PARIS, January, 1833.
MADAME,--I entreat you to completely separate the author from the
man, and to believe in the sincerity of the sentiments which I have
vaguely expressed in the correspondence you have obliged me to hold
with you. In spite of the perpetual caution which some friends give
me against certain letters like those which I have had the honour to
receive from you, I have been keenly touched by a tone that levity
cannot counterfeit. If you will deign to excuse the folly of a young
heart and a wholly virgin imagination, I will own that you have been
to me the object of the sweetest dreams; in spite of my hard work I
have found myself more than once galloping through space to hover above
the unknown country where you, also unknown, live alone of your race.
I have taken pleasure in comprehending you among the remains almost
always unfortunate of a dispersed people, a people scattered thinly
over the earth, exiled perhaps from heaven, but of whom each being
has language and sentiments to him peculiar and unlike those of other
men,--delicacy, choiceness of soul, chasteness of feeling, tenderness
of heart, purer, sweeter, gentler than in the best of other created
beings. There is something saintly in even their enthusiasms, and calm
in their ardour. These poor exiles have all, in their voices, their
words, their ideas, something, I know not what, which distinguishes
them from others, which serves to bind them to one another in spite of
distance, lands, and language; a word, a phrase, the very sentiment
exhaled in a look are like a rallying call which they obey; and,
compatriots of a hidden land whose charms are reproduced in their
memories, they recognize and love one another in the name of that
country toward which they stretch their arms. Poesy, music, and
religion are their three divinities, their favourite loves; and all
these passions awake in their hearts sensations that are equally
powerful.
I have clothed you with all these ideas. I have held out to you my
hand, fraternally, from afar, without conceit, without affectation,
but with a confidence that is almost domestic, with sincerity; and
could you have seen my glance you would have recognized within it both
the gratitude of a lover and the religions of the heart,--the pure
tenderness that binds the son to a mother, the brother to a sister, the
respect of a young man for woman, and the delightful hopes of a long
and fervent friendship.
'T was an episode wholly romantic; but who will dare to blame the
romantic? It is only frigid souls who cannot conceive all there is of
vast in the emotions to which the unknown gives full scope. The less
we are restrained by reality, the higher is the flight of the soul. I
have therefore let myself gently float upon my reveries, and they are
ravishing. So, if a star darts from your candle, if your ear should
catch a distant murmur, if you see figures in the fire, if something
sparkles or speaks beside you, near you, believe that my spirit is
wandering among your panels.
Amid the battle I am fighting, amid my heavy toil, my endless studies,
in this agitated Paris, where politics and literature absorb some
sixteen or eighteen hours of the twenty-four, to me, an unfortunate
man, widely different from the author that people imagine, come
charming hours which I owe to you. So, in order to thank you, I
dedicated to you the fourth volume of the "Scènes de la Vie privée,"
putting your seal at the head of the last "Scene," which I was writing
at the moment when I received your first letter. But a person who is
a mother for me, and whose caprices and even jealousy I am bound to
respect, exacted that this silent testimony of secret sentiments should
be suppressed. I have the sincerity to avow to you both the dedication
and its destruction, because I believe you have a soul sufficiently
lofty not to desire a homage which would cause grief to a person as
noble and grand as she whose child I am, for she preserved me in the
midst of griefs and shipwreck where in my youth I nearly perished. I
live by the heart only, and she made me live! I have saved the only
copy of that dedication for which I was blamed as if it were a horrible
coquetry; keep it, madame, as a souvenir and by way of thanks. When you
read the book say to yourself that in concluding it and revising it
I thought of you and of the compositions which you have preferred to
all the others. Perhaps what I am doing is wrong; but the purity of my
intentions must absolve me.[1]
Lay the things that shock you in my works, madame, to the account
of that necessity which forces us to strike powerfully a _blasé_
public. Having undertaken, rashly no doubt, to represent the whole of
literature by the whole of my works; wishing to erect a monument more
durable from the mass and the amassing of materials than from the
beauty of the edifice, I am obliged to represent everything, that I may
not be accused of want of power. But if you knew me personally, if my
solitary life, my days of study, privation, and toil were told to you,
you would lay aside some of your accusations and perceive more than one
antithesis between the man and his writings. Certainly there are some
works in which I like to be myself; but you can guess them; they are
those in which the heart speaks out. My fate is to paint the happiness
that others feel; to desire it in perfection, but never to meet it.
None but those who suffer can paint joy, because we express better that
which we conceive than that we have experienced.
See to what this confidence has drawn me! But, thinking of all the
countries that lie between us, I dare not be brief. Besides, events are
so gloomy around my friends and myself! Civilization is threatened;
arts, sciences, and progress are threatened. I myself, the organ of
a vanquished party representing all noble and religious ideas, I am
already the object of lively hatred. The more that is hoped from my
voice, the more it is feared. And under these circumstances, when a man
is thirty years old and has not worn out his life or his heart, with
what passion he grasps a friendly word, a tender speech!...
Perhaps you will never receive anything from me again, and the
friendship you have created may be like a flower perishing unknown in
the depths of a wood by a stroke of lightning. Know, at least, that it
was true, and sincere; you are, in a young and stainless heart, what
every woman must desire to be--respected and adored. Have you not shed
a perfume on my hours? Do I not owe to you one of those encouragements
which make us accept hard toil, the drop of water in the desert?
If events respect me, and in spite of excursions to which my life as
poet and artist condemn me, you can, madame, address your letters "Rue
Cassini, No. 1, near the Observatory"--unless indeed I have had the
misfortune to displease you by this candid expression of the feelings I
have for you.
Accept, madame, my respectful homage.
[Footnote 1: This publication of the "Scènes de la Vie privée" took
place in May, 1832, nine months _before_ Mme. Hanska's first letter
reached Balzac. The above passage must therefore have been forged and
interpolated here; probably to bring this letter into line with a
tale in "Roman d'Amour" (pp. 55-59), which the same dates prove to be
false.--TR.]
PARIS, end of January, 1833.
Pardon me the delay of my answer. I returned to Paris only in December
last, and I found your letter in Paris awaiting me. But once here, I
was sharply seized by crushing toil and violent sorrows.[1] I must be
silent as to the sorrows and the toil. None but God and myself will
ever know the dreadful energy a heart requires to be full of tears
repressed, and yet suffice for literary labours. To spend one's soul in
melancholy, and yet to occupy it ever with fictitious joys and sorrows!
To write cold dramas, and keep within us a drama that burns both heart
and brain! But let us leave all this. I am alone; I am now shut up at
home for a long time, possibly a year. I have already endured these
voluntary incarcerations in the name of science and of poverty; to-day,
troubles are my jailers.
I have more than once turned my thought to you. But I must still be
silent; these are follies. I have one regret; it is to have boasted
to you of "Louis Lambert," the saddest of all abortions. I have just
employed nearly three months in remaking that book, and it is now
appearing in a little 18mo volume, of which there is a special copy for
you; it will await your orders and shall be given, with the Chénier, to
the person who calls for them; or they shall be sent wherever you write
to me to forward them.
This work is still incomplete, though it bears this time the pompous
title of "Histoire Intellectuelle de Louis Lambert." When this edition
is exhausted, I will publish another "Louis Lambert" more complete.
I tell you naïvely all that you want to know about me. I am still
waiting for you to speak to me with equal confidence. You are afraid
of ridicule? And of whose? That of a poor child, victim yesterday and
victim to-morrow of his feminine bashfulness, his shyness, his beliefs.
You have asked me with distrust to give an explanation of my two
handwritings; but I have as many handwritings as there are days in the
year, without being on that account the least in the world versatile.
This mobility comes from an imagination which can conceive all and yet
remain virgin, like glass which is soiled by none of its reflections.
The glass is in my brain. But my heart, my heart is known but to one
woman in the world as yet,--the _et nunc et semper dilectæ dicatum_ of
the dedication of "Louis Lambert." Ties eternal and ties broken! Do not
blame me. You ask me how we can love, live, and lose each other while
still loving. That is a mystery of life of which you know nothing as
yet, and I hope you never may know it. In that sad destiny no blame can
be attached except to fate; there are two unfortunates, but they are
two irreproachable unfortunates. There is no fault to absolve because
there is no cause to blame. I cannot add another word.
I am very curious to know if "La Femme abandonnée," "La Grenadière,"
the "Lettre à Nodier" (in which there are enormous typographical
errors), the "Voyage à Java," and "Les Maranas" have pleased you?...
Some days after receiving this letter you will read "Une Fille d'Ève,"
who will be the type of the "La Femme abandonnée," taken between
fifteen and twenty years of age.
At this moment I am finishing a work that is quite evangelical, and
which seems to me the "Imitation of Jesus Christ" poetized. It bears
an epigraph which will tell the disposition of mind I was in when
writing the book: _To wounded hearts, silence and shade_. One must have
suffered to understand that line to its full extent; and one must also
have suffered as much as I have done to give birth to it in a day of
mourning.
I have flung myself into work, as Empedocles into the crater, to stay
there. "La Bataille" will come after "Le Médecin de campagne" (the book
I have just told you of); and is there not something to shudder at when
I tell you that "La Bataille" is an impossible book? In it I undertake
to initiate the reader into all the horrors and all the beauties of a
battle-field; my battle is Essling, Essling with all its consequences.
This book requires that a man, in cold blood, seated in his chair,
shall see the country, the lay of the land, the masses of men, the
strategic events, the Danube, the bridges; shall behold the details and
the whole of the struggle, hear the artillery, pay attention to all the
movements on the chess-board; see all, and feel, in each articulation
of the great body, Napoleon--whom I shall not show, or shall only
_allow to be seen_, in the evening, crossing the Danube in a boat! Not
a woman's head; cannon, horses, two armies, uniforms. On the first page
the cannon roars, and never ceases until the last. You read through
smoke, and, the book closed, you have seen it all intuitively; you
remember the battle as if you had been present at it.
It is now three months that I have been measuring swords with that
work, that ode in two volumes, which persons on all sides tell me is
impossible!
I work eighteen hours a day. I have perceived the faults of style
which disfigure "La Peau de Chagrin." I corrected them to make it
irreproachable; but after two months' labour, the volume being
reprinted, I discover another hundred faults. Such are the sorrows of a
poet.
It is the same thing with "Les Chouans." I have rewritten that book
entirely; but the second edition, which is coming out, has still many
spots upon it.
On all sides they shout to me that I do not know how to write; and
that is cruel when I have already told myself so, and have consecrated
my days to new works, using my nights to perfect the old ones. Like
the bears, I am now licking the "Scènes de la Vie privée" and the
"Physiologie du Mariage;" after which I shall revise the "Études
Philosophiques."
As all my passions, all my beliefs are defeated, as my dreams are
dispersed, I am forced to _create myself_ passions, and I choose that
of art. I live in my studies. I wish to do better. I weigh my phrases
and my words as a miser weighs his bits of gold. What love I thus
waste! What happiness is flung to the winds! My laborious youth, my
long studies will not have the sole reward I desired for them. Ever
since I have breathed and known what a pure breath coming from pure
lips was, I have desired the love of a young and pretty woman; yet
all has fled me! A few years more and youth will be a memory! I am
eligible to the Chamber under the new law which allows us to be men at
thirty years of age, and certainly in a few years the recollections of
youth will bring me no joys. And then, what hope that I could obtain
at forty that which I have missed at twenty? She who is averse to me,
being young, will she be less reluctant then? But you cannot understand
these moans,--you, young, solitary, living a country life, far from our
Parisian world which excites the passions so violently, and where all
is so great and so petty. I ought still to keep these lamentations in
the depths of my heart....
You have asked my friendship for _a_ youth; I thought of you yesterday
in fulfilling a promise of the same kind and devoting myself to a young
man whom I hope to embark upon a fine and noble life. You are right;
there is a moment in the life of young men when a friendly heart can
be very precious. In the park of Versailles is a statue of "Achilles
between Vice and Virtue," which seems to me a great work, and I have
always thought, when looking at it, of that critical moment in human
life. Yes, a young man needs a courageous voice to draw him to the
life of manhood while allowing him to gather the flowers of passion
that bloom along the wayside.
You will not laugh at me, you, who have written to me so noble a page
and lines so melancholy, in which I have believed. You are one of those
ideal figures to whom I give the right to come at times and nebulously
pose amid my flowers, who smile to me between two camellias, waving
aside a rosy heather, and to whom I speak.
You fear the dissipations of the winter for me? Alas! all that I know
of the impressions I can produce, comes to me in a few letters from
kind souls which set me glowing. I never leave my study, filled with
books; I am alone, and I listen and wish to listen to no one. I have
such pain in uprooting from my heart my hopes! They must be torn out,
one by one, root by root, like flax. To renounce Woman!--my sole
terrestrial religion!
You wish to know if I ever met Fedora; if she is true. A woman of cold
Russia, the Princess Bagration, is supposed in Paris to be the model
of her. I have reached the seventieth woman who has the coolness to
recognize herself in that character. They are all of ripe age. Even
Madame Récamier is willing to _fedorize_ herself. Not a word of all
that is true. I made Fedora out of two women whom I have known without
ever being intimate with them. Observation sufficed me, and a few
confidences.
There are also some kind souls who will have it that I have courted the
handsomest of Parisian courtesans and have hid, like Raphael, behind
her curtains. These are calumnies. I have met a Fedora; but that one I
shall not paint; besides, the "La Peau de chagrin" was published before
I knew her.
I must bid you adieu, and what an adieu! This letter may be a month on
its way; you will hold it in your hands, but I may never see you,--you
whom I caress as an illusion, who are in my dreams like a hope, and
who have so graciously embodied my reveries. You do not know what it
is to people the solitude of a poet with a gentle figure, the form of
which attracts by the very vagueness which the indefinite lends it. A
solitary, ardent heart takes eagerly to a chimera when it is real! How
many times I have travelled the road that separates us! what delightful
romances! and what postal charges do I not spend at my fireside!
Adieu, then; I have given you a whole night, a night which belonged
to my legitimate wife, the "Revue de Paris," that crabbed spouse.
Consequently the "Théorie de la Démarche," which I owed to her must be
postponed till the month of March, and no one will know why; you and
I alone are in the secret. The article was there before me--a science
to elucidate; it was arduous, I was afraid of it. Your letter slipped
into my memory, and suddenly I put my feet to the embers, forgot
myself in my arm-chair,--and adieu "La Démarche;" behold me galloping
towards Poland, and re-reading your letters (I have but three)--and
now I answer them. I defy you to read two months hence the "Théorie de
la Démarche" without smiling at every sentence; because beneath those
senseless foolish phrases there are a thousand thoughts of you.
Adieu. I have so little time that you must absolve me. There are but
three persons whose letters I answer. This sounds a little like French
conceit, and yet it is really most delicate in the way of modesty. More
than that, I meant to tell you that you are almost alone in my heart,
grandparents excepted.
Adieu. If my rose-tree were not out of bloom I would send you a petal.
If you were less fairy-like, less capricious, less mysterious, I would
say "write to me often."
P. S. The black seal was an accident. I was not at home, and the friend
with whom I was staying at Angoulême was in mourning.
[Footnote 1: This letter is inconsistent with the preceding one, also
dated January, 1833. A system of arbitrary dating is thus shown.--TR.]
PARIS, February 24, 1833.
Certainly there is some good genius between us; I dare not say
otherwise, for how else can one explain that you should have sent me
the "Imitation of Jesus Christ" just when I was working night and day
at a book in which I have tried to dramatize the spirit of that work by
conforming it to the desires of the civilization of our epoch. How is
it that you had the thought to send it to me when I had that of putting
its meditative poesy into action, so that across wide space the saintly
volume, accompanied by an escort of gentle thoughts, should have come
to me as I was casting myself into the delightful fields of a religious
idea; coming too, at a moment when, weary and discouraged, I despaired
of being able to accomplish this magnificent work of charity; beautiful
in its results--if only my efforts should not prove in vain. Oh! give
me the right to send you in a month or two my "Médecin de campagne"
with the Chénier and the new "Louis Lambert," in which I will write the
last corrections. My book will not appear till the first of March. I
do not choose to send you that ignoble edition. A few weeks after its
appearance I shall have still another ready, and I can then offer you
something more worthy of you. The same line of thought presented itself
to me in all of them,--poesy, religion, intellect, those three great
principles will be united in these three books, and their pilgrimage
toward you will be fulfilled; all my thoughts are assembled in them,
and if you will draw from that source there will be for you, in me,
something inexhaustible.
Now I know that my book will please you. You send me the Christ upon
the cross, and I, I have made him bearing his cross. There lies the
idea of the book: resignation and love; faith in the future and the
shedding of the fragrance of benefits around us. What joy for a man
to have at last been able to do a work in which he can be himself,
in which he may pour out his soul without fear of ridicule, because
in serving the passions of the mob he has conquered the right, dearly
bought, of being heard in a day of grave thought. Have you read
"Juana"? Tell me if she pleases you.
You have awakened many diverse curiosities in me; you are capable
of a delightful coquetry which it is impossible to blame. But you
do not know how dangerous it is to a lively imagination and a heart
misunderstood, a heart full of rejected tenderness, to behold thus
nebulously a young and beautiful woman. In spite of these dangers, I
yield myself willingly to hopes of the heart. My grief is to be able
to speak to you of yourself as only a hope, a dream of heaven and of
all that is beautiful. I can therefore tell you only of myself; but I
abandon myself with you to my most secret thoughts, to my despairs, to
my hopes. You are a second conscience; less reproachful perhaps and
more kindly than that which rises so imperiously within me at evil
moments.
Well, then! I will speak of myself, since it must be so. I have met
with one of those immense sorrows which only artists know. After three
months' labour I re-made "Louis Lambert." Yesterday, a friend, one of
those friends who never deceive, who tell you the truth, came, scalpel
in hand, and we studied my work together. He is a logical man, of
severe taste, incapable of doing anything himself, but a most profound
grammarian, a stern professor, and he showed me a thousand faults.
That evening, alone, I wept with despair in that species of rage which
seizes the heart when we recognize our faults after toiling so long.
Well, I shall set to work again, and in a month or two I will bring
forth a corrected "Louis Lambert." Wait for that. Let me send you,
when it is ready, a new and fine edition of the four volumes of the
Philosophical tales. I am preparing it. "La Peau de chagrin," already
corrected, is to be again corrected. If all is not then made perfect,
at least it will be less ugly.
Always labour! My life is passed in a monk's cell--but a pretty cell,
at any rate. I seldom go out; I have many personal annoyances, like all
men who live by the altar instead of being able to worship it. How many
things I do which I would fain renounce! But the time of my deliverance
is not far off; and then I shall be able to slowly accomplish my work.
How impatient I am to finish "Le Médecin de campagne," that I may know
what you think of it--for you will read it no doubt before you receive
your own copy. It is the history of a man faithful to a despised love,
to a woman who did not love him, who broke his heart by coquetry; but
that story is only an episode. Instead of killing himself, the man
casts off his life like a garment, takes another existence, and in
place of making himself a monk, he becomes the sister of mercy of a
poor canton, which he civilizes. At this moment I am in the paroxysm of
composition, and I can only speak well of it. When it is finished you
will receive the despairs of a man who sees only its faults.
If you knew with what force a solitary soul whom no one wants springs
toward a true affection! I love you, unknown woman, and this fantastic
thing is only the natural effect of a life that is empty and unhappy,
which I have filled with ideas only, diminishing its misfortunes by
chimerical pleasures. If this present adventure ought to happen to any
one it should to me. I am like a prisoner who, in the depths of his
dungeon, hears the sweet voice of a woman. He puts all his soul into a
faint yet powerful perception of that voice, and after his long hours
of revery, of hopes, after voyages of imagination, the woman, beautiful
and young, kills him--so complete would be the happiness. You will
think this folly; it is the truth, and far below the truth, because the
heart, the imagination, the romance of the passions of which my works
give an idea are very far below the heart, the imagination, the romance
of the man. And I can say this without conceit, because all those
qualities are to me misfortunes. After all, no one attaches himself
with greater love to the poesy of this sentiment at once so chimerical
and so true. It is a sort of religion, higher than earth, less high
than heaven. I like to often turn my eyes toward these unknown skies,
in an unknown land, and gather some new strength by thinking that
_there_ may be sure rewards for me, when I do well.
Remember, therefore, that there is here, between a Carmelite convent
and the Place where the executions take place, a poor being whose joy
you are,--an innocent joy according to social laws, but a very criminal
one if measured by the weight of affection. I take too much, I assure
you, and you would not ratify my dreamy conquests if it were possible
to tell you my dreams, dreams which I know to be impossible, but which
please me so much. To go where no one in the world knows where I
am,--to go into your country, to pass before you unknown, to see you,
and return here to write and tell you, "You are thus and so!" How many
times have I enjoyed this delightful fancy--I, attached by a myriad
lilliputian bonds to Paris, I, whose independence is forever being
postponed, I, who cannot travel except in thought! It is yours, that
thought; but, in mercy and in the name of that affection which I will
not characterize because it makes me too happy, tell me that you write
to no one in France but me. This is not distrust nor jealousy; although
both sentiments prove love, I think that the suspicions they imply
are always dishonouring. No, the motive is a sentiment of celestial
perfection which ought to be in you and which I inwardly feel there. I
know it, but I would fain be sure.
Adieu; pitiless editors, newspapers, etc., are here; time fails me
for all I have to do; there is but a single thing for which I can
always find time. Will you be kind, charitable, gracious, excellent?
You surely know some person who can make a sepia sketch. Send me a
faithful copy of the room where you write, where you think, where you
are _you_--for, you know well, there are moments when we are more
ourselves, when the mask is no longer on us. I am very bold, very
indiscreet; but this desire will tell you many things, and, after all,
I swear it is very innocent.
In the month of May two young Frenchmen who are going to Russia can
leave with the person you may indicate, in any town you indicate, the
parcel containing André Chénier, my poor "Louis Lambert" and your copy
of "Le Médecin de campagne." Write me promptly on this subject. They
are two young men who are not inquiring; they will do it as a matter
of business. Objects of art are not exposed to the brutalities of
the custom-house and you will permit a poor artist to send you a few
specimens of art. They are only precious from the species of perfection
that artists who love each other give to their work for a brother's
sake. At any rate, allow Paris the right to be proud of her worship of
art. You will enjoy the gift because none but you and I in the world
will know that this book, this copy is the solitary one of its kind.
The seal I had engraved upon it is lost. It came to me defaced by
rubbing against other letters. You will be very generous to send me an
impression inside of your reply.
All this shows that I am occupied with you, and you will not refuse to
increase my pleasures; they are so rare!
PARIS, end of March; 1833.
I have told you something of my life; I have not told you all; but
you will have seen enough to understand that I have no time to do
evil, no leisure to let myself go to happiness. Gifted with excessive
sensibility, having lived much in solitude, the constant ill-fortune of
my life has been the element of what is called so improperly _talent_.
I am provided with a great power of observation, because I have been
cast among all sorts of professions, involuntarily. Then, when I
went into the upper regions of society, I suffered at all points of
my soul which suffering can touch; there are none but souls that are
misunderstood, and the poor, who can really observe, because everything
bruises them, and observation results from suffering. Memory only
registers thoroughly that which is pain. In this sense it recalls great
joy, for pleasure comes very near to being pain. Thus society in all
its phases from top to bottom, legislations, religions, histories,
the present times, all have been observed and analyzed by me. My one
passion, always disappointed, at least in the development I gave to it,
has made me observe women, study them, know them, and cherish them,
without other recompense than that of being understood at a distance by
great and noble hearts. I have written my desires, my dreams. But the
farther I go, the more I rebel against my fate. At thirty-four years
of age, after having constantly worked fourteen and fifteen hours a
day, I have already white hairs without ever being loved by a young
and pretty woman; that is sad. My imagination, virile as it is, having
never been prostituted or jaded, is an enemy for me; it is always in
keeping with a young and pure heart, violent with repressed desires,
so that the slightest sentiment cast into my solitude makes ravages.
I love you already too much without ever having seen you. There are
certain phrases in your letters which make my heart beat. If you knew
with what ardour I spring toward that which I have so long desired! of
what devotion I feel myself capable! what happiness it would be to me
to subordinate my life for a single day! to remain without seeing a
living soul for a year, for a single hour! All that woman can dream of
that is most delicate, most romantic, finds in my heart, not an echo
but, an incredible simultaneousness of thought. Forgive me this pride
of misery, this naïveté of suffering.
You have asked me the baptismal name of the _dilecta_ [Mme. de Berny].
In spite of my complete and blind faith, in spite of my sentiment for
you, I cannot tell it to you; I have never told it. Would you have
faith in me if I told it? No.
You ask me to send you a plan of the place I live in. Listen: in one
of the forthcoming numbers of Regnier's "Album" (I will go and see him
on the subject) he shall put in my house for you, oh! solely for you!
It is a sacrifice; it is distasteful to me to be put _en évidence_.
How little those who accuse me of vanity know me! I have never desired
to see a journalist, for I should blush to solicit an article. For
the last eight months I have resisted the entreaties of Schnetz and
Scheffer, author of "Faust" who wish extremely to make my portrait.
Yesterday I said in jest to Gérard, who spoke to me of the same thing,
that I was not a sufficiently fine fish to be put in oils. You will
receive herewith a little sketch made by an artist of my study. But I
am rather disturbed in sending it to you because I dare not believe
in all that your request offers me of joy and happiness. To live in
a heart is so glorious a life! To be able to name you secretly to
myself in evil hours, when I suffer, when I am betrayed, misunderstood,
calumniated! To be able to retire to you!... This is a hope that goes
too far beyond me; it is the adoration of God by monks, the Ave Maria
written in the cell of a Chartreux,--an inscription which once made me
stand at the Grande-Chartreuse, beneath a vault, for ten minutes. Oh!
love me! All that you desire of what is noble, true, pure, will be in
a heart that has borne many a blow, but is not blasted!
That gentleman was very unjust. I drink nothing but coffee. I have
never known what drunkenness was, except from a cigar which Eugène Sue
made me smoke against my will, and it was that which enabled me to
paint the drunkenness for which you blame me, in the "Voyage à Java."
Eugène Sue is a kind and amiable young man, a braggart of vices, in
despair at being named Sue, living in luxury to make himself a great
seigneur, but for all that, though a little worn-out, worth more than
his works, I dare not speak to you of Nodier, lest I should destroy
your illusions. His artistic caprices stain that purity of honour which
is the chastity of men. But when one knows him, one forgives him his
disorderly life, his vices, his lack of conscience for his home. He
is a true child of nature after the fashion of La Fontaine. I have
just returned from Madame de Girardin's (Delphine Gay). She has the
small-pox. Her celebrated beauty is now in danger. This distresses me
for Émile, her husband, and for her. She had been vaccinated; present
science declares that one ought to be vaccinated every twenty years.
I have returned home to write to you under the empire of a violent
annoyance. Out of low envy the editor of the "Revue de Paris" postpones
for a week my third number of the "Histoire des Treize." Fifteen days'
interval will kill the interest in it, and I had worked day and night
to avoid any delay. For this last affair, which is the drop of water
in too full a cup, I shall probably cease all collaboration in the
"Revue de Paris." I am so disgusted by the tricky enmity which broods
there for me that I shall retire from it; and if I retire, it will be
forever. To a certain degree my will is cast in bronze, and nothing can
make me change it. In reading the "Histoire" in the March number, you
will never suspect the base and unworthy annoyances which have been
instigated against me in the inner courts of that review. They bargain
for me as if I were a fancy article; sometimes they play me monkey
tricks [_malices de nègre_]; sometimes insults upon me are anonymously
put into the Album of the Revue; at other times they fall at my feet,
basely. When "Juana" appeared, they inserted a notice that made me pass
for a madman.
But why should I tell you these miserable things? The joke is that
they represent me as being unpunctual; promising, and not keeping
my promises. Two years ago, Sue quarrelled with a bad courtesan,
celebrated for her beauty (she is the original of Vernet's Judith). I
lowered myself to reconcile them, and the consequence is the woman is
given to me. M. de Fitz-James, the Duc de Duras, and the old court, all
went to her house to talk, as on neutral ground, much as people walk
in the alley of the Tuileries to meet one another; and I am expected
to be more strait-laced than those gentlemen! In short, by some fatal
chance I can't take a step that is not interpreted as evil. What a
punishment is celebrity! But, indeed, to publish one's thoughts, is it
not prostituting them? If I had been rich and happy they should all
have been kept for my love.
Two years ago, among a few friends, I used to tell stories in the
evening, after midnight. I have given that up. There was danger of
my passing for an _amuser_; and I should have lost consideration. At
every step there is a pitfall. So now I have retired into silence and
solitude. I needed the great deception with which all Paris is now busy
to fling myself into this other extremity. There is still a Metternich
in this adventure; but this time it is the son, who died in Florence. I
have already told you of this cruel affair, and I had no right to tell
you. Though separated from that person out of delicacy, all is not over
yet. I suffer through her; but I do not judge her. Only, I think that
if you loved some one, and if you had daily drawn that person towards
you into heaven, and you became free, you would not leave him alone
at the bottom of an icy abyss after having warmed him with the fire
of your soul. But forget all that; I have spoken to you as to my own
consciousness. Do not betray a soul that takes refuge in yours.
You have much courage! you have a great and lofty soul; do not tremble
before any one, or you will be unhappy; you will meet in life with
circumstances that will make you grieve that you did not know how to
obtain all the power which you ought to have had and might have had.
What I tell you now is the fruit of the experience of a woman advanced
in years and purely religious. But, above all, no useless imprudence.
Do not pronounce my name; let me be torn in pieces; I do not care for
such criticism, provided I can live in two or three hearts which I
value more than the whole world beside. I prefer one of your letters to
the fame of Lord Byron bestowed by universal approbation. My vocation
on this earth is to love, even without hope; provided, nevertheless, I
am a little loved also.
Jules Sandeau is a young man. George Sand is a woman. I was interested
in both, because I thought it sublime in a woman to leave everything
to follow a poor young man whom she loved. This woman, whose name is
Mme. Dudevant, proves to have a great talent. It was necessary to
save Sandeau from the conscription; they wrote a book between them;
the book is good. I liked these two lovers, lodging at the top of a
house on the quai Saint-Michel, proud and happy. Madame Dudevant had
her children with her. Note that point. Fame arrived, and cast trouble
into the dove-cote. Madame Dudevant asserted that she ought to leave
it on account of her children. They separated; and this separation is,
as I believe, founded on a new affection which George Sand, or Madame
Dudevant, has taken for the most malignant of our contemporaries, H.
de L. [Henri de Latouche], one of my former friends, a most seductive
man, but odiously bad. If I had no other proof than Madame Dudevant's
estrangement from me, who received her fraternally with Jules Sandeau,
it would be enough. She now fires epigrams against her former host, so
that yesterday I found Sandeau in despair. This is how it is with the
author of "Valentine" and "Indiana," about whom you ask me.
There is no one, artist or literary person, whom I do not know in
Paris, and for the last ten years I have known many things, and things
so sad to know that disgust of these people has seized my heart. They
have made me understand Rousseau, they cannot pardon me for knowing
them; they pardon neither my avoidance of them nor my frankness. But
there are some impartial persons who are beginning to speak truth. My
name is Honoré, and I wish to be faithful to my name.
What mud all this is! and, as you write me, man is a perverse animal.
I do not complain, for heaven has given me three hearts: _la dilecta_
[Madame de Berny], the lady of Angoulême [Mme. Carraud] and a friend
[Auguste Borget] who is at this moment making a sketch of my study for
you, without knowing for whom it is; and these three hearts, besides
my sister and you,--you who can now do so much for my life, my soul,
my heart, my mind, you who can save the future from a past given over
to suffering,--are my only riches. You will have the right to say that
Balzac is diffuse, not quoting from Voltaire, but of your own knowledge.
At this moment of writing, you must have read "Juana," and have,
perhaps, given her a tear. In the last chapter there are sentences in
which we can well understand each other: "melancholies not understood
even by those who have caused them," etc., etc.
Do you not think that I have said too much good of myself and too much
evil of others? Do not suppose, however, that all are gangrened. If
H..., married for love and having beautiful children, is in the arms of
an infamous courtesan, there is in Paris Monsieur Monteil, the author
of a fine work ["L'Histoire des Français des divers états aux cinq
derniers siècles"], who is living on bread and milk, refusing a pension
which he thinks ought not to be given to him. There are fine and noble
characters; rare, but there are some. Scribe is a man of honour and
courage. I should have to make you a whole history of literary men; it
would not be too beautiful.
I entreat you to tell me, with that _kittenish_, pretty style of yours,
how you pass your life, hour by hour; let me share it all. Describe
to me the places you live in, even to the colours of the furniture.
You ought to keep a journal and send it to me regularly. In spite of
my occupations I will write you a line every day. It is so sweet to
confide all to a kind and beautiful soul, as one does to God.
To put a stop to some of your illusions, I shall have a sketch made of
the "Médecin de campagne" and you will find in it the features, perhaps
a little caricatured, of the author. This is to be a secret between
you and me. I have been thinking how to send you this copy when it is
ready. I think I have found the most natural way, and I will tell it to
you, unless you invent a better.
Grant my requests for the details of your life; so that when my thought
turns towards you it may meet you, see that work-frame, the flower
begun, and follow you through all your hours. If you knew how often
wearied thought needs a repose that is partly active, how beneficent to
me is the gentle revery that begins: "She is there! now she is looking
at such or such a thing." And I--I can give to thought the faculty to
spring through space with force enough to abolish it. These are my only
pleasures amid continual work.
I have not room to explain to you here what I have undertaken to
accomplish this year. In January next you can judge if I have been
able to leave my study much. And yet I would like to find two months
in which to travel for rest. You ask me for information about Saché.
Saché is the remains of a castle on the Indre, in one of the most
delicious valleys of Touraine. The proprietor, a man of fifty-five,
used to dandle me on his knee. He has a pious and intolerant wife,
rather deformed and not clever. I go there for him; and besides, I am
free there. They accept me throughout the region as a child; I have no
value whatever, and I am happy to be there, like a monk in a monastery.
I walk about meditating serious works. The sky is so pure, the oaks so
fine, the calm so vast! A league away is the beautiful château d'Azay,
built by Samblançay, one of the finest architectural things that we
possess. Farther on is Ussé, so famous from the novel of "Petit Jehan
de Saintré." Saché is six leagues from Tours. But not a woman! not a
conversation possible! It is your Ukraine without your music and your
literature. But the more a soul full of love is restricted physically,
the more it rises toward the heavens. That is one of the secrets of
cell and solitude.
Be generous; tell me much of yourself, just as I tell you much of
myself. It is a means of exchanging lives. But let there be no
deceptions. I have trembled in writing to you, and have said to myself:
"Will this be a fresh bitterness? Will the heavens open to me once more
only to drive me out?"
Well, adieu, you who are one of my secret consolations, you, towards
whom my soul, my thoughts are flying. Do you know that you address
a spirit wholly feminine, and that what you forbid me tempts me
immensely? You forbid me to see you? What a sweet folly it would be
to do so! It is a crime which I would make you pardon by the gift of
my life; I would like to spend it in deserving that pardon. But fear
nothing; necessity cuts my wings. I am fastened to my glebe as your
serfs to the soil. But I have committed the crime a hundred times in
thought! You owe me compensation.
Adieu! I have confided to you the secrets of my life; it is as if I
told you that you have my soul.
PARIS, May 29-June 1, 1833.
I have to-day, May 29, received your last letter-journal, and I have
made arrangements to answer it as you wish. In the first place I have
finally discovered a paper thin enough to send you a journal the
weight of which shall not excite the distrust of all the governments
through which it passes. Next, I resign myself, from attachment to your
sovereign orders, to assume this fatiguing little handwriting, intended
for you specially. Have I understood you, my dear star? for there are
fearful distances between us, and you shine, pure and bright, upon my
life, like the fantastic star attributed to every human being by the
astrologers of the middle ages.
Where are you going? You tell me nothing about it. To have all the
requirements of a sentiment so grand, so vast, and not to have its
confidence, is not that very wrong? You owe me all your thoughts. I am
jealous of them.
If I have been long without writing to you it is because I have
awaited your answer to my letters, being ignorant as to whether you
received them. Even now I do not know where to address the letter I am
beginning. Then, this is what has happened to me: from March to April
I paid off my agreement with the "Revue de Paris" with a composition
entitled, "Histoire des Treize," which kept me working day and night;
to this were joined vexations; I felt fatigued, and I went to spend
some time in the South, at Angoulême; there I remained, stretched on
a sofa, much petted by a friend of my sister, of whom I think I have
already told you; and I became sufficiently rested to resume my work.
I found in my new _dizain_ and in the "Médecin de campagne" untold
difficulties. These two works (still in press) absorb my nights
and days; the time passes with frightful rapidity. My doctor [Dr.
Nacquart], alarmed at my fatigue, ordered me to remain a month without
doing anything,--neither reading, writing letters, nor writing of any
kind; to be, as he expressed it, like Nebuchadnezzar in the form of
a beast. This I did. During this inaction vainglory has had its way.
MADAME [the Duchesse de Berry] has caused to be written to me the most
touching things from the depths of her prison at Blaye. I have been her
consolation; and "l'Histoire des Treize" had so interested her that
she was on the point of writing to me to be told the end in advance,
so much did it agitate her! And an odd thing! M. de Fitz-James writes
me that old Prince Metternich never laid the story down, and that he
devours my works. But enough of all that. You will read Madame Jules,
and when you reach her you will regret having told me to burn your
letters. The "Histoire des Treize" [this refers only to one part,
"Ferragus"] has had an extraordinary success in this careless and busy
Paris.
Forgive my scribbling; my heart and head are always too fast for
the rest, and when I correspond with a person I love I often become
illegible.
I have just read and re-read your long and delightful letter. How glad
I am that you are making the journal I asked of you. Now that this is
agreed upon between us I will confide to you all my thoughts and the
events of my life, as you will yours to me. Your letter has done me
great good. My poor artist [Auguste Borget] is one of my friends. At
this moment he is roaming the shores of the Mediterranean, or you would
have had by this time a sketch of my chamber or my little salon. I
cannot yet tell you his name; but he will perhaps put it on a landscape
he is to make in the copy of the "Médecin de campagne" which is
destined for you, but cannot be ready before next autumn. He is a great
artist, still more a noble heart, a young man full of determination
and pure as a young girl. He was not willing to _exhibit_ this year
some magnificent studies. He wants to study two years longer before
appearing, and I praise the resolution. He will be great at one stroke.
Regnier, who is making the collection of the dwellings of celebrated
persons, was here yesterday; my house will be (for you) in the next
number, and, to finish up the quarter, he will put in the Observatoire,
on the side where M. Arago lives. That is the side I look upon; it is
opposite to me.
I hope "Le Médecin de campagne" will appear within the next fortnight.
This is the work that I prefer. My two counsellors cannot hear
fragments of it without shedding tears. As for me, what care bestowed
upon it!--but what annoyances! The publisher wanted to summons me to
deliver the manuscript more rapidly! I have only worked at it eight
months; yet to all the world this delay--put it in comparison with the
work--will seem diabolical. You shall have an ordinary copy, in which I
want you to read the composition. Do not buy it; wait, I entreat you,
for the handy volume I intend for you, besides the grand copy. You know
how much I care that you shall read me in a copy that I have chosen.
It is a gospel; it is a book to be read at all moments. I desire that
the volume in itself shall not be indifferent to you; there will be a
thought, a caress for you on every page.
Before I can hear from you where to address my letters, much time must
elapse. I can therefore talk to you at length. To-morrow I will speak
of your last letter, which I have near me, very near me, so that it
perfumes me. Oh! how a secret sentiment brightens life! how proud it
renders it! If you knew what part you have in my thoughts! how many
times during this month of idleness, under that beautiful blue sky of
Angoulême, I have delightfully journeyed toward you, occupying my mind
with you, uneasy about you, knowing you ill, receiving no answers,
and giving myself up to a thousand fancies. I live much through you,
perhaps too much: betrayed already by a person who had only curiosity,
my hopes in you are not devoid of a sort of terror, a fear. Oh! I am
more of a child than you suppose.
Yesterday I went to see Madame Récamier, whom I found ill, but
wonderfully bright and kind. I had heard she did much good, and very
nobly, in being silent and making no complaint of the ungrateful
beings she has met. No doubt she saw upon my face a reflection of
what I thought of her, and, without explaining to herself this little
sympathy, she was charming to me.
In the evening I went to see (for I have been only six days in Paris)
Madame Émile de Girardin, Delphine Gay, whom I found almost well of her
small-pox. She will have no marks. There were bores there, so I came
away,--one of them that enemy to all laughter, the bibliophile X...,
about whom you ask me for news. Alas! I can tell you all in a word. He
has married an actress, a low and obscure woman of bad morals, who, the
week before marrying him, had sent to one of my classmates, S..., the
editor of the "National," a bill of her debts, by way of flinging him
the handkerchief. The bibliophile had said much harm of this actress;
he did not then know her. He went behind the scenes of the Odéon, fell
in love with her, and she, in revenge, married him. The vengeance is
complete; she is the most dreadful tyrant I ever knew. She has resumed
her actress allurements, and rules him. There is no talent possible to
him under such circumstances. He calls himself a bibliophile and does
not know what bibliography is; Nodier and the amateurs laugh at him. He
needs much money, and he stays in literature for want of funds to be a
banker or a merchant of fashions. Hence his books,--"Divorce," "Vertu
et Tempérament," and all that he does. He is the culminating point of
mediocrity. By one of those chances that seem occult, I knew of his
behaving horribly to a poor woman whose seduction he had undertaken as
if it were a matter of business. I have seen that woman weeping bitter
tears at having belonged to a man whom she did not esteem and who had
no talent.
Sandeau has just gone to Italy; he is in despair; I thought him
crazy....
As for Janin, another alas!... Janin is a fat little man who bites
everybody. The preface to "Barnave" is not by him, but by Béquet, on
the staff of the "Journal des Débats," a witty man, ill-conducted, who
was hiding with Janin to escape his creditors. Béquet was a school-mate
of mine; he came to me, already an old man from his excesses, to weep
over his trouble. Janin had taken from him a poor singer who was all
Béquet's joy. The "Chanson de Barnave" is by de Musset; the infamous
chapter about the daughters of Sejanus is by a young man named Félix
Pyat.
For mercy's sake, leave me free to be silent about these things when
they are too revolting. They run from ear to ear in the salons, and one
must needs hear them. I have already told you about H...; well! married
for love, having wife and children, he fell in love with an actress
named J..., who, among other proofs of tenderness, sent him a bill of
seven thousand francs to her laundress, and H... was forced to sign
notes of hand to pay the love-letter. Fancy a great poet, for he is a
poet, working to pay the washerwoman of Mademoiselle J...! Latouche
is envious, spiteful, and malicious; he is a fount of venom; but he
is faithful to his political creed, honest, and conceals his private
life. Scribe is very ill; he has worn himself out in writing.
General rule: there are few artists or great men who have not had their
frailties. It is difficult to have a power and not to abuse it. But
then, some are calumniated. Here, except about the washerwoman's bill,
a thing I have only heard said, all that I have told you are facts that
I know personally.
Adieu for to-day, my dear star; in future I will only tell you of
things that are good or beautiful in our country, for you seem to me
rather ill-disposed towards it. Do not see our warts; see the poor and
luckless friends of Sandeau subscribing to give him the needful money
to go to Italy; see the two Johannots, so united, so hard-working,
living like the two Corneilles. There are good hearts still.
Adieu; I shall re-read your pages to-night before I sleep, and
to-morrow I will write you my day. This day I have corrected the
fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of the "Médecin de campagne" and
signed an agreement for the publication of the "Scènes de la Vie
Parisienne." I wish I knew what you were doing at the moments when my
mind is occupied with you.
During my absence a horse I was fond of died, and three beautiful
unknown ladies came to see me. They must have thought me disdainful.
I opened their letters on arriving. There was no address; all was
mysterious as a _bonne fortune_. But I am exclusive; I write to none
but you, and chance has sent my answer to those inquisitive women.
PARIS, July 19-August 8, 1833.
You have not been either forgotten or less loved; but you yourself have
been a little forgetful. You have not written to me how long a time you
were to stay in Vienna, so that I might know if my reply would reach
you there. Then you have written the name of your correspondent so
illegibly that I copy it with fear that there may be some mistake.
That said, I have written you several letters which I have burned for
fear of displeasing you, and I will now sum up for you in very few
words my recent life.
An odious lawsuit was instituted against me by a publisher, _à propos_
of "Le Médecin de campagne." The work was finished to-day, July 19, and
will be sold by a publisher appointed by the court. As for that book, I
have buried therein since I last wrote to you more than sixty nights.
You will read it, you, my distant angel, and you will see how much of
heart and life has been spent in that work, with which I am not yet
very content.
My work has so absorbed me that I could not give you my thoughts; I
am so weary, and for me life is such a desert! The only sentiment
apparently true that dawns in my real life is a thousand leagues away
from me. Does it not need all the power of a poet's heart to find
consolation there; to say to itself amid such toil: "She will quiver
with joy in seeing that her name has occupied me, that she herself
was present to my thought, and that what I dwelt on as loveliest and
noblest in that young girl I have named for her"? You will see in
reading the book that you were in my soul as a light.
I have nothing to tell you about myself, because I have been working
night and day without seeing any one. Nevertheless, a few unknown
ladies have rapped at my door and have written to me. But I have not
a vulgar soul, and, as _la dilecta_ says, "If I were young and pretty
I should come, and not write this." So I drop all that into the void.
There is something of you in this feminine reserve. A crown of the
nature of that to which I aspire is given in its entirety; it cannot be
divided.
Well, still some days, some months of labour, and I shall have ended
one of my tasks. I shall then take a brief repose and refresh my brain
by a journey; friends have already proposed to me Germany, Austria,
Moravia, Russia. _Non so._ I do not yet know what I shall do. You are
so despotic in your orders that I am afraid to go your way; there would
be a double danger there for me.
Your letters delight me; they make me love you more and more; but this
life, which turns incessantly toward you, is consumed in efforts and
returns to me no richer. To love one another without personal knowledge
is torture.
August 1, 1833.
Twelve days' interval without being able to resume my letter! Judge my
life by that. It is a perpetual combat, without relaxing. The wretches!
they don't know what they destroy of poesy.
My lawsuit will be decided to-morrow. "L'Europe Littéraire" has quoted
the "Story of the Emperor" told by a soldier of the Imperial Guard
to peasants in a barn (one of the chief things in the "Médecin de
campagne"). Bah! And here are speculators who for the last week have
stolen me, printed me without my permission, and have sold over twenty
thousand copies of that fragment! I could use the law with rigour,
but that's unworthy of me. They neither give my name, nor that of
the work; they murder me and say nothing; they rob me of my fame and
my pittance,--me, a poor man! You will some day read that gigantic
fragment, which has made the most unfeeling weep, and which a hundred
newspapers have reproduced. Friends tell me that from end to end of
France there has risen a cry of admiration. What will it be for the
whole work!
I send herewith a scrap of a former letter which I had not entirely
burned.
Since the 19th of last month I have had nothing but troubles,
anxieties, and toil. To finish this little letter, I have to take part
of a night, and I think it a gentle recreation.
I leave in a week for the country so as to finish in peace the third
_dizain_ of the "Contes Drolatiques" and a great historical novel
called "Privilège." Always work! You can, I think, without blushing,
allow yourself to read the third _dizain_. It is almost pure.
I await, assuredly with anxiety, your letter relating to "Le Médecin de
campagne." Write me quickly what you think of it; tell me your emotions.
_Mon Dieu!_ I would fain recount to you a thousand thoughts; but there
is a pitiless somebody who hurries and commands me. Be generous,
write to me, do not scold me too much for a seeming silence; my heart
speaks to you. If a spark flames up in your candle at night, consider
the little gleam as a message of the thoughts of your friend. If your
fire crackles, think of me who think often of you. Yes, dream true in
saying to yourself that your words not only echo, but they remain in
my memory; that in the most obscure corner of Paris there is a being
who puts you into all his dreams, who counts you for much in his
sentiments, whom you animate at times, but who, at other times is sad
and calls to you, as we hope for a chance that is well-nigh impossible.
PARIS, August 8, 1833.