_December, 1842._
It is some time since I have felt like writing to you. My nights are
passed writing prose for posterity to read. This is because I have been
dissatisfied both with you and with myself, which is most extraordinary.
I find myself to-day in a more indulgent frame of mind. This evening I
heard Madame Persiani, which has reconciled me with human nature. If I
were King Saul I should put her in the place of David.
I am told that M. de Pongerville, the Academician, is going to die. This
grieves me, because I shall not take his place, and I should prefer that
he wait until my time were come. This Pongerville made a metrical
translation of a Latin poet named Lucretius, who died at the age of
forty-three from the effect of a love-potion which he took to make
himself beloved or lovable. But previous to this he had composed a long
poem on _The Nature of Things_, a poem atheistic, impious, abominable,
and so forth.
M. de Pongerville’s health troubles me more than it should, and,
besides, I shall be obliged to start out at ten o’clock day after
to-morrow for the vexatious fatigues of New Year’s Day. Why is it a
matter of course that everybody on this day should either go visiting or
else feel it necessary to raise Cain? I have still other grievances,
which would make you laugh, so I shall not tell them to you.
Do you know that if we continue to write to each other in this tone of
friendly confidence, keeping to ourselves our secret thoughts, we have
only one resource: that is, to be more careful of our style, then to
publish some day our correspondence, as has been done for Voltaire and
Balzac? You have a remarkable habit of considering as non-existent
things of which you do not wish to speak, which certainly does great
credit to your diplomacy. It seems to me that you grow more beautiful.
This I thought impossible, for the boundless sea is not increased by the
addition of a few drops of water. This proves that what you lose in one
direction you gain in another. One improves in beauty when one is in
health; one is in health when one has a wicked heart and a good
digestion. Do you still eat little cakes?
Good-bye. I wish you a happy ending of the old year, and a happy opening
of the new year. Your friends will wear away your cheeks on that day.
When I have finished the writing which I mentioned a while ago I shall
go to London for a two weeks’ holiday. This will be towards Easter.