Will you not be much dissatisfied with yourself when you know that you
have given me great pain at a moment when I already had much? After all
that I have said to you, was not my silence significant of misfortunes?
I now inclose to you the letters begun before I received this letter
from Switzerland in which you give me your exact address.
I will not explain to you the troubles that overwhelm me; they are
such that I thought yesterday of quitting France. Besides, the lawsuit
which troubles me so much is very difficult to explain even to the
judges; you will feel therefore that I cannot tell you anything about
it in a letter. _Mon Dieu!_ if you have never thought that I might have
untold troubles, your heart should have told you that I did not enter
your soul to leave it as you suppose me to have done, and that I did
not forget you. You do not know with what strength a man who has met
with nothing but toil without reward, sorrows without joy, fastens to
a heart in which for the first time he finds the consolations that he
needs. The fragments of letters which I now send you have been under my
hand for the last three months, but for three months past I have not
had a day, an hour, to write to the persons I love best. But you are
far away; you know nothing of my life of toil and anguish. At any rate,
I pardon you the _badnesses_ which reveal such force in your heart for
him whom you love a little.
Later, I will write you in detail; but to-day I can only send you these
beginnings of letters, assuring you of my constant faith. I intend to
plead my case myself, and I must study it.
Nothing can better picture to you the agitated life which I lead than
these fragments of letters. I have not the power or the faculty to give
myself up for an hour to any connected subject outside of my writings
and my business matters. When will this end? I do not know. But I am
very weary of this perpetual struggle between men and things and me.
I must bid you adieu. Write to me always, and have faith in me. During
the hours of release that come to me I shall turn to you and tell you
all there is of good and tender sentiments in me for you. Adieu; some
day you will know how unhappy I was in writing you these few lines, and
you will be surprised that I was able to write them.
Adieu; love him who loves you.
PARIS, August 19, 1833.
What would I not pardon after reading your letter, my cherished angel?
But you are too beloved ever to be guilty of a fault; you are a spoilt
child; to you belong my most precious hours. See, I answer you alone.
_Mon Dieu!_ do not be jealous of any one. I have not been to see
Madame Récamier or any one else. I do not love Madame de Girardin;
and every time I go there, which is rare, I bring away with me an
antipathy.[1]... It is ten months since I have seen Eugène Sue, and
really I have no male friends in the true acceptation of the word.
Do not read the "Écho de la Jeune France." The second part of "Histoire
des Treize" ought to be in it, but those men have acted so badly
towards me that I have ceased to do what, out of extreme good-will to a
college friend interested in the enterprise, I began by doing. You will
find a grand and beautiful story just begun; the first chapter good,
the second bad. They had the impertinence to print my notes, without
waiting for the work I always undertake as it goes through the press,
and I shall now not complete the history till I put it in the "Scènes
de la Vie Parisienne" which will appear this winter.
I have only a moment in which to answer you; I live by chance, and by
fits and starts. _Perdonatemi._
Since I last wrote to you in such a hurry I have had more troubles than
I ever had before in my life.
My lawyers, my solicitors, everybody, implore me not to spend eight
months of my life in the law-courts, and yesterday I signed a
compromise allowing all questions in litigation to be sovereignly
decided by two arbitrators. That is how I now stand. The affair will be
decided by the end of the week, and I shall then know the extent of my
losses and my obligations.
Of the three copies I have had made of "Le Médecin de campagne" nothing
exists that I can send you, unless it be the first volume. But here
is what I shall do: I shall have duplicate proofs made of the second
volume, and you shall read them ten days hence, before the rest of the
world. I have already found many blemishes, therefore it is a copy of
the second edition only that I wish to give you; which will prove to
you my tenderness, for I don't know for whom else I would take the
trouble to write myself the title for printing [_le titre en regard de
l'impression_].
The extreme disorder which this lawsuit and the time taken in making
this book has brought into my affairs, obliges me to take service once
more in the newspapers. For the last week I have been very actively
working on "L'Europe littéraire" in which I own a share. Thursday next
the "Théorie de la Démarche" will be finished. It is a long and very
tiresome treatise. But by the end of the month there will be a "Scène
de la Vie de province," in the style of "Les Célibataires," called
"Eugénie Grandet," which will be better. Take "L'Europe littéraire" for
three months.
You have not told me whether you have read "Juana" in the "Revue de
Paris," nor whether you have found the end of "Ferragus." I would like
to know if I ought to send you those two things. As for the _dizains_
of the "Contes Drolatiques," do not read them. The third you might
read. The first two belong, like those which follow the third, to a
special literature. I know women of exquisite taste and lofty devotion
who do read them; but in truth I never reckoned on such rare suffrages.
It is a work that cannot be judged until completed, and ten years
hence. It is a literary monument built for a few connoisseurs. If you
do not like La Fontaine's Tales, nor those of Boccaccio, and if you are
not an adorer of Ariosto, let the "Contes Drolatiques" alone; although
they will be my finest meed of fame in the future. I tell you this once
for all, not to return to it.
I send to you, to the address of Henriette Borel,[2] by to-morrow's
carrier, a unique "Louis Lambert" on Chinese paper, which I have had
printed for you, believing my work perfect. But I have the grief to
tell you that there is now a new manuscript for the future edition of
the "Études Philosophiques." You will also find in the package the
first volume of "Le Médecin de campagne," and I will send you the
second as soon as there is a copy. I hope to make you wait not more
than eight or ten days for it. _Evelina_ is in the second volume. If
you receive these volumes safely I will send you the Chénier I have
here for you.
Now that what I regard as business is ended, let us speak of
ourselves--Ourselves! Who told you about the little Metternich? As to
the services I have rendered Eugène Sue, I do not understand. But,
I entreat, do not listen to either calumny or gossip; I am the butt
of evil tongues. Yesterday one of my friends heard a fool relating
that I had two talismans in my house, in which I believed; two
drinking-glasses; on one of which depended my life, on the other my
talent. You cannot imagine what nonsense is told about me, calumnies,
crazy incriminations! There is but one thing true--my solitary life,
increasing toil, and sorrows.
No, you do not know how cruel and bitter it is to a loving man to ever
desire happiness and never meet it. Woman has been my dream; yet I
have stretched my arms to none but illusions. I have conceived of the
greatest sacrifices. I have even dreamed of one sole day of perfect
happiness in a year; of a woman who would have been as a fairy to
me. With that I could have been content and faithful. And here I am,
advancing in life, thirty-four years old, withering myself with toil
that is more and more exacting, having lost already my finest years and
gained nothing real.
You, you, my dear star, you fear--you, young and beautiful--to see me;
you overwhelm me with unjust suspicions. Those who suffer never betray;
they are the betrayed.
Benjamin Constant has made, as I think, the arraignment of men of the
world and intriguers; but there are noble exceptions. When you have
read the Confession in the "Médecin de campagne" you will change your
opinion, and you will understand that he who, for the first time,
revealed his heart in that book ought not to be classed among the
cold men who calculate everything. O my unknown love, do not distrust
me, do not think evil of me. I am a child, that is the whole of it--a
child, with more levity than you suppose, but pure as a child and
loving as a child. Stay in Switzerland or near France. In two months
I must have rest. Well, you shall hear, perhaps without terror, a
"Conte Drolatique" from the lips of the author. Oh! yes, let me find
near you the rest I need after this twelvemonth of labour. I can take
a name that is not known, beneath which I will hide myself. It will be
a secret between you and me. Everybody would suspect M. de Balzac, but
who knows M. d'Entragues? Nobody.[3]
_Mon Dieu!_ what you wish, I wish. We have the same desires, the same
anxieties, the same apprehensions, the same pride. I, too, cannot
conceive of love otherwise than as eternal, applying that word to the
duration of life. I do not comprehend that persons [_on_] should quit
each other, and, to me, one woman is all women. I would break my pen
to-morrow if you desired it; to-morrow no other woman should hear my
voice. I should ask exception for my _dilecta_, who is a mother to me.
She is nearly fifty-eight years old, and you could not be jealous of
her--you, so young. Oh! take, accept my sentiments and keep them as a
treasure! Dispose of my dreams, realize them? I do not think that God
would be severe to one who presents herself before him followed by an
adorable cortège of beautiful hours, happiness, and delightful life
given by her to a faithful being. I tell you all my thoughts. As for
me, I dread to see you, because I shall not realize your preconceived
ideas; and yet I wish to see you. Truly, dear, unknown soul who animate
my life, who bid my sorrows flee, who revive my courage during grievous
hours, this hope caresses me and gives me heart. You are the all in
all of my prodigious labour. If I wish to be something, if I work, if
I turn pale through laborious nights, it is, I swear to you, because I
live in your emotions, I try to guess them in advance; and for this I
am desperate to know if you have finished "Ferragus;" for the letter
of Madame Jules is a page full of tears, and in writing it I thought
much of you; offering to you there the image of the love that is in my
heart, the love that I desire, and which, in me, has been constantly
unrecognized. Why? I love too well, no doubt. I have a horror of
littlenesses, and I believe in what is noble, without distrust. I have
written in your "Louis Lambert" a saying of Saint Paul, in Latin: _Una
fides_; one only faith, a single love.
_Mon Dieu!_ I love you well; know that. Tell me where you will be
in October. In October I shall have a fortnight to myself. Choose a
beautiful place; let it be all of heaven to me.
Adieu, you who despotically fill my heart; adieu. I will write to you
once every week at least. You, whose letters do me so much good, be
charitable; cast, in profusion, the balm of your words into a heart
that is athirst for them. Be sure, dear, that my thought goes out to
you daily; that my courage comes from you; that one hard word is a
wound, a mourning. Be good and great; you will never find (and here I
would fain be on my knees before you that you might see my soul in a
look) a heart more delicately faithful, nor more vast, more exclusive.
Adieu, then, since it must be. I have written to you while my solicitor
has been reading to me his conclusions, for the case is to be judged
the day after to-morrow, and I must spend the night in writing a
summary of my affair.
Adieu; in five or six days you will have a volume that has cost much
labour and many nights. Be indulgent to the faults that remain in spite
of my care; and, my adored angel, forget not to cast a few flowers of
your soul to him who guards them as his noblest wealth; write to me
often. As soon as the judgment is rendered I will write to you; it will
be on Thursday.
Well, adieu. Take all the tender regards that I place here. I would
fain envelop you in my soul.
[Footnote 1: This is not true. The antipathy, if any, was to Émile de
Girardin, and it put an end for a time to Balzac's visits to the house.
See Éd. Déf., vol. xxiv., p. 198.--TR.]
[Footnote 2: Mlle. Henriette Borel was governess in the Hanski family.
She was a native of Neufchâtel, and M. Hanski employed her to select
and engage a furnished house there for himself and family, to which
they went in May, 1833. She was the "Lirette" who took the veil in
Paris (December, 1845); of which ceremony Balzac gives a vivid account
in one of the following letters.--TR.]
[Footnote 3: If Balzac ever wrote this paragraph (which I believe to
be an interpolation made to fit the theory in "Roman d'Amour") he
fell ludicrously short of his design; for he wrote letters to friends
about this journey, two from Neufchâtel during the five days he stayed
there (pp. 181-183, vol. xxiv., Éd. Déf.); he stopped half way to see
manufacturers and transact business with them in his own name; he
took with him to Neufchâtel his artist-friend, Auguste Borget; and
he made the acquaintance, not of Madame Hanska only, but of Monsieur
Hanski, who remained his friend through life and his occasional
correspondent.--TR.]
PARIS, end of August, 1833.
My dear, pure love, in a few days I shall be at Neufchâtel. I had
already decided to go there in September; but here comes a most
delightful pretext. I must go on the 20th or 25th of August to
Besançon, perhaps earlier, and then, you understand, I can be in the
twinkling of an eye at Neufchâtel. I will inform you of my departure by
a simple little line.
I have given to speculators a great secret of fortune, which will
result in books, blackened paper,--salable literature, in short.[1]
The only man who can manufacture our paper lives in the environs of
Besançon. I shall go there with my printer.
Ah! yes, I have had money troubles; but if you knew with what rapidity
eight days' labour can appease them! In ten days I can earn a hundred
louis at least. But this last trouble has made me think seriously of no
longer being a bird on a branch, thoughtless of seed, fearing nought
but rain, and singing in fine weather. So now, at one stroke, I shall
be rich--for one needs gold to satisfy one's fancies. You see I have
received your letter in which you complain of life, of your life, which
I would fain render happy.
Oh! my beloved angel, now you are reading, I hope, the second volume
of "Le Médecin de campagne;" you will see one name written with joy on
every page. I liked so much to occupy myself with you, to speak to you.
Do not be sad, my good angel; I strive to envelop you in my thought. I
would like to make you a rampart against all pain. Live in me, dear,
noble heart, to make me better, and I, I will live in you to be happy.
Yes, I will go to Geneva after seeing you at Neufchâtel; I will go and
work there for a fortnight. Oh! my dear and beloved Evelina, a thousand
thanks for this gift of love. You do not know with what fidelity I love
you, unknown--not unknown of the soul--and with what happiness I dream
of you. Oh! each year, to have so sweet a pilgrimage to make! Were it
only for one look I would go to seek it with boundless happiness! Why
be displeased about a woman fifty-eight years old, who is a mother to
me, who folds me in her heart and protects me from stings? Do not be
jealous of her; she would be so glad of our happiness. She is an angel,
sublime. There are angels of earth and angels of heaven; she is of
heaven.
I have the contempt for money that you profess; but money is a
necessity; and that is why I am putting such ardour into the vast and
extraordinary enterprise which will burst forth in January. You will
like the result. To it I shall owe the pleasure of being able to travel
rapidly and to go oftener toward you.
_Una fides_; yes, my beloved angel, one sole love and all for you. It
is very late for a young man whose hairs are whitening; but his heart
is ardent; he is as you wish him to be, naïve, childlike, confiding. I
go to you without fear; yes, I will drive away the shyness which has
kept me so young, and stretch to you a hand old in friendship, a brow,
a soul that is full of you.
Let us be joyous, my adored treasure; all my life is in you. For you I
would suffer everything!
You have made me so happy that I think no longer of my lawsuit.
The loss is reckoned up. I have done like _le distrait_ of La
Bruyère--established myself well in my ditch. For three thousand eight
hundred francs flung to that man, I shall have liberty on a mountain.
I will bring you your Chénier, and will read it to you in the nook of a
rock before your lake. Oh, happiness!
What a likeness between us! both of us mismanaged by our mothers.
How that misfortune developed sensitiveness. Why do you speak of a
"cherished lamb"? Are you not my dear Star, an angel towards whom I
strive to mount?
I have still three pages on which to talk with you, but here comes
business, lawyers, conferences. _À bientôt_, A thousand tendernesses of
the soul.
You speak to me of a faithless woman; but there is no infidelity where
there was no love.
[Footnote 1: This was one of his amusing visions of making a
fortune.--TR.]
PARIS, September 9, 1833.
Winter is already here, my dear soul, and already I have resumed my
winter station in the corner of that little gallery you know of. I have
left the cool, green salon from which I saw the dome of the Invalides
over twenty acres of leafage. It was in this corner that I received
and read your first letter, so that now I love it better than before.
Returning to it, I think of you more specially, you, my cherished
thought; and I cannot resist speaking a little word to you, conversing
one fraction of an hour with you. How could it be that I should not
love you, you, the first woman who came across the spaces to warm a
heart that despaired of love. I had done all to draw to me an angel
from on high; fame was only a pharos to me, nothing more. Then you
divined all,--the soul, the heart, the man. And yesterday, re-reading
your letter, I saw that you alone had the instinct to feel all that is
my life. You ask me how I can find time to write to you. Well, my dear
Eve (let me abridge your name, it will tell you better that you are all
the sex to me, the only woman in the world, like the first woman to the
first man),--well, you alone have asked yourself if a poor artist to
whom time lacks, does not make sacrifices that are immense in thinking
of and writing to her he loves. Here, no one thinks of that; they take
my hours without scruple. But now I would fain consecrate my whole life
to you, think only of you, and write for you only.
With what joy, if I were free of cares, would I fling all palms, all
fame, and my finest works like grains of incense on the altar of love.
To love, Eve,--that is my life!
I should long ago have wished to ask you for your portrait if there
were not some insult, I know not what, in the request. I do not want it
until after I have seen you. To-day, my flower of heaven, I send you a
lock of my hair; it is still black, but I hasten it to defy time. I am
letting my hair grow, and people ask why. Why? Because I want enough to
make you chains and bracelets!
Forgive me, my dearest, but I love you as a child loves, with all the
joys, all the superstitions, all the illusions of its first love.
Cherished angel, how often I have said to myself: "Oh! if I were loved
by a woman of twenty-seven, how happy I should be; I could love her all
my life without fearing the separations that age decrees." And you, my
idol, you are forever the realization of that ambition of love.
Dear, I hope to start on the 18th for Besançon. It depends on
imperative business. I would have broken that off if it did not concern
my mother and many very serious interests. I should be thought a
lunatic, and I have already trouble enough to pass for a man of sense.
If you will take "L'Europe littéraire" from the 15th of August you will
find the whole of the "Théorie de la Démarche" and a "Conte Drolatique"
called "Perseverance d'amour," which you can read without fear. It will
give you an idea of the first two _dizains_.
You have now read "Le Médecin de campagne." Alas! my critical friends
and I have already found more than two hundred faults in the first
volume! I thirst for the second edition, that I may bring the book to
its perfection. Have you laid down the book at the moment when Benassis
utters the adored name?
I am working now at "Eugénie Grandet," a composition which will appear
in "L'Europe littéraire" when I am travelling.
I must bid you adieu. Do not be sad, my love; it is not allowable that
you should be when you can live at all moments in a heart where you
are sure of being as you are in your own, and where you will find more
thoughts full of you than there are in yours.
I have had a box made to hold and perfume letter-paper; and I have
taken the liberty to have one like it made for you. It is so sweet to
say, "She will touch and open this little casket, now here." And then,
I think it so pretty; besides, it is made of _bois de France_; and it
can hold your Chénier, the poet of love,--the greatest of French poets,
whose every line I would like to read to you on my knees.
Adieu, treasure of joy, adieu. Why do you leave blank pages in your
letters? But leave them, leave them. Do nothing forced. Those blanks
I fill myself. I say to myself, "Her arm passed here," and I kiss the
blank! Adieu, my hopes. _À bientôt._ The mail-cart goes, they say, in
thirty-six hours to Besançon.
Well, adieu, my cherished Eve, my eloquent and all-gracious star.
Do you know that when I receive a letter from you a presentiment,
I don't know what, has already announced it. So to-day, 9th, I am
certain I shall get one to-morrow. Your lake--I see it; and sometimes
my intuition is so strong that I am sure that when I really see you I
shall say, "'Tis _she_!"--"_She_, my love, _is thou_!"
Adieu; _à bientôt_.
PARIS, September 13, 1833.
Your last letter, of the 9th, has caused me I cannot tell what keen
pain; it has entered my heart to desolate it. It is now three hours
that I have been sitting here plunged in a world of painful thoughts.
What crape you have fastened on the sweetest, most joyous hopes which
ever caressed my soul! What! that book, which I now hate, has given
you weapons against me? Do you not know with what impetuosity I spring
to happiness? I was so happy! You put God between us! You will not
have my joys, you divide your heart: you say, "There, I will live
with him; here, I will live no more." You make me know all the agonies
of jealousy against ideas, against reason! _Mon Dieu_, I would not
say to you wicked sophisms; I hate corruption as much as violation;
I would not owe a woman to seduction, nor even to the power of good.
The sentiment which crowns me with joy, which delights me, is the free
and pure sentiment which yields neither to the grace of evil nor to
the attraction of good; an involuntary sentiment, roused by intuitive
perception and justified by happiness. You gave me all that; I lived in
a clear heaven, and now you have flung me into the sorrows of doubt. To
love, my angel, is to have nothing in the heart but the person loved.
If love is not that, it is nothing. As for me, I have no longer a
thought that is not for you; my life is you. Griefs?--I have had none
to speak of for several days. There are no longer griefs or pains to me
but those you give me; the rest are mere annoyances. I said to myself,
"I am so happy that I ought to pay for my happiness." Oh! my beloved,
she who presents herself in heaven accompanied by a soul made happy by
her can always enter there! I have known noble hearts, souls very pure,
very delicate; but these women never hesitated to say that to love is
the virtue of women. It is I who ought to be the good and the evil for
you. Confess yourself? Good God! to whom, and for what? My angel, live
in your sphere; consider the obligations of the world as a duty imposed
upon your inward joys; live in two beings; in the _unknown you_, the
most delightful, and the _known you_--two divisions of your time; the
happy dreams of night, the harsh toils of day.
If what I say to you here is evil, my God! it is without my knowledge.
Do not put me among the Frenchmen whom people believe they have the
right to accuse of levity, fatuity, and evil creeds about women. There
is nothing of that in me. To betray love for a man or an idea is one
and the same thing. Oh! I have suffered from this betrayal! A glacial
cold has seized me at the mere apprehension of new sorrows. I shall
resist no more; I am not strong enough. I must be done with this life
of tender sentiments, exalted feelings, happiness dreamed of, constant,
faithful love which you have roused for the first and the last time
in all its plenitude. I have often risen to gather in the harvest,
and have found nothing in the fields, or else I have brought back
unfructifying flowers. I am more sad than I have told you that I am,
and from the nature of my character, my feelings go on increasing. I
shall be the most unhappy man in the world until your answer comes;
I can still receive it here before my departure for Besançon and
consequently for Neufchâtel. I leave Saturday, 21st; I shall be at
Besançon 23rd, and on the 25th at Neufchâtel. My journey is delayed
by the box I am taking to you. There are many things to do to it. I
have sought for the cleverest workman in Paris for the secret drawer,
and what I wish to put into it requires time. With what joy I go about
Paris, bestir myself, keep myself moving for a thing that will be
yours! It is a life apart, it is ineffable! The Chénier is impossible;
we must wait for the new edition.
You ask me what I am doing. _Mon Dieu!_ business; my writings are laid
aside. Besides, how could I work knowing that Saturday evening I shall
be going towards you? One must know how the slightest expectation
makes me palpitate, to understand all the physical evil that I endure
from hope. God has surely given me iron membranes if I do not have an
aneurism of the heart.
Here all the newspapers attack "Le Médecin de campagne." Every one
rushes to give his own stab. What saddened and angered Lord Byron makes
me laugh. I wish to govern the intellectual life of Europe; only two
years more of patience and labour, and I will walk upon the heads
of those who strive to tie my hands, retard my flight! Persecution,
injustice give me an iron courage. I am without strength against kind
feelings. You alone can wound me. Eve, I am at your feet; I deliver to
you my life and my heart. Kill me at a blow, but do not make me suffer.
I love you with all the forces of my soul; do not destroy such glorious
hopes.
Thank you a thousand times for the view; how good and merciful you are!
The site resembles that of the left bank of the Loire. The Grenadière
is a short distance away from that steeple. There is a complete
resemblance. Your drawing is before my eyes until there is no need of a
drawing.
_À bientôt._
In future my letters will be always _poste restante_; there is more
security for you in that way.
PARIS, September 18, 1833.
DEAR, BELOVED ANGEL,--I have a conviction that in coming to Neufchâtel
I shall do more than all those heroes of love of whom you speak to me;
and I have the advantage over them of not talking about it. But that
folly pleases me.
I cannot leave till the 22nd; but the mail-cart, the quickest vehicle,
more rapid than a post-chaise, will take me in forty hours to Besançon.
The 25th, in the morning, I shall be at Neufchâtel, and I shall remain
there until your departure.
Unhappily, I do not know if your house is Andrea or Andrée. Write me a
line, _poste restante_, at Besançon on this subject.
A thousand heart-feelings, a thousand flowers of love. Dear, loved one,
in two years I shall be able to travel a thousand leagues, and pass
through the dangers of Arabian Tales to seek a look; but that will be
nothing extraordinary in comparison with the impossibilities of all
kinds that my present journey presents. It is not the offering to God
of a whole life; no, it is the cup of water which counts in love and in
religion for more than battles. But what pleasures in this madness! How
I am rewarded by knowing proudly how much I love you!
I start Sunday, 22nd, at six in the evening. I should like to stay
three days at Neufchâtel. Do not leave till the 29th.
Adieu, cherished flower. What thoughts, solely filled with you,
throughout the hours of this journey! I will be yours only. I have
never so truly lived, so hoped!
_À bientôt._
NEUFCHÂTEL, Thursday, September 26, 1833.
_Mon Dieu!_ I have made too rapid a journey, and I started fatigued.
But all that is nothing now. A good night has repaired all. I was four
nights without going to bed.
I shall go to the Promenade of the faubourg from one o'clock till four.
I shall remain during that time looking at the lake, which I have
never seen. Write me a little line to say if I can write to you in all
security here, _poste restante_, for I am afraid of causing you the
slightest displeasure; and give me, I beg of you, your exact name [_et
donnez-moi, par grâce, exactement votre nom_].
A thousand tendernesses. There has not been, from Paris here, a moment
of time which has not been full of you, and I have looked at the Val de
Travers with you in my mind. It is delightful, that valley.
_À bientôt._