, Milan, and the Splugen. That
is the shortest route in reality, though the longest to the eye; for
one can go from Florence to Milan in thirty-six hours; and from Milan
by the Splugen there are but eighty relays to Paris. By this route I
can see Neufchâtel, and I own I have a tender affection for the street
and the courtyard where I had the happiness of meeting you. I shall go
and see the Île Saint-Pierre and the Crêt, and your house; after which
I shall take that route through the Val de Travers which seemed to me
so beautiful on my way to Neufchâtel.

I am kept here at the mercy of a steamboat which may call for me
to-morrow or six days hence; it is very irregular. If I had not been
detained for this horrible quarantine in a shocking lazaretto (which I
could not have imagined as a prison for brigands), I should have had
enough time to see Florence well. I went yesterday to the Cascine,
where you took your walks; but the day was not fine. Bad weather has
pursued me, everywhere it has snowed and rained; but my troubles began
by losing my travelling companion. I was to have had Théophile Gautier,
that man whose mind so pleases you; he was to share with me the costs
of the journey and write a pendant to his "Voyage en Belgique;" but the
necessity of doing the Exhibition, rendering an account of all that
spoilt canvas in the Louvre, obliged him to remain in Paris. Italy has
lost by it; for he is the only man capable of comprehending her and
saying something fresh about her; but when I make the journey again he
will come. We will choose our time better.

I have met Frankowski twice, once in Milan and again in Venice; he
will take to you my New-Year's souvenir, or else he will send it to
you. Each time that I have seen him the acquaintance ripens. I think
him a man of honour and high integrity. He is a Pole of the _vieille
roche_; his sentiments are frank. You could, that is, M. Hanski could
do him a great service. You have property, I think, that is difficult
to manage, and which, until now, has been badly managed by unfaithful
stewards. Well, I think this brave colonel does not know where to turn
for a living. He came to Paris to see what he could do with a novel.
A man must be at the end of his hopes to land himself in a foreign
country where publishers are refusing two or three hundred manuscripts
a year. He asked me for a letter to M. de Metternich,--as if I could
do anything for him with the prince, whom I never saw, as you know.
However delicate such business is, if M. Hanski is thinking to send
an honest man to manage his distant property and make it profitable,
giving an honourable share to him who would bring it under cultivation,
he might save a married man who, I think, despairs of his present
position, and would blow his brains out rather than fail in the
sternest honour. In case M. Hanski should think of trying this colonel,
write me a line; I will then write to Frankowski to know if the place
suits him; and if he answers affirmatively, I will give him a note for
M. Hanski. Besides, the time this correspondence would take brings me
to the period of my visit to Poland, and he could be useful to me as a
guide in your country. I have a conviction that M. Hanski would do a
good business for himself in doing this good action. I have had means
of studying the colonel; and besides, M. Hanski is too prudent not to
study his compatriot himself. When you see Frankowski, don't speak
to him of the letter he asked of me for Metternich, for he asked it
in a letter that was mad with despair, and I have known so well the
despair of an honest man struggling against misfortune that I divined
everything. I hope that this idea of mine may reach you in time. But,
in all such cases, one should always save a man of honour the terrible
shock of an interest caused only by compassion. This sentiment, in me,
is stripped of what makes it so wounding; but others are not expected
to know that. If all the world knew my heart, of what value would be
the opening of it to those I love? So after explaining all this to
you, you will read it to M. Hanski, and he will do what he thinks
proper. But, in any case, it would be better to find an honest man to
manage his estates well than to sell them; for after the late rise in
value of the lands of Europe there is no doubt that those who possess
them, in whatever part of Europe they may be, will have in the course
of some years an enormous capital.

Not knowing that I should be detained in quarantine, and thinking to
be absent only one month, I ordered my letters to be kept for me; so
that I am without news of you since the last of February. Do you know,
this seemed so hard to me that I inquired at Genoa if there was a
vessel going to Odessa; they told me it took a month to go from Genoa
to Odessa. Then I gazed into the sky at the point where the Ukraine
must be, and I sent it a sorrowful farewell. At that moment I was
capable, had it taken but twelve days to go to Odessa, of going to see
you and not returning to Paris without my play. But then my debts, my
obligations came back to my memory. What a life! Fame, when I have it,
and if I have it, can never be a compensation for all my privations and
all my sufferings!

I saw yesterday at La Pergola, a Princess Radziwill and a Princess
Galitzin (who is not Sophie). There seem to be a good many Princesses
Radziwill and Galitzin! There was also a Countess Orloff, who used to
be an actress in Paris under the name of Wentzell. I hoped to enjoy my
dear incognito; but, as at Milan and at Venice, I was recognized by
strangers. Also I met the husband of a cousin of Madame de Castries,
and Alexandre de Périgord, son of the Duc de Dino. Happily, I came to
Florence _en polisson_, as they used to say for the trips to Marly.
I have neither clothes nor linen nor anything suitable to go into
society, and so I preserve my dear independence.


April 13.

I have seen the gallery of the Medici, but in a hurry. I must come back
here if I want to study art. A letter from the consul at Livorno, just
received, tells me there will be no steamer till the 20th, and I must
be in Paris from the 20th to 25th. So there is nothing for me to do but
to take the mail-cart, and I leave in a few hours. I close my letter,
which I would like to make longer, but will write again at Milan,
through which I pass and where I shall stop two days, for I go by Como
and the Saint-Gothard.

Adieu, _cara contessina_. I hope that all is well and that I shall find
good news of you in Paris. At this moment of writing, you ought to have
received my little souvenirs, if Frankowski is a faithful man. In a few
months I shall have the happiness of seeing you, and that hope will
render life and time the easier to bear. Do not forget to remember me
to all, and permit your moujik to send you the expression--not new, but
ever increasing in strength--of his devoted sentiments and tenderest
thoughts.



PARIS, May 10, 1837.

Here I am, back in Paris. My health is perfect, and my brain so much
refreshed that it seems as though I had never written anything. I found
three long letters from you which are delightful to me. I fished them
out of the two hundred which awaited me and read them in the bath I
took to unlimber me after my fatiguing journey; and certainty, I count
that hour as the most delightful of all my trip. Before beginning my
work, I am going to give myself the festival of a long talk with you.

In the first place, _cara carina_, put into that beautiful forehead,
which shines with such sublime intelligence, that I have blind
confidence in your literary judgment, and that I make you, in that
respect, the heiress of the angel I have lost, and that what you
write to me becomes the subject of long meditations. I now await your
criticisms on "La Vieille Fille;" such as the dear conscience I once
had, whose voice will ever echo in my ears, knew how to make them;
that is to say, read the work over and point out to me, page by page,
in the most exact manner, the images and the ideas that displease you;
telling me whether I should take them out wholly and replace them, or
modify them. Show neither pity nor indulgence; go boldly at it. _Cara_,
should I not be most unworthy of the friendship you deign to feel for
me if in our intimate correspondence I allowed the petty vanity of
an author to affect me? So I entreat you, once for all, to suppress
long eulogies. Tell me on three tones: that is good, that is fine,
that is magnificent; you will then have a positive, comparative, and
superlative, which are so grandiose in their line that I blush to offer
them for your incense-pot. But they are still so far below the gracious
praise you sometimes offer me that they are modest--though they might
seem singular to a third person. I beg you therefore to be concise in
praise and prolix in criticism; wait for reflection; do not write to me
after the first reading. If you knew how much critical genius there is
in what you said to me about my play you would be proud of yourself.
But you leave that sentiment to your friends. Yes, Planche himself
would not have been wiser; you have made me reflect so much that I am
now employed in remodelling my ideas about it. Remember, _carina_, that
I am sincere in all things, and especially in art; that I have none of
that paternal silliness which ties so cruel a bandage round the eyes of
many authors, and that if "La Vieille Fille" is bad, I shall have the
courage to cut it out of my work.

I laughed much at what you write of the three heiresses of Warsaw, and
at the tale you tell me, which was also told and invented in Milan.
There they maintained _mordicus_ that I had just married an immensely
rich heiress, the daughter of a dealer in silks. There is no absurd
story of which I am not made the hero, and I will amuse you heartily by
telling them all to you when I see you.

I received M. Hanski's letter two days ago from the Rothschilds, and
the five hundred francs were at Rougemont de Löwenberg's. The portrait
has just been returned from the Exhibition. Boulanger will make the
copy in a few weeks and the picture will soon be with you. You are
to have the original, which has had the utmost success at the Salon;
many critics consider it among the best of our modern works, and it
has given rise to arguments which must have enchanted Boulanger. I am
very sorry that the admirable frame I unearthed in Touraine cannot
adorn your gallery; but there is no use in opposing the rigours of the
custom-house. The statue will reach you about the same time. You will,
I dare say, order a little corner closet on which to place the statue,
and in it you can keep the enormous collection of manuscripts you
will receive from me; so that, knowing how much you have of the man's
heart, you will have his labours as well. I shall then be wholly at
Wierzchownia.

Your three letters, read all at once, bathed my soul in the purest and
sweetest affections, as the native waters of the Seine refreshed my
body; it was more to me to read again and again those pages full of
your adorable little writing than to rest myself.

I have made a horribly beautiful return journey; but it is good to have
made it. It was like our retreat from Russia. Happy he who has seen
the Beresina and come out, safe and sound, upon his legs. I crossed
the Saint-Gothard with fifteen feet of snow on the path I took; the
road not even distinguishable by the tall stone posts which mark it.
The bridges across the mountain torrents were no more visible than
the torrents themselves. I came near losing my life several times in
spite of the eleven guides who were with me. We crossed the summit
at one o'clock in the morning by a sublime moonlight; and I saw the
sunrise tint the snow. A man must see that once in his life. I came
down so rapidly that in half an hour I passed from twenty-five degrees
below freezing (which it was on the summit) to I don't know what
degree of heat in the valley of the Reuss. After the horrors of the
Devil's bridge, I crossed the Lake of the Four Cantons at four in the
afternoon. It has been a splendid journey; but I must do it again in
summer, to see all those noble sights under a new aspect. You see that
I renounced my purpose of going by Berne and Neufchâtel. I returned by
Lucerne and Bâle, having come by the Ticino and Como. I thought that
route the most economical of time and money, whereas, on the contrary,
I spent enormously of both. But I had the worth of my money; it was
indeed a splendid journey; my excursion has been like a dream, but a
dream in which presided the face of my faithful companion, of her of
whom I have already told you the pleasure I had in seeing her, and _who
did not suffer from the cold_ [her miniature].

Here I am, returned to my work. I am about to bring out immediately,
one after the other: "César Birotteau," "La Femme Supérieure;" I shall
finish "Illusions Perdues," then "La Haute Banque," and "Les Artistes."
After that, I shall fly to the Ukraine, where, perhaps, I shall have
the happiness to write a play which will end my financial agonies. Such
is my plan of campaign, _cara contessina_.


May 11.

I have been very egotistical. I began by speaking of myself, answering
the first things that struck me in your letters, and I ought to have
said at once how glad I was to know you relieved of the deplorable
but sublime duty of nurse, which you fulfilled so courageously and
successfully. The reproach you make me for harshness in a sentence
of mine, I feel very much. That sentence, believe me, was only the
expression of my desire to see you perfect; and perhaps that desire
was rather senseless, for it may be that contrasts are necessary in a
character. But, however it is, I will never complain again, even when
you accuse me unjustly, reflecting that an affection as sincere and as
old as ours can be troubled only on the surface.

We are going no doubt to bring out a new edition of the "Études
Philosophiques," the one in which is "Les Ruggieri." I have just
re-read that fragment, and I see that it shows the effect of the state
of anguish in which I was when I wrote it, and the feebleness of a
brain which had produced too much. It needs much retouching. I do
not know what has been thought of that poor preface to a book called
"Illusions Perdues." I am going now to write the continuation and
complete the work.

Your monotonous life tempts me much; and especially after travelling
about do your tales of it please me. I owe to you the sole Homeric
laugh I have had for a year, when I read of your fib to the Countess
Marie, and when I read her letter so full of oratorical sugarplums. I
do not think that woman true, and I really don't know how to answer
her, for I am as stupid when I have nothing in my heart as I often am
when my heart is full.


May 13.

I have now been at home eight days, and for eight days I have been
making vain efforts to resume my work. My head refuses to give itself
to any intellectual labour; I feel it to be full of ideas, but nothing
comes out. I am incapable of fixing my thought; of compelling it to
consider a subject under all aspects and deciding its march. I don't
know when this imbecility will cease; but perhaps it is only my broken
habit that is in fault. When a workman drops his tools for a time, his
hand gets divorced. He must renew the fraternity that comes from habit,
that links the hand to the tool, as the tool to the hand.


May 14.

I went last night to see "La Camaraderie," and I think the play is
immensely clever. Scribe knows the business, but he does not know
art; he has talent, but he will never have genius. I met Taylor, the
royal comissioner to the Théâtre-Français, who has just brought from
Spain, for a million francs, four hundred Spanish pictures, very fine
ones. In a very few minutes it was arranged between us that he should
undertake to have accepted, rehearsed, and played a piece of mine
at the Théâtre-Français, without my name being known until the time
comes to name the author; also to give me as many rehearsals as I
want, and to spare me all the annoyances which accompany the reception
and representation of a play. Now, which shall I write? Oh! how many
conversations with you I need; for you are the only person--now that
I am widowed of that soul which uplifted, followed, strengthened my
attempts--the only one in whom I have faith. Yes, persons whose hearts
are as noble as their birth, who have contracted the habit of noble
sentiments and of things lofty in all ways, they alone are my critics.
It is now some time since I have accustomed myself to think with you,
to put you as second in my ideas, and you would hardly believe what
sweetness I find in again beginning, after this travelling interregnum,
to write to you the life of my thought--for as to that of my heart I
have no need; in spite of certain melancholy passages, you know well
that souls high-poised change little. Like the summits I have just
seen, the clouds may sometimes cover them, the day may light them
variously; but their snow remains pure and dazzling.

I went yesterday to see Boulanger. The picture has come back to him
from the Exhibition. He wants another three weeks to make the copy
which I give to my mother, but the canvas will start for Berditchef
early in June, so that you will get it before the statue.

Adieu, for to-day. I must examine my thoughts about the stage, and
start upon a journey through the dramatic limbo, to find out to what I
must give life or death. This affair is of the highest importance to my
financial interests, and is very serious for my reputation as a writer.
To-morrow I will close my letter and send it. If I failed to write to
you during my journey you will see by the frequency of my letters that
I am repairing omissions.


May 15.

This is the eve of my fête-day, still my poor fête-day, for my
financial affairs are not beauteous. The law about the National Guard
will oblige me to make a violent move,--that of living in the country
two leagues from Paris; but this time I will live in a house by myself.
I shall thus be obliged very seriously to work my sixteen hours a day
for three or four months; but at least (if the friendly indorsements I
gave to that poor stupid Werdet do not cause trouble) I am all but easy
in mind on financial matters.

Adieu. You will receive still another letter this week. Many tender
things to you and my remembrances to all about you. I reply this week
to M. Hanski.



PARIS, May 20-29, 1837.

I write to you on rising, for this is my birthday, and I shall be all
day long with my sister and mother.

_Mon Dieu!_ how I should like to have news of you; but I am deprived
of it by my own fault, for you have put the _lex talionis_ into our
correspondence by not writing to me when I do not write to you. But
that is very wrong. I am a man, and subject to crises. At this moment,
for instance, Werdet has gone into bankruptcy, and I am summoned to
pay the indorsements I gave him out of kindness, just as he had given
some to me; but with this difference, that I have paid all the notes he
endorsed for me, and he has not paid those I guaranteed for him. So now
I must work night and day to get out of the embarrassment into which I
have put myself.

You could never believe how crushing this last misfortune is. My
business agents all tell me now is the time to make a journey.

Make a journey!--when I owe to Girardin, for the "Presse," "La
Haute Banque" and "La Femme Supérieure;" to the "Figaro," "César
Birotteau," and "Les Artistes;" to Schlesinger, for the "Gazette
Musicale," "Gambara;" and the end of the third _dizain_ to Werdet's
capitalist,--six works, all clamoured for by the four persons to whom I
owe them, and which represent fifteen thousand francs, ten thousand of
which have already been paid.

To pay my most pressing debts. I took all the money my new publishers
gave me, and they only begin their monthly payments to me when I give
them two unpublished volumes 8vo. I need at least three months to
finish the six works named above as due, then three months for their
two new volumes; so that here I am for six months without resources
and without any means of getting money. Happily, the brain is in good
health, thanks to my journey.

This is a bad birthday. I have begun it by dismissing my three
servants and giving up my apartment in the rue des Batailles
[Chaillot], though I don't know whether the proprietor will be willing
to cancel the lease. And finally, I have heroically resolved to live,
if necessary, as I lived in the rue Lesdiguières, and to make an end to
a secret misery which is dishonouring to the conscience.

Apropos of misery; I wrote you from Florence under the impression of
distresses revealed by one of your countrymen. I beg you not to be
vexed with me. Tell M. Hanski that in view of what has just happened to
me, I have made the good resolution never to guarantee any one, either
financially or morally. I beg him to regard all I said about that man
as not said, and, inasmuch as I recommended him through your gracious
lips, I beg him to do nothing in his favour. Do not accuse me of
carelessness, but of ignorance. Later I will explain by word of mouth
the reason of this change. The present makes me alter the past.


May 23.

Boulanger has written me a very free and easy, ungrateful letter, he
will not make the copy he engaged to make, which distresses my mother
and sister. The packer is at this moment making the case for the
original; it leaves in a few days, and I shall address it, according to
M. Hanski's letter, to MM. Halperine, at Brody, by diligence, direct;
for neither the Rothschilds nor Rougemont de Löwenberg are willing to
take charge of so cumbersome a parcel, and the colour-merchant who
is packing the canvas, assures me that he has sent the most valuable
pictures in this way. That's enough about my effigy. It is one of the
finest things of the school. The most jealous painters have admired it.
I am glad you will not be disappointed after waiting so long. I shall
write you a little line the day I put the parcel in the diligence, and
tell you the route it will take.

I have persuaded my mother to go and live two years in Switzerland at
Lausanne. The sight of my struggle and that of my brother kills her.
She sees us always working without pecuniary result, and she suffers
dreadfully without having the material conflict which calls up strength.

If you knew all I have done for Boulanger you would feel the bitterness
that fills my soul at this betrayal; for if he had not trifled with me
for nearly a year you would have had the portrait six months ago, and
it has now become ridiculous.


May 28.

Here I am, as you have often desired to see me. I have broken away from
every one, and I go, in a few weeks, to a hidden garret, having blocked
all the roads about me. I have been making a recapitulation of my work,
and I have enough to do for four years, without, even then, completing
all the series of the "Études de Mœurs." My monk's gown must not be a
lie. I have but two things which make me live: work, and the hope of
finding all my secret desires realized at the close of this toil. To
whoever can live by those two potent ideas, life is still grand; and
if I do not find again in the solitude to which I return that noble
Madame de Berny, whom my sister Laure now calls my Josephine, at least
she is not replaced by a Marie-Louise, but by glorious hope, the sole
companion of a poet in travail. This journey, in refreshing my brain,
rejuvenated me, and gave me back my force; I need it to accomplish my
last efforts.

I have just finished a work which is called "Massimilla Doni,"
the scene of which is in Venice. If I can realize all my ideas as
they present themselves in my brain it will be, assuredly, a book
as startling as "La Peau de Chagrin," better written, more poetic
possibly. I will not tell you anything about it. "Massimilla Doni" and
"Gambara" are, in the "Études Philosophiques," the apparition of Music,
under the double form of _execution_ and _composition_, subjected to
the same trial as Thought in "Louis Lambert:" that is to say, the work
and its execution are killed by the too great abundance of the creative
principle,--that which dictated to me the "Chef-d'œuvre inconnu" in
respect to painting; a study which I rewrote last winter. You will soon
receive two Parts of the "Études Philosophiques" in which the work has
been tremendous.

I have just finished a little study, entitled "Le Martyr calviniste,"
which with "Le Secret des Ruggieri" and "Les Deux Rêves" completes my
study of the character of Catherine de' Medici. I have begun to write
"La Femme Supérieure" for the "Presse," and in a few days I shall have
finished "César Birotteau." All this in manuscript only; for, after
composition, comes the battle of the proofs. You see that my ideas for
the stage are again drowned in the flood of my obligations and my other
work.

As soon as the above manuscripts are done I shall go into Berry, to
Madame Carraud, and there finish the third _dizain_, begun alas! in
Geneva and dated from Eaux-Vives and the dear Pré-l'Évêque!

It is now two years since I saw you. So, when my head refuses ideas,
when the ink-pot of my brain is empty, and I must have rest, by that
time I hope I shall have bought, through privations, the necessary
sum for a journey to Poland and to see Wierzchownia this autumn. God
grant that I then have a mind free of all care, and that I complete
between now and then the books that are to liberate me! Happily, except
for a few sums, it is only a question of blackening paper, and that,
fortunately, is in my own power. I am anxious to finish the two other
volumes which, under the title of "Un Grand homme de Province à Paris"
is to complete "Illusions Perdues" of which the introduction alone has
appeared. That is, certainly, with "César Birotteau," my greatest work
in dimensions.


May 29.

From the way I have started I hope to finish "La Femme Supérieure"
in four days. I am stirred by a species of fury to finish the works
for which I have already received the money. I live before my table;
I leave it only to sleep; I dine there. Never did poet stay thus in
a moral world; but yesterday some one told me I was said to be in
Germany. I hope that the ridiculous stories spread about me will cease
in consequence of the absolute seclusion in which I am about to live.
At any rate, the commercial proceedings instituted against me by
Werdet's creditors will have this good effect, that, being driven to
hide myself, no one can gossip about me. But they will make fantastic
tales about my disappearance!

I entreat you not to forget my request relative to corrections of "La
Vieille Fille" and, in general, to all you find faulty in my works. I
have none but you in the world to do me this friend's service. Be curt
in your verdicts. When there was something very bad Madame de Berny
never discussed; she wrote, "Bad" or, "Passage to be rewritten." Be,
I pray you, my dear star and my literary conscience, as you are in so
many other things my guide and my counsellor. You have a sure taste;
you have the habit of comparison, because you read everything. This
will be, moreover, an occupation in your desert.

Alas! I can only talk to you about myself. I am now without letters
from you, delivered over to all sorts of anxieties, because I had the
misfortune, in travelling, to leave you a month in silence,--though I
wrote to you from Sion in the Valais, and expected to find an answer in
Milan on my return from Florence. I have written to Milan, to Prince
Porcia, to forward your letter here.

Have the kindness to write to Madame Jeroslas ... that I can more
easily go four months hence and lay my homage at her feet than write
her a letter at this moment. Seriously, I go to bed with a tired hand.
I will send you a page for her in my next letter, though I shall not
write you till I can announce the termination of "César Birotteau" and
"La Femme Supérieure," the two great thorns I have in my foot at this
moment. The third _dizain_ may amuse me perhaps at Frapesle, Madame
Carraud's house, where I shall live ten days among the flowers, well
cared for by her, who is like a sister to me. She is very delicate,
very feeble; she will go, too, I foresee it, that fine and noble
intellect; and of the three truly grand women whom I have known, you
alone will remain. Such friendships are not renewed, _cara_. Therefore,
mine for you grows greater from all my losses, and, I dare to say it,
from all the illusions that experience mows down like the flowers of
the field. All my recent griefs, that ignoble little treachery of
Boulanger, this present misfortune due to my attachment to the weak,
all these things cast me with greater force to you, in whom I believe
as in God, to whom the troubles of earth drive us back. There are
affections that are like great rivers; all flows into them. So the
longer I live, the more the river swells; the sea into which it casts
itself is death.

I hope that all goes well with you, and that M. Hanski will be so kind
as not to be vexed with me if I do not answer his gracious letter; I am
so hurried! Tell him all that I would say to him; passing through such
an interpreter that which I should write to him will be bettered. Take
great care of yourself; after the long night-nursing you have borne, I
tremble lest you should be ill; if that should happen, in God's name
let me know; I must go and nurse you.

Adieu. I wish you good health, and Anna also. If my theory on human
forces is true, you ought to live in the atmosphere that my soul makes
for you by surrounding you with sacred wishes. Would that it were like
the thorny hedges placed about private fields, that cattle may neither
feed nor trample there. I would that I could thus drive off all griefs,
all disappointments, all that herd of worries, pain, and maladies. To
you, who give me such strength, would I could return it!



PARIS, May 31, 1837.

I have this instant received yours (number 28) of the 12th, written
after you received the one I wrote you from Florence. But did you not
receive one from Sion? which I do not, however, count as a letter, for
there were only fifteen lines on a page. It is clear that some one kept
the money for the postage, and read, or burned the letter. _Mon Dieu!_
how vexed I am! I stopped at Sion expressly to write it. You ought to
have received it early in March. Let us say no more about it.

I admire the capacity of your intelligence in regard to the person
about whom I wrote you from Florence. The reasons that struck your mind
struck mine later. But your letter grieves me. Such profound sadness
reigns through the religious ideas it expresses. It seems as though
you had lost all hope on earth. You ask me to make you confidences as
I would to my best friend; but have I not told you all my life? I have
often confided too much of my anguish to you, for it did you harm.

This letter comes to me at a bad moment. It has singularly added to the
dumb grief that gnaws me and will kill me. I am thirty-eight years old,
still crippled by debt, with nought but uncertainty as to my position.
Scarcely have I taken two months to rest my brain before I repent them
as a crime when I see the evils that have come through my inaction.
This precarious life, which might be a spur in youth, becomes at my
age an overwhelming burden. My head is turning white, and whatever
pleasant things may be said about it, it is clear that I must soon
lose all hope of pleasing. Pure, tranquil, openly avowed happiness,
for which I was made, escapes me; I have only tortures and vexations,
through which a few rare gleams of blue sky shine.

My works are little understood and little appreciated; they serve to
enrich Belgium, but they leave me in poverty. The only friend who came
to me at my start in life, who was to me a true mother, has gone to
heaven. And you, you write me there are as many _ideas_ as there is
distance between us, and you dissuade me from going to see you!

Your letter has done me great harm. Believe me, there is a certain
measure of religious ideas beyond which all is vicious. You know what
my religion is. I am not orthodox, and I do not believe in the Roman
Church. I think that if there is a scheme worthy of our kind it is that
of human transformations causing the human being to advance toward
unknown zones. That is the law of creations inferior to ourselves;
it ought to be the law of superior creations. Swedenborgianism,
which is only a repetition in the Christian sense of ancient
ideas, is my religion, with the addition which I make to it of the
incomprehensibility of God. That said (and I say it to you because I
know you to be so truly Roman Catholic that nothing can influence your
mind about it), I must surely see more clearly than you see it what
your detachment from all things here below conceals, and deplore it if
it rests on false ideas. To comfort myself as to this, I have read over
a letter in which you told me you wished to be always yourself, to show
yourself--in your hours of melancholy, of piety, and of spring-tide
returns.


June 1.

Your letter has left long traces upon me, and I can scarcely say what
impressions I have had on reading the part where you separate your
readings into profane and religious. There is a whole world between
your last but one letter and this letter. You have taken the veil. I am
deathly sad.


June 2.

I have begun "La Femme Supérieure" in a manner that promised to finish
it in four days, and now it is impossible for me to write a line. My
faculties seem unstrung. I had made my mother decide on spending two
years in Switzerland to spare her the sight of my struggle, the triumph
of which I placed at that date. But she is now ill. Two nephews to
bring up, my mother to support, and my work insufficient!--that is one
of the aspects of my life. Continual injustice, constant calumny, the
betrayal of friends, that is another.[1] The embarrassments into which
Werdet's failure flung me, and my new treaty which keeps me in a state
of extreme poverty, that is a third. The literary difficulties of what
I do and the continuity of toil, that is another. I am worn-out on the
four faces of the square by an equal pressure of trouble. If my soul
finds the ivory door through which it flees into lands of illusion,
dreams of happiness, closed, what will become of it? Solitude, farewell
to the world? It is sorrowful for those who live by the heart to have
no life possible but that of the brain.

When you receive this letter Boulanger's portrait will be on its way
to you; it was packed this week. I wished to have it rolled, but the
colour-dealer and a picture-restorer whom I consulted assured me it
would go safely in a square box the size of the picture. You will
have a fine work, so several painters say. The eyes especially are
well rendered, but more in the general physical expression of the
worker than with the loving soul of the individual. Boulanger saw the
writer, and not the tenderness of the imbecile always taken-in, not the
softness of the man before the sufferings of others, which made all
my miseries come from holding out a helping hand to weaklings in the
rut of ill-luck. In order to do a service in 1827 to a working printer,
I found myself, in 1829, crushed down under a debt of one hundred and
fifty thousand francs and cast, without bread, into a garret. In 1833,
just as my pen was giving signs of enabling me to clear my obligations,
I connected myself with Werdet; I wanted to make him my only publisher,
and in my desire to make him prosper, I signed engagements, so that in
1837, I find myself again with a hundred and fifty thousand francs of
debt, and on that account so threatened with arrest that I am obliged
to live in hiding. I make myself, as I go along, the Don Quixote of
the feeble; I wanted to give courage to Sandeau, and I dropped upon
that head four or five thousand francs that would have saved another
man! I need a barrier between the world and me; I must content myself
with producing without spending; I must shut myself up within a narrow
circle, under pain of succumbing.

[Footnote 1: See Memoir, pp. 231, 232, 329.--TR.]


June 5.

Yesterday I sent away my three servants; Auguste, whom you have seen,
remains, on a salary that my new publishers, the printers, and I pay.
He will carry proofs. I am trying to get rid of my apartment rue des
Batailles; that of rue Cassini is paid up, and the lease ends October
1 of this year. I must resume the life I led in the rue Lesdiguières:
live on little, and work always. Alas! I need a family! Perhaps I will
go and settle in some village in Touraine. A garret in Paris is still
dangerous.

I have seven years' work before me, counting three works a year like
the "Lys," and I shall be forty-five when the principal lines of my
work are defined and the portions very nearly filled in. At forty-five
one is no longer young, in form at least; one must, to preserve a few
fine days, plunge into the ice of complete solitude.

My mind is not tranquil enough to write for the stage. A play is the
easiest and the most difficult work for the human mind; either it
is a German toy, or an immortal statue, Polichinello or Venus, the
"Misanthrope" or "Figaro." The miserable melodramas of Hugo frighten
me. I need a whole winter at Wierzchownia to adjust a play, and I have
four months of crushing work to do before I can know if I shall have
the money, and when and how I shall have it, to enable me to go there.

Perhaps I shall take one of those sublime resolutions which turn life
inside out like a glove. That is very possible. Perhaps I shall leave
literature, to enrich myself, and take it up later if it suits me to do
so; I have been reflecting about this for some days past.

Are you not tired of hearing me ring my song on every key? Does not
this continual _egotistery_ of a man fighting forever in a narrow
circle bore you? Say so, because in your letter you seemed disposed to
turn away from me, as from a beggar who knows nothing but the _Pater_,
and says it over and over again.

_Cara_, I hold Florence to be a great lady, a glorious city, where we
breathe the middle ages; but, as I told you, Venice and Switzerland
are two conceptions which resemble nothing. I have not dared to say
any harm to you of your bust, because it gave me too much joy to see
it. As for the mouth, do not complain of Bartolini; he has made it
beautiful and true. Your mouth is one of the sweetest creations I have
ever seen; in the bust it has, certainly, the expression your aunt and
others blame; but that is only on the surface of the thing. Without
your mouth, the forehead would be hydrocephalus. There is an exact
balance in the two, between sensations and ideas, between the heart
and the brain; there is, above all, in the expression thus blamed, an
extreme nobility and infinite sweetness, two attributes which render
you adorable to those who know you well. No one has analyzed your
head and face more than I. The last time that I could study you, and
have enough coolness to do so, was in Daffinger's studio [in Vienna],
and it was only there that I detected on your lips a few faint signs
of cruel passion. Do not be astonished at those two words: it is
such indications that give to your mouth the expression those ladies
complain of; but such evidences are repressed by goodness. You have
something violent in your first impulse, but reflection, kindness,
gentleness, nobleness, follow instantly. I do not regard this as a
defect. The first impulse has its cause, and I will tell it to you in
your chimney-corner at Wierzchownia, if you think to ask me; and I will
give you proofs of what I say about you, examples taken from what I saw
you do in Vienna--in the affair of the letter, for instance, which was
written under one such impulse. If you were exclusively good you would
be a sheep--which is too insipid.

Well, adieu, _cara_; a thousand tender regards, _quand même_ motto of
the friends of the throne. Many prettinesses to the pretty Anna for her
thought and for herself. I shall write this week to M. Hanski.



PARIS, July 8, 1837.

I just receive your number 29, in which there is an "at last!" which
makes me tremble, dear, for it is now nearly a month since I wrote to
you.

The explanation of my silence is in "La Femme Supérieure," which fills
seventy-five columns of the "Presse" and which was written in a month,
day by day. I sat up thirty nights of that damned month, and I don't
believe that I slept more than sixty-odd hours in the course of it; I
never had time to trim my beard, and I, the enemy of all affectation,
now wear the goat's beard of La Jeune France. After writing this letter
I must take a bath, not without terror, for I am afraid of relaxing
the fibres which are strung up to the highest tension; and I must begin
again on "César Birotteau," which is growing ridiculous on account of
its delays. Besides, it is now ten months since the "Figaro" paid me
for it.

Nothing can express to you the sweeping onward of such mad work. At any
price I must have my freedom of mind, for, another year of this life,
and I shall die at my oar. I have done during this month, "Les Martyrs
ignorés" "Massimilla Doni," and "Gambara." When I have finished "César
Birotteau" I must then do "La Maison Nucingen et Compagnie" and another
book, which will bring me to the end of these miseries that give me
so much toil and no money. I found time to see about the packing of
that portrait, which you will surely have, I think, before this letter
reaches you.

The long delay of your number 29 has added to all my troubles the fear
of some illness in your home; you cannot think what anxiety that puts
into my mind. And I fear so much lest some breath of poisoned slander,
some calumny may reach you, lest the sorrows of my life may have
wearied you, that the failure of your letters puts me in a fever.

I will not talk to you again of the difficulties of my life, for the
affair you know of has rendered them enormous and insurmountable.
While I work night and day to free my pen, my new publishers give me
nothing until I work for them; so that I must run in debt, and all
my money worries will begin again. Werdet's failure has killed me. I
imprudently indorsed for him, I was sued, and I was forced to hide and
defend myself. The men whose duty it is to arrest debtors discovered
me, thanks to treachery, and I had the pain of compromising the persons
who had generously given me an asylum. It was necessary, in order not
to go to prison, to find the money for the Werdet debt at once, and,
consequently, to involve myself again to those who lent it to me.

Such a little episode in the midst of my toil!

I will no longer wring your heart with the details of my struggle.
Besides, it would take volumes to tell you all of them and explain
them. The truth is, I do not live. Always toil! I cannot support
this life for more than three or four months at a time. I have still
forty-five days more of it; after that I shall be utterly broken down,
and then I will go and revive in the solitude of the Ukraine, if God
permits it. I hope to last till the end of "César Birotteau."

"La Femme Supérieure" makes two thick 8vo volumes. It is ended in the
newspaper, but not in the book form; I am adding a fourth Part.

I wish I had strength enough to give the end of "Illusions Perdues."
But that is very difficult; though very urgent, because my payment of
fifteen hundred francs a month does not begin till then.

Not only have I not closed the gulf of sorrows, but I have not closed
that of my business affairs. I have hoped so often that I am weary of
hope, as I told you. I am a prey to deep disgust, and I shut myself
up in complete solitude. Nevertheless, a grand affair is preparing
for me in the publication of my works, with vignettes, etc., resting
upon an enterprise both inciting and attractive to the public. This
is an interest in a tontine, created from a portion of the profit of
subscribers, who are divided into classes and ages; one to ten, ten to
twenty, twenty to thirty, thirty to forty, forty to fifty, fifty to
sixty, sixty to seventy, seventy to eighty. So, the subscriber will
obtain a magnificent volume, as to typographic execution, and the
chance of thirty thousand francs income for having subscribed. Also the
capital of the income will remain to the subscriber's family.

It is very fine; but it needs three thousand subscribers per class
to make it practicable. But imagine that, in spite of the ardour of
my imagination, I have received so many blows that I shall see this
project played with an indifferent eye. An enormous sum is required for
advertising; and four hundred thousand francs for the vignettes alone.
The work will be in fifty volumes, published in demi-volumes. It will
include the "Études de Mœurs" complete, the "Études Philosophiques"
complete, and the "Études Analytiques" complete, under the general
title of "Études Sociales." In four years the whole will have been
published. The vignettes will be in the text itself, and there will
be seventy-five in a volume, which will prevent all piracy in foreign
countries.

But this depends still on several administrative points to settle. May
fate grant it success! It is high time. I feel that a few days more
like the last, and I am vanquished.

I, who know so amply what misfortune is, I cry to you from the depths
of my study, enjoy the material good that M. Hanski bestows upon you,
and which you justly boast of to me. I wish with all the power of my
soul that you may never know such miseries as mine.

If this affair takes place, and taking place, succeeds, you shall
be the first informed of it; and never letter more joyous will rush
through Europe! But I have reached the point of very great doubt in all
business affairs.

You will some day read "La Femme Supérieure," and if ever I needed a
serious and sincere opinion upon a composition, it is on this. Twenty
letters of reprobation reach the newspaper daily, from persons who stop
their subscriptions, etc., saying that nothing could be more wearisome,
it is all insipid gabbling, etc.; and they send me these letters!
There is one, among others, from a man who calls himself my great
admirer, which says that "he cannot conceive the stupidity of such a
composition." If that is so, I must have been heavily mistaken.

This distrust, into which such communications throw an author, is
little propitious to a start on "César Birotteau" which I make to-day
and must push with the greatest celerity. I have robbed you of the
manuscript and proofs of "La Femme Supérieure" to the profit of my
_cara sorella_, who has none of these things, and who, on seeing the
bound proofs brought home to me for you, said, in a melancholy tone,
"Am I never to have any of them myself?" So I thought to give her those
of "La Femme Supérieure;" I will keep those of the reprints for you.

On coming out of my painful labour of forty-five days, I have
religiously put your dear Anna's heart's-ease into my "Imitation of
Jesus Christ," where there is another on a fragment of a yellow sash.

What events, what thoughts have passed beneath heaven's arch in seven
years! and what terror must one feel as one sees one's self advancing
ever, with no lull in the storm! One must not think of happy fancies
pictured on the horizon, especially when the soul is ever in mourning.

I send you a thousand caressing desires; I would that you had all the
happiness that flees from me. I see but too well that my life can
never be other than a life of toil, and that I must place my pleasure
there, in the occupation by which I live. And yet, when my pen is
free, two or three months hence, I shall once more tempt fortune; I
shall make a last effort. But if I do so, it is because there is no
risk of money. After that, if nothing comes of it, I shall retire into
some corner, to live there like a country curate without parishioners,
indifferent to all material interests, and resting on my heart and
my imagination,--those two great motive powers of life. This is only
telling you that you count for more than half in that vision.

I did not finish "Berthe la Repentie" without thinking at every line
that I began it with fury at Pré-l'Évêque in 1834, now nearly four
years ago. I ought never to have had debts; I ought to have lived like
a canon in the Ukraine, having no other function than to drive away
your blue devils and those of M. Hanski and write a _dizain_ every
year. 'T would have been too beautiful a life. Between repose and me
there are twelve thousand ducats of debt, and the farther I go, the
more they increase. Chateaubriand is dying of hunger. He sold his past
as author, and he has sold his future. The future gives him twelve
thousand francs a year, so long as he publishes nothing; twenty-live
thousand if he publishes. That to him is poverty; he is seventy-five
years old, an age at which all genius is extinct, but the memories of
youth reflower. That is how we love--the first time in reality, the
second time in memory.

_Addio, cara._ I must leave you to take up my _dizain_ and "César
Birotteau" alternately. I would give I know not what, all, except our
dear friendship, to have finished those two works which will bring me
in nothing but insults.

I think it surprising that you had not received my New Year's gift in
June, for Colonel Frankowski has been in Poland three months. Put a
kiss on Anna's forehead from her horse, the quietest she will ever have
in her stables. Remember me to all about you and to M. Hanski. I send
nothing to you who possess the whole of this Parisian moujik.

I conceived yesterday a work grand in its thought, small in its volume;
it is a book I shall do immediately. It will be called by some man's
name, such as "Jules, or the new Abeilard." The subject will be the
letters of two lovers led to the religious life by love, a true heroic
romance _à la_ Scudéry.



PARIS, July 19, 1837.

_Cara_, you will end by being so weary of my jeremiads that when you
receive a letter from me you will fling it into the fire without
opening it, certain that it is a garretful of blue devils and the
amplest stock of melancholy in the world. If my fat and daring
countenance is at this moment installed before you, you will never
behold my griefs on that swelling forehead--less ample, less beautiful
than yours--nor on those rotund cheeks of a lazy monk. But so it is. He
who was created for pleasure and happy carelessness, for love and for
luxury, works like a galley-slave.

I was talking to Heine yesterday about writing for the stage. "Beware
of that," he said; "he who is accustomed to Brest cannot accustom
himself to Toulon. Stay in your own galley."

I am the lighter by three works: here is the third _dizain_ done in
manuscript, but not in proofs; here is "Gambara" finished, and I am at
the last proof of "Massimilla Doni;" and finally, in three days I shall
begin the end of "César Birotteau." I hope the woodman brings down
trees; I hope the workman is no bungler. But I am always meeting worthy
people, Parisians, who say to me, "Why don't you publish something?"
Yesterday, after leaving Heine, I met Rothschild on the boulevard,
that is to say, all the wit and money of the Jews; and he said to me,
"What are you doing now?" "La Femme Supérieure" has been inundating the
"Presse" for the last fortnight!

_Cara_, you talk to me still of my dissipation, my travels, and
society. That is wrong in you. I travel when it is impossible to rouse
my broken-down brain. When I return, I shut myself up and work night
and day until death comes--of the brain, be it understood, though a man
may die of work. I did wrong not to go to the Ukraine, but I am the
first punished; that wrong was caused by my poverty. But I have just
discovered an economical means of conveyance which I shall use as soon
as I am free. It is to go from here to Havre, Havre to Hamburg, Hamburg
to Berlin, Berlin to Breslau, Breslau to Lemberg, Lemberg to Brody.
I think that route will not be dear, as so much is done by water.
From Paris to Hamburg, four days, is two hundred francs, everything
included. Only, will you come and fetch me at Brody, where I shall be
without a vehicle and ignorant of the language? That is the project I
am caressing; and it makes me hasten my work.

There is nothing new about the grand affair of my publication on the
tontine plan. But the petty newspapers are already laughing at this
enterprise, which they know nothing about, and solely because it makes
to my profit.

Is not this singular? I was just here when Auguste brought me your kind
and very amiable number 30--in the sense that there is an adorable
number of pages. In the first place, _cara_, I see that you are not
speaking to me with a frank heart in fearing that your letter would be
flung down with disdain! and you came near using a worse word. Ah! have
we never understood each other? Have you no idea of friendship,--no
knowledge of true sentiments? It must be so, if you can imagine I am
not more interested in your missing book and all that happens around
you than I am in the finest or the most hideous events of the world.
I am so angry, so shaken by that passage in your letter that my hand
trembles as if I had killed my neighbour. It is you who have killed
something in me. But you can revive it by pouring out to me without
fear your reveries. Next, you tell me that I am hiding from you some
gambling loss, some disaster, and that I am a poor head financially.

Dear and beautiful châtelaine, you talk of poverty like one who does
not know it and who never will know it. The unfortunate are always
wrong, because they begin by being unfortunate.

Must I for the fifth or sixth time explain to you the mechanism of my
poverty, and how it is that it only grows and increases? I will do so,
if only to prove to you that I am the greatest financier of the epoch.
But we will never return to the subject again, will we?--for there is
nothing sadder than to relate troubles from which we still suffer:--

In 1828 I was flung into this poor rue Cassini, when my family would
not even give me bread, in consequence of a liquidation to which they
compelled me, owing one hundred thousand francs and being without a
penny. There, then, was a man who had to have six thousand francs to
pay his interests, and three thousand francs on which to live; total,
nine thousand francs a year. Now, during the years 1828, 1829, and 1830
I did not earn more than three thousand francs, for M. de Latouche paid
only one thousand for "Les Chouans;" the publisher Mame failed and paid
me only seven hundred and fifty francs, instead of fifteen hundred, for
the "Scènes de la Vie privée;" the "Physiologie du Mariage" brought
me only one thousand francs, through the bad faith of the publisher;
and M. de Girardin paid me only fifty francs a _feuille_ [16 pages]
in his paper "La Mode." Thus in the course of three years my debt was
increased by twenty-four thousand francs.

1830 came; general disaster to the publishing business. "La Peau de
Chagrin" paid me only seven hundred francs; three thousand later by
adding the "Contes Philosophiques" to it. Then the "Revue de Paris"
took ten _feuilles_ a year, at one hundred and sixty francs: total,
sixteen hundred francs. So 1830 and 1831 together gave me only ten
thousand francs; but I had to pay eighteen thousand francs for interest
and my living. Thus I increased the debt by eight thousand francs.
The capital of the debt then amounted to one hundred and thirty-two
thousand francs.

1833 came; and then by making my agreement with Madame Bêchet I found
myself equal to my living and my debt; that is to say, I could live
and pay my interest; because from 1833 to 1836 I earned ten thousand
francs a year; I then owed six thousand two hundred francs interest,
and I supposed I could live on four thousand francs. But, at this
moment of success, new disasters came.

A man who has only his pen, and who must meet ten thousand francs a
year when he does not have them, is compelled to many sacrifices. It
was soon, not one hundred and thirty-two thousand francs that I owed,
but one hundred and forty thousand, for how did I fight the necessity
that pressed upon me? With an aide-de-camp who may be compared to the
vulture of Prometheus [Werdet]; with usurers who made me pay nine, ten,
twelve, twenty per cent interest, and who consumed in applications,
proceedings, and errands fifty per cent and more of my time. Moreover,
I had signed agreements with publishers who had advanced me money on
work to be done; so that when I signed the Bêchet agreement I had
to deduct from the thirty thousand francs she was to pay me for the
first twelve volumes of the "Études de Mœurs" ten thousand francs
to indemnify Gosselin and two other publishers. So it was not thirty
thousand, but twenty thousand francs only; and those twenty thousand
are reduced to ten thousand by a loss I have lately met with, of copies
that were worth that sum. The fire in the rue du Pot-de-Fer consumed
the volumes I bought back from Gosselin.

So my position in 1837 exactly corresponds with these facts, when it
places me with one hundred and sixty-two thousand francs of debt; for
all that I have earned has never covered interests and expenses. My
expenditure in luxury, for which you sometimes blame me, is produced
by two necessities. First: when a man works as I do, and his time is
worth to him twenty to fifty francs an hour, he heeds a carriage, for
a carriage is an economy. Then he must have lights all night, coffee
at all hours, much fire, and everything orderly about him; it is that
which constitutes the costly life of Paris. Second: in Paris, those
who speculate in literature have no other thought than to extort from
it. If I had stayed in a garret I should have earned nothing. This is
what ruins the men of letters in Paris,--Karr, Goslan, etc. They are
needy, and it is known; publishers pay them five hundred francs for
what is worth three thousand. I therefore considered it good business
to exhibit an exterior of fortune, so as not to be bargained with and
to fix my own price.

If you do not regard with admiration a man who, bearing the weight of
such a debt, writing with one hand, lighting with the other, _never
committing a baseness_, cringing to no usurer, nor to journalism,
imploring no man, neither his creditor nor his friend, never tottering
in the most suspicious, most selfish, most miserly country in the
world, where they lend to the rich only,---a man whom calumny has
pursued and is still pursuing, a man who they said was in Sainte
Pélagie when he was with you in Vienna,--then you know nothing of the
world! [1]

The enterprise of the "Chronique de Paris" was undertaken to play a
bold stroke and pay off my debt. Instead of winning, I lost.

It was a horrible reverse.

And in the midst of this hell of conflicting interests, of days without
bread, of friends who betrayed me, of jealousies that tried to injure
me, I had to write ceaselessly, to think, to toil; to have droll ideas
when I wept, to write of love with a heart bleeding from inward wounds,
with scarce a hope on the horizon--and that hope reproachful, and
asking from a knight brought back from the battle, where and why he was
wounded.

_Cara_, do not condemn in the midst of this long torture the poor
struggler who seeks a corner where to sit down and recover breath,
where to breathe the sweet air of the shore and not the dusty air of
the arena; do not blame me for having spent a few miserable thousand
francs in going to Neufchâtel, Geneva, Vienna, and twice to Italy. (You
do not comprehend Italy; in that you are dull, and I will tell you
why.) Do not blame me for going to spend two or three months near you;
for without these halts I should be dead.

Imprint this very succinct explanation in your beautiful and noble,
pure, sublime head, and never return to these ideas that I gamble,
etc.; for I have never gambled, never had any other disasters than
those into which my own kindness dragged me.

Alas! I thought my pious offering for the new year had reached your
hands; for allow me the intoxicating pleasure of thinking that what I
give you caused me a little privation. It is in that way that poverty
can equal riches. If that poor man has sold it he must have been much
in need. But I shall never console myself for knowing that the chain
you gave me in Geneva is not in your hands. The misfortune I can
repair. What is irreparable is that the mails arrive without bringing
me any letters from you. You make to yourself false ideas about me, and
you do not know to what black dragons I fall a victim when a fortnight
passes without manna from the Ukraine.

What! you did not receive that letter from Sion? In future, when I
travel I shall prepay my letters myself. Oh! the honour of Swiss
innkeepers! The rascal in whom I trusted must have burned the letter
and kept the francs I gave him to prepay it.

You and I are not of the same opinion on religious questions, but I
should be in despair if you adopted my ideas; I like better to see
you keep your own; and I shall never do anything, even though I think
I am right, to destroy them. Only, knowing you to be a good and true
Catholic, I prefer the pages in which you disappoint me to those
in which you preach to me Catholicism; and yet, they all give me
the greatest pleasure. That is only telling you that I want both. I
conceive of Catholicism as poesy, and I am preparing a work in which
two lovers are led by love to the religious life; then that _bag of
nails_ whom you call your aunt will like me much and declare that I
make a good use of my talents!

_Addio_. You have very cruelly proved to me that you have a prudent
friendship for me; you judge very sternly the poor strivings of a
stormy life which, from its youth up, has never had the satisfaction of
saying to itself, "This is really mine."

I send you a letter I received yesterday from my sister; you will see
that the poor child cannot help weeping when I weep, and laughing when
I laugh. But then, it is true, she is near me, and you are in the
Ukraine. And besides, those who are truly beloved are always sure of
not wounding, for from them all is dear--even unjust blame.

A thousand friendly compliments to M. Hanski and remembrances to all.
A kiss on the hair of your dear Anna. Thanks for the heart's-ease.

[Footnote 1: For a fuller understanding of this, I refer the reader to
his sister's account of his pecuniary trials, and to a brief statement
of the then existing system of literary payments, which will be found
in my "Memoir of Balzac," pp. 70, 71, 81, 89, 90, 158-160. It is
possible that had Balzac _been another man_ he might have rid himself
of his incubus of debt--though it is difficult to say how a young man
owing 100,000 francs and 6 per cent interest on them, without one penny
to pay either debt or interest, could have done so. But the question
here is: Could the man whose business it was to know men live apart
from their lives, a beggar in a garret? Can the genius whose mission
it was to grasp the whole of human society be judged in his business
methods like a city banker? Edmond Werdet, the publisher, who said he
suffered through his publication of Balzac's works, and who, nine years
after his death, wrote a book upon him partly for revenge ("Portrait
intime de Balzac, sa vie, son humeur, et son caractère." 1 vol., Paris,
1859), brought no charge against him of want of probity, or of failure
to keep his money engagements. On the contrary, he says in one place:
"He was an honest man; an honest man in debt, not a business man in
debt, as M. Taine has said of him." In another place he says: "Balzac
had his absurdities if you will, but he was exempt from vices."--TR.]


_For you only._

I should be most unjust if I did not say that from 1823 to 1833 an
angel sustained me through that horrible war. Madame de Berny, though
married, was like a God to me. She was a mother, friend, family,
counsellor; she made the writer, she consoled the young man, she
created his taste, she wept like a sister, she laughed, she came daily,
like a beneficent sleep, to still his sorrows. She did more; though
under the control of a husband, she found means to lend me as much as
forty-five thousand francs, of which I returned the last six thousand
in 1836, with interest at five per cent, be it understood. But she
never spoke to me of my debt, except now and then; without her, I
should, assuredly, be dead. She often divined that I had eaten nothing
for days; she provided for all with angelic goodness; she encouraged
that pride which preserves a man from baseness,--for which to-day my
enemies reproach me, calling it a silly satisfaction in myself--the
pride that Boulanger has, perhaps, pushed to excess in my portrait.

Therefore, that memory is for much in my life; it is ineffaceable,
for it mingles with everything. Tears are in me now for two persons
only,--for her who is no more, and for her who still is, and, I hope,
ever will be. Thus I am inexplicable to all; for none have ever known
the secret of my life; I would not deliver it up to any one. You have
detected it; keep it for me securely.

_Addio._ It was natural that I should not mix this great history of
the heart with the tale of my disasters and that of a material life so
difficult. But I could not let your analytical forehead cast a thought
on my confession of misery that would say I had forgotten her who gave
me the strength to resist it, or her who continues that rôle.

But let us leave all this henceforth. Let me take up once more my
burden. I bear it alone; and I can but smile at those who ask why I do
not run thus laden.

But neither do I wish you, in thinking of me, to see me always
suffering and harassed. There come hours when I look from my window,
my eyes to the sky, forgetting all, lost as I am in memories. If the
sorrowful had not the power to forget their sorrows, if they could not
make themselves an oasis where the springs and the palms are, what
would become of us?

Adieu; do not blame me again without thinking of all that ought to keep
you from saying that I conceal some great catastrophe. Do you think
that I lose millions in the boudoir of an opera girl?



SACHÉ, August 25, 1837.

I receive your number 31 here. I ended by getting an inflammation of
the lungs, and I came to Touraine by order of the doctor, who advised
me not to work, but to amuse myself, and walk about. To amuse myself
is impossible. Nothing but travel can counterbalance my work. As for
working, that is still impossible; even the writing of these few lines
has given me an intolerable pain in the back between the shoulders; and
as for walking, that is still more impossible; for I cough so _agedly_
that I fear to check the perspiration it causes by passing from warm to
cool spots and breezy openings. I thought Touraine would do me good.
But my illness has increased. The whole left lung is involved, and I
return to Paris to submit to a fresh examination. But as I must, no
matter what state I am in, resume my work and leave a mild and milky
regimen for that of stimulants, I feel that toil will carry me off.

I have reached a point where I no longer regret life; hopes are too
distant; tranquillity too laborious to attain. If I had only moderate
work to do I would submit without a murmur to this fate; but I have
too much grief, too many enemies. The third Part of the "Études
Philosophiques" is now for sale. Not a paper has noticed it. Fourteen
copies have been sold, though nearly all was new and unpublished! The
indorsements I so imprudently gave to that miserable Werdet have given
rise to a keener pursuit of me than I ever had for real debt; for I
never met with such severity, having, ever since I lived in the world,
been strictly punctual. Never was an illness more untimely for my
affairs.

You must think that your dear letter came as a benefaction from
Providence in the solitude of Saché. But, dear, why do you make, like
those spiteful little feuilletonists and so many others, the false
reasoning that considers an author guilty of all that he puts into the
mouth of his actors? Because I paint a journalist without faith or law,
make him talk as he thinks, and begin the portrait of that hideous
and cancerous sore, does it follow that my literature is that of a
commercial traveller? You are so wrong in this that I will not insist;
only, I don't like to find my polar star at fault, nor to catch myself
smiling as I kiss her pages. You are infallible for me. Do not quarrel
with me too much in the little time I have to live.

The grand affair is coming on. They engrave, design, and print
vigorously. But, if there is success, success will come too late. I
feel myself decidedly ill. I should have done better to go and pass six
months at Wierzchownia than to stay on the battle-field, where I shall
end by being knocked over. When one has neither supports nor ammunition
there comes a moment when one must capitulate. The whole world of Paris
rises in arms against inflexible virtue, and beats it down at any cost.

I meditate retiring to Touraine; but I cannot be there alone. There is
no one to see there. One must have all in one's own home.

The moments when my energy deserts me are becoming more frequent, and,
in those terrible phases, it is impossible to answer for one's self.
There is neither reasoning, nor sentiment, nor doctrine that can quell
the excesses of that crisis, when the soul is, so to speak, absent.
Journeys cost so much money, and ruin me for a year or more; thus I am
forced to remain in France. The law about the National Guard drives me
into going to Touraine, for it is impossible for me to submit to that
rule. So I think that towards the middle of September I shall have
chosen a little house on the banks of the Cher or the Loire. I am even
in treaty for one now, which would suit me very well, but there are
serious difficulties.

I am surprised that you have not yet received Boulanger's picture. They
assured me it would go by a flying-waggon which went so fast that in a
month it would be delivered in Brody. Now it is more than two months
since I announced to you its departure.

This distance between us is something very dreadful. Your letter has
been so delayed that I feared illnesses; I feared lest your fatigues
had affected your health. I see now that you and yours are well. I will
write you from Paris after seeing the doctor.

Why are you vexed with me for not having told you of Madame Contarini?
I shall be angry with you till death for always believing that I need
foreign female preachers to refresh my memory of _my country_. Alas!
I think of it too much. I have too much subordinated all my thoughts
to what you, so distant from me, think, to be happy. In short, I am
neither converted nor to be converted, for I have but one religion and
I do not divide my sentiments. If my religion is too terrestrial, the
fault is in God, _who made it what it is_. Madame Contarini did not
know that she was following in your religious foot-prints; for it is
you who have undertaken my conversion.

You are always the providence of some one. That poor Swiss girl, will
she love you better than the other? For we ought never to judge those
we love; I am very fixed on that principle. The affection that is not
blind is no affection at all.

I resume this letter at midnight, before going to bed. My bedroom
here, which people come to see out of curiosity, looks out on woods
that are two or three times centennial, and I take in a view of the
Indre and the little château that I called Clochegourde. The silence is
marvellous.

I leave to-morrow, 26th, for Tours with M. de Margonne, and the 28th
for Paris, where my deplorable affairs need me. I always leave this
lonely valley with regret.

My mother is very unwell. She sinks under the distress which the
precarious position of her children gives her; for we have to take
charge, my brother-in-law, my sister and myself, of the children of
my poor dead sister Laurence. What makes me spur the principle of my
courage so much is my desire to succeed in time to gild her old age.

Do you know that your letter is dated July 27, and that I received it
August 21?--a whole month! A month without news of you is a very long
time for a friendship watching for it at all hours, and often, between
two proofs, taking its head in its hands and asking itself, "What is
she thinking of?"

Well, adieu, for my fatigue is returning; I am going to bed and shall
think of all I have not told you, forgetfulnesses which come of so
short a letter; in Paris I shall have more to tell you. But, no matter
what I say, find ever on my pages the purest and sweetest flowers of
an affection that distance cannot lessen, which springs across that
distance,--an affection known to you, and which, in a word, is ever
prolix.



PARIS, September 1, 1837.

_Cara_, I hasten to tell you that the inflammation, which turned into
bronchitis, is now cured. But I must begin work again, and God knows
what will happen in consequence of new excesses. Though all goes well
physically, all goes ill pecuniarily; and I will not tell you the
particulars, lest they bring upon me more unjust suspicions.

I begin this evening a comedy in five acts, entitled, "Joseph
Prudhomme;" for I must come to that last resource; I am in the
condition of "My kingdom for a horse!"

Three months hence you will receive three very important works: "César
Birotteau," the third _dizain_, and the "Lettres de deux Amants, ou le
nouvel Abeilard." I count the comedy as nothing. I think I have never
done anything that can be compared to "Berthe la Repentie," the diamond
of the third _dizain_. You brought luck to that poem, for the first
chapter was written in Geneva, three days after my arrival.

I wish not to tell you anything about the "Lettres de deux Amants;"
that is a surprise I desire to make to my dear preacheress, to teach
her to comprehend that when one has undertaken to paint the whole of a
moral world, one must paint it under all its aspects, with believers
and unbelievers, and every one in his place. Apropos of the comedy
which I am now going to attempt and to put upon the stage, I admire to
see how persistence is necessary in art. That comedy has been in my
head for ten years; it has come back and back under divers faces, it
has been a score of times cast and recast, modified, made, remade, and
made again, and now it is about to come to the surface, new and vulgar,
grand and simple. I am delighted with it; I foresee a great success
and a work which may maintain itself on the repertory among the score
of plays which make the glory of the Théâtre-Français. I have a second
sight about it, as about "La Peau de Chagrin" and "Eugénie Grandet."
After being reassured by the friend to whom I confided the first doubt
I had about it, I have seen in it the elements of a great thing. There
is comedy and dumb tragedy, laughter and tears both. It has five acts,
as long and fertile as those of "Le Mariage de Figaro." This work,
brought to birth in the midst of my present miseries, is, at this
moment, like a carbuncle glowing in the shadows of a muddy grotto. A
terrible desire seizes me to go and write it in Switzerland, at Geneva;
but the dearness of living among those Swiss alarms me.

I have just seen the drawings made for "La Peau de Chagrin," and
they are wonderful. This enterprise is gigantic. Four thousand steel
engravings, drawn on copper-plate in the text itself. One hundred per
volume! In short, if this affair succeeds, the "Études Sociales" will
be brought forth in their entirety, in a magnificent costume, with
regal trappings.

Admit that if, in a few months, Fortune visits my threshold, I shall
have earned her well; and be sure that I shall cling fast hold on
whatever she deigns to fling to me.

Never did I find myself in such a tempest as now, and never did
hope show herself so serene or so beautiful; she is lustrous in her
turquoise, she smiles to me, and I let myself go to that smile which
helps me to bear my misfortunes. Without these celestial apparitions
what would become of poets and of artists when unhappy?

Adieu, dear. I must not tire you too long with the echoes of the
storm--unless, indeed, they make Wierzchownia the sweeter to you, and
the long expanse of the Ukraine more placid to your eye.

I do not understand bow it is that I am not, in the middle of August,
installed in some corner of your mansion, duly framed and mounted, with
all the monastic dignity that painter gave me.

You cannot imagine how beautiful Paris is becoming. We needed the reign
of a trowel to arrive at such grand results. This magnificence, which
advances daily and on all sides, will make us worthy of being the
capital of the world. The boulevards paved with asphalt, lighted by
bronze candelabra with gas, the increasing splendour of the shops, of
that fair, two leagues long, perpetually going on and varied by ever
new handiworks, compose a spectacle that is unequalled. In ten years we
shall be clean; "Paris mud" will be out of the dictionaries; we shall
become so magnificent that Paris will be really a great lady, the first
of queens, crowned with battlements.

I renounce Touraine and remain a citizen of the intellectual
metropolis. But I shall exempt myself from the draconian tyranny of
the National Guard by putting three leagues of distance between me
and this terrible queen. Respect is good taste towards royalties. An
obscure village will receive my miseries and my grandeurs. Your moujik
will have a very humble cottage, whence he will now and then depart
at half-past six to reach the Italian Opera at eight, for music is a
distraction, the only one that remains to him. Those beneficent voices
refresh both soul and mind.

Adieu, dear. You share in sorrows; it is right that I should send you
rays of gentle hope when she makes an azure rift athwart the dais of
gray cloud. God grant that star may not fall like others, but lead me
to some treasure-trove.

I please myself in thinking that you are happy; that your life has
taken, after the departure of your guests, its accustomed way, that
Paulowska brings you in her golden fleeces, that no one steals your
books, that no wicked page of mine has furrowed that brow so full of
dazzling majesty; in short, that you have all the crumbs of little
happiness, for that is much. Materialities, which are the half of life,
are not lacking to you; and if they bring monotony, at least the energy
that may spend itself in sacred regions--where you bear it to the
detriment of this poor passionate earth--is not exhausted. You know,
this long time, what wishes I make that life be light upon you. I hope
that Anna, and your tall young ladies, and the master, and the Swiss
maid, in short, all your household, are well, and that you have no
grief that makes you lift your eyes to heaven.

After that phrase I pick up my spade, I mean my pen, and dig in the
field "Birotteau," which still needs delving and rolling and raking and
watering; and when you read the letter of François to César, remember
that it was there that my thought made a pause to turn to you and send
you this letter across your steppe, like a flower of friendship asking
asylum in your soil, which, in spite of wintry snows, will be always
coloured and perfumed by a sincere affection.



SÈVRES, October 10, 1837.

Much time has gone by without my writing to you; I have lived so
tempestuously that I am not sure whether on my return from Touraine and
after my convalescence I thought to tell you that my chest was quite
well and had nothing the matter with it.

In order to put myself outside of that atrocious law of the National
Guard, I have removed from the rue Cassini and the rue des Batailles,
and legally quitted Paris; that is to say, I have gone before three
mayors and declared that I quitted the capital; after which I
installed myself and live here at Sèvres. Therefore take note that
after you receive this letter you must address your letters to
"Monsieur Surville, rue de la Ville-d'Avray, Sèvres, Seine-et-Oise,"
for I must receive my letters under that name for some months to come,
so that my address may not be known at the post-office, partly for
secret reasons (which are Werdet's failure, and the pursuit which I
must endure till I can earn the money to pay up my indorsements), and
partly to escape the great quantity of letters with which unknown men
and women overwhelm me.

I have bought here a bit of ground containing some forty rods, on which
my brother-in-law is going to build me a tiny house, where I shall
henceforth live until my fortune is made, or where I shall remain
forever if I stay a beggar. When it is built, and I am in it, which
will be in January next, I will let you know, and you can then write to
me under my own name, and put the address of my poor hermitage, which
is "Les Jardies," the name of the piece of ground on which I hang like
a worm on a green leaf. Land about Paris is so parcelled out that I had
to negotiate with three peasants to collect this lot of forty rods,
and a rod contains only seventeen square feet. I am here at a distance
which allows me to go and come from Paris in two hours. I can go to the
theatre and sleep at home. I am in Paris without being there. There
are neither heavy taxes nor tolls; living is cheaper, and the day when
I can make sure of having a thousand francs a month for myself I can
have a carriage. And finally, I escape that perpetual inquisition which
publishes every step I take and every word I say. I shall neither see
nor receive any one. Then instead of spending twenty thousand francs
with other people where I may lodge, I shall spend them on my own home,
and nothing shall ever get me out of that. You would never believe how
I like fixedness. Constancy is one of the corner-stones of my nature.

You can easily understand that these turmoils have not left me a minute
to myself. I have looked at a hundred houses around Paris, and been in
negotiations for several. For a whole month I have roamed the environs
to find what I wanted on the exact boundary of the department of the
Seine and Seine-et-Oise. I came very near buying one house; but after
convincing myself that I should have to spend twenty thousand francs
in repairs and alterations to suit myself, I determined to buy a piece
of ground and build; for a house would cost only twelve thousand
francs, built as I wished it, and the land, with the peasant's house
on it, came to not more than five thousand. Reckoning the interior at
three thousand, the whole would be twenty thousand, and allowing five
thousand for mistakes, that would make twenty-five thousand; that is, a
rental of twelve hundred francs a year, and the comfort of having one's
cabin to one's self without the annoyances of noise, for my land backs
upon the park of Saint-Cloud. I have retained the apartment in the rue
de Batailles for a few months to store my furniture until I install
myself at Les Jardies.

I hasten to write to you, because to-morrow I begin "La Maison
Nucingen" for the "Presse." That means fifty columns to hatch out
before the end of the month, and then?--then my pen will be free, for
my new editors have compromised with the defunct "Figaro," now about
to rise from its ashes, and I have finished that third _dizain_. So,
about November 1 my pen will owe nothing to any one, and I can begin
the execution of my new treaty by the publication of "César Birotteau."
But, as that work cannot appear before January 1, and as I have had an
advance of two months, I shall receive no money till March. My distress
must therefore go on for six months longer, and it is frightful.

This illness has made me lose six irreparable weeks. I think ever, if
my embarrassments are too great, of going to take refuge with you for
three months. I keep that project for a last resource, and I now repent
that I have not already put it into execution; for when I am known to
be travelling everybody waits, and nobody says anything. After that,
returning with one or two plays in hand, all my money troubles could
be pacified. But I cannot do that until I have paid my pen debts and
given one work to my new editors; which throws me over to the month of
February,--if, always, my house is finished and I am in it.

I cannot give you an idea of the turmoil in which I have been for the
last six weeks, and the disconnectedness of my life, usually (in body)
so peaceful. And all the while I had to read proofs and write. You
are ignorant, in your Ukraine, of what Parisian removals are; nothing
describes them but a provincial saying: "Three removals are equal to
one conflagration."

In the midst of these worries and fatigues I have had two joys: they
are your two letters, which I shall answer in a few days, for I have
united them with their elders in a precious casket which I took to my
sister, in order not to subject them to these removal agitations. I
think there is something in them I ought to answer.

It is probable that I shall not go to the Opera, and this will be, I
assure you, a great privation; because there is nothing that distracts
my mind like music, and I do not know how else to relax my soul.
Nothing will remain to me but the contemplation of the azure waves of
hope, and I don't know whether this hovering with spread wings above
that infinite, which recedes as we approach it, is not a pain--which
pleases perhaps, but is none the less painful.

I have had many griefs since I wrote to you. In the passing crisis in
which I am, every one has fled me like a leper. I am all alone. But I
prefer this solitude within my solitude to the fawning hatred which is
called, in Paris, friendship.

I have still a _conte_ to write for my third _dizain_, to replace one
which was too free, and it is now a month that I have been trying to
find something, without avail. Nothing but the want of that _feuille_
delays the publication.... Next month the announcement of our tontine
on the "Études Sociales" will, no doubt, appear; and from the 1st
to the 15th the magnificent edition will be ready. They have begun
with "La Peau de Chagrin." The second volume will be "Le Médecin de
campagne," and the third "Le Lys dans la Vallée." God grant that the
affair succeed!

I am in despair at hearing that your _cassolette_ is in Warsaw, and I
cannot imagine why it has not been sent to you by some opportunity. Is
there no communication between you and Warsaw? There are now strong
reasons for suspecting the person in question, whose journey is
inexplicable. I add to this letter a line for him, which you must seal
and send to him, to hasten the delivery of that jewel.

Write me a line, I beg of you, to let me know if the picture has
reached Brody. Double the time it ought to have taken has elapsed, and
I am very impatient to know if anything unlucky has happened to it on
the journey. I hear nothing of the statue from Milan. Those Italians
are really very singular.

You wrote me that you might go to Vienna, but have never again
mentioned that project. If you go there I could bring you, myself, a
whole _library_ of manuscripts which belong to you, and are beginning
to be difficult to transport.

This is the first time I have ever answered two letters from you;
for if you reckon up, you will see that in letter-writing I have the
advantage, in spite of what you call, so insultingly, your chatter.
Whatever it is, I am grieved when I do not get it, and it is now a
fortnight since I have seen Auguste enter, bearing respectfully a
little packet, neatly folded and very spruce, which comes from such
distance and yet has nothing of the immensity of the steppes in its
form.

My play, the comedy in five acts, is all laid out, and as your opinion
has made me change and modify the one I first began, I dare not tell
you this one, because when your reply comes it will be written, and if
you are against it you will throw me into terrible perplexities. Is
not this falling on one's knees before one's critic? Wherefore, behold
me there! I place myself at your feet with a good grace, entreating
you to pay no attention to what I have just said, and to go your way
with your female scissors through my plot, and cut up my dramatic
calico mercilessly, for, in my present situation, this play represents
a hundred thousand francs, and I must make it a masterpiece well and
quickly, or succumb.

You know "Monsieur Prudhomme," the type made by Henri Monnier? I
take it boldly; because in order to seize success one must not have
to obtain acceptance for a creation. One must, like the ambassador
making love, buy it ready-made. Hence, there is no anxiety about the
personage; I am sure of the laughter so far. Only, I must annihilate
Monnier, and my Prudhomme must be _the_ Prudhomme. Monnier made only
a poor vaudeville of burlesques; I shall make five acts for the
Théâtre-Français.

Prudhomme, as type of our present bourgeoisie, as image of the
Gannerons, of the Aubés, of the National Guard, of that middle-class on
which _il padrone_ rests, is a personage far more comic than Turcaret,
droller than Figaro. He is wholly of the present day. Here is the
subject:--

At thirty-seven years of age, Prudhomme is seized with a passion
for the daughter of a porter,--charming person, who studies at the
Conservatoire and has carried off prizes. She sees before her the
career of Mademoiselle Mars; she has distinction, jargon, she is quite
_comme il faut_; she is eighteen, but she has been already betrayed
in a first love; she has had a son by a pupil at the Conservatoire,
who has gone to America out of love for his child, being alarmed by
his poverty, and resolved to make his fortune. Pamela mourns him, but
she has the child on her arms. The desire to support and bring up her
child makes her marry Prudhomme, from whom she conceals her situation.
Prudhomme, at thirty-seven, possesses thirty thousand francs in
savings; he has invested them in the mines of Anzin in 1815, and his
shares are worth, in 1817, three hundred thousand francs. That incites
him to marry. The marriage takes place. He has a daughter by his wife.
The thousand-franc shares of Anzin are worth, in 1834, one hundred and
fifty thousand francs. This is the prologue; for the play itself begins
in 1834, eighteen years later.

Monsieur Prudhomme has realized fifteen hundred thousand francs on
half his shares, and keeps the rest. He has made himself a banker;
and, as happens to all imbeciles, he has prospered under the advice
of his wife, who is an angelic and superior woman, full of propriety
and good taste. She has known how to play the rôle of a woman of
means. But her attachment to her husband, inspired by the really good
qualities of that ridiculous man, strengthened by the passion that he
has for her, by the comfort that he gives her through his wealth, is
balanced by the maternal sentiment exalted to the highest pitch which
Pamela bears to her first child, whom, thanks to this wealth, she was
enabled to bring up, with an invisible hand, until two years earlier,
when she introduced him into her own home, without his knowing the
truth. Adolphe is made head clerk, and the poor mother has played her
dreadful part so carefully that no one, not even Adolphe, suspects the
great love that envelops him. M. Prudhomme is very fond of Adolphe.
Mademoiselle Prudhomme is seventeen years old. The play is entitled
"Le Mariage de Mademoiselle Prudhomme." M. Prudhomme, rich from the
shares of Anzin, rich with the profits of his bank, and possessing much
private property, will give his daughter a million. She is, therefore,
with a million and expectations, one of the best matches in Paris.

I must tell you that, unlike the Antonys, Adolphe is a gay, practical
young fellow, happy in his position, delighted not to have either
father or mother, and never inquiring about them. In that lies a
dreadful drama between the mother and her son, for poor Madame
Prudhomme is tortured a dozen times a day by the indifference of her
son in the matter of his mother, and by a crowd of circumstances I
cannot explain here; they make the play itself.

The fortune of Mademoiselle Prudhomme tempts a young notary, who owes
his business to his predecessor, who is eager to be paid for it. This
old notary is a friend of Prudhomme; he has introduced the young notary
to the house. Madame Prudhomme's tenderness for Adolphe does not escape
his eye; he believes that she intends to give him her daughter; and
the two notaries open Prudhomme's eyes to his wife's love for Adolphe.
Here, then, is the wife unjustly accused of an imaginary sin, from
which she does not know how to vindicate herself. The comedy comes,
you understand, from the _pathos_ of Prudhomme, and from his efforts
to convict his wife. His wife accepts the singular combat of silencing
her husband as if she were guilty, which is a satirical situation
completely in the style of Molière. But she sees whence the blow has
come. She fences with the two notaries, and, pressed by them, she
shows them the infamy of their conduct, and declares that she will
never give her daughter to a man capable of soiling the honour of the
mother to obtain the daughter. They are forced to retract to Prudhomme,
and the mother, to secure the tranquillity of her husband, is forced to
separate from her son.

That is the main play; but, you understand, there is an enormous
quantity of situations, scenes, movements. Servants are mixed up in
it. It is a picture of our present bourgeoisie. There is a return of
Adolphe's father, which complicates everything, and brings about the
dénouement. There is a horrible scene in which Prudhomme, in order to
get light on his wife's passion, proposes the marriage of brother and
sister, and arms himself with his wife's terror. There is also the most
fruitful of all subjects, great ridicule of men and things through
Prudhomme's magniloquence. Madame Prudhomme is the Célimène of the
bank, the true character of our women of the present day. But there is,
above all, a keen satire on manners and morals. Prudhomme, accepting
this false disaster, vanquished by the superiority of his wife, is a
figure that was lacking to the stage. The solid happiness, marred by
the slander of self-interested persons and restored by them for their
own interests, has the true ring of comedy. Mademoiselle Prudhomme
does not marry. Apparently, all this is vague; but the vagueness and
want of outline is that of the "Misanthrope," the plot of which is in
ten lines. The rôle of Madame Prudhomme, who is forty years old, can
be played only by Mademoiselle Mars; but, with her tacit maternity,
crushed down at every moment, she can be superb.

_Ecco, cara_, the card on which I am about to stake my whole future;
for I have but that chance left, so deplorable is the state of the
publishing business now; and I must, if our grand affair fails, have
something to fall back upon. I shall not do that play only. I shall
do two others at the same time, so as to obtain the receipts of two
theatres at least.

_Addio._ I will write you between now and November 1, when I shall have
got some pressing matters off my hands. But, I entreat you, do not
forget, and continue to me the tale of your tranquil Ukrainean life. I
have flowers beneath my windows, dahlias, plants that make me think of
your gardens. When I open the book in which I put all the thoughts of
my work, and so many other things, I turn ever to the one saying, "I
will be Richelieu to preserve you." That, in this great corral of my
ideas, is the flower that my eye caresses oftenest.

Be indulgent to the poor third _dizain_, the third of which was written
at the hôtel de l'Arc. "Berthe la Repentie" is decidedly the finest
thing in the "Contes Drolatiques." I gossip to you about my poor
thoughts; my life is such a desert; there are so many misconceptions,
recent betrayals, difficulties, that I dare not talk to you of my
material life. It is too sad.


October 12.

The "Conte" is rewritten and sent to the printing-office, and I can say
that I am heartily glad to have finished at last that eternally "in the
press" _dizain_. I have many other books to finish also. "Massimilla
Doni" lacks a chapter on "Moïse," which requires long studies of the
score; and as I must make them with a consummate musician, I cannot
be master of my own work. Next I have a preface to sew on, like a
collaret, to "La Femme Supérieure;" and a fourth Part also, like a
bustle; for the sixty-five columns in the "Presse" did not furnish
forth a volume; hence the preface and the added end of the volume. You
cannot imagine how these mendings, these replasterings, weary me; I am
worn-out with such secondary toils.

I have forgotten to tell you, I think, about Mademoiselle de Fauveau,
who remembers you very well. She and her sister are such Catholics
that the latter made difficulties about marrying the son of Bautte
(the millionaire jeweller of Geneva where you and I went together, you
remember?) on account of his religion, and yet these two poor women
are in great poverty. Is not that splendid in faith? Mademoiselle de
Fauveau, to whom I said that many persons objected to what I made
Madame de Mortsauf say before dying, fell into a holy wrath with such
profane ones, for she holds in admiration the "Lys dans la Vallée."
When I told her that I had modified the cries of the flesh she said:--

"At least, do not take out: I will learn English to say 'my dear.'"

She thought the Catholic theme magnificently laid down; for it is the
combat of mind over matter.

"Unhappily," I said to her, "it seems that none but you and I see it
so."

She is a charming person, but rather too mystical and mythic. She made
me go to San Miniato to see primitive triglyphs, superb, in relation to
the Trinity; but I saw nothing of the kind. Don't call me a "commercial
traveller" again, on account of that blindness. I would like to be a
traveller and travel to your _cara patria_, but not a commercial one.

Adieu; I hope that this frail paper will tell you all I think, and
that you will not think of my distress, or of my griefs; but that you
will do as I do myself--lift, gaily and sadly both, my head to heaven,
whence I have awaited, from my youth up, the Orient of full happiness.

Do not scold me too much, _cara_, for my silence, for there has been
no truce or rest to me since my last letter; and I have been saying
to myself that I must have made you anxious, without being able to
sit down and write; for to write one word only is what I can never do.
Some day, beside your fire, make me relate to you this month; you will
then see what it has been. These are real novels that must be kept for
private talks; and then the lord of Wierzchownia will laugh, as he did
when I told him of my campaigns in China.



CHAILLOT, October 20, 1837.

I receive this morning your number 34 and have just read the tale of
your journey. I am here for my mother's fête-day.

Those cursed builders demand the whole month of November to arrange my
cabin at Sèvres; and I shall be here at least a fortnight to attend
to the proofs of "La Maison Nucingen." My editors have arranged with
the "Figaro" and have bought back my agreement with it, so that my
pen owes nothing to any one, no matter who, after the publication of
"La Maison Nucingen." I am unusually content with the third _dizain_.
But you don't know how that literature is proscribed; it is so blamed
for obscenity that I should not be surprised at a general hue and cry
against it. English manias are gaining on us; it is enough to make one
adore Catholicism.

"Massimilla Doni," another book which will be much misunderstood, gives
me immense labour from its difficulties; but I have never caressed
anything so much as those mythical pages, because the myth is so
profoundly buried beneath reality. You have, no doubt, before this read
"Gambara" in the "Revue de Saint-Pétersbourg;" for those worthy pirates
will not have overlooked that work, which cost me six months toil.

I have seen Versailles; Louis Philippe's action was so far good, as it
saved the palace; but it is the most ignoble and the silliest piece
of work in itself I ever saw; so bad is it in art and so niggardly in
execution. When you see it you will be amazed; and when I explain
to you what is Louis XIV., Louis XV., Louis XVI., and Empire, you
will think the rest horribly mean and bourgeois. Your Aunt Leczinska
is there a dozen times in family portraits, and I took pleasure in
looking at her and saying to myself with a laugh, "Better a live
emperor than a buried dowdy;" for you are a queen of beauty, and she
an ugly dowdy; though that must be the fault of the painters, for she
was really very handsome. An extraordinary thing is, that there is not
one of her portraits that is like another; so many portraits, so many
different women. She was, no doubt, variable. What is really fine at
Versailles, worthy of Titian and all that is noblest in painting, is
the "Consecration of Napoleon" and the "Crowning of Josephine," the
"Blessing of the Eagles" and "Napoleon pardoning Arabs" in the pictures
of David and Guérin. What a great painter David is! He is colossal. I
never saw those three pictures before.

I write to you also in presence of a friend [her portrait] in the
contemplation of whom I lose myself as in the infinite. I have a
quarrel to make with you, apropos of an insincere sentence in your
number 33, about your regret at not having friends who can travel for
your benefit. That sentence is one of the wounds that reach my heart;
for you know well that if for you and yours it were necessary that I
should go to the ends of the earth, or do daily something difficult and
binding (which is more than exhibiting one's self in greater ways), I
would not reflect a moment, I would do it with the blind obedience of a
dog. If you know that, your remark is bad; if you do not know it, put
me to the proof. My character, my manners and morals, all that is I, is
so horribly calumniated that despair seizes me when I see that I have
not even one little corner where doubt and suspicion do not enter.

You tell me that I write to you less often; there is not a letter
of yours without an answer, and I often write to you in a scramble
amid the desperate struggles I maintain, which will end, perhaps, in
conquering my courage.

The announcement of our grand affair is postponed to the period of
the general elections, a moment when the newspapers are much read.
The first number will probably appear November 15. It will be my
Austerlitz, or my Waterloo.

You spoke of the material obstacles to your presence among the works at
Wierzchownia; but I own that if you understand very little my material
obstacles, I understand yours still less; I cannot conceive expense
in the solitude of a steppe. Make me your bailiff, and you will see
that the man who created Grandet understands domestic economy. I would
rather be your bailiff than be Lord Byron; Lord Byron was not happy,
and I should be very happy.

The farther I go, the more frequent are my moments of depression and
despair. This solitude and this constant toil without compensation kill
me. Every day I think back to those days when the person of whom I
have told you provisioned me with courage, and shared my labour. What
an immense loss! What can fill it? An image? That image is mute and
does not even look at me. But, whatever she be, and in spite of the
imperfections of memory, she gilds my solitude and I can say that she
enlightens it.

You cannot think how many dark distresses have resulted from the blow
that deprived me of Madame de Berny. First, the tardy reparations of
all my family, who did not like her, and who repeated the scene of
"Clarissa Harlowe." Then, all those little things of the heart which
ought to lie burned, or remain in one's own possession. Her son has
understood nothing of all that; he has not returned me such things,
and I do not venture to ask for them. So that I, whom neither work,
nor grief, nor anything else seems likely to kill, I am making
arrangements as if I were to die to-morrow, that I may grieve the heart
of none.

I heard yesterday your dear "Norma." But Rubini was replaced by a
wretched tenor and they skipped his airs. I came away before the scene
where Norma declares her passion to the Druids. The strangest set of
people were in the boxes, for no one has yet returned from the country;
the vine harvest was late this year, and the weather superb. Prince Ed.
Schonberg occupied the box of the Apponys, who are still absent. But no
princess.

Was I not right when I said to you in Vienna that the fortnight I
passed there was like an oasis in my life? Since that moment I have
never had a day or an hour of repose. I travelled to gain a truce to
such life; and no doubt the month, or months, I might again take, in
which Paris could be completely forgotten, would be another oasis. But
can I take them? There are days when a ferocious desire seizes me to
drop everything. It would have been wise had I committed that folly.
That alone would enable me to bring back a play; here, I am too much
pursued by my obligations.

You can hardly imagine how your letters carry me to you; and how those
which seem to you long and diffuse are precious to me. Where there is
heart and constancy, one cannot dwell on the merit and the grace that
mark each detail; but I do assure you they make me very fastidious.
There come heavy and peculiarly gloomy hours when I have only to read
through some past page, taken at random, to soothe my soul; it is as if
I issued from a dungeon to cast eyes on a lovely landscape. Only--there
have been some sad things, or rather, saddening things; for example,
when you believe on the word of your sister Caroline; when you say
you would not know what to do at Wierzchownia with a Parisian, a wit,
who needs Paris and would be bored in the Ukraine. That proves that a
hundred letters will not make you know me, nor the forty-five days we
spent together. I own I am not saddened, but humiliated, by that tirade
from a charming creature.

Apropos of the third _dizain_; I earnestly desire that you will not
read it until M. Hanski has first passed judgment on it; for if it
were likely to injure me in your mind I would rather that it should
never go upon your bookshelves. It is specially a book for men; and I
suffer when that easy and inoffensive pleasantry is ill-understood or
ill-taken. Do me this favour; let it unwrinkle the boyard's brow when
he has his blue devils; but hide the book away.

I believe you are right as to the route I had better take, and that
from Havre to Lubeck and from Lubeck to Berlin would be best. But by
Berlin, one must go through Warsaw; and I wanted to avoid Warsaw,
because I hate those stupid occasions when one is recognized and
receptions are made for one without heart or soul, purely from vanity.
But it is the better route Perhaps also the least costly.

When you spoke to me in your number 33 of a happiness that I did not
dream of in the rue de Lesdiguières, believing that I should see
disappointment in a peaceful, obscure, secluded existence, happy in a
home and confidence, you did not know how much ballast I have thrown
into the sea, how many of my soap-bubbles have burst, how little I now
cling to that which men call fame (which is here the privilege of being
calumniated, vilified, disgraced). Reputation, political consistency,
all is in the water. That which is not in the water, and on which I
rely, is the youth of heart that will enable me to love for twenty
years a woman who might then be forty-six--this counts the form for
little, and the soul for all!

Why do you speak to me of a journal in which I am a shareholder?
Journal yourself, as the school-boys say. You believe in
advertisements! You think our names are respected! People take them for
puffs of a spurious Macassar, a sham perfume; but whoever would attack
this singular humbug would be well scoffed at. I shall never again
concern myself in business or a newspaper; a scalded cat fears cold
water.

I have a persecutor who wants to put me in prison (always that business
of Werdet, who has got his certificate of bankruptcy and walks about
Paris free of creditors). Jules Sandeau quarrelled with this man, whom
he despised on his personal account. Well, he has now made up with him,
and dines with him. I have been a father to Jules. I cry to myself,
"Here's another man stricken from the list of the living for me!" Do
you think that makes me love Paris?

Adieu for to-day. I will write you a few more lines before closing
my letter. I must now apply myself to "La Maison Nucingen" and, like
Sisyphus, roll my rock.


Monday, 23.

I don't know anything more wearying than to sit a whole night, from
midnight till eight o'clock, beneath the light of shaded candles,
before blank paper, unable to find thoughts, listening to the noise of
the fire and that of carriages sounding beyond the window panes from
the Barrière des Bons-Hommes and the quay. This is what your servant
has done for five nights past, without meeting the moment when some
inner voice, I know not what it is, says to him, "Go on!" Such useless
fatigues count for nothing to every one.


Thursday, 26.

Three days during which I have not been able to do anything--except
torture myself.

Yesterday I met one of your guests at Geneva, that relater of
anecdotes, who spoke of the Z... He is to come and see me this
morning; and I would like much to know, by return mail, whether,
in case he returns to _la cara patria_, I can give him some of the
manuscripts that belong to you; for I think they will have to be sent
in detachments.

My brain must be fatigued by the proofs of "Les Contes Drolatiques" and
of "Massimilla Doni," for complete impotence in respect to what I have
to do reigns there. I have often had these checks, but they have never
before lasted so long.

I must bid you farewell and send this letter, which, by the blessed
invention of the "bon roy Loys le unzième," will be in your hands
within twenty days. Winter is about to begin, so all chance of going to
see you is postponed till spring,--though snow-drifts do not terrify
me any more than wolves; those who are very unhappy need fear no
accidents. They are the anointed of sorrows. Death respects them.

I will own to you that when I found myself so ill at Saché I had a sort
of sensuous tranquillity in feeling my dull pains, for _I live from
duty only_.

I am now to make two grand essays for fortune: the tontine affair and
my comedy. After that, I shall let myself go with the current and see
what comes of it. Believe that after a struggle of eighteen years, and
a bitter fight of seven, if "a campaign of France" should end them,
I must, willing or unwilling, find my Saint Helena. Between now and
the month of April all will be decided. The tontine will have failed,
"Mademoiselle Prudhomme" will have been hissed, and I shall have flung
myself into a diligence from Lubeck to Berlin in search of a rest most
needful. You will see a literary soldier covered with wounds to nurse.
But he will not be hard to amuse, "quoi qu'on die."

Well, adieu. Write to me oftener, and do not forget to remember me
to your colony. Tell M. Hanski that I think I have found a means to
naturalize madder in Russia. That will wake him up. Many caressing
things to your Anna. Tell me confidentially of something that would
please her from Paris, and find here the homage of my attachment, and
the flowers of a heart that can never be withered of them.



CHAILLOT, November 7, 1837.

I have decidedly begun my comedy; but, after defining its principal
lines, I perceived the difficulties, and that gives me a profound
admiration for the great geniuses who have left their works on the
stage.

Yesterday I went to hear Beethoven's symphony in C minor. Beethoven is
the only man who makes me know jealousy. I would rather be Beethoven
than Rossini or Mozart. There is a divine power in that man. In that
_finale_, it seems as though some enchanter raised you into a land of
marvels, amid the noblest palaces filled with the treasures of all
arts; and there, at his command, gates, like those of the Baptistry,
turn on their hinges, letting you see beauties of an unknown kind--the
fairy land of fantasy. There, flutter beings with the beauties of
woman and the rainbow-tinted wings of the angel; you are bathed in an
upper air, that air which, according to Swedenborg, sings and sheds
fragrance, has colour and feeling, which flows to you, and beatifies
you!

No, the mind of the writer can never give such joys, because what we
paint is finite, fixed, and what Beethoven flings to you is infinite!
You understand that I only know the symphony in C minor, and that
fragment of the Pastoral symphony which we heard rattled off at Geneva
on a second floor--of which I heard little, because two steps away
from you stood a young man, who asked me, with straining eyes and a
petrified air, if I knew who that beautiful lady was; the which was
you, and I was proud as though I were a woman, young, beautiful, and
vain.

I live so solitary a life that I have nothing to tell you of Paris, nor
can I paint its life, or repeat its cancans. I can only speak to you of
myself, a subject of perpetual sadness. My little house gets on; the
masonry will be finished by the 30th of this month. But, no doubt, it
will not be habitable for three or four months.

I am plunged at this moment into laughable trouble, in the sense that
I have in my own home one of the pleasures of wealth. My "faithful"
Auguste doubts my future fortune and leaves me, alleging a certain
paternal will which desires him to abandon domestic service for
commerce; but the real truth of this flight is his own disbelief in my
future opulence, and a species of certainty that my present distress
will last, and thus prevent him from doing his own little business. I
let him go; and I groan at having to find some other rascal. I like
those I know; though this one cared as little for me as for the year
I. of the Republic. He paid no attention to anything; he left me, ill
in bed, one whole day without a drop to drink; though when he was ill
I gave him a nurse, and I paid a thousand francs this year to exempt
him from the conscription. He had become intolerable to me through his
negligence, so that his present ingratitude suits me.

Imagine that for the last three years, at least, I have had on my
hands an Irish lady, a Miss Patrickson, who has appointed herself to
translate my works and propagate them in England. The story is droll.
Madame de C..., furious against me for various reasons, took her to
teach English to R... and invented a trick to play me through her.
She made her write me a love-letter signed "Lady Nevil." I take the
English "Almanach" and I could not find in it either a Lord or a Sir
Nevil. Moreover, the letter was very equivocal. You know that when such
things are feigned there is either too much or too little of them; I
saw therefore what it was. I replied with ardour. A rendezvous was
given me at the Opera. I went that day to see Madame de C..., who made
me stay to dinner. But I excused myself, saying I had an engagement at
the Opera. She said, "Very good, I'll take you there." But in saying
so she could not help exchanging a glance with her _demoiselle de
compagnie_, and that glance sufficed me. I guessed all. I saw she was
laying a trap for me and meant to make me ridiculous forever after. I
went to the Opera. No one there. Then I wrote a letter, which brought
the miss, old, horrible, with hideous teeth, but full of remorse for
the part she had played, full also of affection for me and contempt
and horror for the marquise. Though my letters were extremely ironical
and written for the purpose of making a woman masquerading as a false
Lady blush, she had got them back into her own possession. Thus I had
the whip hand of Madame de C... and she ended by divining that in this
intrigue she was on the down side. From that time forth she vowed me a
hatred which will end only with life. In fact, she may rise out of her
grave to calumniate me. She never opened "Séraphita" on account of its
dedication, and her jealousy is such that if she could annihilate the
book she would weep for joy.

So this horrible, old, and toothless Miss Patrickson, feeling herself
bound to make reparation, lives only as my translator. I met at Poissy
a Madame Saint-Clair, daughter of some English admiral, I don't know
who, sister of Madame Delmar, who is also infatuated to translate
me, and has proposed to me a lucrative arrangement with the English
reviews. I have said neither yes nor no, on account of my Patrickson.
As it is now three years that the poor creature has been struggling
with the affair, which is her livelihood, I imagined she would be glad
of this help. I went to see her Wednesday evening, she lives on a fifth
floor, but I myself know nothing more grandiose than poverty. I mount,
I arrive! I find the poor creature as drunk as a Suisse. Never in my
life was I so embarrassed; she spoke between her teeth; she did not
know what I was saying; and finally, when she did understand that I
was proposing to her collaboration in her translations, she burst into
tears; she told me that if this work did not remain solely hers she
would kill herself; that it was her living and her glory; and then she
told me her troubles. I never listened to anything so dreadful; I came
away frozen with horror, not knowing whether she drank from a liking
for it, or to drown the sense of her misery. I therefore refused Madame
Saint-Clair. You could not imagine the filth, the hole, the frightful
disorder in which that woman lives. It surpasses her ugliness. That is
the chief episode of my week.

In the desert of her life that woman has clung to my work as to a
fruitful palm-tree, but it will be to her unfruitful, and I have no
money with which to succour her. Yesterday, however, I went by chance
into the rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg, where there is an English pastry-cook
who makes the most delicious oyster-patties; I had an English lady
on my arm. Whom did I find there? My Patrickson at table, eating and
drinking. Certainly I am neither a monk nor a ninny, and I comprehend
that the more unhappy one is the more compensations are sought, and
it is lucky indeed to find them at a pastry-cook's. But the lady who
was with me said she was sure that this unfortunate woman _drank gin_,
for she had all the characteristics of a person who drank gin. I had
said nothing to her about my miss of the translations. But whether she
drinks gin or not, she is none the less in the greatest poverty. It
remains to be discovered whether she is in poverty because she drinks
gin, or whether she drinks gin because she is miserable. As for me, the
misery of others wrings my heart. I never condemn the unfortunate. I am
stoical under my own misfortunes; I would give my bread while dying
of hunger. That has happened to me several times, and those I served
never returned it to me. Example: Jules Sandeau, who for two months
never came to see me, and would not if I were dying. Well, though I
know that, I don't acquire experience. If I marry, my wife must rule
my property and interpose between me and the whole world, or I shall
exhaust the treasures of Aladdin on others. Happily, I have nothing.
When I do have something, I shall have to make myself fictitiously
avaricious.

I have taken my mother to Poissy, to a very agreeable _pension_. I took
her by the railroad, by which one goes very fast. My heart bled in
taking her there; I, who have dreamed of making her a comfortable end
of life with a fine fortune, and who advance so little that my poverty
is becoming, as I told you, burlesque. It has taken more diplomacy to
get wood to burn this month than it would take to negotiate a treaty
of peace between France and any power you please ten years hence. And
the comedy gets on but slowly; it is like my portrait, which I was
told yesterday had arrived, but the despatching agent did not know in
what town! I hope it is Brody. God grant the same may not happen to my
comedy! What I perceive most at this moment is the immense judgment
that is needed for the poet of comedy. Every word must be a verdict
pronounced on the manners and morals of an epoch. The subjects chosen
must not be thin or paltry. The poet must go to the bottom of things;
he must steadily embrace the whole social state and judge it under a
pleasing form. There are a thousand things to say, but only the good
things must be said. This work confounds me. I need not say that in
saying this I am considering works of genius; for as to the thirty
thousand plays given to us in the last forty years, nothing would be
easier to write. I am absorbed by this comedy; I think of nothing
else, and each thought extends the difficulties. It is not only the
doing of it, there is also the representing of it, and it may fail. I
am in despair at not having gone to Wierzchownia and shut myself up
this winter to keep to this work in your cenobitic life. I should have
done like Beaumarchais, who ran to read his comedy, scene by scene, to
women, and rewrote it by their advice.

I am now at a moment of extreme depression. Coffee does nothing for
me; it does not bring to the surface the inner man, who stays in his
prison of flesh and bones. My sister is ill, and when Laure is ill the
universe seems to me topsy-turvy. My sister is all to me in my poor
existence. I am not working with facility. I do not believe in what
they call my talent. I spend nights in despairing.

"La Maison Nucingen" is there in proofs before me, and I cannot touch
it; yet it is the last link in my chain, and with three days' work I
should break it. The brain will not stir. I have taken two cups of
clear coffee; it is just as if I had drunk water. I am going to try
a change of place and go to Berry, to Madame Carraud, who has been
expecting me these two years; every three months I have said that I am
going to see her. My little house will not be ready till December; the
workmen will be in it until my return.

To crown all troubles, no letters from you. You might write to me
every week, but you scarcely write every fortnight. You have much more
time than I have, in your steppe, where there are neither symphonies
of Beethoven, asphalt boulevards, operas, newspapers, books to write,
proofs to correct, nor other miseries, and where you have a forest of
a hundred thousand acres. _Dieu!_ if you had that near Paris you would
have an income of two millions, and your forest would be worth fifty
millions. All is in juxtaposition; I am here, and you are there.


November 12

Reparation to the poor miss. She drinks nothing but water; it was my
unexpected visit that intoxicated her. I retract all I wrote to you,
and leave it for my punishment; but you will not think me the worse or
the better for it.

I am about to start for Marseille, to go to Corsica and from there to
Sardinia. I shall try to be back the first week in December. It is an
affair of fortune of the highest importance that takes me there, and
I can only tell you about it if it fails; for if it succeeds I must
whisper it into the tube of your ear. It is now three weeks since I
began to think of this journey; but the money for it lacks and I do not
know where to find it. I need about twelve hundred francs to go and get
a "yes" or a "no" about a fortune, a rapid fortune, to be made in a few
months.[1]

[Footnote 1: For the amusing history of this chimera, see his sister's
account of it; "Memoir of Balzac," pp. 103-107.--TR.]

_Addio, cara._ Here are three letters that I have written you against
your one. I have never seen Provence or Marseille, and I promise myself
a little diversion on this trip. I shall go by the mail-cart to the
sea; the rest of the way by steamboat; so that I hope to have finished
my errand in fifteen days, for no one must perceive my absence. My
publishers would grumble.

The tontine is withdrawn; my works will appear purely and simply in
parts, with steel engravings inserted in the text. So we fall back once
more into the rut of publications such as have been made for the last
hundred years in France.


November 13.

My comedy has begotten a preliminary. It is impossible to make
"Prudhomme parvenu" without first showing "Prudhomme se mariant;" all
the more because "Le Mariage de Prudhomme" is excellent comedy and
full of comic situations. So here I am, with eight acts on my hands
instead of five.


November 14.

Adieu; I must throw myself into unexpected labour which may give me an
_arachnitis_. I am offered twenty thousand francs for "César Birotteau"
by December 10. It is one volume and a half to do, but my poverty has
made me promise it. I must work twenty-five nights and twenty-five
days. So, to you all tender things. I must rush to Sèvres and find the
manuscript already begun and the proofs of the work. There are only
nine _feuilles_ done, and forty-six are needed; thirty-five to do.
There's not a minute to be lost. Adieu, I must be twenty-five days
without writing to you.



PARIS, December 20, 1837.

I have just finished, as I promised to do, and I wrote you hastily
in my last letter I should do, "César Birotteau." I had to do at the
same time "La Maison Nucingen" for the "Presse." That is enough to
tell you that I am worn-out, in a state of inexpressible annihilation.
It requires a certain effort to write to you, and I do it under the
inspiration of horrible fears and anxieties. I have heard nothing from
you since your number 34, dated October 6. You have never left me so
long without news of you, and you could scarcely believe how, in the
midst of my work, this silence has alarmed me, for I know it is not
without some reason that you have failed to write to me.

To-day I can only write in haste, to tell you that I am not dead with
fatigue or inflammation of the brain; that "César Birotteau" and the
third _dizain_ are both out; that "La Maison Nucingen," finished a
month ago, will soon appear; that I am about to finish "Massimilla
Doni;" that the edition called "Balzac Illustrated" will appear,
and will be an astounding thing in typography and engraving; that
for twenty-five days I have only slept a few hours; that I have been
within an ace of apoplexy; that I shall never again undertake such a
feat of strength; that my cot at Sèvres is nearly built; and that you
can now always address your letters to "Madame Veuve Durand, 13 rue
des Batailles," because I am still obliged to stay there to finish
certain pressing works which need constant communication between the
printing-office and me. My house will not be ready till February 15 at
the earliest.

My portrait makes my head swim. I don't know precisely where it is. In
any case, write to M. Halperine, who ought to have it, or could reclaim
it on the road between Strasburg and Brody. M. Hanski may not know
that the Rothschilds do not do business with the Halperines, and their
couriers do not take charge of such large packages.

I have no interesting news to give you, for I have not left my study
and proofs since my last letter. Heine came to see me and told me all
about the L... affair. It goes beyond anything I had imagined, as
much for the illness as for the family details. The English lords are
infamous. Koreff and Wolowski are demigods; I do not think a million
could pay them. We will talk of this later in the chimney-corner.

Perhaps you have been away; perhaps you have left Wierzchownia to nurse
your sister. My imagination rushes through all the possibilities in
the circumference of suppositions till it reaches the absurd. What has
happened to you? I see no case in which you would leave me without one
word from you or another. Adieu. Find here the expression of an old
and tried friendship and the effusions of an affection that resembles
no other. I cannot write more, for I am in such a state of exhaustion
that nothing can better prove my attachment than this very letter.
Nevertheless, I must, in a few days, resume my yoke of misery. Then
I can write to you more at length and tell you all that I keep in my
heart.

Remember me to all of yours, and beg M. Hanski to claim the portrait
from the Halperines, so that they in turn may inquire for it all along
the line. I have been to see the shippers here, and I shall sue them if
you do not get the picture within a fortnight. Therefore, answer me by
a line on this subject.

Your devoted

NORÉ.




VI.


LETTERS DURING 1838.



CHAILLOT, January 20, 1838.

I am relieved of anxiety. I have your numbers 36 and 37. Number 35 has
not reached me, remember that. Number 34 is dated October 6; number
36 December 10. So you did not leave me from October 6 to December 10
without a letter. Now, as I only receive at the end of January the
36 and 37, you can imagine how uneasy I have been, left _two_ months
without a word!

These two letters are pricked in every direction, stigmata of the fears
inspired by the plague, and perhaps it is to an earlier fumigation
that I owe the loss of number 35. In any case, I ought to tell you of
this loss, as it explains the doleful letter I wrote you last. To me
it was a grief that consumed all others--your silence. I am the object
of such atrocious calumnies that I ended by thinking that you had been
told of them, and had believed those monstrous things: that I had eaten
human flesh, that I had married an Ellsler, or a fishwoman, that I was
in prison, that--that--etc. I have, perhaps, enemies in the Ukraine.
Distrust all that you hear of me from any but myself, for you have
almost a journal of my life.

Now, as to the affair that takes me to the Mediterranean, it is neither
marriage nor anything adventurous or silly. It is a serious and
scientific affair about which it is impossible to say a word because I
am pledged to secrecy. Whether it turns out well or ill, I risk nothing
but a journey, which will always be a pleasure or a diversion for me.

You ask me how it is that, knowing all, observing and penetrating
all, I can be duped and deceived. Alas! would you like me if I were
never duped, if I were so prudent, so observing that no misfortunes
ever happened to me? But, leaving the question of the heart aside, I
will tell you the secret of this apparent contradiction. When a man
becomes such an accomplished whist-player that he knows at the fifth
card played where all the others are, do you think he does not like
to put science aside and watch how the game will go by the laws of
chance? Just so, dear and pious Catholic, God knew in advance that
Eve would succumb, and he let her do so! But, putting aside that way
of explaining the thing, here is another which you will like better.
When, night and day, my strength and my faculties are strained to the
utmost to compose, write, render, paint, remember; when I take my
flight slowly, painfully, often wounded, across the mental fields of
literary creation, how can I be at the same moment on the plane of
material things? When Napoleon was at Essling he was not in Spain. Not
to be deceived in life, in friendships, in business, in relations of
all kinds, dear countess secluded and solitary, one must do nothing
else than be purely and simply a financier, a man of the world, a man
of business. I do see plainly enough that persons deceive me, and
are going to do so, that such a man is betraying me, or will betray
me, and depart carrying with him a portion of my fleece. But at that
moment when I feel it, foresee it, know it, I am forced to go and fight
elsewhere. I see it when I am being carried away by some necessity of
a work or event, by a sketch that would be lost if I did not complete
it. Often I am building a cot in the light of my burning houses. I
have neither friends nor servants; all desert me; I know not why--or
rather, I do know it too well; because no one likes or serves a man
who works night and day, who does nothing for their profit, who stays
where he is and obliges them to go to him, and whose power, if power
there be, will have no fruition for twenty years; it is because that
man has the personality of his toil, and that all personality is odious
if it is not accompanied by power. Now that is enough to convince you
that one must be _an oyster_ (do you remember that?) or an angel to
cling to such great human rocks. Oysters and angels are equally rare
in humanity. Believe me, I see myself and things as they are; never
did any man bear a more cruel burden than mine. Do not be surprised,
therefore, to see me attach myself to those beings and those things
that give me courage to live and go onward. Never blame me for taking
the cordial that enables me to get one stage farther on my way.

It is twelve years that I have been saying of Walter Scott what you
have now written to me. Beside him Lord Byron is nothing, or almost
nothing. But you are mistaken as to the plot of "Kenilworth." To the
minds of all makers of romance, and to mine, the plot of that work is
the grandest, most complete, most extraordinary of all; the book is a
masterpiece from this point of view, just as "St. Ronan's Well" is a
masterpiece for detail and patience of finish, as the "Chronicles of
the Canongate" are for sentiment, as "Ivanhoe" (the first volume, be it
understood) is for history, "The Antiquary" for poesy, and "The Heart
of Midlothian" for profound interest. All these works have each their
especial merit, but genius shines throughout them all. You are right;
Scott will be growing greater when Byron is forgotten, except for his
form and his powerful inspiration. Byron's brain never had any other
imprint than that of his own personality; whereas the whole world has
posed before the creative genius of Scott, and has there, so to speak,
beheld itself.

As for what is called "Balzac Illustrated," do not be anxious; it is
the whole of my work, except the "Contes Drolatiques." It is the work
called "Études Sociales."

M. Hanski is very kind to imagine that women fall in love with authors.
I have, and shall have nothing to fear on that score. I am not only
invulnerable, but secure from attack. Reassure him. The Englishwoman of
the times of Crébillon the younger is not the Englishwoman of to-day.

I am now beginning to work at my plays and at the "Mémoires d'une jeune
Mariée," or else at "Sœur Marie des Anges;" those, for the time being,
are my chosen subjects. But from one moment to another all may change.
The continuation of "Illusions Perdues" ("Un Grand homme de Province
à Paris") tempts me much; that, with "La Torpille," could be finished
this year. How many stones I bring and heap up!

The text of the illustrated edition is revised with so much care that
it ought to be considered the only one existing; it differs much from
all preceding editions. This typographic seriousness has reacted on the
language, and I have discovered many additional faults and follies;
so that I earnestly desire that the number of subscribers may enable
the publication to be continued, which will give me the opportunity to
succeed in doing my best for my work, so far as purity of language is
concerned.

The arrival of the _cassolette_ gave me as much pleasure as it did
you; it is as if I had sent you two different things. I now hope
that by this time Boulanger's portrait has reached you. Brullon, the
colour and canvas dealer whom all the great artists here employ, and
who despatched the case, is in despair; we consult each other as to
going to law about it; but as such a suit would bring M. Hanski's name
before the public, and the newspapers would get hold of it and make
their thousand and one calumnious comments,--for my name would whet
their appetite,--we keep to the line of correspondence. Brullon has
sent thousands of pictures to all parts of the world, and nothing of
the kind ever happened before. It is true that the case was sent by
waggon, because, as the canvas was not rolled, its size would not allow
of its going by diligence. You could not believe what errands, steps,
and tramps that luckless picture has necessitated; but I will not say
more about them, lest I make the portrait disagreeable to you. I have
written to-day to the MM. Halperine at Brody to know if, when my letter
reaches them, they have the picture. If not, we may have to come to an
arbitration here on the matter.

The great Tronchin cured the headaches of young girls which you
mention, by making them eat a roll soaked in milk on waking; the thing
is innocent enough to try.

Be very sure that you will know all I do at the moment of doing it,
or as soon as I can manage it. I wrote you of my departure for Sion a
year ago, at this time, or very near it. I did not leave Paris a month
ago, after finishing "César Birotteau." As I had been twenty-five days
without sleep, I have now been a month employed in sleeping sixteen
hours a day and in doing nothing the other eight. I am renewing my
brain to spend it again immediately. Financial crises are dreadful;
they prevent me from amusing myself; for society is expensive, and I am
not sure whether I may not, within a week or ten days, go to Sardinia.
But I will not start without letting you know.

I never read the newspapers, so that I was ignorant of what you tell
me about Jules Janin. Some persons had casually said to me that the
papers, and Janin especially, had greatly praised me in connection with
a little play taken from "La Recherche de l'Absolu" which failed. But I
am, as you know, indifferent to both the blame and the eulogy of those
who are not the elect of my heart; and especially so to the opinions of
the press and the crowd; therefore I know nothing to tell you about the
conversion of a man I neither like nor esteem, and one who will never
obtain anything from me. As I do not know his friends or his enemies, I
am ignorant of his motives for this praise, which, from what you tell
me of it, seems treacherous.

Every time that you hear it said that I have failed on points of honour
and personal self-respect, do not believe it.

You have misunderstood me; I like much that a woman should write and
study; but she ought to have the courage, as you have, to burn her
works. Sophie is the daughter of Prince Koslevski, whose marriage was
never recognized; you must have heard of that very witty diplomatist,
who is with Prince Paskevitch in Warsaw. The English lady is the
Countess Guidoboni-Visconti, at whose house I met the bearer of the
_cassolette_. Mrs. Somerville is the illustrious mathematician,
daughter of Admiral Fairfax, who is now in the Russian service. I
send you her autograph, for she is one of the great lights of modern
science, and parliament has given her a national pension.

You will know from others that the Italian Operahouse was burned down
at the same time as the Royal Exchange in London and the Imperial
Palace at Saint-Petersburg. I will tell you nothing of all that. The
winter is severe in Paris; we do not know how to protect ourselves from
cold,--careless Frenchmen that we are.


Monday, January 22.

Four Parts of "La Peau de Chagrin" have appeared, this frosty winter.
In spite of the cold I meet in the Champs Élysées _fiacres_ driven
slowly along with their blinds down, which shows that people love each
other in Paris in spite of everything; and those _fiacres_ seem to me
as magnificently passionate as the two lovers whom Diderot surprised in
a pouring rain, bidding each other good-night in the street beneath a
gutter!

Do not end your letters gloomily, as, for instance, by thinking that I
shall never visit Wierzchownia; I shall come soon, believe me; but I am
not the master of circumstances, which are peculiarly hard upon me. It
would take too long to explain to you how my new editors interpret the
agreement which binds me to them, and this letter is already very long.

After idling a little for a month, going two or three times to the
Opera, twice to La Belgiojoso, and often to La Visconti (speaking
Italianly), I am now beginning, once more my twelve or fifteen hours'
work a day. When my house is built, when I am well installed there,
when I have earned a certain number of thousand francs, then I am
pledged to myself as a reward to go and see you, not for one or two
weeks, but for two or three months. You shall work at my comedies, and
we, M. Hanski and I, will go to the Indies astride of those _smoking_
benches you tell me of.

I don't know what "César Birotteau" is. You will tell me before I am
in a state to make myself into the public that reads it. I have the
deepest disgust for it, and I am ready to curse it for the fatigues it
has caused me. If my ink looks pale to you, it is because it freezes
every night in my study.

You have heard about La Belgiojoso and Mignet. The princess is a woman
much outside of other women, little attractive, twenty-nine years
old, pale, black hair, Italian-white complexion, thin, and playing
the vampire. She has the good fortune to displease me, though she is
clever; but she tries for effect too much. I saw her first five years
ago at Gérard's; she came from Switzerland, where she had taken refuge.
Since then, she has recovered her fortune through influence of the
Foreign Office, and now holds a salon, where people say good things. I
went there one Saturday, but that will be all.

I have just read "Aymar," by Henri de Latouche; his is a poor mind,
falling into childishness. "Lautreamont," by Sue, is a work _laché_,
as the painters say; it is neither done, nor could it be done. To
second-rate minds, to persons without education, or those, who, being
ill-informed or informed by prejudice, have not the courage to correct
for themselves the false bias given to them and are content to accept
judgments ready-made without taking the trouble to discuss them, Louis
XIV. is a petty mind and a bad king.[1] His faults and his errors are
counted to him as crimes, whereas he exactly fulfilled the prediction
of Mazarin: he was both a great king and an honest man. He may be
blamed for his wars and his rigorous treatment of Protestants; but he
always had in view the grandeur of France, and his wars were a means to
secure it. They served, according to his ideas, to guarantee us against
our two greatest enemies at that period, Spain and England. After
having, through the possession of Flanders and Alsace, established
solid frontiers against Germany, he preserved France from Spanish
intrigues by the conquest of Franche-Comté. Having thus given security
to his people, he gave them a splendour which dazzled the world, and a
grandeur which subdued it. One must indeed be neither a Frenchman nor
a man of sense to blame him stupidly for that affair of the Chevalier
de Rohan, a presumptuous fool and a State criminal, who was negotiating
with a foreign country, selling France, and striving to light civil
war,--a man whom the king had the right to condemn and punish according
to the laws of the kingdom he governed. But, as you say, Sue has a
narrow and bourgeois mind, incapable of understanding the _ensemble_
of such grandeur; he sees only scraps of the vulgar and commonplace
evil of our present pitiable society. He has felt himself crushed by
the gigantic spectacle of the great century, and he has resented it by
calumniating the finest and greatest epoch of our history, dominated
by the powerful and fruitful influence of the greatest of our kings;
pronounced Great by his contemporaries, and against whom even his
enemies invented no other sarcasm than to call him _"le roi soleil_."

To-morrow, Tuesday, 23rd, I shall begin to finish "Massimilla Doni,"
which requires great study of music, and will oblige me to go and hear
played and replayed to me Rossini's "Moïse," by a good old German
musician.

You would hardly believe with what resignation I face the dull and
malignant abuse which the publication of "Massimilla Doni" will bring
down upon me. Seen on one side only, it is true that the subject is
open to criticism; it will be said that I am obscene. But looking at
the psychical subject, it is, as I think, a marvel. But I have long
been used to such detraction. There are persons who still persist in
considering "La Peau de Chagrin" as a novel. But then, serious people
and the appreciators of that composition are daily gaining ground.
Five years hence "Massimilla Doni" will be understood as a beautiful
explanation of the inner process of art. To the eyes of ordinary
readers it will be only what it is apparently, a lover who cannot
possess the woman he adores because he desires her too much, and so
is won by a miserable creature. Make them perceive from that the
conception of works of art!

Adieu, _cara_. A thousand tender effusions of friendship, and remember
me to all about you. This is a long chatter; I have been writing it
during three days, and doing little else. But it is so good to think to
you! Think of me as of one entirely devoted, grieved when he gets no
letters, happy when he shares your lonely life, for he too is lonely
amid this Parisian bustle.

[Footnote 1: This letter is among those which Mme. de Balzac gave to
the Édition Définitive (vol. xxiv., pp. 273-282). The passage relating
to Louis XIV. is so evidently false in "Lettres à l'Étrangère" that I
give it here in Mme. de Balzac's version. In "Lettres à l'Étrangère"
it begins thus: "To well-informed minds Louis XIV. is a petty mind, a
man _nul_." This being totally out of keeping with Balzac's published
opinion of Louis XIV. ("Six Rois de France," Éd. Déf., vol. xxiii., pp.
525-535, written in 1837), I think it more just to Balzac to follow
his wife's version here. The following passages are from "Six Rois
de France" and give his opinion briefly: "He had known adversity and
even misfortune in his youth; it was, no doubt, to this circumstance
that he owed the perspicacity, the knowledge of man that distinguished
him almost constantly." "This prince, in his adversity, remained
ever worthy of the title of Great, which history has preserved to
him." See Appendix concerning Mme. Hanska's letters in the Édition
Définitive.--TR.]



FRAPESLE, near ISSOUDUN, February 10, 1838.

I have just received your little number 38, and at the moment that I
read it you must have in your hands the rather long letter in which I
explained my fears and made the inquiry to which you now reply.

I am thankful to know myself in painting at Berditchef, for in my
uneasiness about that wretched canvas I was about to sue the despatcher
of it. I am curious to know what you will think of the work. It is
now said that Boulanger has not given a delicacy that lurks under
the roundness of the lines, that he has exaggerated the character of
my rather tranquil strength, and bestowed upon me a hectoring and
aggressive expression. That is what sculptors and painters said to me
a few days before I left Paris, at a dinner at M. de Castellane's,
who is having some plays acted in private at his house. The merit of
Boulanger is in the fire of the eyes, the material truth of outline,
and the rich colouring. In spite of these criticisms, which concern
only the moral resemblance--so closely united, however, to physical
resemblance--they all said it was one of the finest specimens of the
school for the last ten years; so I reflected that, at least, you would
not have a daub in your gallery. We shall see what you say to it.

I came here worn-out with fatigue. The body is relaxing. I have come
to do, if I can, the preliminary play of which I spoke to you, and the
second Part of "Illusions Perdues," the first Part of which pleased you
so much. I shall stay in Berry till the middle of March.

They write me from Paris that "Cesar Birotteau," after two months'
_incognito_, is obtaining a success of enthusiasm, and that in spite
of the silence of some newspapers, and the cruel civilities of others,
it is being borne to the clouds above "Eugénie Grandet," with which
they crush down so many other things of mine. I tell you that idiocy of
Parisians, because you look upon such things benignly as _events_.

Now that I see my inventions to give you little pleasures reach you,
write me what Anna would like for her birthday. I have an opportunity
to send to Riga. Riga is not far from you, and I will tell you where
to send for your idol's gift. Do you want any of that Milanese silver
filagree, or anything in the way of Parisian taste? And if at our
coming Exhibition M. Hanski wants one or two good pictures, well
chosen, to increase his collection, some of those things that become in
time of great value, tell him to feel sure that I am at his orders, and
at yours equally.

You could not believe how much I thought of you in crossing La Beauce
and Berry, for they are your Ukraine on a small scale, and every time
I cross them my thought is fixed on Wierzchownia. They are two very
high plateaus, for at Issoudun we are six hundred feet above sea-level,
and there is nothing on them but wheatfields, vineyards, and woods.
In Beauce, however, the land is so precious that not a single tree is
planted. You will see that melancholy landscape some day, when you come
to France, and perhaps, like me, you will not share the feeling it
inspires in ordinary travellers.

I do not know if they told me truly, or if the person who told me was
told truly, but my publishers are boasting that they have sold five
thousand of the Illustrated Balzac, which leads one to suppose that,
time and friendship aiding, we may sell ten thousand. Then all my
financial misfortunes will cease in 1839. God grant it!

Do not play the coquette about your thirty-third anniversary; you know
well what I think about the age of women, and if you want me to give
you new editions of it, I shall think you very greedy of compliments.
There are women who will always be young, and you are one of them;
youth comes from the soul. Never lose that innocent gaiety which is one
of your greatest charms; it makes you able to think aloud to every one,
and that will keep you young a long time. In spite of what you say,
there are, I think, few clouds above the lake of your thoughts, but
always the infinite of blue skies.

If you have a frame made for my portrait, and it requires one, have
it made in black velvet. That is economical and beautiful, and very
favourable to Boulanger's colour and tones.

Remember that nothing leads to the malady of Lady L... so surely as the
mystical ecstasies of which you tell me in Séverine's sister; believe
me, for it was in this way that the pure and sublime young daughter
of Madame de Berny became insane. The mother died of that, as well as
of the death of her son. What did she not say to me on the absurdity
of our moralities, in the paroxysm of her sorrow! And what appalling
mother-cries!

I beg you never to say to me in a letter, "If I die." I have causes
enough for melancholy, and dread, and gloomy black dragons, without the
added waves of bitterness that my blood rushes to my heart under the
sudden faintness that those words cause me.

Gracious greetings to _tutti quanti_, and to you, all tenderness. I
re-read at this moment the silly verses in which I fold my letter, and I
send you, laughing, the homage of a poor collegian--for the ruled paper
reveals the age of seventeen and its illusions.



FRAPESLE, March 2, 1838.

_Cara contessina_; I am here, without having done a single thing that
is worth anything. I am a little better, that is all. I have been ill
of a malady that love abhors, caused by the quality of the drinking
water, which contained calcareous deposits. Hence, complete dissolution
of my brain forces. Poor human beings! See on what fame depends, and
the creations of thought! Madame Carraud thinks I have escaped an
illness; it is very sure that I have escaped making a comedy or a bad
novel.

I heard that George Sand was at her country-place at Nohant, a few
leagues from Frapesle, so I went to pay her a visit. You will therefore
have your wished-for autographs: one of George Sand, which I send you
to-day; the other, signed Aurore Dudevant, you shall receive in my
next letter. Thus you will have the curious animal under both aspects.
But there is still another; the nickname, given by her friends, of "le
docteur Piffoël." When that reaches me I will send it. As you are a
curious eminentissime or an eminentissime curious person, I will relate
to you my visit.

I arrived at the Château de Nohant on Shrove Saturday, about half-past
seven in the evening, and I found comrade George Sand in her
dressing-gown, smoking a cigar after dinner in the chimney-corner of
an immense solitary chamber. She was wearing pretty yellow slippers
trimmed with fringe, coquettish stockings, and red trousers. So much
for the moral. Physically, she has doubled her chin like a monk. She
has not a single white hair in spite of her dreadful troubles; her
swarthy skin has not varied; her beautiful eyes are still dazzling;
she has the same stupid look when she thinks, for, as I told her,
after studying her, all her physiognomy is in her eye. She has been at
Nohant a year, very sad, and working enormously. She leads about the
same life as mine. She goes to bed at six in the morning and rises at
midday; I go to bed at six in the evening and rise at midnight. But,
naturally, I conformed to her habits; and for three days we talked from
five o'clock, after dinner, till five next morning; so that I knew her
better, and reciprocally, in those three talks, than during the four
preceding years, when she came to my house at the time she loved Jules
Sandeau, and was connected with Musset. She knew me only as I went to
see her now and then.

It was useful for me to see her, for we made mutual confidences on the
subject of Jules Sandeau. I, who am the last to blame her for that
desertion, have nothing now but the deepest compassion for her, as you
will have for me when you know with whom we had to do, she, in love; I,
in friendship.

She was, however, even more unhappy with Musset; and she is now in deep
retirement, condemning both marriage and love; because in both states
she has met with nothing but deceptions.

Her male is rare, that is the whole of it. He is the more so because
she is not lovable, and, consequently, will always be difficult to
love. She is a lad, she is an artist, she is grand, generous, devoted,
chaste; she has the great lineaments of a man: _ergo_, she is not
a woman. I did not feel, any more than I formerly felt when beside
her, attacked by that gallantry of the epidermis which one ought to
employ in France and Poland towards every species of woman. I talked
as with a comrade. She has lofty virtues, of the kind that society
takes the wrong way. We discussed, with a gravity, good faith, candor,
and conscience worthy of the great shepherds who lead herds of men,
the grand questions of marriage and liberty: "For," as she said to me
with immense pride (I should never have dared to think it for myself),
"although by our writings we are preparing a revolution for future
manners and morals, I am not less struck by the objections to the one
than by those to the other."

We talked a whole night on this great problem. I am altogether for the
liberty of the young girl and the slavery of the wife; that is to say,
I wish that before marriage she should know what she binds herself to,
that she should study it all, because, when she has signed the contract
and experienced its chances she must be faithful to it. I gained
a great deal in making Madame Dudevant recognize the necessity of
marriage; but she will believe it, I am sure, and I think I have done
good in proving it to her.

She is an excellent mother, adored by her children; but she dresses
her daughter Solange as a boy, which is not right. _Morally,_ she is
like a young man of twenty, for she is inwardly chaste and _prudish_;
she is only an artist externally. She smokes immoderately; plays the
princess a little too much, perhaps; and I am convinced that she has
faithfully painted herself in the princess of her "Secrétaire intime."
She knows, and said, of herself just what I think, without my saying it
to her, namely: that she has neither force of conception, nor gift of
constructing plots, nor faculty of reaching the true, nor the art of
pathos, but--without knowing the French language--she has _style_; and
that is true.

She takes her fame, as I do mine, in jest, and she has a profound
contempt for the public, calling it _Jumento_.

I will relate to you the immense and secret devotion of this woman
for those two men, and you will say to yourself that there is nothing
in common between angels and devils. All the follies that she has
committed are titles to fame in the eyes of great and noble souls. She
was duped by Madame Dorval, Bocage, Lamennais, etc., etc. Through the
same sentiment she is now the dupe of Listz and Madame d'Agoult; but
she has just come to see it as to that pair as she did in the case of
la Dorval; she has one of those minds that are powerful in the study,
through intellect, and extremely easy to entrap on the domain of
realities.

Apropos of Listz and Madame d'Agoult, she gave me the subject of "Les
Galériens," or "Amours forcés," which I am going to write; for in her
position she cannot do so. Keep that secret. In short, she is a man,
and all the more a man because she wants to be one, because she has
come out of womanhood, and is not a woman. Woman attracts, and she
repels; and, as I am very much of a man, if she produces that effect
on me she must produce it on all men who are like me; she will always
be unhappy. Thus, she now loves a man who is inferior to her, and in
that contract there can be only deception and disenchantment for a
woman with a fine soul. A woman ought always to love a man superior to
herself, or else be so well deceived that it will be as if it were so.

I did not stay at Nohant with impunity; I brought away a monstrous
vice; she made me smoke a hookah and latakia; and they have suddenly
become a necessity to me. This transition will help me to give up
coffee and vary the stimulant I need for work; I thought of you. I
want a fine, good hookah, with a lid or extra-bowl; and, if you are
very amiable, you will get me one in Moscow; for it is there, or in
Constantinople, that the best can be had. Be friendly enough to write
at once to Moscow, so that the parcel may reach me with the least
possible delay. But on condition only that you tell me what you want in
Paris, so that I have my hookah only as barter. If you can also find
true latakia in Moscow, send me five or six pounds, as opportunities
are rare to get it from Constantinople. And dare I also ask you not to
forget the _caravan tea_ you promised me?

I am much of a child, as you know. If it is possible that the
decoration of the hookah should be in turquoise, that would please me,
all the more because I want to attach to the end of the tube the knob
of my cane, which I am prevented from carrying by the notoriety given
to it. If you wish, I will send you a set of Parisian pearls, such as
you liked; the mounting will be so artistic that, although the pearls
are only Parisian, you will have a work of art. Say yes, if you love
me. Yes, isn't it?

I will write you a line from Paris, for I must go to Sardinia. Pray
to God that I may succeed, for if I do, my joy will carry me to
Wierzchownia. I shall have liberty! no more cares, no more material
worries; I shall be rich!

_Addio, cara contessina_, for the post has imperious and self-willed
hours. Think that in fifteen days I shall be sailing on the
Mediterranean. Ah! from there to Odessa, it is all sea--as they say in
Paris, it is all pavement. From Odessa to Berditchef it is but a step.

I send you my tender regards, and friendly ones to M. Hanski, with all
remembrances to your young companions. You ought to be, as I write,
in full enjoyment of the Boulanger, and I await with impatience your
_sacro sainct dict_ on the work of the painter.

Think that if I pray it is for you; if I ask God for anything with that
cowl lowered it is for you, and that the fat monk now before you is
ever the moujik of your lofty and powerful mind.

Have you read "Birotteau"? After that book I shall decidedly write "La
Première Demoiselle;" then a love-book, very coquettish, "Les Amours
forcés." It is for those who have the adorable sweetness to love
according to the laws of their own heart, and to pity the galley-slaves
of love.



AJACCIO, MARCH 26, 1838.

_Cara contessina_, I did not have a moment to myself in which to write
to you from Paris on my return from Berry. The above date will show
you that I am twenty hours from Sardinia, where I make my expedition.
I am waiting for an opportunity to cross over to that island, and on
arrival I shall have to do five days' quarantine,--for Italy will not
give up that custom. They believe in contagion and cholera; it broke
out in Marseille six months ago, and they still continue their useless
precautions.

During the few days I remained in Paris I had endless difficulties to
conquer in order to make my journey; money was laboriously obtained,
for money is scarce with me. When you know that this enterprise is
a desperate effort to put an end to the perpetual struggle between
fortune and me, you will not be surprised by it. I risk only a month of
my time and five hundred francs for a fairly fine fortune. M. Carraud
decided me; I submitted my conjectures, which are scientific in their
nature, to him, and as he is one of those great _savants_ who do
nothing, publish nothing, and live in idleness, his opinion was given,
without any restriction, in favour of my ideas,--ideas that I can only
communicate to you by word of mouth if I succeed, or in my next letter
if I fail. Successful or unsuccessful, M. Carraud says that he respects
such an idea as much as a fine discovery, considering it an ingenious
thing. M. Carraud was for twenty years director of our Military School
of Saint-Cyr; he is the intimate friend of Biot, whom I have often
heard deplore, in the interest of science, the inaction in which M.
Carraud now lives.

In truth, there is no scientific problem that he cannot discuss
admirably when questioned; but the trouble is that these vast
mathematical minds judge life by what it is, and, not seeing a logical
conclusion of it, they await death to be rid of their time. This
vegetable existence is the despair of Madame Carraud, who is full of
soul and fire. She was stupefied on hearing M. Carraud declare, when
I submitted my conjectures to him, that he would go with me, he who
never leaves the house even to look after his own estate. However, the
natural man returned, and he gave up the project. His opinion ended by
bringing my own incandescence to the highest point; and in spite of
the terrible equinox in the Gulf of Lyon, in spite of five days and
four nights to spend in a diligence, I started. I have suffered much,
especially at sea. But here I am, in the native town of the Napoleons,
giving myself to all the devils because I am obliged to wait for the
solution of my problem within twenty hours' distance of that problem.
One must not think of going through Corsica to the straits which
separate it from Sardinia, for the land journey is long, dangerous, and
costly, both in Corsica and Sardinia. Ajaccio is an intolerable place.
I know no one, and there is no one to know. Civilization is what it is
in Greenland; the Corsicans do not like strangers. I am wrecked, as
it were, on a granite rock; I go and look at the sea and return to
dinner, go to bed, and begin over again,--not daring to work, because
at any moment I may start; this situation is the antipodes of my
nature, which is all resolution, all activity.

I have been to see the house where Napoleon was born; it is now a poor
hovel. I have rectified a few mistakes. His father was a rather rich
land-owner, and not a clerk, as several lying biographies have said.
Also, when Napoleon reached Ajaccio on his return from Egypt, instead
of being received by acclamations, as historians declare, and obtaining
a general triumph, he was shot at, and a price was put upon his head;
they showed me the little beach where he landed. He owed his life to
the courage and devotion of a peasant, who took him to the mountains
and put him in an inaccessible retreat. It was the nephew of the mayor
of Ajaccio who put the price upon his head, that told me these details.
After Napoleon was First Consul the peasant went to see him. Napoleon
asked him what he wanted. The peasant asked for one of his father's
estates, called "Il Pantano," which was worth a million. Napoleon gave
it to him. The son of that peasant is to-day one of the richest men in
Corsica.

Napoleon had already given his father's estates to the Ramolini,
his mother's family,--having no right to do so. The Bonapartes said
nothing, for during his power they obtained everything from him. Since
his death, and recently, they have brought suits to recover this
property from the Ramolini.

Pozzo di Borgo triumphs in Corsica as he triumphed over his enemy
Napoleon,--Metternich, Wellington, and Talleyrand aiding. His nephew,
who is paymaster here, has an income of more than one hundred thousand
francs. I am lodging in one of his houses.

I am going to Sassari, the second capital of Sardinia, and shall stay
there a few days. What I have to do there is a small matter for the
moment; the grand question, whether or not I am mistaken, will be
decided in Paris; it suffices if I can procure a specimen of the thing.
Do not crack your brains in trying to find out what it can be; you will
never discover it.

I am so weary of the struggle about which I have so often told you,
that now it must end, or I shall succumb. Here are ten years of toil
without any fruit; the only certain results are calumnies, insults,
and lawsuits. You tell me as to that the noblest things in the world;
but I answer you that all men have but one quantum of strength, blood,
courage, hope; and mine is exhausted. You are ignorant of the extent
of my sufferings; I ought not, and I could not tell you all of them. I
have renounced happiness, but in default of that I must, at least, have
tranquillity. I have therefore formed two or three plans for fortune.
This is the first; if it fails, I shall go to the second. After which,
I shall resume my pen, which I shall not have entirely relinquished.

Yesterday I wanted to write to you, but I was overcome by gleams of an
inspiration which dictated the plot of a comedy that you have already
condemned: "La Première Demoiselle" [afterwards "L'École des Ménages"].
My sister thought it superb; George Sand, to whom I related it at
Nohant, predicted the greatest success; it was this that made me take
it in hand again, and the most difficult part is now done; namely, that
which is called the _scenario_,--the arrangement of all the scenes,
the entrances and exits, etc. I undertook the "Physiologie du Mariage"
and the "Peau de Chagrin" against the advice of the angel whom I have
lost. I am now, during this delay in my journey, undertaking this play
against yours.



AJACCIO, March 27.

I don't know from where I can send you this letter, for I have so
little money that I must consider a postage that costs five francs;
but from Sassari I go to Genoa, and from Genoa to Milan. That is the
least expensive way of returning, on account of not being forced to
stay anywhere, because opportunities are frequent. In Milan I have a
banker on whom I can count; in Genoa also. Therefore, you must not be
surprised at the great delay of this letter. After leaving Corsica, I
shall probably have neither time nor facilities for writing; but the
letter is all ready, and I shall pay the postage when I can.

The Mediterranean has been very bad; there are merchants here who
think their ships are lost. To risk as little as possible, I took the
land route from Marseille to Toulon, and the steamboat that carries
despatches from Toulon here. Nevertheless, I suffered terribly, and
spent much money. I think, however, that the sea route to Odessa would
be the safest, most direct, and least costly way of going to you.
From Marseille to Odessa by sea it is only four hundred francs. From
Odessa to Berditchef it ought not to cost much, especially if you came
to Kiew to meet me. You see that wherever I go I think of your dear
Wierzchownia.

Corsica is one of the most beautiful countries in the world; there are
mountains as in Switzerland, but no lakes. France is not making the
most of this fine country. It is as large as ten of our departments,
but does not yield as much as one of them; it ought to have five
million of inhabitants, but there are barely three hundred thousand. We
are beginning to make roads and clear forests which will yield immense
wealth, like the soil, which is now completely neglected. There may be
the finest mines in the world of marble, coal, and metals, etc.; but
no one has studied the country, on account of bandits and the savage
state in which it is left.

In the midst of my maritime sufferings on the steamboat I bethought
me of the indiscretion I committed in asking you to get me a hookah
from Moscow, in my passionate ardour for the latakia which I smoked
at George Sand's, and which Lamartine had brought her. I was so
spasmodically unhappy about it that I laugh now as I remember my
sickness. I am sorry I could not get a hookah in Paris; it would have
wiled away my time here and dispelled the ennui which, for the first
time in my life, has laid hold upon me; this is the first time that I
have known what a desert with semi-savages upon it is.

This morning I have learned that there is a library here, and
to-morrow, at ten o'clock, I can go there to read. What? That is an
anxious question. There are in this place neither reading-rooms, nor
women, nor popular theatres, nor society, nor newspapers, nor any
of the impurities that proclaim civilization. The women do not like
foreigners; the men walk about the whole day, smoking. The laziness is
incredible. There are eight thousand souls, much poverty, and extreme
ignorance of the simplest current events. I enjoy a complete incognito.
No one knows what literature or social life is. The men wear velveteen
jackets; there is so much simplicity in clothing that I, who have
dressed myself to seem poor, look like a rich man. There is a French
battalion here, and you should see the poor officers, idling in the
streets from morning till night. There is nothing to do! I shall now
begin to sketch scenes and lay out projects. I must work with fury. How
people must love on this desert rock! and truly the place swarms with
children, like gnats of a summer's evening.

Adieu for to-day. I was only eighteen hours at Marseille and ten at
Toulon, and so could not write to you until to-day.



AJACCIO, April 1.

I leave to-morrow for Sardinia in a little row-boat. I have just
re-read what I wrote to you, and I see I did not finish about the
hookah. You understand that if it gives you the least trouble you are
to drop my commission. As for the latakia, I have just discovered
(laugh at me for a whole year) that Latakia is a village of the island
of Cyprus, a stone's throw from here, where a superior tobacco is made,
named from the place, and that I can get it here. So mark out that item.

I have just seen a poor French soldier who lost both hands by a
cannon-ball, and has nothing but stumps; he earns his living by
writing, beating a drum, playing the violin, playing at cards, and
shaving in the streets. If I had not seen it I never should believe it.

The Ajaccio library has nothing. I have re-read "Clarissa Harlowe,"
and read for the first time "Pamela" and "Sir Charles Grandison,"
which I found horribly dull and stupid. What a fate for Cervantes and
Richardson to have been able to do but one work! The same might be said
of Sterne.

I have had the misfortune to be recognized by a cursed law-student
of Paris, just returned to make himself a lawyer in his own land.
He had seen me in Paris. Hence an article in a Corsican paper. And
I, who wanted to keep my journey as secret as possible! Alas, alas!
What a bore! Is there no way for me to do either good or evil without
publicity? This is the eighth day of my placid life. But Ajaccio is
like one household.

I have had a great escape. If I had not taken the route I did take, and
had come direct from Marseille, I should have encountered a dreadful
tempest which wrecked three ships on the coast.



AJACCIO, April 2.

This evening, at ten o'clock, a little boat will carry me away; then I
have five days' quarantine at Alghiero, a little harbour you may see on
the map of Sardinia. It is there, between Alghiero and Sassari, that
the district of Argentara lies, and it is there that I am going to see
mines, abandoned at the time of the discovery of America. I cannot tell
you more than that.

When this letter is in your possession in that pretty room at beautiful
Wierzchownia, I shall be either a fool or a man of wisdom; perhaps
neither the one nor the other, simply an ambitious heart defeated in an
ingenious hope.

_Addio, cara_; I hope that all goes well at Wierzchownia, that you have
wept a little over "César Birotteau," that you have written me your
feelings and impressions about that book, and that I shall thus be
rewarded for it in this world. All caressing things to those you love.
I have again put off writing to M. Hanski, because I shall do so at
Milan after receiving certain news. But give him my regards, and keep
for yourself the most attaching and coquettish, which are your due.



Off ALGHIERO, SARDINIA, April 8.

I am here, after five days of rather lucky navigation in a coral-boat
on its way to Africa. But I now know the privations of sailors; we had
nothing to eat but the fish we caught, which they boiled into execrable
soup. I had to sleep on deck and be devoured by fleas, which abound,
they say, in Sardinia. And finally, although here, we are condemned to
remain five days in quarantine on this little boat, in view of port,
and those savages will give us nothing. We have just gone through a
frightful tempest; they would not let us fasten a cable to a ring on
the quay; but, as we are Frenchmen, one sailor jumped into the water
and fastened it himself by force. The governor came down and ordered
the cable loosed as soon as the sea calmed down; which, under their
system of contagion, was absurd; because we had already given the
cholera or we had not given it. It was a pure notion of the governor,
who wants things done as he says. Africa begins here; I see a ragged
population, almost naked, brown as Ethiopians.



CAGLIARI, April 17.

I have just crossed the whole of Sardinia and seen things such as
they relate of the Hurons and about Polynesia. A desert kingdom, real
savages, no husbandry; long stretches of palm-trees and cactus; goats
everywhere browsing on the undergrowth and keeping it down to the level
of the waist. I have been seventeen and eighteen hours on horseback--I
who have not mounted a horse these four years--without seeing a single
dwelling. I came through a virgin forest, lying on the neck of my
horse in fear of my life; for I had to ride down water-courses arched
over with branches and climbing plants which threatened to put out my
eyes, break my teeth or wrench off my head. Gigantic oaks, cork-trees,
laurel, and heather thirty feet high,--nothing to eat.

No sooner did I reach the end of my expedition than I had to think of
returning; so, without taking any rest, I started on horseback from
Alghiero to Sassari, the second capital of the island, from which a
diligence, lately established, was to bring me here, where there is,
in port, a steamboat for Genoa. But, as the weather is bad here I must
stay for two days.

From Sassari to Cagliari I came through the whole of Sardinia, through
the middle of it. It is alike everywhere. There is one district
where the inhabitants make a horrible bread by pounding acorns of
the live-oak to flour and mixing it with clay, and this within sight
of beautiful Italy! Men and women go naked with a strip of linen,
a tattered rag, to cover their nudity. I saw masses of human beings
trooped in the sun along the walls of their hovels, for Easter-day.
No habitation has a chimney; they make their fires in the middle of
the huts, which are draped with soot. The women spend their days in
pounding the acorns and kneading the bread; the men tend the goats
and the cattle; the soil is untilled in this, the most fertile spot
on earth! In the midst of this utter and incurable misery there are
villages which have costumes of amazing richness.



GENOA, April 22.

Now I can tell you the object of my journey. I have been both right and
wrong. Last year, at this time, in Genoa, a merchant told me that the
careless neglect of Sardinia was so great that there were, in a certain
locality, disused silver mines with mountains of scoriæ containing
refuse lead from which the silver had been taken. At once, I told him
to send me specimens of these scoriæ to Paris, and that after assaying
them I would return and get a permit in Turin to work those mines with
him. A year passed, and the man sent me nothing.

Here is my reasoning: The Romans and the metallurgists of the middle
ages were so ignorant of docimasy that these scoriæ must, necessarily,
still contain a great amount of silver. Now, a friend of Borget, a
great chemist, possesses a secret by which to extract gold and silver
in whatever way and in whatever proportion they are mixed with other
material, at no great cost. By this means I could get all the silver
from these scoriæ.

While I was waiting and expecting the specimens, my Genoese merchant
obtained for himself the right to work the mine; and, while I was
inventing my ingenious deduction, a Marseille firm went to Cagliari,
assayed the lead and the scoriæ, and petitioned, in rivalry with
the Genoese, for a permit in Turin. An assayer from Marseille, who
was taken to the spot, found that the scoriæ gave ten per cent of
lead, and the lead ten per cent of silver by the ordinary methods. So
my conjectures were well-founded; but I had the misfortune not to act
promptly enough. On the other hand, misled by local information, I rode
to the Argentara, another abandoned mine, situated in the wildest part
of the island, and I brought away specimens of mineral. Perhaps chance
may serve me better than the reasonings of intellect.

I am detained here by the refusal of the Austrian consul to _viser_
my passport for Milan, where I must go before returning to Paris, to
get some money. I will send you my letter from there, which is in the
Austrian dominions, and time will be saved in its going to Brody.

I thought I should only be a month on this trip, and I shall have been
from forty-five to fifty days. I do not surfer less in my affairs than
in my habits by such a break. It is now fifty days since I had news of
you! And my poor house which is building! Grant it be finished, and
that I may be able to regain time lost. I must do three works at once
without unharnessing.

Adieu, _cara_. If you have seen Genoa you know how dull the life is
here. I shall go to work on my comedy. Do not scold me too much when
you answer this letter about my journey, for the vanquished should be
consoled. I have thought often of you during my adventurous trip; and I
imagined that M. Hanski was saying more than once, "What the devil is
he doing in that galley?"

_À propos_, the statue from Milan has been received in Paris
[Puttinati's statue], and is thought bad; so I shall not insist on
sending you a copy; you have enough of me on Boulanger's canvas.



MILAN, May 20, 1838.

Dear countess, you know all that this date says [his birthday]. I begin
the year at the end of which I shall belong to the great and numerous
regiment of resigned souls; for I swore to myself in the days of
misfortune, struggle, and faith which made my youth so wretched, that
I would struggle no longer against anything when I reached the age of
forty. That terrible year begins to-day,--far from you, far from my
own people, in a mortal sadness which nothing alleviates, for I cannot
change my fate myself, and I no longer believe in fortunate accidents.
My philosophy will be the child of lassitude, not of despair.

I came here to find an opportunity to get back to France, and I have
remained to do a work, the inspiration for which has come to me here
after I had vainly implored it for some years. I have never read a
book in which happy love is pictured. Rousseau is too impregnated with
rhetoric; Richardson is too much of a reasoner; the poets are too
flowery; the romance-writers are too slavish to facts; and Petrarch too
busy with his images, his _concetti_; he sees poesy better than he sees
woman. Pope has given too many regrets to Héloïse. None have described
the unreasoning jealousies, the senseless fears, or the sublimity of
the gift of self. It may be that God, who created love with humanity,
alone understands it, for none of his creatures have, as I think,
rendered the elegies, imaginations, and poesies of that divine passion,
which every one talks of and so few have known.

I want to end my youth--not my earliest youth--by a work outside of all
my other work, by a book apart, which shall remain in all hands, on
all tables, ardent and innocent, containing a sin that there may be a
return, passionate, earthly and religious, full of consolations, full
of tears and joys; and I wish this book to be without a name, like the
"Imitation of Jesus Christ." I would I could write it here. But I must
return to France, to Paris, re-enter my shop of vendor of phrases, and
between now and then I can only sketch it.

Since I wrote you nothing new has happened. I have seen once more the
Duomo of Milan, and I have made the tour of the Corso. But I have
nothing to say of all that which you do not know already. I have made
acquaintance with the Chimæras of the grand chandelier on the altar
of the Virgin, which I had seen superficially; with Saint Bartholomew
holding his skin as a mantle; with certain delightful angels sustaining
the circle of the choir; and that is all. I have heard, at the Scala,
the Boccabadati in "Zelmira." But I go nowhere; the Countess Bossi came
bravely up to me in the street and reminded me of our dear evening at
the Sismondis'. She was not recognizable. The change in her forced me
to a terrible examination of myself.

It is now two months that I have had no news of you. My letters remain
in Paris; no one writes to me because I have been wandering in lands
where there are no mails. Nothing has better proved to me that I am an
animal living by caresses and affection, neither more nor less like a
dog. Skin-deep friendships do not suit me; they weary me; they make me
feel more vividly what treasures are inclosed in the hearts where I
lodge. I am not a Frenchman, in the frivolous acceptation of that term.

The inn became intolerable to me, and I am, by the kindness of Prince
Porcia, in a little chamber of his house, overlooking gardens, where
I work much at my ease, as with a friend who is all kindness for me.
Alphonso-Serafino, Principe di Porcia, is a man of my own age, the
lover of a Countess Bolognini, more in love this year than he was last
year, unwilling to marry unless he can marry the countess, who has a
husband from whom she is separated _a mensâ et thero._ You see they are
happy. The countess is very witty. The prince's sister is the Countess
San-Severino, about whom I think I have already told you.

Milan is all excitement about the coronation of the emperor as King
of Lombardy; the house of Austria has to spend itself in costs and
fireworks. Though I have seen Florence only through the crevice of a
half-week, I prefer Florence to Milan as a residence. If I had the
happiness to be so loved by a woman that she would give me her life,
it would be upon the banks of the Arno that I should go and spend my
life. But after all, in spite of the romances of my friend George Sand,
and my own, it is very rare to meet with a Prince Porcia who has enough
fortune to live where he likes. I am poor, and I have wants. I must
work like a galley-slave. I cannot say to Arabella d'Agoult (see the
"Lettres d'un Voyageur"), "Come to Vienna, and three concerts will give
us ten thousand francs; let us go to Saint-Petersburg, and the ivory
keys of my piano will buy us a palace." I need that insulting Paris,
its publishers, its printing-offices, twelve hours' stupefying work a
day. I have debts, and debt is a countess who loves me too tenderly. I
cannot send her away; she puts herself obstinately betwixt peace, love,
idleness, and me. It is too hideous, that fate, to cast upon any one,
even my enemies. There is only one woman in the world from whom I could
accept anything, because I am sure of loving her all my life; but if
she did not love me thus, I should kill myself in thinking of the part
I had played.

You see I must, within a few months, take refuge in the life of La
Fontaine. Whichever side I turn I see only difficulties, toil, and
vain and useless hope. I have not even the resource of two years at
Diodati on the Lake of Geneva, for I am now too hardened in work to die
of it. I am like a bird in its cage, which has struck against all its
bars, and now sits motionless on its perch, above which a white hand
stretches the green net that protects it from breaking its head. You
would never believe what gloomy meditations this happy life of Porcia's
costs me; he lives upon the Corso, ten doors from the Bolognini. But I
am thirty-nine to-day, with one hundred and fifty thousand francs of
debt upon me; Belgium has the million I have earned, and----I have not
the courage to go on, for I perceive that the sadness which consumes me
would be cruel upon paper, and I owe to friendship the grace of keeping
it in my heart.

To-morrow, after writing a few letters for my lovers, I shall be gayer,
and I will come to you with a virtue that shall make a saint despair.


May 23.

_Cara_, I have home-sickness! France and its sky--gray for most of
the time--wrings my heart beneath this pure blue sky of Milan. The
Duomo, decked with its laces, does not lift my soul from indifference;
the Alps say nothing to me. This soft, relaxing air fatigues me; I go
and come without soul, without life, without power to say what the
matter is; and if I stay thus for two weeks longer, I shall be dead.
To explain is impossible. The bread I eat has no savour; meat does not
nourish me, water can scarcely slake my thirst; this air dissolves me.
I look at the handsomest woman in the world as if she were a monster,
and I do not even have that common sensation that the sight of a flower
gives. My work is abandoned. I shall recross the Alps, and I hope in a
week to be in the midst of my own dear hell. What a horrible malady is
nostalgia! It is indescribable. I am happy only at the moment when I
write to you, and say to myself that this paper will go from Milan to
Wierzchownia; then only does thought break through this black existence
beneath the sun, this atony which relaxes every fibre of the life. That
is the only operative force which maintains the union of soul and body.


May 24.

I have again seen the Countess Bossi; and I am struck with the few
resources of Italian women. They have neither mind nor education; they
scarcely understand what is said to them. In this country criticism
does not exist, and I begin to think that the saying is right which
attributes to Italian women something too material in love. The only
intelligent and educated woman I have met in Italy is La Cortanza of
Turin.

I have been to see the Luini frescos at Saronno; they are worthy of
their reputation. The one that represents the Marriage of the Virgin is
of peculiar sweetness. The faces are angelical, and, what is rare in
frescos, the tones are soft and harmonious.

There is no present opportunity to return to France. I must resolve
to take the wearisome and fatiguing means of the Sardinian and French
mail-carts.


June 1, 1838.

My departure is fixed for to-morrow, errors excepted, and I think that
never shall I have seen France again with such pleasure, though my
affairs must be greatly tangled by this too long absence. If I am six
days on the road that will make three months, and, in all, it has been
seven months of inaction. I need eight consecutive months of work to
repair this damage. I shall enter my new little house to spend many
nights in working.


June 5.

I have just been to the post-office to see if any one had had the idea
to write to me _poste restante_. There I found a letter from the kind
Countess Loulou [Louise Turheim], who loves you and whom you love, and
in whose letter your name is mentioned in a melancholy sentence which
drew tears from my eyes; for, in the species of nostalgia under which
I am, imagine what it was to me to recall the Landstrasse and the
Gemeindegasse! I sat down on a bench before a café and stayed there for
nearly an hour, with my eyes fixed on the Duomo, fascinated by all that
letter recalled; and the incidents of my stay in Vienna passed before
me, one by one, in their truth, their marble candour. Ah! what do I not
owe--not to her who causes such memories, but--to this frail paper that
awakens them! You must remember that I am without news of you for three
months, by my own fault. You know why. But you will never know whence
this thirst for making a fortune comes to me.

I am going to write to the good chanoinesse without telling her all she
has done by her letter, for such things are difficult to express, even
to that kind German woman. But she spoke of you with such soul that
I can tell her that what in her is friendship in me is worship that
can never end. She says so prettily that _one_ of my friends--not the
_veritable_ one, but the _other_--is in Venice; truly, she moved me to
tears. What perpetual grief to be always so near you in thought and so
distant in reality! Ah, dear, the Duomo was very sublime to me on the
5th of June at eleven o'clock! I lived there a whole year.

Well, adieu. I leave to-morrow, and in ten days I shall answer all your
letters, treasures amassed during this dreadful journey. May God guard
you and yours, and forget not the poor exile who loves you well.



AUX JARDIES, SÈVRES, July 26, 1838.

I receive to-day your number 44, and I answer it, together with the
three letters I found awaiting me in the rue des Batailles a month ago.

In the first place, dear, you must know that the "Veuve Durand" no
longer exists. The poor woman was killed by the little journals which
pushed their baseness towards me so far as to betray a secret which to
any men of honour would have been sacred. So now I am established for
always at Sèvres, and my hovel is called "Les Jardies;" therefore my
address now is and long will be: "M. de Balzac, aux Jardies, à Sèvres."

You predicted truly in your last letter; I ought to pass a month here
doing nothing but turning round and round to settle myself upon my
muck-heap. I am still in the midst of plasterers, masons, diggers,
painters, and other workmen. I arrived quite full of that book which
does not exist, which has never been done, and which I desire to do,
and I found the most foolish mercantile hindrances; the two volumes
of "La Femme Supérieure," taken from the "Presse," lack a few pages
before they can be sold as a book, which I must fill out by adding the
beginning of "La Torpille." I found the contractor for my house at bay;
I found the hounds of my debts awaiting me, with annoyances of all
kinds. I have enough to do for a month in goings and comings, etc. I
took a week to rest; my journey back was very fatiguing; I risked an
ophthalmia on the Mont Cenis; having left the great heat of Lombardy, I
came, in a few hours, into twenty degrees below freezing on the summit
of the Alps, with snow and wind.


August 7.

Fifteen days' interruption, during which this letter has been
constantly under my eyes, on my table, without my being able to tell
you that the wind on the Mont Cenis drove a fine dust into my eyes,
which pricked them with blinding particles. I know that my letters,
which tell you my life, give you as much pleasure as yours give me.
Only, your words sustain and refresh me; whereas mine communicate to
you my vertigoes, my worries, my disappointments, my lassitudes, my
terrors, my toils. Your existence is calm, gentle, and religious; it
rolls slowly along, like a stream on its gravelly bed between two
verdant shores. Mine is a torrent, all noise and rocks. I am ashamed
of the exchange, in which I bring you only troubles, and obtain from
you the treasures of peace. You are patient; I am in revolt. You have
not understood the last cry I uttered, at Milan. I had, there, a
double nostalgia, and I had not, against the more dreadful of the two,
the resource, horrible as it is, of my struggles here. Here, moral
and physical combat, debts, and literature have something exciting,
bewildering. See it yourself; I am interrupted in a sentence in the
middle of the night, and I cannot resume that sentence for perhaps two
weeks.

I have a world of things to tell you. In the first place, remove
from your tranquil life a trouble like that of procuring my hookah.
Just fancy! all that came of my ignorance! I thought you lived near
Moscow, and that Moscow was the principal market for such things. That
was all,--except that I wanted to receive from you an article which
is, they say, a _chasse-chagrin_. But if it causes you the slightest
trouble it will be painful to me to see it.

Among the thousand and one things that I have had to do I must put in
the front line a negotiation about the "Mariage de Joseph Prudhomme,"
with a theatre that agrees to give me twenty thousand francs on the day
the play is read; and you can imagine what thirst a man has for twenty
thousand francs when he is building a house, and how he must work to
obtain them!

I am, therefore, in spite of the doctor's orders forbidding me to live
in freshly plastered rooms, at Les Jardies. My house is situated on the
slope of the mountain, or hill, of Saint-Cloud, half-way up, backing
on the king's park and looking south. To the west I see the whole of
Ville d'Avray; to the south I look down upon the road to Ville d'Avray,
which passes along the foot of the hills where the woods of Versailles
begin; and easterly I overlook Sèvres and rest my eyes upon a vast
horizon where lies Paris, its smoky atmosphere blurring the edges of
the famous slopes of Meudon and Bellevue; beyond which I see the plains
of Montrouge and the Orléans highroad which leads to Tours. It is all
strangely magnificent, with ravishing contrasts. The depths of the
valley of Ville d'Avray have all the freshness, shade, and verdure of
the Swiss valleys, adorned with charming buildings. The horizon on the
other side shines on its distant lines like the open sea. Woods and
forests everywhere. To the north is the royal residence. At the end of
my property is the station of the railway from Paris to Versailles, the
embankment of which runs through the valley of Ville d'Avray without
injury to any part of my view.

So, for ten sous and in ten minutes I can go from Les Jardies to the
Madeleine in the heart of Paris! Whereas at Chaillot, and in the rue
Cassini it took an hour and forty sous at least. Therefore, thanks to
that circumstance, Les Jardies will never be a folly, and its value
will be some day doubled. I have about one acre of land, ending,
towards the south, in a terrace of one hundred and fifty feet and
surrounded by walls. At present nothing is planted in it, but this
autumn I shall make this little corner of the earth an Eden of plants
and shrubs and fragrance. In Paris or its environs anything can be had
for money; so, I shall get magnolias twenty years old, _tiyeuilles_
of sixteen, poplars of twelve years, birches, etc., transplanted with
balls of roots, and white Chasselas grapes, brought in boxes, that I
may gather them next year. Oh! how admirable civilization is! To-day my
land is bare as my hand. In the month of May it will be surprising. I
must buy two more acres of ground about me, to have a vegetable garden
and fruit, etc. That will cost some thirty thousand francs, and I shall
try to earn them this winter.

The house is a parrot's perch; there is one room on each floor, and
there are three floors. On the ground-floor a dining-room and salon;
on the first floor a bedroom and dressing-room; on the second floor a
study, where I am writing to you at this moment in the middle of the
night. The whole is flanked by a staircase that somewhat resembles a
ladder. All round the building is a covered gallery to walk in, which
rises to the first floor. It is supported on brick pilasters. This
little pavilion, Italian in appearance, is painted brick-colour, with
stone courses at the four corners, and the appendix in which is the
well of the staircase is painted red also. There is room in it only for
me.

Sixty feet in the rear, towards the park of Saint-Cloud, are the
offices, composed, on the ground-floor, of a kitchen, scullery, pantry,
stable, coach-house, and harness-room, bath-room, woodhouse, etc. Above
is a large apartment which I can let if I choose, and above that again
are servants' rooms and a room for a friend, [He says elsewhere that
this building was the peasant's house, bought with the land.] I have a
supply of water equal to the famous Ville d'Avray water, for it comes
from the same source. There is no furniture here as yet; but all that I
own in Paris will be brought here, little by little. I have, just now,
my mother's old cook and her husband to serve me. But for at least a
month longer I shall live in the midst of masons, painters and other
workmen; and I am working, or am going to work to pay them. When the
interior is finished I will describe it to you.[1]

I shall stay here until my fortune is made; and I am already so pleased
with it that after I have obtained the capital of my tranquillity I
believe that I shall end my days here in peace, bidding farewell,
without flourish of trumpets, to my hopes, my ambitions--to all! The
life that you lead, that life of country solitude, has always had great
charms for me. I wanted more, because I had nothing at all, and in
making to one's self illusions it costs a young man no more to make
them grand. To-day my want of success in everything has wearied my
character--I do not say my heart, which will hope ever. That I may have
a horse, fruits in abundance, the material costs of living secured,
such is my place in the sunshine, obtained, not paid for, but sketched
out. I pay the interest on capital, instead of paying rent. That is the
change of front I have performed. I am in my own home, instead of being
in the house of an oppressive landlord. My debt and my money anxieties
remain the same; but my courage has redoubled under the lessening of my
desires.

To-morrow, _cara_, I will continue my chatter and send it to you this
week.

[Footnote 1: See Théophile Gautier's description of that interior;
"Memoir of Balzac," pp. 224, 225.--TR.]


Wednesday, August 8.

There are many things in your last four letters to which I ought to
reply; but they are locked up in Paris, and before I can get them too
much time will have passed. I will answer in another letter, quickly
following this.

But among other things that struck me in them was the extreme
melancholy of your religious ideas. You write to me as if I believed
in nothing, as if you wished to send me to La Grande-Chartreuse, or as
if you meant to say to me, "Earth no longer interests me." You cannot
think how many inductions, possibly false, I draw from that state of
mind; but (and you tell me so with sincerity) you express to me what
you feel; otherwise you would be false and distrustful when you should
be all truth with a friend like me. Even if I displease you, I must say
to you with confidence that I am not satisfied, and I would rather see
you otherwise. To go thus to God is to renounce the world; and I do not
comprehend why you should renounce it when you have so many ties that
bind you to it, so many duties to accomplish. None but feeble souls
will take that course. The reflections that I make on this subject are
not of a nature to be communicated to you. They are, moreover, very
selfish, and concern only me. Like those that I expressed in Milan,
they would displease you, because, as you say, they trouble you; and
for those my heart sinks down. I see clearly that happiness will never
come to me; and who would have no bitterness in thinking that thought?
I was very unhappy in my youth, but Madame de Berny balanced all by an
absolute devotion, which was understood to its full extent only when
the grave had seized its prey. Yes, I was spoilt by that angel; I prove
my gratitude by striving to perfect that which she sketched out in me.

I meant to speak to you of new vexations; but I ought to be silent.
In one of my letters, I don't know which, there is a promise that I
made to us both not to speak to you again of my troubles, to write
to you only at the moments when all looked rosy, and to tell my
jeremiads to the passing clouds, going northward. When you see them
look gray they are telling them to you. How many black confidences
have I not smothered! There is many a corner that I hide from you;
and it is those corners that would amaze you could you penetrate them
and find--behind so many agitations, preoccupations, toils, travels,
"inward dissipations," as you say--a fixed idea, daily more intense,
which surely has little virtue since it cannot remove mountains, that
miracle promised to faith! Often, friends have seen me turn pale at the
loud cracking of a whip and rush to the window. They ask me what the
matter is; and I sit down, palpitating, and saddened for days. Such
fevers, such starts, shaken by inward convulsions, break me, crush
me. There are days when I fancy that my fate is being decided, that
something happy or unhappy will occur to me, is preparing, and I not
there! These are the follies of poets, comprehended by them alone.
There are days when I take real life and all about me for a dream; so
much is this present life, for me, against nature. But now all that
will cease amid these fields, which always calm me.

Have I secured material existence, beneath which I would fain compress
the life of the heart that I see is lost and useless, in spite of the
ten good years that still remain to me?--for my passion has a will of
which you can form to yourself no idea. It must have all or nothing.
As to that, I am as I was on the day I left college. I am much to
be pitied, and I will not be pitied. I have never done anything to
disprove the absurd and silly lies of society which give me the good
graces of charming women, all of which are derived from the coquetries
of Madame de Castries and a few others. I have accepted the accusation
of self-conceit; I am willing that absurdity on absurdity should
accumulate about me to hide the true man, who has but one sentiment,
one ideal!

I am at this moment-engaged in doing a part of my book on love, which
will be detached; I want to paint well the soul of a young girl before
the invasion of that love (which will lead her into a convent), and I
have thought it true to make her abhor the Carmelites (to whom she will
eventually return) at the beginning of life, when she longs for the
world and its pleasures. As she has been eight years in the convent,
she arrives in Paris as much a stranger to it as Montesquieu's Persian;
and by the power of that idea I shall make her judge and depict the
modern Paris, instead of employing the dramatic method of novels. That
is a novel idea, and I am putting it into execution.

Nevertheless, it is very difficult for me to resume my life of labour,
getting up at midnight and working till five in the afternoon. This is
the first morning that I have passed without dozing between six and
eight o'clock. Six months' interruption have made ravages; there are
forces that come from habit, and when habit is broken, farewell forces.
I hope to continue working for three or four months, in order to repair
the breaches caused by absence, and, if my plays succeed, perhaps I
shall have earned, over and above my debts, enough capital for the
bread and water on my table, and my flowers and fruit. The rest may
come, perhaps, hereafter.

_Addio, cara_; I could not tell you how my comic-opera house, that
cottage they push forward on the stage and where lovers give themselves
a rendezvous, has awakened the housekeeping and bourgeois instincts in
me. One could be so happy here! All the advantages of Paris, and none
of its disadvantages! I am here as at Saché, with the possibility of
being in Paris in fifteen minutes--just time enough to reflect on what
one is going to do there.

_Mon Dieu!_ have you read in the "Lettres d'un Voyageur" the part
about Moulin-Joli? the engraving of which I saw in _her_ house without
then knowing the terrible passage to which it gave rise, terrible to
ill-mated beings. Well, Les Jardies are Moulin-Joli without the woman
who engraves. If you do not know this history, read it. George Sand
never related anything as well.

I send you many caressing homages and all those flowers of the soul
which are so exactly the same that I fear they bore you. Many kind
remembrances to those about you. I cannot send you an autograph,
unfortunately; I had one of Manzoni for you, but they have just lit
my fire with it! This is the second time something precious has been
burned up here.

The newspapers have told you of the deplorable end of the poor Duchesse
d'Abrantès. She has ended like the Empire. Some day I will explain her
to you,--some good evening at Wierzchownia.

I can now reply to your bucolics on your beautiful flowers and turf by
idyls on my own; but alas! there's a difference in quantity. You have
a thousand acres, and I have a thousand square feet!

All affectionate and good things. Do not neglect to tell me about your
health, your beauty, your incidents in the depths of the Ukraine; you
will do so if you form the least idea of the value I attach to the most
minute particular.



AUX JARDIES, September 17, 1838.

Since I last wrote I have done nothing but work desperately; for one
must conquer during the last years, or bury one's self under a barren
success.

I have just written for the "Presse" the beginning of "La Torpille,"
and the "Presse" would not have it. I have written the beginning of "Le
Curé de Village," the religious pendant of the philosophical book you
know as "Le Médecin de campagne." I have written the preface to two
volumes about to be published, containing "La Femme Supérieure," "La
Maison Nucingen," and "La Torpille." I have written two volumes in 8vo,
entitled, "Qui Terre a, Guerre a;" and finally, I have written for the
"Constitutionnel" the end of "Le Cabinet des Antiques," under the title
of "Les Rivalités de Province."

You will understand from that, _cara_, that I have been unable to write
you even two lines in the midst of this avalanche of ideas and labour.

Nothing of all that gives me a sou. I had prepared, to save me, certain
dramas, and they are all begun; but I wish to go to the _grand_, and I
am discontented; so much so that, seeing how ill I do things while I
see such fine things to do, I have abandoned my attempts. And yet, my
salvation is in the theatre. A success there would give me a hundred
thousand francs. Two successes would clear me, and two successes are
only matters of intelligence and toil,--nothing else.

At the moment of present writing I have begun a drama in three acts,
entitled, "La Gina." It is Othello the other way. La Gina will be
a female Othello. The scene is in Venice. I _must_ essay the stage.
Proposals are not lacking to me. I am offered in one direction twenty
thousand francs first payment for fifteen acts; and I have the fifteen
acts in my head, but not on paper.

Well, all the manuscripts are at the printing-office; proofs are
rolling; the printers will not beat me in rapidity, for it is not the
mechanical invention with its thousand arms that gets on fastest, it is
the brain of your poor friend!


September 18.

The time to turn the page, and I find "La Gina" too difficult. Reasons
have killed it. In "Othello" Iago is the pillar which supports the
conception; I have only a money motive, instead of the motive of hidden
love. I found my personage inadmissible. A vaudeville writer would not
have been stopped by that difficulty. So I return to a former play,
imagined some time ago, called "Richard Cœur-d'Éponge." I will tell
you about it if I do it.

My house does not get on. I have the walls of the enclosure still
to do, and much to the interior. It is alarming. I have found a
source--not of fortune! only clear water.


October 1.

I am into money matters up to my neck. It is demoralizing. I have not
had two hours to myself for reflection since I wrote you the above few
lines. Do not be vexed with me. I need calmer times to relate to you
a life like mine. I must say mass every second, and ring it. I have
had the hope of buying out my publishers, who are ruining me, and I
have just spent two weeks in Paris in crushing, killing efforts. You
must remember that I have no help or succour, but, on the other hand,
infinite obstacles, without number. If I cannot overcome them I shall
go to you for six months' rest at Wierzchownia, where I can write my
plays in peace before returning here. Many persons whom I love and
esteem advise this, telling me to "go somewhere." But as for me, I
cannot abandon a battlefield.

The two volumes containing "La Femme Supérieure," "La Maison Nucingen,"
and "La Torpille" are out.


October 10.

For the last seven years or so, whenever I have read a book in which
Napoleon was mentioned, if I found any new and striking thought said by
him, I put it at once into a cook-book that never leaves my desk and
lies on that little book you know of, which will belong to you--alas,
soon, perhaps--in which I put my subjects and my first ideas. In a day
of distress (one of my recent days), being without money, I looked to
see how many of those thoughts there were. I found five hundred; hence,
the finest book of the century; I mean the publication of the "Maximes
et Pensées de Napoléon." I sold the work to a former hosier, who is the
big-wig of his arrondissement, and wants the cross of the Legion of
honour, which he can have by dedicating this book to Louis-Philippe. It
is about to appear. Get it. You will have one of the finest things of
the day; the soul, the thought of that great man, gathered through much
research by your moujik, Honoré de Balzac. Nothing has made me laugh so
much as this idea of getting the cross for a sort of grocer, who may
perhaps recommend himself to your Grace by his title of administrator
of a charitable enterprise. Napoleon will have brought me four thousand
francs and the hosier may get a hundred thousand. I had such great
distrust of myself that I would not work my own idea. To the hosier,
both fame and profit. But you will recognize the hand of your serf in
the dedication to Louis-Philippe. May the shade of Napoleon forgive
me![1]

[Footnote 1: This book, extremely rare to-day, appeared at the close of
the year 1838, without the name of any publisher, under the following
title: "Maximes et Pensées de Napoléon, recueillies par J. L. Gaudy
jeune. Paris. 1838."]


October 15.

I receive to-day your answer to my last letter. Never before did it
happen to me to receive a reply to one letter while I was writing
another. This phenomenon takes place now at the end of five years,
during which time I have written to you once a fortnight at least. To
tell you all the whys and wherefores belongs to the domain of _talk_,
not to that of epistolary conversation.

_Cara_, you are more than ever bent on _converting_ me. Your letter is
that of a grave and serious abbess and an omnipotent, _omni-scavante_,
gracious and witty Countess Hanska. I kneel at your feet, dear and
beautiful sister-Massillon, to tell you here that the sorrow of my
life is a long prayer, that my soul is very white, not because I do
not sin, but because I have no time to sin, which makes it perhaps
all the blacker in your eyes. But you know that I have in the shrine
of my heart a madonna who sanctifies all. What have I said or done to
you that should bring me all this Christian advice? I work so hard
that I have not always time to sleep or, more alarming symptom, to
write to you. A man so unfortunate is either the most guilty or the
most innocent of men on earth; and in either case there's nothing to
be done. Would you know what that means? I am weary of the life thus
allotted to me, and, were it not for my duties, I would take another.
I must have received many blows, be very tired of my fate, to abandon
myself to chance, as I do to-day, with a character as strongly tempered
as mine.

You have reticences about my affections which grieve me all the more
because I cannot reply to them (the reticences), and you ask me
superfluous questions about my health. Why have you not divined, with
that grand perspicacious forehead of yours and your other attributes,
that the unhappy are always robust in health? They can pass through
seas, conflagrations, battles, bivouacs, and fresh plaster; they
are always sound and well! Yes, I am perfectly well, without aches
or pains, in my young house. Have no uneasiness as to that. Beyond a
great and general fatigue after my excesses of work during the last
fortnight, I am well, and if white hairs did not abound I should think
I were the younger by ten years.

_Mon Dieu!_ how I suffer when, in reading your letter, I see that you
have suffered from my silence, and that you have taken to heart my
anxieties and the agonies of my poor life. Do you know it? do you feel
it? No--never see me, as you say, joyous and tranquil! When I write to
you joyously all is at its worst, and I am trying to conceal how ill
that is. When things are going ill with me if I do not write to you,
it is because--No, I cannot write it to you; I will talk of it to you
some day, and then you will regret having written to me some words
that are sweet and cruel both in relation to my delayed letters. There
are things that you will never divine. Do not fear that anything can
change or diminish an attachment like mine. You think me light-minded,
giddy; it makes me laugh. Believe, once for all, that he in whom you
have been good enough to recognize some depth of thought, has depth in
his heart, and that while he displays such courage in the battle he
is fighting, there is just as great constancy in his affections. But
you are ignorant of the claims of each day; the dreadful difficulties
on which I spend myself. If you knew what wiles were necessary--like
those of the "Mariage de Figaro"--to make that hosier pay four thousand
francs for the thoughts and maxims of Napoleon; if you realized that my
publishers will not give me money; that I am trying to break up that
agreement; that to break it I must pay them fifty thousand francs; and
that after believing that my life was secured and tranquil it is now
more in peril than ever, you would not treat as folly my enterprise in
Sardinia! Oh! I entreat you, do not advise or blame those who feel
themselves sunk in deep waters and are struggling to the surface.
Never will the rich comprehend the unfortunate. One must have been
one's self without friends, without resources, without food, without
money, to know to its depths what misfortune is. I have the knowledge
of all that; and I no longer complain that I am the victim of a poor
unfortunate man who, for food, sells a jest of mine that I may have
said on the boulevard, but which, when published, forms a horrible
attack upon me. I complain no longer of calumnies and insults; those
poor unfortunates live upon them, and though I would rather die than
live so, I have not the courage to blame them, for I know what it is to
suffer.

However rare my letters are, they are the _only ones_ that I write
to-day (except those on business); and what quarrels and ill-will I
have brought upon myself by not answering letters! You cannot know what
a literary life busy as mine is must be. Whatever they tell you, or
however my silence may appear to you, know this: that I work day and
night; that the phenomenon of my production is doubled, trebled; that
I have brought myself to correct a volume in a single night, and to
write one in three days. The world is foolish. It thinks that a book is
spoken. This grieves me only from you; I laugh with pity at others.

I have done eight works since the month of last November. _Cara_, each
of those eight works would have foundered for a year the strongest of
the French writers, who barely do half a volume a year. Among those
eight I do not mention the book of love, of which I have told you
something, which is there, on my table, beneath your letter; I have
about twenty-five _feuilles_ of that written. Neither do I speak of
five "Contes Drolatiques" written within two months.

_Mon Dieu!_ I have not one soul to understand me; I have never had but
one. Poor, dear Madame de Berny came to see me daily in those days when
she thought that I should perish beneath my burden. What would she say
now if she saw it tenfold heavier? Yes, I work tenfold harder in 1838
than I did in 1828, 1830, 1831, 1832, 1833. In those days I believed in
fortune; to-day I believe in misery. There are men who want me to sell
myself to the present order of things. I would rather die! I must have
my freedom of speech.

When you speak to me of fatal death, such as that of your cousin, I
call it happy death, for I do not believe we are placed here below for
happiness. Withold was right; I pity his mother much; but he is happy,
believe it.

You asked me when I shall calm that French fury which carried me to
Italy, to Sardinia. Is not that asking me when I shall be imbecile? Do
you expect a man who can write in five nights "Qui Terre a, Guerre a"
or "César Birotteau" to measure his steps like a capitalist who takes
his dog to walk on the boulevard, reads the "Constitutionnel," comes
home to dinner, and plays billiards in the evening? I will allow you
here five seconds to laugh at the most charming person in the world,
who, to my thinking, is Madame Eve. Nothing remains now but to blame
_la furia_ which will take me to see certain Northern people in their
steppe. Know, beautiful great lady, that if I abandoned myself to
Providence, as you propose to me, Providence would already have put me
in prison for debt; and I don't see that there is anything providential
in a sojourn at Clichy. What would the plants that creep out of caves
in search of the sun say if they heard a pretty dove asking them why
they climbed that fissure to the air? You curse our civilization;
I await you in Paris! But I would also like to know who are the
impertinent people who write to you about me; and who think there is a
sun for me elsewhere than in the North.

Théophile Gautier is a young man of whom I think I have spoken to you.
He is one of the talents that I discovered; but he is without force
of conception. "Fortunio" is below "Mademoiselle de Maupin," and his
poems, which have pleased you, alarm me as a decadence in poesy and
language. He has a ravishing style, much intellect, of which I think
he will not make the most because he is in journalism. He is the son
of a custom-house receiver at the Versailles barrier of Paris. He is
very original, knows a great deal, and talks well on art, of which he
has the sentiment. He is an exceptional man, who will, no doubt, lose
his way. You have divined _the man_; he loves colour and flesh; but he
comprehends Italy, without having seen it.

I am struck by the manner in which you return, three several times to
the "levity of my character, and the multiplicity of my enthusiasms."
There must be under all that some calumny which has snaked its way to
Wierzchownia, God knows how!

Well, I must bid you farewell, without having said one tenth part of
the things I had to say to you, and which I will return to later. After
all, it would be only describing to you the worries of my present
life, which are innumerable. I must correct for to-morrow "Le Curé de
Village" for it annoys me to have further dealings with the "Presse."

Adieu, dear azure flower; keep all safely for one who lays up treasures
of affections and feelings in your direction. I know not why you say
that old friendships are timid; mine grows very bold with time.

All graceful things to those about you, and to M. Hanski my friendly
regards.


October 16.

I am in treaty with the "Débats" to take all my prose at a franc a
line. That would make M. Sedlitz, the German poet, howl; but he is
a baron, and has estates, and was scandalized in the Landstrasse at
hearing me talk about the profits of literature. If this _affair_ comes
off you will see me very soon at Wierzchownia. I want to be there in
winter.

Much tenderness, preaching or laughing, mundane or Catholic. _À
bientôt._



AUX JARDIES, November 15, 1838.

To-day I meant to have closed and sent to you a letter begun a month
ago; but it is lost,--lost from my desk. I have spent three hours of
this night in looking for it. I am vexed, I weep for it, because, to
me, all expression of the soul fallen into the gulf of oblivion seems
irreparable. You would have known what has happened to me since the
date of my last letter. In two words, I am about to enter a happier
period, or, to use a truer word, a less unhappy period than the past,
financially speaking. A few days more and I shall, perhaps, have paid
off half my debt. Material success is coming; it begins. My works are
to be issued in several _formats_ at the same time. My publishers allow
me to buy off my agreement, which bound me too closely, and I am going,
in a few months, to be free. These are results. You will be ignorant,
until I can tell them to you, of the marches and countermarches, and
goings and comings, and conferences which have made me mount and
descend all the rungs of the ladder of hope.

My pen will have brought in mounds of gold this month.[1] "Qui Terre
a, Guerre a" more than ten thousand francs; "Le Cabinet des Antiques"
five thousand francs, etc., etc.; "Massimilla Doni" a thousand francs.
I have sold for twenty thousand francs the right to sell thirty-six
thousand 18mo volumes, selected from my works. "La Physiologie du
Mariage" in 18mo has been sold for five thousand francs. In short, it
is a sudden, unhoped-for harvest, and it comes in the nick of time. I
hope, between now and five months hence, to have paid off one hundred
thousand francs of my debt. But I have eight volumes to finish.
They have bought prefaces of a _feuille_ in length for five hundred
francs. All this will give you pleasure, will it not? Nothing will as
yet give me any ease; for this money goes only to clear off the old
debt; but at least I can breathe. Another thing that will give you
pleasure and rejoice your Catholic soul is that my affairs took on this
smiling aspect from the day when my mother hung about my neck a medal
blessed by a saint, which I have religiously worn with another amulet
[probably her miniature], which I believe to be more efficacious. The
two talismans get on very well together, and have not displeased each
other. I am not willing to disappoint my mother, but this miracle does
not convert me, because I am ignorant which of the two charms is the
most powerful.

I have been very miserable of late; my publishers are piling up
their ducats, while I have not had a brass farthing, and this war of
diplomatic conferences costs me much. I have now returned to my shell,
at Sèvres, where nothing is yet finished or habitable. I have the
removal of my furniture to do and many other expenses besides.

The moral is less satisfactory than the material condition. I am
growing older, I feel the need of a companion, and every day I regret
the adored being who sleeps in a village cemetery near Fontainebleau.
My sister, who loves me much, can never receive me in her own home. A
ferocious jealousy bars everything. My mother and I do not suit each
other, reciprocally. I must rely on work unless I have a family of
friends about me; which is what I should like to arrive at. A good and
happy marriage, alas! I despair of it, though no one is more fitted
than I for domestic life.

I have interior griefs that I can tell only to you, which oppress
me. Ever since I have had ideas and sentiments I have thought wholly
of love; and the first woman that I met was a faultless heroine,
angelic in heart, a mind most keen, education most extensive, graces
and manners perfect. Diabolical Nature placed its fatal _but_ upon
all this. _But_ she was twenty-two years older than I; so that if the
ideal was morally surpassed, the material, which is much, erected
insurmountable barriers. Therefore, the unlimited passion that has
always been in my soul has never found true fulfilment. The half of all
was lacking. Do you think, therefore, that I can meet with it now that
time is flying at a gallop with me? My life will be a failure, and I
feel it bitterly. There is no fame that lasts; I am resigned to that.
There are no chances for me. My life is a desert. That which I desired
is lacking,--that for which I could have made the greatest sacrifices,
that which will never come to me, that on which I must no longer
count! I say it mathematically, without the poesy of wailing, which
I could lift to the height of Job; but the fact is there. I should
not lack adventures; I could play, if I chose, the rôle of a man _à
bonnes fortunes_, but my stomach turns against it with disgust. Nature
made me for one sole love. I am an ignored Don Quixote. I have ardent
friendships. Madame Carraud, in Berry, has a noble soul; but friendship
does not take the place of love,--the love of every day, of every hour;
which gives infinite pleasures in the sound at all moments of a voice,
a step, the rustle of a gown through the house; such as I have had,
though imperfectly, at times in the last ten years. Add to this that I
hold in profound detestation all young girls, that I count much higher
developed beauties than those that will develop, and the problem is
still more difficult to solve.

Madame Carraud, whose letters give me great pleasure--if that word can
be employed for other letters than yours---has divined my situation.
She awakes my sorrows by a letter I have just received from her, in
which she talks marriage to me, which makes me furious for a long time.
I will not listen to it. You know how fixed my opinion is. I must have
much fortune for that, and I have none. I must have a person who knows
me well, and I doubt if that is possible in one who is, after all, a
stranger. What a sad thing is life, _cara_!

You will certainly see me when my great works are done. At the first
inanition of the brain I shall turn to your dear Wierzchownia, and pay
you a visit; for I cannot endure to be so long without seeing you. Last
night at the Opera, where I heard Duprez in "Guillaume Tell," I was the
whole evening in Switzerland,--the Switzerland of Pré-l'Évêque and the
two shores of the lake where we walked together. There are details of
our trips to Coppet and Diodati which occupy me more than my own life.
Looking at the scene of the Lake of the Four Cantons, I remembered,
_word for word_, all you said to me as we passed the Galitzin house,
and what you said about such and such a portrait at Coppet. And I said
to myself--in my way of telling myself the future--"Such a period will
not pass without my seeing the Ukraine; as I live so much by memories,
these are the treasures I ought to seek, and not silver mines." I was
happier in that Opera-Switzerland than the millionnaire Greffulhe, who
yawned above me.

From those letters of yours, so serious, so dun-coloured and ascetic,
I fear to find you changed. No matter, we must love our friends as they
are.

What I do not like in your last letter is the remark that "old
friendships are timid." In that there is a distrust of yourself or
of me that I do not like. You know that nothing can prevail against
you, that you are apart from whatever may happen to me, like a true
king who can never be reached. I am afraid that you forge ogres. If my
letters are delayed, be sure there is some good reason; that I have
been hurried about night and day, without truce or rest; that I have
not written to a living soul, and that, if I were ill or happy, you, in
spite of distance, would be the first informed of it.

You know the good your letters do me, whatever they are, religious, or
sad, or gay, or domestic. I am the more reserved because I have nothing
but troubles to send you, and no flower other than that of an eternal
affection, as much above all petty, worldly imitations as Mont Blanc is
above the lake. Do not be surprised therefore if I hold back a letter
which tells you of misery and toil without other compensation than that
of talking to you about them.

You complain of Polish divorces, whereas here we are doing all we can
to restore the admirable section on divorce to the Civil Code such
as Napoleon contrived it; which met all social disasters, without
giving an opening to libertinism, change, vice, or passion. It is the
only institution which can secure happy marriages. There are in Paris
forty thousand households on promise only, without either civil or
religious contract; and they are among the best, for each fears to lose
the other. This is not said publicly, but the statistic is correct.
Cauchois-Lemaire, for instance, is married in that way. The Napoleonic
law allowed only _one_ divorce in a woman's life, and forbade even that
after ten years of marriage. In this it was wrong. There are tyrannies
which can be borne in youth, that are later intolerable. I knew an
adorable woman who waited till she was forty-five and her daughters
were married, in order to separate from her husband; having put off
until that moment when she could no longer be suspected the liberation
without which she would have died.

What! do you dare to tell us there is but _one_ man in this "stupid
nineteenth century"? Napoleon is he? And Cuvier, _cara_! And Dupuytren,
_cara_! And Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, _cara_! And Masséna, _carina_!
And Rossini, _carissima_! And our chemists, our secondary men, who are
equal to the talents of the first order! And Lamennais, George Sand,
Talma, Gall, Broussais (just dead), etc.! You are very unjust. Lord
Byron, Walter Scott, and Cowper belong to this century. Weber also, and
Meyerbeer; also several _gamins de Paris_ who could make a revolution
by a wave of their hand. Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and Musset are, they
three, the small change of a poet, for neither of them is complete.
Apropos, "Ruy Blas" is immense nonsense, and an infamy in verse. The
odious and the absurd never danced a more dissolute saraband. He has
cut out two horrible lines:--

_... affreuse compagnone,
Dont la barbe fleurie et dont le nez trognonne;_

but they were said at the first two representations. At the fourth
representation, when the public became aware of them, they were hissed.

I cannot tell you anything of the war in the Caucasus, except that I
deplore for you the loss that grieves you [Count Withold Rzewuski].

_Cara_, I would like you to explain to me how I have deserved a phrase
thus worded and addressed to me in your last letter: "The natural
levity of your character." In what do I show levity? Is it because
for the last twelve years I pursue, without relaxing, an immense
literary work? Is it because for the last six years I have had but one
affection in my heart? Is it because for twelve years I have worked
night and day to pay an enormous debt which my mother saddled upon me
by a senseless calculation? Is it because in spite of so many miseries
I have not asphyxiated or drowned myself, or blown out my brains?
Is it because I work ceaselessly, and seek to shorten by ingenious
schemes, that fail, the period of my hard labour? Explain yourself. Is
it because I flee society and intercourse with others to give myself
up to my passion, my work, my release from debt? Can it be because I
have written twelve volumes instead of ten? Can it be because they do
not appear with regularity? Is it because I write to you with tenacity
and constancy, sending you with incredible levity autographs? Is it
because I go to live in the country, away from Paris, in order to have
more time and spend less money? Come, tell me; have no hidden thought
from your friend. Can it be because, in spite of so many misfortunes,
I preserve some gaiety and make campaigns into China and Sardinia?
For pity's sake, be fearless, and speak out. Can it be because I am
delaying to write my plays that I may not risk a fiasco? Or is it
because you are--through the blind confidence of a son for his mother,
a sister for a brother, a husband for a wife, a lover to his mistress,
a penitent to his confessor, an angel towards God, all, in short, that
is most confiding and most a _unit_--so aware of what passes in my poor
existence, my poor brain, my poor heart, my poor soul, that you arm
yourself with my confidences to make of _me_ another _myself_ whom you
scold and lecture and strike at your ease?

Levity of nature! Truly, you are like the worthy bourgeois who, seeing
Napoleon turn to right and left, and on all sides to examine his field
of battle, remarked: "That man cannot keep quiet in one place; he has
no fixed ideas." Do me the pleasure to go wherever you have put the
portrait of your poor moujik and look at the space between his two
shoulders, thorax and forehead, and say to yourself: "There is the
most constant, least volatile, most steadfast of men." That is your
punishment. But, after all, scold, accuse your poor Honoré de Balzac;
he is your thing; and I do wrong to argue; for if you will have it so,
I will be frivolous in character, I will go and come without purpose,
and say sweet things without object to the Duchesse d'O...; I will
fall in love with a notary's wife, and write feuilletons to enrage the
actresses, and I will make myself a superlative rip. I will sell Les
Jardies; I will await your sovereign orders. There is but one thing in
which I shall disobey you, and that is the thing of my heart--where,
nevertheless, you have all power.

I entreat you to add also that I am a light-weight in body and thin as
a skeleton. The portrait will then be complete.

Explain also, if you can, the "multiplicity of my dissipations
[_entraînements_],"--I, of whom it is said that no one can make me
do anything but what I choose to do! (Those who say so do not know
that I am moujik on the estate of Paulowska, the subject of a Russian
countess, and the admirer of the autocratic power of my sovereign.)

Alas! I never doubt you, I never rebel against anything--except the
invasion of mystical ideas. And even that is from an admirable instinct
of jealousy. Moreover, if I must say so, I hold the _devout spirit_ in
horror. It is not piety which alarms me, but devoutness. To fly from
this and that to the bosom of God, so be it; but the more I admire
those sublime impulses, the more the minute practices of devoutness
harden me. Quibbling is not law.

Addio, _cara_; I must finish "Massimilla Doni," do the opening part of
"Le Curé de Village" (in that book you will adore me in the quality of
Brother of the Church; it will be pure Fénelon), correct "Qui Terre a,
Guerre a," and, finally, deliver within ten days the manuscript of "Un
Grand homme de Province à Paris," which is the conclusion of "Illusions
Perdues." So you see that my idleness is a busy one.

Find here all treasures of affection, and prayers for the happiness of
you and yours in the present and in the future. If God heard or paid
attention to what I ask of him, you would have no anxieties, and you
would be the happiest woman upon earth.

I have busied myself about your Parisian pearls, and I shall have an
opportunity to send them. God grant they may get to you in time for the
New Year. Did you receive the autographs of Scribe, Hugo, and Byron? I
sent them all.

[Footnote 1: In the midst of this constant calculation of the money to
be gained by his work, it is well to remind ourselves now and then that
_never_ did he sacrifice that work, the fruit of his genius, to gain,
terrible as his need of money was. His difficulty in his art was with
_form_; and his laborious nights were spent in unflinching efforts to
remedy that defect in his mechanism.--TR.]




VII.


LETTERS DURING 1839, 1840, 1841.



AUX JARDIES, February 12, 1839.

When this letter reaches you, it is probable that the fate of "L'École
des Ménages" [formerly "La Première Demoiselle"] will have been decided;
and while you read these words they may be representing that play, so
long meditated, which perhaps may fall flat in two hours. It has taken
on great proportions; there are five leading rôles and the subject
is vast. It touches the painful spot of modern morals: marriage; but
perhaps the personages lack certain conditions in order to become
types. To my eyes, the play is precisely the bourgeois family. But it
has a certain inferiority through that very thing.

I am going to-morrow to come to an understanding with the managers
of the Renaissance, after many protocols exchanged between them and
a friend who has undertaken to fight for my interests; the play will
be mounted in twenty days. I took, to lay out my ideas and write them
down for me, a poor young man of letters, named Lassailly, who has not
written two lines worth preserving. I never saw such incapacity. But he
has been useful to me in making the first germ, on which I can work.
Nevertheless, I would have liked some one of more intelligence and wit.
Théophile Gautier is coming to do the second play in five acts, and I
expect much from him.

Nevertheless, dear countess, it is impossible for me to do all
that I have undertaken, and all that I must do to get out of my
embarrassments. Here is what I have accomplished the last month:
"Béatrix, ou Les Amours Forcés," two volumes 8vo, wholly written and
corrected, which is coming out in the "Siècle;" "Un Grand homme de
Province à Paris," the end of "Illusions Perdues," of which only the
second volume remains to do, and that will be done this week. Besides
which, three plays: "L'École des Ménages," "La Gina," and "Richard
Cœur d'Éponge."

Well, after such great labour (for I have just as much for the month of
March) shall I gain my liberty, shall I owe nothing to any one, shall
I have the tranquillity of soul of a man from whom no one has money
to demand? I begin to feel some fatigue. Just now, on beginning to go
to work, I found it impossible to take it up with my usual ardour; I
thought of you; I wanted to tell you across space how often you are
here, and to confide to you my little sorrows and my great works, or,
if you like, my little works and my great sorrows.


March 13.

How many things have happened in my life since I wrote the last lines!
In the first place, twenty days employed in correcting and rewriting
my play for the people of the Renaissance theatre; who have brutally
rejected it from want of money to make the first payment agreed upon.
Then, the reading of it before certain of the actors and the director
of the Théâtre Français who thought it magnificent, but impossible to
act as it then was, because of the union of tragedy and comedy. They
want it either the one or the other. Next, a reading at the house of
Madame Saint-Clair, sister of Madame Delmar, in presence of three
ambassadors, English, Austrian, and Sardinian, with their wives, Madame
Molé, M. de Maussion, Custine, etc. Delight and criticism. After which,
second and last reading at Custine's, in presence of another wave of
the great world, who all wish to see it performed. I have coldly put
away my play in a box, and this morning Planche came and asked me for
it, to see what it is like. He is to give me his opinion next Sunday.

So, dear, much to do, much company, much annoyance, and little result.
However, let me tell you that Taylor, the collector of Spanish pictures
and former Commissary for the King to the Théâtre Français, and the
director Védel and Desmousseaux have taken so high an opinion of me
as a dramatic writer that they have asked me to give them, as soon as
possible, a play entirely comic, saying that they would have it played
immediately. They are convinced that I can write for the stage.


March 16.

Planche took my play to read; he is to return it in two days, and will
doubtless tell me what it is worth. Stendhal, who was present at the
reading at Custine's, writes me the little line which I enclose in this
letter, and which he signs, by an inexplicable habit, Cotonet. He never
signs, except officially, his real name, Henri Beyle.

I am not well in body or in mind. I feel a horrible lassitude, which,
in regard to my head, is not without danger. I have no longer either
force or courage. The obstacles I have been accustomed to overcome
increase enormously and terrify me. Anxieties about money have
become for me what the Furies were to Orestes. I am without support,
enervated, without even kindly sentiments, without the faculty of
feeling any, of any kind. I am a negation. Ah! these moments are
terrible, especially when, for want of money, I cannot shake myself
together by a journey. There are no pleasures for me; none but those of
the heart. That is the only thing that intellect has not yet overrun;
it is the only thing it can never displace.

Adieu; this is a letter on which I have written for two months; for
two months it has lain among my papers and I take it up when I have
exhausted the _feuillets_ beneath which I place it.


April 14.

Dear, here is another month gone by. What a month! I have just received
your letter. If my irregularity grieves you, yours kills me; it has
made me think you did not want any more of my letters, and that you
have left me like a body without a soul. I have, however, been working
day and night. The endless corrections of the "Grand homme de Province"
and of "Béatrix," also articles to write, obliged me to put myself into
a garret in Paris, where I am close to the printing-offices, and thus
lose no time. I have not had even a fleeting moment to continue this
letter; I have only slept by chance, when I dropped from fatigue. I am
wholly weaned from life, and absolutely indifferent whether I live or
do not live.

Here is the news. You will see M. de Custine; he goes to Russia. He
will take you the manuscript of "Séraphita,"--the manuscript, you
understand, not the proofs; they are too voluminous. He will see you;
he is rich; he is happy in being able to travel at his ease! He will
make, if necessary, a _détour_ to see you.

I have reached a point when, in contemplating coldly my situation,
I see I have now but two ways of cutting the Gordian knot. Either I
must sell my work, to be made the most of by others during ten years,
for one hundred and fifty thousand francs; or, if I do not succeed in
recovering tranquillity by that means, I must insure my life for that
sum, which is the total of my debt, and fling myself into work as into
a gulf from which I know I shall never issue; for, from the weakness
that assails me after my toil has passed a certain limit, I feel that a
man can die from excess of it.

Planche has brought back my play. He thinks it is above what is now
being done; but we are not of the same opinion as to its faults.
Brought to the point of view of art, it has many.

Beyle has just published the finest book, as I think, which has
appeared these fifty years. It is called "La Chartreuse de Parme." I
don't know whether you can procure it. If Macchiavelli had written a
novel, it would have been this one. Jules Sandeau has lately dragged
George Sand through the mire in a book called "Marianna." He has
given himself a fine rôle, that of Henry! He! good God! You will
read the book and it will horrify you, I am sure. It is anti-French,
anti-gentleman. Henry ends as Jules ought to have ended (when one loves
truly and is betrayed),--by death. But to live, and write this book, is
awful.

Dear, do not blame my friendship. Some day you will know the life I
am now leading, the burdens I am bearing. The terrace walls of Les
Jardies have all rolled down. I must buy more ground, with a house on
it, and I have no money. This house, my dream of tranquillity, my dear
Chartreuse, needs fifteen or twenty thousand francs to settle me in it;
and I don't know if ever my days can flow here peacefully. Twelve years
of toil, of pain and grief, have left me as I was the first day, with a
burden as heavy and as difficult to remove. Madame de Staël said, "Fame
is the brilliant mourning of happiness."

Your project of coming to the banks of the Rhine makes my heart beat.
Oh! come. But you will not come. It would be so easy for me to go to
Baden and see the Rhine; the journey is neither long nor costly, and
a journey is so necessary to me. The mail-cart goes to Strasburg, and
from there, in two minutes, to Germany; it is only ten days and twenty
louis. Oh! I don't know if you have not warmed up my courage, and
re-tempered my soul. I will not give the manuscript to M. de Custine.
I will bring it to you, that and the others. If you do this, I will
bring you a fine pianist for Anna; I will--I don't know what I will not
do, for those lines in your letter have warmed me,--I have returned to
the idea that life is endurable.

You will find me much changed, but physically; horribly aged, with
white hairs,--in short, _un vieux bonhomme_. "You show now that you
wear your laurels," M. de Beauchesne said to me the other day. The
speech was pretty, if exaggerated. I am sure that on the other side of
the Rhine I shall grow young again. When I think that as soon as this
letter reaches you (which takes a month) you may be coming, and that I
shall see you in June, precisely at the moment when I shall be unable
to write and in need of rest!--But it is all a dream; I must return to
post and letter-paper, to the power of the imagination of the heart, to
memory.

Adieu; in my next letter I will tell you what happens, and how the
present crisis ends for me; the matters pending between Louis-Philippe
and the Chambers have complicated it.



AUX JARDIES, June 2, 1839.

I received your last letter to-day when I have just missed,
fortunately, breaking my leg in going to see the devastation of my
grounds produced by a storm. My foot slipped; and the whole weight of
the _body_ came on the left foot which twisted under me and all the
muscles about the ankle were violently wrenched, and cracked with a
great noise. The amount of will I put into supporting myself gave me
a pain of extreme violence in the solar plexus; I suffered there more
than I did in the ankle, though that pain made me suppose I had broken
my leg. The head surgeon of the hospital at Versailles came, and I
shall have to stay in bed two weeks. There, dear countess! I find one
compensation, namely: that all my horrible financial and literary
affairs, etc., being interrupted by a superior power, I can write you
to my heart's content, for it is very long since I have been with you.
Alas! I have had so much to do. Les Jardies have cost me many wakeful
nights. But we won't speak of that.

Well, as M. de Talleyrand used to say, foresee griefs and you are sure
to be a prophet. No more trip to the banks of the Rhine! However, for
one piece of bad news I will give you a good piece. If the Chamber of
Deputies votes our law on literary property I shall doubtless have to
go to Saint Petersburg, and I shall return through the Ukraine. But in
any case, dear of dears, my first journey will be to you. So long as
Les Jardies are not in order I cannot travel; it would be too great a
folly, it would be ruin. Happily my accident has happened just as I had
finished "Un Grand homme de Province à Paris." Otherwise, I don't know
what would have become of me with my publishers.

M. de Custine is not going to Russia; only as far as Berlin. So I took
your precious manuscript out of its hiding-place for nothing.

During the two days that I have been in bed a rage, a veritable rage,
possesses me to see you. Every time that I am alone, that I re-enter
myself, that my brain is cleared, that I am with my heart, it is always
so. Your letter distressed me. It came when I was in the midst of those
sweet reveries that are my elysium, and I thought your letter cold,
ceremonious, religious. I hated you for two days. I hid that letter; it
put me out of temper. You say in it that you are my old friend. If that
is so, learn that I have loved you only since yesterday. Treat me with
more coquetry. When have you received a letter without an autograph?
Know, countess, that out of your eleven million friends in France and
other countries there is not half a million who would have perpetuated
that little attention; it shows a perennial affection which proves that
my friendship is still in its spring. Were you fifty years old, my
eyes would always see you in that heart's-ease-coloured gown, looking
as you did on the Crêt at Neufchâtel. You have no idea of either my
heart or my character. Fy! Do not think it so easy to get rid of me.

My health has borne up under work which has amazed literary men. I am
at my twelfth volume. You must read "Un Grand homme," a book full of
vigour, in which you will find those great personages of my work, as
you are good enough to call them,--Florine, Nathan, Lousteau, Blondet,
Finot. That which will commend the work to foreigners is its audacious
painting of the inner manners and morals of Parisian journalism, which
is fearful in its accuracy. I alone was in a position to tell the truth
to our journalists, and fight them to the death. That book will not be
forbidden in Russia.

I have at this moment under my pen "Le Curé de Village" to finish,
the second episode of which, entitled "Véronique," will appear in the
"Presse." This book will be loftier, grander, and stronger than "Le Lys
dans la Vallée" and "Le Médecin de campagne;" the two known fragments
of it have justified my promises.

In a life as busy as mine nothing produces much effect; I have worked
as usual through the riots. But a month or so ago Planche and I said to
each other, "Shots will be fired within six weeks." And so it was.

A Russian professor from Moscow came to see me lately,--M. Chevireff;
I love all that ends in _eff_ on account of Berditchef; I am child
enough to fancy it brings me nearer to you. It is thus that the words
"Geneva," "Vienna" never sound in my ears without effect. The longer I
love, the more Hoffmannesque I become on that subject.

So it is all over about the Rhine! You could not believe what agitation
was caused me by those two fatal lines, written perhaps unconsciously,
in which you tell me that your journey is put off. It was so easy
for me to go to the Rhine, even with all my business matters and the
newspapers on my hands. The mail-carts go so rapidly now from Paris to
the Rhine. Well, I must put this, too, with many a golden dream! The
springtide will console you; nothing consoles me. I see by the date of
your letter that you wrote on my fête-day, and you did not think of
it! I still my complaints; for I should seem very ridiculous in both
cases; but I remarked that you put fewer lines in your pages, and that
you were, in point of fact, getting rid of me. Perhaps I deserve it for
telling you, in one of my former letters, how little time I have to
write to you, with an air as if I boasted of my fidelity. Alas! that
was only a bit of childish candour, which you ought not to punish. Some
day I will tell you the truth about that passage; you will be touched,
and ashamed that you were ever angry with me.

Do not think that because there are four hundred leagues between us
I do not know how to read the thoughts that lie beneath your sublime
forehead. I can parade them before you, one by one. It suffices me to
examine your letter with the attention of a Cuvier to know the exact
frame of mind in which it was written; and you had, when writing this
letter, something against me, no doubt. You will tell me later what it
was.

My Jardies get on but slowly. The buildings are still of little
importance; but all is heavy on those who have nothing. I am beginning
to have trouble with my eyes, and that grieves me; I shall have to
cease working at night.

Did I tell you that "Béatrix" is finished? You will see it, no doubt,
in the "Revue de Saint Pétersbourg," but bad and emasculated. It
will only be good in the 8vo edition now in press. Those puritans of
liberalism who manage the "Siècle" in which "Béatrix" appeared assume
to have morals, and demolish the archbishop's palace! This is the
buffoonery of folly. They are afraid of the word "bosom," and trample
morality under foot! they will not allow the word _volupté_ to be
printed, but they upset social order! The wife of the director-in-chief
is as scraggy as a bag of nails, and they suppressed a joke of Camille
Maupin on the bones of Béatrix! I will make you laugh heartily when I
tell you all the negotiations required to get into that newspaper a
joke on the bitch of M. de Halga. Unfortunately for me, you will read
that book mangled and expurgated.

What a pretty nest Les Jardies will be when finished! How happy one
might be here! What a beautiful valley, cool as a Swiss valley. The
royal park a few steps off! Paris in a quarter of an hour, and Paris a
hundred leagues away! What a beautiful life if--But I begin to think
like the capucin monk: we are not placed here below to take our comfort.

The Exhibition of pictures has been very fine this year. There were
seven or eight masterpieces, in several styles: a superb Decamps; a
magnificent Cleopatra by Delacroix; a splendid portrait by Amaury
Duval; a charming Venus Anadyomene by Chassériau, a pupil of Ingres.
What a misfortune to be poor when one has the heart of an artist!

The first _young girl_ work that I do I shall dedicate to your dear
Anna; but I shall await a word about that in your next letter; for I
must know if it be agreeable to you that I should do this.

It seems there is to be, next autumn, a dahlia-Balzac. If you would
like a cutting tell me how to send it to you. It will be, they say, a
magnificent flower; in case the attempt to vary the stock succeeds.

You wish me the tranquillity of soul that you enjoy. Alas! I have
passions, or, to speak more correctly, passion, too living, too
palpitating, to be able to extinguish my soul. You would never imagine
in what agitations I live; for me, nothing is lost or forgotten; all
that affects me is of yesterday. The tree, the water, the mountain,
the dress, the look, the fear, the pleasure, the danger, the emotion,
even the sand, the colour of a wall, the slightest incident, all things
shine in my soul, as fresh, and more extended daily. I forget all that
is not within the domain of the heart; or, at least, whatever is in
the domain of imagination needs to be recalled and firmly meditated.
But all that belongs to my love is my life; and when I yield myself
to it, it seems to me that then, alone, I live. I count those hours
of delightful abandonment only; those are my hours of sunshine and of
joy. But you will never imagine that; it is the poesy of the heart,
heightened by an incredible power of intuition. I never pride myself on
what is called talent; nor yet on my will which is held to be kindred
with that of Napoleon. But I do render thanks and take pride in my
heart, in the constancy of my affections. _There_ is my wealth; _there_
are the treasures beyond the reach of the one who coined that gold;
the workman who made those ducats is far away, but the miser holds
them ever in his hand. "I know you have a great and noble soul; and I
know where to touch you; I will make you blush for me." That speech is
one of my ducats. For many a fool it would have been nothing; to me it
rings sublime; and if I did not love like an imbecile, a collegian, a
ninny, a madman, like anything you please that is most extravagant, I
should have worshipped that woman as a divinity.

I don't know whether all this will not seem to you Swedenborgian; but
it belongs to my history, and I will some day explain it to you. At
any rate, I will say this. Those words were said to me by a rather
extraordinary woman, whom I will not name, in a fit of mistaken
jealousy. Well, I assure you that a month never passes that I do not
remember the look of the sky at the moment they were said, and the
colour of the cloud I saw there.

Adieu. In ten days my leg will be much better; but I shall have written
to you again before then. I will tell you my reveries, one by one.
You will count for much in my idleness; which is for me the mother of
memories.

I am glad to know that all goes well in your States. But, on the word
of an honest man, I don't understand why the count does not arrange his
affairs so as to have no longer any care. When I have settled mine--and
I shall then be, incontestably, a far greater financier than he--I will
go and offer him my services to make something out of nothing--forgive
that joke!

All gracious things to Mademoiselle Séverine, and to your dear Anna;
my affectionate compliments to the Grand Marshal, and to you the most
precious and sweetest offerings of my heart.

No Custine, no pearls; that is a loss to you, for the set is very fine;
you would have been queen of the balls at Kiew next winter. But you
will be that without the pearls.



AUX JARDIES, July, 1839.

I am cured. The accident, which kept me in bed forty days without
moving, has left no traces except some pain in the muscles. But your
silence disquiets me much. Is anything going wrong with you? Are you
travelling? All this exercises my mind, tortures me, besieges me with a
thousand dragon-fancies.

I am overwhelmed with business. The disaster of my fallen walls is not
yet repaired. I have been obliged to purchase land, which has ruined
me. The masons must be here for another month. It is all the more
impossible for me to get away because my illness has put my work into
arrears, and also because I have let one of the three houses on the
place to the Visconti family.[1]

A novel of mine is about to appear, named "Pierrette," with which you
will no doubt be pleased. "Une Princesse Parisienne" will also be out
soon. "Véronique," the second fragment of the "Curé de village," is
already out. "Les Paysans," that is, "Qui Terre a, Guerre a," is in
process of being bought and published by the "Constitutionnel." And
finally "Le Ménage d'un Garçon" and "Le Martyr calviniste" are in the
hands of the compositors of the "Siècle;" "Massimilla Doni," appears
with the true edition of "La Fille d'Ève;" "Béatrix" is nearly printed.
I am now going to work on the last part of "Illusions Perdues," finish
the "Curé de village," and do a great drama for the Porte-Saint-Martin.

There, dear, there is where we now are; and I have certainly drawn down
upon me the hatred of all the men of the pen by "Un Grand homme de
Province." Growls resound in the press. But you see I continue my work
intrepidly, keeping on with even steps, and tolerably insensible to
calumny--like all those who have never given cause for slander.

I shall have three houses to let, each looking out on inclosed gardens;
and I will only let this elegant village to extremely distinguished
people. Our railway will begin to run in a few days, and I can enter
a carriage from my garden; so that I am really in the heart of Paris
(which I have never been before), because for eight sous and in fifteen
or twenty minutes I am there. So I am enchanted with Les Jardies. When
all the necessary ground is bought and the gardens planted, it will
be delicious, and envied by all the world. Railways change all the
conditions of life around Paris. I have still some things to remove
from Chaillot; some furniture to bring out; so that various material
annoyances have delayed this letter, for I can trust no one to do
anything. I am alone, bachelor that I am, without servants, except a
gardener and his wife. I will have nothing until my debts are paid. So
I am living devilishly, without in the least caring what people think
of me; for I _will_ attain to independence and tranquillity.

I shall have, a few days hence, a delightful little story which Anna
can read; I would like to dedicate it to her; you must tell me if it
would be a pleasure to her, and to you, also.

Alas! the brutal indifference of the powers that be and the Chambers
to literary men, who have now reached the last degree of endurance,
is such that the bill on literary property remains between the two
Chambers and has never been brought forward, so that our journey as the
representatives of the lettered class (of which I told you, and which
would have given me the chance to go and see you) will not take place.
But I have not lost all hope. I shall go to Germany, to the banks of
the Rhine, probably, and once there, I may be able to go and bid you
good-day; if I have only a few moments to stay, at least I shall see
you. This would take two months, and two months means that I must leave
four or five thousand francs for payments in my absence. I must have
good luck to get them! If my buildings are finished by August 15, and I
can provide for all my payments, it is possible I may escape. That is
why I am, just now, very busy in stuffing the newspapers with articles.
But if the "Constitutionnel" decides to take "Les Paysans" I shall have
to put off going till September.

We say in France, "No letters, good news." I hope the interruption in
your letters means that result; but why not have written me a single
little line? It is conceivable that I who lead the triple life of
literary man, debtor, and builder, and also that of a man defending
himself against feuilletonists, and who now am managing, so to speak,
the Société des Gens-de-lettres (one of the greatest things for the
future to be done in France),--it is, I say, conceivable that my
letters should be sometimes involuntarily delayed. But you, who have
only to let yourself live in your Ukraine! Ah! you are very guilty; for
you know the happiness given by your judgments, your ideas. "'Tis from
the North our light doth come," said Voltaire, to flatter the Empress.
But I--I say it piously.

Well, I must leave you for "Pierrette." I have just risen; it is two in
the morning. I belong to the printer.

[Footnote 1: Count Émile Guidoboni-Visconti, to whom Balzac had
rendered a service in settling a question of family inheritance. Madame
Visconti was an Englishwoman, and to her "Béatrix" is dedicated under
her Christian name, Sarah.--TR.]


July 15.

I have not spoken to you of "L'Épicier," "La Femme comme il faut,"
"Le Rentier," and "Le Notaire," four figures I have done for Curmer's
"Les Français peints par eux-mêmes." You will, no doubt, read those
little sketches. I have just been giving a last touch to "Une Princesse
Parisienne;" it is the greatest moral comedy that exists. It relates a
mass of lies by which a woman, thirty-seven years of age, the Duchesse
de Maufrigneuse, now become the Princesse de Cadignan, succeeds in
getting herself taken for a saint, a virtuous, modest young girl by her
fourteenth admirer; it is, in short, the last degree of depravity in
sentiment. She is, as Madame de Girardin said, "Célimène in love." The
subject is of all lands and of all times. The masterly part of it is to
have made the lies seem necessary and right, justified by love. It is
one of the diamonds in the crown of your servant. Put it with the other
old trinkets of my literary jewellery.

Adieu, for I am overwhelmed with work. Alas! few pleasures; all
is anxiety and disappointment. My life is a strange and continual
deception; I, who was manufactured expressly, as I believe, for
happiness! Is that providential?

Many affectionate things to all. The autograph I send is Berryer's.



AUX JARDIES, August, 1839.

I have received your last letter, and I think there is something
wonderful in our double existence: with you the deepest peace, with
me the most active war; with you repose, with me incessant struggle.
You could never imagine the ever up-springing torments to which I am
subjected. But I don't know why I tell you these things, for many a
time you have told me they were my own fault and that I was wrong.

Les Jardies are nearly done; a few days more and I shall have finished
the buildings. Only a few trifling things remain to do. But I shall
not be easy till all is paid for, and that _all_ is a fortune;
thousand-franc notes are there engulfed like ships in the sea. The
burden of literary production is doubled, and also complicated by the
exactions of publishers who want all their books at once, whereas
critics say I write too much. Then everybody wants his money at once.
A terrible desire has seized me the last few days to abandon this
life--not by suicide, which I shall always consider silly, but by
quitting, in imitation of Molière's Maître Jacques, my coachman's
top-coat for a cook's jacket; that is, by making believe that my work,
my Jardies, my debts, my family, my name, that all that is I is dead
and buried, or as if it had never existed, and then go off to some
distant country, America of the North or South, under another name, and
there (taking, perhaps, another form) begin another life with happier
fortunes.


September.

I am excessively agitated by a horrible affair,--the Peytel affair. I
have seen that poor fellow three times. He is condemned to death. I am
starting in two hours for Bourg.[1]

[Footnote 1: This curious episode in Balzac's life, in which Gavarni
took a leading part, seems to have been a piece of generous and
imaginative folly. But with M. Zola's late action in mind, the
reflection suggests itself that if we knew all the circumstances of
the case (now passed into oblivion) we might find that Balzac and
Gavarni had cause to think themselves right. A brief outline of the
affair is given in the Appendix. Balzac's argument of the case will be
found in the Édition Définitive, vol. xxii.; Polémique Judiciare, pp.
579-625.--TR.]


October 30.

You will perhaps have heard that, after two months of unheard-of
efforts to snatch him from his doom, Peytel went, two days ago, to the
scaffold, "like a Christian," the priest said; I say, like a man who
was not guilty.

You can now understand this horrible gap in my correspondence. Ah!
dear, my affairs were already in a bad enough state, but this devotion
of mine has cost me a crazy sum, five thousand francs at least in
money, and five thousand more in non-working. Calumnies of all kinds
have been my reward. Henceforth I shall, I think, see an innocent man
murdered without meddling; I will do as the Spaniards do--run away when
a man is stabbed.

We will talk of that, for I am going to see you; I can promise you
that; I shall be, beyond a doubt, out of all condition to write for
several months, in consequence of fatigue. I am now preparing the drama
of "Vautrin" in five acts, at the Porte-Saint-Martin. I am finishing
"Le Curé de Village;" idem "Sœur Marie des Anges;" idem "Les Paysans;"
idem "Les Petites Misères de la Vie conjugale;" idem "Pierrette,"
dedicated to your dear Anna; idem "La Frélore."

When all that is done, if I do not have a brain-fever, I shall be on
the Berlin road, to divert my mind, and I shall go as far as Dresden.
And one does not go to see the Dresden Madonna without keeping on to
see the Saint of Wierzchownia.


November 2.

I have had frightful troubles about which I cannot write you a word;
it would be suffering them twice over. I was on the point of wanting
food and lights and paper. I have been hunted like a hare, worse than
a hare, by sheriffs. I am here, alone, at Les Jardies. My mother is
much distressed. I alone am in the secret of the future. I see, within
two months, events which will carry me onward in the difficult path of
liberation.

I work so fast that I cannot tell you of what I am doing. You will
read later a little pearl, the "Princesse Parisienne," who is the
Duchesse de Maufrigneuse at thirty-seven years of age. You have not yet
received, I think, "Un Grand homme de Province à Paris," which is not
only a book but a great action, and, above all, courageous. The howls
of the press continue.

But now, exhausted by so many struggles, I am going to give myself up
to that delightful composition, "Sœur Marie des Anges,"--human love
leading up to divine love.

"Pierrette" is one of those tender flowers of melancholy which are
certain in advance of success. As the book is for Anna I will not tell
you anything about it, but leave you the pleasure of surprise.


December, 1839.

You see me stupefied. I find a letter which I join to this one. I
thought it posted, but, in the midst of my turmoil, it was slipped
under the papers of "Pierrette." In finishing "Pierrette" and clearing
up my desk, I found it, when I thought it was in your hands! I now
understand why you have not written to me. You think me dead and
buried, or something.

Yesterday I received a great literary affront. "Pierrette" was refused
by the "Siècle." I can truly say it was a pearl sweated from my
sufferings, for I am all suffering. There is nothing extraordinary in
believing that I sent you a letter that was lying, in my desk, I forget
to live.

I had presented myself for the Academy (thirty-nine visits to pay!),
but to-day I have withdrawn before Victor Hugo, whose autograph on the
subject I inclose. I work eighteen hours and sleep six. I eat while I
work, and I believe I do not cease to work while sleeping, for there
are literary difficulties on which I postpone decision till I wake, and
I find them all solved when I do wake; thus my brain must work while I
sleep.

I still count, as soon as I have an instant of tranquillity on going
via Dresden to you.

I have had thirteen successive proofs of "Pierrette;" that is to say,
it has been remade thirteen times. I did "César Birotteau" seventeen
times. But as I did "Pierrette" in ten days you can imagine what the
work was, and it was not the only thing I had on my hands. I have
passed into the condition of a steam-engine, but an engine which,
unfortunately, has a heart,--a heart which suffers, which feels at all
points of a vast circumference, which everything affects, afflicts,
wounds, and which never misses any pain. There is no longer consolation
for me; the bitter cup is drained, i believe no more in a happy future;
but I live on, pushed by the vigorous hand of duty. I stretch my
sorrowing hands to you across the distance, wishing that you may always
have that good and peaceful, tranquil life in which, at times, my
thought, unknown to you, has gone to rest. Yes, there are hours when,
sinking beneath my burden, I fancy myself arriving and living without
cares, if not without griefs, in that oasis of the Ukraine.

A thousand friendly things to those about you. Believe in the eternal
affection of your more than ever poor moujik.


January 20, 1840.

I hear nothing from the Ukraine. It is more than three months that
I have had no letter from you, and I do not comprehend it. Have I
given you pain? Have you taken ill the silences to which I have been
compelled? Are you punishing me for my miseries? Are you ill? Are you
at the bedside of any one of yours? I ask myself a thousand questions.

I have seen by the merest chance the Princess Constantine, at a ball
given by Prince Tufiakin, the only one to which I have gone for two
years. From her I heard that she had news from you, while I, nothing!
That fact has caused me the most violent distress. The troubles of
money are nothing but annoyances; but all that touches the heart--ah!
those are the real griefs. To be thus overwhelmed on all sides, is it
not enough to make life intolerable! It is already heavy enough to me
who have not a single prospect on which my eyes can rest themselves.
All is savage, barren, gashed with precipices. At forty years of age,
after fifteen years of constant toil, one is permitted to be weary
of work which gives, as its result, a doubtful fame, a real misery,
superficial friendships without devotion, wasted sacrifices, growing
worries, burdens more and more heavy, and no pleasure. There are those
who paint my life very differently, but this is what it _is_. I have
lost the taste of many joys; there are pleasures of which I can no
longer conceive. I am frightened at a species of interior old age which
has come upon me. I don't know if I could now make those campaigns in
China which so diverted M. Hanski at Geneva.

At this moment "Pierrette," the story that belongs to your dear Anna,
is appearing in the "Siècle." They have taken out the dedication, which
will be put at the end, as an _envoi_. The stoppage of your letters
makes me fear that this may no longer be agreeable to you.

My situation is horribly precarious. The desire to pay what I owe
made me condemn myself to a life of extreme misery, but it serves for
nothing to live in that way. My conscience only is satisfied. At this
moment I am hoping that Rothschild will aid me. If he does not, then I
shall fall once more into the disasters of 1828. I shall be ruined for
the second time. There is something fatal in money. But I shall recover
life by writing for the stage.

This is now the 20th of January. My play "Vautrin," which is rehearsing
at the Porte-Saint-Martin, will be played on the 20th of February, and
it seems that I may count on a great financial success; I wrote it for
that. Still, if Rothschild does not help me, it is quite impossible
that I can get over the coming month. I shall have to lose my house,
furniture, and everything I have gathered to myself for the last twelve
years; and even that will not relieve me. My creditors will gain
nothing. I shall lose all, and owe just as much. It is horrible; but
it will happen; I foresee it. To tell you my efforts, my marches and
countermarches for the last three months would be to write volumes. And
all the while I had to work, to get my plays accepted, to invent them,
to write them. The royal indifference that pursues French literature is
communicated to all about us.

I have still two works to do, print, and publish to fulfil the
agreement I signed in 1838, which obliged me to give fourteen volumes.
I have given birth to ten between November, 1838, and January,
1840,--fourteen months. Those I shall now finish are "Sœur Marie des
Anges," and "Le Ménage d'un Garçon."

You have said nothing to me about "Un Grand homme de Province à Paris,"
which has raised such storms around me.

I am preparing several works for the stage. May heaven grant me help
and I shall be free through the profits of the stage combined with
those from publishers. In three months I could earn a great sum by
pledging myself for new books; and if luck would grant that publishers
might think of selling me under a cheap form I should be saved.

If there is any good news of this kind you shall have it very quickly;
as you shall that of the success or fall of "Vautrin." Frédérick
Lemaître, that actor who is so sympathetic to the masses and who
created the part of Robert Macaire, plays Vautrin.

At this moment I am organizing another play for a man of great talent,
Henri Monnier, from which I hope success. It is a piece in which
Prudhomme plays the leading part.

Adieu. Miserable or fortunate, I am always the same for you; and it is
because of that unchangeableness of heart that I am painfully wounded
by your abandonment. I may miss writing to you, carried away as I often
am by a life that resembles a torrent; but you, dear countess, why
do you deprive me of the sacred bread that came to me regularly and
restored my courage? Tell me. How will you explain it to me?


February, 1840.

Ah! I think you at last excessively small; and it shows me that you are
of this world. Ah! you write to me no longer because my letters are
rare! Well, they were rare because I often did not have the money to
post them, but I would not tell you that. Yes, my distress has reached
that point and beyond it. It is horrible, and sad, but it is true, as
true as the Ukraine where you are. Yes, there have been days when I
proudly ate a roll of bread on the boulevard. I have had the greatest
sufferings: self-love, pride, hope, prospects, all have been attacked.
But I shall, I hope, surmount everything, I had not one farthing, but I
earned for those atrocious Lecou and Delloye seventy thousand francs
in a year. The Peytel affair cost me ten thousand francs--and people
said I was paid fifty thousand! That affair and my fall which kept me
forty days in bed retarded everything.

Oh! I do not like your want of confidence. You think that I have a
great mind, but you will not admit that I have a great heart! After
nearly eight years you do not know me! My God, forgive her, for she
knows not what she does!

No, I was not _happy_ in writing "Béatrix;" you ought to have known it.
Yes, Sarah is Madame Visconti; yes, Mademoiselle des Touches is George
Sand; yes, Béatrix is even too much Madame d'Agoult. George Sand is at
the height of felicity; she takes a little vengeance on her friend.
Except for a few variations, _the story is true_.

Ah! I entreat you, never make comparisons between yourself and Madame
de Berny. She was a woman of infinite kindness and absolute devotion;
she was what she was. You are complete in your own way as she was in
hers. Two grand things should never be compared. They are what they are.

"Pierrette" has appeared in the "Siècle." The manuscript is bound for
Anna. Friends and enemies proclaim the little book a masterpiece; I
shall be glad if they are not mistaken. You will read it soon, as
the book is being printed. People put it beside the "Recherche de
l'Absolu." I am willing. I myself wish it put beside Anna.

Alas! yes; I am always writing; I blacken much paper, though I advance
but little. I am ashamed of my forced fecundity.

Your letter was no longer expected; I had lost all hope. I did not know
what to imagine; I believed you ill, and I went to inquire of Princess
Constantine. I should have gone to you, were it not for poverty. Oh!
you do not know what you are to me; but it is an unhappy passion.
Faith is not given; yours is not an absolute sentiment, and mine is. I
could believe you dead, I could not suppose you forgetting. Whereas,
under the pretext that I am a man, living in Paris, you imagine
monstrous things. Count my volumes on your fingers and reflect. I am
more in a desert in Paris than you are at Wierzchownia. I do not like
to have you write to any one in the world, still less to any one in
Paris, but Custine's address is 6 rue de La Rochefoucauld. Write,
Sévigné! I have obeyed as a moujik.

You have truly divined the affair of that poor Peytel; there are
fatalities in life. Oh! the circumstances were more than extenuating,
but impossible to prove. There are noblenesses in which men will never
believe. However, it is all over. I will let you read some day what he
wrote to me before going to the scaffold. I can take this matter to the
feet of God and many sins will be forgiven me. He was a martyr to his
honour. That which men applaud in Calderon, Shakespeare, and Lope de
Vega, they guillotined at Bourg.

I, who wish to marry, who desire it, and who, perhaps, may never marry,
for I wish to marry--in short, you know! But what you do not know is
this: in the first place, I have the most absolute kindliness, and the
will to let the being with whom I should have to walk through life
be happy as she wishes to be, never to shock her, and never be stern
except on one point, respect for social conventions. Love is a flower,
the seed of which is brought by the wind, and flowers where it drops.
It is as ridiculous to be angry with a woman because she does not love
us, as to be angry with fate for not giving us black hair when we have
red. In default of love, there is friendship; friendship is the secret
of conjugal life. One can bear not being loved, but this must not be
shown; it is losing half the fortune that remains to us, in despair at
having lost the other half.

This woman squinted, she was uncouth, her nature was horrible, but the
man was bent on having her; he lost his head a first time on seeing
an inferior being preferred to him, and he lost it a second time for
having lost it the first, in avenging himself. The woman was beneath
vengeance. I would not blame a woman too much for loving a king. But
if she loves Ruy Blas, it is vice that has put her there where she has
lowered herself; she no longer exists, she is not worth a pistol-shot.
That's enough said about it.

"Vautrin" is being mounted, vigorously. I have a rehearsal daily. When
you hold this letter in your hand, the great question will have been
decided. It is almost certain that "Vautrin" will be represented the
evening you hold this, for it will be between February 28 and March
5. A fortune in money and a fortune in literature are staked upon a
single evening! Frédérick Lemaître answers for its success. Harel, the
director, believes in it! As for me, I despaired of it ten days ago; I
thought the play stupid, and I was right. I wrote it all over again,
and I now think it passable. But it will always be a poor play. I have
yielded to the desire to put a romantic figure on the scene, and I did
wrong.

Yes, certainly, I want the view of Wierzchownia.


February 10.

T have surmounted many miseries, and if I have a success now they are
all over. Imagine, therefore, what will be my agony during the evening
when "Vautrin" is performed. In five hours of time it will be decided
whether I pay or do not pay my debts. I have been crushed by that
burden for fifteen years; it hampers the expansion of my life, it takes
from my heart its natural action, it stifles my thought, it soils my
existence, it embarrasses my movements, it stops my inspirations, it
weighs upon my conscience, it hinders all, it has barred my career,
it has broken my back, it has made me old. My God! have I paid dearly
enough for my place in the sun? All that calm future, that tranquillity
I need so much, all is about to be staked on a few hours, delivered
over to Parisian caprices, as it is at this moment to the censor.

Oh! how I need repose! I am forty years old. Forty years of suffering;
for the happiness I enjoyed beside an angel from 1823 to 1833 was the
counterpoise of an equal misery, and it needed strength to bear a joy
as infinite as pain. And then, how death put an end to that! and what a
death!--I sigh for the promised land of a tender marriage, weary as I
am of tramping this desert without water, scorching with sun and full
of Bedouins. Ten years hence, and who, good God! will care for me!

To go to see you is my constant desire; but for that I cannot leave
behind me either bills to pay or business, money anxieties or debts,
which still amount to sixty thousand francs at least; but "Vautrin" may
give them in four months!

Madame Visconti, of whom you speak to me, is one of the most amiable
of women, of an infinite, exquisite kindness; a delicate and elegant
beauty. She has helped me much to bear my life. She is gentle, but
full of firmness, immovable and implacable in her ideas and her
repugnances. She is a person to be depended on. She has not been
fortunate, or rather, her fortune and that of the count are not in
keeping with their splendid name; for the count is the representative
of the elder branch of the legitimatized sons of the last duke, the
famous Barnabo, who left none but natural children, some legitimatized,
others not so. It is a friendship which consoles me under many griefs.
But, unfortunately, I see her very seldom. Nothing is possible in a
life so busy as mine, and when one goes to bed at six to get up at
midnight. My system, my crushing obligations are all against my taking
any comfort. No one can come to see a workman who is fifteen hours at
his work, and I myself cannot fulfil any social duties. I see Madame
Visconti once a fortnight only, which is truly a grief to me, for she
and my sister are my only compassionating souls. My sister is in Paris,
Madame Visconti at Versailles, and I scarcely see them. Can that be
called living? You are in a desert at the farther end of Europe; I know
no other women in the world; I have the honour to assure you that no
one believes me overwhelmed by feminine hearts all at my orders, and
that I am, as to women, miserably neglected. What a savage joke! _Mon
Dieu!_ how stupid people are! There is in it a bitter sarcasm on the
hours when I sit gazing at the embers and thinking of my life with
bent head and wounded heart, and tears in my eyes; for to no one more
than to me would the daily happiness of nights and mornings be more
fitted. I have in my soul and in my character an equable quality which
would make a woman happy; I feel within me an infinite, inexhaustible
tenderness,--alas! without employment. Always to dream, always to wait,
to feel one's good days pass, to see youth torn out hair by hair, to
fold nothing in one's arms, yet find one's self accused of being a Don
Juan! A gross and empty Don Juan! There are moments when I envy my poor
sister Laurence lying these fifteen years in a coffin watered by our
tears.


February 14.

Adieu; I close this letter, placing in it for you as much affection as
in all the others put together. If "Vautrin" succeeds, the year 1840
will see me in your manor.

At this moment I am overwhelmed by work. I have in press "Pierrette,"
to which I must add another story to make the required two 8vo
volumes. I have a book to do for the "Presse," and also in the press
a novel in letters, which I shall call I don't know what, for "Sœur
Marie des Anges" is too long, and that is only one part of it. I must
finish all this to get my liberty of coming and going, which I have
never had since Geneva--no, I have never had but six weeks really to
myself, and for those escapades I paid dearly enough.

I am going to finish "La Torpille" and also "Les Lecamus" for the
"Siècle," and the last part of "Illusions Perdues," which is the end
of "Un Grand homme." And there is still the end of "Béatrix" to do, a
fourth Part, the last meeting of Calyste and Béatrix. In all, six works
to be done, besides two plays to be represented. What do you think of
that? Do you believe I have time to idle? Alas, I have not time to
think; I am swept onward by the current of labour as by a river. I have
scarcely a moment to write to you, and I take that from sleep. To yield
myself up to a thing of the heart is a luxury to me. How privileged are
the rich! And how little they know how to enjoy their facilities! I
think that money makes men dull. For the last three weeks I have hoped
that Rothschild would help me to arrange my affairs; I asked him to do
so. But bah! if I have to ask him twice, I prefer my poverty and toil.

Many tender things to you, dear. Present my remembrances and
friendships to all about you, and my wishes for the happiness of your
family. You have your wolves, I have my creditors; I wish I had no
wolves to encounter but your kind.

I hear that Colonel Frankowski, who took you the _cassolette_, is here.
Can I trust him with Anna's "Pierrette" and your pearls? Tell me;
answer this at once.

Adieu once more. Take all the flowers of sincere and faithful affection
here inclosed, pure, if any ever were so.

I open my letter to beg you not to write to M. de Custine. This is
imperative; you will soon understand why.



PARIS, March, 1840.

I am in bed, at my sister's house, ill since the day after the first
representation of "Vautrin." I left my bed to-day for the first time in
ten days. I have been well nursed by my sister. My illness, which is
nearly over, was an attack of cerebral neuralgia, caused by a draught
in a railway-carriage, which, combined with the mental condition in
which I was, gave me both a horrible fever, which I had, and the
atrocious sufferings of neuralgia.

You know, of course, by this time, that "Vautrin" has had the
misfortune to be forbidden by Louis-Philippe, who saw a caricature
of his own person in the fourth act, where Frédérick Lemaître plays
the part of an envoy from Mexico. Thus, I have but one representation
of the play to tell you of. The misfortune of the manager of the
Porte-Saint-Martin was that he was forced to let to unknown strangers a
large part of the house. The other part belonged partly to my enemies,
the journalists, and about a third to friends of mine and friends of
the manager and of the actors. I had expected some lively opposition;
but, in spite of hostile efforts, a great success in the sale of
tickets was obtained. That was all I wanted for the theatre and for
myself, when the prohibition came.[1]

Here, then, I was: Sunday, master of sixty thousand francs; Monday,
with nothing. First, all my agonies of money over; next, my position
more perilous than ever. Victor Hugo accompanied me to see the
minister, and we there acquired the certainty that the minister
himself counted for nothing in the prohibition, but Louis-Philippe
for all. Throughout this affair, at the representation and at the
ministry, Victor Hugo's conduct has been that of a true friend,
courageous, devoted; and when he heard I was ill he came to see me. I
have been well helped by George Sand and Mme. de Girardin. Frédérick
Lemaître has been sublime. But the affair of the likeness to Louis
Philippe was perhaps put forward against Harel, the manager of the
Porte-Saint-Martin, whose place he wanted. All this is still a mystery
to me. However it be, the blow has fallen. My situation is more painful
than it has ever been. Doctor Nacquart preaches vehemently a journey of
six weeks. Perhaps I can go to you.

Now, this is what has happened. The newspapers have been infamous; they
have said that the play was revolting in its immorality. I shall say
but one thing to you about that: read it! It may not be very good, but
it is eminently moral. Thereupon, the minister, to screen the royal
fury, made the pretext of immorality, which was cowardly and base.
One thing you may believe in, namely: terrible attacks on my part on
that tottering throne. It shall not have two farthings. I will be the
emulator and assistant of M. de Cormenin, and you shall see the effect
of my change from a peace footing to a war footing. I will have neither
truce nor armistice until I have driven----

[Footnote 1: Frédérick Lemaître, with or without satirical intention,
dressed himself as a Mexican general in a way to resemble Louis
Philippe, especially by wearing a wig rising to a point, giving his
head the famous pear shape for which that of Louis-Philippe was
ridiculed.--TR.]


May, 1840.

Nothing can better paint to you my life than this interruption. After
six weeks' delay I must finish a sentence left unfinished in my desk
without the possibility of returning to it. The end of that sentence
is: "claws of steel into their hearts." I resume my narrative.

They came and offered me indemnities; five thousand francs to begin
with. I blushed to the roots of my hair, and replied that I accepted no
alms; that I had earned two hundred thousand francs' worth of debts in
doing sundry masterpieces which counted for something in the sum total
of the glory of France in the nineteenth century; that I had been three
months rehearsing "Vautrin," during which time I might have earned by
other work twenty-five thousand francs; that a pack of creditors were
after me, but that if I could not pay them all, I did not care whether
I was hunted by fifty or a hundred of them; and that my dose of courage
to resist was the same. The director of the Beaux-Arts, Cavé, went
away, saying that he was full of esteem and admiration for me. "This is
the first time," he said, "that I have ever been refused." "So much the
worse," I replied.

Since I wrote you the two preceding pages my life has been that of
a stag at bay. I have come and gone about Paris helped by friends.
And now, without a farthing, I begin the fight once more. Frédérick
Lemaître will entice other actors, and I have obtained permission to
present a new play, in five acts, at one of the closed theatres; about
six weeks hence we shall re-appear, and then we shall see!



AUX JARDIES, May 10.

_Cara_, I have just received your last letter, and again I must
complain of the rarity of those letters. Oh! do not let what I have
written of my distresses keep you from writing to me monthly. If I
do not write to you as often in my periods of trouble, do not blame
my heart. I often make my prayer to Hope, turning my face toward the
Ukraine. Do not punish me for my confidences, which may, which must
sadden you. Alas! with what rapidity time is flying. How many white
hairs are in my head, faithful to all, even to toil.

You are laughing at me, and that is not right. Madame Visconti is an
Englishwoman, not an Italian; and I have no vanity in my friendships;
you know that. A man as busy as I am can attend very little to trifles.
Certainly, I will acknowledge that I am not without the vanity of love,
and I think that when we love we ought to love in all ways, and be very
happy to see _la dilecta_ carry off the palm from others in even the
smallest things,--her toilet, for instance. I should have all those
weaknesses, including blazons. But this was no ground on which to twit
me; look in your mirror, dress yourself very elegantly to-morrow, and
vindicate me, _cara_.

Every one comes up to me in Paris, admiring my courage as much and even
more than the rest. They thought me crushed, buried under my disaster,
and hearing that I am about to deliver battle once more, both friends
and enemies have been equally surprised.

Frédérick Lemaître rejected my drama of "Richard Cœur d'Éponge,"
saying that _paternity_ was a selfish sentiment which had little chance
of success with the masses. Moreover, he was not pleased with the
dénouement; and as one must only give him things to play that he likes
to play, I have been under the necessity of finding another play. It is
found at last, and I write to you in the midst of labours necessitated
by "Mercadet." "Mercadet" is the battle of a man against his creditors,
and the schemes he employs to escape them. It is exclusively a comedy,
and I hope this time to reach success, and also to satisfy literary
requirements.

Besides doing this comedy I am at this moment finishing "Le Curé de
village," one of the works to be included in the "Scènes de la Vie de
campagne," and by no means the least of them. But it needs much labour
to add a book to the "Lys dans la Vallée" and "Le Médecin de campagne."
However, I hope that "Le Curé" will surpass both; and you will think
it does yourself; for the "Curé de village" is the application of
Catholic repentance to civilization, just as the "Médecin de campagne"
is the application of philanthropy; and the first is far more poetic
and loftier. One is of man; the other is of God.

I shall do this year "Les Paysans" which has been composed these two
years, and the proofs are in my hands. But hunted as I am, without any
tranquillity, I cannot give myself up to my literary sympathies. I do
only that which is most pressing.

"Pierrette" is not yet out. You know why. Carried along by truth,
by the drama, it was necessary to speak of marriage and the results
of marriage. But you will see that all is kept to the most decorous
language. I don't know when it will please the publisher to bring out
the book. Wait for the Paris edition of both "Pierrette" and "Vautrin;"
ask Bellizard for the third edition; that is the only good one, and it
has a scene added.

I hope to publish this year a complete edition of the four Parts of the
"Études de Mœurs," and I have before me still to do the "Scènes de la
Vie politique" and "Scènes de la Vie militaire;" two rather long and
very difficult portions. It will take me at least six years to get to
the end of them.

I have great need to-day to feel my wounds nursed and healed, to be
able to live without cares at Les Jardies, and to pass my days with
my work and a woman. But it seems that the history of all other men
will never be other than a romance for me. Debts are a burden under
which I must succumb. Since the reckoning I gave you in Geneva--do you
remember?--nothing has changed; I have lived, and I have marked my
place, that is all. I have sustained myself on the surface of the waves
by swimming. God grant that I may not go under! but you will pray for
my soul's rest, will you not?

I leave you for "Mercadet."


May 15.

This is the evening of my Catholic fête, and four days hence is my
birthday. I have never, since I lived, seen a fête on those days;
no one has ever wished me returns of them, except once, when Madame
de Castries, the first year of our acquaintance, sent me the most
magnificent bouquet I ever saw. Therefore I am always sad on these
days. My mother cares little for me. I am so busy I have always told
my sister not to keep our fêtes, and there has never been any one else
to fête me. I do not count Madame de Berny, for that was a daily fête.
But then, from 1822 to 1832 my life was exceptional. Chance has acted
towards me as fate with those fantastic animals of the desert who
have but a few rare joys in their life, and die without perpetuating
themselves. This is how it was that the unicorn became a lost species,
and why that sublime painter of "Chastity," Il Pontormo, has placed a
unicorn beside that beautiful emblematical figure. I will own to you in
your ear, that I would rather, by far, have happiness than fame; that I
would give all my works to be happy as I see certain fools being happy.

Believe, dear, that in what I said to you about not writing to the rue
de La Rochefoucauld, there was a reason superior to all pettiness. That
person is about to publish a book such as he published on England, and
I believe it will be terrible [de Custine's book on Russia]. I cannot
tell you more; your intelligence will do the rest. I am extremely glad,
knowing how things may turn, that he has not been in your regions.

The friendship of which I spoke to you, and at which you laugh
apropos of my dedication, is not all I thought it. English prejudices
are terrible, they take away an essential to all artists, the
_laisser-aller_, unconstraint. In the "Lys dans la Vallée," I explained
the women of that county in a few words, as I divined it in Lady
Ellenborough during the two hours I walked about her park, while that
silly Prince Schonberg was making love to her, and during dinner.

Each step I take in life gives me a profound respect for the past. I
cannot tell you all I feel on that subject, not here at least, but I
will at Wierzchownia, where you will see me appear unexpectedly; for I
look to your region as to an asylum for my sorrows on the day when they
become intolerable. So I am not sure whether you ought to desire to see
me, with the white staff in my hand and the wallet on my back.

I beg of you, write me at least once a month, and remember that no
letter of yours has ever gone without an answer. The autograph is from
Meissonier, who is reviving the Flemish school among us,--the painter
of "Le Fumeur," "Le Liseur," and "La Partie d'échecs."



AUX JARDIES, June, 1840.

_Mon Dieu!_ what intervals between your letters, dear! If you knew what
uneasiness you give me, how often I spend hours with my elbows on the
table and my chin in my hands, asking myself what has happened to you.
And the visions far beyond sight! As for me, I have my excuse for the
months that separate my letters: either I have suffered beyond measure,
or I have worked enormously, or I have had some of those deplorable
affairs of which you know nothing.

It is now twenty days that I have suffered much with a species of
cholerine, or inflammation of the bowels, caused by an increase of
anxieties and labour; for the one leads to the other. I have written
the comedy in five acts, "Mercadet;" but Frédérick wants changes.
The interests which are fighting each other over the corpse of the
Porte-Saint-Martin prevent the provisional opening which the minister
had granted me; so the three or four hopes which had been successively
lighted are successively extinguished. In these last hopes, these
last efforts, my energy has broken down, and, at this moment I am
not worth an insect pinned to the card-board of a naturalist's box. I
am over-burdened with toil, obligations, business, till I no longer
recognize myself, and a life so embarrassed as mine no longer interests
me. This is strictly the fact. I would offer half my burden to any
benevolent passer-by. If you know a woman who needs to exercise great
faculties, who is tired of a monotonous life, who desires a position in
which there is much to combat and to conquer, who would be enticed by
the first campaign in Italy, who is thirty-six to forty years of age,
and has the wherewithal to fight with, send her to me; I will occupy
her.

Joking apart; I am very lonely when my brain ceases to work, or lies
down to rest. There is something humiliating, in the thought that a
trifling inflammation of insignificant viscera prevents the exercise of
our highest powers.

I have "Le Curé de village" to finish and a crowd of other things.
"Pierrette" is delayed for the preface by the publisher, I don't know
for what reason. The business of publishing books has become so bad
that I believe not ten volumes will be written in the next two years.
Belgium has ruined French literature. What _ungenerosity_ in those who
read us! If every one had refused the Belgian editions and insisted, as
you have, on the French editions, if only two thousand persons on the
continent had acted thus, we should have been saved. But Belgium has
sold already some twenty to thirty thousand copies. This evil will end
by force of evil. Meantime our poets starve or go mad.


June 21.

To go to see you, to go down the Rhine, to see Prussia and Saxony is
in me the desire of a lover, of a nun, of a child, of a young girl, of
all that is most vehement. But my interests are so threatened and I am
so poor that travel is forbidden me. Oh! you do not know how much there
is of longing, of repressed desires and wishes in what I now write
to you, or how many times my imagination and my heart have made that
journey.

Your last letter came in the midst of my cruel trouble, and I could not
answer you immediately. Our two existences, one so tranquil and deep,
the other so foaming and rapid, flow ever parallel; but that which
afflicts me grievously is that there is no cohesion. When thought has
constantly traversed space, when a thousand times it has filled the
void, one feels that this is not all. Something, I know not what, is
wanting, or rather, I know too well. These wings incessantly spread
and folded cause suffering; it is not lassitude, it is worse. Violent
desires possess me at times to quit all, to begin some other thing than
this present life, like children quitting play. I would like to know
if you too have these impulses of soul; I ask you to tell me because I
know that you are true, and above the pettiness of vanity, which makes
people drape themselves for themselves. But you will answer me by some
religious turn to things celestial, or by a blasting phrase against
our human nature. Yet I would not take from your religion what the eye
takes from a mirror as we use it, for it is one of the greatest charms
of your heart and mind. I never lay down a letter from you without
believing in something divine, and I will not tell you now of the
regrets that then assail me at the intolerable idea of our separation.
It seems to me that all would be well with me if the divinity were near
me.

I entreat you, write me every fortnight; you live in solitude, without
so much to do; it would be easy for you; and when one knows that one
does good to a poor being who has no one and who can thus be comforted,
is not that a work of charity?


June 30.

I shall send this letter, having nothing more to tell you of my
affairs, though much to add on my grief at your abandonment.


July 3.

I have your letter, number 55, and I answer its questions. _Primo_:
I have not received the picture of Wierzchownia; no, I have received
nothing, absolutely nothing. _Secundo_: Borget is in China. _Tertio_:
I forgot to tell you of M. de Custine; but he was superb at the
representation of "Vautrin." He had a proscenium box and applauded
vehemently; he behaved in the most superior way. If I told you not to
write to the rue de La Rochefoucauld it was because in that street a
book is being written which will be terrible, and I do not want you
to commit the slightest imprudence. There will be anger; all the more
justifiable because _they_ have been very well received. My friendship
saw danger ahead, and signalled it to you; believe me as to this.

I thank you from the bottom of my soul for your letter, but I am in
despair to know that you were ill while I was blaming you for not
writing. Solicitude at a distance is often injustice. Yes, I am very
willing that "Les Paysans" should be for M. Hanski if I write it. I
am at the end of my resignation. I believe that I shall leave France
and carry my bones to Brazil, in a mad enterprise, which I choose on
account of its madness. I will no longer bear the life I lead; enough
of useless toil! I shall burn my letters, all my papers, leave nothing
but my furniture and Les Jardies, and depart; confiding a few little
things that I value to my sister's friendship. She will be a faithful
dragon to those treasures. I will give a power of attorney to some
one; I will leave my works to be managed by others, and go to seek the
fortune that is lacking to me here. Either I shall return rich, or no
one shall ever know what becomes of me. This is a very fixed project
in my mind, which I shall put into execution this winter resolutely,
without mercy. My work can never pay my debt. I must look to something
else. I have not more than ten years left of real energy, and if I
do not profit by them I am a lost man. You are the only person who
will be informed of this decision. Certain circumstances may hasten my
departure. Nevertheless, however rapid may be the execution of this
plan, you shall receive my farewell. A letter from Havre or Marseille
will tell you all. This project has not been formed without sad hours
of days and nights. Do not think that I could renounce a literary
life and France without the most frightful wrenching. But poverty is
implacable, and if I go farther it will become shameful, intolerable.

I know that what I write will give you infinite pain; but is it not
better to tell you of it and explain my reasons, than leave you to hear
it brutally from the newspapers? But first I shall try a last throw of
the dice, my pen aiding; If that succeeds, I may pull through for the
time being. Perhaps I might be able to go and bid you farewell; perhaps
there are chances that I could rest three months with you, instead of
resting three months with Madame Carraud.

Ah! dear, you don't know what it is, after writing fifteen volumes
in fifteen months, to do sixteen acts of plays--"Vautrin," "Pamela
Giraud," "Mercadet"--uselessly; for there is no longer any hope of
opening the Porte-Saint-Martin. Lawsuits, battling over a coffin,
prevent that, The Français is closed three months for repairs. The
Renaissance is dead. There is no theatre where Frédérick can play. I
tried the Vaudeville in its new building, but the manager has no money.

You ask me for details about Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo is an extremely
brilliant man; he has as much wit as poesy. He is most fascinating
in conversation, a little like Humboldt, but superior, and admitting
more dialogue. He is full of bourgeois ideas. He execrates Racine, and
considers him a secondary man. He is crazy in that direction. There is
more of good than of evil in him. Though the good is an outcome of
vanity, and though all things are deeply calculated in him, he is, in
the main, a charming man, besides being the great poet that he is. He
has lost much of his quality, his force, and his value by the life he
leads.


August, 1840.

I have attempted a last effort; I am doing, by myself alone, the "Revue
Parisienne," just as Karr does "Les Guêpes."[1] The first number has
appeared. I postpone the execution of my project on Brazil. One loves
France so well! I will bear up. I am going to undertake the "Scènes de
la Vie militaire." I shall begin with Montenotte, and shall, no doubt,
go, in September or October, to the region about Nice, Albenga, and
Savona, and examine the ground where those fine manœuvres took place.

This letter has been lying two months on my table. It has been hindered
by so many matters! But at last it goes, bearing to you the testimony
of an affection always on the morrow of our meeting on the Crêt, and
eight years old.

A thousand tender regards and a thousand more. I am writing politics,
and posing as the friend of Russia. May God bless you! The Russian
alliance is much in my mind. I hate the English.

"Pierrette" is about to appear. You can let Anna read it, for all you
say. There is nothing "improper" in it.

[Footnote 1: Three numbers alone appeared: July 25, August 25,
September 25. Some of his best criticism, that on Cooper and Stendhal,
was in it; also the tale of "Z. Marcas," etc. The first number begins
thus: "We have always thought that nothing was more interesting, comic,
and dramatic than the comedy of government." See Édition Définitive,
vol. xxiii., pp. 567-785.--TR.]



SÈVRES, October 1, 1840.

Dear countess, I have this moment received your last letter. _Mon
Dieu!_ what can I say to you? All that it contains of kind, expansive,
and consoling is enough to make one accept worse miseries than mine, if
such existed. I have only sad things to reply to sad things.

In the first place, I had completely settled the project of going
to spend the winter with you; but my lawyer opposed it with wise
reasons--that do not satisfy me. Yes, I dreamed of seven or eight
months' peace and tranquillity, constant work, but without fatigue,
complete forgetfulness of all my tortures of all kinds. My arrangements
were made; I was to see Berlin and Dresden, and then go to you. Well,
it is all put off. Your presentiment was true. All _was_ to have taken
place; I felt a joy so infinite that nothing can express it. But it
would be, alas! mad and imprudent. My affairs are in too bad a state. I
spike my cannon, I retreat, to return in force. I will explain all this
in detail.

But, first of all, I must answer what you asked me, Which made me
smile, for I thought that you did not need to ask it; you ought to
have felt sure of that. Yes, I will never take any extreme resolution,
in whatever way it be, without first letting you know of it. When
I abandon myself, as they say, to the grace of God, I will begin
by abandoning myself to the grace of your Highness, like a good
moujik. You have precedence of God; for I confess to you, to my great
detriment, that I love you much more than him. You will scold me, but
why should I lie? I shall skip about your lands of Paulowska with you,
reading to you. For a nothing I'd make myself Russian, if--But the
_if_ is too long to unravel. All is not said about my journey; they
have made me abandon it--but I have not abandoned it. It depends a good
deal on finance, and the outcome of political affairs, for we are
furiously at war. I can't understand why an understanding is not come
to.

If you knew what it is in the midst of my agitated life to get a letter
from you, especially such a letter as I have just received, oh! you
would write me oftener, you would tell me fully all you do and all you
think.

By this time you must have received "Vautrin" and "Pierrette."
"Pierrette" is a diamond. In another twenty days the "Curé de village"
will be out, but lopped. I had not time to finish the book. It lacks
precisely all that concerns the _curé_, the amount of a volume, which
I shall write for the second edition [it was never written]. The
publisher and I could not come to an understanding on this increase of
volumes.


November 16, 1840.

Precisely one month and a half interval! And so many things to tell you
that I can't tell you; it would take volumes. Perhaps this fact will
enlighten you: From the time you receive this letter write to me at the
following address: "Monsieur de Brugnol, rue Basse, No. 19, Passy, near
Paris." I am here, in hiding for some time. Nevertheless, if, in the
meantime, you have addressed me at Sèvres, I shall get the letters.

Dear countess, I had to move very hastily and hide myself here, where I
am. But, as Marie Dorval says, money troubles are mere vexations; it is
only in the things of the heart that grief and misery are. Though all
goes badly with me, financially speaking, all goes well, for I'm going
to Russia; I'm going to see you as soon as I can earn the money for the
trip. I hope to leave for Berlin in February; I shall stay a month in
Berlin, fifteen days in Dresden, and be with you by the middle of April.

I have taken my mother to live with me, and I cannot leave home without
leaving the household provided-for for a year. It is probable that I
shall stay, June and July, in Saint-Petersburg, and return to you a
second time in the autumn.

During the period when this letter has lain, begun but unfinished,
among my papers (which have been for the past month in boxes, mixed
up with those of my whole library), I have received a letter from the
banking-house of Rougemont and Löwenberg, telling me to send there for
the picture you announced to me. So, be at ease on that subject, as
well as on the other subjects that interest us, about which you write
superfluous things.

It goes without saying that if I earn my ducats more quickly than I
expect, I shall start the earlier. I begin to feel a deep execration
for my dear country. You don't know what a bear-garden it is; I should
like Holland better, I think,--the most unliterary country in the
world. We will talk about this, dear, before long, and there's enough
in it for more than one evening. _Mon Dieu!_ how long it is since I
have seen you! It seems to me a dream to know within myself that I am
starting, going,--that every step will be bringing me nearer to you!
I have recovered strength for the work I am doing at this moment, in
thinking that it will give me liberty to go to Germany, and to find you
at the end of my errand.

I am just now finishing "Le Curé de village;" it is a great thing,
which occupies me much.

My last efforts have been poisoned by sufferings beyond the measure
of those that a man can bear; but I have neither time nor strength to
tell you anything about them. It must be for later. I can only send
you this letter, written in the course of nearly two months--for it is
now November 26; and provided it tells you my final decision, that's
enough, I think; but there are many things beneath that decision.

No longer adieu, dear, but _à bientôt_, for three months _is soon_. I
shall write you once, or twice, between now and the time I take the
steamer. A thousand tender regards, a thousand good hopes, and all
that a long attachment brings of gracious thoughts and flowers long
compressed in the depths of the soul. Many things in your last letter
did me good, of which I will not speak to you; but I did not think you
had so much persistence, or so much will. When you show me that the
excellent advice I gave you in Geneva has been followed, I quiver all
over.

All kind remembrances to those whom I know among the many who surround
you, and many things to M. Hanski.

You have again harped on the "elegant empire"---Coquette! but you make
me smile rather sadly.

There is one piece of serious news with me. I have taken my mother to
live with me. An increase of trouble and work. But!--


December 16, 1840.

At last I have been able to go to Rougemont and Löwenberg and obtain
the picture of Wierzchownia. I brought home, myself, the box made of
those northern woods, which, on being broken, exhaled such delicious,
enchanting odours that they gave me a sort of nostalgia. If you burn
such wood as that it must be a sensuous delight to stir your fire; more
than a pleasure. The picture has been injured; all journeys, though
they may form youth, hurt pictures. But, dearest of dears, the canvas
is immense; we have no spaces large enough in our honeycomb cells that
are called in Paris apartments. I shall put the original at Les Jardies
(if I can keep that place), and I will have a reduced copy made by
my dear Borget, who has just returned from China, and is working for
the Salon this year; thus I can have it before my eyes in my study.
I have had much pleasure in contemplating that picture; but you never
told me that a river ran before your lawn, nor that you had a Louvre.
It all seems very lovely, very beautiful, very fresh. The buildings
are elegant; we have nothing better here. What melancholy in the
background! How one divines the steppes and a country without a rise!
You did well; it was a good action to send me the likeness of your
dwelling; but I would also like a view of Paulowska.

Dear, it does not lessen my desire to go and see you, which I shall
put into execution. I am working night and day to arrange my affairs
here, and make a purse for my journey. You will see me, some fine day,
landing on that charming bridge.

This is only a little line to tell you that my eyes will be forever on
your windows, on the columns of your peristyle, and, while examining my
ideas, I shall be walking on that lawn.

"Le Curé de village" will be out in a few days; "Les Mémoires de deux
jeunes Mariées" are nearly finished. My lawyer, a man of admirable
character, maintains my debt by legal process [_maintient ma dette par
la procédure_]. I shall give two plays and a quantity of articles. I
shall leave my proofs to be corrected by friends in my absence, for a
dozen volumes will be re-issued during my travels.

Perhaps I shall come to you an Academician; but certainly with the
satisfaction of having published "Le Curé de village," which is one of
the stones of my pediment. I shall bring that work with me. I would
like to know to whom I shall address myself to avoid all annoyance at
the frontier regarding my manuscripts. Do you think I ought to write
to Saint Petersburg, or will a few words from Pablen, your ambassador,
suffice? I should like to obtain information about this because I would
then bring you my manuscripts.

When I saw your cage, it seemed to me it was mine, and I ought to be
living in it. You have made me very happy, and you must have had a
presentiment of my pleasure when you asked me so often if the picture
had arrived.

Yesterday, December 15, one hundred thousand persons were in the Champs
Élysées. A thing happened that would make one believe that natural
effects had intentions: at the moment when the body of Napoleon entered
the Invalides, a rainbow formed above that building. Victor Hugo has
written a sublime poem, an ode, on the return of the Emperor. From
Havre to Pecq both banks of the Seine were black with people, and all
those populations knelt as the boat passed them. It was more grand
than the Roman Triumphs, he was recognizable in his coffin; the flesh
was white; the hand speaking. He is the man of prestige to the last;
and Paris is the city of miracles. In five days one hundred and twenty
statues were made, seven or eight of them very fine, also one hundred
triumphal columns, urns twenty feet high, and tiers of seats for a
hundred thousand spectators. The Invalides was draped in violet velvet
powdered with bees. My upholsterer said to me, to explain the thing:
"Monsieur, in such cases, all the world upholsters."[1]

Well, adieu. I work, and every hour lost delays my journey. I send you
to-day the most precious of autographs, for Frédérick Lemaître never
writes a line; he is as great as Talma.

All tender and gracious homage. My regards and remembrances to those
about you. You ought by this time to have "Pierrette" complete.

[Footnote 1: This relates to the return of Napoleon's body from Saint
Helena. The translator of this volume was present. The Champs Élysées
from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde were lined with
those statues, between which were the urns, filled with burning
incense. As the catafalque (all gold, and draped with violet gauze)
paused beneath the Arch, the populace fell on their knees, believing
that Napoleon would rise from the dead. The remnant of the Old Guard
followed him on foot. The weather was so terribly cold that fifteen
hundred persons were said to have died of it; three hundred of them
English.---TR.]



March, 1841.

Dear countess; I have received your dear letter number 57, dated
December 20, 1840, and if I reply rather late it is that I have been so
busy.

I cannot leave till I have settled my affairs in a manner to have a
truce, and I have still many things to do for that: three volumes to
write and a comedy; but patience! some day I shall take my flight. Do
not fear; when I start, I will write to you from each town in Germany,
where I make any stay.

"Le Curé de village" has appeared. It is a book that has cost me much
time; you will see that when you read it. It is not yet finished, nor
perfected.

I work immensely, and I have scarcely the time to write to you. Last
month I wrote a novel for the newspaper "Le Commerce," entitled "Une
Ténébreuse Affaire," and the beginning of a book called "Les Deux
Frères," for the "Presse." I have also "Les Lecamus" in the "Siècle,"
which is a study on Catherine de' Medici, in the style of the "Secret
des Ruggieri." At this moment I am doing a novel for "Le Messager," and
finishing for my publisher "Les Mémoires de deux jeunes Mariées." That
is a good deal of work, all that!--without counting nonsense like "Les
Peines de cœur d'une chatte Anglaise," and a "Note" to the Chamber of
Deputies on literary property, etc. So, to win a moment of liberty I
work like a poor wretch; but I look at the promised land: that balcony,
the corner of the house, the study for work!

Before I have Les Jardies painted for you I must know if that cottage
remains to me, if I shall not be despoiled of it.

When I start, I shall take care to avoid being stopped at the
custom-house, by taking nothing or almost nothing with me, and
fortifying myself with introductions; be easy in mind about that. I
think I shall be able to start in May, and reach you in June or July.

My traveller, Borget, is working for fame on his landscapes; but I am
very much afraid he has not genius, and we have so many _talents_ that
one more will not be remarked.

You do not tell me anything of all that interests me most,--your
health, your person, yourself; and that is very wrong. Is it to make
me come and see for myself? I don't need that. You know well that I
am kept here by my obligations, which are enormous, and the weight of
which will end by dragging me under.

I am grieved to know that months must pass before you receive "Le Curé
de village," for that is one of the books which I should like you to
read as soon as it is finished. A copy has gone to Henri de France with
these words: "Homage of a faithful subject." You will read a certain
passage in favour of Charles X., which will prevent the book from
obtaining the Montyon prize.

They tell me there is a cousin of yours here, but he has not looked me
up any more than your brother did. George Sand, whom I go to see quite
often, could have told him where to find me. This cousin seems to me
a simpleton, who swallows a quantity of nonsense about me, if I may
judge by what I am told of him. You must admit, dear, that your brother
has been wilfully mistaken; for George Sand and I continue pretty good
friends, and I see her about once every month. I lead a very retired
life on account of my work, but I am not unfindable to my friends.


March 15.

I have just returned from George Sand, who has never seen or known
Comte Adam Rzewuski. I stirred her up and questioned her with much
pertinacity; and as for the last three years she has had Chopin for
friend, that illustrious Pole, who remembers Léonce and his brother
[cousins of Madame Hanska], would certainly have known your dear Adam.
Besides which, Grzymala, the lover of Mme. Z..., and Gurowski and all
the Poles who cram her rooms would surely know that Adam was Adam
Rzewuski. Do not show that you know this, for men are terrible in a
matter of self-love, and you would make him my enemy. George Sand did
not leave Paris at all last year. She lives at number 16 rue Pigalle,
at the end of a garden, and over the stables and coach-house which
belong to the house on the street. She has a dining-room in which the
furniture is carved oak. Her little salon is _café-au-lait_ coloured,
and the salon in which she receives has many superb Chinese vases
full of flowers. There is always a jardinière full of flowers. The
furniture is green; there is a side table covered with curiosities;
also pictures by Delacroix, and her own portrait by Calamatta. Question
your brother, and ascertain if he saw these things, which are striking
and quite impossible not to see. The piano is magnificent and upright,
in rosewood. Chopin is always there. She smokes cigarettes, and _never_
anything else. She rises at four o'clock; at four Chopin has finished
giving his lessons. You reach her rooms by what is called a miller's
staircase, steep and straight. Her bedroom is brown; her bed two
mattresses on the floor, in the Turkish fashion. _Ecco, contessa._ She
has the pretty, tiny little hands of a child. And finally, the portrait
of the lover of Mme. Z... as a Polish castellan, three-quarter length,
hangs in the dining-room, and nothing would more strike a stranger's
eye. If your brother can bring himself out of that, you will know the
truth. But let yourself be fooled--Oh! travellers!

If you only knew how many Balzacs there are at the different carnival
balls in Paris. What adventures I shoulder! This year I have cheated
everybody, for I have not set foot in any of them.

I hasten to send you this scrap of a letter, to acknowledge yours,
and assure you that my desire to start increases. What your brother
is right about is the incredible influence of the atmosphere of
Paris; literally, one drinks ideas. At all times, all hours, there is
something new; whoso sets foot on the boulevard is lost; he must amuse
himself.


March 25.

Your cousin, or M. Hanski's cousin, is named Gericht or Geritch. I
don't know who they all are who call themselves your cousins, but this
I know, you have no more cruel enemies; they loudly exclaim at my
friendship for you, and make much noise about it; while I am living
in my corner and have not uttered your name ten times. When an exiled
princess said to me, "We all know you love Poland, M. de Balzac," I
answered, "It would be difficult not to love _your_ country."

But I am very silly to be irritated by such things! The world is the
world. Some of your "cousins" say such things as this, accepting all
the calumnies they hear about me: "Ah! if my cousin knew what M. de
Balzac has done!" They cannot know that I write you my life very nearly
as it passes. However, this has wounded me deeply, and will, no doubt,
cause you pain. There is another cousin of yours here, I am told. This
M. Gericht is very proud of our illustrious friendship, but the other
cousin is much grieved by it. So be it! Is it not enough to make one
hate that smoke called fashion or fame, whichever you like?

I tell you these silly trifles because I have just been thrashed by
them; and every time I go out I am wounded by something of the kind,
which, however, does not concern you, and therefore I bear it better
than what touches you.

That silly Princess R... came here, and does not distinguish between
Vienna and Paris; she has, perhaps, the same _bonhomie_, but Paris is
not _bonhomme_. There are, as your brother told you, ideas in the very
air, and an animation which is not to be seen in any other people or
any other capital. Imagine what a city is in which superiorities of all
kinds are collected.

I made George Sand repeat to me that she had never seen a Pole or a
Russian of your brother's name. I spent, two days ago, a charming
evening with Lamartine, Hugo, Madame d'Agoult, Gautier, and Karr at
Madame de Girardin's. I have not laughed so much since our days in
Geneva.[1]

Adieu, dear; _à bientôt_. I shall start for Germany, in all
probability, in May, and I hope, after so much toil, to have well
earned seeing you and saying, _Sempre medesimo_.

[Footnote 1: See Lamartine's portrait of Balzac at Mme. de Girardin's;
Memoir to this edition, pp. 123-125.--TR.]



PASSY, June 1, 1841.

This night, dear countess, I have seen you in a dream, in a manner most
accurate, most precise, and I renew the fable of "Les Deux Amis." I
write to you instantly. I was frightened by seeing you so distinctly;
then I woke, went to sleep again, and read a good, long letter from
you. You were not changed; and I was in ecstasies at seeing you thus.
You were both far and near; I did not even have the pleasure of
pressing your hand.

Did this come from my speaking of you to a Russian lady the evening
before, at the house of the daughter of the late Prince Koslowski,--a
Mademoiselle Crewuzki, who was in Vienna when we were there, and who
tried to prove to me that you were not beautiful (she is hideous)?
Or is it that a letter from you is on its way to me? The same thing
happened to Madame de Berny; whenever I wrote to her, she dreamed of
the letter. That thought overcame me just now, at my desk, before
beginning to write to you.

Alas! dear, no journey; at any rate, not for another year at least. So
many events have happened that I know not how to relate them all. I sum
them up.

When I wrote to you, "I am coming," I doubted the possibility of living
in France amid the dreadful struggles which consumed my life; and I
had the idea of going to you in Petersburg and renouncing France. But
a last effort has drawn me out of the claws of the publisher to whom I
owed a hundred thousand francs. By working day and night, and pledging
myself for six months to the labours of a literary Hercules, I have
paid him that money.

I do not owe more than one hundred and fifty thousand; and though age
is advancing on me, and work becomes each day more toilsome, I conceive
the hope of ending this horrible debt in eighteen months by putting
myself in a situation which my lawyer wishes me to hold, in order not
to be sued and not to pay more costs. "Les Jardies" will be sold to a
_locum tenens_, and when my debts are paid I shall recover it. On the
other hand, my mother has ruined herself for my brother Henry, who
is now in the colonies, and she lives with me. Besides which, I have
almost my majority for the Academy. All these things made me renounce
the project of going to Russia, and I have signed an agreement to do
ten new volumes the coming year. I have also to write articles promised
to the "Presse" and the "Siècle." And finally, _cara_, I have signed a
bargain for a complete edition of my works, to be managed by a great
publishing house, printed with the utmost luxury, and sold at a low
price.

All these things, so great, so important to me, have been settled since
my last letter. But I have not worked, published, and attended to
affairs with impunity.

Do not be vexed with me. For two months I literally have not had time
to write or do anything but what I have done. Les Jardies were seized,
a creditor was about to have them sold; I had to get fifty thousand
francs in a month, and I did get them. I had to publish my books and
articles, and attend to business without money--absolutely without
money. It was raining incessantly; I went on foot from Passy to do my
business, tramping all day and writing all night. _Primo_: I did not
go mad. _Secundo_: I fell ill. I had to travel. As soon as the result
was obtained I was seized with an inflammation of the blood which
threatened to attack the brain. I went to Touraine for two weeks; but
on my return Dr. Nacquart condemned me to a bath of three hours a day,
to drink four pints of water, and take no food, inasmuch as my blood
was coagulating. I am just out of this barbarous but heroic treatment,
with complexion clear, refreshed, and ready for new struggles.

That is the summing up of my history; for if I had to go into details
it would take volumes.

Dear, I have not received from you the least little word since your
number 57, dated December 29. Oh! how wrong that is, when you are
loved as you are by me, when you alone are in this heart with poverty
and toil--two incorruptible guardians. Why have you abandoned me thus
when you are my only thought, the end and the bond of so much work,
when, ever since I have had Wierzchownia before me in painting, I have
found nothing in my fields of thought that I did not seek on the waters
of your river, beneath your windows, among your roses and on your
carpets of green grass? Oh! has remorse never touched your heart? Has
no thought ever come to you in a sparkle from your candle at night,
saying, "He thinks of you!" M. Hanski himself, has he never said to
you, "Why don't you write to that poor fellow?"

Has nothing pleaded for the poor unhappy one, the sufferer, the
night-watchman, the maker of books and articles, the pretended
poet--for me, in short, for the traveller to Neufchâtel, Geneva, and
Vienna, who is not present before you now because the journey costs
money, and money and publishing are two irreconcilable terms.

Yes! six months without writing to me! I have always had good reasons
for my silence; but you have none for yours; you ought to write me
three times against my once, and it is I who write twice to your once!
_Ingrato cuore!_

My excuses are these: I have published "Le Curé de village" (still
incomplete). I have done three quarters of "Les Mémoires de deux jeunes
Mariées." I have published "Une Ténébreuse Affaire." "Les Lecamus,"
"Les Deux Frères" and I am about to publish "Les Paysans;" I have done
many useless works for a living; what I call useless because they are
outside of my real works, and therefore, except for the money earned,
lost time. And finally, between now and a month hence, my Work will be
published in parts under the title of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, and I must
correct at least three times five hundred _feuilles_ of compact type!

Ah! dear, the woman beloved, a little bread in a corner, tranquillity,
moderate work--that is my hope. I know it is enormous in one respect,
but it is humble for the rest. Why is it not granted? God wills it not;
but I cannot see his reasons.

Dear, here are my present hopes and my programme. I am about to write
a book for _the prix_ Montyon, which will pay a third of my debt.
Another third will be paid by the theatre; the last third by my usual
work. You will come to Baden and I shall see you there, for I could
absent myself _one_ month; but two or three, no, not under present
circumstances.

My sister still wants to marry me. She has among her friends a
goddaughter of Louis-Philippe, daughter of that Bonnard who brought up
the King of the French. I laughed so that my sister was speechless.
"In the first place," I said to her, "I will not marry any woman under
thirty-six, preferably forty, inasmuch as I am forty-two."

Apropos of that, I expected a letter, from you May 16, Saint Honoré's
day, or the 20th, my birthday, and I had palpitations for nothing at
post-time. _Ingrato cuore!_ But you are loved _quand même_. During
these six months there have been moments when I fancied you were coming.

So Gurowski elopes with an Infanta and marries her! Oh! how much better
to be a fool like Gurowski than an intrepid traveller like me.

If you only knew what I would give to have a child. No, there are
moments when the fear of waking up old, ill, incapable of inspiring any
sentiment (and that is beginning) seizes me, and I almost go mad. I go
and walk alone in some solitary place, cursing life and our execrable
country--and yet the only one where it is possible to live.

I have here, before my eyes, your last letter of December 29, alas!
You were looking at a ray of sunshine thawing your windows; you saw
the past in that, and the future! Would to heaven that ray would come
to me. I await it with impatience--that ray, your letter, which shines
upon me from time to time. Six months' silence, a winter of the heart!
What has happened to you during all that time? Have you been ill? Are
you suffering? What? The mind and heart wander dolorously through all
the zones of supposition, doubt, anxiety.

If I were less ruined, less bound to give all my money to my lawyer, I
should go to see you, because I am ordered to go away for a time; but I
am only allowed five hundred francs' worth of liberty.

Well, adieu, dear; or rather, _à bientôt_. In spite of my promises,
always baffled by fate and misfortune, believe that the only thing I
desire is to go and see you. I will not talk of it any more. I will try
for it. Perhaps the very force of work may exact a longer rest than
fifteen days spent in Touraine by the combined commands of lawyer and
doctor. When I shall have finished bringing out the books which I must
still do for Souverain (that is, five volumes), I shall, no doubt, find
a moment. Do not be vexed with me for postponing this, to me, great
happiness; I had to do so for my interests. I had to rescue the hundred
thousand francs Les Jardies cost, and persevere in that great and noble
task--of paying debts. You owe me to my own despair, and now I have
begun to hope again. HOPE is, above all to me, a virtue; it is a duty,
not done without many tears shed secretly, which you do not see. God
owes me a great compensation, and among those he does send me I count
the pure benedictions your sweet hand wafts me with the adieus of your
dear letters.

A thousand wishes for the happiness of your dear Anna. My affectionate
compliments to all those I know about you, and my friendship to the
Count. I have not forgotten him among my dedications; he will find his
in the beautiful complete edition I am now preparing.

As for you, dear Elect Lady, the most adored among all my friendships,
preferred even to my natural affections, you who are before the sister,
and whom I shall ever hold in affection, I do not bid you farewell; I
offer you afresh all that is yours--but one cannot give one's self
twice.


June 30, 1841.

Dear countess, I cannot understand your silence. It is many days now
that I have looked for your answer. I have written to you twice since
I received your last letter, and I am a prey to the keenest anxiety.
These fears and uncertainties seize me in the midst of my work; I
interrupt it to ask myself where you are, and what you are doing.
Perhaps you have been elsewhere than at Wierzchownia; perhaps you have
only lately returned there. In short, I torment myself strangely, and
I have, in my laborious life, amid all my thoughts, one thought which
masters the rest and puts among them an anxiety that is truly dreadful,
for it attacks the sentiment by which I live.

I have succinctly related to you the business I have done, and how I
have drawn myself out of certain bad troubles. The physical and moral
fatigue which labours of all kinds caused me, made me make a little
journey of two weeks into Bretagne in April and a few days in May. I
returned ill, and spent the rest of the month in taking baths of three
hours to quell the inflammation that threatened me and in following a
debilitating regimen. No more work, not the slightest strength, and
I continued till the beginning of the present month in the agreeable
condition of an oyster. At last, Dr. Nacquart being satisfied, I began
to write again, and I have done "Ursule Mirouët," one of the privileged
books, which you will read, and I am now going to work on a book for
the _prix_ Montyon.

To relate to you my life, dear, is only to enumerate my labours, and
what labours! The edition of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE (that is the title of
the complete work, the fragments of which have, until now, composed the
works I have published) will take two years to bring out; it contains
five hundred folios of compact type. These I must read three times! It
is as if I had fifteen hundred folios [24,000 pages] of compact type to
read! And my regular work must not be allowed to suffer. My publishers
have decided to add to each Part a vignette. This general revision of
my works, their classification, the completion of the divers portions
of the edifice, give me an increase of work which I alone know, and it
is crushing.

Dear, this is what I shall have written this year: 1. "Le Curé de
village;" 2. "Une Ténébreuse Affaire;" 3. "Le Martyr calviniste;" 4.
"Le Ménage d'un Garçon;" 5. "Ursule Mirouët;" 6. The book for the
_prix_ Montyon. And besides those ten volumes I shall have written the
amount of two volumes in little detached articles; and I must also,
for my living, write two novels that are rather indispensable to the
part of my works which is to be first published, namely: "Scènes de la
Vie privée," which is to have twenty books.[1] That will make eighteen
volumes in all. Judge, therefore, of what I shall have done. I have
lived in ink, proofs, and literary difficulties to solve. I have slept
little. I have, I think, ended, like Mithridates, in being impervious
to coffee.

If my lawyer puts me, as to my affairs, in a tranquil state, I could
travel in September and October. I could go as far as the Ukraine for
a few days. But that depends entirely on my work; for all that the
publisher pays goes to my lawyer to settle my affairs, and for my
living I have only what the newspapers give me. So you can judge the
difficulty of working for two masters, two necessities.

I shall wait a few days before sending this letter, hoping that you
will have written to me. Since the last two pages were written I have
been present at Victor Hugo's reception [at the Academy], where the
poet deserted his colours and the Elder Branch, and tried to justify
the Convention. His speech has caused extreme pain to his friends.
He tried to caress parties; but that which might pass in shadow and
privacy never goes well in public. This great poet, this fine maker
of imagery, received his spurs, from whom?--Salvandy! The assemblage
was brilliant; but the two orators were both bad. Praises were given
to France, which I thought ridiculous. Let our pens be the masters
of the world of intellect, I desire it; but that we should say it of
ourselves, without contradictors, in our own Academy, is bad taste, and
it disgusts me.

I am worried about my affairs. I am forced to await the conclusion of
my lawyer's principal arrangement, which is to sell Les Jardies. The
sale takes place July 15th.

[Footnote 1: For complete bibliographical lists of Balzac's Works
of all kinds, with dates of publication, etc., see Memoir to this
translated edition, pp. 351-369.--TR.]


July 15.

Les Jardies were sold this morning for seventeen thousand five hundred
francs, having cost me a hundred thousand! Here I am, without house,
hearth, or home. A few days hence I shall begin to fulfil my last _pen_
obligations; there are but six volumes still to do, and then, having
neither house, nor furniture, nor prosecution to fear, I can travel!
But still I am separated from that travel by six volumes, and the
reprinting of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, which would appear during my journey.
It seems hardly likely I could do the six volumes and four of the
reprints between now and October 15; however, I shall try.

No letter from you; my anxiety has reached the highest point. I
begin to yield myself to the most absurd ideas. I shall consult a
somnambulist to know if you are ill. A few days ago I had my fortune
told with cards by a very famous wizard. I had never seen one of
those singular phenomena. The man told me, after consulting his cards,
things of incredible accuracy, with particulars about my past life; and
he explained to me his prognostics for the future. This man, without
education, and extremely common, uses choice expressions the moment he
is with his cards. The man and the cards is another being to the man
without the cards. He told me--not knowing me from Adam--me, who did
not myself know at two o'clock that I should consult him at three, that
my life until to-day had been one continued series of struggles, in
which I had always been victorious. He also told me that I should soon
be married; which was my _great curiosity_.


July 16.

Ought I to send this letter? Ought I to wait longer? You have left two
letters from me without an answer; this will be the third. In the midst
of my toil, under which I bend, but do not break, this is a continual
anxiety which distresses me.

I have always the intention to pass part of the coming winter with
you; but all depends on the reprinting of my works, which becomes
problematical in spite of the fifteen thousand francs already paid
me for it. The affair seems to be heavy and difficult, and I live in
conferences with my lawyer and the three publishers, who want so many
guarantees that I believe I shall begin all over again the troubles of
the agreement I have just bought out, at a cost of one hundred thousand
francs.

You are very courageous if you have done all you said in your last
letter, and you must now see that I was right when I spoke to you of
the value that a woman ought to have in her own house--which is a
wholly French idea. For pity's sake, dear, send me a line the moment
you receive this letter, which I shall send off to-day. I have great
need to know how you are, what you are doing, whether you or any of
yours are ill; for surely nothing but illness could thus interrupt all
news between us. Remember that the corner of earth where Wierzchownia
is interests me more than all the other lands of the world put together.

I begin to weary extremely of my continual toil. It is now nearly five
years that I have not ceased to work; the wizard who told me I should
soon have my tranquillity must have lied.

Adieu, dear; all tender regards and remembrances across the spaces
which I too, sooner or later, will cross; with what pleasure none but
myself can know! But, for pity's sake, a word, a letter. I await it
with an impatience that so much delay has made a soul-sickness. The
wizard told me that within six weeks I should receive a letter which
would change all my life; and in the live combinations of cards which
he made, that fact reappeared in all of them. I will relate to you some
day that _séance_ and make you laugh heartily.

Adieu, _sempre medesimo_.



PARIS, September, 1841.

Dear countess, it is now nearly ten months since I have received any
letters from you; and this is the fifth letter I have written without
receiving any reply. I am more than anxious; I know not what to think.

This time, I have good news to tell you. _Primo_: I have at length
paid off the debt which crushed my life and my efforts. The hundred
thousand francs due to those with whom I made that fatal treaty of
1836 are paid. _Secundo_: Les Jardies are sold to a friend who will
keep them for me. _Tertio_: no one can any longer harass me; my debts
are fixed at a certain figure. I spend nothing, and, if I keep my
health and force, they will _all_ be paid in eighteen months. _Quarto_:
three firms of publishers, Dubochet, Furne, and Hetzel and Paulin,
unite to undertake the publication of all my works, a great number,
with engravings, to be sold cheaply. LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE is at last to
arise, beautiful, well corrected, and almost complete. My works will be
purchasable; for as they are now, no one knows where to buy them, or
has the money to do so; they have hitherto cost three hundred francs,
whereas now they will cost eighty and be well printed. This is an
affair which alone might pay my debts. But I do not count upon it; I
rely only on my pen and new works.

During this year I have written thirty thousand lines for the
newspapers. In 1842 I shall write forty thousand. I have, besides, a
comedy in five acts for the Théâtre-Français, not counting "Mercadet,"
which is always on the stocks. I have written this year, in all,
sixteen volumes. But in the spring, if my play is played, I shall go to
Germany and to you; for between now and then you will have told me why
you have punished me and deprived me of my bread. I could not travel
now; I must prepare enough volumes of my complete works, so that this
new publication might not suffer by my absence. I have to fill up my
frame-work. Many things are still lacking in the "Scènes de province"
and "Scènes Parisiennes." As for the "Scènes de la Vie politique,
militaire, and campagne," two-thirds are still wanting, and I must
finish them all in seven years, under pain of never doing LA COMÉDIE
HUMAINE,--which is the title of my history of society painted in action.

In the midst of all this business and toil, and I may say, _renascent
pains_, the grief that your silence causes is the greatest of all;
each day more poignant; and I no longer seek for the reasons of your
silence. I await them.

As soon as, through the devotion of Gavault (my lawyer, the solicitor
of the city of Paris), I saw that there was still a means to remain
in France and pull myself through my difficulties, and that I could
respond to his advances of money by pecuniary profits, I redoubled in
courage and I sacrificed the journey I was to have made to you. But
I told you so, instantly, in a letter telling you all my hopes. This
year, the _better_ has made long strides. I shall attain to--death
perhaps, but my last glance shall see the Romans fly!

How shall I explain to you that amid these triple battles I feel a cold
place in my heart; that I can no longer complain, or write to you; I
can only suffer! How many explanations have I given to your silence,
all either wounding or irritating! This letter leaves in September; you
will receive it in October or November. I cannot, therefore, receive
a reply to it before January. That will be four or five months more
of uncertainty and fears, amid the most terrible, most active, most
occupied life that there is in the world--for I move a world, and you
do not know what a Prometheus afoot, acting, with an unseen vulture
within his heart, is. I have moments when I cannot invent reasons for
your silence; I have reviewed them all and have found each more bitter
than the others.

This year I have worked through two hundred nights, and I must begin
another in the same way to conquer my liberty. Ah! they may well make a
goddess of her!

The address "M. de Brugnol, rue Basse No. 19, Passy, department of the
Seine," is always the direct and right address.



PARIS, September 30, 1841.

Dear countess, I have just received the letter you have sent me under
cover to Souverain, and I am amazed beyond measure. First of all, have
the charity to answer by return of mail the following questions:--

1. Did you address the letters which have been returned to you to M.
de Brugnol, rue Basse No. 19; Passy; or were they directed to Sèvres?

2. At what dates ought they to have reached me?

Your answer is of great importance to my tranquillity; for I must
discover through what causes your letters have not been delivered to me.

Nothing ever made such an impression on me as your little letter sent
through my publisher. I have more than suffered, I have been ill
from it. I have had a species of congestion of the head, which was,
apparently, the result of it. The letter you will have received a few
days before you receive this will paint to you my anxieties. When
putting it myself into the post, I spoke to the postmaster, telling
him that I had put four letters into his office to which I had had no
answer; and that never had my correspondence, lasting eight or nine
years, been thus interrupted; that I did not know whether my letters
were received, and I feared this might be on account of some error in
the prepayment of mine. He answered that if there had been an error it
was his affair and would not affect the delivery of the letters. But if
I had not received this letter through Souverain, or your answer to my
last in the needed time (two and a half months), I should have started,
dear, even if so rash a journey had stopped the species of prosperity
which Gavault, the lawyer, is introducing into my affairs. Imagine,
therefore, what a revulsion there was in my mind on reading your letter
so full of melancholy, of deep sadness, which shows me that _some evil
trick_ has been played, to repress which I have need of an answer to
the above questions.

Dear, and very dear, you must know that my activity the past year
has been cruel; I can only use that word. I have made an agreement
to write forty thousand lines in the newspapers from October, 1841,
to October, 1842; and if I obtain two francs and a half a line, all
my indebtedness will be cleared off, or nearly so, and I shall have
won an independence I have never had since I existed. I shall owe not
a sou nor a line to any one in the world. It is to that result that
I have immolated my dearest affections, and renounced that journey I
had planned. But it is impossible that after the coming winter I shall
not need some violent and long diversion, and in April I will go to
Germany, and beyond it, to you.

The sorrowful eloquence of your dear letter of a wounded heart made
me weep; my heart was wrung as I read, at its close, your assurances
of old affection, when in me all was the same as ever while you were
blaming me. These flashes of joy on learning that all our pain came
from neither you nor myself, and that amid this disaster, which has
darkened eight months of our life, we each had the same confidence
in the other--though you were saddened and I impatient, almost
unjust--were needed to send some balm into my heart. Must I again tell
you that you and my sister are the sole deities of my heart. It was,
dear, extreme misfortune which made me give you that hope of my visit.
But I have been stronger against excessive work than I expected. After
ten months of labour, to have written "Ursule Mirouët" in twenty days
is one of those things which printers and witnesses of that remarkable
effort will not believe. It has nothing analogous to it but "César
Birotteau."

Well! God owed me the joy, mingled with tears, that your letter brought
me; without it I might not have been able to do another like effort
this month, when I must give a rival to "Le Médecin de campagne." To
win the Montyon prize for 1842, I am now writing "Les Frères de la
Consolation." They talk of giving me the cross, for which I care very
little; it is not at forty years of age that it can give pleasure; but
I could not refuse Villemain.

"Les Mémoires de deux jeunes Mariées" will be out in a few days.
In another month I shall finish, in the "Presse," my story of "La
Rabouilleuse," the first part of which appeared under the title of "Les
Deux Frères."

I have great need to see Germany thoroughly in order to be able to
write the "Scènes de la Vie militaire;" and I shall go straight to
Dresden to view the battle-field.

The affair of the publication of my great work, under the title of
LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE in which all my compositions will be classed and
definitively corrected, is about to begin. In order to travel, I must
leave four volumes ready with my publishers, four _compact_ volumes.
The whole will be in twenty-eight volumes at four francs, with
illustrations.

Doesn't your head swim in reading me? Now you see where the travail
of my nights goes. And by the end of December I shall finish a comedy
called "Les Rubriques de Quinola." Do you feel what there is under all
this? There is _you_! Your friend must be a giant, a truly great man;
and it is with the greatest of men that I set up a rivalry. I hope that
when we meet again you will find the Honoré of Geneva much taller, that
you will not be so old as you say you are, and that after so much time
spent apart from each other we may have, both of us, a second youth.
Don't calumniate yourself, dear.

Borget, who has returned from China after making the tour of the world,
will reduce the Wierzchownia landscape and make a pretty picture of it.
Alas! it is still unframed in my study; you will not believe my poverty
till it is all over and I tell you about it. I suffer less on that
account than I have done, without as yet being at ease; I must still be
earning the bread of the morrow; but Gavault maintains with firmness
the plan formed for my release from debt and my freedom.

I no longer have Les Jardies, and I do not live under my own name;
consequently no more prosecutions and costs. I am in reality as
if I owed nothing; I am asked for nothing, and all my earnings are
accumulating in Gavault's hands without loss, until they reach the
total of my debt; and I live on three hundred francs a month at Passy.
There, dear. Ten more novels and two plays, if they succeed, will buy
me back Les Jardies and liberty. When once I reach that point, I shall
think of making myself a fortune equal to that I have earned to pay my
debts, and that will give me an income of twenty thousand francs a year!

After the sensation of grief your letter gave me came the unspeakable
pleasure of knowing you still my friend, though pained; but why not
have taken, dear, the following course on the return of the first
letter? What had you done with your wits? Has the heart no wits? At
any rate, put this into your beautiful head, behind that splendid
forehead: direct always to "M. de Balzac, Paris, _poste restante_."
Even a husband cannot obtain the letters for his wife; the post gives
them only to her without her husband; it writes to the person to whom
they are addressed to come and fetch them; and as the post is always
informed of my whereabouts, a letter _poste restante_ will always reach
me.

I cannot write to you, dear, oftener than once a month; but I will
never fail in that, unless from illness, or too hard labour. By the
end of October I may be able to send you, through Bellizard, the
original edition, fifty copies only being printed, of "Les Frères de la
Consolation."

January 5, 1842.

I have this instant received, dear angel, your letter sealed with black
[telling him of the death of M. Hanski, on November 10, 1841], and,
after reading it, I could not perhaps wish to have received any other
from you, in spite of the sad things you tell me about yourself and
your health. As for me, dear, adored one, although this event makes
me attain to that which I have ardently desired for nearly ten years,
I can, before you and God, do myself this justice, that I have never
had in my heart any other thing than complete submission, and that I
have not, in my most cruel moments, stained my soul with evil wishes.
No one can prevent certain involuntary transports. Often I have said
to myself, "How light my life would be with _her_!" No one can keep
his faith, his heart, his inner being without hope. Those two motive
powers, of which the Church makes virtues, have sustained me in my
struggle.

But I conceive the regrets that you express to me; they seem to me
natural and true; especially after a protection that has never failed
you since that letter at Vienna. I am, however, joyful to know that I
can write to you with open heart to tell you all those things on which
I have kept silence, and disperse the melancholy complaints you have
founded on misconceptions, so difficult to explain at a distance. I
know you too well, or I think I know you too well, to doubt you for
one moment; and I have often suffered, very cruelly suffered, that you
have doubted me, because, since Neufchâtel, you are my life. Let me
say this to you plainly, after having so often proved it to you. The
miseries of my struggle and of my terrible work would have worn-out
the greatest and strongest men; and often my sister has desired to put
an end to them, God knows how; I always thought the remedy worse than
the disease. It is therefore you alone who have supported me till now;
yet I have never counted on more than we saw--that day at Les Chênes,
you remember?--of that old couple Sismonde de Sismondi, Philemon and
Baucis, which so touched us. Nothing in me has changed.

I have redoubled in work to go and see you this year, and I have
succeeded. Since I last wrote to you I have not slept more than two
hours of a night, and I have written, above my promised books and
articles, two plays in live acts, one with a prologue, which begin
their rehearsal to-morrow at the Odéon. I hoped by working for some
months longer like the last eighteen months to pay my crushing debts
and save Les Jardies. This constant labour has, especially during the
last five years, parted me wholly from society. To-day I want my patent
of eligibility, for Lamartine has a rotten-borough for me, and to be
one of the coming legislature is a future for us.

To conceive of this in the thick of the battle, is it not loving well
to have such courage, such boldness, when, your letters becoming so
rare, I was tortured, week by week, with the desire to go to you and
learn the reason of your silence?--for the few words, almost illegible,
which ended your letters were always to me fresh beams of hope. "Be
patient," you said to me; "you are loved as much as you love. Do not
change, for others change not."

We have both been courageous, one as much as the other; why, therefore,
should we not be happy to-day? Do you think it was for myself that I
have been so persistent in magnifying my name? Oh! I am perhaps very
unjust, but such injustice comes from the violence of my heart. I would
have liked two words for me in your letter, but I sought them in vain;
two words for him who, since the scene you live in is before his eyes,
has not passed, while working, ten minutes without looking at it; I
have there sought all, ever since it came to me, that we each have
asked in the silence of our spirits. I have not been able to part with
it to let Borget make his copy. The certainty of knowing you free has
made me gentle, or I should have been more angry, were you not mourning.

O my beloved angel, be prudent and take care of yourself; take care
of your precious health. I shall not work much before my departure. I
start for Germany March 20th, and I will not cross Saxony without your
permission; but I cannot any longer have so many leagues between us. I
have already signified to my publishers that they must at once print
enough Parts to have no need of me until after September.

I have carefully buried my joy, just as I hid my griefs and my
memories, in the depths of my heart. But I will tell it to you. I
remained, all stupefied, for twenty-four hours, locked in my study,
not willing that any one should speak to me. When I came out I was
hot in the midst of intense sudden cold. Let me tell you of a little
superstition, a little circumstance which has made a great impression
upon me. On November 1 I lost one of the two shirt buttons Madame de
Berny had given me, which I wore one day, and yours the next day. After
losing it, I could only wear yours; and this little chance matter
troubled me to a point you will imagine when I tell you that my mother
and all about me noticed it. I said to myself, "There is in it some
warning from heaven!" I love you so, and it has cost me so horribly to
keep silence about it since Vienna, that I value the solitude of my
study at Passy, where no one penetrates, and where I can be with you.

Ah! dear, you have put so many things into your letter that I do not
start at once. I await your answer here; you will then have had time
to reflect how difficult it is for me to remain in Paris when for six
years I have longed to see you. Oh! write me that your existence shall
be wholly mine, that we shall now be happy, without any possible cloud.
Will you ever know how much strength it has needed to write to you
thus, without saying a word to paint to you the ardour of this unique
love, preserved as my one treasure, my only hope! Oh! how many times,
under my most bitter disappointments, in struggles, in griefs, I have
turned to the North,--to me the Orient, peace, happiness!

To speak now of business, I have made a great step. On the 5th or
7th of February they play at the Odéon "L'École des Grands Hommes,"
an immense comedy on the struggle of a man of genius with his epoch.
The scene is in 1560, in Spain. It relates to the man who sailed a
steamboat in the port of Barcelona, let her sink to the bottom, and
disappeared. If I have a success, I start; if I fail, I must write four
volumes to get the money for my journey. But I have still another play
at the Vaudeville.

My complete works are being rapidly printed, and will be issued during
my journey.

If I have two successes, I shall leave the money to buy back Les
Jardies, and pay off some lesser creditors, and I am sure, in two
years, to complete my liberation. Only I must have enough to buy back
the house for my mother, to whom I owe the sum of forty thousand francs.

Gavault, my lawyer, is satisfied. Every one believes in a great success
for "Les Ressources de Quinola," the false title of my play. I keep the
one I have just told you for the last moment.

The "Mémoires de deux jeunes Mariées," published in the "Presse," has
had the greatest success. But the finest work this year is "Ursule
Mirouët."

I send this little line, written in haste. I will write you more in
detail within three or four days. I am worn-out with work, and I am
still up all night, for there is much to be done to the play. I have
three acts to add to the second play, and my newspaper articles on my
shoulders.

As for your letters, dear, adored one, be without anxiety. If I die
suddenly there is nothing to fear. They are in a box like the one you
have; and above them is a notice, which my sister knows of, to put
them all into the fire without looking at them, and I am sure of my
sister. But why this uneasiness now? Why? I ask myself that question in
terrible anxiety. You must be more ill than you have told me. You did
not fill the last page in your letter! You have put so much uneasiness
around that which makes me happy that I know not what to think. Alas!
do you not feel, my cherished angel, my flower of heaven, that all you
wish of me shall be done as you wish? Do I not love you even more for
you than for myself?

I entreat you, on receiving my letter, write me two words only, to let
me know if I can write to you with open heart (for I am still hampered
by what you say to me), and how you are; I need to know nothing more
than that. You, all is you, dearest; I am only uneasy about your
health. Take care of yourself; you owe this to me.

Adieu, my dear and beautiful life that I love so well, and to whom I
now can tell it. _Sempre medesimo._

       *       *       *       *       *

NOTE.--The "Lettres à l'Étrangère" end here. The letters that follow
are those to Madame Hanska, given in Balzac's Correspondence, vol.
xxiv. of the Édition Définitive of his works. No letters have, so far,
been published between the one dated above, January 5, 1842, and the
one that here follows, dated October 14, 1843, written after a visit
paid by Balzac to Madame Hanska in St. Petersburg.

So far as can now be ascertained, the history of their relationship
from this date is as follows: Madame Hanska would not, or could not,
consent to marry Balzac after Monsieur Hanski's death for the following
reasons: 1. Her duty to her daughter, to whom she was left guardian,
with the care, conjointly with the child's uncle, of enormous estates
in the Ukraine. 2. Russian law, which required relinquishment of
property on marriage with a foreigner. 3. The difficulty of obtaining
the Emperor's consent to such marriage.

The first difficulty was removed by the marriage of her daughter Anna,
in 1846, to Count Georges Mniszech, the owner of vast estates in
Volhynia; and in September of that year Balzac was summoned to meet
Madame Hanska at Wiesbaden, at or about which time it is said that she
pledged herself definitively to marry him.

Meantime, he had met her at several places, and had travelled with
her in Germany, Holland, and Italy, as will be seen by the following
letters. In the summer of 1845 Madame Hanska paid a visit to Paris with
her daughter; but in secrecy to avoid the displeasure of the Russian
government. During this visit Balzac took her to Tours, Vendôme, and
the valley of the Cher, to show her the places of his childhood. The
visit to Vendôme is recorded in a letter written after his death to
M. Armand Baschet by M. Mareschal-Duplessis, director of the College,
who was also director when Balzac was a pupil there. M. Mareschal
mentions that he was accompanied by a lady; but he mistakes Madame
Hanska's nationality and calls her an Englishwoman; or she may herself
have conveyed that idea for the sake of her incognito, which was
all-important to her.

In October of the same year (1845) Balzac accompanied Madame Hanska
to Naples for a few days only; but he met her in Rome in March, 1846,
and stayed there a month. His visit to Wiesbaden, mentioned above,
took place in October, 1846. In December Balzac went to Dresden,
returning some weeks later with Madame Hanska, who remained in Paris
till April, 1847, when she returned to Wierzchownia. Balzac left
Paris in September, 1847, and paid his first and long desired visit
to Wierzchownia, arriving about the first of October. He stayed there
until February, 1848, when he returned to Paris, leaving it again early
in September for Wierzchownia; where he lived until one month after his
marriage to Madame Hanska, which took place March 15, 1850. He returned
to Paris with his wife May 20, and died three months later, August 19,
1850.--TR.




VIII.


LETTERS DURING 1843, 1844, 1845.



BERLIN, October 14, 1843.

Dear countess,[1] I arrived here this morning at six o'clock,
having had for all rest twelve hours at Tilsit, from which must be
deducted three hours given to the director of posts, to whom I had an
introduction, and who did me so many services that I took tea with him
in the evening. I arrived too late to dine there with Stieglitz, as we
desired.

As long as I was on Russian soil I seemed to be still with you, and,
without being exactly of a frolicking gaiety, you must have seen by my
little letter from Taurogen that I had strength enough left to joke at
my grief. But once on foreign soil, I can say nothing at all, except
that this journey may be made to go to you, but not on quitting you.
The aspect of Russian lands, without culture, without inhabitants,
seemed to me natural; but the same sight seen in Prussia was horribly
sad, and in keeping with the sadness that seized upon me. These barren
tracts, this sterile soil, this cold desolation, this poverty, gripped
and chilled me. I felt myself as much saddened as if there had been a
contrast between my heart and Nature. Black grief swooped down upon me
more and more heavily as physical fatigue increased. But do not pity
me for taking the land journey, because these late storms must have
made the navigation of the Baltic very bad.

I know how you are by the way I feel; I feel within me an immense
void, which enlarges and deepens more and more, and from which
nothing distracts me. So I have renounced going to Dresden; I do not
feel the courage to go there. Holbein's Madonna will not be stolen
between now and a year hence; the scene of the battle and the defiles
of the Kulm will not change, and I shall have a reason, next May,
to make the journey again with other ideas. Don't blame me for my
faint-heartedness; nothing now pleases me in this journey, which did so
please me in the salon of the Hotel Koutaitsof when you said, "You will
go here--and there." I listened to you, I went, for it was you who told
me. But now, how can I help it? far from you all is lifeless, without
a soul. Next year, perhaps; but now, I have nothing but the gulf of my
toil, and I go to it by the shortest way.

I slept this morning from seven o'clock till midday, a few tired,
restless hours. I have breakfasted, dressed, and paid three visits: to
Bresson, Redern, and Mendelssohn; and on my return I sit down to write
to you, for to talk with you is the greatest, the most vital instinct
of the moment.

I was interrupted by Comte Bresson, who came immediately to invite me
to dinner for to-morrow, because he leaves, or rather his wife leaves,
the day after; she goes before him to Madrid. As far as I can judge, he
is a man of intelligence and great good sense; above all, without any
species of pretension, which is rare in diplomatists, and I prize it
much. He advised me to write a line to Humboldt, of whom I saw much in
Paris at Gérard's and elsewhere; he will, no doubt, show me Potsdam. M.
Bresson goes to Spain, and Salvandy to Turin.

I resume my dear laments, and I must tell you that the highway from
Petersburg to Tilsit is only practicable at two sections: from
Petersburg to Narva, and from Riga to Taurogen; so that for more than
half way the road is detestable when it rains, and it had rained a
great deal, alas! Imagine the jolts we made! but the vehicles are
excellent; they resisted them. All that is Russian has a very tough
life. A roadway is laid down across the sands of Livonia with gorse;
out though the road has the gorse _characteristics_, it has, none
the less, a disquieting aspect and a boggy style. It is a miracle to
get over the road in three days and a half; and that gives a great
idea of Russian stubbornness. We had eight horses, and sometimes ten,
in certain places. Where the chaussée [paved road] is made it is
magnificent. Ah! I shall have pleasure in going over it again! but
_then_ it will not be over gorse but flowers that I shall be jolted.
Literally, one eats nothing by the way, for there is nothing to eat;
but the way-stations are very handsome, and there is always excellent
Russian tea. I am therefore able to honour my grief by thinness, due
to the diet of the journey; if I suffered, my mental condition was
such that I did not become conscious of it; the grief of quitting you
quelled hunger, just as the pleasure of meeting you had already quelled
sea-sickness. You are above all.

I am here at the Hôtel de Russie, which is passably good and not too
dear. From Berlin I shall go to Leipzig and Frankfort-on-the-Main, by
the Prussian _Schnell-post_; and from Frankfort to France by steamboat,
or railroad all the way; which is, I think, more economical than any
other way of travelling.

I have found two road companions, two sculptors, one of whom, as I
told you, speaks an almost incomprehensible French, and I have just
made the rounds of Berlin with him. These young men have been full of
attentions to me all the way, especially from Riga, where I parted
from my first companion, the Frenchman. The artist-nature is everywhere
the same. These two young fellows got me out of all difficulties at
inns, and I have just invited them to dinner (a _rapin_ dinner, be it
understood). It is the least I can do for such obliging lads to thank
them for their good care before we part.

This sulky Berlin is not comparable to sumptuous Petersburg. In the
first place, one might cut a score of mean little towns like the
capital of the Brandebourg out of the great city of the vast European
empire, and there would still remain enough space built upon to crush
the score of extracted little Berlins without injury to its vast
extent. But, at first sight, Berlin seems the more populated; for
I have perceived several individuals in the streets, which is not
often the case in Petersburg. However, the houses here, without being
handsome, seem well built; one can see that they are not wanting in
comfort inside. The public buildings, rather ugly of aspect, are of
handsome freestone; and the space around them is so managed as to set
them off. Very likely it is to this artfulness that Berlin owes its
air of being more populous than Petersburg; I should have said more
_animated_ if it concerned any other people; but the Prussian, with his
brutish heaviness, is never anything but ponderous; less beer and bad
tobacco, and more French or Italian wit is needed to produce the stir
of the other great capitals of Europe, or else the grand industrial and
commercial ideas which have caused the great development of London; but
Berlin and its inhabitants will never be otherwise than an ugly little
town inhabited by ugly fat people.

However, it must be admitted, to whoso returns from Russia, Germany
has an indefinable air which can only be explained by the magic word
LIBERTY, manifested by free manners and customs, or, I should say, by
freedom in manners and customs. The principal public buildings of
Berlin are grouped about the hotel where I am, so that I could see them
all in an hour. Fatigue is seizing me; I aspire to dinner: the first I
have eaten since the splendours of Russia.

Till to-morrow, dear countess.

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at St. Petersburg. Balzac has just left
her after a visit of two months.--TR.]


October 15.

Our dinner was composed of soup, venison, mayonnaise of fish, macaroni
with cheese, a little dessert, a half-bottle of madeira, and a bottle
of bordeaux. _Ecco, signora!_ At eight o'clock I dismissed my guests
and went to bed, the first bed that resembled a bed since I left
Dunkerque. Before going to sleep I thought of you and of what you
might be doing at eight o'clock of a Saturday evening. I imagined you
were at the theatre; I saw the Michel theatre; but I did not have the
cruel pleasure, as in _Schnell-post_ or in _Karéta potchtôvaïa_, to
think till midnight, for at midnight I was sound asleep, and in the
morning I slept till eight o'clock. You have so often subdued the most
imperious things in nature that you will pardon poor nature for taking
its revenge for once. Exclusively tender souls have a worship for
memories, and your memory, you cannot doubt it, is always in my heart
and in my thought. I give myself the fête of thinking of it during
that short half-dreaming moment when we feel ourselves betwixt slumber
and sleep; and all the sweet impressions of the two months I have
spent with you return to enchant my soul with their radiant images,
so full of harmony. You see that the Virgin of Poland is the same as
the Notre-Dame of France, and that if my journey is saddened by a
separation such as I have now borne three times, all is otherwise well
with me.

I have received from M. de Humboldt the note which encloses mine; it
is, certainly, curious under present circumstances. I send it to you;
and I can speak of it openly, as this letter will be carried to you by
Viardot, whom I have just met, and who agrees very willingly to take
it; he is one of the most honourable men I know; in whom one can put
the utmost confidence; he will give it into your own hand.


October 16.

I have just dined with Madame Bresson, _née_ de Guitaut. There was a
great dinner at the Embassy on occasion of the King's fête. Except
the ambassadress, everybody was old and ugly or young and hideous;
the handsomest woman, if not the youngest, was the one I took into
dinner; guess who,--the Duchesse de Talleyrand (ex-Dino) who was there
with her son, the Duc de Valençay, who looked to be ten years older
than his mother. The conversation was about people's names and little
incidents happening at court within forty-eight hours. But at any rate,
it explained to me Hoffmann's jests about German courts. Impossible to
join Redern; I had his wife on one side of me,--the face of an heiress,
and a very rich heiress to make him forget such lack of charm.

Nothing can be more wearisome than Berlin. I am consumed with
ennui--ennui has entered me to the bone, and I am afraid of being ill.
I write this before going to bed; it is nine o'clock; but what can one
do in Berlin? For all amusement there's "Medea," translated from the
German, and played literally! Yesterday they played before the court
Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream," also translated literally! The
King of Prussia protects letters, but, as you see, they are mostly dead
letters.

I leave to-morrow, and go to Leipzig by the railway to reach Mayence;
after which by the same to Dresden to see the Gallery.

M. de Humboldt made me a visit of an hour this morning, charged, he
said, with the compliments of the King and the Princess of Prussia. He
gave me all necessary information as to how to find Tieck at Potsdam,
and I shall profit by it to study the physiognomy of that great barrack
of Frederick the Great, of whom de Maistre said: "He was not a great
man; at the most a great Prussian."

I went out by the railway, and on getting into a carriage I found the
fantastic Duchesse de Talleyrand, with her hair dressed in a mass of
flowers and diamonds, like an apparition of a midsummer night's dream.
She was on her way to court in full dress, to dine with the Princess
of Prussia. We had also for third the Comte de Redern, a mouldy old
Prussian fop, dry as a Genevese and important as a retired diplomatist.
I requested the shepherdess of threescore to lay my respects at the
feet of the princess.

I saw Tieck in his home; he seemed pleased with my homage. There was
an old countess, his contemporary in spectacles, octogenarian perhaps,
a mummy with a green eye-shade, who seemed to me a domestic divinity.
I have just returned; it is half-past six o'clock, and I have eaten
nothing since morning. Berlin is the city of ennui; I should die of
it in a week. Poor Humboldt is dying of it; he drags about with him a
nostalgia for Paris. As I start to-morrow morning by the railway, I
must bid you adieu. I cannot write again until I get to Mayence.

In talking this morning with Comte Bresson, I told him I had been
driven from Petersburg by the tattle of porters and ignoble gossip;
that no one believed in generous and disinterested sentiments, and that
I was angry with the Russian people for attacking my sacred liberty
by imagining that I should do like Loëve-Weymar. M. Bresson strongly
approved; and said that a Frenchman should never marry any but a
French-woman; I told him I was of his opinion, and that was what I
should do! I am told that if I stay here a week fêtes will be made for
me. But a week means three hundred francs, and really, for Berlin, that
is too dear. If I could only get away from this dreadful town by paying
that sum, I don't say it would be too much; I would even add a little
to be off the quicker. More than ever do I see that nothing is possible
to me without you, and the more space I put between us, the more I feel
the strength of the tie that holds me. I live by the past only, and I
live in it only, withdrawn into the depths of my heart. Must it not
be horrible suffering to be alone as I am, with the continual memory
of these two months, from which my thought plucks flowers, blossom by
blossom, with melancholy and religious tenderness?


October 17.

I leave you afresh this morning, for it is like a fresh leaving not
to write to you in the evening what I have done during the day. I go
to Leipzig, where I shall book my place in the _Schnell-post_ for
Frankfort. I shall sleep at Leipzig; the next day go to Dresden, and
return, on the 20th, to take the Prussian conveyance.

The loneliness that takes the place of intimacy has all the ways
of remorse--I feel a violent need of changing from place to place,
stirring, going, coming; as if at the end of this physical agitation
and all these useless movements I should find you. I look with
tenderness at this paper which I shall carry in a moment to Viardot,
thinking how your pretty fingers will hold it in that salon where the
hours fled so sweetly and so rapidly. Viardot will faithfully deliver
to you this packet, in which I may say that my life will be one long
anguish till I see you again. From Mayence you shall have a letter
which will tell you of my acts and deeds after leaving Berlin. I shall
reach Passy about November 10; therefore write me on the 3rd, of your
style.

Adieu; if I have failed in our agreement, if anything displeases you in
this letter, be, as ever, kind and forgive me. Think of my grief, my
loneliness, my sorrow, and you will be full of pity and indulgence for
the poor exile.



DRESDEN, October 19, 1843.

I left Berlin with ennui, dear, but I have found nostalgia here.
Nothing that I eat nourishes me, nothing that I see distracts me. I
have seen the famous Gallery, and Raffaelle's Virgin, also Holbein's,
and I said to myself, "I love my love too well!" In going through the
famous treasury, I would have given all for one half-hour on the Neva.
To add to my troubles I am here for two days longer than I wished to
be; and this is why. From Berlin I went to Leipzig and passed the
night. I had counted without the fair at Leipzig; all the seats were
taken in the _Schnell-post_. I then asked the landlord to book my seat
and keep my luggage, instead of my dragging it to Dresden and back, for
they demand an infinite number of thalers for overweight of luggage.
The landlord said it was doubtful if he could get me a seat for the
20th, the day I wished to start, and I have just received a letter from
him saying I can have no place till the 22nd.

Yesterday, on arriving, having missed the hour for the Gallery, I
walked about Dresden in all directions, and it is, I assure you,
a charming city; very preferable as a residence to that mean and
melancholy Berlin. It has the look of a capital; partly a Swiss, partly
a German town; the environs are picturesque and all is charming. I
can conceive of living in Dresden; there is a mixture of gardens
and dwellings that delights the eye. As for the palace begun by
Augustus the Strong, it is really a most curious masterpiece of rococo
architecture. As a fantasy it is almost as fine as gothic, and as art
it is exquisite. What a misfortune that so enchanting a conception
is unfinished, and is left in a deplorable state. It would take,
of course, millions to repair, complete, arrange, and furnish this
delightful gem. There is nothing in Petersburg, still less in Prussia,
nor in the whole North to compare to it. What a man was that Augustus,
calling himself Elector in Poland, and King in Saxony!

I saw so many Titians in Florence and Venice that those in the Dresden
gallery had less value in my eyes. Correggio's "Night" seemed to me
over-praised; but his Magdalen, two Virgins of his, the two Madonnas
of Raffaelle, and the Dutch and Flemish pictures are well worth the
journey. The treasury is nonsense; its two or three millions in
diamonds could not dazzle eyes that had just seen those of the Winter
Palace. Besides, the diamond says nothing to me; a dew-drop, sparkling
in a ray of the rising sun, is to me more beautiful than the finest
diamond in the world--just as a certain smile is more beautiful to
me than the finest picture. So I must return to Dresden with you in
order that the pictures may speak to me. Rubens moved me somewhat,
but the Rubens of the Louvre are more complete. The true masterpiece
of the Gallery is Holbein's Madonna, which extinguishes all the rest.
How I regretted that I could not hold your hand in mine while I
admired it with that inward delight and plenitude of happiness which
the contemplative enjoyment of the beautiful bestows! The Madonna of
Raffaelle, one expects it; but Holbein's Madonna is the unexpected, and
it grasps one.

Dear countess, you will never form to yourself a complete idea of
my dreadful loneliness. Not speaking the language and not knowing a
person to speak to, I have not uttered a hundred sentences since I
left Riga and that French merchant. I am always in front of myself,
and the scenery being a desert and a plain, I have nothing to
interest the eye; the heart has passed from excess of riches to the
most absolute pauperism. The recapitulation mentally of those hours
that flew by, alas! so rapidly, the dreamy thoughts that followed them
gave such bitter sadness to a nature naturally gay and laughing that
my two sculptors said to me--that is, the one who thought he spoke
French--"What is it? what is the matter?" Another fortnight like this
and I shall gently, gently die, without apparent illness.

I see that I must renounce the Rhine and Belgium and return to strong
occupation in the affairs and toils of Paris. This air does me harm; I
am inwardly debilitated; nothing restores my tone, nothing cheers my
courage, I thirst for nothing. I have two nostalgias: one for the banks
of the Neva which I leave, the other for the France to which I go.

German railway trains are a pretext for eating and drinking; they stop
at every moment; the passengers get out and drink and eat, and get in
only to do it all over again; so that the mail-cart in France goes
faster than the trains in Germany.

It is eleven at night; I am in a hotel where every one is asleep.
Dresden is quiet as a sick-room; I feel no desire to sleep. Have I
grown old that the Gallery has given me so few emotions? or has the
source of my emotions changed? Ah! surely, I recognize the infinite
of my attachment and its depth in the immense void there now is in my
soul. To love, for me, is to live; and to-day more than ever I feel
it, I see it, all things prove it to me, and I recognize that there
will never be for me any other taste, any other absorption, any other
passion than that you know, which fills not only my heart but my entire
brain.


October 20.

Absolutely nothing to tell you but what you already know. I have just
returned from the theatre, which is certainly one of the most charming
I ever saw. Despléchin, Séchan, and Diéterle, the three decorators who
did our French Opera house, came here to arrange it. Nothing could be
prettier. If you choose Dresden for a residence Anna will have the
loveliest hall she ever dreamed of. They sang a German version of "Fra
Diavolo" which seemed to me an excellent preparation for sleep. I had
seen the collections of porcelains and antiquities in the morning. I
feel tired. Fatigue is a power; and I am now going to bed at eleven
o'clock. You know of whom I shall dream as I sleep.


October 21.

I leave to-morrow; my place is booked, and I will finish my letter,
because I wish to put it in the post myself. I have a head like an
empty pumpkin, and I am in a state which makes me more uneasy than I
can tell you. If I continue thus in Paris I must return. I have no
feeling for anything, no desire to live, not the slightest energy,
nor do I feel any will. You will never know until I explain it to you
verbally, the courage I display in writing to you. This morning I
stayed till eleven o'clock in bed, unable to get up. It is horrible
suffering which has its seat nowhere; which cannot be described; which
attacks both heart and brain. I feel stupid, and the farther I go,
the worse the malady becomes. I will write you from Mayence if I feel
better. But as for the present, I can only describe my condition as
Fontenelle, a centenarian, explained his,--"a difficulty of being." I
have not smiled since I left you; it is spleen of the heart; and that
is very serious, for it is a double spleen.

Adieu, dear star thrice blessed! there may come a moment when I can
express to you the thoughts that oppress me; to-day I can only tell
you that I love you too well for my peace; for, after this August
and this September, I feel that I can only live beside you and that
your absence is death. Oh! how happy I should be were I walking and
conversing with you in the little garden overhanging the bridge of
Troïsk, where there is nothing yet but broomsticks to mark where
they mean to plant the trees. To me, there was no garden in Europe
more lovely--when you were in it, I mean. There are moments when I
see clearly the least little objects that surround you; I look at
the cushion with a pattern of black lace worked upon it on which
you leaned, and I count the stitches! Never was my memory so fresh;
my inward sight, on which are mirrored the houses that I build, the
landscapes I create, is now all given to the service of the most
completely happy memories of my life. You could never imagine the
treasures of revery which glorify certain hours; there are some which
fill my eyes with tears. My inward eyes behold those angular bronzes
against which I struck my knees as I wound my way through your blue
salon, and the little chair in which you reposed your dreamy thoughts!
What power and happiness there is in these returns to a past which thus
we see again. Such moments are more than life; for the whole of life
is in this one hour withdrawn from real existence to the profit of
these memories which flood my soul in torrents. What sweetness and what
strength lies in the simple thought of certain material objects, which
attracted but little notice in the happy days that are past; and how
happy I feel myself to feel thus!

Adieu; I am going to carry my letter to the post. All tenderness to
your child a thousand times blessed; my regards to Lirette, and to you
all that there is in my heart, my soul, my brain.



PASSY, February 5, 1844.

Yesterday I did errands; for I must think about getting "Les Petits
Bourgeois" set up by a printer at the cost of a new publisher. I went
to see the successor of M. Gavault, and there I found a summons from
that dreadful Locquin-coquin. No one more audacious than a swindler! he
cries, "Murder! thieves!" to hang his victim. All this stirred my bile,
and as I had been up since three in the morning I felt very weary, and
went to bed at six to rise at four. While I slept the dear journal
came; I put it aside for my waking and have just read it. All these
opposing emotions, some exasperating, others gentle, not to say divine,
have done me harm; I feel exhausted, which seldom happens to me. I
must be at M. Gavault's at nine o clock for consultation with him and
his successor, M. Picard, on the Locquin affair; now, to get there at
nine o'clock supposes breakfasting at seven; and I who have still five
_feuillets_ to write for Hetzel, promised to him for this morning! I
had kept them back in order to have a _calm night_ to search them out;
they needed mind, and my mind was all upset!

I entreat you, do not be worried about the Reviews; it would even be
a pity were it otherwise. A man is lost in France the moment he makes
himself a name, and is crowned in his lifetime. Insults, calumnies,
rejection, all that suits me. Some day it will be known that if I lived
by my pen there never entered two centimes into my purse that were
not hardly and laboriously earned, that praise or blame were equally
indifferent to me, that I have built up my work amid cries of hatred
and literary musketry, and have done so with a firm and imperturbable
hand. My revenge is to write, in the "Débats," "Les Petits Bourgeois;"
which will make my enemies say with fury, "At the moment one might
think his bag was empty he produces a masterpiece." That is what Madame
Reybaud said on reading "David Séchard," "Honorine," etc. You will
read the strange history of "Esther." I will send it to you thoroughly
corrected; you will there see a Parisian world which is, and always
will be, unknown to you, very different from the false world of "Les
Mystères" and ever comic; in which the author, as George Sand said,
applies a whip that strips off all the plasters put on to hide the
wounds he uncovers. You write me: "What a volume is that which contains
'Nucingen,' 'Pierre Grassou,' and 'Les Secrets de la Princesse de
Cadignan'!" Perhaps you are right; I am proud of it (between ourselves).

You will see if the corruption of the Spanish abbé, which annoys you,
was not necessary to develop the history of Lucien in Paris, ending in
a frightful suicide. Lucien had already served as an easel on which to
paint journalism; he serves again to paint the piteous and pitiable
class of kept women; the corruption of the flesh, after the corruption
of the mind. Next comes "Les Petits Bourgeois," and, for conclusion,
"Les Frères de la Consolation." Nothing will then be lacking in my
Paris but _artists_, the _stage_, and the _savants_. I shall then have
painted the great modern monster under all its aspects.

To sum up: here is the stake I play for,--four men have had in this
half-century an immense influence: Napoleon, Cuvier, O'Connell; and I
desire to be the fourth. The first lived on the blood of Europe, he
inoculated himself with armies; the second espoused the globe; the
third has incarnated himself in a people; and I shall have carried a
whole social world in my brain. Better live thus than call out every
evening, "Spades, hearts, trumps!" or find out why Madame such a one
has done such or such a thing. But there will always be in me something
greater than the writer, happier than he, and that is, your serf. My
sentiment is nobler, grander, more complete than all the satisfactions
of vanity or fame. Without this plenitude of heart I could not have
accomplished one tenth of my work; I should not have had this ferocious
courage. Tell yourself often this truth in your moments of melancholy,
and you will divine by the toil-effect the grandeur of its cause.

Your journal has done me good to read, and I shall re-read it again
to-morrow, more than once. It is six o'clock; I must see about
inventing and then writing the little trifles for Hetzel. I leave you,
sending to you all flowers of the heart.

February 6.

Yesterday I went out, but I suffered much; that thief who sues me,
your letter, all these violent and opposing emotions did me harm. If
the colic, as Lord Byron says, puts love to flight it certainly knocks
down imagination; not only have I suffered, but my brain has been as
if veiled. Last night was dreadful, and the waking not pleasant. After
breakfasting, I feel rather better; but I have to go out for current
affairs, and I cannot think of it without repugnance, so weak and
ill do I still feel. I have, nevertheless, corrected the article for
Hetzel, and added _la coda,_ the most difficult part to wrench out. I
still have one horribly difficult chapter to do of three _feuillets_;
after which I shall be delivered. But while breakfasting the idea
of a pretty comedy in three acts came to me; I will tell it to you
if I write it. This week I must finish "Le Programme," and then set
seriously to work on "Mercadet."

I dine to-day with Girardin, and shall pay a visit to M. de Barante
to thank him for his letter. I perceive, sadly, that my hard labour
has aged me much; if I do not go to Germany by the grace of God and
yourself, I shall make a trip on foot among the Alps.

Do not think that I ever tire of the Daffinger. I give it to myself as
a reward when I have done my task, and at night it is there, beside me,
on my table, and I search my ideas in it.


February 7.

I am still not well, and I have even gone to bed during the day; but
I feel a little better now and shall dine with my doctor. I have just
done the article for Hetzel, which will be, like all things wrenched
out in spite of Minerva, detestable. Yesterday I consulted M. Roux
(Dupuytren's successor, alas!), and he strongly advised me that journey
on foot as the only means of arresting the inclination of my cerebral
organs to inflame.

I am now going to two printing-offices to negotiate affairs, and, among
others, to arrange with a publisher for "Les Petits Bourgeois."


February 8.

When I do not suffer in my head I suffer in the intestines, and I have
at all times a little fever; nevertheless, this morning, at the moment
of writing to you, I am well, or rather, I feel better.

Yesterday I talked with a publisher named Kugelmann. He is a German,
who seems to me full of good-will; we shall settle something to-day
when I have done with the "Débats;" I go to Bertin at eleven o'clock.
If the two affairs can be arranged I shall have nearly twenty thousand
francs for "Les Petits Bourgeois." They want to illustrate either
"Eugénie Grandet" or "La Physiologie du Mariage," and have made me
proposals to that effect. If these proposals lead to any result you
shall know it, of course. Yesterday I met Poirson, manager of the
Gymnase, in an omnibus, and he proposed to me to give him the comedy
of "Prudhomme," and have it played by Henri Monnier. That is one of my
crutches for this year; I shall go and explain it to him next Monday;
and if it suits him, I shall set to work upon it immediately, so as to
have it played in March--or rather in May, for March has twice been
fatal to me.

Adieu for to-day, celestial star, implored and followed with so much
religion. Every day I say to myself, thinking of your dear household
of three, "I hope they are happy! that nothing troubles them! that
Lirette sanctifies herself more and more; that Anna goes sometimes to
the theatre (for her health, as she says so prettily); and that madame
will from time to time look down the Neva to where Paris lies." As for
me, I think only of that rococo salon, and so thinking, I make a little
mental prayer to a human divinity, especially about nine o'clock, when
tea makes me think that you are taking yours in the lamplight at that
white table, the yellow wavelets of which I see at moments, together
with the samovar. What friends are things, when they surround beloved
beings! There is even a stupid ivory elephant that returns to my memory
at times. As for the causeuse, the little carpet, the Louis XIV.
screen, and the chair on which you rested your noble, cherished head,
they are objects of worship. Do you feel yourself loved even in the
outward objects to which you have given more real life than living and
moving beings have to me? Your sadnesses make me smile, and I say to
myself, "She was not _then_ sitting in her chair; she was not looking
then at her chimney-corner." But it would have been a pity not to
write those four pages; they are sublime; and were it not for the deep
respect I have for you, I would put them proudly into one of my books,
to give you the enjoyment of seeing how superior you are to scribblers
like the rest of us. That letter is a true diamond as style and as
thought; you have the inspiring influence, dear lady!--

See how I chatter with you! Can I help it? I make my letters one of
those cat-like sensuous joys to which we grow used, and which wrap us
so softly that we forget they are but the _copy_ of their cause!--

Well, one more look at that dear rue Millionne, and a deep, deep sigh,
alas! not to be there. Why should you not have a poet as others have a
dog, a parrot, a monkey?--and all the more because I am a little of all
three, and repeat to you ever the one phrase, "I am faithful!" (Here
the countess throws up her head and casts a superb glance.)

Adieu till to-morrow; I have recovered a little gaiety the last two
days; are some happy events happening to you? God owes them to you.
Have you not suffered enough to expiate the fault of all who surround
you?--for as to you, you have never understood or practised anything
but the good and the beautiful.


February 10.

Yesterday Bertin was ill, but he sent word that the affair held good.
I went to the printing-office, but the publisher did not come; a bad
sign. Here's a strange thing! the printer fell so in love with the
title "Les Petits Bourgeois de Paris" that he wants to buy the book of
me for twenty thousand francs and publish it illustrated! I came home
to dinner and went to bed, for I had this morning to read seven folios
of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE and the whole of Hetzel's article. It crushed me
down. I went to bed after breakfast and slept till dinner-time, and
as I could not sleep again from six in the evening till three next
morning, I took some coffee, and here I am at nine in the evening,
writing at my table.

If I have luck I shall sell the right to illustrate "Eugénie Grandet,"
and the "Petits Bourgeois" affair will come off, and this will bring
me out of these matters (I mean the annoying matters). They played
a new tragedy at the Odéon last night, but I did not go; I reserve
myself for Tuesday, when the "Mystères de Paris" are brought out at the
Porte-Saint-Martin.


February 14.

"Les Mystères" ended this morning at half-past one after midnight. I
did not get back to Passy till three in the morning. It is now one
o'clock, and I am just up. Frédérick Lemaître was in fear of a cerebral
congestion; I found him yesterday at midday in bed; he had just
plunged into a mustard bath up to his knees. Twice the night before
he lost his eyesight. "Les Mystères" is the worst play in the world,
but Frédérick's talent will make a furor for it. As actor, he was
magnificent. You never can describe such effects, they must be seen. I
am satisfied with the success he will give to "Les Mystères," because
it gives me time to finish "Mercadet." The princes were in a proscenium
box, and as the Prince de Joinville had never seen me, the Duc de
Nemours pointed me out to him.

Since then I have written to Poirson that I will go and see him Friday
to agree about "Prudhomme." I am to dine with my old friend the
Duchesse de Castries, who, just now, for one reason or another, renews
her kind attentions to your servant. All my prose is ready for Hetzel.
To-day I dine with Lingay, the man who wanted to put to the profit
of the State, so he said, my talent of observation. He does not seem
vexed with me for my want of compliance, or perhaps he has too much
intelligence not to have understood me.


February 16.

I went out yesterday for much business.

1. A purchaser wants my Florentine furniture. People have come from
all parts to see it, even the antiquity dealers; and they are all in
a flutter of admiration. You don't know what this means. It was the
article in the "Messager" (which you will doubtless read copied into
the "Débats") which has roused all this attention.

2. The matter of "Les Petits Bourgeois" rests, so far, with the
"Débats." But the publisher wants the book; no doubt to illustrate with
"Eugénie Grandet" and the "Physiologie du Mariage."

3. Poirson thinks the idea of the play excellent and proposes to
_guide me!_--and if the execution is equal to the plot, he assures me
of all the advantages I can desire. So I may appear once more before
the public about April 1. Here I am, with "Prudhomme" and "Les Petits
Bourgeois" on my hands; but no money. I must coin it in a manner to
conquer tranquillity for three months. It is terrifying. This is
Shrove-Saturday; I must spend it working, Sunday too, with a fury that
is not French, but Balzacian.


February 17.

You know, dear countess, that there are days when the brain becomes
inert. In spite of my best will I have sat all day long in my
arm-chair, turning over the leaves of the "Musée-des-Familles!"--what
do you say to that?--and in gazing from time to time at my Daffinger,
without finding aught there than the most sublime and charming creature
in the world and not a line of _copy_! I wanted to return to "Madame de
la Chanterie," but I could only write two _feuillets_.


February 18.

I dine to-day with Poirson, the theatre manager.

Yesterday I dined out; a dinner of twenty-five persons at a restaurant;
but what a dinner! It would have cost two or three thousand roubles in
the 60th degree of latitude. I went this morning to see Bertin and have
come home to tell you that all is concluded. Three thousand one hundred
and fifty francs a volume, like those of "Les Mystères." That will make
nine thousand five hundred. I am going to bed, worn-out with fatigue.


February 19.

Shrove-Tuesday, February 19. Oh joy! I have your letter and have just
read it. You ask why I no longer go in the Versailles direction.
Simply because one does not seek that which annoys and displeases. Do
you want to know the only way in which to cease to be to me _unica_ and
_dilecta_? it is to speak of that to me. All that was a bad dream which
must be forgotten in order not to blush for it to one's self. Deprived
of your letters I no longer lived; nor did I live again until once more
I saw your dear handwriting. And you speak to me of Versailles; the
very name sickens me, with the ideas attached to it, and this when I am
so far from you with vast spaces parting us! But you do not know how in
your absence I am deprived of soul and brain. I live by the reception
of one letter, and I no sooner have it than I want another.

Ah! your letter was indeed due me amidst the annoyances and troubles
of all kinds that assail me and the crushing work which implores peace
and has never found it except near you. Even Hetzel, whom I thought a
friend, is getting up with Bertin a foolish squabble with me. If you
only knew in what a fit of misanthropy I went to bed. It was frightful.
But also, with what delight I read those pages so full of sincerity and
affection! One hour of such pure, heavenly enjoyment would make one
accept the martyrdoms of human existence.

Yes, you have every reason to be proud of your child. It is through
seeing young girls of her sphere, those who are the best brought-up
here, that I say to you, and repeat it: you have the right to be proud
of your Anna. Tell her that I love her, for you, whose happiness she
is, and for her own angelic soul which I appreciate so truly. You tell
me, dear countess, that, in the midst of your good success, there is
something in the supreme decision which thwarts you, but you do not
tell me what it is. Please repair that omission; do not let me fancy
evil out of this uncertainty. Nothing, no event in the things of life,
no woman however beautiful, _nothing_ can disturb that which _is_ for
ten years past, because I love your soul as much as your person, and
you will ever be to me the Daffinger. Do you know what is the most
lasting thing in sentiment? It is _la sorcellerie à froid_--charm that
can be deliberately judged. Well, that charm in you has undergone the
coolest examination, and the most minute as well as the most extended
comparison, and all is more than favourable to you. Dear fraternal
soul, you are the saintly and noble and devoted being to whom a man
confides his life and happiness with ample security. You are the
pharos, the light-giving star, the _sicura richezza, senza brama_.
I have understood you, even to your sadnesses, which I love. Among
all the reasons which I find to love you--and to love you with that
flame of youth which was the only happy moment of my past life--there
is not one against my loving, respecting, admiring you. With you
no mental satiety can exist: in that I say to you a great thing; I
say the thing that makes happiness. You will learn henceforth, from
day to day, from year to year, the profound truth of what I am now
writing to you. Whence comes it? I know not; perhaps from similarity
of characters, or that of minds; but, above all, from that wonderful
phenomenon called _entente cordiale_--intimate comprehension--and also
from the circumstances of our lives. We have both been deeply tried
and tortured in the course of our existence; each has had a thirst for
rest in our heart and in our outward life. We have the same worship of
the ideal, the same faith, the same devotion to each other. Well, if
those elements do not produce happiness, as their contraries produce
unhappiness, then we must deny that saltpetre, coal, etc., produce
ashes. But beyond these good reasons, it must be said, dear, that there
is another, a fact, a certainty, the inspiration of a feeling beyond
all else--the inexplicable, intangible, invisible flame which God has
given to certain of his creatures, and which impassions them; for I
love you as we love that which is beyond our reach; I love you as we
love God, as we love happiness.

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 told you, on a
theatre success to pay my debts; I count only on the fifty folios of
LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE which 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 of LA
COMÉDIE HUMAINE with "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 the _status quo_ of
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 to manage 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 the _ifs_ and _buts_, the _fors_ and the _yes 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 of LA 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 thought streamed 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 of
_himself_. 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 of the 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, _this_ is 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 pin which 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.

[Footnote 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, certain of 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, happy
_senza 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 transit_ to 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
the _cavaliere serventi_, who watch 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 and desired 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 some in 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 my _fixed 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 the _far 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 the gowns 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]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Wierzchownia.]

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 "Les Paysans" 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! [1] 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 road to 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 the _madness_ of 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."

[Footnote 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 do anything; 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.

[Footnote 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 is because 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 thought of 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, I claim 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 the
_dilettanti_ and 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. _We_ are 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 the _octroi_ and
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 as the dear child.
Keep me _au courant_ of 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]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska at Dresden.]

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 the
_status quo_ was 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 to you! 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 Frankfort
_and_ the 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 ease _incognito_. 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.[1] 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 a _fiacre_, 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.

[Footnote 1: Secrecy was required, as Russians in those days were not
allowed to travel in foreign countries without a special permit from
their government, which was difficult to obtain.--TR.]


February 15, 1845.

Dear countess; the uncertainty of your arrival at Frankfort has weighed
heavily upon me; for how could I work, expecting every hour a letter
which might make me start at once? I have not written a line of the
conclusion of "Les Paysans." This uncertainty has disorganized me
completely. From the point of view of mere material interests it is
fatal. In spite of your fine intelligence, you can never comprehend
this, for you know nothing of Parisian economy, or the painful
straits of a man who tries to live on six thousand francs a year. For
this reason, I must quit Passy; but I dare do nothing, I can make
no plans on account of your uncertainty. But the worst of all is
the impossibility of occupying my mind. How can I throw myself into
absorbing labour with the idea before me of soon starting, and starting
to see you? It is impossible. To do so I need to have neither head nor
heart. I have been tortured and agitated as I never was in my life
before. It is a triple martyrdom, of the heart, of the head, of the
interests, and, my imagination aiding, it has been so violent that I
declare to you I am half dazed,--so dazed, that to escape madness I
have taken to going out in the evening and playing lansquenet at Madame
Merlin's and other places. I had to apply a blister to such disease.
Luckily, I neither lost nor won. I have been to the Opera, and dined
out twice, and tried to lead a gay life for the last fortnight. But now
I shall try to work night and day, and finish "Les Paysans" and a bit
of a book for Chlendowski.

I send you by the Messageries the eleventh volume of LA COMÉDIE
HUMAINE, in which you will find "Splendeurs et Misères des
courtisanes." The fourth volume contains _your_ "Modeste Mignon" and
the end of "Béatrix," also "Le Diable à Paris." These books may perhaps
amuse you; but in any case, tell me your opinion of them as you have
always done,--namely, with the sincerity of a fraternal soul and the
sagacity and sure judgment of a true critic. If the reduction of my
bust by David is made in time, I will send you that also.

Not only is the finishing of "Les Paysans" an absolute necessity before
which _all_ must yield relatively to literature and the reputation
which I have for loyalty to pen engagements, but it is an absolute
necessity for my interests. This year is a climacteric in my affairs.

Within forty-live days the printing of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE will be
finished. The publishers have put the two largest printing-offices in
Paris on it, and I am obliged to read twice the usual number of proofs.
The result will be a sum of importance to me. But I cannot leave Passy
till my present debts are paid. Therefore I must finish "Les Paysans"
and LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, and "Les Petits Bourgeois" and "Le Théâtre
comme il est." But, dear countess, you have made me lose all the month
of January and the fifteen first days of February by saying to me:
"I start--to-morrow--next week," and by making me wait for letters;
in short, by throwing me into rages which none but I know of. It has
brought a frightful disorder into my affairs, for instead of getting
my liberty February 15, I have before me a month of herculean labour,
and on my brain I must inscribe (to be rejected by my heart) the words:
"Think no longer of your star, nor of Dresden, nor of travel; stay at
your chain and toil miserably."

Dear, what I call toil is something that must be seen, no prose
can depict it; what I have done for a month past would lay any
well-organized man on his back. I have corrected the thirteenth and
fourteenth volumes of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, which contain "La Peau
de Chagrin," "La Recherche de l'Absolu," "Melmoth réconcilié," "Le
Chef d'œuvre inconnu," "Jésus-Christ en Flandres," "Les Chouans,"
"Le Médecin de campagne," and "Le Curé de village." I have finished
"Béatrix;" I have written and corrected the articles for "Le Diable
à Paris;" and I have settled some affairs. All that is nothing; that
is not working. Working, dear countess, is getting up regularly at
midnight, writing till eight o'clock, breakfasting in fifteen minutes,
working till five o'clock, dinner, and going to bed; to begin again
at midnight. From this travail there issue five volumes in forty-five
days. It is what I shall begin as soon as this letter is written. I
must do six volumes of "Les Paysans," and six folios of LA COMÉDIE
HUMAINE, inasmuch as that is all that is needed to complete the
edition, which is in seventeen volumes. I hope for another edition in
1846, and that will be in twenty-four volumes, and may give me two
hundred thousand francs.

So this is my report on the affairs of your servitor and the journey of
your Grace.

Now, let me come to that which is more serious than all,--I mean that
tinge of sadness which I see on your Olympian brow. What! because a
crazy woman cannot be happy, must she come and spoil your comfort
and trouble your heart? And you listen to her, _you!_ Take care, for
that is a crime of lese-comradeship, lese-brotherhood. And you write
me things mournful enough to kill the devil. In your last but one
letter you propose to me gracefully, with those Russian forms you must
have borrowed for the occasion, a little congress in which the two
high powers should decide whether or not to continue their alliance
offensive and defensive. That, my dear lady, is, believe me, a greater
crime than those you joke me about; for I have never needed any such
consultation.

Since 1833, you know very well that I love you, not only like one
beside himself, but like a see-er, with eyes wide open; and ever since
that period, I have always and ceaselessly had a heart full of you. The
errors for which you blame me are fatal human necessities, very truly
judged by your Excellency herself. But I have never doubted that I
should be happy with you.

Dear countess, I decidedly advise you to leave Dresden at once. There
are princesses in that town who infect and poison your heart; were it
not for "Les Paysans" I should have started at once to prove to that
venerable invalid of Cythera how men of my stamp love; men who have not
received, like her prince, a Russian pumpkin in place of a French heart
from the hands of a hyperborean Nature. In France, we are gay and witty
and we love, gay and witty and we die, gay and witty and we create, gay
and witty and withal constitutional, gay and witty and we do things
sublime and profound! We hate _ennui_, but we have none the less heart;
we tend to things gay and witty, curled and frizzed and smiling; that
is why it is sung of us, to a splendid air, "Victory, singing, opens
our career!" It makes others take us for a frivolous people--we, who
at this moment are applauding the disquisitions of George Sand, Eugène
Sue, Gustave de Beaumont, de Toqueville, Baron d'Eckstein, and M.
Guizot. We a frivolous people! under the reign of money-bags and his
Majesty Louis-Philippe! Tell your dear princess that France knows how
to love. Tell her that I have known you since 1833, and that in 1845 I
am ready to go from Paris to Dresden to see you for a day; and it is
not impossible I may do so; for if Tuesday next I am lucky at cards at
Comtesse Merlin's, I shall be on Sunday, 23d, at the Hôtel de Rome in
Dresden, and leave on the 24th.

Dear star of the first magnitude, I see with pain by your letter that
you commit the fault of defending me when I am blamed in your presence,
and of taking fire on my account. But you don't reflect, dear, that
that is a trap set for you by the infamous galley-slaves of society's
galleys, to enjoy your embarrassment. When persons say ill of me before
you, there is but one thing to do,--turn those who calumniate me into
ridicule by outdoing what they say. Tell them: "If he escapes public
indignation it is because he is so clever he blunts the sword of the
law." That is what Dumas did to some one who told him his father was a
negro: "My grandfather was a monkey," he replied.

No, when I think that I might leave here January 1, reach Dresden
the 7th, and stay till February 7th, thus seeing you one whole month
without detriment to my affairs, that I could then return to my desk
happy, refreshed, full of ardour for work, a transport seizes me which
eddies and whirls like steam as it hisses from its valve. I see that
you are completely ignorant of what you are to me. That does honour to
neither your judgment nor your penetration. To-day, that delightful
escapade has become impossible to me. March 1, I must regulate the sale
of Les Jardies; the legal formalities must be fulfilled in order to put
that precious thirty thousand francs aside; LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE must be
finished to obtain the fifteen thousand francs that are due to me for
it; and finally, I must make up the sixty-three thousand for my acre,
if I buy it, and to pay off twenty-five thousand of debt which would
otherwise prevent my becoming a land-owner.

Villemain is at Chaillot; he is no more crazy than you or I. [Minister
of Public Instruction till 1844, and Secretary of the Academy.] He
has had a few hallucinations which have affected his ideas, just as
I had some that affected my use of words in 1832 at Saché; I have
related that to you already; I uttered words involuntarily. But he is
so thoroughly cured that he speaks of the matter with the wisdom and
coolness of a physician. He had already declined very much in talent,
and was no longer fit to negotiate with the clergy, and they profited
by his resignation to get rid of him. We talked of it, he and I, for
more than two hours. From what he told me, I judge that he is forever
lost to public life.

Adieu; I perceive that I bid you adieu in my letters as I said
good-night to you at Petersburg in the Hotel Koutaitsof, when we walked
for ten minutes from the sofa to the door and from the door to the
sofa, unable to say a final adieu. If I could do the second part of
"Les Paysans" in eight days, I would be off, and see you in six days!
Tell yourself that there never passes an hour that you are not in my
thoughts; as for my heart, you are always and unceasingly there.

The winter has set in with great severity. You are right to stay in
Dresden. Avoid, I entreat you, those sudden changes from heat to cold
and cold to heat of which you tell me. It is right to think, as you do,
incessantly of your child; but it would be wrong, and not loving to
her, to always forget yourself for her. Of all the personages whom you
mention to me none but Countess L... attracts me. That amiable old lady
who welcomed you as the daughter of Count Rzewuski goes to my heart,
she belongs to my world. As for Lara, do me the pleasure not to receive
him in future.

Did I tell you that they named the _bœuf gras_ this year Père Goriot,
and that many jokes and caricatures are made upon it at my expense?
This is a scrap of news. I am vexed not to go to Dresden, for I had
not the time when I was there solely to see the Gallery, to view
the country about and go to Kulm, in order to write my "Bataille de
Dresde." That will be one of the most important parts of the "Scènes de
la Vie militaire."

_À bientôt_; take care of yourself, and tell your dear child all
tenderly loving things from one of the most sincere and faithful
friends she will ever have, not excepting her husband, for I love her
as her father loved her.



PASSY, April 3, 1845.

I have just received your letter of March 27, and I know not what
to think of all you say to me of mine. I, to give you pain, or the
slightest grief! I, whose constant thought is to spare you pain! The
epithet _meutrière_ applied to my language makes me bound. _Mon Dieu_,
however good my intentions were, it seems that I have hurt you, and
that is enough. When we see each other, you will comprehend, perhaps,
how the uncertainty that hovers over me is fatal; fatal to my interests
so seriously involved; fatal to my happiness because I see myself
separated from you--for a month more at any rate, for I have not
written a line and I could not now be at Frankfort before the first
week in May. Under such irritating circumstances it was permissible to
be impatient. Besides which, I write my letters very hastily, and never
read them over. I say what is in my mind without any reflection; if I
had re-read that letter I might have made of it (as I have of others
_in which I raised my voice too high_) a sacrifice to Vulcan.

However, let me tell you that there are two hearts here that are full
of you and love you for yourself only: Lirette and I. Lirette, with
whom I have been talking at her convent grating of your situation,
shares my ideas wholly as to the future about which I have made
allusion, and apropos of which I have, perhaps indiscreetly, given
you some really wise counsel. As to the personal dangers _to me_ of
which you speak, those are things I laugh at; you are not as familiar
with them as I. Here, in Paris, there are plenty of persons who
dislike me and would be glad to have me out of the world, men who
have hatreds that are more than ferocious against me, but who bow to
me all the same. It is possible that, like Carter when he undertook
to tame two lions, I might find your Saxons rather too ferocious and
my lion-taming trade a little too visible. But I can assure you, dear
countess, that if that fear is the cause of the dreadful three months
I have just passed, ah! dear fraternal heart, I should be the one to
say the words which I have kissed in your letter: "I forgive you!" I
have contemplated those words with tears in my eyes; in them is the
whole of your adorable nature. You thought yourself affronted by your
most faithful servant, the most devoted that ever could be, and you
forgave him. I have been more moved by that than by all my griefs
put together. Oh! thank you for the pain that makes me fathom your
perfection; pardon me for having misjudged you; be _you_, yourself, as
much as you wish; do all that you will, and if, by impossibility, you
do wrong, it shall be my joy to repair the broken armour. I was wrong.
I was guilty and very guilty, because to goodness one should ever
respond by gentleness and adoration. Write me little or much, or do not
write me at all; I shall suffer, but say nothing. Do what you think
best for your future and that of your child; only, do not root yourself
too firmly in the present; look always before you, and tear out the
brambles in the path before you follow it.

Another academician is dead, Soumet, and five or six others are
declining to the tomb; the force of things may make me an academician
in spite of your ridicule and repugnance.

I have done everything I could to remain at Passy, where I live
tranquilly and comfortably, but all has failed. I have notice to leave
in October of this year, and I must move to Paris and live for two
years in an apartment, until I can build a little house at Monceau.
I shall look for one in the faubourg Saint-Germain. This removal
means the spending of several thousand francs, which I regret. My
money-matters, even more than my work, imperatively require me to stay
in Paris through April.

I am almost certain of recovering my habits of work and those of food
and sleeping; and if the difficulty of the lodging were only solved, I
should have tranquillity of soul, for this house is at my disposition
and I can remove at my ease, working here till the last moment.

Sunday, half-past two o'clock.

I have just risen. I look at my Daffinger with delight. At last I
received your letter, yesterday. Imagine, dear, what a real misfortune
happened to me. Your letter had a spot of ink which glued it to
another letter, and delayed it, as was stated by the post on its
envelope. The post-mistress, who for two days had seen my anxiety,
cried out eagerly when she saw me, "Monsieur, here's a letter!" and
held it for me to see with a joy that did her honour. And what a
letter! I read it, walking gently along in solitary places. To read
things so charming addressed to one's self is enough to make one never
write a line again, but lie at the feet of one's sovereign like her
faithful dog. Finally, I went to sleep, for I must own I had not closed
my eyes for two days, so much did this delay disquiet me.



PASSY, April 18, 1845.

You write me, "I want to see you!" Well, then, when you hold this
letter between your dainty fingers may they tremble a little, for I
shall be very near to you, at Eisenach, at Erfurt, I don't know where,
for I shall follow my letter closely. This is Friday; I shall leave
Sunday at the latest.

What! you could receive an order from your government to return to your
own country, and I not see you! Oh! dear countess; and you tell me I
have been amusing myself. But you know my life from the letters in
which it is written down day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute;
you have surely read, you surely know that my only pleasures are
thinking of you, and proving it to you by writing. I have spent these
last five months in saying to myself every day: "I start to-morrow; I
shall see her! if only for a month, for two minutes, I shall see her!"

Do not write again; expect me.

I am grieved that you have read "Les Petits Manèges d'une Femme
vertueuse" without waiting for the Chlendowski edition in Vol. IV. of
LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, where it bears the name of "Béatrix," the last
Part. Have you received the two lines which told you the state I was in
from Monday to Sunday? "I shall see her!"--a thought which has defrayed
many a journey of seven hundred leagues.

I have sent everything to the right-about--COMÉDIE HUMAINE, "Les
Paysans," the "Presse," the public, and Chlendowski, to whom I owe
ten folios of the COMÉDIE HUMAINE--hum! also my business affairs, a
projected volume (which I will do as I travel), and my affair with
the "Siècle;" in short, all. I am so happy to go that I can't write
steadily; I don't know whether you can read this, but you will see my
joy in my scribbling. Read "intoxication of happiness" for all the
words you can't decipher. Tell the people about you that, having gone
to Leipzig on business, I am coming to Dresden from politeness, to bid
you adieu before your return to your own country. Have an apartment
engaged for me at the Stadt-Rom; I need three rooms: a small salon,
bedroom, and study. I shall have to work from five in the morning till
midday. But from midday till after seven o'clock I shall be with you,
and bid you good-night by eight o'clock. As you see, there is no place
for a Saxon or a Pole in all this.

This time I bid you adieu without pain, for my trunks are packed, and I
am now going out for my passport and my proofs.

I should not like to be lodged under the roof at the Stadt-Rom, as I
was at my first hasty visit to Dresden; not higher than the second
floor. I shall bring my sad hippocrene with me, my coffee; for seven
hours a day is the least I can work, with all I have to do. Now I leave
you; adieu! This time, I am certain of seeing you soon, and sooner
perhaps than you think.[1]

[Footnote 1: Balzac joined Madame Hanska at this time in Dresden, and
they travelled in Germany and Holland; after which Madame Hanska and
her daughter accompanied him to Paris, where they stayed some time.
This visit was kept a profound secret lest it should reach the ears of
the Russian government.--TR.]



PASSY, September 8, 1845.

Dear star, alas! so distant! No, I cannot accustom myself to see you
again beaming upon me through such space. No, truly, I cannot bear it.
Tell me, for pity's sake, in your next letter where you will be early
in October, and I shall be there too; do not doubt it. How and when is
my secret, and I shall not return to Paris till you set out for home
with your smala.

It is now decided that I am not to move again. I meet with people who
do not keep their word, and I am released from the obligation of doing
twenty-five folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE. I have only thirteen to do,
and I can roast those with a turn of my hand. What need have I of
money? I need to see you, and I am going back to you. I know very well
we shall no longer have any freedom in our walks or our talks, and that
many duties will too often deprive me of the charm of your incomparable
companionship; but chance will favour me sometimes with a blessed ten
minutes, when I can tell you in a mass what I feel in detail; and if
chance should be against me, at least I should see you, I could look
at you. I should hear your sweet voice, I should know you were really
there, that distance was abolished between us, that we were both in
the same land, the same town. My affection for you is so great and so
minute, or, if you like it better, so puerile, that I even grieve on
eating a good fruit, thinking that you have none; and the notion takes
me to eat no more, so as not to enjoy a pleasure of which you are
deprived. Ah! believe me, you are the first and the last, or rather the
sole and the continual thought of my life.

I have come to an understanding with that old gambler on the Bourse,
Salluon, who owns the house of which I told you, and shall look at the
place to-morrow.

Royer-Collard is dead. He was the counterpart of Sieyès.

I went yesterday at two o'clock to see Madame de Girardin. I went on
foot, and returned on foot. She said to me several times that I ought
to present myself for the Academy; although they desire, this time,
to put in Rémusat, who has not many claims. But do not be uneasy, I
know how it would vex you, and you may feel assured that in this, as
in everything else, I will only do what you wish. I returned by the
post-office, thinking you more generous to me than you are in reality.
I said to myself: "She will have found two letters at Frankfort, and
the little case from Froment-Meurice [goldsmith], and she will send me
just a line outside of her regular missive." Nothing! I was sad. I send
you volumes, and you only give me what is agreed upon.


September 10.

This morning I have only ten more _feuillets_ to do to be done with
Chlendowski, that is to say, to complete "Les Petites Misères;" and
to-morrow I begin the last part of "Splendeurs et Misères." That means
six folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE still to do. This will take fully ten
days; that brings me to the 30th. Evidently, I could start the first
week of October, from the 1st to the 5th, and I could be in Dresden the
10th to return here November 5th. That would be nearly a month, dear
countess! Do not neglect as soon as you receive this letter to send me,
1st, Anna's arms, blazoned; 2nd, your own; 3rd, those of Georges; ask
him to make me those three little drawings that I may have exact models
made of them, and if there are supporters tell him to draw those also;
it is possible that Froment-Meurice may find effects there which he
can make use of in the things he has to make for Georges and Anna.

I have recovered my faculties, more brilliant than ever, and I am now
sure that my twelve folios, which will be two novels of six folios
each, will be worthy of the former ones. I tell you this to quiet
the anxiety of your fraternal soul in regard to the reaction of the
physical on the mental, and to prove to you for the hundred-millionth
time that I tell you everything, not concealing the smallest scrap of
either good or evil. Go therefore to the baths of Teplitz or elsewhere,
if you think it necessary, provided you are faithful to your promise of
Sarmate. Meantime I shall reduce my work to its simplest expression,
and about April 20 I shall go North to contemplate you in the midst of
your grandeurs.

Laurent-Jan has been here; he distracted my mind and amused me, but he
stole three hours.

Well, I must end this little conversation, a pale joy in comparison
to our real talks, embellished by the charms of presence, and the
certainty of reality. This is Wednesday, and I have still no letters;
how is it you did not write me a line from Frankfort, acknowledging
the two letters, and the package from Froment-Meurice. I am lost in
conjectures and very unhappy.


September 12.

At last, I have your letter. Oh, _mon Dieu!_ who knows what a letter
is? I tremble all over with happiness. To know what you are doing,
where you are, what you are thinking, is happiness to me here. What a
fine page that is on families of cathedrals and cemeteries. Ah! it is
you who know how to write! But I must leave you to go and see Georges'
cane at Froment-Meurice's, and execute your sovereign orders.

So you have seen Heidelberg! Thank you for the view and the branch of
box. But why did you not tell me what name Dr. Chelius gave to your
illness, and for what reason he sends you to Baden, the waters of
which always seem to me a farce? However, I am far from murmuring at
a decision which puts you on the frontier of France; thirty-six hours
from Paris. Only, I do want details as to your health. Anna's jewels
have been sent by a courier of the Rothschilds, directed to Baron
Anselme Rothschild at Frankfort. Write for them there and have them
sent wherever you are. You did not tell me how you passed the Prussian
frontier. You are very sure, are you not, that all your heart-griefs
are mine? I cannot get accustomed to life here now, I never cross the
Place de la Concorde without sighing heavily. When you are at Baden,
try to form the good habit of writing to me twice a week. You, so kind,
you will not refuse me that, will you? and you will not think me too
exacting, too tiresome, too importunate? Selfish, yes, I am that; but
your letters are my life.

I have not yet sold anything to the newspapers; I have had many
parleys, but no money; they think my price too high.

I have many annoyances about which I tell you nothing in my letters.
Alas! you have enough of your own; and besides, they would take up
too much space. I will relate them to you twenty-five days hence, to
be consoled as you alone know how to console. You will be frightened
at the blackness of the world, its injustices, its persecutions, its
hatreds. One might truly believe that there were none good in the
world but us two; at least to one another. Therefore, I no longer
want to live in Paris; I would much prefer living at Passy, seeing no
one, working under your eyes and never leaving you. There is nothing
true, believe me, but the one sentiment that rules me, especially when
doubled by the friendship which unites us: same tastes, same mind,
same efforts, same fraternal souls. I will put in for you here a
morning-glory out of my garden, and a bit of mignonette, gathered in
that path where we walked together so often; and I send you also the
little bit of lead type which was lost and has now been found. These
little things will come to you full of earnest wishes for your dear
health. Take good care of yourself; be selfish; that will be loving
your child, that will be proving once more that you do have some regard
for your faithful and devoted believer. Tell me what Dr. Chelius said
to you. Be very prudent at Baden; it is full of Frenchmen, gamblers,
journalists. Avoid the company there, see no one, for this fatal
celebrity of mine, which I curse, might cling to you who would abhor
it, sweet and simple violet that you are, and cause you much annoyance
and even, though God forbid it, grief.

All true flowers of affection, a thousand thoughts (unpublished ones,
if you please) to the great lady, the young girl, the stern critic, to
my indulgent public, to all that world that is contained in you, to all
those personages who are so many aspects of my sovereign so faithfully
and solely cherished.



PARIS, October 15, 1845.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Dresden.]

Dear countess; I leave Paris by the mail coach on the 22nd, just as you
are starting from Mulhausen, and I shall be at Chalon at five o'clock
on the 25th, just in time to give you a hand on getting out of your
carriage. My place is booked and paid for. How do you expect me to
write you from Paris _Wednesday_ a letter to Frankfort-on-the-Main,
when you leave that town on Thursday? I received your third letter
yesterday at Passy, in which you give me these directions, impossible
to follow. I groan the more as I cannot send you a letter for the
custom-house at Strasburg, where I wanted to recommend you to
attention.

Tell your social fortune-teller that her cards have lied; that I am
not preoccupied with any blonde, except Dame Fortune. No, I have no
words except the mute language of the heart wherewith to thank you for
that adorable letter No. 2, in which your gaiety breaks out with its
sparkling gush, sweet treasure of a charming wit which the fine weather
has brought back to you; for, as you once said to me, "It is only
wrong-doers who stay sad when the joyful sun shines."

I make use of the excellent M. Silbermann, who will take to you these
lines, not so much to tell you that you will find me at Chalon (your
instinct will have told you that), but to paint to you my delight on
reading your letter. Your infantine and purely physical joy enters my
heart; I admire that adorable nature, so playful, so spontaneous, and
so serious withal, because it is composed of lively impressions and
deep sentiments. My eyes were filled with tears in thanking God with
fervour that he had restored that health which you value for the sake
of others,--those who love you, like your children and your old and
faithful serf. Every time I go to breathe your atmosphere, your heart,
your presence, I come back desperate at the obstacles that prevent
me from staying in that heaven. I work, God knows how, for God alone
knows why. When you hold this letter I shall probably have no debts
whatever, except to my family. We will talk of my affairs on the boat
between Chalon and Lyon. I shall have much to tell you thereupon, and I
hope this time you will not be discontented with your servant. I have
enormously much to do, write, correct, in order to meet you. I hope
to take you as far as Genoa. But to whom could I confide the care of
holding your head if you are sea-sick? If you will let me do as I wish
I will go to Naples. I would give up everything, even fortune, to guard
a friend like you and care for her in case of illness. I cannot think
of you given over to strangers, to indifferent persons. I want to be
with you, dear countess, my brilliant star, my happiness!

All this week I have been like a balloon; you know what my tramps
on business errands are in Paris; I have been really overwhelmed by
them. Minutes are worth hours to me if I do not want to lose money by
travelling, for I must myself collect the sums due me. Also Les Jardies
will be paid for this week; and I have been five times to see Gavault
without finding him. You see I tell you all; it is stupid to talk of
these things here when we shall have a whole day on the boat from
Chalon to Lyon, and another from Lyon to Avignon. I will try to have
lodgings prepared for you in advance, as on our other journeys, for I
think you will be obliged to stop sometimes to rest.

I have not received the cup. I don't know whether the post takes charge
of such things. In any case, however, it cannot be lost. You know I
want to make a symbolic souvenir of it. It is to be supported by four
figures: Constancy, Labour, Friendship, Victory.

Baden was to me a bouquet of flowers without a thorn. We lived there
so sweetly, so peacefully, so heart to heart! I have never been as
happy in my life; I seemed to catch a glimpse of that future I call
to, I dream of, amid my troubles and my crushing labour. I would go
to the end of the world on foot to tell you that your letters are to
me in absence what you were yourself in Baden,--a masterpiece of the
heart which is not met with twice in life. Oh! if you knew how you are
blessed and invoked at every moment. My eyes are filled with happy
tears as I think of all you are to me; those are thoughts I dwell
on with a sweetness of recollection that nothing equals; that is my
excess; I allow myself that, as your dainty daughter allows herself
peaches.

I leave you; I have five folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE to correct. I
will write you to-morrow before beginning work. You can tell yourself
that in spite of toil, errands, business of all kinds and at all hours,
I am thinking of you; that your name is on my lips, in my head, in my
heart, and that I only live and breathe in you. You can add that I am
saying and repeating to myself incessantly: "On the 24th I shall see
her! I shall live ten days of her life!"


October 16.

Dear countess, I am working much; I wrote you in such haste yesterday
that I had no time to read over what I had written. I shall see you
perhaps this day week.

With the enticing prospect of that blessed 24th it is impossible for me
to put two ideas together; on the other hand, I have the sad certainty
of being unable to do fine literary work so long as I cannot see
daylight in my business affairs and have not paid integrally all my
creditors. Worried on that side, and absorbed on the other by a deep,
exclusive, passionately controlling sentiment, I can do nothing--the
mind is no longer here. This is not a complaint, nor a compliment,
it is truth. I have just come to a decision which will obviate this
misfortune; it is to end the twelfth volume of the COMÉDIE HUMAINE with
"Madame de la Chanterie." That relieves me from making seven folios
(which would have brought in nine thousand francs). Far from you I
am only happy when I am seeing you in thought and memory, when I am
thinking of you; and I think of you too much _for copy_.

I have received the pretty cup, and I want to make a marvel of it.
When you hold this letter, tell yourself that we are each going toward
the other. Take care in every way. Attend to your health; it is the
property of your child--I dare not say mine, and yet, what have I else
in this world? If anything in what I say displeases you, excuse it by
the haste in which I scribble. I have only time to close my letter by
saying, _à bientôt_.



MARSEILLE, November 12, 1845.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, Naples. Balzac had joined her at Chalon
and accompanied her, with her daughter and Count Mniszech (whom Anna
was now engaged to marry), to Naples. This letter was written on his
way back to Paris.--TR.]

I have this instant arrived, without my luggage or my passport; I have
not breakfasted; but while they are laying the table, I sit down to
write to you, dear countess, as usual; for it is, on arriving, my first
and greatest need.

It has _blown_ ever since I left Naples, "blown a gale" as they said
on the boat, with "a heavy sea." Those, as you know, are the innocent
words with which sailors disguise the most frightful weather. Ours
was so bad that we were obliged to put into Toulon yesterday, but
_La Santé_ [health officers] would not allow the purser of the ship,
or your humble diplomatic servant to land with the most important
despatches the East ever forwarded. It was seven o'clock; the sun
was down; _La Santé_ vacated its office. We told _La Santé_ that it
took upon its own head the greatest responsibility and was terribly
high-handed. _La Santé_ laughed in our faces, and we were forced to
spend the night on board and come on to Marseille. I was not sea-sick,
but everybody else, sailors excepted, was badly so. That was not all;
it rained in torrents the whole way. The yellow waters of the Tiber and
the Arno could be seen in the sea to a great distance; the littoral was
flooded. To all my griefs no aggravation was lacking. But I had one
diversion. I went to Pisa, and in spite of the beating rain I saw all;
except your admirer, M. C. The cathedral and the baptistery enchanted
me; but that enchantment was mingled with the thought that during this
year I had admired nothing without you until now; and I looked at those
noble things with deep melancholy.

At Civita Vecchia I landed, in memory of you, and went to see that
antiquity-shop, where you sat down. I there learned that Madame Bocarmé
had been telling tales about my journey; of no importance, however,
for who cares about the gossip of that intriguing old lady! You were
very right; I repent having written your name for Anna, as I always
repent when I have had the misfortune not to obey you in matters you
have thoroughly divined. Such is the exact tale of my journey. As for
sentiments, I shall have to invent new words, so weary must you be with
my elegies. I looked at the Hôtel des Victoires as long as I could.
Not a woman appeared on deck; they were only manifested by dreadful
vomitings, which rattled the panels of the ship as much as the fury of
the seas.

Here comes my breakfast to interrupt me.


Midnight.

Méry has just left me. I offered him tea and whist at ten sous a
fish; not ruinous, as you see. Here is the history of my day. After
breakfast I went to bed, for I was tired. Méry, to whom I had written
a line, came while I was asleep, and found me in such a magnificent
attitude of repose that he respected it. But he returned while I was
dressing, and we went to the shop of a dealer in antiquities, where I
found some very beautiful things. I chose a few trifles which seemed
to me true bargains to snatch; you know I never buy in any other way.
After leaving these shops we went to dinner,[1] and then returned here
for tea. I have lost five francs and won the collaboration of Méry
for several plays that I have in view. He is going to have the affair
of the two _savants_ copied, and we will have it printed for you. A
curious autograph of Méry's and some verses he has charged me to send
you are herewith inclosed. That will give you pleasure, will it not?

I leave to-morrow at eleven o'clock; so that I shall have stayed
only-forty-eight hours at Marseille, where I have been much occupied by
bric-à-brac, and somewhat by Méry. I must close this letter and send
it, for the mail goes to-morrow to Italy.

[Footnote 1: See Memoir, p. 272--TR.]


November 13, nine in the morning.

Adieu again, dear countess; I shall not write you more until I reach
Passy. You know well what is in my heart and soul and memory for you
and your two children--for Georges is like a first-born to you. I am
still stupid from the sea-voyage, even in writing to you; the roll of
the vessel is in my head; you will excuse me, will you not? I wrote you
with my feet still wet with sea-water. To-morrow I take the mail-cart
for Paris. I have spent a great deal, apart from my purchases. In the
first place, on the ship the water was not drinkable; I had to have
champagne, and I could not drink it alone beside the captain and the
purser, who had been admirably attentive to me. All that was much
extra. Then I had to ask some gentlemen to breakfast this morning at
the Hôtel de l'Orient; politeness required it; besides, that is part
of my make-up as author of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE. Don't cry out at the
extravagance; and say nothing about it to Georges, who would take me
for a Lucullus and laugh at me.

Affectionate homage, and all tenderness of heart to your adorable
child, and to the excellent Georges. I am going to work to rejoin
you. Perhaps you will see Méry in Florence; he has arranged to make
the journey with me. Take good care of yourself, and tell yourself
sometimes that there is a poor being at Passy very far from his sun.
I am like Méry,--very chilly when in Paris. You are my Provence. Méry
talked much of you to me; you are very sympathetic to him. He took
full notice of your Olympian brow, which has something of a Pagan
god and the Christian angel and a little of the demon (I mean the
demon of knowledge). Those who know you as I do can aspire to but one
thing beside you; and that is to comprehend, enjoy, and love your soul
more and more, if only to become better by intercourse with you and
your etherealized spirit. That is my prayer, the desire of my human
religion, and my last yearning thought towards you.



PARIS, November 18, 1845.

Dear countess, I arrived here so fatigued that I was forced to go to
bed, and have only just risen for dinner, and shall return to bed
directly after it. I have a severe lumbago and fever; I feel all
kneaded and broken. I went beyond my strength. At Marseille I was
perpetually in company, and that added greatly to the effects of the
voyage. You saw the life I led in Naples,--always going, rushing,
looking, examining, observing, and talking! So that these last three
nights in the mail-cart, without sleep, added to twelve days on
shipboard and rushing about Naples, have vanquished my health, vigorous
as it is. I went out this morning to the custom-house and to see Émile
de Girardin, and this evening to see M. F... I am not yet recovered; I
still have lumbago and fever, but a good night's sleep will cure me.


November 19.

Georges' commissions will be handed to him about December 15 by the
captain of the "Tancrède." His cane is ordered and will soon be
finished. My affairs are doing well; but I shall not finish everything
by the end of the year; and as long as I have a single creditor, it
would be imprudent to raise the mask by becoming a property-owner.

Chlendowski gives me the greatest uneasiness. He threatens to go into
bankruptcy if he is not aided. I never knew a man lie like him. What
you did for love of France with Laurent-Jan, I have done for Poland
with Chlendowski. Fate tells us, dear countess, to take care of none
but ourselves. Honest folk, believe me, have enough to do in that way
without undertaking the care of others. If Chlendowski fails, I shall
lose ten thousand francs; the thought makes me shudder.

I have given orders to search Paris for a house all built and ready;
for it is impossible, in view of the scarcity of money, that a fine
house could not be had for a hundred and fifty thousand francs.


November 21.

I rose at nine o'clock, a lump of lead! I am making up my arrears of
sleep. Alas! my good genius will hear with pain that I am forced to
set myself an Herculean task. I must put my papers in order, and it is
now ten years since I have touched them. What labour! I have to make a
bundle for each creditor, with bill and receipt in perfect order, under
pain of paying twice for what was never due. It will give me a fever
till it is all done. But I am in such haste to return to Italy and
to my dear troupe, never to leave them again, that I find courage to
drive all my affairs abreast,--manuscripts, completions of everything,
publishers, debts, even the purchase of a property worthy of the author
of LA G-R-R-R-ANDE COMÉDIE HUMAINE.

I must bid you abruptly adieu, and hurry out on business, so as to
be able to-morrow to return to regular hours of rising and working.
I intend to rise at four every day. Adieu, then, dear, distant star,
which scintillates forever, ceaselessly, as memory and as consolation.


November 25.

Yesterday I rushed the whole day; twenty-five francs carriage hire!
I went to see my sister; then to Girardin at the "Presse," where my
account is settled. Girardin takes "Les Petites Misères," and I must
now finish them. Then I went to Plon's printing-office. I saw A. de
B... about the renewal of Chlendowski's notes; and I am now expecting
the said Chlendowski to explain his position to me. After which, I must
go out again and see M. Gavault to regulate his account, and know what
he has paid. All that is not proof of activity; it is simply becoming
the wheel of a machine.

Chlendowski came. I spoke to him sternly and with dignity. I told
him that in order to help a man who had summoned me, I must have
guarantees; I must have a deed legally drawn, and a deposit of the
wood-cuts which are to illustrate "Les Petites Misères;" and on that
condition I was willing to renew his notes for three thousand eight
hundred francs. The man took my arm, in the Polish fashion, and kissed
it humbly. In this way I shall be secured if he fails, and A. de B...
consents to keep the wood-cuts. See what difficulties and worries! We
have an appointment for to-morrow, and I must now go to M. Gavault and
consult on this deed of guaranty. I dine with Émile de Girardin, who
wants to know if "Les Petites Misères" is _publishable_.


November 27.

I have no news of my purchases at Amsterdam. But, on the other hand,
I found on my return a letter from a ship-owner in Havre, asking for
an interview. I wrote to M. Periollas, asking him to inquire about my
cases, and also about the ship-owner. I have just received his answer;
he says he knows nothing about the cases, but that the ship-owner is
building a ship which he wants to call "Le Balzac;" and Periollas asks
me to write a pretty letter to the ship-owner because he adores me. So,
dear countess, your servitor will be carved on the prow of a vessel and
show his fat face to all the nations; what do you say to that?

I have just heard strange, sad news,--Harel is mad, and Karr also. I
prefer not to believe it.


November 28.

I have received a letter from Lirette inviting me to the ceremony of
her taking the vows and veil. This letter has prevented me from sending
my packet to you by the boat of December 1, for I want you to know of
this at once; but it really hurts me to think what anxiety the delay
may cause you.

I assure you that my life here is no longer endurable. I live in
a whirlwind of errands, business, consultations, legal notices,
corrections, which deprive me of all reflection, pressed as I am on all
sides, with not a soul to help me, doing all myself. Yesterday I worked
seven hours on "Les Petites Misères" ... Is it written above that,
until the end, I shall be harried and driven like a college drudge?



PASSY, December 3, 1845.

I could not write to you yesterday; I had very pressing proofs for the
"Presse" (which wants the whole of "Les Petites Misères" at once), and
also for LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE. So that having risen at half-past two in
the morning, I worked till midday. I had scarcely time to breakfast and
reach the convent at one o'clock.

These good sisters really think that the world turns for them alone.
I asked the portress how long the ceremony would last; she replied,
"An hour." So I thought to myself: I can see Lirette after it and get
back in time for my business at the printing-office. Well, it lasted
till four o'clock! Then I had, in decency, to see the poor girl; and
I did not get away till half-past five. But I don't blame Lirette; it
was right that her dear countess and her Anna should be represented
at the burial of their friend; so I went through it bravely. I had a
fine place beside the officiating priest. The sermon lasted nearly
an hour; it was well-written and well-delivered; not strong, but full
of faith. The officiating priest went to sleep (he was an old man).
Lirette never stirred. She was on her knees between two postulants.
The little girls were ranged on one side of the choir, the Chapter
on the other, behind the grating, which was made transparent for the
occasion. Lirette, together with the postulants, listened to the
exhortation-sermon on her knees and did not raise her eyes. Her face
was white, pure, and stamped with the enthusiasm of a saint. As I had
never seen the ceremony of taking the veil, I watched, observed, and
studied everything with a deep attention which made them take me, I
have no doubt, for a very pious man. On arriving, I prayed for you and
for your children fervently; for each time that I see an altar I take
my flight to God and humbly and ardently dare to ask his goodness for
me and mine--who are you and yours. The chapel, with its white and gold
altar, was a very pretty one; it belongs to the Order of the Visitation
of Gresset. The ceremony was imposing and very dramatic. I felt deeply
moved when the three new sisters threw themselves on the ground, and
were buried beneath a mortuary pall while prayers for the dead were
recited over those living creatures, and when, after that, we saw them
rise and appear as brides, crowned with white roses, to make their vows
of espousal to Jesus Christ.

An incident occurred. The youngest of the sisters, pretty as a dream
of love, was so agitated that when it came to pronouncing the vows
she was forced to stop short, precisely at the vow of chastity. It
lasted thirty seconds at most; but it was awful; there seemed to be
uncertainty. For my part, I admit that I was shaken to the depths of my
soul; the emotion I felt was too great for an unknown cause. The poor
little thing soon came to herself, and the ceremony went on without
further hindrance.

When one has seen the taking of the veil in France, one feels a pity
for writers who talk of forced vows. Nothing can be more free. If a
young girl were constrained what prevents her from stopping everything?
The world is there as spectator, and the officiating priest asks
twice if she has fully reflected on the vows she desires to take. I
saw Lirette after the ceremony; she was gay as a lark. "You are now
Madame," I said, laughing. She replied she was so happy she asked
God continually to make us all priests and nuns! We ended by talking
seriously of you and your dear child.

Dear countess, I hope you will find here a proof of my affection, for
I was overwhelmed with work and business. But Lirette had written,
"I am sure that nothing will prevent you from being present." I knew
too well the meaning she attached to that not to determine it should
be fulfilled. I was happy there, for I thought exclusively of you,
after I had made my prayers. To think of you who are my religion and
my life, is to think of God. I feel but too well that if your glorious
friendship failed me I should lose consciousness of myself, I should
become insane, or die.

December 4, 1845.

To-morrow I am going to see, in the rue des Petits-Hôtels, Place
Lafayette (you know), a little house that is there for sale. It is
close beside that church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, the Byzantine church
we went to see, and where a funeral was going on. You said, looking
at the vacant ground near the church which I pointed out to you: "I
should not be unwilling to live here; we should be near God, and far
from the world." From what I am told I think I could buy the house and
might even do so without consulting you; it would be firing on the fly
at a pheasant. My next letter will tell you if it is done. The rue
des Petits-Hôtels joins the rue d'Hauteville (which goes down to the
boulevard near the Gymnase), and, by the rue Montholon, it intersects
the rue Saint-Lazare and the rue de la Pépinière. It is in the centre
of that part of Paris which is called the right bank, and will always
be the region of the boulevards and theatres. It is also the upper
banking quarter.

My letter must go to-morrow if I want the "Tancrède" to take it. "Les
Petites Misères de la Vie conjugale" is finished. To-morrow I begin the
last folio (sixteen pages) that remains to do on LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE;
then all will have been delivered to Chlendowski. I expect to finish
the novel for Souverain by the 20th or 25th of December. Then I need
three months for the seven volumes of "Les Paysans;" that will bring
me to March 15. My mother's affairs will take some time, as well as
the clearing up of my liquidation accounts. I do wish, you see, not to
leave any business behind me in quitting Paris for perhaps eighteen
months; and when I return it must be to my own home. I have promised
you that, and I will no longer deceive myself by thinking that I can do
the impossible.

T see with grief that I shall, apparently, have to sacrifice Florence
and Rome to the work and the business that will secure, as you say, the
repose and safely of my future. To spend immense sums in going to see
you for only eight days, and returning to find suits and worries of
all kinds is senseless! I must have, as you say, the courage to spare
myself these mistaken calculations and these bootless sorrows. I shall
try to go to Rome for Holy Week, for I shall then be so weary I shall
need some distraction; but if by sacrificing that happiness I should
obtain your _satisfecit_ and what you call a "position worthy of me,"
I should not hesitate. Will you, at last, approve of me a little? Tell
me so, then, for I have great need of being sustained by you in my
hard and cruel resolutions. Don't you see, nothing is ever done in the
time I assign for things. If LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE is not finished by
December 25, I cannot have the money for it before January 15, 1846,
and if I do not get it till then, my payments are delayed that time.
So with "Les Paysans;" I shall not be paid till March. Money rules me
absolutely when it is a question of paying creditors. Well, between now
and a month hence all will be done. But if you only knew the steps,
the tramps! Creditors for three hundred francs cost as much search and
verification as those for thirty thousand--it is a labyrinth, a hydra!

Adieu, dear distant star, yet always present; soft and celestial light,
without which all would be darkness within me and without me. Oh! I
entreat you, take care of yourself. I am not too anxious about your
little illness; it is only an effect of the climate; they told me that
on the ship, and strong constitutions are often the most tried. But I
tell you and I repeat it to you: take care of yourself. Remember that
you are the glory and honour and sole treasure of a poor being who
loves you exclusively, who thinks of you only, whose acts, as well
as his thoughts and dreams, are emanations from that moral sun of
affection which is his whole soul in its relation to you. Bless you a
thousand times for your punctuality in writing! Tell me everything;
all that happens to you, with every possible detail; nothing is
insignificant to me if it concerns you. Do as I do. Among all the great
worries of my life, as troubled as yours is calm and serene, I do not a
pass a day without writing you a line, as a merchant makes up his day
book. Well, a few more efforts, and a little patience, and I hope to
have conquered the right to never leave you again.



PASSY, December 13, 1845.

Dear countess; I am overcome by the same nostalgia which I felt before
I went to Chalon. It is excessively difficult for me to write; my
thought is not free; it no longer belongs to me. I believe that I
cannot recover my faculties under eighteen months, perhaps. You must
resign yourself to endure me beside you. Since Dresden I have done no
great thing. The beginning of "Les Paysans" and the end of "Béatrix"
were my last efforts; since then, nothing has been possible to me.
Yesterday, during the whole day, I felt a sombre and dreadful gloom
within me.

Yet I must finish the six folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE. Furne has
come. He has excellent intentions. On my side, I _must_ complete this
undertaking, which is all my future. But the heart is as absolute as
the brain, it is indifferent to whatever is not itself; millions to
win, a fortune of fame and self-love satisfied is nothing to the heart.

Your letter describes to me a similar state with much truth and
eloquence. That letter, in which pain is more contagious than the
plague, and over which I wept your tears, shuddering to find there what
I felt myself, that letter has filled the measure of my inward and
hidden malady. Nothing but my interests can drag me out of the deep
despondency that has now laid hold upon me. Paris is a dreadful desert;
nothing gives me pleasure, nothing contents me; I am under the empire
of some passionate invading force without analogy in my life. I compare
the twenty-four towns we saw together with one another; I try to recall
your observations, your ideas, your advice; motion fatigues me, rest
depresses me. I get up, I walk, but my body is absent, I see it, I feel
it; at times, as I tell you, this is madness. It is very probable that
if my six folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE were finished I could go to
Naples; and that thought is the only means of making me do them. What
could I not obtain from myself under the hope of that immense joy, were
it only for one week? I tell myself there are a thousand reasons why I
ought to see you, consult you; that I can do nothing without you. In
short my mind is the accomplice of my heart and will.

Meantime, awaiting the result, I make no complaint, I am dull and
gloomy; I am like a Breton conscript, regretting his dear scones and
his Bretagne. All that is not you was once without interest to me, now
it is odious.


December 14.

Yesterday, dear countess, I went to see, in detail, the Conciergerie,
and I saw the queen's dungeon and that of Madame Elisabeth. It is all
dreadful. I saw everything thoroughly; it took the whole morning, and
I had no time to go to the rue Dauphine to do Georges' commissions.
When I went back towards the court of assizes I heard that the trial
then going on was that of Madame Colomès, niece of Maréchal Sebastiani,
a woman forty-five years of age whom I wished to see. And I found,
seated on the prisoner's bench of the court of assizes, the living
image of Madame de Berny! It was awful. She was madly in love with a
young man, and to give him money, which he spent on actresses of the
Porte-Saint-Martin, she forged indorsements in negotiating the notes
of imaginary persons. She took everything on herself (he has taken to
flight), and would not allow her lawyer to charge the blame to him.

I had never heard a case pleaded in court and I stayed to hear
Crémieux, who spoke well, _ma foi_! The unhappy creature, in order to
get money to give the young man, had abandoned herself to usurers, to
old men! Crémieux told me that she said to her lover: "I only ask you
to deceive me enough to let me fancy I am loved." She is the daughter
of a brother of the maréchal, and the wife of the engineer-in-chief
of Bridges and Highways, and a deputy. I was so deeply interested in
finding a novel seated on that bench, that I stayed till half-past four
o'clock beside the poor creature, who has been very handsome and who
wept like a Magdalen; every now and then I heard her sigh out, "Aie!
aie! aie!" in three heart-rending tones.

M. Lebel, governor of the Conciergerie, who has locked the door on
every sort of crime for the last fifteen years, is, they tell me,
the grandson of the Lebel who opened the doors of Louis XV. to the
beauties of the Parc-aux-cerfs. These vicissitudes, these striking
analogies, occur in obscure families as in the most august. The heir
of the original Lebel, the successor of him of royal pomps, had
nothing to leave on going to his death but a worn-out cravat and an
old prayer-book. When you come to Paris I must certainly show you the
Palais; it is curious and thrilling and completely unknown. Now I can
do my work ["La Dernière Incarnation de Vautrin"].

On my return home, I found I had missed Captier, Claret's friend. This
is a pity; I should have liked to talk with him about a purchase I
have in view. There is a chance of buying a bit of ground in the rue
Jean-Goujon in the best condition. It is only a stone's throw from the
Place de la Concorde.

Yesterday I found some distraction of my nostalgic misery in the
Conciergerie, and the court of assizes, and to-day I plunge into work
vehemently.

Ah! I must have my house between two gardens, without disagreeable
neighbourhood. And I will have a little greenhouse at the back of
it--But I must leave you, I must work. You do not know that I am
silently collecting very splendid art furniture by dint of researches
and tramps about Paris, economy, and privations. I don't wish to speak
to you of this; I shall not unmask my batteries until my dream takes,
more and more, the semblance of reality.


December 15.

I am now launched into work. This night I have done six pages of the
six folios I have to do; and I assure you--I, who know myself--that
that is a great deal. I shall try this week to finish LA COMÉDIE
HUMAINE.

Yesterday, after finishing my work, I went to see my sister, on a
letter she had written me saying that her eldest daughter was dying.
Sophie had really nothing more than a slight congestion of the head,
which cooling drinks relieved. I heard from Laure that a M. Bleuart
was on the point of ruin from having bought up the _quartier_ Beaujon,
and that several of the houses were for sale. I hurried there. There
are, indeed, houses and vacant ground; but of all those houses there is
but one that is anything like finished, and that one is immense; nine
windows on the front. I am going there on Wednesday with a friend of
Claret and a young man who is in the secret of M. Bleuart's affairs.
You see I bestir myself to find a really good thing, and repair in some
degree the disaster of Les Jardies; but the important thing of all is
to work. I met my old landlord of the rue des Batailles, and he told me
that ground in the rue Jean-Goujon was selling for nothing, and I ought
to make haste to buy at present prices.

On returning from Beaujon yesterday, I went to pay a visit of half an
hour to Madame de Girardin. Returning at six o'clock, I dined and was
asleep by seven. In examining my resources, I think I can do without
what you know of (the Dresden affair); it is, I have reflected,
so difficult to write, receive, and send papers of that kind that
I shall try to wait, and place the matter as a last result in its
time and place. I am so in the habit when I write to you of thinking
aloud, calculating, and recalculating, that you see and know all my
hesitations, my backings-down, my additions, etc. You are always and in
all things my sole thought; it is you, and you know it well, who are
the foundation of everything. If I had the strength this night to apply
myself to six folios it was because I want to go from Naples to Rome
with you, and for that I shall try to leave here January 11. I want to
install you in Rome, as I installed you in Naples. Madame de Girardin
calls me _il vetturino per amore_.

Adieu for to-day. How are you? Do you amuse yourself sometimes? Does
Georges take good care of both of you? If anything happens to you under
his auspices I will crush his box of insects on the boat. I bless you
every day of my life, and I thank God for your good affection. You
are my happiness, as you are my fame and my future. Do you sometimes
remember that morning at Valence on the bank of the Rhône, when our
gentle talk triumphed over your neuralgia as we walked for two hours
in the dawn, both ill, yet without perceiving the cold or our own
sufferings? Believe me, such memories, which are wholly of the soul,
are as powerful as the material recollections of others; for in you the
soul is more beautiful than the corporeal beauties for which the sons
of Adam destroy themselves.

Adieu till to-morrow, gentle and spiritual power, who hold subjected to
your laws your poor and fervent servitor.


December 16.

I received yesterday at four o'clock your number 4. I see that you
are still uneasy; but you have not thought of one thing, which is
that you began to write to me while I was travelling, and it requires
time to establish our regular correspondence. Thus to-day, December
16, I have received four letters from you; well, you, between now and
December 30, will have received four letters from me. What is the
difference?--fourteen days. But those fourteen days were five at sea,
three at Marseille, three in a mail-cart, and the first week in Paris,
during which I wrote to you from here. I calculate that you have to-day
received my packet by the "Tancrède." That was my number 2; on the
24th you will get my number 3, sent by Anselme de Rothschild; and this
will reach you on the 30th, because it will leave here on the 21st.
So, dear countess, in spite of the uneasiness which this early failure
of the superior force has caused you, you see I am not in fault; I have
written to you every day,--too much, in fact, for I have done nothing
but think of you, and I have written too little for _posterity_; and
not to write retards my liberation.

_Mon Dieu_, how your letters make me live! I have an idolatry for those
dear papers; I am like a child about them; your punctuality delights
me. Never think that I mistake the value of such goodness on your part.
I entreat you, take care of yourself; those pains in your stomach worry
me. Mine have disappeared, or at least I seldom suffer from them. What
is deplorable is that work fatigues me, the symptoms that happiness and
the journeys of this year drove away are returning. My eyes throb, the
temples also, and I feel weary. I have had to buy a candelabrum for
five candles; three were no longer enough, my eyes pained me. So that
ugly little candlestick of tarnished gilt, which you must have noticed
in my study, is now replaced by a ministerial candelabrum of unheard-of
magnificence in bronze, chased and gilt; but it burns one franc fifty
centimes' worth of wax-candles every night; do you hear that, madame?
Now, two francs for fire, and fifty centimes of coffee besides, make
four francs a night. The Arabian Nights cost dear.

Dear countess, I can give Lirette her capital without any difficulty.
Tell me how much you intend for her, and I will pay it to her at once.
I will go to the convent and settle it with her. I shall be quite
content to receive it back in May. Why give yourself the trouble of
sending money here. Let me be, for once at least, your business agent.

I have not yet obtained your fantastic set of jewels; but I shall have
them soon. Froment-Meurice desires to distinguish himself on Georges'
cane, and I don't know whether it will be done by New Year's day. He
is a great artist. I assure you it is quite alarming to see how much
talent and genius there are in Paris.

I am so cautious about all that concerns you that I shall not risk
sending this letter on the 17th; for the boat leaves on the 21st, and
at this season the mail-cart might be delayed; therefore I prefer to
put my letter in the post to-day, 16th. So I cannot tell you anything
about the Bleuart houses; but you shall know all by the letter leaving
January 1; you will know also whether I can take the steamboat that
starts on the 11th. Do not insist, I entreat you, on forbidding it.
In the first place I warn you that, not only you will not be listened
to, but I shall be very happy in disobeying you. That means nothing,
however, for the greatest happiness must always consist, for me, in the
most complete submission to your sovereign will, ever and everywhere.
But, I repeat, you alone will be responsible if you persist.

I still have no news of my purchases at Amsterdam; those are furniture
griefs. I have just heard of a great misfortune; the beautiful Madame
Delaroche, daughter of Horace Vernet, is dead.

Well, _à bientôt_. Consent with a good grace, because you will gain
nothing by refusing. Do you not think it may be the food at the Hotel
Vittoria which gives you those pains in your stomach?



PASSY, December 17, 1845.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Naples.]

Dear countess; my ability to work only lasted two days. I am again
seized by _spleen_, complicated with nostalgia, or, if you like, by an
ennui I never felt before. Yes, this is _true ennui_; nothing amuses
me, nothing distracts me, nothing enlivens me; it is a death of the
soul, a death of the will, the collapse of the whole being. I feel that
I cannot take up my work until I see my life decided, fixed, settled.
LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE--I no longer care for it; I will let Chlendowski sue
me for the folios that are lacking; I cannot think for the six that
are to finish the sixteen volumes. More than that, to-morrow I was to
go and see a house of which they tell me marvels; and that scarcely
interests me. I am exhausted. I have waited too long; I have hoped too
much; I have been too happy this last year; and I can wish no longer.
To have been, after so many years of toil and misfortune, free as a
bird of the air, a thoughtless traveller, superhumanly happy, and then
to come back to a dungeon! Is that possible? I dream, I dream by day,
by night; and my heart's thought, returning upon itself, prevents
all action of the brain thought--it is fearful! I have sent for "Les
Mystères de Londres," which you told me had amused you; I will read it
to escape myself.


December 18.

Yesterday I read "Les Mystères de Londres" from two o'clock in the
afternoon till midnight; I read the book through. It is a little better
than Sue or Dumas; but not good; it made me feverish.

This morning Captier came for me; and I have returned with a bad cold
from the Beaujon _quartier_. It was raining in torrents; we stood with
our feet in the mud and our shoulders wet for three hours, and I was
seized with a sore throat which has almost extinguished my voice. The
house we went to see is held at two hundred thousand francs and we
offered eighty thousand. It is large and handsome; with nine windows
front, two storeys, a magnificent ground-floor, and ill-arranged first
floor which would have to be entirely remodelled. There would be twenty
thousand francs, at least, to spend upon it. Besides which, it has an
insolent air; it looks like a great restaurant, and the sacrifices
made to the outside are immense inconveniences; for instance, you
enter it from a portico which would require a vast awning over it.
Another thing: the land in the rue Jean-Goujon is impossible; they ask
twenty-five thousand francs for it. There is no ground in Paris for a
hundred francs the metre; and there are nearly four metres in a fathom.
You can judge if the Monceau land is a good bargain. I shall keep where
I am, and not hasten anything; I think that is wisest.


December 20.

A terrible misfortune has happened. The Doubs has overflowed: the water
is higher than in any former flood; the bridge my brother-in-law was
building has been swept away. I am now going to see my sister.--

I found at Laure's a very concise letter from the doctor of the
"Leonidas" telling me he had seen you in Naples. The letter only
reached me to-day and he says that he leaves on the 21st. He asks for
an answer, which I have sent in four words, but I do not know whether
he will receive it. My depression still continues. I am reading "Les
Trois Mousquetaires," and I suffer from my cold.

I found desolation at my sister's home; her daughter is ill; I stayed
there all day trying to brighten them up. Can you conceive that my
brother-in-law, having two bridges to build this year, should have
gone to Spain with M. de P..., a man who, as I suppose, is looking for
fortune on the hope of building a railroad in Spain. My sister owned
that it was she who induced her husband to make this journey; and the
luckless man writes to her that Spain has cost him dear, for if he had
himself superintended the building of the Doubs bridge it would have
been finished and delivered; in which case the disaster from natural
forces would have fallen on the government.

The contracts for the Chemin de fer du Nord are given out to-day; if
Rothschild awards them, the shares of that railway will certainly rise.

Adieu for to-day. I re-plunge into "Les Trois Mousquetaires," for life
without work is intolerable, and I continue to think of you with a
persistence that alarms me. I remain, stupid, in one place; and I don't
know what would happen to me if I flung myself into work desperately.
I have not a thought that is not for you; I have no will other than
to go where you are; I am, as it were, driven by that desire; and,
nailed to this spot by necessity, I remain motionless with grief.
It is impossible for me to forget; I pass whole hours with my eyes
fixed on that table-cloth embroidered by your dear little white-mouse
paws; in gazing at its squares, red, green, and its striped lines,
thinking of you, and recalling the infinitely trifling details of that
journey--No, instead of scolding me, have pity on me, for I am truly
too unhappy. I implore work, and it refuses me inspiration. I hope,
nevertheless, that this may not last always, and that one of these days
will see me seriously at my table for the service, if not the profit,
of his Majesty the Public.


December 21.

I have read "Les Trois Mousquetaires" and that was all I did yesterday.
I went to bed at seven o'clock, and I have now got up at four in the
morning. I am better in mind; I have a real desire to work; and that
desire seems to me of good augury. Besides, it _must_ be done; all
things urge me to it,--the money to earn, the obligations to fulfil,
liberty, and the possibility of seeing you the sooner. Can you imagine,
dear star of my life, that money says nothing to me now? No, truly,
it does not stir me. There is no longer in my soul any vestige of
ambition, any desire for fortune; porcelains, pictures, all those
things of luxury that I have loved, I am now indifferent to. Oh! what a
tyrant is a sentiment like mine! how all things disappear before it!

I can understand, dear countess, why you were shocked at "Les
Mousquetaires," you so well-informed, knowing, above all, the history
of France, not only from the historical point of view, but even to the
smallest details of the cabinet of the kings and the private dinners of
the queens. One is certainly sorry to have read this book, if only from
disgust with one's self for having wasted one's time,--the precious
stuff of which life is made. It is not so that we reach the last page
of a novel of Walter Scott; this is not the sentiment with which we
leave him; we re-read Scott, but I do not think we shall re-read Dumas.
He is a charming narrator; but he ought to renounce history, or else
study it, and know it better.

On opening my window on the street side this morning I had a giddiness,
and I still have the blood in my head. I shall take a foot bath
and it will pass away. Besides, if I work, the equilibrium will be
re-established, and I am going to work. Oh! if you only knew what
respect I feel for myself, knowing that a being so perfect, a woman so
accomplished takes interest in my existence. For a year past I have no
memory except for her; for two weeks now I think of nothing but of how
to return to her. I arrange the crumbs of my feast, I absorb myself in
the recollection of nothings which turn into poems.

Did you know that Schwab was in Paris? He came to see me this morning,
and--would you believe it?--I saw Schwab with delight, for Schwab
is the Hague. Do you remember a certain walk we took to the Chinese
bazaar, behind the children? No, never did two souls give themselves
to each other with more poesy, more charm! These recollections are to
me so many suns, shining on the Spitzberg; they make me live; I live
by them alone. There are things in the past (the past that is yours)
that give me the effect of a gigantic flower--which shall I say?--a
magnolia, moving, walking, one of those dreams of youth, too poetic,
too beautiful to be ever realized--

Forgive me! I have been sitting here stupefied; I have wept like a
child,--I am so unhappy to be at Passy when you are at Naples! I have
let myself go, I have let myself write to you in this letter that
which I dream at all hours, and in thought it is less dangerous than
formulated. In thought it is the gossamer thread athwart the azure;
here, upon this paper, it is an iron cable which wrings and presses me
till the blood gushes out in tears of despair.

Adieu for to-day; if I listened to myself I should write you till
to-morrow. I am beside myself with regret and pain; I implore my work
to keep me sane.


December 22.

I dined yesterday with Madame de Girardin, and heard excellent music
from Mademoiselle Delarue. She is the daughter of a worthy old man whom
you knew in Vienna. Gautier, who was there, made me promise to go and
take haschisch with him to-night at the Hôtel Pimodan. I must now go
out on all sorts of tiresome business.


December 23.

I resisted the haschisch; that is, I did not experience any of the
phenomena they talked of. My brain is so solid that it needed, perhaps,
a stronger dose. Nevertheless I did hear celestial voices and saw
divine pictures; after which I descended Lauzun's staircase during
twenty years. I saw gildings and paintings in a salon of fairy-like
splendour. But this morning, since waking, I am half asleep, and
without strength or will.[1]

[Footnote 1: Théophile Gautier has related this evening in his essay on
Baudelaire, in the "Portraits et Souvenirs littéraires."]


December 25.

Yesterday I slept the whole day, and to-morrow I am going to Rouen to
see some ebony panels which, I am told, can be had for nothing. This
morning M. Captier is coming for me to see some land in the rue du
Rocher. It is impossible to get that Dujarier legacy paid. I have lost
a whole day rushing about on that business and attained nothing. I
still cannot work.


December 27.

I started yesterday from Passy at six in the morning; at seven I was on
the railroad and at eleven I was at Rouen. It is the route I took with
you and Anna. Is not that telling you that I thought the whole way of
you two? I transported myself back in thought to that day when we saw
Rouen; it was a fête I gave myself. I was happy, oh! very happy! I saw
the treacherous confectioner, and I recalled my atrocious sufferings
when I thought myself poisoned between Rouen and Mantes. Ah! how kind
you were! then, as always, my guardian angel and beneficent star.

I found at Rouen the relics of a regal piece of furniture which I
bought for eighty francs. That is doing business! True, it will cost a
good deal to repair and arrange it; that frightens me, but I shall give
it to a cabinet-maker, and then my remorse will be complete.

Another result, not quite so satisfactory; as I had eaten nothing all
day, I came back with a dreadful headache.


December 28.

I have just returned from the post-office; no letters from Naples. I
begin to be very uneasy, for I ought to have one of the 18th, which
is the day the steamboat sailed; allowing six days for navigation
and three days from Marseille here, that is nine days. I have just
seen an advertisement of a house in the rue du Montparnasse; they ask
ninety thousand francs for it, with costs that would make it a hundred
thousand. I will go and see it; it is in the Luxembourg quarter.

I must bid you adieu; each time I close a letter and take it to the
post I seem to be going myself to meet you. Ah! _à propos_, do not let
us calumniate any one. The Duc de S... died from other causes than
those you think. It is a curious history, which I will tell you some
day. He was going to be married, and when he saw that his bride would
never be anything but his bride, less philosophical than Louis XVIII.,
he blew out his brains.

M. Captier has brought me the plan of a house; to cost from forty to
fifty thousand francs; with land costing fifty thousand, that would
be a hundred thousand; but I cling to the hope of finding a house all
complete for that money. I shall wait.

My incapacity for work makes me very unhappy. On Wednesday, the last
day of the year, I dine with Madame de Girardin, in order to take
measures with Nestor Roqueplan for the Variétés. I shall then begin to
work seriously at "Richard Cœur-d'Éponge." I tell you this that you
may know what I am doing or expect to do. You will receive this letter
on your first of January, which is our 6th, your anniversary. God grant
that in this coming year of 1846 we may never be parted for a moment;
that you will lay down the burden of your responsibilities, and will
have no others. Those are my ostensible prayers; there is another that
I keep for myself alone. I end this year loving you more than ever;
blessing you for all the immense consolations that I owe to you, which
even now are life to me. At moments I think myself ungrateful when
I recall this year of 1845, and I say to myself that I have only to
remember in order to be happy. What I have in my heart, that is my
haschisch! I need only retire there to be in heaven.

Dear star, luminous, yet ever, alas! so distant, above all never be
discouraged; hope, have faith in your fervent servitor; believe that
when you read these lines I shall again be working, sending off my
sheets of "copy," and that I shall soon be free to go to you; if,
indeed, you do not forbid it too rigorously. But no, you could not have
the courage, knowing me so unhappy, to refuse me the only consolation
that enables me to bear my life.




IX.


LETTERS DURING 1846.[1]

[Footnote 1: Concerning the letters of this year, see Appendix.--TR.]



PASSY, January 1, 1846. One year more, dear, and I take it with
pleasure; for these years, these thirteen years which will be
consummated in February on the happy day, a thousand times blessed,
when I received that adorable letter starred with happiness and hope,
seem to me links indestructible, eternal. The fourteenth will begin
in two months; and all the days of these years have added to my
admiration, to my attachment, to my fidelity, like that of a dog.

I have a very Grandet mind, I assure you. A few days more, and if
the King of Holland were to offer me sixty thousand francs for my
Florentine furniture, he could not have it! It is still more so in
matters of the heart. I shall have proved it to you fourteen years from
now, when you have seen me forgetting nothing of all my happinesses,
great or small.


January 4.

O dear countess, I received this morning, at half-past eight o'clock,
the letter of your dear child with the portrait of Leonidas; decidedly,
I shall have an "Album Gringalet." I do not understand why on the 22nd
you had not received my letter of the 3rd, sent from Rothschild's
counting-room. When this letter leaves it will be the seventh on its
way to you. I have never failed to tell you day by day what happens to
me; and you will see on your return that I have written the oftenest.
I am going to see your dear Lirette; for I do not wish to forget that
I am a substitute for both of you, mother and daughter, towards her;
moreover, I want to know at what periods she wishes to receive the sum
you have given me for her.

I dined, as I told you I should in my last letter, with Nestor
Roqueplan, on the last day of the year, at the illustrious Delphine's.
We laughed as much as I am capable of laughing without you and far away
from you. Delphine is really a queen of conversation; "that evening
she was particularly sublime, sparkling, ravishing. Gautier was there
also; I came away after a long talk with him; he had been assured there
was no hurry about "Richard Cœur-d'Éponge," the theatre having more
than enough on hand. Gautier and I may make our play together later.
Such was the result of this dinner, the history of which is your due.
Returning home, I met two or three bores, who tired me much. You will
not believe that, for you seem ignorant that I like to have no one but
you, and to see none but you in the world. But, dear countess, the sad
thing is, that I cannot write a line, and I groan--


January 5, midnight.

Here is a strange thing! I received this morning your long letter, one
day later than that of your daughter; this is a mystery, for both came
from Marseille.

Oh! dearest, what a day I have had! atrocious, dreadful, awful! I had
errands to do; I was to go to Froment-Meurice, then to M. Gavault,
then to a ship-builder who is building a ship he is bent on naming for
me, then to the newspaper offices, especially the "Presse." At midday,
after breakfast, I went to the post; good! I received a fine thick
letter, very heavy; my heart quivered with joy. Ah! I was happy! so
happy that in the carriage from Passy to Paris I opened my letter a
thousand times blessed, and read, and read! At last I reached the page
dictated to you by the strange and inconceivable conduct of Madame
A. and Koref; and after having read your crushing reflections I was
thrown into consternation. I closed the letter and put it in my pocket.
At first, any one might have seen my tears; then I was overcome by a
sadness of which the following were the physical effects: Two inches of
snow were on the pavements of Paris; I was in thin boots; so unhappy
was I that I wanted air, I was choking in the _fiacre_. I stopped
it, and got out in the rue de Rivoli and walked, walked, my feet in
the snow, across all Paris, through crowded streets, seeing no one,
among the carriages, noticing none of them; I went, I went, on and
on, my face convulsed, like a madman. People stared at me. I marched
from the rue de Rivoli to the back of the Hôtel de Ville among all
those populous streets, not conscious of the crowd or the cold, or of
anything. What hour was it? what weather? what season? what city? Where
was I? Had any one questioned me I could not have answered him; I was
senseless with pain. Sensibility, which is the blood of the soul, was
flowing out of me in torrents through my wound. And this is what I was
saying to myself: "I have never, in my life, uttered one indiscreet
word; and here are the reasons of my silence: 1. honour and integrity;
2. certainty of injuring the object of my hopes; 3. certainty of
rendering my liquidation impossible; 4. complete uncertainty as to
the result of my wishes. And I am accused of ignoble speeches,--I,
whose conduct is irreproachable!" To meet with this injustice, even
involuntary, from you crushed me; I felt the blows of that club upon
my head at every step. Koref is an infamous spy, an Austrian spy,
well known as such; he is not received anywhere; I do not bow to him
any longer; I scarcely answer him when he speaks to me. Madame A... is
ignorant of this, she confides herself and talks of your interests and
of my affairs to the most dangerous man I know! It is truly incredible!
Moreover, Koref is allied with a very bad woman, a Madame de B... who
spreads slanders, and spies as spies spy, even outside of politics,
and merely to keep her hand in. Who knows if those people have not
already made this the subject of a report? Who knows if Koref, too well
known to be trusted any longer by the Austrian police, has not used
Madame A.'s absurd confidences to get into the service of a hyperborean
power? Ah! truly, Madame A. may have done us, without exaggeration, an
incalculable injury! I, who already have suffered a great pecuniary
loss through absurd cancans sent from Berlin, to have such sufferings,
thanks to that woman, in addition!

Thinking all this I walked on, seeing nothing before me but trouble and
confusion--Koref! whom I have not seen for eighteen months, and to
whom I have not addressed a word for three years, he to call himself
_my friend_! It is too impudent!--I walked with my heart bleeding,
my feet in the ashes of my longed-for future, and thinking ever of
the pitiless reflections that Madame A.'s fatal letter had suggested
to you. At four o'clock I reached Froment-Meurice; nothing was ready,
neither your set, nor the bracelet, nor my seal (_fulge, vivam_) which
I have waited for so long.

I went to Gavault's on foot, from the Hôtel de Ville to the Madeleine.
Gavault was frightened at my face when he saw me without soul, without
strength, without life. From there, still on foot, I went back to
Passy at eight o'clock, without feeling bodily fatigue; the bruised
soul numbed the body, mental fatigue was greater than all physical
exhaustion. At ten o'clock I went to bed; impossible to sleep. I have
lighted my candles and my fire, and taken my coffee.--I have just read
the end of your letter; and the balm of the last sheet has calmed me,
without altogether making the last echoes of my suffering cease.

Till to-morrow: bodily fatigue has come to me and I can sleep. I am
going to bed; it is one o'clock.


January 6.

To-day, January 6, is your birthday, dear countess. I wish to express
to you none but thoughts of gentleness and peace. Going to bed at one
o'clock, I fell asleep among the charming things you said to me at
the close of your letter, and I had no dreams at all. The fatigue of
yesterday, moral and physical, was such that I slept till ten o'clock.
I have just breakfasted and I return to your letter. That which is
grievous in it does not come from you; it comes from strangers, from
that silly Madame A...; and you could not have thought otherwise than
as you did on reading her letter. By a strange fatality I read only
half your letter, and I have suffered by my own fault. I could have
taken a _fiacre_ and read the rest; but, I see now, deep and violent
sensations do not reason; they rush like torrents or thunderbolts.
What upset me thus was that I saw plainly they were trying to give
you malignant impressions about me. I have no need of "society;" far
from it, I have a most profound horror of it; celebrity weighs upon
me; I thirst for a _home_, a _home of my own_, I thirst to drink long
draughts of a life in common, the life of two. I have no affection in
the world that conflicts in any manner whatsoever with what I have in
my soul, which is indeed the very substance of that soul; "the rest
is all vain dream." To finish, once for all, with bad people and bad
tales, tell yourself, dear, that society is composed of criminals
who have a horror of honest men and of men without sin; it hates the
happiness that eludes it.

Let me, before I close my letter, say this: my mind is made up; if
I am forced to abandon my hopes, if, by force of hostile and secret
persecution you should turn your back upon me, my resolutions are
fixed; the haschisch that I tried yesterday will render a man imbecile
at the end of a year; he can remain so, knowing nothing further of the
pains or joys of life, until he dies. Haschisch, as you know, is only
an extract of hemp, and hemp contains the end of man. No, if I cannot
have my beautiful dreamed-of life, I want nothing. Yesterday, all the
treasures of furniture which I have collected were so many bits of wood
and crockery to me! Poverty, were I alone, has attractions for me. I
want nothing, except in relation to the secret object of my life; that
object is the supreme motive of all my prayers, my steps, my efforts,
my ideas, my toils, of the fame I seek to acquire, in short of my
future and of all that I am. For thirteen years this aspiration has
been the principle of my blood--for ideas and sentiments work through
the blood.

I thank you for the instructions you give me about Lirette. I will pay
her the sum agreed upon to-morrow at her convent, and I will inquire
the amount that you must still add. I am so glad to do any business
for you that you ought to make me give you a commission for it. Poor
dear Atala [a name by which he called her in jest], poor dear Anna, the
picture of your losses and financial deceptions distresses me; alas!
there is nothing to be done but to return to your own home as soon as
the thermal treatment at Baden is duly accomplished. Yes, you will have
to return courageously, to settle all and complete your work in order
to obtain the right to rest in peace.

I leave you to go to the post, for I expect a letter with news of my
Amsterdam cases, which are as long delayed in coming from Rouen to
Paris as they were between Amsterdam and Rouen. If I do not finish my
letter to-day I will to-morrow; and to-morrow it will jump into the
letter-box, and the day after be at Roanne. What a hippogriff is the
post!

Adieu, dear; I am going to work like one possessed. I start April 1 by
boat for Civita-Vecchia. Easter Sunday falls on the 12th; I shall see
Rome for ten days; then I will return with you through Switzerland.
There's my plan. Between now and then I shall have my liberty. Take
care of yourselves, all, but you especially. I will answer next week
your dear child's letter, and also Georges'.

When I think that after Baden you will have to return home, a shudder
comes over me. You know when you enter there but you don't know when
you can leave. But I will not end my letter sadly; find here within it
the fresh flowers of an old affection. My heart blesses you, my soul is
round you with all its thoughts. As for my mind, you know that is only
the reflection and echo of yours.



PASSY, February 8, 1845.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Naples.]

No letters! my uneasiness has reached its height; I do not know what
to think; I believe you are ill. I am tortured to the point of not
being able to write a line to-day. I dine with M. F..., a sacrifice
to make, and a great one, I assure you; but it is very essential not
to displease him; he does my business well, and I am more and more
satisfied with him. This week we attack an account very difficult to
terminate; that of B... It is a matter of nine thousand francs to be
paid. No letter! I am very unhappy.


February 9.

What joy! I have your letter at last. I ought to write to you on my
knees for such kindness, and such persistency and perseverance in that
kindness. The passage in which you tell me you had been lost in a
contemplation of the future like one of mine, and in which you seem so
touched by those transports of worship I often have toward you,--that
true affection, so humble coming from a soul so lofty, gave me for a
moment more happiness than I have ever had before in my life.

Dear countess, do not risk yourself in Rome before Georges is perfectly
recovered; put off the journey for your children's sake; Rome will not
be swallowed up to-morrow, but health is lost there in a week. Wait;
wait.

When you receive this letter LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE will be finished.

I have paid M. Potier a thousand francs, for he has had, you see, to
incur expenses,--he says so himself. This is a house of forty-five
thousand francs, and fifteen thousand for additions, sixty thousand
in all. [The house in the rue Fortunée.] I hope to own the house and
to have paid up all disquieting claims by the end of February. But
all these uncertainties prevent me from working at my ease. I am like
a bird on a branch. I hope you will let me come and tell you of my
installation and spend a few days with you in April.

In going to Souverain's to-day I saw in the shop of a dealer in
bric-à-brac a miniature of Madame de Sévigné, done in her day it seemed
to me, which can be had for very little. Do you want it? It seemed
to me rather good; but it must be said that I scarcely looked at it
because I was in a hurry.


February 10.

I have seen that miniature again, and it is hideous. On the other
hand, I have bought a portrait of Queen Marie Leczinska after Coypel,
evidently painted in his atelier. I bought it for the value of the
frame; as it is one of those portraits that queens give to cities or
great personages, though it is but a copy, I thought it would decorate
a salon.

I am more inert than I can tell you; I work badly, without inspiration,
without taste, without courage; my life, my soul, and all my forces are
elsewhere. I have asked Gautier to bring me an artist named Chenavard,
a friend of La Belgiojoso, whom I know but whose address is unknown
to me, to enlighten me as to the value of Marie Leczinska's portrait,
because, like Louis XIV., "I don't choose to deceive myself."


February 11.

Much tramping, much fatigue, without result. M. F... has fallen
dangerously ill, and that delays my business. You see, dear beloved
countess, that I am not the master of this liquidation; the least
effort would be punished; I must wait like a hunter on the watch. It
is dreadful! I assure you that the harassment of my affairs, joined
to that of my soul (which is tortured by absence as one is, they say,
by remorse) affects my poor brain powerfully. Without vanity, I can
certify to you that I am wonderful; I rise every night, I think of
you, I write to you, and stay so for two hours before I am able to
begin to work. Then I continue to write, but for you, and not, as
I ought, for the public. Or if by a miracle it is not you of whom
I am thinking, it is about one of the houses offered to me, its
furnishing, its arrangement, and the thousand details of my business;
for every affair of a thousand francs exacts as much care as a matter
of a hundred thousand. Then I re-read your dear letters, I look at
my proofs, and I reason with myself. The day dawns, and I have done
nothing. I tell myself that I am a monster, that to be truly worthy of
you I must forget you and girt my loins with the labourer's cord; I say
insults to myself; I grasp that ivory Daffinger; I think you there; I
dream--and I waken to remorse for having dreamed instead of working.

Madame de Girardin writes to ask me to go and see her. There is to be
a lady present, daughter or grand-daughter of Sheridan, who desires to
see me. I shall go in my grand costume of fine manners.


February 12.

I went to bed this morning, my hours upset! and all for a tiresome
Englishwoman who stared at me through an eyeglass as she might at an
actor. Madame de Girardin, charming in a small company, is, it must be
admitted, a less agreeable mistress of a house at great receptions.
She belies her origin by her talent; but when her talent is not to the
fore she becomes once more the daughter of her mother; that is to say,
bourgeoise and Gay _pur sang_. The Duc de Guiche, who has given in
his allegiance, was there; he exerted himself, and was almost witty,
which I had doubted. The memory of Madame Kalergi, whom I never knew,
or even saw, as you know, pursued me. Admiral de la Susse described
the regrets of the Baden society that I did not accept the invitations
of that beautiful lady, but confined myself to a certain family who
had confiscated me to their own profit. From that moment I became of a
most stupendous stupidity; so that Madame de Girardin whispered to me,
"What is the matter with you this evening?" To which I answered, "Your
Englishwoman has gone to my heart." At which she laughed and I kept
the secret of my melancholy--I saw once more the scenery of Baden, the
Hôtel du Cerf, the promenades, etc. Ah! how you absorb me! It cannot be
expressed; a word a nothing, brings me back to you.

Dear countess, we must console that poor Georges. I will find a copy of
the Dejean catalogue; it is very rare, the whole edition having been
burned in the fire of the rue Pot-de-Fer (when the "Contes Drolatiques"
were destroyed). I have found a work the title of which you will find
on the sheet which envelops this letter. Write me whether Georges knows
of it. It is the finest iconography of coleopteras in existence. Only
seven copies remain; the blocks are planed and that ends it. If he
wants the work I will bring it to him with his insects and the Dejean.
In wandering about, Saturday, I found two vases (Restoration) on which
were painted, for some entomologist no doubt, the prettiest insects in
the world. They are the work of an artist and must have cost a great
deal. Georges will like them, I know, and I shall return him painted
pots for painted pots. Perhaps these vases were a gift to Latreille;
for no one, I think, would have done such conscientious work unless
for some great entomological celebrity. It is a real _trouvaille_, a
chance such as I never had before. No one knows what Paris is; with
time and patience, everything can be found here, even at a bargain.
Just now I am negotiating for the purchase of a chandelier which must
have come from the palace of some Emperor of Germany, because it is
surmounted by the double-headed eagle. It is a Flemish chandelier
and came from Brussels no doubt before the Revolution; it weighs two
hundred pounds and is of brass; I have bought it for the intrinsic
value of the metal--four hundred and fifty francs. I intend it for my
dining-room, which will be in the same style. I see you alarmed by
this communication; but do not be anxious; no debts are incurred; I
am obeying your sovereign orders. Lirette will be paid as you intend,
and Froment-Meurice also. As to my personal affairs, the liquidation
has more money than it needs. Froment-Meurice is really an impossible
jeweller. Here it is February 17th, and the figure of Nature is not yet
finished. He says it is still in the hands of the chaser. He himself
is wholly absorbed in a toilet-set for the Duchess of Lucca.


February 18.

I have received the letter in which you tell me that Georges gets
better and better, and that he had come to see you at the Villa Reale.
This good letter shows me that calmness is restored to your heart and
mind, because you have returned to your habit of writing every evening
when your good friendship battles with sleep, often vanquished to my
profit. A strange thing! there are in this long letter that I am about
to carry to the post things that reply to the questions in yours! This
affinity with each other brings tears to my eyes. How I love your
letters! how true they are! In reading them I seem to hear you speak;
they are indeed a balm to all my wounds. I beg of you do not go to
Rome, I repeat it; the journey might be fatal to Georges; he is very
delicate. I was like that at his age; but I never thought of myself,
and others cared still less for me.

I am not working as much as I ought. You do right to tell me so;
believe that I blame myself harshly. "The days are going," as you
say; but you do not know the labyrinth through which my liquidation
is leading me; you are ignorant of the incessant tramps which upset
all my days, and often for sums not more than a hundred francs. My
tranquillity means owning property, settlement in a home, and respect.
Therefore I avow that even if I incur your blame (to me so terrible) I
must put my liquidation before my literary work.

I am glad that the engraving and device of your armed knight pleased
you. No one helped your servitor; pray believe that; the Latin is my
own property: _Virens sequar_ and _Fulge, vivam_, are worthy of the E
inscribed on the star.

I have the portrait of Queen Marie Leczinska. It is not by Coypel, but
was done in his atelier by a pupil, either Lancret or another, as
you please. One must be a connoisseur not to think it a Coypel. The
portrait has been engraved, and I shall lose nothing on it, Chenavard
says.

I met Koref, who had the impudence to tell me he had been talking of me
to one of your friends in the most eulogistic terms. I wish you could
have seen me look at him as I said, "I do not doubt it." He left me
instantly.



PASSY, March, 1846.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Naples.]

Dear countess, the person who will take to you this letter is a friend
of mine, M. Schnetz, the painter of the beautiful picture of the
"Madonna's Vow," which is in Saint-Roch. He is the Director of the
French School of Art in Rome, and I profit by his kindness to send you
news from me to meet you on your arrival in Rome.

As M. Nacquart prophesied, my courage has been rewarded; to-day I can
walk [he had been thrown from a carriage], and all my preparations for
my journey are made. My place is booked in the mail-cart for Lyon; for
the Marseille's post service carries so many letters that letters in my
person are turned out of the mail-cart by the other kind.

I must wear my bandages for another month; but nothing prevents me
from seeing Rome with you, or rather you with Rome. Oh! it was God who
led you to Naples, you and yours, more than you think perhaps. Now,
the wisest thing you can do is to stay in Rome, and not continue your
projected journey until you have received good news from the Ukraine;
for they say that those provinces are in a state of disquieting
fermentation; I even hear talk of a general insurrection. Eleven
hundred seigneurs and land-owners in Galicia have been murdered by
their peasantry, whom they were endeavouring to draw into rebellion
against their sovereign, the Emperor of Austria. The Austrians are
to-day in retreat (you will see that in the "Débats"). The revolt,
or the insurrection, has been simultaneous throughout the former
Poland--Prussian, Austrian, and Russian; the movement is communistic.
I tremble for your cousin L.... The insurgents, they tell me, are
occupying Piotrkov. This is really frightful; no quarter is given on
either side; priests, women, children, old men, all are in arms. Bands
of ten thousand starving Poles have thrown themselves from Russian
Poland into Prussia (where the famine began), and the Prussians are
thrusting them back, as if infected with the plague, by a cordon of
troops. Every one here foresees nothing but evil for that unfortunate
nation; but the surprise is that Galicia, which seemed to be so well
governed, so happy even, under the Austrian sceptre, should have
revolted in this untimely manner. Chlopiçki, whom they wished to put
at the head of the movement, refused. He has retired into Prussia,
saying that he would blow his brains out sooner than command such a
folly. All sensible people groan over it. They say that Lithuania
and the provinces in the west of Russia will rise also, on account
of the recruiting for the Caucasus. What disasters for the future of
Europe must we not fear, with these populations at a pitch of chronic
insanity! And the governments, which admit that they are already
exhausted, will they be able to repress and control them?

How fortunate that you are in Rome! for even you, so wise and so
intelligent, have jealous and malevolent people about you over there.
Besides, no one knows what might happen if you were caught between the
insurgents and the troops. The "Gazette de Cologne" has published,
under Prussian censure, an article which speaks of the blindness of
the governments in the matter of Poland, and dwells on the fact that
nationalities cannot perish. (Don't speak of this to any one.) I hope
nothing unfortunate will happen to Countess Mniszech; but Georges must
be very uneasy about his mother, for the whole of Galicia is expected
to rise. They say that Hungary, hitherto so faithful, is also in arms.

You can form no idea of my happiness ever since my place was booked in
the Lyon mail. I am now making all my arrangements.

I have given Lirette the money you gave me for her. I went to the
convent myself, though still ill. Here's a strange thing! She has been
requested by Abbé L... to send to Petersburg an affidavit declaring
that neither he, the abbé, nor you had endeavoured to dissuade her
from entering a convent, and affirming that she did not possess forty
roubles and consequently had never given that sum to the convent. What
does all that mean? I hope they will permit her to write, and that I
shall bring you a long letter from her.

Take care of yourself, and do not forget to let me know where you
are in Rome, addressing your letter to "M. Lysimaque, at the French
Consulate, Civita-Vecchia, for M. de Balzac;" and try to find me a
niche not far from you, if it is only a kennel. I hope my preceding
letter has reached you through the Rothschilds.

What do you think of M. de Custine, who offered me a letter of
introduction to Prince George (Michel Angelo)? He did not remember the
prince's relationship to you! I take such part in your interests and
those of your dear child that I tremble every morning as I open the
newspapers. _Mon Dieu!_ what anxiety when I think of the state in which
your affairs are! You must not think of returning there till all is
quiet once more.

Without adieu this time, but _à bientôt_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Balzac started for Rome March 20, and returned to Paris
May 1, 1846.]



To MADAME LAURE SURVILLE, _Paris_.

ROME, the Eternal City, April, 1846.

My dear Laure, I feel in advance the pleasure you will enjoy in
thinking that your brother has put his hand to the pen in the city
of the Cæsars, popes, and others. Give you a description of it?--I
could not do it. Read Lamennais ("Affaires de Rome") and you will know
nearly as much as he or I. I have been received with distinction by our
Holy Father; and you must tell my mother that in prostrating myself
at the feet of the father of all faithful people, whose hierarchical
slipper was kissed by me in company with a _podestat d'Avignone_ (a
hideous mayor from the Vaucluse district, who claimed to be his former
subject), I thought of her, and I am bringing her back a little chaplet
prepared by Leo XII. much shorter to recite than the old one. It is
called La Corona, and is blessed by his present Holiness.

I have seen all Rome from A to Z. The illumination of the dome of St.
Peter's on Easter-Eve is alone worth the journey; but as the same might
be said of the benediction given _urbi et orbi_, Saint Peter's itself,
the Vatican, the ruins, etc., etc., my journey really counts as ten
journeys.

I am so content in Rome that I am thinking of passing nearly the whole
of next winter here, for I want to know everything about it. As there
are three hundred churches, you can imagine that I have only been to
see the principal ones. Saint Peter's surpasses all that one expects,
but through reflection. I climbed to the ball above which is the cross.
It would take a week to tell of Saint Peter's. Imagine that your house
could easily be put into the cornice of one of the flat double-columns
of the interior third tier of the dome. Nothing could surpass the
_Miserere_ of the choir, which is so superior to the choir of the
Sistina that I preferred to listen twice to that of Saint Peter's: the
first time, it was the music of angels (Guglielmi); the second time
it was learned music (Fioravanti), which I thought bad, though the
execution was perfect.

Truly, everybody should lay by money and go once in his life to Rome,
or he will know nothing of antiquity, architecture, splendour, and the
impossible realized. Rome, in spite of the short time I have stayed
here, will always be one of the grandest and most beautiful memories of
my life.... I sail on the 22nd for Genoa, and shall go from there as
quickly as possible to Paris.



PASSY, June 14, 1846.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Rome.]

Dear countess, I find in the "Presse" of yesterday an article sent
from Russia, which seems to me so disquieting that I send it to you.
To-morrow I will send you the "Presse" and the "Débats." You will
receive them for one month.

I rise at half-past three, not earlier, though I ought to be up at two.
Sleep will not come as it should at seven in the evening, on account of
the heat. It is now half-past four, and I have not yet written a line!

Adieu for to-day, till to-morrow. M. F... is coming to see me to-day,
and I shall have to talk business after working all night.

The Russian article in the "Presse" points to very serious matters.
I believe in the spoliation of the land-owners by the government; my
uneasiness about your interests is extreme. Will your children have
time? What does the article mean? Tell me fully what you think about
it. It seems to me to be written by some one who feigns ignorance on
the subject.


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 of LA 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 of LA 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 in a 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.

[Footnote 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 you three 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 revoir_
and _à 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 them away. 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 of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE between 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
all misfortunes; 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 for LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, you see, my liquidation will be well
advanced; so I shall put off all solution till the month of November.
The Beaujon house will 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 the
_procureur-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 letter to 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 the _ensemble_
which 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
francs as _dot_, 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 Walewski_ with 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.

[Footnote 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 this session. 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 for LA 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 the
COMÉDIE 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, in the
"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 be _all_ himself. 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 this fact
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 have forbidden 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 and _au 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 last year 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 and my 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 to _you_ either 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]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Kreuznach.]

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."


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 a _pis 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 from LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE and 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 heart the 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; but _à 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."

[Footnote 1: This refers to the examination of Lucien de Rubempré
before the _juge d'instruction_, and the description connected with it
of the Palais de Justice.--TR.]


August 7.

The heat is so dissolving I cannot write a line: I soak two shirts a
day by merely staying in my arm-chair and reading Walter Scott. I must
love you much to write even these few words; my hand and forehead are
streaming. This delays me and makes me groan. I expect Potier to-day;
I have decided to settle with him if possible before my departure; so
that everything may be done, repairs and all, during my absence, and I
can then remove there on my return.

Adieu, all my thoughts are with you, and with what can make you happy,
were it even at the cost of my life and happiness. Before the end of
the month I hope to see you! I shall work firmly, that there may be no
delay in my journey. I hope you will be satisfied with the work I bring
you. My dear critic will be too tenderly moved to be very severe.



PASSY, October 18, 1846.[1]

[Footnote 1: Balzac's visit to Wiesbaden, Stuttgard, etc., was paid
between the date of the last letter and that of the present one. It
has been stated, on what proof I do not know, that during this visit
Madame Hanska promised definitively to marry him as soon as permission
could be obtained from her government. Before Balzac left Paris he
purchased the little house in the Beaujon quarter, since known as the
house in the rue Fortunée, now rue Balzac, and began to store it with
his treasures of furniture, pictures, and bric-à-brac, many of which,
he says in a letter to his sister, belonged to Madame Hanska.--TR.]

Here I am, dear sovereign star, imperturbably before my desk, at the
hour named, as I announced to you yesterday in the little letter
hastily written in the office of "Le Messager;" and before resuming
my work, my heart, that poor heart all yours, feels an imperious need
to shed itself into your heart, and tell you the little details of
a life become your life through that miracle of thought, constant,
immutable, during so many years of exclusive affection, of which you
alone, besides myself, can appreciate the immensity and the depth. From
Frankfort to Forbach I lived in you only; I went over those four days
like a cat which has finished her milk and licks her whiskers. All the
precautions with which your kindness and that of your dear children
surrounded me, the shawl, the hood, cured my cold perfectly; I feel
admirably well. While they changed the luggage I wrote you a line, to
prevent you from doing yourself harm, so anxious about me did I leave
you.

I paid the duties on the little Dresden service. They told me at the
custom-house that they had orders to send my cases to Paris, and I
asked them to wait till the Wiesbaden cases came so that all might
go together. Custom-houses do not respect heart-griefs, and I had to
leave my reveries and memories (more and more tender beneath the charm
of your smile, and your glance ever present with me) and attend to my
cases. As my cold disturbed my stomach I relayed that organ with two
little rolls and two large slices of Wiesbaden ham between Frankfort
and Forbach. This, I hope, is a sufficient bulletin.

I was alone in the mail, and that was a blessing from heaven. At Metz,
no one. At Verdun I encountered Germeau, coming from Paris with his
wife, and I thanked him for his intervention at the custom-house. When
you come to Forbach in your carriage you will be received with all
the respect due to your social position, and your things will not be
searched, I promise you that. I flew with the mail to Paris and arrived
here at six o'clock in the morning; I went to bed at seven, and got up
at eleven to breakfast. In the midst of my frugal repast the editor
of the "Constitutionnel" fell from the clouds upon me, and found me
half eating, half correcting the proofs of "La Cousine Bette," which
he owned to me was having an astounding success. Véron's anxiety was
consequently all the greater; but I calmed it by telling him of my
journey and assuring him I had come back to finish everything. All this
kept me till one o'clock.

I have written to Lirette, and shall send her your collective letter.
But I shall soon go and see her and give her all details. Here is
the dawn, just breaking; I must leave you, you, who are always there
before me, blessing my work, like the soft white dove that you are.
You will hear with some pleasure, I am sure, that an immense reaction
in my favour has set in. I have conquered at last! Once more has my
protecting star watched over me; once more an angel of peace and hope
has touched me with her vigilant, guardian wing. At this moment society
and the newspapers are turning favourably towards me; more than that,
there is something like an acclamation, a general coronation. Those
who fought me most fight no longer; those who were most hostile to me,
Soulié for instance, are coming back to me. You know that he (Soulié)
made me honourable amends in his new drama at the Ambigu. It is a great
year for me, dear countess, especially if "Les Paysans" and "Les Petits
Bourgeois" are published rapidly one after the other, and if I have the
happiness of doing them well, and if your taste and that of the public
should agree in thinking them fine--Come, tell me to stop, and bring
myself back to "Cousine Bette;" truly, I am talking too much, and with
too much pleasure; but it is to me such delicious, irresistible joy to
throw myself thus wholly into your fraternal soul.

Ah! I have read your pretty letter which arrived the morning after I
had left Paris, as I see by the postmark; had it reached me in time
I would have dressed differently and so escaped my cold. Poor dear,
you see once more in this that I comprehend you at a distance. I was
already at Mayence when your letter reached Passy telling me that as I
was ill I must drop the "Constitutionnel" and come and rest near you.
You have so spoilt me by kindness that I had already done this without
knowing whether you would approve of it.

The time that I have lost on business errands and proposals is really
frightful. Furne is making gigantic announcements of LA COMÉDIE
HUMAINE. I hasten to tell you this as I don't know whether I shall be
able to write to you again for some time. It is now the 20th. This
letter can only go to Dresden, Hôtel de Saxe, and it must even wait for
a line from you before I send it.

_Allons!_ to the pen, and to work!


October 24.

Yesterday I worked like a negro; I wrote the amount of two chapters
and corrected thirty columns of proof which I had on my desk. Just
now, I can only count on money from the "Constitutionnel," or on that
of a treaty by which I should bind myself for another work, but that
other work is quite impossible for me to do. In my present labyrinth
I must work and work without cessation to end, first of all, "Les
Parents pauvres." It is not elegies that will give me money, and I need
some; there is none here just now, at this moment, and I am at the
mercy of certain payments to make, besides which I am expecting cases
from everywhere, Geneva, Wiesbaden, etc. Nevertheless, do not think
of my affairs or cloud the purity of your brow by useless anxieties.
Publications will give something--but when? _Voilà!_

I hoped to find a letter from you at the post-office this morning
telling me where to address you. I have half a mind to send this letter
to Dresden by Bossange; but suppose that by chance you do not go to
Dresden? Evidently I ought to wait for your next letter, which cannot
be long in coming. I entreat you, do not harass yourself about all
this: do not punish me for having believed in the luck of business in
default of other happiness, more complete but impossible. I shall work,
as I have always worked. It is only a habit to resume, not to begin,
which would be more difficult. I feel young, full of energy and of
talent before new difficulties. When I am settled in my little house
at Beaujon [rue Fortunée], very cosy, well furnished, very quiet, safe
from the intrusion of unwelcome persons, I shall write successively
"Les Paysans," "Les Petits Bourgeois," "La Dernière Incarnation de
Vautrin," "Le Député d'Arcis," "Une Mère de famille;" and the plays
will go on as well. It was especially to give myself up to this
immense, but necessary production, that I wished to house myself as
soon as possible at Beaujon, for it is quite impossible to stay longer
at Passy.

Most Parisians think I did not go to Wiesbaden; that it was only a
_canard_; that's Paris! Madame de Girardin told me that she had heard
from a person who knew you well, that you were excessively flattered
by my homage, and sent for me to join you wherever you went, out of
pride and vanity, being much gratified in having a man of genius for
_patito_, though your social position was too high to allow him to
aspire to anything else! And thereupon she laughed satirically, and
told me I was wasting my time running after great ladies, who would
only strand me! Isn't that Parisian? But, as you see, the contradictory
statements of the Paris cancans make them little dangerous.

To-day, all the exterior work on the Beaujon house is finished, except
the gallery which is to be added, and is, in fact, a new building; that
will be covered in this week. So, in this respect, at any rate, I am
tranquil.

It is four o'clock; I must brush up copy; I salute you as the birds are
saluting the dawn.

The combined letter of your dear children has made me very happy. I see
them so contented, so charmed, without the slightest fear of mischance
in the future; but then, how you have brought-up your Anna! morally and
physically how you have trained her! In truth, Georges owes you much,
and I think he feels it, for a brain like his comprehends everything;
there is in him the union of great knowledge and great character.
Pity me to be once more battling with business, the house, repairs,
buildings, contractors; I go from one to the other, on foolish errands
and vexations of all sorts. Yet I must write as if I were tranquil, and
devote myself exclusively to that intolerable and hideous old maid who
calls herself Cousine Bette, when I would much rather be with you and
you only. It is really atrocious; and I never had such a time in my
life. But my faith and belief in you give me a courage, a patience, a
lucidity and a talent that amaze the boldest and most hardened toilers.

Alas! I must leave you; time has marched while I have been talking thus
at random with you. I must carry this letter to the post.



PARIS, November 20, 1846.

I was saying yesterday, dear countess, that I had scarcely more than
time to write to you if I were going to see you on the 6th in Dresden.
But how can I help writing? heart and soul are at Dresden, only body
and courage are in Paris. To talk with you is an imperative need; I
must write to you, tell you, relate to you everything--about my books,
my furniture, my financial calculations, the architect, the house, the
bothers, the nothings, the conversations, just as I talk to myself--are
you not _myself_? have you not long been my conscience? If you were
not, should I have talked to you with such freedom and sincerity of my
follies, my faults,--in short, of all that I have done either of good
or evil?

Yesterday I went to the Vaudeville, where Arnal made me die of laughing
in "Le Capitaine de Voleurs," and I put my letter into the post for
yesterday's mail. It will not go till to-day. This morning I have still
thirty-two pages to do on "Cousine Bette" and sixty-four on "Cousin
Pons." Total, one hundred between now and the 29th. On Friday I shall
go and book my place in the mail.

Ouf! I have just corrected eight hundred lines of "Cousine Bette" and
the eight first chapters of "Cousin Pons." Since this morning I have
not risen from my chair, and it is now a quarter past three. I put wood
on the fire, and think of you, there, as if near me. What happiness
in the idea of soon seeing you again! My whole soul quivers at the
thought. I have such need to be with you three. And to think that I
have still a hundred pages to write and correct!

Decidedly, I shall send to Tours for that secretary and bureau of Louis
XVI.; the bedroom will then be complete. It is an affair of a thousand
francs; but for that money what sort of modern furniture does one get?
bourgeois platitudes, paltry things without taste or value.


November 22.

I have your letters, yours and those of the children. Thanks be to God,
they tell me you are better, and that I can meet you on the 6th at
Leipzig. I have just re-read your letter, for the paper is so thin that
one side of the page prevented me from reading the other in a carriage.
I went to the post, from there to your house, where nothing is getting
on. You tell me not to work so hard, to take care of my health, to
amuse myself, to go into society. But, dear countess, did I not write
you that I had pledged myself to the payment of my last debts, counting
on a rise to sell my shares in the Chemin de Fer du Nord? Well the
Nord fell yesterday from 627 frs. to 575--two hundred francs below
the price at which I bought them. So, you see, my pen must earn what
the shares should have given me, and work to pay my creditors, to
whom I will keep my word. Do you think I have time to amuse myself?
It will be a miracle if I pull through at all. I have almost doubled
in production; I have done forty-eight folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE
instead of twenty-four; and you know that can't be done by scribbling
as I am doing now to you. Ah! _bon Dieu_, it is fearful! I tremble as I
write of it. I am not sure that even that will get me through. I must
finish "Les Paysans" and perhaps something more. It is necessary, even
indispensable. If I go to you I shall hardly see you, for I could not
leave my table and papers. I cannot think about my health, or take any
care or thought of myself; I am a copy-machine, and nothing else. My
courage is really amazing; I recognize that, and you will be convinced
of it when I tell you that since my return from Wiesbaden I have done
all you will read of "La Cousine Bette,"--which, parenthetically, has
a prodigious success--all those twenty chapters, dear countess, were
written _currente calamo,_ done at night for the next day, without
proofs. You have been, this time as ever, my inspiring genius.


November 23, 1846.

Yesterday I went to see Laurent-Jan and proposed to him to dialogue my
play for the Variétés, for I have an avalanche of work up to November
30, and as I want to start December 1, I have no time to do the play.
It would have paid him some thousands of francs, but he declined,
on the pretext that it was too strong, too colossal for his "feeble
talent." The real cause of this touching modesty is his invincible
laziness. Nature gives talent, but it is for man to put it to work
and bring it to sight by force of will, perseverance, and courage.
Now, that fellow has talent, but he will never do anything with it
except spend it in pure waste, wearing it out, like his boots, on the
boulevards, or in the boxes of the lesser theatres with actresses who
laugh at him.

Here I was interrupted by Dr. Nacquart; he scolded me well when he
found me at my table writing, after all he had said to me about it.
Neither he nor any of his friends the doctors can conceive how a
man should subject his brain to such excesses. He said to me, and
repeated his words with a threatening air, that harm would come of
it. He entreated me to at least put some interval of time between the
"debauches of the brain," as he called them. The efforts on "Cousine
Bette," improvised in a week, especially alarmed him. He said, "This
will necessarily end in something fatal."

The fact is, I feel myself in some degree affected; sometimes in
conversation I search, and often very painfully, for nouns. My memory
for _names_ fails me. It is true that I ought to rest. If I had not
had so much anxiety about my last financial affairs, the cares to be
given to the arrangement of my little house would have been a happy
and good diversion to my literary occupations. I have continued to be
unlucky financially. When the doctor made me the above observations on
my literary excesses, I said to him:--

"My friend, you forget my debts. I have obligations which I have bound
myself to meet at certain fixed dates, at the end of each month, and I
will not fail to do so; I must therefore earn money; that is to say,
I must write until I make my chains fall off by force of courage and
toil."

You will never divine the doctor's answer. It paints the man; but start
with the principle that he is a friend, who loves me truly and has not
only much affection, but also much esteem for me.

"Well, my friend," he said, "I can't write fine things like you, but I
manage my affairs better. As a proof, I'll tell you that I bought at
auction three days ago, a house of five stories in the rue de Trévise,
for which I paid two hundred and thirty-five thousand francs; as there
were twenty-five thousand to pay on costs, that makes two hundred and
sixty thousand francs."

The whole spirit, the whole character of our bourgeoisie is in that; it
turns its money over and over, as the aristocracy of old made theirs by
privileges and personal advantages. You must not find fault with the
poor doctor, he is an excellent, worthy man; he is of his caste and his
epoch, that is all.

Regarding what you say to me of your affairs, I shall not cease to
repeat to you, "Make haste!"

You must have read the article in the "Constitutionnel" on Siberia; it
is enough to make persons more confiding than you shudder. Therefore,
do not lose any time, for the future does not seem to me _couleur de
rose_, I assure you. I see Italy and Germany very ready to rise; the
present state of peace hangs by a thread, the life of Louis-Philippe,
who is getting old, and God knows, when the struggle comes, what will
happen to us. For a young and ambitious sovereign, not willing, like
Louis Philippe, to die tranquilly in his bed, see how favourable this
moment would be to recover the right bank of the Rhine! The populations
are harassed by idiotic little sovereigns; England is grappling with
Ireland, which wants to ruin her or separate from her; the whole
of Italy is making ready to shake off the yoke of Austria; Germany
wants its unity, or perhaps, only more liberty. In short, believe it
firmly, we are on the eve of great political catastrophes. In France,
our interest lies in gaining time,--our cavalry and our navy not
being strong enough to make us triumph by sea or land. But the day
when those two arms are strengthened, the fortifications mounted, our
defences finished, and our public works completed, France will be very
formidable.

It must be owned that by the way Louis-Philippe has administered and
governed the country he has made it the first power in the world.
Reflect on that! Nothing is factitious; our army is a fine army;
we have money; all is strong, is real, at this moment. The port of
Algiers, just finished, gives us a second Toulon opposite to Gibraltar;
we advance towards controlling the Mediterranean. We now have Belgium
and Spain with us. Certainly Louis-Philippe has made great way; you
are right in that. If he were ambitious he could sing the Marseillaise
and demolish three empires to his profit. If he puts a paw on
Mehemet-Ali, as he has on the Bey of Tunis, the Mediterranean will be
all for France in case of war. It is a conquest made morally, without
firing a gun. We have, moreover, made giant strides in Algeria by the
displacement of the centres of military action. This means conquest
consolidated, and revolt rendered impossible.

I hope you will be content with me, and will think that I at last do
justice to a sovereign whom you have always supported against me, not
from sympathy, you say, but from conviction. Perhaps you are right in
the main. Perhaps France has less need of glory than of liberty and
security; and inasmuch as she has obtained these two great benefits,
let us wish that she may know how to appreciate them and keep the
government that has given them to her.

Here is the dawn; for two hours I have been talking to you with
pleasure and no fatigue; and I say to you, joyfully, _à bientôt_.[1]

[Footnote 1: This is the last letter to Madame Hanska given in Balzac's
Correspondence in the Édition Définitive of his works. Soon after
writing it he went to Dresden, and brought Madame Hanska, without M.
and Mme. Mniszech, to Paris, in January, 1847,--TR.]



To M. LE COMTE GEORGES MNISZECH, AT WIERZCHOWNIA.

PARIS, February 27, 1847.

My dear Anna and my dear Georges: do not have the slightest uneasiness
about your dear mamma. In the first place, she is here in the strictest
incognito; next she is thoroughly re-assured about her health; and
lastly, charged with the immense duty of taking the place of her
beloved children so essential to her happiness (and I may say to my
own, for all my human affections are centred on three cherished heads),
I have put myself into forty thousand pieces, not to make her forget
those who are the soul of her thought and life but, to render their
absence as endurable as possible.

Our dear Atala [his family name for her] is in a charming and
magnificent apartment (not too expensive); she has a garden, and goes
much to the convent and a little to the theatre. I try to amuse her,
and to be as much Anna to her as possible; but the name of her dear
daughter is so daily and continually on her lips that last night,
as she was amusing herself much at the Variétés and laughing with
all her heart at the "Filleul de tout le monde," played by Bouffé
and Hyacinthe, in the midst of her gaiety she asked herself, in a
heart-rending tone that brought the tears to my eyes, how she could
laugh and amuse herself without her "dear little one." ...

You know that in the month of April I take her back to Germany, and
from there she will go to join you at Wierzchownia. As for me, who
cannot now live away from you, I hope to follow her a little later.

       *       *       *       *       *

[NOTE.--Balzac left Paris early in September, and reached his much
longed for Wierzchownia by October 1, 1847.

The rest of this sad story will be found in the Memoir to this edition,
pp. 318-349; and in the Correspondence, vol. xxiv. of the Édition
Définitive, pp. 561-662.--TR.]




APPENDIX.



I.

_Pages_104, 112, 113: _regarding Madame de Berny_.

Letters to Madame Carraud, written at the same time as the letters from
Geneva. (Édition Définitive, pp. 191, 178.)



      GENEVA, January 30, 1834.

      "Do not accuse me of ingratitude, my dearest flower of
      friendship! I have thought of you much. I have even
      talked of you with pride, congratulating myself in having
      a second conscience in you.

      "Go to Frapesle? of course I will. _Mon Dieu!_ you are
      angelically good to have thought of her whom all my
      friends (I mean my sister and Borget) call my good angel.
      [Madame Carraud had invited Madame de Berny, who was ill,
      to stay at her house with Balzac.] If I have not written
      to you, or to our Borget, it is because I am so little
      my own master here. Keep this secret at the bottom of
      your heart; but I think my future is fixed, and that,
      according to Borget's earnest wish, I shall never share
      my crown, if crown there be.

      "After April, yes, I can go to Frapesle.... Some
      day, _cara_, you will know, when reading the 'Études
      de Mœurs' and the 'Études Philosophiques' in your
      chimney-corner at Frapesle, why I write to you now so
      disconnectedly. I am congested with ideas that crowd upon
      me, I hunger for repose; and besides, I am weary of my
      position as bird upon a branch.... It is written above
      that I shall never have complete happiness, freedom,
      liberty, all, except in prospect. But, dear, I can at
      least say this, with all the tenderest effusions of my
      heart, that in my long and painful way four noble beings
      have constantly held out their hands to me, encouraged,
      loved, and pitied me; that you are one of those hearts
      that have in mine the unalterable privilege of priority
      over all my affections....

      "If Frapesle were only on my way back to Paris! but
      neither Frapesle nor Angoulême now for me! I return,
      three days hence, to Paris, through that wearisome
      Bourgogne, to resume my yoke of misery, after refusing
      from hands of love money that would have freed me in a
      moment; but I will owe my gold to no one but myself, my
      liberty to none but me....

      "Yes, be sure of it, I will go to Frapesle, and I think
      I shall obtain the company of Madame de Berny.... That
      life is so much to mine! Oh! no one can form a true idea
      of that deep affection which sustains my efforts and
      soothes at every moment my wounds. You know something
      of it--you who know friendship so well, you so kind and
      affectionate...."


Now, is it possible that Balzac wrote those words with the same
pen, the ink not dry upon it, that is supposed to have written the
insinuation made on pages 112, 113? No, never!

A few months earlier, August, 1833, he had said to Madame Carraud: "You
are right, dear noble soul, in loving Madame de Berny. In each of you
are striking resemblances of thought; the same love of the right, the
same enlightened liberality, the same love of progress, same desires
for the good of the masses, same elevation of soul and thought, same
delicacy in your natures. And for that I love you much."



II.

_Page_ 476: _relating to the letters Madame Hanska, then Madame de
Balzac, gave to MM. Lévy in_ 1876_ for their Édition Définitive of the
Works_.

In various foot-notes to "Lettres à l'Étrangère," and also in "Un Roman
d'Amour," an effort is made to represent Madame de Balzac as having
suppressed parts of these letters for some purpose not legitimate.
"These letters," it is said, "copied by the hand of Madame de Balzac,
were given to M. Michel Lévy to be placed, in 1876, in Balzac's general
'Correspondance.' But she who was then no more than the widow of a man
of genius did not, it must be owned, deliver the authentic and integral
text of those letters."

Ten of the letters that Madame de Balzac gave to M. Michel Lévy appear
also in "Lettres à l'Étrangère." I have carefully compared these, and
I find certain differences, but nothing that does not come within the
legitimate province of an editor. These differences are mainly as
follows: 1. Unpleasant comments on persons then living are omitted;
also certain painful details about his family and hers which ought
never to have seen the light. 2. Some affectionate expressions to
herself are omitted, and some, apparently from other letters, are
added. 3. Additions, also apparently from other letters, and one at
least from Balzac's other writings, are made. _Possibly_ the passage
about Louis XIV. (page 476) is one of these; it may have been added by
Madame de Balzac as being more just to his real opinion. 4. Passages
have been transposed; probably through some confusion of the sheets in
copying or in printing. But there is nothing omitted, changed, or added
that gives the least colour to the idea conveyed of suppression or
insincerity.

The letters can be compared by every one. Their dates, and the pages on
which they appeared in the Édition Définitive are as follows:--

(1) August 11, 1835, p. 217. (2) October, 1836, p. 239. (3) January 20,
1838, p. 273. (4) March 26, 1838, p. 284. (5) April 8, 1838, p. 290.
(6) April 17, 1838, p. 290. (7) April 22, 1838, p. 291. (8) May 20,
1838, p. 294. (9) June 15, 1838, p. 303. (10) July, 1838, p. 309.



III.

_Page_ 544. _The Peytel affair_.

In 1831, a young man named Sébastien-Bénoist Peytel came to Paris to
try his fortunes in literature; he lived among the journalists and
writers who are described in "Un Grand homme de province à Paris."
After a time he became part-proprietor of the paper called "Le
Voleur," to which Balzac himself contributed from time to time. Balzac
describes him as hot-headed, gifted with great mental and physical
strength, ambitious, proud, and passionate, carried away at times by
the force of his own words, but good essentially. He had an eye that
always looked a man in the face; and he was not tricky or deceitful.

During this time he seems to have been the friend of all the young
writers and artists, especially of Gavarni. He was a lover of art,
antiquities, and bric-à-brac, and having inherited some property from
his father, he spent money on forming a collection.

After a while, however, his attempts at literature and journalism not
satisfying him, he became a notary, first at Lyon, then at Belley, near
Bourg. But before leaving Paris he married a young girl named Félicie
Alcazar, described as a Creole, with a mother and four sisters but no
father, and with relations who mingled in good society. M. de Lamartine
was so far intimate with Peytel that he acted as father or guardian to
Félicie Alcazar on the occasion of the marriage, signed the contract,
and took the bride to the mayor's office and to the church.

The marriage was not happy from the start. The wife disliked and even
hated the husband, and showed it. He, on the contrary, appears to have
been attached to her, and he led an irreproachable life.

One night, at eleven o'clock, as the husband and wife and their
man-servant were returning from Bourg to Belley along the highroad, the
wife and servant were murdered by means of a pistol-shot and a hammer
belonging to the carriage. There were no witnesses to the deed, but the
husband immediately gave himself up, or, as Balzac puts it, "accepted
the responsibility of the homicide."

The explanation Peytel gave, and which his friends afterwards adopted,
was that he suddenly on this drive discovered criminal relations
between his wife and the servant, Louis Rey, and in a moment of
ungovernable fury he had killed the man with the hammer. The latter had
endeavoured to escape, but he pursued him; the man then turned to shoot
him, but the shot killed the wife instead.

The authorities, on the other hand, charged Peytel with murdering his
wife to obtain her money, and killing the man as witness of the crime;
they also brought charges against him of past dishonesty. Prejudice was
strong against him in Belley because he was a stranger. "No matter how
the affair took place," said one who knew the town; "Peytel is a dead
man."

Up to this time, the matter taking place in the provinces, Peytel's
friends seem to have thought but little of it, supposing that he
would certainly, under the circumstances, be acquitted. He himself
felt so sure of this that he wrote to Gavarni to come and take him to
Switzerland. On the contrary, he was condemned, and the condemnation
roused his friends in Paris to the highest pitch. Balzac and Gavarni
took up the case and studied it; Lamartine wrote the following letter
to Peytel in prison:--


      PARIS, November 12, 1838.

      Your deplorable situation fills all minds here; no one
      doubts that unforeseen revelations, to which time and
      circumstances always lead, will completely justify the
      details that you yourself have given, and cause pity and
      universal interest to take the place of the prejudices
      you speak of. Meantime, monsieur, I am glad to be able to
      assure you that those prejudices have no access to the
      mind of any one here, and that if you need to add other
      proof than your unhappiness and despair, you will find
      it here in the unanimous assertion of the purity of your
      antecedents and the irreproachability of your life.

      Receive, with the expression of my sorrowful sympathy,
      the assurance of my distinguished sentiments.

      DE LAMARTINE.


Balzac and Gavarni went to Belley, Bourg, and Maçon, employed counsel,
and brought the matter before the Court of Cassation (Appeals). Balzac
wrote, and published in the "Siècle," a long argument of the case (see
Édition Définitive, vol. xxii., pp. 579-625), to which a brother-in-law
of the murdered woman replied, rather weakly. Balzac rejoined in the
"Presse," prefacing his second statement with the following words to
the editor:--


      October 2, 1839.

      "Monsieur, I am obliged to make use of the newspapers,
      who have published my letter on the Peytel affair, to
      thank collectively all those persons who have addressed
      congratulations to me; and to assure those who have sent
      me startling testimony in favour of Peytel that their
      declarations will be received if the Court of Cassation
      grants a new trial."


The following very curious letter relating to this subject, from M.
Moreau Christophe, inspector-general of prisons, to Gavarni, is worth
preserving.


      PARIS, September 29, 1839.

      My dear Monsieur Gavarni: you ask my opinion of the
      Peytel affair. What shall I say to you? When there is a
      woman, that is, love, in a crime, it is a tangle, the
      thread of which escapes the most clear-sighted. They
      think they hold the thread because they have got hold of
      the skein. The material of a fact does not constitute the
      truth of it. Why do you talk of judiciary trials [_débats
      judiciaires]_? A judiciary trial is to my eyes a legal
      lie. The accused lies to the lawyer, the lawyer lies to
      the judge, the newspapers lie to the public. How do you
      expect truth to come to light through that criss-cross of
      lies? She is just as much hidden from us at the Palais
      as if she were down at the bottom of her well. It is
      only behind the bolts, after condemnation, that truth
      can be found. And even then one must be very expert to
      find her. That was where I discovered the truth about the
      Laroncière affair, and several other love tangles, about
      which you think you know through the newspapers, whereas
      you know nothing at all.

      That was how you yourself discovered the truth in the
      depths of Peytel's dungeon. Balzac has brought startling
      lights out of that dungeon. But,--shall I say it?--in
      spite of the immense dialectic and legal talent he has
      just displayed in the "Siècle" in defence of your unhappy
      friend, I fear that under his pen truth is impregnated
      with an atmosphere of romance. Lawyers sometimes fade
      the cause they plead. Besides, it is too late. Moreover,
      instead of saving the man who did the act, a subsequent
      revelation will only the more surely lose him, when he
      adds to the blood of the victim after the act a stain,
      however just, upon her memory. That is Peytel's case.
      Truth cannot save him now. A lie will kill him.

      MOREAU CHRISTOPHE.

French legal arguments never commend themselves to the Anglo-Saxon
mind; there seems to be a radical divergence of comprehension as to how
truth can be got at, and Balzac's argument is certainly not convincing.
But with the events of the past year before our minds we cannot be sure
that prejudice and injustice on the other side may not have justified
it.

The Court of Cassation rejected the appeal, and Peytel was executed
as stated in the text. A history of this case is given in "Le Notaire
Assassin," by Paul d'Orcières. Paris. 1884.



IV.

_Page_ 693. _Concerning the letters of_ 1846.

In "Un Roman d'Amour," which (as stated in the Preface to this volume)
is the authority given on page 1 of "Lettres à l'Étrangère," to vouch
for the authenticity of those letters, the following statement is made
(page 94):--

"He [Balzac] lost in November, 1846, a daughter, born at six months.
The birth of this child gave occasion for one of those great hidden
dramas of which the celebrated novelist was the hero; and the rapid
progress of his heart disease was due in part to this terrible
adventure."

Now, a man of Balzac's emotional excitability--plainly shown in his
walking distraught about Paris on reading one page of a letter without
waiting to read the next (see letter to Madame Hanska of January 5,
1846)--could not have passed through such a crisis without some sign of
it appearing in his letters.

I have therefore studied with great care those for the year 1846 given
in his Correspondence. The letters addressed to Madame Hanska are all
here, in this volume, for the reader to judge.

Balzac returned, about October 15, from Wiesbaden, where Madame Hanska,
it is said, pledged herself definitively to marry him as soon as
matters could be arranged with the Russian government.

From October to December there are five letters to M. and Mme.
Mniszech, all very lively and gay. Here are a few quotations from
them:--

      _October:_ "To-morrow our great and dear Atala [his
      family name for Madame Hanska] will receive a letter from
      me. But I charge you none the less to assure her that
      there is not a fibre in my heart that is not for her, and
      that I am, as I have been for thirteen years, the sole
      moujik of Paulowska, who will be hers for time and for
      eternity."

      "Anna's dear mother is, as you know, the only affection I
      have in all my life. She has been my only consolation in
      my griefs, my toils, my misfortunes; she has sufficed to
      appease all, to counterbalance all."

      _November:_ "I thank you with all my heart for the
      punctuality with which you give me news of our great and
      good Atala Notify me, I entreat you, of the day when I
      must stop sending letters to Dresden. I imagine that the
      doctor will not forbid your dear, beloved mother to read.
      In which case I shall write to her every day. As soon as
      she wrote me she should stay in Dresden till the end of
      November I sent all the newspapers and 'La Cousine Bette'
      there to amuse the dear invalid."

      "Père Bilboquet [his name for himself], believe it,
      is buying nothing more; he is only thinking of paying
      and worrrking [_trrravailller_] in the market-place of
      Literature; yes, I have given myself the task of earning
      40,000 francs in six months. Oh! how I wish! could see my
      troupe in their fine carriage ... This is stolen from the
      quantity of _copy_ I have to do.

      "DUC DE BILBOQUET,

      "Peer of France and other regions."


The letters to Madame Hanska of October 18, 19, 20 are unusually
cheerful and hopeful about his future; and those of November 20, 21,
22, 23 are full of his work, and mention his intention to join her
December 6 at Leipzig. In point of fact, he did join her in the course
of that month, and she returned with him to Paris some time in January,
1847. She remained in Paris till the following April, when she returned
to Wierzchownia, where Balzac followed her in September.

Now, if the reader has read the letters to Madame Hanska during this
year (1846) attentively he will see, not only that there is no symptom
of any such crisis with its attendant circumstances in Balzac's life,
but that there was actually no time for it.

To this record I must add that in 1889 M. le Vicomte de Spoelberch de
Lovenjoul proposed to sell me the papers of Balzac in his possession;
and in giving me a general list and description of them he wrote:--

"A cloud of letters exist, but they tell nothing; they are not the
letters of women who had a part, either great or small, in his time or
in his thoughts."

Warped minds, that is, degenerate minds judging all things by a
standard of evil, may persuade themselves that this outspoken,
impulsive man is the deceitful, double-faced being that they represent
him. But will any sober, reflecting, common-sense, true judge of human
nature, in presence of these letters, agree with that opinion? No.

It is surely an important duty to rescue a great name, and a great
nature, from undeserved obloquy, and I hope the readers of this
volume will second my effort by studying the truth of this matter and
maintaining it.


KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY.





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