Letters to Madame Hanska, born Countess Rzewuska, afterwards Madame Honoré de Balzac, 1833-1846 (part 4 of 5)

Letters to Madame Hanska, born Countess Rzewuska, afterwards Madame Honoré de Balzac, 1833-1846 (part 4 of 5)

Dear countess,[1] I arrived here this morning at six o'clock, having had for all rest twelve hours at Tilsit, from which must be deducted three hours given to the director of posts, to whom I had an introduction, and who did me so many services that I took tea with him in the evening. I arrived too late to dine there with Stieglitz, as we desired.

As long as I was on Russian soil I seemed to be still with you, and, without being exactly of a frolicking gaiety, you must have seen by my little letter from Taurogen that I had strength enough left to joke at my grief. But once on foreign soil, I can say nothing at all, except that this journey may be made to go to you, but not on quitting you. The aspect of Russian lands, without culture, without inhabitants, seemed to me natural; but the same sight seen in Prussia was horribly sad, and in keeping with the sadness that seized upon me. These barren tracts, this sterile soil, this cold desolation, this poverty, gripped and chilled me. I felt myself as much saddened as if there had been a contrast between my heart and Nature. Black grief swooped down upon me more and more heavily as physical fatigue increased. But do not pity me for taking the land journey, because these late storms must have made the navigation of the Baltic very bad.

I know how you are by the way I feel; I feel within me an immense void, which enlarges and deepens more and more, and from which nothing distracts me. So I have renounced going to Dresden; I do not feel the courage to go there. Holbein's Madonna will not be stolen between now and a year hence; the scene of the battle and the defiles of the Kulm will not change, and I shall have a reason, next May, to make the journey again with other ideas. Don't blame me for my faint-heartedness; nothing now pleases me in this journey, which did so please me in the salon of the Hotel Koutaitsof when you said, "You will go here--and there." I listened to you, I went, for it was you who told me. But now, how can I help it? far from you all is lifeless, without a soul. Next year, perhaps; but now, I have nothing but the gulf of my toil, and I go to it by the shortest way.

I slept this morning from seven o'clock till midday, a few tired, restless hours. I have breakfasted, dressed, and paid three visits: to Bresson, Redern, and Mendelssohn; and on my return I sit down to write to you, for to talk with you is the greatest, the most vital instinct of the moment.

I was interrupted by Comte Bresson, who came immediately to invite me to dinner for to-morrow, because he leaves, or rather his wife leaves, the day after; she goes before him to Madrid. As far as I can judge, he is a man of intelligence and great good sense; above all, without any species of pretension, which is rare in diplomatists, and I prize it much. He advised me to write a line to Humboldt, of whom I saw much in Paris at Gérard's and elsewhere; he will, no doubt, show me Potsdam. M. Bresson goes to Spain, and Salvandy to Turin.

I resume my dear laments, and I must tell you that the highway from Petersburg to Tilsit is only practicable at two sections: from Petersburg to Narva, and from Riga to Taurogen; so that for more than half way the road is detestable when it rains, and it had rained a great deal, alas! Imagine the jolts we made! but the vehicles are excellent; they resisted them. All that is Russian has a very tough life. A roadway is laid down across the sands of Livonia with gorse; out though the road has the gorse characteristics, it has, none the less, a disquieting aspect and a boggy style. It is a miracle to get over the road in three days and a half; and that gives a great idea of Russian stubbornness. We had eight horses, and sometimes ten, in certain places. Where the chaussée [paved road] is made it is magnificent. Ah! I shall have pleasure in going over it again! but then it will not be over gorse but flowers that I shall be jolted. Literally, one eats nothing by the way, for there is nothing to eat; but the way-stations are very handsome, and there is always excellent Russian tea. I am therefore able to honour my grief by thinness, due to the diet of the journey; if I suffered, my mental condition was such that I did not become conscious of it; the grief of quitting you quelled hunger, just as the pleasure of meeting you had already quelled sea-sickness. You are above all.

I am here at the Hôtel de Russie, which is passably good and not too dear. From Berlin I shall go to Leipzig and Frankfort-on-the-Main, by the Prussian Schnell-post; and from Frankfort to France by steamboat, or railroad all the way; which is, I think, more economical than any other way of travelling.

I have found two road companions, two sculptors, one of whom, as I told you, speaks an almost incomprehensible French, and I have just made the rounds of Berlin with him. These young men have been full of attentions to me all the way, especially from Riga, where I parted from my first companion, the Frenchman. The artist-nature is everywhere the same. These two young fellows got me out of all difficulties at inns, and I have just invited them to dinner (a rapin dinner, be it understood). It is the least I can do for such obliging lads to thank them for their good care before we part.

This sulky Berlin is not comparable to sumptuous Petersburg. In the first place, one might cut a score of mean little towns like the capital of the Brandebourg out of the great city of the vast European empire, and there would still remain enough space built upon to crush the score of extracted little Berlins without injury to its vast extent. But, at first sight, Berlin seems the more populated; for I have perceived several individuals in the streets, which is not often the case in Petersburg. However, the houses here, without being handsome, seem well built; one can see that they are not wanting in comfort inside. The public buildings, rather ugly of aspect, are of handsome freestone; and the space around them is so managed as to set them off. Very likely it is to this artfulness that Berlin owes its air of being more populous than Petersburg; I should have said more animated if it concerned any other people; but the Prussian, with his brutish heaviness, is never anything but ponderous; less beer and bad tobacco, and more French or Italian wit is needed to produce the stir of the other great capitals of Europe, or else the grand industrial and commercial ideas which have caused the great development of London; but Berlin and its inhabitants will never be otherwise than an ugly little town inhabited by ugly fat people.

However, it must be admitted, to whoso returns from Russia, Germany has an indefinable air which can only be explained by the magic word LIBERTY, manifested by free manners and customs, or, I should say, by freedom in manners and customs. The principal public buildings of Berlin are grouped about the hotel where I am, so that I could see them all in an hour. Fatigue is seizing me; I aspire to dinner: the first I have eaten since the splendours of Russia.

Till to-morrow, dear countess.

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at St. Petersburg. Balzac has just left her after a visit of two months.--TR.]

October 15.

Our dinner was composed of soup, venison, mayonnaise of fish, macaroni with cheese, a little dessert, a half-bottle of madeira, and a bottle of bordeaux. Ecco, signora! At eight o'clock I dismissed my guests and went to bed, the first bed that resembled a bed since I left Dunkerque. Before going to sleep I thought of you and of what you might be doing at eight o'clock of a Saturday evening. I imagined you were at the theatre; I saw the Michel theatre; but I did not have the cruel pleasure, as in Schnell-post or in Karéta potchtôvaïa, to think till midnight, for at midnight I was sound asleep, and in the morning I slept till eight o'clock. You have so often subdued the most imperious things in nature that you will pardon poor nature for taking its revenge for once. Exclusively tender souls have a worship for memories, and your memory, you cannot doubt it, is always in my heart and in my thought. I give myself the fête of thinking of it during that short half-dreaming moment when we feel ourselves betwixt slumber and sleep; and all the sweet impressions of the two months I have spent with you return to enchant my soul with their radiant images, so full of harmony. You see that the Virgin of Poland is the same as the Notre-Dame of France, and that if my journey is saddened by a separation such as I have now borne three times, all is otherwise well with me.

I have received from M. de Humboldt the note which encloses mine; it is, certainly, curious under present circumstances. I send it to you; and I can speak of it openly, as this letter will be carried to you by Viardot, whom I have just met, and who agrees very willingly to take it; he is one of the most honourable men I know; in whom one can put the utmost confidence; he will give it into your own hand.

October 16.

I have just dined with Madame Bresson, née de Guitaut. There was a great dinner at the Embassy on occasion of the King's fête. Except the ambassadress, everybody was old and ugly or young and hideous; the handsomest woman, if not the youngest, was the one I took into dinner; guess who,--the Duchesse de Talleyrand (ex-Dino) who was there with her son, the Duc de Valençay, who looked to be ten years older than his mother. The conversation was about people's names and little incidents happening at court within forty-eight hours. But at any rate, it explained to me Hoffmann's jests about German courts. Impossible to join Redern; I had his wife on one side of me,--the face of an heiress, and a very rich heiress to make him forget such lack of charm.

Nothing can be more wearisome than Berlin. I am consumed with ennui--ennui has entered me to the bone, and I am afraid of being ill. I write this before going to bed; it is nine o'clock; but what can one do in Berlin? For all amusement there's "Medea," translated from the German, and played literally! Yesterday they played before the court Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream," also translated literally! The King of Prussia protects letters, but, as you see, they are mostly dead letters.

I leave to-morrow, and go to Leipzig by the railway to reach Mayence; after which by the same to Dresden to see the Gallery.

M. de Humboldt made me a visit of an hour this morning, charged, he said, with the compliments of the King and the Princess of Prussia. He gave me all necessary information as to how to find Tieck at Potsdam, and I shall profit by it to study the physiognomy of that great barrack of Frederick the Great, of whom de Maistre said: "He was not a great man; at the most a great Prussian."

I went out by the railway, and on getting into a carriage I found the fantastic Duchesse de Talleyrand, with her hair dressed in a mass of flowers and diamonds, like an apparition of a midsummer night's dream. She was on her way to court in full dress, to dine with the Princess of Prussia. We had also for third the Comte de Redern, a mouldy old Prussian fop, dry as a Genevese and important as a retired diplomatist. I requested the shepherdess of threescore to lay my respects at the feet of the princess.

I saw Tieck in his home; he seemed pleased with my homage. There was an old countess, his contemporary in spectacles, octogenarian perhaps, a mummy with a green eye-shade, who seemed to me a domestic divinity. I have just returned; it is half-past six o'clock, and I have eaten nothing since morning. Berlin is the city of ennui; I should die of it in a week. Poor Humboldt is dying of it; he drags about with him a nostalgia for Paris. As I start to-morrow morning by the railway, I must bid you adieu. I cannot write again until I get to Mayence.

In talking this morning with Comte Bresson, I told him I had been driven from Petersburg by the tattle of porters and ignoble gossip; that no one believed in generous and disinterested sentiments, and that I was angry with the Russian people for attacking my sacred liberty by imagining that I should do like Loëve-Weymar. M. Bresson strongly approved; and said that a Frenchman should never marry any but a French-woman; I told him I was of his opinion, and that was what I should do! I am told that if I stay here a week fêtes will be made for me. But a week means three hundred francs, and really, for Berlin, that is too dear. If I could only get away from this dreadful town by paying that sum, I don't say it would be too much; I would even add a little to be off the quicker. More than ever do I see that nothing is possible to me without you, and the more space I put between us, the more I feel the strength of the tie that holds me. I live by the past only, and I live in it only, withdrawn into the depths of my heart. Must it not be horrible suffering to be alone as I am, with the continual memory of these two months, from which my thought plucks flowers, blossom by blossom, with melancholy and religious tenderness?

October 17.

I leave you afresh this morning, for it is like a fresh leaving not to write to you in the evening what I have done during the day. I go to Leipzig, where I shall book my place in the Schnell-post for Frankfort. I shall sleep at Leipzig; the next day go to Dresden, and return, on the 20th, to take the Prussian conveyance.

The loneliness that takes the place of intimacy has all the ways of remorse--I feel a violent need of changing from place to place, stirring, going, coming; as if at the end of this physical agitation and all these useless movements I should find you. I look with tenderness at this paper which I shall carry in a moment to Viardot, thinking how your pretty fingers will hold it in that salon where the hours fled so sweetly and so rapidly. Viardot will faithfully deliver to you this packet, in which I may say that my life will be one long anguish till I see you again. From Mayence you shall have a letter which will tell you of my acts and deeds after leaving Berlin. I shall reach Passy about November 10; therefore write me on the 3rd, of your style.

Adieu; if I have failed in our agreement, if anything displeases you in this letter, be, as ever, kind and forgive me. Think of my grief, my loneliness, my sorrow, and you will be full of pity and indulgence for the poor exile.

DRESDEN, October 19, 1843.

I left Berlin with ennui, dear, but I have found nostalgia here. Nothing that I eat nourishes me, nothing that I see distracts me. I have seen the famous Gallery, and Raffaelle's Virgin, also Holbein's, and I said to myself, "I love my love too well!" In going through the famous treasury, I would have given all for one half-hour on the Neva. To add to my troubles I am here for two days longer than I wished to be; and this is why. From Berlin I went to Leipzig and passed the night. I had counted without the fair at Leipzig; all the seats were taken in the Schnell-post. I then asked the landlord to book my seat and keep my luggage, instead of my dragging it to Dresden and back, for they demand an infinite number of thalers for overweight of luggage. The landlord said it was doubtful if he could get me a seat for the 20th, the day I wished to start, and I have just received a letter from him saying I can have no place till the 22nd.

Yesterday, on arriving, having missed the hour for the Gallery, I walked about Dresden in all directions, and it is, I assure you, a charming city; very preferable as a residence to that mean and melancholy Berlin. It has the look of a capital; partly a Swiss, partly a German town; the environs are picturesque and all is charming. I can conceive of living in Dresden; there is a mixture of gardens and dwellings that delights the eye. As for the palace begun by Augustus the Strong, it is really a most curious masterpiece of rococo architecture. As a fantasy it is almost as fine as gothic, and as art it is exquisite. What a misfortune that so enchanting a conception is unfinished, and is left in a deplorable state. It would take, of course, millions to repair, complete, arrange, and furnish this delightful gem. There is nothing in Petersburg, still less in Prussia, nor in the whole North to compare to it. What a man was that Augustus, calling himself Elector in Poland, and King in Saxony!

I saw so many Titians in Florence and Venice that those in the Dresden gallery had less value in my eyes. Correggio's "Night" seemed to me over-praised; but his Magdalen, two Virgins of his, the two Madonnas of Raffaelle, and the Dutch and Flemish pictures are well worth the journey. The treasury is nonsense; its two or three millions in diamonds could not dazzle eyes that had just seen those of the Winter Palace. Besides, the diamond says nothing to me; a dew-drop, sparkling in a ray of the rising sun, is to me more beautiful than the finest diamond in the world--just as a certain smile is more beautiful to me than the finest picture. So I must return to Dresden with you in order that the pictures may speak to me. Rubens moved me somewhat, but the Rubens of the Louvre are more complete. The true masterpiece of the Gallery is Holbein's Madonna, which extinguishes all the rest. How I regretted that I could not hold your hand in mine while I admired it with that inward delight and plenitude of happiness which the contemplative enjoyment of the beautiful bestows! The Madonna of Raffaelle, one expects it; but Holbein's Madonna is the unexpected, and it grasps one.

Dear countess, you will never form to yourself a complete idea of my dreadful loneliness. Not speaking the language and not knowing a person to speak to, I have not uttered a hundred sentences since I left Riga and that French merchant. I am always in front of myself, and the scenery being a desert and a plain, I have nothing to interest the eye; the heart has passed from excess of riches to the most absolute pauperism. The recapitulation mentally of those hours that flew by, alas! so rapidly, the dreamy thoughts that followed them gave such bitter sadness to a nature naturally gay and laughing that my two sculptors said to me--that is, the one who thought he spoke French--"What is it? what is the matter?" Another fortnight like this and I shall gently, gently die, without apparent illness.

I see that I must renounce the Rhine and Belgium and return to strong occupation in the affairs and toils of Paris. This air does me harm; I am inwardly debilitated; nothing restores my tone, nothing cheers my courage, I thirst for nothing. I have two nostalgias: one for the banks of the Neva which I leave, the other for the France to which I go.

German railway trains are a pretext for eating and drinking; they stop at every moment; the passengers get out and drink and eat, and get in only to do it all over again; so that the mail-cart in France goes faster than the trains in Germany.

It is eleven at night; I am in a hotel where every one is asleep. Dresden is quiet as a sick-room; I feel no desire to sleep. Have I grown old that the Gallery has given me so few emotions? or has the source of my emotions changed? Ah! surely, I recognize the infinite of my attachment and its depth in the immense void there now is in my soul. To love, for me, is to live; and to-day more than ever I feel it, I see it, all things prove it to me, and I recognize that there will never be for me any other taste, any other absorption, any other passion than that you know, which fills not only my heart but my entire brain.

October 20.

Absolutely nothing to tell you but what you already know. I have just returned from the theatre, which is certainly one of the most charming I ever saw. Despléchin, Séchan, and Diéterle, the three decorators who did our French Opera house, came here to arrange it. Nothing could be prettier. If you choose Dresden for a residence Anna will have the loveliest hall she ever dreamed of. They sang a German version of "Fra Diavolo" which seemed to me an excellent preparation for sleep. I had seen the collections of porcelains and antiquities in the morning. I feel tired. Fatigue is a power; and I am now going to bed at eleven o'clock. You know of whom I shall dream as I sleep.

October 21.

I leave to-morrow; my place is booked, and I will finish my letter, because I wish to put it in the post myself. I have a head like an empty pumpkin, and I am in a state which makes me more uneasy than I can tell you. If I continue thus in Paris I must return. I have no feeling for anything, no desire to live, not the slightest energy, nor do I feel any will. You will never know until I explain it to you verbally, the courage I display in writing to you. This morning I stayed till eleven o'clock in bed, unable to get up. It is horrible suffering which has its seat nowhere; which cannot be described; which attacks both heart and brain. I feel stupid, and the farther I go, the worse the malady becomes. I will write you from Mayence if I feel better. But as for the present, I can only describe my condition as Fontenelle, a centenarian, explained his,--"a difficulty of being." I have not smiled since I left you; it is spleen of the heart; and that is very serious, for it is a double spleen.

Adieu, dear star thrice blessed! there may come a moment when I can express to you the thoughts that oppress me; to-day I can only tell you that I love you too well for my peace; for, after this August and this September, I feel that I can only live beside you and that your absence is death. Oh! how happy I should be were I walking and conversing with you in the little garden overhanging the bridge of Troïsk, where there is nothing yet but broomsticks to mark where they mean to plant the trees. To me, there was no garden in Europe more lovely--when you were in it, I mean. There are moments when I see clearly the least little objects that surround you; I look at the cushion with a pattern of black lace worked upon it on which you leaned, and I count the stitches! Never was my memory so fresh; my inward sight, on which are mirrored the houses that I build, the landscapes I create, is now all given to the service of the most completely happy memories of my life. You could never imagine the treasures of revery which glorify certain hours; there are some which fill my eyes with tears. My inward eyes behold those angular bronzes against which I struck my knees as I wound my way through your blue salon, and the little chair in which you reposed your dreamy thoughts! What power and happiness there is in these returns to a past which thus we see again. Such moments are more than life; for the whole of life is in this one hour withdrawn from real existence to the profit of these memories which flood my soul in torrents. What sweetness and what strength lies in the simple thought of certain material objects, which attracted but little notice in the happy days that are past; and how happy I feel myself to feel thus!

Adieu; I am going to carry my letter to the post. All tenderness to your child a thousand times blessed; my regards to Lirette, and to you all that there is in my heart, my soul, my brain.

PASSY, February 5, 1844.

Yesterday I did errands; for I must think about getting "Les Petits Bourgeois" set up by a printer at the cost of a new publisher. I went to see the successor of M. Gavault, and there I found a summons from that dreadful Locquin-coquin. No one more audacious than a swindler! he cries, "Murder! thieves!" to hang his victim. All this stirred my bile, and as I had been up since three in the morning I felt very weary, and went to bed at six to rise at four. While I slept the dear journal came; I put it aside for my waking and have just read it. All these opposing emotions, some exasperating, others gentle, not to say divine, have done me harm; I feel exhausted, which seldom happens to me. I must be at M. Gavault's at nine o clock for consultation with him and his successor, M. Picard, on the Locquin affair; now, to get there at nine o'clock supposes breakfasting at seven; and I who have still five feuillets to write for Hetzel, promised to him for this morning! I had kept them back in order to have a calm night to search them out; they needed mind, and my mind was all upset!

I entreat you, do not be worried about the Reviews; it would even be a pity were it otherwise. A man is lost in France the moment he makes himself a name, and is crowned in his lifetime. Insults, calumnies, rejection, all that suits me. Some day it will be known that if I lived by my pen there never entered two centimes into my purse that were not hardly and laboriously earned, that praise or blame were equally indifferent to me, that I have built up my work amid cries of hatred and literary musketry, and have done so with a firm and imperturbable hand. My revenge is to write, in the "Débats," "Les Petits Bourgeois;" which will make my enemies say with fury, "At the moment one might think his bag was empty he produces a masterpiece." That is what Madame Reybaud said on reading "David Séchard," "Honorine," etc. You will read the strange history of "Esther." I will send it to you thoroughly corrected; you will there see a Parisian world which is, and always will be, unknown to you, very different from the false world of "Les Mystères" and ever comic; in which the author, as George Sand said, applies a whip that strips off all the plasters put on to hide the wounds he uncovers. You write me: "What a volume is that which contains 'Nucingen,' 'Pierre Grassou,' and 'Les Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan'!" Perhaps you are right; I am proud of it (between ourselves).

You will see if the corruption of the Spanish abbé, which annoys you, was not necessary to develop the history of Lucien in Paris, ending in a frightful suicide. Lucien had already served as an easel on which to paint journalism; he serves again to paint the piteous and pitiable class of kept women; the corruption of the flesh, after the corruption of the mind. Next comes "Les Petits Bourgeois," and, for conclusion, "Les Frères de la Consolation." Nothing will then be lacking in my Paris but artists, the stage, and the savants. I shall then have painted the great modern monster under all its aspects.

To sum up: here is the stake I play for,--four men have had in this half-century an immense influence: Napoleon, Cuvier, O'Connell; and I desire to be the fourth. The first lived on the blood of Europe, he inoculated himself with armies; the second espoused the globe; the third has incarnated himself in a people; and I shall have carried a whole social world in my brain. Better live thus than call out every evening, "Spades, hearts, trumps!" or find out why Madame such a one has done such or such a thing. But there will always be in me something greater than the writer, happier than he, and that is, your serf. My sentiment is nobler, grander, more complete than all the satisfactions of vanity or fame. Without this plenitude of heart I could not have accomplished one tenth of my work; I should not have had this ferocious courage. Tell yourself often this truth in your moments of melancholy, and you will divine by the toil-effect the grandeur of its cause.

Your journal has done me good to read, and I shall re-read it again to-morrow, more than once. It is six o'clock; I must see about inventing and then writing the little trifles for Hetzel. I leave you, sending to you all flowers of the heart.

February 6.

Yesterday I went out, but I suffered much; that thief who sues me, your letter, all these violent and opposing emotions did me harm. If the colic, as Lord Byron says, puts love to flight it certainly knocks down imagination; not only have I suffered, but my brain has been as if veiled. Last night was dreadful, and the waking not pleasant. After breakfasting, I feel rather better; but I have to go out for current affairs, and I cannot think of it without repugnance, so weak and ill do I still feel. I have, nevertheless, corrected the article for Hetzel, and added la coda, the most difficult part to wrench out. I still have one horribly difficult chapter to do of three feuillets; after which I shall be delivered. But while breakfasting the idea of a pretty comedy in three acts came to me; I will tell it to you if I write it. This week I must finish "Le Programme," and then set seriously to work on "Mercadet."

I dine to-day with Girardin, and shall pay a visit to M. de Barante to thank him for his letter. I perceive, sadly, that my hard labour has aged me much; if I do not go to Germany by the grace of God and yourself, I shall make a trip on foot among the Alps.

Do not think that I ever tire of the Daffinger. I give it to myself as a reward when I have done my task, and at night it is there, beside me, on my table, and I search my ideas in it.

February 7.

I am still not well, and I have even gone to bed during the day; but I feel a little better now and shall dine with my doctor. I have just done the article for Hetzel, which will be, like all things wrenched out in spite of Minerva, detestable. Yesterday I consulted M. Roux (Dupuytren's successor, alas!), and he strongly advised me that journey on foot as the only means of arresting the inclination of my cerebral organs to inflame.

I am now going to two printing-offices to negotiate affairs, and, among others, to arrange with a publisher for "Les Petits Bourgeois."

February 8.

When I do not suffer in my head I suffer in the intestines, and I have at all times a little fever; nevertheless, this morning, at the moment of writing to you, I am well, or rather, I feel better.

Yesterday I talked with a publisher named Kugelmann. He is a German, who seems to me full of good-will; we shall settle something to-day when I have done with the "Débats;" I go to Bertin at eleven o'clock. If the two affairs can be arranged I shall have nearly twenty thousand francs for "Les Petits Bourgeois." They want to illustrate either "Eugénie Grandet" or "La Physiologie du Mariage," and have made me proposals to that effect. If these proposals lead to any result you shall know it, of course. Yesterday I met Poirson, manager of the Gymnase, in an omnibus, and he proposed to me to give him the comedy of "Prudhomme," and have it played by Henri Monnier. That is one of my crutches for this year; I shall go and explain it to him next Monday; and if it suits him, I shall set to work upon it immediately, so as to have it played in March--or rather in May, for March has twice been fatal to me.

Adieu for to-day, celestial star, implored and followed with so much religion. Every day I say to myself, thinking of your dear household of three, "I hope they are happy! that nothing troubles them! that Lirette sanctifies herself more and more; that Anna goes sometimes to the theatre (for her health, as she says so prettily); and that madame will from time to time look down the Neva to where Paris lies." As for me, I think only of that rococo salon, and so thinking, I make a little mental prayer to a human divinity, especially about nine o'clock, when tea makes me think that you are taking yours in the lamplight at that white table, the yellow wavelets of which I see at moments, together with the samovar. What friends are things, when they surround beloved beings! There is even a stupid ivory elephant that returns to my memory at times. As for the causeuse, the little carpet, the Louis XIV. screen, and the chair on which you rested your noble, cherished head, they are objects of worship. Do you feel yourself loved even in the outward objects to which you have given more real life than living and moving beings have to me? Your sadnesses make me smile, and I say to myself, "She was not then sitting in her chair; she was not looking then at her chimney-corner." But it would have been a pity not to write those four pages; they are sublime; and were it not for the deep respect I have for you, I would put them proudly into one of my books, to give you the enjoyment of seeing how superior you are to scribblers like the rest of us. That letter is a true diamond as style and as thought; you have the inspiring influence, dear lady!--

See how I chatter with you! Can I help it? I make my letters one of those cat-like sensuous joys to which we grow used, and which wrap us so softly that we forget they are but the copy of their cause!--

Well, one more look at that dear rue Millionne, and a deep, deep sigh, alas! not to be there. Why should you not have a poet as others have a dog, a parrot, a monkey?--and all the more because I am a little of all three, and repeat to you ever the one phrase, "I am faithful!" (Here the countess throws up her head and casts a superb glance.)

Adieu till to-morrow; I have recovered a little gaiety the last two days; are some happy events happening to you? God owes them to you. Have you not suffered enough to expiate the fault of all who surround you?--for as to you, you have never understood or practised anything but the good and the beautiful.

February 10.

Yesterday Bertin was ill, but he sent word that the affair held good. I went to the printing-office, but the publisher did not come; a bad sign. Here's a strange thing! the printer fell so in love with the title "Les Petits Bourgeois de Paris" that he wants to buy the book of me for twenty thousand francs and publish it illustrated! I came home to dinner and went to bed, for I had this morning to read seven folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE and the whole of Hetzel's article. It crushed me down. I went to bed after breakfast and slept till dinner-time, and as I could not sleep again from six in the evening till three next morning, I took some coffee, and here I am at nine in the evening, writing at my table.

If I have luck I shall sell the right to illustrate "Eugénie Grandet," and the "Petits Bourgeois" affair will come off, and this will bring me out of these matters (I mean the annoying matters). They played a new tragedy at the Odéon last night, but I did not go; I reserve myself for Tuesday, when the "Mystères de Paris" are brought out at the Porte-Saint-Martin.

February 14.

"Les Mystères" ended this morning at half-past one after midnight. I did not get back to Passy till three in the morning. It is now one o'clock, and I am just up. Frédérick Lemaître was in fear of a cerebral congestion; I found him yesterday at midday in bed; he had just plunged into a mustard bath up to his knees. Twice the night before he lost his eyesight. "Les Mystères" is the worst play in the world, but Frédérick's talent will make a furor for it. As actor, he was magnificent. You never can describe such effects, they must be seen. I am satisfied with the success he will give to "Les Mystères," because it gives me time to finish "Mercadet." The princes were in a proscenium box, and as the Prince de Joinville had never seen me, the Duc de Nemours pointed me out to him.

Since then I have written to Poirson that I will go and see him Friday to agree about "Prudhomme." I am to dine with my old friend the Duchesse de Castries, who, just now, for one reason or another, renews her kind attentions to your servant. All my prose is ready for Hetzel. To-day I dine with Lingay, the man who wanted to put to the profit of the State, so he said, my talent of observation. He does not seem vexed with me for my want of compliance, or perhaps he has too much intelligence not to have understood me.

February 16.

I went out yesterday for much business.

1. A purchaser wants my Florentine furniture. People have come from all parts to see it, even the antiquity dealers; and they are all in a flutter of admiration. You don't know what this means. It was the article in the "Messager" (which you will doubtless read copied into the "Débats") which has roused all this attention.

2. The matter of "Les Petits Bourgeois" rests, so far, with the "Débats." But the publisher wants the book; no doubt to illustrate with "Eugénie Grandet" and the "Physiologie du Mariage."

3. Poirson thinks the idea of the play excellent and proposes to guide me!--and if the execution is equal to the plot, he assures me of all the advantages I can desire. So I may appear once more before the public about April 1. Here I am, with "Prudhomme" and "Les Petits Bourgeois" on my hands; but no money. I must coin it in a manner to conquer tranquillity for three months. It is terrifying. This is Shrove-Saturday; I must spend it working, Sunday too, with a fury that is not French, but Balzacian.

February 17.

You know, dear countess, that there are days when the brain becomes inert. In spite of my best will I have sat all day long in my arm-chair, turning over the leaves of the "Musée-des-Familles!"--what do you say to that?--and in gazing from time to time at my Daffinger, without finding aught there than the most sublime and charming creature in the world and not a line of copy! I wanted to return to "Madame de la Chanterie," but I could only write two feuillets.

February 18.

I dine to-day with Poirson, the theatre manager.

Yesterday I dined out; a dinner of twenty-five persons at a restaurant; but what a dinner! It would have cost two or three thousand roubles in the 60th degree of latitude. I went this morning to see Bertin and have come home to tell you that all is concluded. Three thousand one hundred and fifty francs a volume, like those of "Les Mystères." That will make nine thousand five hundred. I am going to bed, worn-out with fatigue.

February 19.

Shrove-Tuesday, February 19. Oh joy! I have your letter and have just read it. You ask why I no longer go in the Versailles direction. Simply because one does not seek that which annoys and displeases. Do you want to know the only way in which to cease to be to me unica and dilecta? it is to speak of that to me. All that was a bad dream which must be forgotten in order not to blush for it to one's self. Deprived of your letters I no longer lived; nor did I live again until once more I saw your dear handwriting. And you speak to me of Versailles; the very name sickens me, with the ideas attached to it, and this when I am so far from you with vast spaces parting us! But you do not know how in your absence I am deprived of soul and brain. I live by the reception of one letter, and I no sooner have it than I want another.

Ah! your letter was indeed due me amidst the annoyances and troubles of all kinds that assail me and the crushing work which implores peace and has never found it except near you. Even Hetzel, whom I thought a friend, is getting up with Bertin a foolish squabble with me. If you only knew in what a fit of misanthropy I went to bed. It was frightful. But also, with what delight I read those pages so full of sincerity and affection! One hour of such pure, heavenly enjoyment would make one accept the martyrdoms of human existence.

Yes, you have every reason to be proud of your child. It is through seeing young girls of her sphere, those who are the best brought-up here, that I say to you, and repeat it: you have the right to be proud of your Anna. Tell her that I love her, for you, whose happiness she is, and for her own angelic soul which I appreciate so truly. You tell me, dear countess, that, in the midst of your good success, there is something in the supreme decision which thwarts you, but you do not tell me what it is. Please repair that omission; do not let me fancy evil out of this uncertainty. Nothing, no event in the things of life, no woman however beautiful, nothing can disturb that which is for ten years past, because I love your soul as much as your person, and you will ever be to me the Daffinger. Do you know what is the most lasting thing in sentiment? It is la sorcellerie à froid--charm that can be deliberately judged. Well, that charm in you has undergone the coolest examination, and the most minute as well as the most extended comparison, and all is more than favourable to you. Dear fraternal soul, you are the saintly and noble and devoted being to whom a man confides his life and happiness with ample security. You are the pharos, the light-giving star, the sicura richezza, senza brama. I have understood you, even to your sadnesses, which I love. Among all the reasons which I find to love you--and to love you with that flame of youth which was the only happy moment of my past life--there is not one against my loving, respecting, admiring you. With you no mental satiety can exist: in that I say to you a great thing; I say the thing that makes happiness. You will learn henceforth, from day to day, from year to year, the profound truth of what I am now writing to you. Whence comes it? I know not; perhaps from similarity of characters, or that of minds; but, above all, from that wonderful phenomenon called entente cordiale--intimate comprehension--and also from the circumstances of our lives. We have both been deeply tried and tortured in the course of our existence; each has had a thirst for rest in our heart and in our outward life. We have the same worship of the ideal, the same faith, the same devotion to each other. Well, if those elements do not produce happiness, as their contraries produce unhappiness, then we must deny that saltpetre, coal, etc., produce ashes. But beyond these good reasons, it must be said, dear, that there is another, a fact, a certainty, the inspiration of a feeling beyond all else--the inexplicable, intangible, invisible flame which God has given to certain of his creatures, and which impassions them; for I love you as we love that which is beyond our reach; I love you as we love God, as we love happiness.

If the hope of all my life were to fail me, if I lost you, I should not kill myself, I should not make myself a priest, for the thought of you would give me strength to endure my life; but I would go to some lonely corner of France, in the Pyrenees, or the Ariège, and slowly die, doing and knowing nothing more in this world; I should go at long intervals to see Anna and talk of you at my ease with her. I should write no more. Why should I? Are you not the whole world to me? Examining what I feel in merely waiting for a letter, and what I suffer from a day's delay, it seems proved to me that I should die of grief. Oh! take care of yourself! Think that there is more than one life bound to yours. Take care in everything! Each day my double egotism increases; each day hope adds to her treasury dreams, longings, expectations. Oh! remain what I saw you on the Neva!

If you ask me, Madame la comtesse, why I yield myself up to this verbiage, which, some day soon, will bring a frown to that Olympian brow, if you would know why I have launched with such a flow upon the letter-tide, I shall tell you that I have just re-read your letter, that this is Mardi-gras, and I am taking the sole pleasure that I seek from the carnival.

Now I must talk health; you will not pardon me if I forget it in writing to you. I am well, in spite of a slight grippe, and I think I shall be able to master the enormous work that I must do between now and March 20. Do not dwell too much upon my troubles and my toils; do not pity me too much; without this avalanche to sweep away I should die, consumed by an indefinable ill, called absence, fever, consumption, nerves, languor--what Chénier has described in his "Jeune Malade." Therefore I bless heaven for the obligations which misfortune has placed upon me. I do not count, as I think I told you, on a theatre success to pay my debts; I count only on the fifty folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE which I have to do, and which will give me about fifty thousand francs. It is true that I also expect to bring to a good conclusion the affair of illustrating "Eugénie Grandet" and the "Physiologie;" and those two things represent twenty thousand at least. So I shall fully have enough, and over, for my journey and stay in Dresden.

Adieu until to-morrow. To-morrow I continue my journal after putting this one into the post. If you knew what emotion seizes me when I throw these packets into the box! My soul flies to you with the papers; I tell them a thousand foolish things; like a fool, I fancy they are going to repeat them to you; it is impossible to me to comprehend that these papers impregnated with me should be in eleven days in your hands and yet that I stay here. Well, you will see that during the last fourteen days I have been much driven about; I have worked little, I have thought of you, I have been agitated by the expectation of work for Frédérick. "Les Mystères" which, thanks to him, have had a success, little durable however, have cast me on the deserted boards of the "Gymnase." I am chasing Henri Monnier; you can, on reading these pages, scribbled in haste, tell yourself that your poor servant is working desperately; every moment is precious; a scene must be written, a proof corrected, copy sent. You will therefore have but little from me as writing, but much as thought in the journal which will follow the present one.

Adieu. Yesterday I was sad; to-day, thanks to your adorable letter, I am gay, happy. You are my life, my strength, my consolation; I have learned through disappointments and bitterness that I have but you in this world.

Adieu, then; be sure that I live more at the feet of your chair than in my own.

PARIS, February 28, 1844.

Dear countess; I have decided to finish the seventh volume of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE with "Le Lys dans la Vallée" which can certainly go under the head of "Scènes de la Vie de province." This arrangement spares me the writing of three volumes which I should not have time to publish separately first; besides I wish not to have a single line to write between now and October 1.

In spite of what you tell me of your plans for Dresden, I hardly believe in them. You leave Petersburg about the middle of May; you will be at home, at Wierzchownia, by the end of June; how can you expect between July and October (four months) to be put in possession of your rights, to have received the accounts of administration and guardianship, and to have re-established the status quo of your personal government? Oh! if you only knew with what sadness I count upon my fingers and add up all these difficulties: the time required for the journey, the accounts to examine and verify, the current affairs, and the unexpected hindrances! Such thoughts bring me dreadful, pitiless, implacable hours. You are my whole life; the infinitely little incidents as well as the gravest events of that life depend on you, and solely on you; the two months that I spent in Petersburg have, alas! sufficiently enlightened me as to that. No, you can never leave in October, for I know your anxious tenderness for your child; you would never let her travel in winter,--I have the certainty of conviction as to that. Do you understand what there is of despair in those words? Existence was endurable with the hope of Dresden; it overwhelms me, it annihilates me if I have to wait longer.

You ought to profit by your stay in Petersburg to obtain recovery of the administration from Anna's guardians, so that there be no one but you and her uncle to manage her affairs. You will do this, I am sure, unless you think it simpler and easier to manage at home, I mean in the chief town of your department, or I should say government, inasmuch as your provinces are divided into governments, not departments, as they are in France.

In any case, dear countess, when you return to Wierzchownia examine well the ifs and buts, the fors and the yes and nos, and decide whether I may go to you. If your high wisdom decides that I cannot, I shall ask of toil its absorption and its excitements in default of the resignation which I cannot promise you. Mon Dieu, one year lost! It is a lifetime for a being who finds a life in a day, when that day is passed with you.

I leave you to dine with M. de Margonne and to pay a little visit to the Princesse Belgiojoso, who lives next door to him.

February 29.

I had yesterday, after writing to you, a violent rush of blood to the head. From three in the morning till three in the afternoon I corrected without pausing six folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE ("Les Employés"), into which I inserted passages taken from the "Physiologie de l'Employé," a little book, written in haste, about which you know nothing. This work, which was equivalent to writing in twelve hours an 8vo volume, brought on the attack. My nose bled from yesterday until this morning. But I feel myself more relieved than weakened by this little natural bleeding,--beneficial, I make no doubt.

I have been to fetch the proofs of what I have so far done on "Les Petits Bourgeois." The printing-office is close to Saint-Germain-des-Prés; the idea came to me to enter the church, where they are painting the cupola, and I prayed for you and your dear child at the altar of the Virgin. Tears came into my eyes as I asked God to keep you both in life and health. My thought streamed even to the Neva. Perhaps, returning from those heights, I have brought back a gleam from that ideal throne before which we kneel. With what fervour, what ardour, what abandonment of myself, do I feel bound to you forever,--"for time and for eternity," as the devout people say.

On my way home I bought, for fifteen sous on the quay, the "Mémoires de Lauzun," which I had never read.[1] I looked them over in the omnibus, returning to Passy, where your serf, having reintegrated himself into his arm-chair, is writing this to you while awaiting dinner. What a strange thing that an honourable, courageous man, who seems to have had plenty of heart on all occasions when he needed it, could dishonour with such levity the women he professed to love! I think conceit, being the dominant feature of his character, smothered what was really good and generous within him. Does he not sub-suggest to us that he would not have Marie-Antoinette in the flower of her youth and the prestige of her grandeur? It was an odious calumny and a useless cruelty, when we think of the position of that poor queen at the period when these Memoirs were being written, In other respects this poor Lauzun makes one pity him; he never so much as suspects, while believing himself adored, that he was never loved, even feebly. A man so vain is not endured by the majority of women, who want an exclusive worship for themselves, and will not accept, unless for a moment, the presence of a rivalry as aggressive as it is insatiable--that of a lover of himself. So, we see how Princesse C... quickly quitted him; it is frightful.

After reading and closing that bad book, I cried out to myself, "How happy he is who loves but one woman!" I persist in that opinion; it is both a cry of the heart and the result of reasoning and observation; for I analyze you with the utmost coolness, and I recognize, with conviction and joy, that none can be compared to you. I do not know in this world a finer intellect, a nobler heart, a gentler or more charming temper, a nature more straightforward, a judgment more sure, based on reason and virtue. I will say no more, for fear of being scolded; and yet, this is what explains and justifies an enthusiasm stronger to-day than it was in 1833; which sends the blood in waves to my heart at sight of that page of poor Töpfer, which will lie on my table all my life; which transports me as I look at the Daffinger. Ah! you do not know what passed within me when, in that courtyard,--every stone of which is engraved in my memory, with its planks, its coach-house, etc.,--I saw your sweet face at the window. I no longer felt my own body, and when I spoke to you I was stultified. That stultification, that arrested torrent, arrested in its course to bound with greater force, lasted two days. "What must she think of me?" was a madman's phrase that I said and resaid in terror. No, truly, and believe it absolutely, I am not yet accustomed to know you after all these years. Centuries would not suffice, and life is short! You saw the effect during those two months in Petersburg. I left you in the same ecstasy in which I was the day I saw you once more. Of all the faces you made me see and know in Petersburg none remain in my memory. All have fled, evaporated, leaving no trace. But I can tell with certainty the smallest little detail of everything about you, even to the number of steps to your staircase, and the flower-pots that are massed at its angles. Of my apartment at Madame Tardif's, nothing remains in my mind; nothing of Petersburg either, unless it be the bench on which we sat in the Summer Garden, and the steps of the Imperial Quay where I gave you my hand. Oh! if you knew how precious to me is that pin which rolled along the quay! I have fastened to my mantel-piece, on the red velvet which drapes the side of it, a leaf of your ivy, that lustrous ivy which frightened you! Well, that leaf casts me into endless reveries. My dinner is brought; I must stop until to-morrow.

[Footnote 1: Armand Louis de Gontant Biron, Duc de Lauzun; born 1747, executed 1793.--TR.]

March 1.

On waking at two this morning, I took up your journal number 10, which I read very rapidly yesterday and have now re-read; I have given one hour to it; it is now three o'clock--can it be one hour? It is a thousand hours of paradise! What a strange thing! you say to me regarding the month of October the very fears I expressed to you a short time ago. Have we two thoughts? You tell me of the pain in your heart, and I was praying for your health in Saint-Germain-des-Prés! You are surely not ignorant that your life is my life, your death would be mine; your joys are my joys, your griefs my griefs. There was never in the world an affection like it; space has no part in it; I have felt my heart beat violently when I read your account of the throbbing of yours. And that page in which you say such gracious truths about my deep, unalterable, infinite attachment to you leaves me with moist eyes. No, such a letter makes all acceptable, burdens, griefs, all miseries! Yes, dear, distant yet present star, rely on me as you would on yourself; neither I nor my devotion will fail you more than the life in your body. At my age, dear fraternal soul, what I say of life may be believed; well, then, believe that for me there is no other life than yours. My plan is made. If harm happens to you, I shall bury myself in some hidden corner of the world, unknown to all; this is no vain saying.

If happiness for a woman is to know herself alone and singly in a heart, filling it in a manner indispensable, certain of shining in a man's intellect as its light, certain of being his life's blood pulsing in his heart, of living in his thought as the substance of that thought, and having the certainty that this is and ever will be--ah! then, dear sovereign of my soul, you can say that you are happy, happy senza brama, for such you are to me--till death. We may feel satiety for things human, there is none for things divine; and that last word alone expresses what you are to me.

No letter has ever made me feel more enjoyments than the one I have just read. It is full of a dear, delicate wit, so graceful, of an infinite kindness, wholly without paltriness. That forehead of a man of genius which I have so admired is visible everywhere. Yet, I have been to blame; how could I ever have thought that what you would do would not be well done, and properly done? From the point of view of the world, that jealousy was pretty, and perhaps flattering to some women, but from the point of view of an affection as exceptional as mine, it was a distrust for which I blame myself and entreat you to pardon me.

The idea of your novel is so pretty that, if you want to give me an immense pleasure, you will write it and send it to me; I will correct it and publish it under my own name. You shall not change the whiteness of your stockings, nor stain your pretty fingers with ink to benefit the public, but you shall enjoy all the pleasures of authorship in reading what I will preserve of your beautiful and charming prose. [This book was "Modeste Mignon."]

In the first place you must paint a provincial family, and place the romantic, enthusiastic young girl in the midst of the vulgarities of such an existence; and then, by correspondence, make a transit to the description of a poet in Paris. The friend of the poet, who continues the correspondence, must be one of those men of talent who make themselves the kite-tails of a fame. A pretty picture, could be made of the cavaliere serventi, who watch the newspapers, do useful errands, etc. But the dénouement must be in favour of this young man against the great poet. Also there must be shown, with truth, the manias and the asperities of a great soul which alarm and rebuff inferior souls. Do this, and you will help me; you will make me win the sympathy of certain choice minds by this employment of a leisure I lack so much. What a temptation for a soul like yours!

Adieu for to-day; leisure lacks and toil is calling. To-morrow I will re-read your adorable letter and answer it.

March 2.

Yesterday I had that tiresome judge from Bourges to dinner. The vote of the Chamber on Queen Pomaré kept him late; and it followed that having been up since two in the morning I went to bed at half-past eight and slept all night like a dormouse. So my work is compromised, and I am heavy, without ideas, without activity. The regularity of my hours saves me. I am expecting the Florentine furniture; meantime, I have re-read that adorable letter. Suzette's death seems to me a small calamity. She was gay, she loved you, and that is a great claim to my remembrance, in which she will remain eternally, if only for her arrivals at the Arc with your missives. Dear countess, I entreat you, never fight my battles, either for me or for my works. I am afraid of some trap set for your good friendship and your gracious, sympathetic partiality. The best way to hoax critics is to satirically agree with them; carrying the matter farther than they reckoned or wished, and when you have enticed them into absurdity, leave them there. The more I think of it the more charming do I find the idea of your novel. Write it out for me and I will use it.

Nodier died as he had lived, with grace and good-humour; in full possession of his mind and sensibility, of his head, in short; and religiously,--he confessed and desired to receive the sacraments. He died not only with calmness, but with joy. Five minutes before his death he asked for news of all his grandchildren, and said: "Are none of them ill? Then all is well." He wished to be buried in his daughter's marriage veil. Mass was said in his room, and he heard it with great collectedness. In short, his conduct was becoming, gay, charming, gracious to the last moment. He sent me word that he had been deeply touched by my letter, that he regretted dying before he had brought the Academy to repair its injustice towards me, that he had always wished I might be his successor there and hoped I should be. I give you these details, knowing the interest that you will take in them.

You may have thought me a little cool about the announcement of your suit being won; and, in truth, if I am glad of it, it is especially in knowing that you are at last delivered from legal annoyances. Believe that though I am little solicitous of fortune for myself (no matter what is said of me), I am too devoted to you not to wish you all the comforts of ease; because one cannot enjoy life or what it offers of good and charming if forced to struggle against ill fortune. If I am destined to live always apart from you, I shall not think the less, with childlike joy, that you are free from cares in the present and in the future, that you are enabled to do good to those about you according to the compassionate and generous instincts of your kindness, and I shall say, with the satisfaction of Pehméja, "I have nothing, but Dubreuil is rich." Let us believe, however, that the future will not be gloomy for me either, from this point of view at least; and that, my debts once paid, I can give myself up to the leisure and repose so awaited, so longed-for, so dearly bought, before I sleep the eternal sleep in which we rest from all, especially from ourselves.

Meantime, my garden is greening; there are fresh young shoots; before long there will be flowers; I will put some in my letter before closing it. The page of your letter produced by that engraving of Töpfer, and the infinite pleasure the latter caused me have given fresh impetus and new vigour to my courage. With such support and such words, waiting is no longer heroism, it becomes a duty. Yes, I suffer much, more perhaps than you can believe, to be nailed, chained here, while you, free in all your actions, are absent and so far away. But hope rocks us ever! so persuasive, so obliging is she that she succeeds in reassuring me, and even in convincing me that the reality will not forever escape me.

When I am thus calmed, and the inspiration and enthusiasm of work takes part in it, all goes fairly well; but it does not continue. Alas! there are moments when discouragement is so strong and lassitude so complete that work becomes impossible to me; my faculties are no longer free; I am distracted from my thoughts by something imperative, inexplicable, arbitrary, which rules my brain and grasps my heart. There is a form, I know not what, which goes and comes, which crosses my room and returns, which lays its finger upon me and says: "Why work? what folly! why wear yourself out in this way? Think that a few months more and you will see her. Amuse yourself while waiting!" I am not romancing, believe me; I am telling this as it happens, be it revery, hallucination, or no matter what phenomenon of a wearied brain that wanders. But I soon return to my fixed idea; I take up the past, crumb by crumb; I make myself happy in it; I am with the future like children with the white cloth that hides their New Year's gifts, and I return to your letters as to the pasture of my soul.

I entered a church to-day, to pray and to ask God for your health, with an ardour full of egotism--as all fanaticisms are. I was afraid; I dared not pray. I said to myself, "This is so full of selfish interest perhaps I shall irritate him." And I stopped suddenly, like a bigoted old woman, or a silly schoolgirl. To this are we brought by force of preoccupation, or to speak more truly, obsession. This is what we become when we have but one idea in the brain and one sole being in the heart.

March 4.

I don't know whether it is a phase of the brain, but I have no continuity of will. I plot, I conceive books, but when it comes to execution, all escapes me. I have turned over and over a hundred times your idea for a novel, which is a very fine thing; it is the duel between poesy and reality, between the ideal and the practical, between physical poesy and that which is a faculty, an effect of the soul. I will do that work; it may become something grand and noble. But at this moment all has fled me; there is some evil influence, as if a sirocco had swept across the strings of a harp; a memory, a nothing, a turning backward, the caprice of some elf that wants a prey--all dissolves my energy and beats me down, body and soul. Well, why not let it consume a portion of my time, that sacred and sublime passion? I am so happy in loving thus! But it is a frightful extravagance! I am royally a spendthrift! "Les Petits Bourgeois" is there, on my desk, the "Débats" has announced it; you know in whose name the book is written; yet I dare not touch it. That mountain of proofs terrifies me, and I rush to the banks of the Neva, where there are no Petits Bourgeois, and I plunge into a blue arm-chair, so enticing to the far niente.

What reading can ever give me the pleasure of those dry, academic notices of Mignet, or any of those books that I picked up at random on the table of your salon, while awaiting the rustle of a silk gown. If I could draw I would make from memory a sketch of the moujik lighting the stove! I see that little bit of cord unsewn from the back of the causeuse under the ivy--such are my grand occupations! Now and then I go over in memory the gowns I have seen you wear, from the white muslin lined with blue that first day at Peterhof to the magnificence of a robe all covered with lace, with which you adorned yourself to go to parties. Ah! 'tis the best poem known by heart that ever was or will be--the verses, stanzas, cantos of those two months!

Yes, I shall never have loved but once in my life, and, happily, that affection will fill my whole life. But I must leave these sacred orgies of memory, for I desire to appear with éclat in the journal.

I put into this packet the first flower that has bloomed in my garden; it smiled to me this morning, and I send it laden with many thoughts and impulses that cannot be written. Do not be astonished to find me so garrulous, saying the same thing for the millionth time; I have no other confidant than you, you only. Never in my living life have I said one word of you, nor of my worship, nor of my faith; and probably the stone which will some day lie above my body will keep the silence I have kept in life. Therefore, there was never in this world a fresher, more immaculate feeling in any soul than that you know of. I hope that the Cyclop of toil will soon return, but not to chase away entirely the Ariel of memory.

Adieu; try to think a little of him who thinks of you at every moment, as the miser of his hidden hoard; as the pious heart of its saint.

PASSY, October 11, 1844[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Wierzchownia.]

Dear countess, I have received your letter of September 25; it came last night, that is, in fifteen days only. I am not very well; yesterday I went to the doctor; the neuralgia must be fought with leeches and a little blister; that will take three or four days. I have been doing "César Birotteau" with my feet in mustard, and I am now writing "Les Paysans" with my head in opium. Within ten days I have written six thousand lines for the "Presse;" I must get through by October 30. Your letter is still another reason for haste; for if you travel, I must be ready.

My illness has reached a height. This inflammation of the coating of the nerves, caused undoubtedly by a strong draught, produces pain effects just as scene painters produce scenic effects. For fifteen nights I have worked at "Les Paysans" in spite of my sufferings. So you see there has been no journey to Belgium. Do not be uneasy, dear countess; your advice as to the travelling lady is not needed; I had already told myself that, for your sake, I ought to pay attention to the follies of public opinion; we have, as usual, thought alike.

It is four in the morning; I must go to bed and put leeches into my right ear; but I would not let these three days be added to your expectation. Before M. Gavault's departure, thirty thousand francs had been offered for Les Jardies; but the value of land in the Allée des Veuves is increasing, and I have told the notary to stop the negotiation. Was this wise? I shall wait; perhaps I shall find a house, ready built and cheap. This neuralgia hinders me very much; for I have to do a work for Chlendowski, who is a great wrangler, just as you predicted; you were right, as usual; I may be paid, but one thing is very certain, I will do no more business with him.

How right you were to give me some hope for Dresden or Frankfort, because, during these last days, I have been so unhappy while working; I wanted to quit everything and go to you at Wierzchownia. Leave me hope; is it not all I have? Ah! if you have understood the sad and tender words I say to you, you must look upon yourself, if not with pride at least with a certain complacency. The greatness of my affection renders petty all the great difficulties of my life. I have amazed everybody by saying that I shall do the twenty thousand lines of "Les Paysans" during the month of October. No one believed me; not even the newspaper. But when they saw me writing six thousand lines in ten days they were awe-struck. The compositors are reading the work, a thing that does not happen once in a hundred times; a murmur of admiration runs through them; and this is the more extraordinary because the work is directed against the multitude and democracy.

Your letter has been much delayed; in my impatience I demanded the head of all the Rzewuskis, except yours; do not frown that aristocratic brow, but think of my toil, my sufferings without comfort!

I am glad you have seen clearly about the poor nun! [1] She abandoned you only for God; and that was a little your fault; your example, your reading, your advice, led her there forcibly. Do not be uneasy about her; she is happy where she is; she hopes to be soon received as novice. I hope that if you wish to send her anything you will make use of me. At the present moment I can easily give her in your name one or two thousand francs without embarrassing myself in the least. I am a rich pauper just now.

You say you have still time to receive a letter from me before your departure. I hasten, as you see, to send you my news of mind and body. I have not been out of the house for twenty days. In point of fact I live in the condition of stupidity produced by forced labour. I have, besides, my little Hetzel articles to do. That poor fellow wants to sell twenty thousand copies of "Le Diable," and he has printed fifteen thousand. Your serf has contributed thereto a quantity of that sly nonsense which pleases the masses. To have paid twenty thousand francs of debt, and to find myself in December on the road to Dresden, "Les Paysans" finished, that is my dream, and a dream that must, and will, be realized; otherwise, I don't know how I could live through 1845. There comes a moment for the madness of hope; and I have reached it. I have so strained my life to this end that I feel all within me cracking. I would I did not think, and did not feel. Oh, how can I tell you of the hours I have sat, during these twenty days, leaning on my elbow, and looking at the salon in Petersburg and at Wierzchownia, those two poles of my thought, of which the south pole was before me in its frame. Hope and reality, the past, the future, jostled one another in a medley of memories that gave me a vertigo. Ah! you stand there indeed, in my life, in my heart, in my soul; there is hardly a motion of my pen, nor a thought of my mind that is not a ray from the one centre, you, you only, you too well beloved--whatever you may say to it.

The death of your cousin Thaddeus grieves me. You have told me so much of him that you made me love one who loved you so well. You have doubtless guessed why I called Paz Thaddeus, and gave him the character and sentiments of your poor cousin. But while you weep for his loss tell yourself that I will love you for all those whose love you lose. Poor, dear countess, the situation in which you are and which you depict so well has made me smile, because it was exactly my own before your last letter. "Shall I or shall I not do 'Les Paysans'?" "Shall I or shall I not start?" "What ought I to do? Ought I to bind myself to my work? Ought I to refuse it?" and so forth. I cut the knot by going to work, saying to myself, "If I do go, I will drop all as at Lagny in 1843." Nacquart said to me brutally yesterday, while writing his prescriptions, "You will die." "No," I said, "I have a private God of my own; a God stronger than all diseases." "I hope," he said, "that if you marry, you will take two years for rest." "Two years, doctor!--why, I shall rest till my last breath, if by rest you mean happiness."

[Footnote 1: Madame Hanska's governess and companion, Mlle. Henriette (Lirette) Borel; who became a convert to the Roman Catholic Church, and took the veil in Paris, as will be seen later--TR.]

October 16.

This interruption, dear, is the result of the doctor's prescriptions. I have not left my bed; leeches were necessary and blisters for three or four days; but this morning the symptoms and the atrocious pain of this inflammation have ceased. In three days, at the latest, I can resume my work. These few days given to doctoring have been days of pleasure to me; for, when I am not working with that absorption of all the mental and physical faculties I can think unceasingly of 1845; I arrange houses, I furnish them, I see myself in them, I feel myself happy there. I go over in my mind all those moments, so few, that we have spent together; I quarrel with myself for not having prolonged those hours of sweet and intimate converse.

Dear, ungrateful one; you have hardly noticed my persistency in satisfying your little wish for autographs. I send you to-day one of Peyronnet; I shall try to get you those of all the ministers who signed the duly ordinances.

Are you really satisfied with this young man? [1] Examine him well, and without predilections, for such excellent prospects for your child will certainly contribute to make the suitor seem perfect. But I don't know why I should advise prudence and shrewdness to one who has stolen all the wits of the Rzewuskis, and has eyes at the tips of her little white-mouse paws. At any rate, dear countess, manage your affairs wisely, and, above all, soften the Governmental dragon of the North.

I am exactly like a bird on a branch; it is necessary that I should leave the rue Basse and go elsewhere, where I can be more suitably lodged. I am like my dear traveller, with her packages and provisions. I dare not do anything; for if I go to Dresden for four months I ought to postpone incurring expenses; besides, I would rather incur them definitively then than provisionally now. My nature abhors change; that is an aspect of my character you have already been forced to recognize, and will recognize more and more; you will even admire it, and end by no longer thanking me for the things of the heart; discovering that this vast devotion is warranted by the Rzewuski intellect and the charms of the person whom you see in your mirror.

How could you recommend me your perfumer? I have thought much about him. I anathematize Viardot for not having told me of his arrival; you should have had your supply before now. But if we meet in Dresden, dear countess, you shall have perfumes for the rest of your days, I will answer for that. We have the same vices, for I too carry the passion for delicate scents to a fault.

Alas! I must bid you adieu; but remember that you have left me nearly a month without letters, that you are not in Paris and have no feuilletons to excuse you. Apropos, I have been three times to the Arsenal, but have not yet obtained Nodier's autograph; but I shall have it.

They tell me that David has finished my bust in marble, and that the marble is not less fine than the cast. It will be, no doubt, in the next Exhibition. You can hardly imagine how I regret not having bought that malachite vase; I have found, for three hundred francs, a magnificent pedestal which would have spared me the immense cost of the one I had made here in bronze.

I am still ill and must now stop. Perhaps I shall be able to give you better news before closing this letter.

[Footnote 1: Count Georges Mniszech, a suitor to her daughter, and subsequently Anna's husband--TR.]

October 17.

All is well; the neuralgic pains have disappeared as if by magic, and if I have not finished my letter it is because I have slept twelve hours running under the quietude of non-suffering.

Adieu, dear beloved sovereign. Examine well that young Count Mniszech; it concerns the whole life of your child. I am glad you have found the first point, that of taste and personal sympathy, so necessary for her happiness and yours, satisfactory. But study him; be as stern in judgment as if you did not like him. The things to be considered above all are principles, character, firmness. But how stupid of me to be giving this advice to the best and most devoted of mothers!

I resume work to-morrow. I cannot give you any news of Lirette, having been unable to go to her convent while my illness and its prescriptions lasted.

I hunger and thirst for your dear presence, star of my life, far away, but ever present. Perhaps you think thus of me, sometimes. Who knows? But alas! you have written to me very little of late. I, so occupied by work, so often ill, I write to you nearly every day. Ah! the reason is that I love you. I feel your indifference, I was going to say ingratitude, deeply; so exasperated am I by this interval of a whole long month. You would be frightened if you knew what ideas plough through me. And then, when the letter comes at last, all is forgotten. I am like a mother who has found her child. But I must not let my letter end with reproaches.

Find here all my heart, all my faith, all my thought, and all my life.

PASSY, October 21, 1844.

I am perfectly well again and have gone back to work. This is a piece of good news worth telling you at once. But oh! dearest, a year is a year, don't you see? The heart cannot deceive itself; it suffers its own pains in spite of the false remedies of hope--Hope! is it anything else than pain disguised? I look at that Colmann sketch of the salon, and every look is a stab; the thought of it enters my heart like a sharp blade. Between that sketch and the picture of Wierzchownia is the door of my study,--and that door represents to me infinite space, spreading away among the memories attached to that furniture, to those blue hangings. "We were there together; she is now there and I am here!" That is my cry, and each look, each stab redoubles it. Why did not Colmann paint the other side of the salon? Why not have done the stove and the little table before the stove, beside which you said to me things so compassionate, so sweet, so fraternally reasonable? Ah! I would give my blood to hear them once again.

Madame Bocarmé has returned. Bettina adores your serf, in all honour and propriety. She tells me that Colmann's fifty water-colours are masterpieces, and he is to Russia what Pinelli is to Rome.

I went out for the first time yesterday. I bought a clock of regal magnificence, and two vases of celadon not less magnificent. And all for nearly nothing. Great news! a rich amateur has a desire for my Florentine furniture. He is coming here to see it. I want forty thousand francs for it. Another piece of news! The Christ of Girardon, bought for two hundred francs, is estimated at five thousand, and at twenty thousand with Brustolone's frame. And yet you laugh, dear countess, at my proceedings in the Kingdom of Bricabracquia. Dr. Nacquart is violently opposed to my selling, even at a great price, these magnificent things. He says: "In a few months you will be out of your present position by this dogged work of yours; and then those magnificences will be your glory." "I like money better," I replied. So, you see, Harpagon played poet, and the poet Harpagon.

Dear, believe me, I cannot always suffer thus. Do you reflect upon it? Another delay! When "Les Paysans" is finished, and the articles for Chlendowski also, I claim a word from you permitting me to join you in your steppes, that is, if your difficulties in obtaining a passport still continue and are permanent.

I have found a most splendid pedestal for David's bust, which every one says is an amazing success. This beautiful thing cost me only three hundred francs, and the late Alibert, for whom it was made, paid fifteen or sixteen thousand francs for it.

Dear countess, I should like your advice on something I want to do. It is impossible for me to remain where I am. A few steps from my present lodging is a house which could be hired for a thousand to fifteen hundred francs, where one could live as well on fifteen hundred francs a year as on fifty thousand. I am inclined to hire it for a number of years and settle in it. I could very well economize and lay by enough to buy a small house in Paris, if I did not live in it for some years. One can come and go between Passy and Paris as one likes, with a carriage. But to settle myself in it would cost very nearly six thousand francs, and I would not make that outlay for the King of Prussia, when I have twenty thousand francs to pay between now and January 1. All could be made smooth by the sale of that Florentine furniture. The "Musée des Familles" does not publish the engravings of it and Gozlan's article till December, so that public attention will not be aroused till January. The bidding will be between the dilettanti and capitalists as soon as they see and know what it is.

As to your plan, I would rather renounce tranquillity than obtain it at that price. When a man has troubled his country and intrigued in court and city, like Cardinal Retz, he may evade paying his debts at Commercy; but in our bourgeois epoch a man cannot leave his own place without paying all he owes; otherwise he would seem to be escaping his creditors. In these days we may be less grand, less dazzling, but we are certainly more orderly, perhaps more honourable than the great seigneurs of the great century. This comes, probably, from our altered understanding of what honour and duty mean; we have placed their meaning elsewhere, and the reason is simple enough. Those great seigneurs were the actors on a great stage, who played their parts to be admired; and they were paid for doing so. We are now the paying public which acts only for itself and by itself. Do not, therefore, talk to me of Switzerland or Italy, or anything of that kind; my best, my only country is the space between the walls of the octroi and the fortifications of Paris. If I leave it, it will only be to see you, as you well know. I should have done so already had you permitted it. Therefore, work with your little white-mouse paws to enlarge the hole of your jail, so that the hour of your liberation may come the sooner. Formerly I lived by that hope: now I die of it. I have feverish impatiences, doubts; I fear everything,--war, the death of Louis-Philippe, an illness, a revolution; in short, obstacles are ever springing up in my agonized imagination. I see how your personal affairs hamper and weary you; and your inexhaustible kindness wearies also.

Thinking sadly of all this, looking out into the void for your interests and those of your child, I have thought of an admirable affair in which one hundred thousand francs risked might make colossal returns. I mean the publication of an encyclopedia for primary instruction. If well planned, the fame of a Parmentier is in it; for such a book is like a potato of education, a necessity, a fabulous bargain. I have faith in such an affair, and I am at this moment considering the manuscript. Oh! if you were here, or at least in the same city, how well things would go! what new courage I should have! what fresh sources would gush up! But absence gives drouth and sterility to ideas as well as to existence.

I am glad that young Mniszech pleases you as well as the dear child. Keep me au courant of matters so important for the future of both of you. In heaven's name, write me regularly three times a month. Think of my work and how you are everywhere in my study. When I look at your surroundings I cannot help taking a pen and scribbling a few words as full of affection as they are of murmurs. If I go to Dresden, I shall postpone the affair of the house.

Adieu; take care of your health, your child, your property, since they preoccupy you to the point of making you forget your most faithful friends.

PASSY, February 1, 1845.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska at Dresden.]

Could I write to you safely before receiving your counter-order, for your last letter told me not to write to you at Dresden? Since that letter I have only had a few lines written in haste, in which the status quo was maintained and to which there was no way of answering.

I have even a certain uneasiness in observing that you do not speak of my last letters. One of them contained an article entitled "Les Boulevards," and I asked your advice about it. There is one observation that I wish to make, merely for the sake of clearing the matter up. I am sure that you send your letters to the post by some unfaithful hand, for the two last were not prepaid, and you had doubtless given the order to do so. Therefore, either prepay them yourself or do not prepay them at all. Let us begin, as we did at Petersburg, in each paying our own letter. Take, I entreat you, habits of order and economy. In travelling, you will have incessant need of your money; it is bad enough to be robbed by innkeepers, without letting others do so. For the twelve years that I have now known you I have posted all my letters to you with my own hand.

Poor dear countess! how many things I have to say to you! But first of all, let us talk business. Without your inexorable prohibition I should have been in Dresden a month ago, at the Stadt-Rom, opposite to the Hotel de Saxe, and if you have raised it let me know by return mail. As you are fully resolved, and your child also, to see Lirette again, there is but one means of doing so, and that is to come to Paris. And the only way to make that journey is as follows: Come to Frankfort and establish yourself there; then propose a trip on the Rhine; begin with Mayence, where you will find me with a passport for my sister and niece. From there you take the mail-cart and go to Paris, where you can stay from March 15 to May 15, without a word to any one. After which you can return to Frankfort, where I will join you later. As you will have seen no one during the few days you are first in Frankfort, you will attract no attention, and no one will notice you on your return. Only be sure you get from your ambassador a passport for Frankfort and the banks of the Rhine.

I shall have found, meantime, for both of you, a small furnished apartment at Chaillot, not far from Passy. You can see the great city at your ease incognito. There are a dozen theatres for Anna, as she likes them so much, and you want to amuse her. That will give you plenty to do, without counting your visits to the convent, which would be more frequent than those to the theatre if you consulted your own tastes; but your tastes are so mingled with those of your daughter, and you spend your lives in each sacrificing to the other so much, that it is impossible to tell which of you wants a thing or does not want it. You need spend very little, if you are willing to travel like a bachelor, and keep a total silence on the escapade.[1] You will see the Exhibition, the theatres, and the public buildings, and I will have tickets for the concerts at the Conservatoire; in short, I shall arrange that you shall enjoy all that can be put into two months. There is my plan.

But in such things, boldness and secrecy, little luggage, only the simple necessaries, are required. You will find what you want here, of better quality and cheaper than elsewhere,--that is, comparatively to the prices I have seen you pay for your gowns and chiffons in Italy and Germany. At Chaillot you shall find a nice little apartment and servants--cook, maid, and valet--for two months. In the morning you can go about Paris on foot, or in a fiacre, to diminish distances. In the evening you would have a carriage of your own. If you follow this programme and do not go into society, there is no possibility of your meeting any one.

Nevertheless, my good angels, reflect well, and do not let your affection for your friend entice you too much. Weigh all the inconveniences and dangers of this journey; however immense would be to me the pleasure of showing Paris to both of you, explaining it to you, and initiating you into its life, I would rather renounce it all than expose you to anything that might cause regret. Examine, therefore, all I have foreseen, and if you think the risks too great, renounce our mirage. We must not give ourselves eternal regrets for two months of a pleasure that is only delayed,--that of seeing the face of a friend through the bars of a convent.

[Footnote 1: Secrecy was required, as Russians in those days were not allowed to travel in foreign countries without a special permit from their government, which was difficult to obtain.--TR.]

February 15, 1845.

Dear countess; the uncertainty of your arrival at Frankfort has weighed heavily upon me; for how could I work, expecting every hour a letter which might make me start at once? I have not written a line of the conclusion of "Les Paysans." This uncertainty has disorganized me completely. From the point of view of mere material interests it is fatal. In spite of your fine intelligence, you can never comprehend this, for you know nothing of Parisian economy, or the painful straits of a man who tries to live on six thousand francs a year. For this reason, I must quit Passy; but I dare do nothing, I can make no plans on account of your uncertainty. But the worst of all is the impossibility of occupying my mind. How can I throw myself into absorbing labour with the idea before me of soon starting, and starting to see you? It is impossible. To do so I need to have neither head nor heart. I have been tortured and agitated as I never was in my life before. It is a triple martyrdom, of the heart, of the head, of the interests, and, my imagination aiding, it has been so violent that I declare to you I am half dazed,--so dazed, that to escape madness I have taken to going out in the evening and playing lansquenet at Madame Merlin's and other places. I had to apply a blister to such disease. Luckily, I neither lost nor won. I have been to the Opera, and dined out twice, and tried to lead a gay life for the last fortnight. But now I shall try to work night and day, and finish "Les Paysans" and a bit of a book for Chlendowski.

I send you by the Messageries the eleventh volume of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, in which you will find "Splendeurs et Misères des courtisanes." The fourth volume contains your "Modeste Mignon" and the end of "Béatrix," also "Le Diable à Paris." These books may perhaps amuse you; but in any case, tell me your opinion of them as you have always done,--namely, with the sincerity of a fraternal soul and the sagacity and sure judgment of a true critic. If the reduction of my bust by David is made in time, I will send you that also.

Not only is the finishing of "Les Paysans" an absolute necessity before which all must yield relatively to literature and the reputation which I have for loyalty to pen engagements, but it is an absolute necessity for my interests. This year is a climacteric in my affairs.

Within forty-live days the printing of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE will be finished. The publishers have put the two largest printing-offices in Paris on it, and I am obliged to read twice the usual number of proofs. The result will be a sum of importance to me. But I cannot leave Passy till my present debts are paid. Therefore I must finish "Les Paysans" and LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, and "Les Petits Bourgeois" and "Le Théâtre comme il est." But, dear countess, you have made me lose all the month of January and the fifteen first days of February by saying to me: "I start--to-morrow--next week," and by making me wait for letters; in short, by throwing me into rages which none but I know of. It has brought a frightful disorder into my affairs, for instead of getting my liberty February 15, I have before me a month of herculean labour, and on my brain I must inscribe (to be rejected by my heart) the words: "Think no longer of your star, nor of Dresden, nor of travel; stay at your chain and toil miserably."

Dear, what I call toil is something that must be seen, no prose can depict it; what I have done for a month past would lay any well-organized man on his back. I have corrected the thirteenth and fourteenth volumes of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, which contain "La Peau de Chagrin," "La Recherche de l'Absolu," "Melmoth réconcilié," "Le Chef d'œuvre inconnu," "Jésus-Christ en Flandres," "Les Chouans," "Le Médecin de campagne," and "Le Curé de village." I have finished "Béatrix;" I have written and corrected the articles for "Le Diable à Paris;" and I have settled some affairs. All that is nothing; that is not working. Working, dear countess, is getting up regularly at midnight, writing till eight o'clock, breakfasting in fifteen minutes, working till five o'clock, dinner, and going to bed; to begin again at midnight. From this travail there issue five volumes in forty-five days. It is what I shall begin as soon as this letter is written. I must do six volumes of "Les Paysans," and six folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, inasmuch as that is all that is needed to complete the edition, which is in seventeen volumes. I hope for another edition in 1846, and that will be in twenty-four volumes, and may give me two hundred thousand francs.

So this is my report on the affairs of your servitor and the journey of your Grace.

Now, let me come to that which is more serious than all,--I mean that tinge of sadness which I see on your Olympian brow. What! because a crazy woman cannot be happy, must she come and spoil your comfort and trouble your heart? And you listen to her, you! Take care, for that is a crime of lese-comradeship, lese-brotherhood. And you write me things mournful enough to kill the devil. In your last but one letter you propose to me gracefully, with those Russian forms you must have borrowed for the occasion, a little congress in which the two high powers should decide whether or not to continue their alliance offensive and defensive. That, my dear lady, is, believe me, a greater crime than those you joke me about; for I have never needed any such consultation.

Since 1833, you know very well that I love you, not only like one beside himself, but like a see-er, with eyes wide open; and ever since that period, I have always and ceaselessly had a heart full of you. The errors for which you blame me are fatal human necessities, very truly judged by your Excellency herself. But I have never doubted that I should be happy with you.

Dear countess, I decidedly advise you to leave Dresden at once. There are princesses in that town who infect and poison your heart; were it not for "Les Paysans" I should have started at once to prove to that venerable invalid of Cythera how men of my stamp love; men who have not received, like her prince, a Russian pumpkin in place of a French heart from the hands of a hyperborean Nature. In France, we are gay and witty and we love, gay and witty and we die, gay and witty and we create, gay and witty and withal constitutional, gay and witty and we do things sublime and profound! We hate ennui, but we have none the less heart; we tend to things gay and witty, curled and frizzed and smiling; that is why it is sung of us, to a splendid air, "Victory, singing, opens our career!" It makes others take us for a frivolous people--we, who at this moment are applauding the disquisitions of George Sand, Eugène Sue, Gustave de Beaumont, de Toqueville, Baron d'Eckstein, and M. Guizot. We a frivolous people! under the reign of money-bags and his Majesty Louis-Philippe! Tell your dear princess that France knows how to love. Tell her that I have known you since 1833, and that in 1845 I am ready to go from Paris to Dresden to see you for a day; and it is not impossible I may do so; for if Tuesday next I am lucky at cards at Comtesse Merlin's, I shall be on Sunday, 23d, at the Hôtel de Rome in Dresden, and leave on the 24th.

Dear star of the first magnitude, I see with pain by your letter that you commit the fault of defending me when I am blamed in your presence, and of taking fire on my account. But you don't reflect, dear, that that is a trap set for you by the infamous galley-slaves of society's galleys, to enjoy your embarrassment. When persons say ill of me before you, there is but one thing to do,--turn those who calumniate me into ridicule by outdoing what they say. Tell them: "If he escapes public indignation it is because he is so clever he blunts the sword of the law." That is what Dumas did to some one who told him his father was a negro: "My grandfather was a monkey," he replied.

No, when I think that I might leave here January 1, reach Dresden the 7th, and stay till February 7th, thus seeing you one whole month without detriment to my affairs, that I could then return to my desk happy, refreshed, full of ardour for work, a transport seizes me which eddies and whirls like steam as it hisses from its valve. I see that you are completely ignorant of what you are to me. That does honour to neither your judgment nor your penetration. To-day, that delightful escapade has become impossible to me. March 1, I must regulate the sale of Les Jardies; the legal formalities must be fulfilled in order to put that precious thirty thousand francs aside; LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE must be finished to obtain the fifteen thousand francs that are due to me for it; and finally, I must make up the sixty-three thousand for my acre, if I buy it, and to pay off twenty-five thousand of debt which would otherwise prevent my becoming a land-owner.

Villemain is at Chaillot; he is no more crazy than you or I. [Minister of Public Instruction till 1844, and Secretary of the Academy.] He has had a few hallucinations which have affected his ideas, just as I had some that affected my use of words in 1832 at Saché; I have related that to you already; I uttered words involuntarily. But he is so thoroughly cured that he speaks of the matter with the wisdom and coolness of a physician. He had already declined very much in talent, and was no longer fit to negotiate with the clergy, and they profited by his resignation to get rid of him. We talked of it, he and I, for more than two hours. From what he told me, I judge that he is forever lost to public life.

Adieu; I perceive that I bid you adieu in my letters as I said good-night to you at Petersburg in the Hotel Koutaitsof, when we walked for ten minutes from the sofa to the door and from the door to the sofa, unable to say a final adieu. If I could do the second part of "Les Paysans" in eight days, I would be off, and see you in six days! Tell yourself that there never passes an hour that you are not in my thoughts; as for my heart, you are always and unceasingly there.

The winter has set in with great severity. You are right to stay in Dresden. Avoid, I entreat you, those sudden changes from heat to cold and cold to heat of which you tell me. It is right to think, as you do, incessantly of your child; but it would be wrong, and not loving to her, to always forget yourself for her. Of all the personages whom you mention to me none but Countess L... attracts me. That amiable old lady who welcomed you as the daughter of Count Rzewuski goes to my heart, she belongs to my world. As for Lara, do me the pleasure not to receive him in future.

Did I tell you that they named the bœuf gras this year Père Goriot, and that many jokes and caricatures are made upon it at my expense? This is a scrap of news. I am vexed not to go to Dresden, for I had not the time when I was there solely to see the Gallery, to view the country about and go to Kulm, in order to write my "Bataille de Dresde." That will be one of the most important parts of the "Scènes de la Vie militaire."

À bientôt; take care of yourself, and tell your dear child all tenderly loving things from one of the most sincere and faithful friends she will ever have, not excepting her husband, for I love her as her father loved her.

PASSY, April 3, 1845.

I have just received your letter of March 27, and I know not what to think of all you say to me of mine. I, to give you pain, or the slightest grief! I, whose constant thought is to spare you pain! The epithet meutrière applied to my language makes me bound. Mon Dieu, however good my intentions were, it seems that I have hurt you, and that is enough. When we see each other, you will comprehend, perhaps, how the uncertainty that hovers over me is fatal; fatal to my interests so seriously involved; fatal to my happiness because I see myself separated from you--for a month more at any rate, for I have not written a line and I could not now be at Frankfort before the first week in May. Under such irritating circumstances it was permissible to be impatient. Besides which, I write my letters very hastily, and never read them over. I say what is in my mind without any reflection; if I had re-read that letter I might have made of it (as I have of others in which I raised my voice too high) a sacrifice to Vulcan.

However, let me tell you that there are two hearts here that are full of you and love you for yourself only: Lirette and I. Lirette, with whom I have been talking at her convent grating of your situation, shares my ideas wholly as to the future about which I have made allusion, and apropos of which I have, perhaps indiscreetly, given you some really wise counsel. As to the personal dangers to me of which you speak, those are things I laugh at; you are not as familiar with them as I. Here, in Paris, there are plenty of persons who dislike me and would be glad to have me out of the world, men who have hatreds that are more than ferocious against me, but who bow to me all the same. It is possible that, like Carter when he undertook to tame two lions, I might find your Saxons rather too ferocious and my lion-taming trade a little too visible. But I can assure you, dear countess, that if that fear is the cause of the dreadful three months I have just passed, ah! dear fraternal heart, I should be the one to say the words which I have kissed in your letter: "I forgive you!" I have contemplated those words with tears in my eyes; in them is the whole of your adorable nature. You thought yourself affronted by your most faithful servant, the most devoted that ever could be, and you forgave him. I have been more moved by that than by all my griefs put together. Oh! thank you for the pain that makes me fathom your perfection; pardon me for having misjudged you; be you, yourself, as much as you wish; do all that you will, and if, by impossibility, you do wrong, it shall be my joy to repair the broken armour. I was wrong. I was guilty and very guilty, because to goodness one should ever respond by gentleness and adoration. Write me little or much, or do not write me at all; I shall suffer, but say nothing. Do what you think best for your future and that of your child; only, do not root yourself too firmly in the present; look always before you, and tear out the brambles in the path before you follow it.

Another academician is dead, Soumet, and five or six others are declining to the tomb; the force of things may make me an academician in spite of your ridicule and repugnance.

I have done everything I could to remain at Passy, where I live tranquilly and comfortably, but all has failed. I have notice to leave in October of this year, and I must move to Paris and live for two years in an apartment, until I can build a little house at Monceau. I shall look for one in the faubourg Saint-Germain. This removal means the spending of several thousand francs, which I regret. My money-matters, even more than my work, imperatively require me to stay in Paris through April.

I am almost certain of recovering my habits of work and those of food and sleeping; and if the difficulty of the lodging were only solved, I should have tranquillity of soul, for this house is at my disposition and I can remove at my ease, working here till the last moment.

Sunday, half-past two o'clock.

I have just risen. I look at my Daffinger with delight. At last I received your letter, yesterday. Imagine, dear, what a real misfortune happened to me. Your letter had a spot of ink which glued it to another letter, and delayed it, as was stated by the post on its envelope. The post-mistress, who for two days had seen my anxiety, cried out eagerly when she saw me, "Monsieur, here's a letter!" and held it for me to see with a joy that did her honour. And what a letter! I read it, walking gently along in solitary places. To read things so charming addressed to one's self is enough to make one never write a line again, but lie at the feet of one's sovereign like her faithful dog. Finally, I went to sleep, for I must own I had not closed my eyes for two days, so much did this delay disquiet me.

PASSY, April 18, 1845.

You write me, "I want to see you!" Well, then, when you hold this letter between your dainty fingers may they tremble a little, for I shall be very near to you, at Eisenach, at Erfurt, I don't know where, for I shall follow my letter closely. This is Friday; I shall leave Sunday at the latest.

What! you could receive an order from your government to return to your own country, and I not see you! Oh! dear countess; and you tell me I have been amusing myself. But you know my life from the letters in which it is written down day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute; you have surely read, you surely know that my only pleasures are thinking of you, and proving it to you by writing. I have spent these last five months in saying to myself every day: "I start to-morrow; I shall see her! if only for a month, for two minutes, I shall see her!"

Do not write again; expect me.

I am grieved that you have read "Les Petits Manèges d'une Femme vertueuse" without waiting for the Chlendowski edition in Vol. IV. of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, where it bears the name of "Béatrix," the last Part. Have you received the two lines which told you the state I was in from Monday to Sunday? "I shall see her!"--a thought which has defrayed many a journey of seven hundred leagues.

I have sent everything to the right-about--COMÉDIE HUMAINE, "Les Paysans," the "Presse," the public, and Chlendowski, to whom I owe ten folios of the COMÉDIE HUMAINE--hum! also my business affairs, a projected volume (which I will do as I travel), and my affair with the "Siècle;" in short, all. I am so happy to go that I can't write steadily; I don't know whether you can read this, but you will see my joy in my scribbling. Read "intoxication of happiness" for all the words you can't decipher. Tell the people about you that, having gone to Leipzig on business, I am coming to Dresden from politeness, to bid you adieu before your return to your own country. Have an apartment engaged for me at the Stadt-Rom; I need three rooms: a small salon, bedroom, and study. I shall have to work from five in the morning till midday. But from midday till after seven o'clock I shall be with you, and bid you good-night by eight o'clock. As you see, there is no place for a Saxon or a Pole in all this.

This time I bid you adieu without pain, for my trunks are packed, and I am now going out for my passport and my proofs.

I should not like to be lodged under the roof at the Stadt-Rom, as I was at my first hasty visit to Dresden; not higher than the second floor. I shall bring my sad hippocrene with me, my coffee; for seven hours a day is the least I can work, with all I have to do. Now I leave you; adieu! This time, I am certain of seeing you soon, and sooner perhaps than you think.[1]

[Footnote 1: Balzac joined Madame Hanska at this time in Dresden, and they travelled in Germany and Holland; after which Madame Hanska and her daughter accompanied him to Paris, where they stayed some time. This visit was kept a profound secret lest it should reach the ears of the Russian government.--TR.]

PASSY, September 8, 1845.

Dear star, alas! so distant! No, I cannot accustom myself to see you again beaming upon me through such space. No, truly, I cannot bear it. Tell me, for pity's sake, in your next letter where you will be early in October, and I shall be there too; do not doubt it. How and when is my secret, and I shall not return to Paris till you set out for home with your smala.

It is now decided that I am not to move again. I meet with people who do not keep their word, and I am released from the obligation of doing twenty-five folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE. I have only thirteen to do, and I can roast those with a turn of my hand. What need have I of money? I need to see you, and I am going back to you. I know very well we shall no longer have any freedom in our walks or our talks, and that many duties will too often deprive me of the charm of your incomparable companionship; but chance will favour me sometimes with a blessed ten minutes, when I can tell you in a mass what I feel in detail; and if chance should be against me, at least I should see you, I could look at you. I should hear your sweet voice, I should know you were really there, that distance was abolished between us, that we were both in the same land, the same town. My affection for you is so great and so minute, or, if you like it better, so puerile, that I even grieve on eating a good fruit, thinking that you have none; and the notion takes me to eat no more, so as not to enjoy a pleasure of which you are deprived. Ah! believe me, you are the first and the last, or rather the sole and the continual thought of my life.

I have come to an understanding with that old gambler on the Bourse, Salluon, who owns the house of which I told you, and shall look at the place to-morrow.

Royer-Collard is dead. He was the counterpart of Sieyès.

I went yesterday at two o'clock to see Madame de Girardin. I went on foot, and returned on foot. She said to me several times that I ought to present myself for the Academy; although they desire, this time, to put in Rémusat, who has not many claims. But do not be uneasy, I know how it would vex you, and you may feel assured that in this, as in everything else, I will only do what you wish. I returned by the post-office, thinking you more generous to me than you are in reality. I said to myself: "She will have found two letters at Frankfort, and the little case from Froment-Meurice [goldsmith], and she will send me just a line outside of her regular missive." Nothing! I was sad. I send you volumes, and you only give me what is agreed upon.

September 10.

This morning I have only ten more feuillets to do to be done with Chlendowski, that is to say, to complete "Les Petites Misères;" and to-morrow I begin the last part of "Splendeurs et Misères." That means six folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE still to do. This will take fully ten days; that brings me to the 30th. Evidently, I could start the first week of October, from the 1st to the 5th, and I could be in Dresden the 10th to return here November 5th. That would be nearly a month, dear countess! Do not neglect as soon as you receive this letter to send me, 1st, Anna's arms, blazoned; 2nd, your own; 3rd, those of Georges; ask him to make me those three little drawings that I may have exact models made of them, and if there are supporters tell him to draw those also; it is possible that Froment-Meurice may find effects there which he can make use of in the things he has to make for Georges and Anna.

I have recovered my faculties, more brilliant than ever, and I am now sure that my twelve folios, which will be two novels of six folios each, will be worthy of the former ones. I tell you this to quiet the anxiety of your fraternal soul in regard to the reaction of the physical on the mental, and to prove to you for the hundred-millionth time that I tell you everything, not concealing the smallest scrap of either good or evil. Go therefore to the baths of Teplitz or elsewhere, if you think it necessary, provided you are faithful to your promise of Sarmate. Meantime I shall reduce my work to its simplest expression, and about April 20 I shall go North to contemplate you in the midst of your grandeurs.

Laurent-Jan has been here; he distracted my mind and amused me, but he stole three hours.

Well, I must end this little conversation, a pale joy in comparison to our real talks, embellished by the charms of presence, and the certainty of reality. This is Wednesday, and I have still no letters; how is it you did not write me a line from Frankfort, acknowledging the two letters, and the package from Froment-Meurice. I am lost in conjectures and very unhappy.

September 12.

At last, I have your letter. Oh, mon Dieu! who knows what a letter is? I tremble all over with happiness. To know what you are doing, where you are, what you are thinking, is happiness to me here. What a fine page that is on families of cathedrals and cemeteries. Ah! it is you who know how to write! But I must leave you to go and see Georges' cane at Froment-Meurice's, and execute your sovereign orders.

So you have seen Heidelberg! Thank you for the view and the branch of box. But why did you not tell me what name Dr. Chelius gave to your illness, and for what reason he sends you to Baden, the waters of which always seem to me a farce? However, I am far from murmuring at a decision which puts you on the frontier of France; thirty-six hours from Paris. Only, I do want details as to your health. Anna's jewels have been sent by a courier of the Rothschilds, directed to Baron Anselme Rothschild at Frankfort. Write for them there and have them sent wherever you are. You did not tell me how you passed the Prussian frontier. You are very sure, are you not, that all your heart-griefs are mine? I cannot get accustomed to life here now, I never cross the Place de la Concorde without sighing heavily. When you are at Baden, try to form the good habit of writing to me twice a week. You, so kind, you will not refuse me that, will you? and you will not think me too exacting, too tiresome, too importunate? Selfish, yes, I am that; but your letters are my life.

I have not yet sold anything to the newspapers; I have had many parleys, but no money; they think my price too high.

I have many annoyances about which I tell you nothing in my letters. Alas! you have enough of your own; and besides, they would take up too much space. I will relate them to you twenty-five days hence, to be consoled as you alone know how to console. You will be frightened at the blackness of the world, its injustices, its persecutions, its hatreds. One might truly believe that there were none good in the world but us two; at least to one another. Therefore, I no longer want to live in Paris; I would much prefer living at Passy, seeing no one, working under your eyes and never leaving you. There is nothing true, believe me, but the one sentiment that rules me, especially when doubled by the friendship which unites us: same tastes, same mind, same efforts, same fraternal souls. I will put in for you here a morning-glory out of my garden, and a bit of mignonette, gathered in that path where we walked together so often; and I send you also the little bit of lead type which was lost and has now been found. These little things will come to you full of earnest wishes for your dear health. Take good care of yourself; be selfish; that will be loving your child, that will be proving once more that you do have some regard for your faithful and devoted believer. Tell me what Dr. Chelius said to you. Be very prudent at Baden; it is full of Frenchmen, gamblers, journalists. Avoid the company there, see no one, for this fatal celebrity of mine, which I curse, might cling to you who would abhor it, sweet and simple violet that you are, and cause you much annoyance and even, though God forbid it, grief.

All true flowers of affection, a thousand thoughts (unpublished ones, if you please) to the great lady, the young girl, the stern critic, to my indulgent public, to all that world that is contained in you, to all those personages who are so many aspects of my sovereign so faithfully and solely cherished.

PARIS, October 15, 1845.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Dresden.]

Dear countess; I leave Paris by the mail coach on the 22nd, just as you are starting from Mulhausen, and I shall be at Chalon at five o'clock on the 25th, just in time to give you a hand on getting out of your carriage. My place is booked and paid for. How do you expect me to write you from Paris Wednesday a letter to Frankfort-on-the-Main, when you leave that town on Thursday? I received your third letter yesterday at Passy, in which you give me these directions, impossible to follow. I groan the more as I cannot send you a letter for the custom-house at Strasburg, where I wanted to recommend you to attention.

Tell your social fortune-teller that her cards have lied; that I am not preoccupied with any blonde, except Dame Fortune. No, I have no words except the mute language of the heart wherewith to thank you for that adorable letter No. 2, in which your gaiety breaks out with its sparkling gush, sweet treasure of a charming wit which the fine weather has brought back to you; for, as you once said to me, "It is only wrong-doers who stay sad when the joyful sun shines."

I make use of the excellent M. Silbermann, who will take to you these lines, not so much to tell you that you will find me at Chalon (your instinct will have told you that), but to paint to you my delight on reading your letter. Your infantine and purely physical joy enters my heart; I admire that adorable nature, so playful, so spontaneous, and so serious withal, because it is composed of lively impressions and deep sentiments. My eyes were filled with tears in thanking God with fervour that he had restored that health which you value for the sake of others,--those who love you, like your children and your old and faithful serf. Every time I go to breathe your atmosphere, your heart, your presence, I come back desperate at the obstacles that prevent me from staying in that heaven. I work, God knows how, for God alone knows why. When you hold this letter I shall probably have no debts whatever, except to my family. We will talk of my affairs on the boat between Chalon and Lyon. I shall have much to tell you thereupon, and I hope this time you will not be discontented with your servant. I have enormously much to do, write, correct, in order to meet you. I hope to take you as far as Genoa. But to whom could I confide the care of holding your head if you are sea-sick? If you will let me do as I wish I will go to Naples. I would give up everything, even fortune, to guard a friend like you and care for her in case of illness. I cannot think of you given over to strangers, to indifferent persons. I want to be with you, dear countess, my brilliant star, my happiness!

All this week I have been like a balloon; you know what my tramps on business errands are in Paris; I have been really overwhelmed by them. Minutes are worth hours to me if I do not want to lose money by travelling, for I must myself collect the sums due me. Also Les Jardies will be paid for this week; and I have been five times to see Gavault without finding him. You see I tell you all; it is stupid to talk of these things here when we shall have a whole day on the boat from Chalon to Lyon, and another from Lyon to Avignon. I will try to have lodgings prepared for you in advance, as on our other journeys, for I think you will be obliged to stop sometimes to rest.

I have not received the cup. I don't know whether the post takes charge of such things. In any case, however, it cannot be lost. You know I want to make a symbolic souvenir of it. It is to be supported by four figures: Constancy, Labour, Friendship, Victory.

Baden was to me a bouquet of flowers without a thorn. We lived there so sweetly, so peacefully, so heart to heart! I have never been as happy in my life; I seemed to catch a glimpse of that future I call to, I dream of, amid my troubles and my crushing labour. I would go to the end of the world on foot to tell you that your letters are to me in absence what you were yourself in Baden,--a masterpiece of the heart which is not met with twice in life. Oh! if you knew how you are blessed and invoked at every moment. My eyes are filled with happy tears as I think of all you are to me; those are thoughts I dwell on with a sweetness of recollection that nothing equals; that is my excess; I allow myself that, as your dainty daughter allows herself peaches.

I leave you; I have five folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE to correct. I will write you to-morrow before beginning work. You can tell yourself that in spite of toil, errands, business of all kinds and at all hours, I am thinking of you; that your name is on my lips, in my head, in my heart, and that I only live and breathe in you. You can add that I am saying and repeating to myself incessantly: "On the 24th I shall see her! I shall live ten days of her life!"

October 16.

Dear countess, I am working much; I wrote you in such haste yesterday that I had no time to read over what I had written. I shall see you perhaps this day week.

With the enticing prospect of that blessed 24th it is impossible for me to put two ideas together; on the other hand, I have the sad certainty of being unable to do fine literary work so long as I cannot see daylight in my business affairs and have not paid integrally all my creditors. Worried on that side, and absorbed on the other by a deep, exclusive, passionately controlling sentiment, I can do nothing--the mind is no longer here. This is not a complaint, nor a compliment, it is truth. I have just come to a decision which will obviate this misfortune; it is to end the twelfth volume of the COMÉDIE HUMAINE with "Madame de la Chanterie." That relieves me from making seven folios (which would have brought in nine thousand francs). Far from you I am only happy when I am seeing you in thought and memory, when I am thinking of you; and I think of you too much for copy.

I have received the pretty cup, and I want to make a marvel of it. When you hold this letter, tell yourself that we are each going toward the other. Take care in every way. Attend to your health; it is the property of your child--I dare not say mine, and yet, what have I else in this world? If anything in what I say displeases you, excuse it by the haste in which I scribble. I have only time to close my letter by saying, à bientôt.

MARSEILLE, November 12, 1845.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, Naples. Balzac had joined her at Chalon and accompanied her, with her daughter and Count Mniszech (whom Anna was now engaged to marry), to Naples. This letter was written on his way back to Paris.--TR.]

I have this instant arrived, without my luggage or my passport; I have not breakfasted; but while they are laying the table, I sit down to write to you, dear countess, as usual; for it is, on arriving, my first and greatest need.

It has blown ever since I left Naples, "blown a gale" as they said on the boat, with "a heavy sea." Those, as you know, are the innocent words with which sailors disguise the most frightful weather. Ours was so bad that we were obliged to put into Toulon yesterday, but La Santé [health officers] would not allow the purser of the ship, or your humble diplomatic servant to land with the most important despatches the East ever forwarded. It was seven o'clock; the sun was down; La Santé vacated its office. We told La Santé that it took upon its own head the greatest responsibility and was terribly high-handed. La Santé laughed in our faces, and we were forced to spend the night on board and come on to Marseille. I was not sea-sick, but everybody else, sailors excepted, was badly so. That was not all; it rained in torrents the whole way. The yellow waters of the Tiber and the Arno could be seen in the sea to a great distance; the littoral was flooded. To all my griefs no aggravation was lacking. But I had one diversion. I went to Pisa, and in spite of the beating rain I saw all; except your admirer, M. C. The cathedral and the baptistery enchanted me; but that enchantment was mingled with the thought that during this year I had admired nothing without you until now; and I looked at those noble things with deep melancholy.

At Civita Vecchia I landed, in memory of you, and went to see that antiquity-shop, where you sat down. I there learned that Madame Bocarmé had been telling tales about my journey; of no importance, however, for who cares about the gossip of that intriguing old lady! You were very right; I repent having written your name for Anna, as I always repent when I have had the misfortune not to obey you in matters you have thoroughly divined. Such is the exact tale of my journey. As for sentiments, I shall have to invent new words, so weary must you be with my elegies. I looked at the Hôtel des Victoires as long as I could. Not a woman appeared on deck; they were only manifested by dreadful vomitings, which rattled the panels of the ship as much as the fury of the seas.

Here comes my breakfast to interrupt me.

Midnight.

Méry has just left me. I offered him tea and whist at ten sous a fish; not ruinous, as you see. Here is the history of my day. After breakfast I went to bed, for I was tired. Méry, to whom I had written a line, came while I was asleep, and found me in such a magnificent attitude of repose that he respected it. But he returned while I was dressing, and we went to the shop of a dealer in antiquities, where I found some very beautiful things. I chose a few trifles which seemed to me true bargains to snatch; you know I never buy in any other way. After leaving these shops we went to dinner,[1] and then returned here for tea. I have lost five francs and won the collaboration of Méry for several plays that I have in view. He is going to have the affair of the two savants copied, and we will have it printed for you. A curious autograph of Méry's and some verses he has charged me to send you are herewith inclosed. That will give you pleasure, will it not?

I leave to-morrow at eleven o'clock; so that I shall have stayed only-forty-eight hours at Marseille, where I have been much occupied by bric-à-brac, and somewhat by Méry. I must close this letter and send it, for the mail goes to-morrow to Italy.

[Footnote 1: See Memoir, p. 272--TR.]

November 13, nine in the morning.

Adieu again, dear countess; I shall not write you more until I reach Passy. You know well what is in my heart and soul and memory for you and your two children--for Georges is like a first-born to you. I am still stupid from the sea-voyage, even in writing to you; the roll of the vessel is in my head; you will excuse me, will you not? I wrote you with my feet still wet with sea-water. To-morrow I take the mail-cart for Paris. I have spent a great deal, apart from my purchases. In the first place, on the ship the water was not drinkable; I had to have champagne, and I could not drink it alone beside the captain and the purser, who had been admirably attentive to me. All that was much extra. Then I had to ask some gentlemen to breakfast this morning at the Hôtel de l'Orient; politeness required it; besides, that is part of my make-up as author of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE. Don't cry out at the extravagance; and say nothing about it to Georges, who would take me for a Lucullus and laugh at me.

Affectionate homage, and all tenderness of heart to your adorable child, and to the excellent Georges. I am going to work to rejoin you. Perhaps you will see Méry in Florence; he has arranged to make the journey with me. Take good care of yourself, and tell yourself sometimes that there is a poor being at Passy very far from his sun. I am like Méry,--very chilly when in Paris. You are my Provence. Méry talked much of you to me; you are very sympathetic to him. He took full notice of your Olympian brow, which has something of a Pagan god and the Christian angel and a little of the demon (I mean the demon of knowledge). Those who know you as I do can aspire to but one thing beside you; and that is to comprehend, enjoy, and love your soul more and more, if only to become better by intercourse with you and your etherealized spirit. That is my prayer, the desire of my human religion, and my last yearning thought towards you.

PARIS, November 18, 1845.

Dear countess, I arrived here so fatigued that I was forced to go to bed, and have only just risen for dinner, and shall return to bed directly after it. I have a severe lumbago and fever; I feel all kneaded and broken. I went beyond my strength. At Marseille I was perpetually in company, and that added greatly to the effects of the voyage. You saw the life I led in Naples,--always going, rushing, looking, examining, observing, and talking! So that these last three nights in the mail-cart, without sleep, added to twelve days on shipboard and rushing about Naples, have vanquished my health, vigorous as it is. I went out this morning to the custom-house and to see Émile de Girardin, and this evening to see M. F... I am not yet recovered; I still have lumbago and fever, but a good night's sleep will cure me.

November 19.

Georges' commissions will be handed to him about December 15 by the captain of the "Tancrède." His cane is ordered and will soon be finished. My affairs are doing well; but I shall not finish everything by the end of the year; and as long as I have a single creditor, it would be imprudent to raise the mask by becoming a property-owner.

Chlendowski gives me the greatest uneasiness. He threatens to go into bankruptcy if he is not aided. I never knew a man lie like him. What you did for love of France with Laurent-Jan, I have done for Poland with Chlendowski. Fate tells us, dear countess, to take care of none but ourselves. Honest folk, believe me, have enough to do in that way without undertaking the care of others. If Chlendowski fails, I shall lose ten thousand francs; the thought makes me shudder.

I have given orders to search Paris for a house all built and ready; for it is impossible, in view of the scarcity of money, that a fine house could not be had for a hundred and fifty thousand francs.

November 21.

I rose at nine o'clock, a lump of lead! I am making up my arrears of sleep. Alas! my good genius will hear with pain that I am forced to set myself an Herculean task. I must put my papers in order, and it is now ten years since I have touched them. What labour! I have to make a bundle for each creditor, with bill and receipt in perfect order, under pain of paying twice for what was never due. It will give me a fever till it is all done. But I am in such haste to return to Italy and to my dear troupe, never to leave them again, that I find courage to drive all my affairs abreast,--manuscripts, completions of everything, publishers, debts, even the purchase of a property worthy of the author of LA G-R-R-R-ANDE COMÉDIE HUMAINE.

I must bid you abruptly adieu, and hurry out on business, so as to be able to-morrow to return to regular hours of rising and working. I intend to rise at four every day. Adieu, then, dear, distant star, which scintillates forever, ceaselessly, as memory and as consolation.

November 25.

Yesterday I rushed the whole day; twenty-five francs carriage hire! I went to see my sister; then to Girardin at the "Presse," where my account is settled. Girardin takes "Les Petites Misères," and I must now finish them. Then I went to Plon's printing-office. I saw A. de B... about the renewal of Chlendowski's notes; and I am now expecting the said Chlendowski to explain his position to me. After which, I must go out again and see M. Gavault to regulate his account, and know what he has paid. All that is not proof of activity; it is simply becoming the wheel of a machine.

Chlendowski came. I spoke to him sternly and with dignity. I told him that in order to help a man who had summoned me, I must have guarantees; I must have a deed legally drawn, and a deposit of the wood-cuts which are to illustrate "Les Petites Misères;" and on that condition I was willing to renew his notes for three thousand eight hundred francs. The man took my arm, in the Polish fashion, and kissed it humbly. In this way I shall be secured if he fails, and A. de B... consents to keep the wood-cuts. See what difficulties and worries! We have an appointment for to-morrow, and I must now go to M. Gavault and consult on this deed of guaranty. I dine with Émile de Girardin, who wants to know if "Les Petites Misères" is publishable.

November 27.

I have no news of my purchases at Amsterdam. But, on the other hand, I found on my return a letter from a ship-owner in Havre, asking for an interview. I wrote to M. Periollas, asking him to inquire about my cases, and also about the ship-owner. I have just received his answer; he says he knows nothing about the cases, but that the ship-owner is building a ship which he wants to call "Le Balzac;" and Periollas asks me to write a pretty letter to the ship-owner because he adores me. So, dear countess, your servitor will be carved on the prow of a vessel and show his fat face to all the nations; what do you say to that?

I have just heard strange, sad news,--Harel is mad, and Karr also. I prefer not to believe it.

November 28.

I have received a letter from Lirette inviting me to the ceremony of her taking the vows and veil. This letter has prevented me from sending my packet to you by the boat of December 1, for I want you to know of this at once; but it really hurts me to think what anxiety the delay may cause you.

I assure you that my life here is no longer endurable. I live in a whirlwind of errands, business, consultations, legal notices, corrections, which deprive me of all reflection, pressed as I am on all sides, with not a soul to help me, doing all myself. Yesterday I worked seven hours on "Les Petites Misères" ... Is it written above that, until the end, I shall be harried and driven like a college drudge?

PASSY, December 3, 1845.

I could not write to you yesterday; I had very pressing proofs for the "Presse" (which wants the whole of "Les Petites Misères" at once), and also for LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE. So that having risen at half-past two in the morning, I worked till midday. I had scarcely time to breakfast and reach the convent at one o'clock.

These good sisters really think that the world turns for them alone. I asked the portress how long the ceremony would last; she replied, "An hour." So I thought to myself: I can see Lirette after it and get back in time for my business at the printing-office. Well, it lasted till four o'clock! Then I had, in decency, to see the poor girl; and I did not get away till half-past five. But I don't blame Lirette; it was right that her dear countess and her Anna should be represented at the burial of their friend; so I went through it bravely. I had a fine place beside the officiating priest. The sermon lasted nearly an hour; it was well-written and well-delivered; not strong, but full of faith. The officiating priest went to sleep (he was an old man). Lirette never stirred. She was on her knees between two postulants. The little girls were ranged on one side of the choir, the Chapter on the other, behind the grating, which was made transparent for the occasion. Lirette, together with the postulants, listened to the exhortation-sermon on her knees and did not raise her eyes. Her face was white, pure, and stamped with the enthusiasm of a saint. As I had never seen the ceremony of taking the veil, I watched, observed, and studied everything with a deep attention which made them take me, I have no doubt, for a very pious man. On arriving, I prayed for you and for your children fervently; for each time that I see an altar I take my flight to God and humbly and ardently dare to ask his goodness for me and mine--who are you and yours. The chapel, with its white and gold altar, was a very pretty one; it belongs to the Order of the Visitation of Gresset. The ceremony was imposing and very dramatic. I felt deeply moved when the three new sisters threw themselves on the ground, and were buried beneath a mortuary pall while prayers for the dead were recited over those living creatures, and when, after that, we saw them rise and appear as brides, crowned with white roses, to make their vows of espousal to Jesus Christ.

An incident occurred. The youngest of the sisters, pretty as a dream of love, was so agitated that when it came to pronouncing the vows she was forced to stop short, precisely at the vow of chastity. It lasted thirty seconds at most; but it was awful; there seemed to be uncertainty. For my part, I admit that I was shaken to the depths of my soul; the emotion I felt was too great for an unknown cause. The poor little thing soon came to herself, and the ceremony went on without further hindrance.

When one has seen the taking of the veil in France, one feels a pity for writers who talk of forced vows. Nothing can be more free. If a young girl were constrained what prevents her from stopping everything? The world is there as spectator, and the officiating priest asks twice if she has fully reflected on the vows she desires to take. I saw Lirette after the ceremony; she was gay as a lark. "You are now Madame," I said, laughing. She replied she was so happy she asked God continually to make us all priests and nuns! We ended by talking seriously of you and your dear child.

Dear countess, I hope you will find here a proof of my affection, for I was overwhelmed with work and business. But Lirette had written, "I am sure that nothing will prevent you from being present." I knew too well the meaning she attached to that not to determine it should be fulfilled. I was happy there, for I thought exclusively of you, after I had made my prayers. To think of you who are my religion and my life, is to think of God. I feel but too well that if your glorious friendship failed me I should lose consciousness of myself, I should become insane, or die.

December 4, 1845.

To-morrow I am going to see, in the rue des Petits-Hôtels, Place Lafayette (you know), a little house that is there for sale. It is close beside that church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, the Byzantine church we went to see, and where a funeral was going on. You said, looking at the vacant ground near the church which I pointed out to you: "I should not be unwilling to live here; we should be near God, and far from the world." From what I am told I think I could buy the house and might even do so without consulting you; it would be firing on the fly at a pheasant. My next letter will tell you if it is done. The rue des Petits-Hôtels joins the rue d'Hauteville (which goes down to the boulevard near the Gymnase), and, by the rue Montholon, it intersects the rue Saint-Lazare and the rue de la Pépinière. It is in the centre of that part of Paris which is called the right bank, and will always be the region of the boulevards and theatres. It is also the upper banking quarter.

My letter must go to-morrow if I want the "Tancrède" to take it. "Les Petites Misères de la Vie conjugale" is finished. To-morrow I begin the last folio (sixteen pages) that remains to do on LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE; then all will have been delivered to Chlendowski. I expect to finish the novel for Souverain by the 20th or 25th of December. Then I need three months for the seven volumes of "Les Paysans;" that will bring me to March 15. My mother's affairs will take some time, as well as the clearing up of my liquidation accounts. I do wish, you see, not to leave any business behind me in quitting Paris for perhaps eighteen months; and when I return it must be to my own home. I have promised you that, and I will no longer deceive myself by thinking that I can do the impossible.

T see with grief that I shall, apparently, have to sacrifice Florence and Rome to the work and the business that will secure, as you say, the repose and safely of my future. To spend immense sums in going to see you for only eight days, and returning to find suits and worries of all kinds is senseless! I must have, as you say, the courage to spare myself these mistaken calculations and these bootless sorrows. I shall try to go to Rome for Holy Week, for I shall then be so weary I shall need some distraction; but if by sacrificing that happiness I should obtain your satisfecit and what you call a "position worthy of me," I should not hesitate. Will you, at last, approve of me a little? Tell me so, then, for I have great need of being sustained by you in my hard and cruel resolutions. Don't you see, nothing is ever done in the time I assign for things. If LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE is not finished by December 25, I cannot have the money for it before January 15, 1846, and if I do not get it till then, my payments are delayed that time. So with "Les Paysans;" I shall not be paid till March. Money rules me absolutely when it is a question of paying creditors. Well, between now and a month hence all will be done. But if you only knew the steps, the tramps! Creditors for three hundred francs cost as much search and verification as those for thirty thousand--it is a labyrinth, a hydra!

Adieu, dear distant star, yet always present; soft and celestial light, without which all would be darkness within me and without me. Oh! I entreat you, take care of yourself. I am not too anxious about your little illness; it is only an effect of the climate; they told me that on the ship, and strong constitutions are often the most tried. But I tell you and I repeat it to you: take care of yourself. Remember that you are the glory and honour and sole treasure of a poor being who loves you exclusively, who thinks of you only, whose acts, as well as his thoughts and dreams, are emanations from that moral sun of affection which is his whole soul in its relation to you. Bless you a thousand times for your punctuality in writing! Tell me everything; all that happens to you, with every possible detail; nothing is insignificant to me if it concerns you. Do as I do. Among all the great worries of my life, as troubled as yours is calm and serene, I do not a pass a day without writing you a line, as a merchant makes up his day book. Well, a few more efforts, and a little patience, and I hope to have conquered the right to never leave you again.

PASSY, December 13, 1845.

Dear countess; I am overcome by the same nostalgia which I felt before I went to Chalon. It is excessively difficult for me to write; my thought is not free; it no longer belongs to me. I believe that I cannot recover my faculties under eighteen months, perhaps. You must resign yourself to endure me beside you. Since Dresden I have done no great thing. The beginning of "Les Paysans" and the end of "Béatrix" were my last efforts; since then, nothing has been possible to me. Yesterday, during the whole day, I felt a sombre and dreadful gloom within me.

Yet I must finish the six folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE. Furne has come. He has excellent intentions. On my side, I must complete this undertaking, which is all my future. But the heart is as absolute as the brain, it is indifferent to whatever is not itself; millions to win, a fortune of fame and self-love satisfied is nothing to the heart.

Your letter describes to me a similar state with much truth and eloquence. That letter, in which pain is more contagious than the plague, and over which I wept your tears, shuddering to find there what I felt myself, that letter has filled the measure of my inward and hidden malady. Nothing but my interests can drag me out of the deep despondency that has now laid hold upon me. Paris is a dreadful desert; nothing gives me pleasure, nothing contents me; I am under the empire of some passionate invading force without analogy in my life. I compare the twenty-four towns we saw together with one another; I try to recall your observations, your ideas, your advice; motion fatigues me, rest depresses me. I get up, I walk, but my body is absent, I see it, I feel it; at times, as I tell you, this is madness. It is very probable that if my six folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE were finished I could go to Naples; and that thought is the only means of making me do them. What could I not obtain from myself under the hope of that immense joy, were it only for one week? I tell myself there are a thousand reasons why I ought to see you, consult you; that I can do nothing without you. In short my mind is the accomplice of my heart and will.

Meantime, awaiting the result, I make no complaint, I am dull and gloomy; I am like a Breton conscript, regretting his dear scones and his Bretagne. All that is not you was once without interest to me, now it is odious.

December 14.

Yesterday, dear countess, I went to see, in detail, the Conciergerie, and I saw the queen's dungeon and that of Madame Elisabeth. It is all dreadful. I saw everything thoroughly; it took the whole morning, and I had no time to go to the rue Dauphine to do Georges' commissions. When I went back towards the court of assizes I heard that the trial then going on was that of Madame Colomès, niece of Maréchal Sebastiani, a woman forty-five years of age whom I wished to see. And I found, seated on the prisoner's bench of the court of assizes, the living image of Madame de Berny! It was awful. She was madly in love with a young man, and to give him money, which he spent on actresses of the Porte-Saint-Martin, she forged indorsements in negotiating the notes of imaginary persons. She took everything on herself (he has taken to flight), and would not allow her lawyer to charge the blame to him.

I had never heard a case pleaded in court and I stayed to hear Crémieux, who spoke well, ma foi! The unhappy creature, in order to get money to give the young man, had abandoned herself to usurers, to old men! Crémieux told me that she said to her lover: "I only ask you to deceive me enough to let me fancy I am loved." She is the daughter of a brother of the maréchal, and the wife of the engineer-in-chief of Bridges and Highways, and a deputy. I was so deeply interested in finding a novel seated on that bench, that I stayed till half-past four o'clock beside the poor creature, who has been very handsome and who wept like a Magdalen; every now and then I heard her sigh out, "Aie! aie! aie!" in three heart-rending tones.

M. Lebel, governor of the Conciergerie, who has locked the door on every sort of crime for the last fifteen years, is, they tell me, the grandson of the Lebel who opened the doors of Louis XV. to the beauties of the Parc-aux-cerfs. These vicissitudes, these striking analogies, occur in obscure families as in the most august. The heir of the original Lebel, the successor of him of royal pomps, had nothing to leave on going to his death but a worn-out cravat and an old prayer-book. When you come to Paris I must certainly show you the Palais; it is curious and thrilling and completely unknown. Now I can do my work ["La Dernière Incarnation de Vautrin"].

On my return home, I found I had missed Captier, Claret's friend. This is a pity; I should have liked to talk with him about a purchase I have in view. There is a chance of buying a bit of ground in the rue Jean-Goujon in the best condition. It is only a stone's throw from the Place de la Concorde.

Yesterday I found some distraction of my nostalgic misery in the Conciergerie, and the court of assizes, and to-day I plunge into work vehemently.

Ah! I must have my house between two gardens, without disagreeable neighbourhood. And I will have a little greenhouse at the back of it--But I must leave you, I must work. You do not know that I am silently collecting very splendid art furniture by dint of researches and tramps about Paris, economy, and privations. I don't wish to speak to you of this; I shall not unmask my batteries until my dream takes, more and more, the semblance of reality.

December 15.

I am now launched into work. This night I have done six pages of the six folios I have to do; and I assure you--I, who know myself--that that is a great deal. I shall try this week to finish LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE.

Yesterday, after finishing my work, I went to see my sister, on a letter she had written me saying that her eldest daughter was dying. Sophie had really nothing more than a slight congestion of the head, which cooling drinks relieved. I heard from Laure that a M. Bleuart was on the point of ruin from having bought up the quartier Beaujon, and that several of the houses were for sale. I hurried there. There are, indeed, houses and vacant ground; but of all those houses there is but one that is anything like finished, and that one is immense; nine windows on the front. I am going there on Wednesday with a friend of Claret and a young man who is in the secret of M. Bleuart's affairs. You see I bestir myself to find a really good thing, and repair in some degree the disaster of Les Jardies; but the important thing of all is to work. I met my old landlord of the rue des Batailles, and he told me that ground in the rue Jean-Goujon was selling for nothing, and I ought to make haste to buy at present prices.

On returning from Beaujon yesterday, I went to pay a visit of half an hour to Madame de Girardin. Returning at six o'clock, I dined and was asleep by seven. In examining my resources, I think I can do without what you know of (the Dresden affair); it is, I have reflected, so difficult to write, receive, and send papers of that kind that I shall try to wait, and place the matter as a last result in its time and place. I am so in the habit when I write to you of thinking aloud, calculating, and recalculating, that you see and know all my hesitations, my backings-down, my additions, etc. You are always and in all things my sole thought; it is you, and you know it well, who are the foundation of everything. If I had the strength this night to apply myself to six folios it was because I want to go from Naples to Rome with you, and for that I shall try to leave here January 11. I want to install you in Rome, as I installed you in Naples. Madame de Girardin calls me il vetturino per amore.

Adieu for to-day. How are you? Do you amuse yourself sometimes? Does Georges take good care of both of you? If anything happens to you under his auspices I will crush his box of insects on the boat. I bless you every day of my life, and I thank God for your good affection. You are my happiness, as you are my fame and my future. Do you sometimes remember that morning at Valence on the bank of the Rhône, when our gentle talk triumphed over your neuralgia as we walked for two hours in the dawn, both ill, yet without perceiving the cold or our own sufferings? Believe me, such memories, which are wholly of the soul, are as powerful as the material recollections of others; for in you the soul is more beautiful than the corporeal beauties for which the sons of Adam destroy themselves.

Adieu till to-morrow, gentle and spiritual power, who hold subjected to your laws your poor and fervent servitor.

December 16.

I received yesterday at four o'clock your number 4. I see that you are still uneasy; but you have not thought of one thing, which is that you began to write to me while I was travelling, and it requires time to establish our regular correspondence. Thus to-day, December 16, I have received four letters from you; well, you, between now and December 30, will have received four letters from me. What is the difference?--fourteen days. But those fourteen days were five at sea, three at Marseille, three in a mail-cart, and the first week in Paris, during which I wrote to you from here. I calculate that you have to-day received my packet by the "Tancrède." That was my number 2; on the 24th you will get my number 3, sent by Anselme de Rothschild; and this will reach you on the 30th, because it will leave here on the 21st. So, dear countess, in spite of the uneasiness which this early failure of the superior force has caused you, you see I am not in fault; I have written to you every day,--too much, in fact, for I have done nothing but think of you, and I have written too little for posterity; and not to write retards my liberation.

Mon Dieu, how your letters make me live! I have an idolatry for those dear papers; I am like a child about them; your punctuality delights me. Never think that I mistake the value of such goodness on your part. I entreat you, take care of yourself; those pains in your stomach worry me. Mine have disappeared, or at least I seldom suffer from them. What is deplorable is that work fatigues me, the symptoms that happiness and the journeys of this year drove away are returning. My eyes throb, the temples also, and I feel weary. I have had to buy a candelabrum for five candles; three were no longer enough, my eyes pained me. So that ugly little candlestick of tarnished gilt, which you must have noticed in my study, is now replaced by a ministerial candelabrum of unheard-of magnificence in bronze, chased and gilt; but it burns one franc fifty centimes' worth of wax-candles every night; do you hear that, madame? Now, two francs for fire, and fifty centimes of coffee besides, make four francs a night. The Arabian Nights cost dear.

Dear countess, I can give Lirette her capital without any difficulty. Tell me how much you intend for her, and I will pay it to her at once. I will go to the convent and settle it with her. I shall be quite content to receive it back in May. Why give yourself the trouble of sending money here. Let me be, for once at least, your business agent.

I have not yet obtained your fantastic set of jewels; but I shall have them soon. Froment-Meurice desires to distinguish himself on Georges' cane, and I don't know whether it will be done by New Year's day. He is a great artist. I assure you it is quite alarming to see how much talent and genius there are in Paris.

I am so cautious about all that concerns you that I shall not risk sending this letter on the 17th; for the boat leaves on the 21st, and at this season the mail-cart might be delayed; therefore I prefer to put my letter in the post to-day, 16th. So I cannot tell you anything about the Bleuart houses; but you shall know all by the letter leaving January 1; you will know also whether I can take the steamboat that starts on the 11th. Do not insist, I entreat you, on forbidding it. In the first place I warn you that, not only you will not be listened to, but I shall be very happy in disobeying you. That means nothing, however, for the greatest happiness must always consist, for me, in the most complete submission to your sovereign will, ever and everywhere. But, I repeat, you alone will be responsible if you persist.

I still have no news of my purchases at Amsterdam; those are furniture griefs. I have just heard of a great misfortune; the beautiful Madame Delaroche, daughter of Horace Vernet, is dead.

Well, à bientôt. Consent with a good grace, because you will gain nothing by refusing. Do you not think it may be the food at the Hotel Vittoria which gives you those pains in your stomach?

PASSY, December 17, 1845.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Naples.]

Dear countess; my ability to work only lasted two days. I am again seized by spleen, complicated with nostalgia, or, if you like, by an ennui I never felt before. Yes, this is true ennui; nothing amuses me, nothing distracts me, nothing enlivens me; it is a death of the soul, a death of the will, the collapse of the whole being. I feel that I cannot take up my work until I see my life decided, fixed, settled. LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE--I no longer care for it; I will let Chlendowski sue me for the folios that are lacking; I cannot think for the six that are to finish the sixteen volumes. More than that, to-morrow I was to go and see a house of which they tell me marvels; and that scarcely interests me. I am exhausted. I have waited too long; I have hoped too much; I have been too happy this last year; and I can wish no longer. To have been, after so many years of toil and misfortune, free as a bird of the air, a thoughtless traveller, superhumanly happy, and then to come back to a dungeon! Is that possible? I dream, I dream by day, by night; and my heart's thought, returning upon itself, prevents all action of the brain thought--it is fearful! I have sent for "Les Mystères de Londres," which you told me had amused you; I will read it to escape myself.

December 18.

Yesterday I read "Les Mystères de Londres" from two o'clock in the afternoon till midnight; I read the book through. It is a little better than Sue or Dumas; but not good; it made me feverish.

This morning Captier came for me; and I have returned with a bad cold from the Beaujon quartier. It was raining in torrents; we stood with our feet in the mud and our shoulders wet for three hours, and I was seized with a sore throat which has almost extinguished my voice. The house we went to see is held at two hundred thousand francs and we offered eighty thousand. It is large and handsome; with nine windows front, two storeys, a magnificent ground-floor, and ill-arranged first floor which would have to be entirely remodelled. There would be twenty thousand francs, at least, to spend upon it. Besides which, it has an insolent air; it looks like a great restaurant, and the sacrifices made to the outside are immense inconveniences; for instance, you enter it from a portico which would require a vast awning over it. Another thing: the land in the rue Jean-Goujon is impossible; they ask twenty-five thousand francs for it. There is no ground in Paris for a hundred francs the metre; and there are nearly four metres in a fathom. You can judge if the Monceau land is a good bargain. I shall keep where I am, and not hasten anything; I think that is wisest.

December 20.

A terrible misfortune has happened. The Doubs has overflowed: the water is higher than in any former flood; the bridge my brother-in-law was building has been swept away. I am now going to see my sister.--

I found at Laure's a very concise letter from the doctor of the "Leonidas" telling me he had seen you in Naples. The letter only reached me to-day and he says that he leaves on the 21st. He asks for an answer, which I have sent in four words, but I do not know whether he will receive it. My depression still continues. I am reading "Les Trois Mousquetaires," and I suffer from my cold.

I found desolation at my sister's home; her daughter is ill; I stayed there all day trying to brighten them up. Can you conceive that my brother-in-law, having two bridges to build this year, should have gone to Spain with M. de P..., a man who, as I suppose, is looking for fortune on the hope of building a railroad in Spain. My sister owned that it was she who induced her husband to make this journey; and the luckless man writes to her that Spain has cost him dear, for if he had himself superintended the building of the Doubs bridge it would have been finished and delivered; in which case the disaster from natural forces would have fallen on the government.

The contracts for the Chemin de fer du Nord are given out to-day; if Rothschild awards them, the shares of that railway will certainly rise.

Adieu for to-day. I re-plunge into "Les Trois Mousquetaires," for life without work is intolerable, and I continue to think of you with a persistence that alarms me. I remain, stupid, in one place; and I don't know what would happen to me if I flung myself into work desperately. I have not a thought that is not for you; I have no will other than to go where you are; I am, as it were, driven by that desire; and, nailed to this spot by necessity, I remain motionless with grief. It is impossible for me to forget; I pass whole hours with my eyes fixed on that table-cloth embroidered by your dear little white-mouse paws; in gazing at its squares, red, green, and its striped lines, thinking of you, and recalling the infinitely trifling details of that journey--No, instead of scolding me, have pity on me, for I am truly too unhappy. I implore work, and it refuses me inspiration. I hope, nevertheless, that this may not last always, and that one of these days will see me seriously at my table for the service, if not the profit, of his Majesty the Public.

December 21.

I have read "Les Trois Mousquetaires" and that was all I did yesterday. I went to bed at seven o'clock, and I have now got up at four in the morning. I am better in mind; I have a real desire to work; and that desire seems to me of good augury. Besides, it must be done; all things urge me to it,--the money to earn, the obligations to fulfil, liberty, and the possibility of seeing you the sooner. Can you imagine, dear star of my life, that money says nothing to me now? No, truly, it does not stir me. There is no longer in my soul any vestige of ambition, any desire for fortune; porcelains, pictures, all those things of luxury that I have loved, I am now indifferent to. Oh! what a tyrant is a sentiment like mine! how all things disappear before it!

I can understand, dear countess, why you were shocked at "Les Mousquetaires," you so well-informed, knowing, above all, the history of France, not only from the historical point of view, but even to the smallest details of the cabinet of the kings and the private dinners of the queens. One is certainly sorry to have read this book, if only from disgust with one's self for having wasted one's time,--the precious stuff of which life is made. It is not so that we reach the last page of a novel of Walter Scott; this is not the sentiment with which we leave him; we re-read Scott, but I do not think we shall re-read Dumas. He is a charming narrator; but he ought to renounce history, or else study it, and know it better.

On opening my window on the street side this morning I had a giddiness, and I still have the blood in my head. I shall take a foot bath and it will pass away. Besides, if I work, the equilibrium will be re-established, and I am going to work. Oh! if you only knew what respect I feel for myself, knowing that a being so perfect, a woman so accomplished takes interest in my existence. For a year past I have no memory except for her; for two weeks now I think of nothing but of how to return to her. I arrange the crumbs of my feast, I absorb myself in the recollection of nothings which turn into poems.

Did you know that Schwab was in Paris? He came to see me this morning, and--would you believe it?--I saw Schwab with delight, for Schwab is the Hague. Do you remember a certain walk we took to the Chinese bazaar, behind the children? No, never did two souls give themselves to each other with more poesy, more charm! These recollections are to me so many suns, shining on the Spitzberg; they make me live; I live by them alone. There are things in the past (the past that is yours) that give me the effect of a gigantic flower--which shall I say?--a magnolia, moving, walking, one of those dreams of youth, too poetic, too beautiful to be ever realized--

Forgive me! I have been sitting here stupefied; I have wept like a child,--I am so unhappy to be at Passy when you are at Naples! I have let myself go, I have let myself write to you in this letter that which I dream at all hours, and in thought it is less dangerous than formulated. In thought it is the gossamer thread athwart the azure; here, upon this paper, it is an iron cable which wrings and presses me till the blood gushes out in tears of despair.

Adieu for to-day; if I listened to myself I should write you till to-morrow. I am beside myself with regret and pain; I implore my work to keep me sane.

December 22.

I dined yesterday with Madame de Girardin, and heard excellent music from Mademoiselle Delarue. She is the daughter of a worthy old man whom you knew in Vienna. Gautier, who was there, made me promise to go and take haschisch with him to-night at the Hôtel Pimodan. I must now go out on all sorts of tiresome business.

December 23.

I resisted the haschisch; that is, I did not experience any of the phenomena they talked of. My brain is so solid that it needed, perhaps, a stronger dose. Nevertheless I did hear celestial voices and saw divine pictures; after which I descended Lauzun's staircase during twenty years. I saw gildings and paintings in a salon of fairy-like splendour. But this morning, since waking, I am half asleep, and without strength or will.[1]

[Footnote 1: Théophile Gautier has related this evening in his essay on Baudelaire, in the "Portraits et Souvenirs littéraires."]

December 25.

Yesterday I slept the whole day, and to-morrow I am going to Rouen to see some ebony panels which, I am told, can be had for nothing. This morning M. Captier is coming for me to see some land in the rue du Rocher. It is impossible to get that Dujarier legacy paid. I have lost a whole day rushing about on that business and attained nothing. I still cannot work.

December 27.

I started yesterday from Passy at six in the morning; at seven I was on the railroad and at eleven I was at Rouen. It is the route I took with you and Anna. Is not that telling you that I thought the whole way of you two? I transported myself back in thought to that day when we saw Rouen; it was a fête I gave myself. I was happy, oh! very happy! I saw the treacherous confectioner, and I recalled my atrocious sufferings when I thought myself poisoned between Rouen and Mantes. Ah! how kind you were! then, as always, my guardian angel and beneficent star.

I found at Rouen the relics of a regal piece of furniture which I bought for eighty francs. That is doing business! True, it will cost a good deal to repair and arrange it; that frightens me, but I shall give it to a cabinet-maker, and then my remorse will be complete.

Another result, not quite so satisfactory; as I had eaten nothing all day, I came back with a dreadful headache.

December 28.

I have just returned from the post-office; no letters from Naples. I begin to be very uneasy, for I ought to have one of the 18th, which is the day the steamboat sailed; allowing six days for navigation and three days from Marseille here, that is nine days. I have just seen an advertisement of a house in the rue du Montparnasse; they ask ninety thousand francs for it, with costs that would make it a hundred thousand. I will go and see it; it is in the Luxembourg quarter.

I must bid you adieu; each time I close a letter and take it to the post I seem to be going myself to meet you. Ah! à propos, do not let us calumniate any one. The Duc de S... died from other causes than those you think. It is a curious history, which I will tell you some day. He was going to be married, and when he saw that his bride would never be anything but his bride, less philosophical than Louis XVIII., he blew out his brains.

M. Captier has brought me the plan of a house; to cost from forty to fifty thousand francs; with land costing fifty thousand, that would be a hundred thousand; but I cling to the hope of finding a house all complete for that money. I shall wait.

My incapacity for work makes me very unhappy. On Wednesday, the last day of the year, I dine with Madame de Girardin, in order to take measures with Nestor Roqueplan for the Variétés. I shall then begin to work seriously at "Richard Cœur-d'Éponge." I tell you this that you may know what I am doing or expect to do. You will receive this letter on your first of January, which is our 6th, your anniversary. God grant that in this coming year of 1846 we may never be parted for a moment; that you will lay down the burden of your responsibilities, and will have no others. Those are my ostensible prayers; there is another that I keep for myself alone. I end this year loving you more than ever; blessing you for all the immense consolations that I owe to you, which even now are life to me. At moments I think myself ungrateful when I recall this year of 1845, and I say to myself that I have only to remember in order to be happy. What I have in my heart, that is my haschisch! I need only retire there to be in heaven.

Dear star, luminous, yet ever, alas! so distant, above all never be discouraged; hope, have faith in your fervent servitor; believe that when you read these lines I shall again be working, sending off my sheets of "copy," and that I shall soon be free to go to you; if, indeed, you do not forbid it too rigorously. But no, you could not have the courage, knowing me so unhappy, to refuse me the only consolation that enables me to bear my life.

IX.

LETTERS DURING 1846.[1]

[Footnote 1: Concerning the letters of this year, see Appendix.--TR.]

PASSY, January 1, 1846. One year more, dear, and I take it with pleasure; for these years, these thirteen years which will be consummated in February on the happy day, a thousand times blessed, when I received that adorable letter starred with happiness and hope, seem to me links indestructible, eternal. The fourteenth will begin in two months; and all the days of these years have added to my admiration, to my attachment, to my fidelity, like that of a dog.

I have a very Grandet mind, I assure you. A few days more, and if the King of Holland were to offer me sixty thousand francs for my Florentine furniture, he could not have it! It is still more so in matters of the heart. I shall have proved it to you fourteen years from now, when you have seen me forgetting nothing of all my happinesses, great or small.

January 4.

O dear countess, I received this morning, at half-past eight o'clock, the letter of your dear child with the portrait of Leonidas; decidedly, I shall have an "Album Gringalet." I do not understand why on the 22nd you had not received my letter of the 3rd, sent from Rothschild's counting-room. When this letter leaves it will be the seventh on its way to you. I have never failed to tell you day by day what happens to me; and you will see on your return that I have written the oftenest. I am going to see your dear Lirette; for I do not wish to forget that I am a substitute for both of you, mother and daughter, towards her; moreover, I want to know at what periods she wishes to receive the sum you have given me for her.

I dined, as I told you I should in my last letter, with Nestor Roqueplan, on the last day of the year, at the illustrious Delphine's. We laughed as much as I am capable of laughing without you and far away from you. Delphine is really a queen of conversation; "that evening she was particularly sublime, sparkling, ravishing. Gautier was there also; I came away after a long talk with him; he had been assured there was no hurry about "Richard Cœur-d'Éponge," the theatre having more than enough on hand. Gautier and I may make our play together later. Such was the result of this dinner, the history of which is your due. Returning home, I met two or three bores, who tired me much. You will not believe that, for you seem ignorant that I like to have no one but you, and to see none but you in the world. But, dear countess, the sad thing is, that I cannot write a line, and I groan--

January 5, midnight.

Here is a strange thing! I received this morning your long letter, one day later than that of your daughter; this is a mystery, for both came from Marseille.

Oh! dearest, what a day I have had! atrocious, dreadful, awful! I had errands to do; I was to go to Froment-Meurice, then to M. Gavault, then to a ship-builder who is building a ship he is bent on naming for me, then to the newspaper offices, especially the "Presse." At midday, after breakfast, I went to the post; good! I received a fine thick letter, very heavy; my heart quivered with joy. Ah! I was happy! so happy that in the carriage from Passy to Paris I opened my letter a thousand times blessed, and read, and read! At last I reached the page dictated to you by the strange and inconceivable conduct of Madame A. and Koref; and after having read your crushing reflections I was thrown into consternation. I closed the letter and put it in my pocket. At first, any one might have seen my tears; then I was overcome by a sadness of which the following were the physical effects: Two inches of snow were on the pavements of Paris; I was in thin boots; so unhappy was I that I wanted air, I was choking in the fiacre. I stopped it, and got out in the rue de Rivoli and walked, walked, my feet in the snow, across all Paris, through crowded streets, seeing no one, among the carriages, noticing none of them; I went, I went, on and on, my face convulsed, like a madman. People stared at me. I marched from the rue de Rivoli to the back of the Hôtel de Ville among all those populous streets, not conscious of the crowd or the cold, or of anything. What hour was it? what weather? what season? what city? Where was I? Had any one questioned me I could not have answered him; I was senseless with pain. Sensibility, which is the blood of the soul, was flowing out of me in torrents through my wound. And this is what I was saying to myself: "I have never, in my life, uttered one indiscreet word; and here are the reasons of my silence: 1. honour and integrity; 2. certainty of injuring the object of my hopes; 3. certainty of rendering my liquidation impossible; 4. complete uncertainty as to the result of my wishes. And I am accused of ignoble speeches,--I, whose conduct is irreproachable!" To meet with this injustice, even involuntary, from you crushed me; I felt the blows of that club upon my head at every step. Koref is an infamous spy, an Austrian spy, well known as such; he is not received anywhere; I do not bow to him any longer; I scarcely answer him when he speaks to me. Madame A... is ignorant of this, she confides herself and talks of your interests and of my affairs to the most dangerous man I know! It is truly incredible! Moreover, Koref is allied with a very bad woman, a Madame de B... who spreads slanders, and spies as spies spy, even outside of politics, and merely to keep her hand in. Who knows if those people have not already made this the subject of a report? Who knows if Koref, too well known to be trusted any longer by the Austrian police, has not used Madame A.'s absurd confidences to get into the service of a hyperborean power? Ah! truly, Madame A. may have done us, without exaggeration, an incalculable injury! I, who already have suffered a great pecuniary loss through absurd cancans sent from Berlin, to have such sufferings, thanks to that woman, in addition!

Thinking all this I walked on, seeing nothing before me but trouble and confusion--Koref! whom I have not seen for eighteen months, and to whom I have not addressed a word for three years, he to call himself my friend! It is too impudent!--I walked with my heart bleeding, my feet in the ashes of my longed-for future, and thinking ever of the pitiless reflections that Madame A.'s fatal letter had suggested to you. At four o'clock I reached Froment-Meurice; nothing was ready, neither your set, nor the bracelet, nor my seal (fulge, vivam) which I have waited for so long.

I went to Gavault's on foot, from the Hôtel de Ville to the Madeleine. Gavault was frightened at my face when he saw me without soul, without strength, without life. From there, still on foot, I went back to Passy at eight o'clock, without feeling bodily fatigue; the bruised soul numbed the body, mental fatigue was greater than all physical exhaustion. At ten o'clock I went to bed; impossible to sleep. I have lighted my candles and my fire, and taken my coffee.--I have just read the end of your letter; and the balm of the last sheet has calmed me, without altogether making the last echoes of my suffering cease.

Till to-morrow: bodily fatigue has come to me and I can sleep. I am going to bed; it is one o'clock.

January 6.

To-day, January 6, is your birthday, dear countess. I wish to express to you none but thoughts of gentleness and peace. Going to bed at one o'clock, I fell asleep among the charming things you said to me at the close of your letter, and I had no dreams at all. The fatigue of yesterday, moral and physical, was such that I slept till ten o'clock. I have just breakfasted and I return to your letter. That which is grievous in it does not come from you; it comes from strangers, from that silly Madame A...; and you could not have thought otherwise than as you did on reading her letter. By a strange fatality I read only half your letter, and I have suffered by my own fault. I could have taken a fiacre and read the rest; but, I see now, deep and violent sensations do not reason; they rush like torrents or thunderbolts. What upset me thus was that I saw plainly they were trying to give you malignant impressions about me. I have no need of "society;" far from it, I have a most profound horror of it; celebrity weighs upon me; I thirst for a home, a home of my own, I thirst to drink long draughts of a life in common, the life of two. I have no affection in the world that conflicts in any manner whatsoever with what I have in my soul, which is indeed the very substance of that soul; "the rest is all vain dream." To finish, once for all, with bad people and bad tales, tell yourself, dear, that society is composed of criminals who have a horror of honest men and of men without sin; it hates the happiness that eludes it.

Let me, before I close my letter, say this: my mind is made up; if I am forced to abandon my hopes, if, by force of hostile and secret persecution you should turn your back upon me, my resolutions are fixed; the haschisch that I tried yesterday will render a man imbecile at the end of a year; he can remain so, knowing nothing further of the pains or joys of life, until he dies. Haschisch, as you know, is only an extract of hemp, and hemp contains the end of man. No, if I cannot have my beautiful dreamed-of life, I want nothing. Yesterday, all the treasures of furniture which I have collected were so many bits of wood and crockery to me! Poverty, were I alone, has attractions for me. I want nothing, except in relation to the secret object of my life; that object is the supreme motive of all my prayers, my steps, my efforts, my ideas, my toils, of the fame I seek to acquire, in short of my future and of all that I am. For thirteen years this aspiration has been the principle of my blood--for ideas and sentiments work through the blood.

I thank you for the instructions you give me about Lirette. I will pay her the sum agreed upon to-morrow at her convent, and I will inquire the amount that you must still add. I am so glad to do any business for you that you ought to make me give you a commission for it. Poor dear Atala [a name by which he called her in jest], poor dear Anna, the picture of your losses and financial deceptions distresses me; alas! there is nothing to be done but to return to your own home as soon as the thermal treatment at Baden is duly accomplished. Yes, you will have to return courageously, to settle all and complete your work in order to obtain the right to rest in peace.

I leave you to go to the post, for I expect a letter with news of my Amsterdam cases, which are as long delayed in coming from Rouen to Paris as they were between Amsterdam and Rouen. If I do not finish my letter to-day I will to-morrow; and to-morrow it will jump into the letter-box, and the day after be at Roanne. What a hippogriff is the post!

Adieu, dear; I am going to work like one possessed. I start April 1 by boat for Civita-Vecchia. Easter Sunday falls on the 12th; I shall see Rome for ten days; then I will return with you through Switzerland. There's my plan. Between now and then I shall have my liberty. Take care of yourselves, all, but you especially. I will answer next week your dear child's letter, and also Georges'.

When I think that after Baden you will have to return home, a shudder comes over me. You know when you enter there but you don't know when you can leave. But I will not end my letter sadly; find here within it the fresh flowers of an old affection. My heart blesses you, my soul is round you with all its thoughts. As for my mind, you know that is only the reflection and echo of yours.

PASSY, February 8, 1845.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Naples.]

No letters! my uneasiness has reached its height; I do not know what to think; I believe you are ill. I am tortured to the point of not being able to write a line to-day. I dine with M. F..., a sacrifice to make, and a great one, I assure you; but it is very essential not to displease him; he does my business well, and I am more and more satisfied with him. This week we attack an account very difficult to terminate; that of B... It is a matter of nine thousand francs to be paid. No letter! I am very unhappy.

February 9.

What joy! I have your letter at last. I ought to write to you on my knees for such kindness, and such persistency and perseverance in that kindness. The passage in which you tell me you had been lost in a contemplation of the future like one of mine, and in which you seem so touched by those transports of worship I often have toward you,--that true affection, so humble coming from a soul so lofty, gave me for a moment more happiness than I have ever had before in my life.

Dear countess, do not risk yourself in Rome before Georges is perfectly recovered; put off the journey for your children's sake; Rome will not be swallowed up to-morrow, but health is lost there in a week. Wait; wait.

When you receive this letter LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE will be finished.

I have paid M. Potier a thousand francs, for he has had, you see, to incur expenses,--he says so himself. This is a house of forty-five thousand francs, and fifteen thousand for additions, sixty thousand in all. [The house in the rue Fortunée.] I hope to own the house and to have paid up all disquieting claims by the end of February. But all these uncertainties prevent me from working at my ease. I am like a bird on a branch. I hope you will let me come and tell you of my installation and spend a few days with you in April.

In going to Souverain's to-day I saw in the shop of a dealer in bric-à-brac a miniature of Madame de Sévigné, done in her day it seemed to me, which can be had for very little. Do you want it? It seemed to me rather good; but it must be said that I scarcely looked at it because I was in a hurry.

February 10.

I have seen that miniature again, and it is hideous. On the other hand, I have bought a portrait of Queen Marie Leczinska after Coypel, evidently painted in his atelier. I bought it for the value of the frame; as it is one of those portraits that queens give to cities or great personages, though it is but a copy, I thought it would decorate a salon.

I am more inert than I can tell you; I work badly, without inspiration, without taste, without courage; my life, my soul, and all my forces are elsewhere. I have asked Gautier to bring me an artist named Chenavard, a friend of La Belgiojoso, whom I know but whose address is unknown to me, to enlighten me as to the value of Marie Leczinska's portrait, because, like Louis XIV., "I don't choose to deceive myself."

February 11.

Much tramping, much fatigue, without result. M. F... has fallen dangerously ill, and that delays my business. You see, dear beloved countess, that I am not the master of this liquidation; the least effort would be punished; I must wait like a hunter on the watch. It is dreadful! I assure you that the harassment of my affairs, joined to that of my soul (which is tortured by absence as one is, they say, by remorse) affects my poor brain powerfully. Without vanity, I can certify to you that I am wonderful; I rise every night, I think of you, I write to you, and stay so for two hours before I am able to begin to work. Then I continue to write, but for you, and not, as I ought, for the public. Or if by a miracle it is not you of whom I am thinking, it is about one of the houses offered to me, its furnishing, its arrangement, and the thousand details of my business; for every affair of a thousand francs exacts as much care as a matter of a hundred thousand. Then I re-read your dear letters, I look at my proofs, and I reason with myself. The day dawns, and I have done nothing. I tell myself that I am a monster, that to be truly worthy of you I must forget you and girt my loins with the labourer's cord; I say insults to myself; I grasp that ivory Daffinger; I think you there; I dream--and I waken to remorse for having dreamed instead of working.

Madame de Girardin writes to ask me to go and see her. There is to be a lady present, daughter or grand-daughter of Sheridan, who desires to see me. I shall go in my grand costume of fine manners.

February 12.

I went to bed this morning, my hours upset! and all for a tiresome Englishwoman who stared at me through an eyeglass as she might at an actor. Madame de Girardin, charming in a small company, is, it must be admitted, a less agreeable mistress of a house at great receptions. She belies her origin by her talent; but when her talent is not to the fore she becomes once more the daughter of her mother; that is to say, bourgeoise and Gay pur sang. The Duc de Guiche, who has given in his allegiance, was there; he exerted himself, and was almost witty, which I had doubted. The memory of Madame Kalergi, whom I never knew, or even saw, as you know, pursued me. Admiral de la Susse described the regrets of the Baden society that I did not accept the invitations of that beautiful lady, but confined myself to a certain family who had confiscated me to their own profit. From that moment I became of a most stupendous stupidity; so that Madame de Girardin whispered to me, "What is the matter with you this evening?" To which I answered, "Your Englishwoman has gone to my heart." At which she laughed and I kept the secret of my melancholy--I saw once more the scenery of Baden, the Hôtel du Cerf, the promenades, etc. Ah! how you absorb me! It cannot be expressed; a word a nothing, brings me back to you.

Dear countess, we must console that poor Georges. I will find a copy of the Dejean catalogue; it is very rare, the whole edition having been burned in the fire of the rue Pot-de-Fer (when the "Contes Drolatiques" were destroyed). I have found a work the title of which you will find on the sheet which envelops this letter. Write me whether Georges knows of it. It is the finest iconography of coleopteras in existence. Only seven copies remain; the blocks are planed and that ends it. If he wants the work I will bring it to him with his insects and the Dejean. In wandering about, Saturday, I found two vases (Restoration) on which were painted, for some entomologist no doubt, the prettiest insects in the world. They are the work of an artist and must have cost a great deal. Georges will like them, I know, and I shall return him painted pots for painted pots. Perhaps these vases were a gift to Latreille; for no one, I think, would have done such conscientious work unless for some great entomological celebrity. It is a real trouvaille, a chance such as I never had before. No one knows what Paris is; with time and patience, everything can be found here, even at a bargain. Just now I am negotiating for the purchase of a chandelier which must have come from the palace of some Emperor of Germany, because it is surmounted by the double-headed eagle. It is a Flemish chandelier and came from Brussels no doubt before the Revolution; it weighs two hundred pounds and is of brass; I have bought it for the intrinsic value of the metal--four hundred and fifty francs. I intend it for my dining-room, which will be in the same style. I see you alarmed by this communication; but do not be anxious; no debts are incurred; I am obeying your sovereign orders. Lirette will be paid as you intend, and Froment-Meurice also. As to my personal affairs, the liquidation has more money than it needs. Froment-Meurice is really an impossible jeweller. Here it is February 17th, and the figure of Nature is not yet finished. He says it is still in the hands of the chaser. He himself is wholly absorbed in a toilet-set for the Duchess of Lucca.

February 18.

I have received the letter in which you tell me that Georges gets better and better, and that he had come to see you at the Villa Reale. This good letter shows me that calmness is restored to your heart and mind, because you have returned to your habit of writing every evening when your good friendship battles with sleep, often vanquished to my profit. A strange thing! there are in this long letter that I am about to carry to the post things that reply to the questions in yours! This affinity with each other brings tears to my eyes. How I love your letters! how true they are! In reading them I seem to hear you speak; they are indeed a balm to all my wounds. I beg of you do not go to Rome, I repeat it; the journey might be fatal to Georges; he is very delicate. I was like that at his age; but I never thought of myself, and others cared still less for me.

I am not working as much as I ought. You do right to tell me so; believe that I blame myself harshly. "The days are going," as you say; but you do not know the labyrinth through which my liquidation is leading me; you are ignorant of the incessant tramps which upset all my days, and often for sums not more than a hundred francs. My tranquillity means owning property, settlement in a home, and respect. Therefore I avow that even if I incur your blame (to me so terrible) I must put my liquidation before my literary work.

I am glad that the engraving and device of your armed knight pleased you. No one helped your servitor; pray believe that; the Latin is my own property: Virens sequar and Fulge, vivam, are worthy of the E inscribed on the star.

I have the portrait of Queen Marie Leczinska. It is not by Coypel, but was done in his atelier by a pupil, either Lancret or another, as you please. One must be a connoisseur not to think it a Coypel. The portrait has been engraved, and I shall lose nothing on it, Chenavard says.

I met Koref, who had the impudence to tell me he had been talking of me to one of your friends in the most eulogistic terms. I wish you could have seen me look at him as I said, "I do not doubt it." He left me instantly.

PASSY, March, 1846.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Naples.]

Dear countess, the person who will take to you this letter is a friend of mine, M. Schnetz, the painter of the beautiful picture of the "Madonna's Vow," which is in Saint-Roch. He is the Director of the French School of Art in Rome, and I profit by his kindness to send you news from me to meet you on your arrival in Rome.

As M. Nacquart prophesied, my courage has been rewarded; to-day I can walk [he had been thrown from a carriage], and all my preparations for my journey are made. My place is booked in the mail-cart for Lyon; for the Marseille's post service carries so many letters that letters in my person are turned out of the mail-cart by the other kind.

I must wear my bandages for another month; but nothing prevents me from seeing Rome with you, or rather you with Rome. Oh! it was God who led you to Naples, you and yours, more than you think perhaps. Now, the wisest thing you can do is to stay in Rome, and not continue your projected journey until you have received good news from the Ukraine; for they say that those provinces are in a state of disquieting fermentation; I even hear talk of a general insurrection. Eleven hundred seigneurs and land-owners in Galicia have been murdered by their peasantry, whom they were endeavouring to draw into rebellion against their sovereign, the Emperor of Austria. The Austrians are to-day in retreat (you will see that in the "Débats"). The revolt, or the insurrection, has been simultaneous throughout the former Poland--Prussian, Austrian, and Russian; the movement is communistic. I tremble for your cousin L.... The insurgents, they tell me, are occupying Piotrkov. This is really frightful; no quarter is given on either side; priests, women, children, old men, all are in arms. Bands of ten thousand starving Poles have thrown themselves from Russian Poland into Prussia (where the famine began), and the Prussians are thrusting them back, as if infected with the plague, by a cordon of troops. Every one here foresees nothing but evil for that unfortunate nation; but the surprise is that Galicia, which seemed to be so well governed, so happy even, under the Austrian sceptre, should have revolted in this untimely manner. Chlopiçki, whom they wished to put at the head of the movement, refused. He has retired into Prussia, saying that he would blow his brains out sooner than command such a folly. All sensible people groan over it. They say that Lithuania and the provinces in the west of Russia will rise also, on account of the recruiting for the Caucasus. What disasters for the future of Europe must we not fear, with these populations at a pitch of chronic insanity! And the governments, which admit that they are already exhausted, will they be able to repress and control them?

How fortunate that you are in Rome! for even you, so wise and so intelligent, have jealous and malevolent people about you over there. Besides, no one knows what might happen if you were caught between the insurgents and the troops. The "Gazette de Cologne" has published, under Prussian censure, an article which speaks of the blindness of the governments in the matter of Poland, and dwells on the fact that nationalities cannot perish. (Don't speak of this to any one.) I hope nothing unfortunate will happen to Countess Mniszech; but Georges must be very uneasy about his mother, for the whole of Galicia is expected to rise. They say that Hungary, hitherto so faithful, is also in arms.

You can form no idea of my happiness ever since my place was booked in the Lyon mail. I am now making all my arrangements.

I have given Lirette the money you gave me for her. I went to the convent myself, though still ill. Here's a strange thing! She has been requested by Abbé L... to send to Petersburg an affidavit declaring that neither he, the abbé, nor you had endeavoured to dissuade her from entering a convent, and affirming that she did not possess forty roubles and consequently had never given that sum to the convent. What does all that mean? I hope they will permit her to write, and that I shall bring you a long letter from her.

Take care of yourself, and do not forget to let me know where you are in Rome, addressing your letter to "M. Lysimaque, at the French Consulate, Civita-Vecchia, for M. de Balzac;" and try to find me a niche not far from you, if it is only a kennel. I hope my preceding letter has reached you through the Rothschilds.

What do you think of M. de Custine, who offered me a letter of introduction to Prince George (Michel Angelo)? He did not remember the prince's relationship to you! I take such part in your interests and those of your dear child that I tremble every morning as I open the newspapers. Mon Dieu! what anxiety when I think of the state in which your affairs are! You must not think of returning there till all is quiet once more.

Without adieu this time, but à bientôt.[1]

[Footnote 1: Balzac started for Rome March 20, and returned to Paris May 1, 1846.]

To MADAME LAURE SURVILLE, Paris.

ROME, the Eternal City, April, 1846.

My dear Laure, I feel in advance the pleasure you will enjoy in thinking that your brother has put his hand to the pen in the city of the Cæsars, popes, and others. Give you a description of it?--I could not do it. Read Lamennais ("Affaires de Rome") and you will know nearly as much as he or I. I have been received with distinction by our Holy Father; and you must tell my mother that in prostrating myself at the feet of the father of all faithful people, whose hierarchical slipper was kissed by me in company with a podestat d'Avignone (a hideous mayor from the Vaucluse district, who claimed to be his former subject), I thought of her, and I am bringing her back a little chaplet prepared by Leo XII. much shorter to recite than the old one. It is called La Corona, and is blessed by his present Holiness.

I have seen all Rome from A to Z. The illumination of the dome of St. Peter's on Easter-Eve is alone worth the journey; but as the same might be said of the benediction given urbi et orbi, Saint Peter's itself, the Vatican, the ruins, etc., etc., my journey really counts as ten journeys.

I am so content in Rome that I am thinking of passing nearly the whole of next winter here, for I want to know everything about it. As there are three hundred churches, you can imagine that I have only been to see the principal ones. Saint Peter's surpasses all that one expects, but through reflection. I climbed to the ball above which is the cross. It would take a week to tell of Saint Peter's. Imagine that your house could easily be put into the cornice of one of the flat double-columns of the interior third tier of the dome. Nothing could surpass the Miserere of the choir, which is so superior to the choir of the Sistina that I preferred to listen twice to that of Saint Peter's: the first time, it was the music of angels (Guglielmi); the second time it was learned music (Fioravanti), which I thought bad, though the execution was perfect.

Truly, everybody should lay by money and go once in his life to Rome, or he will know nothing of antiquity, architecture, splendour, and the impossible realized. Rome, in spite of the short time I have stayed here, will always be one of the grandest and most beautiful memories of my life.... I sail on the 22nd for Genoa, and shall go from there as quickly as possible to Paris.

PASSY, June 14, 1846.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Rome.]

Dear countess, I find in the "Presse" of yesterday an article sent from Russia, which seems to me so disquieting that I send it to you. To-morrow I will send you the "Presse" and the "Débats." You will receive them for one month.

I rise at half-past three, not earlier, though I ought to be up at two. Sleep will not come as it should at seven in the evening, on account of the heat. It is now half-past four, and I have not yet written a line!

Adieu for to-day, till to-morrow. M. F... is coming to see me to-day, and I shall have to talk business after working all night.

The Russian article in the "Presse" points to very serious matters. I believe in the spoliation of the land-owners by the government; my uneasiness about your interests is extreme. Will your children have time? What does the article mean? Tell me fully what you think about it. It seems to me to be written by some one who feigns ignorance on the subject.

June 15.

Yesterday I wrote eight pages; the heat was so intense that I put myself into a cold water bath. M. F... came to see me, and I did not go to bed till half-past seven. But I had to be waked out of my first sleep, for at half-past nine the carriers brought the "Adam and Eve" and the "Saint Peter," and my presence was necessary. The concierge had paid sixty francs too much, and I had to explain the error. The discussions as to this lasted till half-past eleven, and I did not get to sleep again till midnight. I had nothing to pay with but a thousand-franc note, for which it was difficult at that hour to get change; and besides, I opened the packages to amuse M. F. and an artist who was with us. The Natoire is charming, signed and authentic. But Holbein's Saint Peter was held to be sublime. The artist, who is a fine connoisseur, said that at public sale it ought to bring three thousand francs.

Now I have paid out one thousand and forty francs. I have only the cases from Rome and the one from Geneva to receive, which will not be more together than five hundred francs, and a third from Genoa, five hundred more. So that leaves me still fifteen hundred francs, and the Chemin du Nord pays a dividend in July; therefore, you see, I am not at all embarrassed.

My situation is even better than I thought. With ten thousand francs all will be brought to an end by M. F..., and my principal creditors perfectly agree to the broad manner in which I am settling my accounts with them.

I can easily suffice to pay all. My health is excellent, and my talent--oh! I have recovered it in all its bloom. My various treaties are to be concluded this week.

Write me the time when you will permit me to come and see you again, so that I may get myself in readiness.

Among the serious paintings that I have in my study, it must be owned that the Natoire [Adam and Eve] looks a little too mincing. I hope to sell that false Breughel for five hundred francs, and that will pay for Genoa, while returning me the cost of the picture.

Here is what I am now going to write: "L'Histoire des Parents pauvres," consisting of "Le Bonhomme Pons"[1] (which will make two or three folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE) and "La Cousine Bette" which will make sixteen; also "Les Méfaits d'un Procureur-du-roi," making six more; in all, twenty-five folios, or twenty thousand francs, newspapers and publishers combined; then, to conclude all, "Les Paysans." All that surpasses my payments. I have besides, for this winter, "Les Petits Bourgeois," and the regulating of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE; also the reprinting of the "Contes Drolatiques" and my comedy. I shall thus have acquired, I think, the right to travel a little. I shall have no debts, and a little house of my own.

But much work is still necessary; if I do eight pages to-day that will be a good deal, for the weather seems threatening to be hotter than ever. I am now going to do a number of errands in Paris, and send you the "Presse" and the "Débats." The Chemin du Nord will not be in full activity for three weeks yet, and that is the cause of the fall in stock which unnecessarily disturbs you. I have so much hope in it that, had I the money, I would again buy into it. The great banking-houses are not anxious, for they are buying it. If the railway has a hundred thousand travellers in July, there will be a rise of two hundred francs; for the funds are placed at ten per cent. I should like to keep five or six hundred francs in the bank so as to buy thirty-five more shares--in case they fall lower, be it understood.

No news from Rome. But I am not uneasy; I am in a phase of hope and confidence which surprises myself; for nothing is really changed in my position; yet I feel, I don't know how or why, less sad, less discouraged than usual. It is as if currents, waves, floods of affection came at moments through my heart for you; it seems to me to be a sympathetic effect between us, and as if at that moment you were thinking of me. You are indeed the principle of the new courage and talent that I feel within me; if I strive to be free and esteemed, it is for you. The world is nothing to me; I do not care for it. I seek to pay all, to make my place clean, to have a home that is dignified and suitable. I devote myself to that result, so often preached to me by you, and the sense of the good I do for the future represses for the moment the pain of an absence which your ideas consider necessary. Moreover, the subjects I am now to write of please me, and can be done with extreme rapidity. The publishing business is at this moment in a bad state. This morning I am going to see Véron, Furne, and Charpentier; but to-day is Monday, and to-morrow is the inauguration of the Chemin de fer du Nord; so it is possible I may postpone these visits till the day after.

[Footnote 1: In "Le Bonhomme Pons," afterwards called "Le Cousin Pons," will be found a description of Balzac's own passion for collecting antiquities and bric-à-brac. This passion was partly his natural instinct, and partly his desire to fill with treasures the home for which he longed. His collection is described in "Le Cousin Pons." See Memoir p. 323.--TR.]

June 16.

It is now a week since I returned from Tours and I have only a dozen pages done, when I ought to have many more. But, as you know, one does not easily resume either hours of work or the faculty of working. Every day I go out for two hours to attend to business. I have not yet seen Émile de Girardin, or Véron, or M. Deshayes.

M. Buquet has sent me a great many insects; show the list of them to Georges, and send it back to me when he has chosen those he wants. Tell him to mark in pencil against them. Tell him also how keenly and deeply I have felt for his misfortune [the death of his father]. And this is very sincere; for there are but you three in whom I take an interest in this world. The others are not worth naming; and it is that I may no longer be shackled, but wholly a thing all yours, that I throw myself up to my chin into work. I am now finishing "Les Paysans" and "Les Petits Bourgeois," and beginning to invent "Le Vieux Musicien" ["Cousin Pons"] and "La Cousine Bette."

Those four works will pay my last debts, and this winter "L'Éducation du Prince" and "La Dernière Incarnation de Vautrin" will give me the first money which will be really mine, and the beginning of my fortune. The times require that I should do two or three masterly works to overthrow the false gods of our bastard literature, and prove that I am younger, fresher, more fruitful than ever.

The "Vieux Musicien" is a poor relation, crushed by insults and humiliations, full of heart, forgiving all, and avenging himself by benefactions. "La Cousine Bette" is another poor relation, overwhelmed by insults and humiliations, living in the homes of three or four families, and meditating vengeance for her bruised self-love and her wounded vanity. These two histories with that of "Pierrette" constitute the "Histoire des Parents pauvres." I shall try to put "Le Vieux Musicien" into the "Semaine," "La Cousine Bette" into the "Constitutionnel," at the same time that "Les Paysans" appears, and that the "Débats" prints "Les Petits Bourgeois."

I will send my letters Thursdays and Sundays; next Sunday you will receive a packet. On that day I shall have begun "La Cousine Bette," and "Les Paysans" will be in full blast. Bertin does not want "Les Petits Bourgeois" till next September. No, to be far from you now is to be crucified daily. If you only knew under what heat I am working you would pity me. May your letters give me courage and hope. Au revoir and à bientôt, I trust.

PASSY, July 13, 1846.

Dear countess, a disagreeable thing has happened to me which will take much time; a creditor to satisfy for a very small sum; but the course he is taking is dangerous for me, and will annoy me much and necessitate a multitude of steps. You see, the end of liquidations is always difficult; it is not enough to have the money, the settlement must be negotiated. That is what crushes me and hinders my work. This new creditor will take a whole week of my time. I can't help it. M. F... is in Brussels, pursuing a bankrupt. Besides, the creditor in question refuses an intermediary, and insists on treating with me. When this is over I will tell you what he has done to me. It is written above that I shall know all the horrors of debt.

July 14.

I have nothing new to tell you, except that I am much fatigued. I have passed the night in hunting for receipted bills and memoranda. It is an excessive bore. Buisson has returned; we are not agreed as to figures. If I do not settle this affair now it will become onerous in the future and more difficult to terminate. I am fully aware that I must attend to my liquidation before all else. I am really frightened to see very honest men asking in good faith for money that has already been paid to them and become stupefied when they have their own receipts before their eyes. M. Picard, my lawyer, says it happens every day.

You have no idea what a hunted hare's life I have led from 1836 to 1846. The state of my papers expresses it in a lamentable fashion; it is enough to break one's heart! It will take six months at least to put them in order. In the hurry of my various movings the business papers have been piled up without care, stuffed into boxes, twisted, pressed, crushed, torn. I need a vast library with numerous drawers in which to classify and put them away. Space is wanting here; I smother. The furniture, which is fine, is getting spoiled; a house is a necessity as urgent as the payment of my debts. I am really as much hurried as I was in 1837, and it is an inexplicable miracle, to me how I ever did those sixteen volumes of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE between 1841 and 1846.

Two years of calmness and tranquillity in a home like the Beaujon house are absolutely necessary to heal my soul after sixteen years of successive catastrophes. I feel, I do assure you, very weary of this incessant struggle, as keen to-day in paying my last debts as when it concerned the total of them. And always my crushing literary labour in the midst of these worrying affairs! Were it not for the new causes of courage which have come into my heart, I should, like that shipwrecked man whose strength surmounted for one whole day the fury of the seas, succumb to waves less rough and gentler within sight of port. To be torn perpetually from calmness and works of the mind by vexations and worries that drive ordinary men mad--is that living, I ask you?

No, I have not lived in these last years, except at Dresden, Carnstadt, Baden, Rome, or in travelling. Thanks be to you, O dear and tender consoling angel, who alone have poured into my desolate life some drops of pure happiness, that marvellous oil which does at times give courage and vigour to the fainting wrestler. That alone should open to you the gates of paradise, if indeed, you have any sins with which to reproach yourself--you, wife so perfect, mother so devoted, friend so kind and compassionate. It is a great and very noble mission to console those who have found no consolation upon earth. I have, in the treasure of your letters, in the still greater treasure of my recollections, in the grateful and constant thought of the good you have done to my soul by your counsel and your example, a sovereign remedy against all misfortunes; and I bless you very often, my dear and beneficent star, in the silence of night and in the worst of my troubles. May that blessing, which looks to God as the Author of all good, reach you often. Try to hear it sometimes in the murmuring sounds that whisper in the soul though we know not whence they come. My God! without you, where should I be!

With what ever increasing gratitude do I look at the casket in which are your letters, those treasures of intelligence, and kindness, thinking how you have ever been to me a beneficent friend, gentle and kind, without failure or deception of any sort, without reproaches or regrets--like a spring ever flowing, so that, even now, in the midst of your personal anxieties, you are still concerned for me, for my literary and financial interests, for my future, in short!--

Ah! how well I comprehend the tears shed by Teano when the memory of Caliste came back too powerfully to his sickened heart! It is a noble thing, admit it, the sacred chrism of tears shed on a head, on a brow irreproachable by a poor man who adores them and says, "Would that I could love you more!"

July 15.

Yesterday the affair of that creditor took my whole day. I also went to fetch my proofs at the "Constitutionnel." Alas! here it is July 15, and it is doubtful if by the 31st I can have finished "Les Parents pauvres." "Les Paysans" will take August and September; especially with the journey I am to make [that to Wiesbaden]. There's the naked truth; but if "Les Paysans" bring twenty-five thousand francs, that will be thirty-five thousand in four or five months; that's a great deal. When I am paid for LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, you see, my liquidation will be well advanced; so I shall put off all solution till the month of November. The Beaujon house will not be free till then; then I shall know what to expect from the Chemin du Nord and from myself. I have my apartment here till August 1; so I must be patient, work, and liquidate. To-day I have to go again to the Palais de Justice about the affair of that creditor; it is a day lost. I will write you another line to-night before dinner. I have all my proofs to put in order.

July 16.

Yesterday I came in late and too tired to write you the promised line; moreover, I found the picture restorer waiting for me. He is the cleverest of his trade in Paris; a former pupil of David and of Gros; he is a great connoisseur. He thinks "Le Jugement de Paris" superb, and attributes it to Giorgione. He accepts the "Chevalier de Malte" for a Sebastian del Piombo; he thinks it a very fine thing, and deplores the accident to the Bronzino, which he considers a work of the first order; the hand especially enchanted him. He will restore them all, and also the flower-picture, which has been badly cleaned. He is a very good little man, much of a connoisseur, and has promised me his help on all occasions. He is to come back Saturday and make the toilet of the "Chevalier de Malte," supposed to have a layer of church grease upon him,--the smoke of candles and other disagreeable ecclesiastical glaze.

You see, dear countess, what Paris is. I sent for the little man in question two weeks ago and it has taken him that time to get here. And my frames! ordered a month ago and not yet begun. That is Paris! it needs time and will to get the simplest and most trifling things; imagine therefore what is needed for serious matters. "La Femme" by Mireveldt, which you gave me, my restorer considered an admirable thing, a real marvel. He consoled me for my false Breughel, and did not despise it as Chenavard did. But no matter, I don't wish to keep it, nor the landscape by Krug-Miville, nor "Les Sorciers." I want good things or none.

Now just imagine that a pretended creditor,--I have his receipts,--a mechanician, took an idea to complain of me at the office of the procureur-du-roi, and I was troubled by a letter requesting me to go there to answer a complaint; I! that is telling you all. I could not understand what it meant; I was too sure of myself to be uneasy; but I feared the malignancy of the newspapers, for I know of what they are capable when it concerns me. You remember that story of Brussels in 1843. However, yesterday at half-past three, the substitute-procureur gave my pretended creditor a good lecture, and showed him his own receipt. He is a bad man, the accomplice of servants I had at Les Jardies; and they no doubt plotted this fine thing among them. I owe him nothing but some unimportant costs, for which he may try to sue me. You see, of course, I can easily pay him those fifty francs (at the most), but I want to give him a lesson and not pay him on account of his complaint, for others might try the same means. I have a project of making him pay five hundred francs to get his fifty. It is vengeance; but I think it is permissible in such a case.

I am going valiantly to work, and with what ardour! I have now spent two whole nights on "Les Parents pauvres." I think it will be really a fine work, extraordinary among those with which I am most satisfied. You shall see. You know it is dedicated to our dear Teano, and I want it to be worthy of him.

It is seven in the morning; I have been at my proofs for three hours. It is very arduous, for this history is something between "César Birotteau" and the "Interdiction." The question is how to give interest to a poor and simple-minded man, an old man. I have just been reading the papers. "L'Époque" has passed over, skipped, forgotten to print the twenty finest lines in Esther's letter to Lucien. I am in despair because of you. I must get them replaced if possible.

You ought to be pleased with Méry's novel; it is enchanting! What wit the fellow has! Too much, perhaps; it is like a shopful of crystals. He breakfasts with me to-day, and we shall regale ourselves by talking of you. I want also to communicate to him the idea of my farce on the army, and propose to him to write it between us for Frédérick.

Must I bid you adieu, dear valiant soul, sister of my soul. I would I could send you back the good you do me from those heights where you shine, but that is impossible: I am a man, and you are an angel; I can only equal myself to you by the reflection of your intelligence, so powerful, yet at the same time so simple and so candid; to you, in whom all gracious details attract yet without detriment to the ensemble which charms and binds for life. If I did not fear to displease you I could go on thus forever; but if I wish to satisfy you I must work, work on, work ever. Besides, is not that being occupied with you? So I leave you for my "Parents pauvres," and I hope you will reward me by one of those exquisite letters of which you alone possess the secret.

PASSY, July 17, 1846.

Yesterday, dear countess, I had Bertin[1] to breakfast, which was delicate, fine, superfine, I'll answer for it. He was charming, and he stayed a long time, talking and looking at my pictures and bric-à-brac. My whole day was taken up, or very nearly; and I profited by what remained of it to go and see Véron, whom I did not find, and Gavault on business. I dine to-day with Madame de Girardin; I want to confer with her husband about "Les Paysans." You will receive three newspapers: the "Presse," "Débats," and "Époque." I wish also to make you read an Opposition journal.

Bertin was stupefied at my riches. He thought that tête-à-tête of old Sèvres delicious; and declared I could sell my beautiful Chinese porcelain service for three or four thousand francs. He told me he had given commissions to one of the cleverest and most influential men of our embassy to China; he wanted fine vases of old porcelain, but was told there was nothing now to be bought in China but the modern. Old china is all bought up by the mandarins, the court, and the rich; and the prices are ten times higher than ours in Paris. All their admirable productions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are now in Europe. There is nothing left in Nankin or in Canton, and nothing in the interior of the Empire, except what belongs to the emperor and private persons.

I am notified that the pictures from Rome will be here in five or six days, and the picture from Heidelberg in three or four. They were very reasonable in Rome. I had only to pay twenty-five Roman crowns in duties (about one hundred and fifty francs), but the total expense is more than three hundred. So if the other Italian pictures arrive, what will become of me? I must make preparations, for I have received no letter from the consul-general, which seems to me ominous.

I asked Bertin to send you the beginning of Charles de Bernard's novel. Tell me if you have received all, and whether you are satisfied. I re-read yesterday, according to your sovereign orders, "L'Instruction criminelle." You are right, as usual; it is a fine thing.

Your semi-compatriot Walewski is to marry, they say, Mademoiselle Ricci, grand-daughter of Stanislas Poniatowski, and descendant of Macchiavelli through the women. She has, I am told, a hundred thousand francs as dot, and three hundred thousand in expectation. Walewski was madly in love with her, and, in his quality of dandy he found no other way of proving it to her than to marry her. What will become of the son of the great man, le grand Colonna Walewski with such a poor little civil list?

I leave you to return to my old musician. I am very well; my head is full of ideas; I work easily, for I have the hope of going to see you at Kreuznach as soon as I have finished my three volumes: there's the secret of my courage.

[Footnote 1: Armand Bertin; his father, Louis-François, founded the "Journal des Débats;" after the latter's death in 1841, Armand Bertin edited the paper.--TR.]

July 18.

No letters, dear countess! that is not nice of you. Here I am very uneasy, very much worried, not to say quite discouraged. It is midday; I got back at one in the morning from Madame de Girardin's. The dinner was given for a Madame de Hahn, a famous German actress, whom a gentleman endowed with fifty thousand francs a year withdrew from the stage and married, in spite of all the petty magnates of his family and caste. Madame de Girardin had her two great men, Hugo and Lamartine, the two Germans, husband and wife, Dr. Cabarrus and his daughter (the doctor is the son of Ouvrard and Madame de Tallien, and a friend from childhood of Émile de Girardin), and your servant. The dinner was over by ten o'clock. At the end of a political disquisition by Hugo I let myself go to an improvisation in which I fought him and beat him, with some success I do assure you. Lamartine seemed charmed and thanked me effusively. He wants me more than ever to go to the Chamber; but do not be anxious, I will never cross the threshold of mine to enter there.

I won Lamartine by my appreciation of his last speech (on Syrian affairs); I was sincere, as I always am, for, truly, the speech was magnificent from end to end. Lamartine has been very great, very dazzling during this session. But what destruction from the physical point of view! That man of fifty-six looks to be fully eighty; he is destroyed, ended; he has but a few years of life in him; he is consumed by ambition, and worn-out by the bad state of his pecuniary affairs. Émile de Girardin went off to the Chamber, so I had no chance to speak of "Les Paysans;" it must be for another time. As to Véron, he takes my novel of "La Cousine Bette;" but we have not yet agreed as to price and quantity. I am expecting the editor of "La Semaine" M. Hippolyte Castille. Beside "Les Paysans" to finish, I have eighteen more folios to do for LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE.

July 19.

I went to bed at half-past six last evening and slept the deepest sleep, in spite of the 32 degrees of heat which we have here. I am now ready to work from two to ten in the morning, when Dubochet and Furne are to breakfast with me. We are to have a conference about the COMÉDIE HUMAINE, and God knows what will come of it; new griefs and worries perhaps! So I shall count only on my work and what I earn from the newspapers for my financial solutions. If I spend the whole of the month of August in doing "Les Paysans," Véron must have the manuscript of "La Cousine Bette" the first days of the same month. I shall correct "Cousine Bette" while I do "Les Paysans."

I wish that all my cases were unpacked, and all my beautiful things visible; for the anxiety to know in what state they are reacts upon me too vehemently, especially in the state of irritation I am in from a continued fever of inspiration and insomnia. I hope to have finished "Le Vieux Musicien" on Monday, by rising daily at half-past one in the morning, as I did to-day, being quite re-established in my working hours. I will tell you to-morrow how many pages I have done to-day; it must be twelve to satisfy me.

July 20, 1846.

I received your letter yesterday at half-past six o'clock and I could not answer then, for I had to dine, and after dinner Cailleux (to whom I had written about the furniture, the Salomon de Caux, etc., and about the portraits of the king and Madame Adélaïde, which are at Geneva) chose the hour between eight and nine to come and see my collection. I had scarcely time to read your letter in the street, and none in which to answer it.

"Le Vieux Musicien," that novel of fifty sheets, will be finished Tuesday. Wednesday I take up the other part of "Les Parents pauvres." This morning I treat with Méry and an editor of "Le Messager." In spite of the intolerable heat (30 degrees at nine in the morning!) my activity has never been more violent or my work more desperate; I am determined to pay integrally the sum total of my debts and win my independence and peace.

I am very well satisfied with "Le Vieux Musicien;" but "La Cousine Bette" is only a formless sketch; it is not yet a question of perfecting it; much has still to be invented.

Well, I must go and do the amount of "copy" I ought to do every morning. I send you my letters very regularly twice a week, but your answers are, alas! short and rare. Oh! I entreat you, on my knees, be less miserly of letters and details; scold me, tell me disagreeable things, but write me! the sight of your pretty little writing softens the bitterness of your wrath, which is never very terrible; for no matter how much you are displeased or even wounded, the angel of peace and mildness, who pardons and does not punish, is always in you.

Ballard, an editor of the "Messager," and Méry came to breakfast with me this morning. I need the "Messager;" for thirty thousand francs are not drawn too easily out of the well of the Parisian press. It is needful to have the support in the "Débats" of Bertin, in the "Constitutionnel" of Véron, in the "Presse" of de Girardin, in the "Messager" of the Minister of the Interior, in the "Musée des Familles" of Picquée. I have also some other newspapers without any leading personal influence. Now these articles are more difficult than you think; they are all invention, labour, drama; the payment is the object. As for the publishing of books, that is dying out, they say. The Public is going to sleep; it is necessary to wake up that bored despot by things that interest and amuse him. Just now, I am very well content with my "Vieux Musicien." When you read this letter it will be finished, for I have now reached the thirty-fourth sheet, and there are but forty-eight. Next week I shall work at "La Cousine Bette" for the "Constitutionnel;" and as soon as those two manuscripts are delivered to the compositors I shall finish "Les Paysans." In April I shall do "Les Méfaits d'un procureur-du-roi;" and this coming winter "Les Petits Bourgeois" and "L'Éducation du Prince." Will not this have been a well-employed year, specially when one considers a moving like mine? I am now searching in the faubourg Saint-Germain, or the rue Royale, for a house.

And now let me beg of you to drive away all useless and unwholesome reflections; do not be sad, do not even be pensive; be what you always are, the providence and joy of your home; be its mind, its heart, its blessing at all moments; a line of sadness, a word of anxiety in your letters gives me such pain. I want you happy; that is my special ambition; and my will is so strong in all which concerns you that I do not doubt its success in this. There is not a day or a moment in my life when I would not fling myself into a gulf to save you from care. That is not a form of speech, it is a sentiment of the heart, deep and true, and you have always seen it manifested in acts when occasion offered; what has been done in the past will not fail you in the future.

Write me often and gaily, and do not tell me you are "obsessed" as an excuse; I am obsessed, too, by business, work, tramping; compare the obsession of the world with yours; yet I write to you every day as one makes one's prayer on rising; but this is because you are my whole life, you are my very soul, and the slightest, vaguest of your depressions casts its shadow upon me. Continue to relate to me your life and all its impressions; hide nothing from me; tell me all,--the good, the bad, and even the involuntary thoughts.

C... came to see me yesterday; he is bitterly dull; I am alarmed when I see that the king takes him and M. Fontaine with him five times out of ten wherever he goes. The king commits the same fault that Napoleon committed; that is, in wishing to be all himself. There comes a day when empires perish because the man they rest on perishes or neglects to supply his substitute. What is certain is that the peace and tranquillity of Europe hang upon a thread, and that thread is the life of an old man of seventy-six.

You speak of complications in your affairs; what are they? But, as you say, we must trust in Providence, for all is danger when we sound the earth beneath us. I acknowledge that nothing surprises me more than to see you so troubled about things that you cannot change, you, whom I have always seen so submissive to the divine will, you, who have always walked straight before you without looking to one side or to the other, and still less behind you, where the past like a corpse is buried. Why not let yourself be led by the hand of God through the world and through life as you have done hitherto, advancing towards the future with that serenity, that calmness, that confidence, which a faith like yours should inspire? I must admit that in this fact of seeing my star which shines with so pure a lustre thus concerned about material interests there is something, I know not what, that I do not like and which makes me suffer. You have already given too much of your time and your beautiful youth. In spite of your instincts and your repugnances, you have been mastered by necessity, the welfare of your child, and your sense of duty. Now that you have fulfilled with such scrupulous and meritorious thoroughness your obligations to your adorable daughter, who understands so well all that she owes to you, and now that you have established her according to the choice of her heart and in accordance with your own ideas and sympathies, you have nothing further to do than to let yourself rest in that quietude of repose which you have so fully earned, giving the burden of business affairs into the hands of your children, who will continue the work of your patient and laborious administration. What can you fear for them, so wise, so enlightened, so sensible, so perfectly united, so exactly suited to each other? Why foresee events that are hostile to their safety?--why fear catastrophes which, I like to believe, will never happen? By spending your strength in creating imaginary dangers you will have none to defend you against real danger--should any ever threaten you, which I do not believe will happen.

Doesn't it seem to you rather strange and odd---you who have so often consoled and sustained me in my troubles and strengthened my beliefs--that I should insolently take my turn in daring to give you counsel, I who have constant and incessant need of being sustained, guided, and sometimes scolded by your high wisdom?

I don't know if you can decipher this shorthand scribbling in haste, which, according to our agreement, I do not take the trouble to read over.

Be very tranquil on the subject of nostalgia; I have forbidden my heart to have any more; it is crushed by toil. Do the same with your dark ideas; disperse them by confiding them to me and permitting me to combat them.

Adieu for to-day; to-morrow the continuation of this scribbled conversation. My tenderest regards to your dear children; you know well what is in my heart to both of them. Adieu and au revoir.

PASSY, July 27, 1846.

I hope my wandering and vagabond troupe will not be alarmed by a thing which will bring us nearer to each other. For the last five days I have not felt well, and this morning I went to see my doctor, who told me an epidemic of severe cholerine was raging, due to the excessive heat we are suffering at this moment; he has prescribed a strict diet, and gum-water to drink. I intend, therefore, to rest myself by going to meet you at Kreuznach and spending three or four days with you if the mail-cart permits. This illness will be absolutely nothing, and therefore do not disturb yourself about it; but if not taken in time it might develop into a case of sporadic cholera. I have given up fruits, which I ate in abundance. I had no strength, I slept incessantly, and had to give up all work.

It is probable that I shall buy the Beaujon house. I will bring you the plan of it. In August and September they are to make the repairs, put in the heaters and do the painting. In October the upholsterer will do his work, and in November I can move in. If my affairs go well, I shall have a year to buy a bit of adjoining ground for a greenhouse and the indispensable stable and coach-house. Then, perhaps, I shall stay in this species of chartreuse for the rest of my days, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot," as Chénier says.

Ah! dear luminous and sovereign star, this time last year we were at Bourges when posting; but you were ill and sad, even while seeing those beautiful things. To suffer amid happiness, that is my lot; for am I not happy in loving you?--yet I suffer here, when I know you to be at Kreuznach. But it must be, when fettered by work and business as I am now.

July 28.

This day year we were at Montrichard; and you saw for a few hours the beautiful valley of the Cher. Ah! how I feel, in thus turning back to the past, that there is no happiness for me without you; since yesterday, when I began to rest, I am a prey to one fixed idea,--see her, listen to her! Do not be affronted, I entreat you, but I need to see you as we need food when hungry; it is odious, it is brutal, it is all that is most revolting, perhaps, but it is true. My thought carries me to Kreuznach at every moment. I must finish my work for the "Constitutionnel," and then go and book my place in the mail. Shall I have a letter this morning? I dare not hope it.

July 29.

I found in the post a letter from your children. Anna had put in a little line which makes me very uneasy. She writes: "Mamma is sad and ill; you ought to come and help us to cheer her." I went at once and took my place as far as Mayence, and I shall be there punctually to meet you; you will not do me the wrong to doubt it, I am sure. Adieu for to day.

July 30.

The king has again been shot at; you will see it in the papers. It is truly odious! it will make our unhappy country impossible and hateful to foreigners. I am very much better; the doctor was a prophet; in two days all was over and restored in good order; I am still dieting, but to-morrow I can resume my usual food and my work. The heat has become more frightful than ever; as I write I am afloat; every pore, every hair, has its drop of moisture; I am soaked as if I were just out of a bath.

Last night I saw the fireworks; I had slept all day, so much had weakness and heat reduced me. The illuminations were very fine; I doubt if Peterhof ever showed anything finer (in spite of your admirations). How I wished for you here! and how many times I said to myself that, positively, you should see it with me next year. In spite of the heat and the diet, I feel so recovered that I shall go this evening to the first representation of "Le Docteur noir," and to-morrow I shall return to my usual ways and my nocturnal work, minus coffee, be it understood; and on the 17th you will see me at Kreuznach, rely upon it.

The end of "Esther" has had a great success. The letter was like an electric shock, everybody is talking of it. The profound truth about our judiciary morals, made dramatic, has startled the men of the robe. Expect now "L'Histoire des Parents pauvres," and you will see that I shall make a very fine work of it--but don't feel too much confidence, for I may deceive myself about it.

So all goes well, and will go better and better. But I love you so much that there is no other misfortune possible for me than that which might come to you either in health or feelings. Tears come into my eyes as I recall certain gestures, certain motions of your dear person in the dim chamber of my brain where are pictured all your features, your adorable nature, your heart infinite in goodness, your mind, your walks with me, our walks along the roadsides, even to your gentle scoldings--in short, our whole history, in which you have always been the noblest, purest, most saintly, and most excellent of human creatures.

July 31.

Forty degrees of heat in my apartment! My weakness is extreme, on account of the strict diet the doctor ordered me. This will explain to you the brevity of my talk with you this morning.

Last night I saw "Le Docteur noir;" it is the height of stupidity, of mediocrity in its saturnalia. I got to bed at one o'clock and did not rise till nine. I have just returned from the post-office; no letters, alas! 'Twas a soldier of the "Medusa," looking out on the horizon and seeing nothing, who came back without letters just now! Well, I must read and correct my proofs.

PASSY, August 1, 1846.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Kreuznach.]

I have your letter! it is the great event of my life. In it I see two atrocities; 1st, "Do not come, you would be so bored;" 2nd, "You do not think enough of your health; you let yourself be worn-out by frantic work; do take a little more diversion; amuse yourself." Bored with you! amuse myself without you! Is that enough insult and injustice? Am I required to refute them?

I am quite well again this morning and I wish to announce that news for a beginning, so that my dear troupe may feel no more uneasiness about its illustrious leader.

My doctor is coming to dinner to-day with Méry (one of your believers), Léon Gozlan and Laurent-Jan. That ought to fully reassure you; I am now only a man without strength, food, or appetite. But the intestines are all right again, I believe; and next week I shall finish with the "Constitutionnel."

August 2.

Dear fraternal soul, I have just finished "Le Parasite," for such will be, as I told you, the definitive title of what I have hitherto called "Le Bonhomme Pons," "Le Vieux Musicien," etc. It is--to me at least--one of those fine works of extreme simplicity which contain the whole of the human heart; it is as grand as the "Curé de Tours," but more clear and quite as heart-breaking. I am enchanted with it; I will bring you the proofs, and you must tell me your impressions. Now, I am going to work on "La Cousine Bette," a terrible novel, for the principal character is a composition of my mother, Madame Valmore and your aunt. It is the history of many families.

Yesterday my dear star seemed veiled for me; I had many annoyances. "Le Messager" was ready to reproduce, for one thousand francs, "Madame de la Chanterie," the proofs of which you and I corrected together at Lyon; but the publisher, assignee of Chlendowski, was inexorable; he would not consent to the publication, even in receiving part of the price. The "Messager" is sent gratuitously to peers and deputies; it prints a thousand copies. So I failed through the greatest piece of ill-will I ever met with in my life. This will show you what the business of literature and publishing is. I am going to send you the "Courier," in which George Sand is bringing out a novel; for I perceive that you are reading only the ministerial newspapers, and you ought also to read a little of the Opposition ones, in order to understand something of our political mess.

August 4.

At last I have your letter; and now that I have it after wishing for it so much, I fear that it tired you to write it in such heat. Be tranquil in mind, as you ought to be in heart; I only bought the Greuze and the Van Dyck because I have a purchaser at a higher price for two of my pictures,--namely, "Les Sorcières" by Paul Brill, and the sketch that Miville sold to me at Bâle. I have exchanged the little picture bought for fifty francs, which Chenavard said was not worth two sous, for a delicious little sketch of the birth of Louis XIV., called an "Adoration of the Shepherds," in which the shepherds are bewigged in the fashion of the times. Louis XIII. and his ministers are represented. Well, well! I shall win your confidence sooner or later, in bric-à-brac at any rate. You can't imagine to what point I am fretted and what anxiety fills my mind when I discover that I have something inferior as a matter of art in my collection. Therefore set your mind at rest; I follow your good advice exactly; I continually deny myself; I never yield to any spontaneous fancy; I buy nothing without consulting, examining, reflecting; and that is the same as telling you I buy nothing but fine things.

I write to you in 50 degrees of heat, as you will have seen by the "Débats." My study is 15 degrees higher than that; for the laundry-man below me keeps a coal fire like that of a locomotive, and above my head is a zinc roof; in short, I live in a stove. But in spite of this heat my health gets better and better; nourishment no longer distresses me; and the intestines are coming back to a normal state. The doctor says my illness came only from heat, which is to me what it is to you. One must cling to doing one's duty, as I do, in order to work under this physical dissolution.

Adieu; proofs are calling me, and I have not, as at Lyon, an intelligent comrade to correct them cleverly and gaily. I have still twenty-six sheets to write.

August 5.

I met Potier in the Passy omnibus; I questioned and sounded him, and gained the certainty that he has another purchaser in view for the Beaujon house, and considers me only as a pis aller; but I cannot put myself in the way of offering more than I have for the last year.

I saw Véron yesterday, who wants as many folios as I can write. He told me that the public was not content with Sue's publication; it was thought repulsive and shameful. The pretty sinners of the great world think to rehabilitate themselves by making an outcry against "such revolting immorality," as they call it. On the other hand, Véron made me many compliments on "L'Instruction Criminelle." At the Palais de Justice both magistrates and lawyers think it splendidly true and irreproachably accurate. If they only remembered Popinot, they would see that Popinot and Camusot are two aspects of the Judge.[1]

I see with joy, by your letter, that you are rather better; also that you have had an earthquake, which must make Germany uneasy. Suppose a crater were to open expressly to prove Georges' theories! Oh! how I wish I knew when you will be really in possession of a prolongation of your passport. I hope to leave here by the 15th or 20th, but I absolutely must finish "Les Parents pauvres" first. I have booked my place for the 15th, but I can exchange it for the 20th if necessary.

Ah! so you are not content with my title of "Le Parasite;" you think it a comedy title of the eighteenth century, like "Le Méchant," "Le Glorieux," "L'Indécis," "Le Philosophe marié," etc. Well, it shall be as your autocratic and supreme will decides, and inasmuch as you declare that the pendant to "La Cousine Bette," can only be "Le Cousin Pons," "Le Parasite" will disappear from LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE and give place to "Le Cousin Pons."

Work, occupation, difficulties in regulating the payments of the last sixty thousand francs of debt, all that mass of fixed or floating cares, repress within my heart the desire to see you, and the need of consulting you and talking over with you my literary and pecuniary affairs. But as you will not permit me to go to you until I have finished "Les Paysans," or at least "La Cousine Bette," I endeavour to obey you. It is the order of the day to me; and it bestows upon me a strength for work I have never yet known. "Le Cousin Pons" and "La Cousine Bette" will give me ten thousand francs; that will pay Hetzel, and the seven thousand francs to my mother. If I can be with you next winter, counting from September, I shall do three works: "Les Petits Bourgeois," "Le Théâtre comme il est," and "Le Député d'Arcis," which, according to my calculation, are worth, taken together, forty thousand francs. So you see that not only will everything be paid, but I shall even have money in hand for the rest of the winter. Dear sovereign star, be very tranquil about my conduct; how do you suppose that at my age any enthusiasm could make me compromise the result of fifteen to sixteen years' labour? I shall not ruin myself in buying pictures any more than I will "bind myself to write novels against the sum that would free me entirely." In spite of that lofty wisdom of yours, you are no more prudent and reasonable than I am. I am really ashamed to repeat these things so often.

No news from Rome; I think there are as many reasons to fear as to rejoice. To-morrow I write again; but à bientôt. I hope to see you.

It is Laurent-Jan and Achard who are doing Grimm's letters; and it is Laurent-Jan who is just now publishing "Jeunesse" in the "Époque."

[Footnote 1: This refers to the examination of Lucien de Rubempré before the juge d'instruction, and the description connected with it of the Palais de Justice.--TR.]

August 7.

The heat is so dissolving I cannot write a line: I soak two shirts a day by merely staying in my arm-chair and reading Walter Scott. I must love you much to write even these few words; my hand and forehead are streaming. This delays me and makes me groan. I expect Potier to-day; I have decided to settle with him if possible before my departure; so that everything may be done, repairs and all, during my absence, and I can then remove there on my return.

Adieu, all my thoughts are with you, and with what can make you happy, were it even at the cost of my life and happiness. Before the end of the month I hope to see you! I shall work firmly, that there may be no delay in my journey. I hope you will be satisfied with the work I bring you. My dear critic will be too tenderly moved to be very severe.

PASSY, October 18, 1846.[1]

[Footnote 1: Balzac's visit to Wiesbaden, Stuttgard, etc., was paid between the date of the last letter and that of the present one. It has been stated, on what proof I do not know, that during this visit Madame Hanska promised definitively to marry him as soon as permission could be obtained from her government. Before Balzac left Paris he purchased the little house in the Beaujon quarter, since known as the house in the rue Fortunée, now rue Balzac, and began to store it with his treasures of furniture, pictures, and bric-à-brac, many of which, he says in a letter to his sister, belonged to Madame Hanska.--TR.]

Here I am, dear sovereign star, imperturbably before my desk, at the hour named, as I announced to you yesterday in the little letter hastily written in the office of "Le Messager;" and before resuming my work, my heart, that poor heart all yours, feels an imperious need to shed itself into your heart, and tell you the little details of a life become your life through that miracle of thought, constant, immutable, during so many years of exclusive affection, of which you alone, besides myself, can appreciate the immensity and the depth. From Frankfort to Forbach I lived in you only; I went over those four days like a cat which has finished her milk and licks her whiskers. All the precautions with which your kindness and that of your dear children surrounded me, the shawl, the hood, cured my cold perfectly; I feel admirably well. While they changed the luggage I wrote you a line, to prevent you from doing yourself harm, so anxious about me did I leave you.

I paid the duties on the little Dresden service. They told me at the custom-house that they had orders to send my cases to Paris, and I asked them to wait till the Wiesbaden cases came so that all might go together. Custom-houses do not respect heart-griefs, and I had to leave my reveries and memories (more and more tender beneath the charm of your smile, and your glance ever present with me) and attend to my cases. As my cold disturbed my stomach I relayed that organ with two little rolls and two large slices of Wiesbaden ham between Frankfort and Forbach. This, I hope, is a sufficient bulletin.

I was alone in the mail, and that was a blessing from heaven. At Metz, no one. At Verdun I encountered Germeau, coming from Paris with his wife, and I thanked him for his intervention at the custom-house. When you come to Forbach in your carriage you will be received with all the respect due to your social position, and your things will not be searched, I promise you that. I flew with the mail to Paris and arrived here at six o'clock in the morning; I went to bed at seven, and got up at eleven to breakfast. In the midst of my frugal repast the editor of the "Constitutionnel" fell from the clouds upon me, and found me half eating, half correcting the proofs of "La Cousine Bette," which he owned to me was having an astounding success. Véron's anxiety was consequently all the greater; but I calmed it by telling him of my journey and assuring him I had come back to finish everything. All this kept me till one o'clock.

I have written to Lirette, and shall send her your collective letter. But I shall soon go and see her and give her all details. Here is the dawn, just breaking; I must leave you, you, who are always there before me, blessing my work, like the soft white dove that you are. You will hear with some pleasure, I am sure, that an immense reaction in my favour has set in. I have conquered at last! Once more has my protecting star watched over me; once more an angel of peace and hope has touched me with her vigilant, guardian wing. At this moment society and the newspapers are turning favourably towards me; more than that, there is something like an acclamation, a general coronation. Those who fought me most fight no longer; those who were most hostile to me, Soulié for instance, are coming back to me. You know that he (Soulié) made me honourable amends in his new drama at the Ambigu. It is a great year for me, dear countess, especially if "Les Paysans" and "Les Petits Bourgeois" are published rapidly one after the other, and if I have the happiness of doing them well, and if your taste and that of the public should agree in thinking them fine--Come, tell me to stop, and bring myself back to "Cousine Bette;" truly, I am talking too much, and with too much pleasure; but it is to me such delicious, irresistible joy to throw myself thus wholly into your fraternal soul.

Ah! I have read your pretty letter which arrived the morning after I had left Paris, as I see by the postmark; had it reached me in time I would have dressed differently and so escaped my cold. Poor dear, you see once more in this that I comprehend you at a distance. I was already at Mayence when your letter reached Passy telling me that as I was ill I must drop the "Constitutionnel" and come and rest near you. You have so spoilt me by kindness that I had already done this without knowing whether you would approve of it.

The time that I have lost on business errands and proposals is really frightful. Furne is making gigantic announcements of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE. I hasten to tell you this as I don't know whether I shall be able to write to you again for some time. It is now the 20th. This letter can only go to Dresden, Hôtel de Saxe, and it must even wait for a line from you before I send it.

Allons! to the pen, and to work!

October 24.

Yesterday I worked like a negro; I wrote the amount of two chapters and corrected thirty columns of proof which I had on my desk. Just now, I can only count on money from the "Constitutionnel," or on that of a treaty by which I should bind myself for another work, but that other work is quite impossible for me to do. In my present labyrinth I must work and work without cessation to end, first of all, "Les Parents pauvres." It is not elegies that will give me money, and I need some; there is none here just now, at this moment, and I am at the mercy of certain payments to make, besides which I am expecting cases from everywhere, Geneva, Wiesbaden, etc. Nevertheless, do not think of my affairs or cloud the purity of your brow by useless anxieties. Publications will give something--but when? Voilà!

I hoped to find a letter from you at the post-office this morning telling me where to address you. I have half a mind to send this letter to Dresden by Bossange; but suppose that by chance you do not go to Dresden? Evidently I ought to wait for your next letter, which cannot be long in coming. I entreat you, do not harass yourself about all this: do not punish me for having believed in the luck of business in default of other happiness, more complete but impossible. I shall work, as I have always worked. It is only a habit to resume, not to begin, which would be more difficult. I feel young, full of energy and of talent before new difficulties. When I am settled in my little house at Beaujon [rue Fortunée], very cosy, well furnished, very quiet, safe from the intrusion of unwelcome persons, I shall write successively "Les Paysans," "Les Petits Bourgeois," "La Dernière Incarnation de Vautrin," "Le Député d'Arcis," "Une Mère de famille;" and the plays will go on as well. It was especially to give myself up to this immense, but necessary production, that I wished to house myself as soon as possible at Beaujon, for it is quite impossible to stay longer at Passy.

Most Parisians think I did not go to Wiesbaden; that it was only a canard; that's Paris! Madame de Girardin told me that she had heard from a person who knew you well, that you were excessively flattered by my homage, and sent for me to join you wherever you went, out of pride and vanity, being much gratified in having a man of genius for patito, though your social position was too high to allow him to aspire to anything else! And thereupon she laughed satirically, and told me I was wasting my time running after great ladies, who would only strand me! Isn't that Parisian? But, as you see, the contradictory statements of the Paris cancans make them little dangerous.

To-day, all the exterior work on the Beaujon house is finished, except the gallery which is to be added, and is, in fact, a new building; that will be covered in this week. So, in this respect, at any rate, I am tranquil.

It is four o'clock; I must brush up copy; I salute you as the birds are saluting the dawn.

The combined letter of your dear children has made me very happy. I see them so contented, so charmed, without the slightest fear of mischance in the future; but then, how you have brought-up your Anna! morally and physically how you have trained her! In truth, Georges owes you much, and I think he feels it, for a brain like his comprehends everything; there is in him the union of great knowledge and great character. Pity me to be once more battling with business, the house, repairs, buildings, contractors; I go from one to the other, on foolish errands and vexations of all sorts. Yet I must write as if I were tranquil, and devote myself exclusively to that intolerable and hideous old maid who calls herself Cousine Bette, when I would much rather be with you and you only. It is really atrocious; and I never had such a time in my life. But my faith and belief in you give me a courage, a patience, a lucidity and a talent that amaze the boldest and most hardened toilers.

Alas! I must leave you; time has marched while I have been talking thus at random with you. I must carry this letter to the post.

PARIS, November 20, 1846.

I was saying yesterday, dear countess, that I had scarcely more than time to write to you if I were going to see you on the 6th in Dresden. But how can I help writing? heart and soul are at Dresden, only body and courage are in Paris. To talk with you is an imperative need; I must write to you, tell you, relate to you everything--about my books, my furniture, my financial calculations, the architect, the house, the bothers, the nothings, the conversations, just as I talk to myself--are you not myself? have you not long been my conscience? If you were not, should I have talked to you with such freedom and sincerity of my follies, my faults,--in short, of all that I have done either of good or evil?

Yesterday I went to the Vaudeville, where Arnal made me die of laughing in "Le Capitaine de Voleurs," and I put my letter into the post for yesterday's mail. It will not go till to-day. This morning I have still thirty-two pages to do on "Cousine Bette" and sixty-four on "Cousin Pons." Total, one hundred between now and the 29th. On Friday I shall go and book my place in the mail.

Ouf! I have just corrected eight hundred lines of "Cousine Bette" and the eight first chapters of "Cousin Pons." Since this morning I have not risen from my chair, and it is now a quarter past three. I put wood on the fire, and think of you, there, as if near me. What happiness in the idea of soon seeing you again! My whole soul quivers at the thought. I have such need to be with you three. And to think that I have still a hundred pages to write and correct!

Decidedly, I shall send to Tours for that secretary and bureau of Louis XVI.; the bedroom will then be complete. It is an affair of a thousand francs; but for that money what sort of modern furniture does one get? bourgeois platitudes, paltry things without taste or value.

November 22.

I have your letters, yours and those of the children. Thanks be to God, they tell me you are better, and that I can meet you on the 6th at Leipzig. I have just re-read your letter, for the paper is so thin that one side of the page prevented me from reading the other in a carriage. I went to the post, from there to your house, where nothing is getting on. You tell me not to work so hard, to take care of my health, to amuse myself, to go into society. But, dear countess, did I not write you that I had pledged myself to the payment of my last debts, counting on a rise to sell my shares in the Chemin de Fer du Nord? Well the Nord fell yesterday from 627 frs. to 575--two hundred francs below the price at which I bought them. So, you see, my pen must earn what the shares should have given me, and work to pay my creditors, to whom I will keep my word. Do you think I have time to amuse myself? It will be a miracle if I pull through at all. I have almost doubled in production; I have done forty-eight folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE instead of twenty-four; and you know that can't be done by scribbling as I am doing now to you. Ah! bon Dieu, it is fearful! I tremble as I write of it. I am not sure that even that will get me through. I must finish "Les Paysans" and perhaps something more. It is necessary, even indispensable. If I go to you I shall hardly see you, for I could not leave my table and papers. I cannot think about my health, or take any care or thought of myself; I am a copy-machine, and nothing else. My courage is really amazing; I recognize that, and you will be convinced of it when I tell you that since my return from Wiesbaden I have done all you will read of "La Cousine Bette,"--which, parenthetically, has a prodigious success--all those twenty chapters, dear countess, were written currente calamo, done at night for the next day, without proofs. You have been, this time as ever, my inspiring genius.

November 23, 1846.

Yesterday I went to see Laurent-Jan and proposed to him to dialogue my play for the Variétés, for I have an avalanche of work up to November 30, and as I want to start December 1, I have no time to do the play. It would have paid him some thousands of francs, but he declined, on the pretext that it was too strong, too colossal for his "feeble talent." The real cause of this touching modesty is his invincible laziness. Nature gives talent, but it is for man to put it to work and bring it to sight by force of will, perseverance, and courage. Now, that fellow has talent, but he will never do anything with it except spend it in pure waste, wearing it out, like his boots, on the boulevards, or in the boxes of the lesser theatres with actresses who laugh at him.

Here I was interrupted by Dr. Nacquart; he scolded me well when he found me at my table writing, after all he had said to me about it. Neither he nor any of his friends the doctors can conceive how a man should subject his brain to such excesses. He said to me, and repeated his words with a threatening air, that harm would come of it. He entreated me to at least put some interval of time between the "debauches of the brain," as he called them. The efforts on "Cousine Bette," improvised in a week, especially alarmed him. He said, "This will necessarily end in something fatal."

The fact is, I feel myself in some degree affected; sometimes in conversation I search, and often very painfully, for nouns. My memory for names fails me. It is true that I ought to rest. If I had not had so much anxiety about my last financial affairs, the cares to be given to the arrangement of my little house would have been a happy and good diversion to my literary occupations. I have continued to be unlucky financially. When the doctor made me the above observations on my literary excesses, I said to him:--

"My friend, you forget my debts. I have obligations which I have bound myself to meet at certain fixed dates, at the end of each month, and I will not fail to do so; I must therefore earn money; that is to say, I must write until I make my chains fall off by force of courage and toil."

You will never divine the doctor's answer. It paints the man; but start with the principle that he is a friend, who loves me truly and has not only much affection, but also much esteem for me.

"Well, my friend," he said, "I can't write fine things like you, but I manage my affairs better. As a proof, I'll tell you that I bought at auction three days ago, a house of five stories in the rue de Trévise, for which I paid two hundred and thirty-five thousand francs; as there were twenty-five thousand to pay on costs, that makes two hundred and sixty thousand francs."

The whole spirit, the whole character of our bourgeoisie is in that; it turns its money over and over, as the aristocracy of old made theirs by privileges and personal advantages. You must not find fault with the poor doctor, he is an excellent, worthy man; he is of his caste and his epoch, that is all.

Regarding what you say to me of your affairs, I shall not cease to repeat to you, "Make haste!"

You must have read the article in the "Constitutionnel" on Siberia; it is enough to make persons more confiding than you shudder. Therefore, do not lose any time, for the future does not seem to me couleur de rose, I assure you. I see Italy and Germany very ready to rise; the present state of peace hangs by a thread, the life of Louis-Philippe, who is getting old, and God knows, when the struggle comes, what will happen to us. For a young and ambitious sovereign, not willing, like Louis Philippe, to die tranquilly in his bed, see how favourable this moment would be to recover the right bank of the Rhine! The populations are harassed by idiotic little sovereigns; England is grappling with Ireland, which wants to ruin her or separate from her; the whole of Italy is making ready to shake off the yoke of Austria; Germany wants its unity, or perhaps, only more liberty. In short, believe it firmly, we are on the eve of great political catastrophes. In France, our interest lies in gaining time,--our cavalry and our navy not being strong enough to make us triumph by sea or land. But the day when those two arms are strengthened, the fortifications mounted, our defences finished, and our public works completed, France will be very formidable.

It must be owned that by the way Louis-Philippe has administered and governed the country he has made it the first power in the world. Reflect on that! Nothing is factitious; our army is a fine army; we have money; all is strong, is real, at this moment. The port of Algiers, just finished, gives us a second Toulon opposite to Gibraltar; we advance towards controlling the Mediterranean. We now have Belgium and Spain with us. Certainly Louis-Philippe has made great way; you are right in that. If he were ambitious he could sing the Marseillaise and demolish three empires to his profit. If he puts a paw on Mehemet-Ali, as he has on the Bey of Tunis, the Mediterranean will be all for France in case of war. It is a conquest made morally, without firing a gun. We have, moreover, made giant strides in Algeria by the displacement of the centres of military action. This means conquest consolidated, and revolt rendered impossible.

I hope you will be content with me, and will think that I at last do justice to a sovereign whom you have always supported against me, not from sympathy, you say, but from conviction. Perhaps you are right in the main. Perhaps France has less need of glory than of liberty and security; and inasmuch as she has obtained these two great benefits, let us wish that she may know how to appreciate them and keep the government that has given them to her.

Here is the dawn; for two hours I have been talking to you with pleasure and no fatigue; and I say to you, joyfully, à bientôt.[1]

[Footnote 1: This is the last letter to Madame Hanska given in Balzac's Correspondence in the Édition Définitive of his works. Soon after writing it he went to Dresden, and brought Madame Hanska, without M. and Mme. Mniszech, to Paris, in January, 1847,--TR.]

To M. LE COMTE GEORGES MNISZECH, AT WIERZCHOWNIA.

PARIS, February 27, 1847.

My dear Anna and my dear Georges: do not have the slightest uneasiness about your dear mamma. In the first place, she is here in the strictest incognito; next she is thoroughly re-assured about her health; and lastly, charged with the immense duty of taking the place of her beloved children so essential to her happiness (and I may say to my own, for all my human affections are centred on three cherished heads), I have put myself into forty thousand pieces, not to make her forget those who are the soul of her thought and life but, to render their absence as endurable as possible.

Our dear Atala [his family name for her] is in a charming and magnificent apartment (not too expensive); she has a garden, and goes much to the convent and a little to the theatre. I try to amuse her, and to be as much Anna to her as possible; but the name of her dear daughter is so daily and continually on her lips that last night, as she was amusing herself much at the Variétés and laughing with all her heart at the "Filleul de tout le monde," played by Bouffé and Hyacinthe, in the midst of her gaiety she asked herself, in a heart-rending tone that brought the tears to my eyes, how she could laugh and amuse herself without her "dear little one." ...

You know that in the month of April I take her back to Germany, and from there she will go to join you at Wierzchownia. As for me, who cannot now live away from you, I hope to follow her a little later.

* * * * *

[NOTE.--Balzac left Paris early in September, and reached his much longed for Wierzchownia by October 1, 1847.

The rest of this sad story will be found in the Memoir to this edition, pp. 318-349; and in the Correspondence, vol. xxiv. of the Édition Définitive, pp. 561-662.--TR.]

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