Letters to Madame Hanska, born Countess Rzewuska, afterwards Madame Honoré de Balzac, 1833-1846 (part 3 of 5)

Letters to Madame Hanska, born Countess Rzewuska, afterwards Madame Honoré de Balzac, 1833-1846 (part 3 of 5)

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.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us