PARIS, _June 22, 1842_.
Your letter has been tardy in coming, and I became impatient. I must
reply at once to the principal points. First, I received your purse. It
exhaled a most aristocratic perfume, and is very pretty. If you
embroidered it yourself, it does you credit. But I have recognised in it
your newly acquired taste for the practical: in the first place, it is a
purse to hold money; next, you valued it at a hundred francs at the
stage-coach. It would have been more poetical to declare that it was
worth one or two stars. All the same, I prize it quite as highly. I will
put my medals in it. I should have cared more for it if you had
condescended to put in it a few lines from your fair hand.
Secondly, I do not care for your pheasants. You offer them in a
disagreeable fashion, and, besides, you say unpleasant things to me
about my Turkish conserves. It is you who have the taste of a heretic,
if you are unable to appreciate what the houris eat.
I believe I have answered everything that was sensible in your letter. I
will not quarrel about the rest. I abandon you to your own conscience,
which, I am sure, is sometimes even more severe than I, whom you accuse
of harshness and indifference. The hypocrisy which you practise so well
in sport, will play you a trick some day--that is, it will become
natural to you. As for coquetry, the inseparable companion of the horrid
vice which you extol, you have always indulged in it. It became you very
well when it was softened by frankness, warm-heartedness, and
imagination, but now--now, what shall I say?
You have beautiful raven hair, a lovely blue cashmere, and you are
always charming when you wish to be. Say that I do not spoil you! As for
that essence of which you speak, it is your own kindness which you thus
designate. I like that word _essence_; yes, the real essence of roses,
which is always frozen like that of Adrianople. I will tell you this
Oriental story.
There was once a dervish who seemed to a baker to be a saint. The baker
one day promised to give him white bread the rest of his life. At this
the dervish was enchanted. But after awhile the baker said to him, “We
agreed on brown bread, did we not? I have first-class brown bread. It is
my specialty, is brown bread.” The dervish replied, “I have already more
brown bread than I can eat, but----”
Right here my cat jumped on the table, and I have had all I could do to
keep her from lying down on my paper. She has made me forget the rest of
the story, which is a pity, for it was very pretty. Do you know that,
with my other air-castles, I have built this one: to meet you in
Marseilles in September, to show you the lions there, and have you eat
figs and fish soup. But I am obliged to be in Paris by August 15, to
write a report for my minister; consequently, you will eat fish soup by
yourself, and you will visit the Museum and the caves of Saint-Victor
without me. On the other hand, when you reach Paris you may, if you
like, receive from my own hand the directions I have made for your trip
to Italy.
Since your wishes always are realised, I pray you humbly to wish that I
may become an Academician. This would be a great gratification to me,
provided that you were not present at my reception. However, you have
abundant time for the realisation of your wishes. It will be necessary
for an epidemic to break out among those gentlemen before my chances are
advanced; and to improve them, I should be obliged to borrow a little of
that hypocrisy in which you are now so skilled. I am too old to reform;
if I should try, I should be still worse than I am at present.
I am curious to know what you think of me, but how shall I ever find it
out? You will never tell me, either the best or the worst that you
think. Formerly I had not much of an opinion of my precious self, but
now I have a little more self-esteem; not that I think I have improved,
but it is the world that has grown worse.
In a week I start for Arles, where I intend to drive out a lot of
beggars who live in the old theater. A fine occupation, is it not? It
would be kind of you, before I go, to send me a letter brimful of sweet
things. I am fond of being spoiled; besides, I am horribly sad and
discouraged. I must tell you that I am spending my evenings revising my
books, which are to be reprinted. I find them very immoral, and
sometimes stupid. I am trying to reduce the immorality and the stupidity
without going to too much trouble. The consequence is, a bad attack of
the blue devils. I say good-bye, and kiss your hands most humbly. Can
you guess what I found among my papers? A short blue thread, twice
knotted. I have put it away in the purse.