Adieu, my dear breath. This last page will bring you a thousand
caresses, my heart, and some anxieties. My cherished one, you speak of
a cold, of your health. Oh, to be so far away! _Mon Dieu!_ all that is
anguish in my life pales before the thought that you are ill.
To-morrow, angel. To-morrow I shall get another letter. My head swims
now. Adieu, my good genius, my dear wife; a thousand flowers of love
are here for you.
PARIS, Monday, October 28, 1833.
I have your letter, my love. How much agony in one day's delay. _À
demain_; I will tell you then why I cannot answer to-day.
Tuesday, 29.
My cherished Eva, on Thursday I have four or five thousand francs
to pay, and, speaking literally, I have not a sou. These are little
battles to which I am accustomed. Since childhood I have never yet
possessed two sous that I could regard as my own property. I have
always triumphed until to-day. So now I must rush about the world of
money to make up my sum. I lose my time; I hang about town. One man
is in the country; another hesitates; my securities seem doubtful to
him. I have ten thousand francs in notes out, however; but by to-morrow
night, last limit, I shall no doubt have found some. The two days I am
losing are a horrible discount.
I only tell you these things to let you know what my life is. It is a
fight for money, a battle against the envious, perpetual struggles with
my _subjects_, physical struggles, moral struggles, and if I failed to
triumph a single time I should be exactly dead.
Beloved angel, be a thousand times blessed for your drop of water,
for your offer; it is all for me and yet it is nothing. You see what
a thousand francs would be when ten thousand a month are needed. If I
could find nine I could find twelve. But I should have liked in reading
that delicious letter of yours to have plunged my hand in the sea and
drawn out all its pearls to strew them on your beautiful black hair.
Angel of devotion and love, all your dear, adored soul is in that
letter. But what are all the pearls of the sea! I have shed two tears
of joy, of gratitude, of voluptuous tenderness, which for you, for me,
are worth more than all the riches of the whole world; is it not so, my
Eva, my idol? In reading this feel yourself pressed by an arm that is
drunk with love and take the kiss I send you ideally. You will find a
thousand on the rose-leaf which will be in this letter.
Let us drop this sad money; I will tell you, however, that the two
most important negotiations on which I counted for my liberation have
failed. You have made me too happy; my luck of soul and heart is too
immense for matters of mere interest to succeed. I expiate my happiness.
Celestial powers! whom do you expect me to be writing to, I who have no
time for anything? My love, be tranquil; my heart can bloom only in
the depths of your heart. Write to others! to others the perfume of my
secret thoughts! Can you think it? No, no, to you, my life, my dearest
moments. My noble and dear wife of the heart, be easy. You ask me for
new assurances about your letters; ask me for no more. All precautions
are taken that what you write me shall be like vows of love confided
from heart to heart between two caresses. No trace! the cedar box is
closed; no power can open it; and the person ordered to burn it if I
die is a Jacquet, the original of Jacquet, who is named Jacquet, one of
my friends, a poor clerk whose honesty is iron tempered like a blade
of Orient. You see, my love, that I do not trust either the _dilecta_
or my sister. Do not speak to me of that any more. I understand the
importance of your wish; I love you the more for it if possible, and
as you are all my religion, an idolized God, your desires shall be
accomplished with fanaticism. What are orders? Oh! no, don't go to
Fribourg. I adore you as religious, but no confession, no Jesuits. Stay
in Geneva.
My jeweller does not return; it vexes me a little. My package is
delayed: but it is true that the "Caricature" is not yet bound and I
wish you to receive all that I promised to send.
_Mon Dieu!_ your letter has refreshed my soul! You are very ravishing,
my frolic angel, darling flower. Oh! tell me all. I would like more
time to myself to tell you my life. But here I am, caught by twelve
volumes to publish, like a galley-slave in his handcuffs.
I have been to see Madame Delphine de Girardin this morning. I had to
implore her to find a place for a poor man recommended to me by the
lady of Angoulême, who terrified me by her silent missive. The sorrows
of others kills me! Mine, I know how to bear. Madame Delphine promised
me to do all she could with Émile de Girardin when he returns.
Apropos, my love, "L'Europe littéraire" is insolvent; there is a
meeting to-morrow of all the shareholders to devise means. I shall go
at seven o'clock, and as it is only a step from Madame Delphine's I
dine with her, and I shall finish the evening at Gérard's. So, I am all
upset for two days. Moreover, in the mornings I run about for money.
Already the hundred louis of Mademoiselle Eugénie Grandet have gone off
in smoke. I must bear it all patiently, as Monsieur Hanski's sheep let
themselves be sheared.
My rich love, what can I tell you to soothe your heart? That my
tenderness, the certainty of your affection, the beautiful secret life
you make me dwarfs everything and I laugh at my troubles--there are no
longer any troubles for me. Oh! I love you, my Eva! love you as you
wish to be loved, without limit. I like to say that to myself; imagine
therefore the happiness with which I repeat it.
I have to say to you that I don't like your reflected portrait, made
from a copy. No, no. I have in my heart a dear portrait that delights
me. I will wait till you have had a portrait made that is a better
likeness after nature. Poor treasure, oh! your shawl. I am proud to
think that I alone in the world can comprehend the pleasure you had in
giving it, and that I have that of reading what you have written to
me,--I who do these things so great and so little, so magnificent and
so _nothing_, which make a museum for the heart out of a straw!
My beloved, my thoughts develop all the tissues of love, and I would
like to display them to you, and make you a rich mantle of them. I
would like you to walk upon my soul, and in my heart, so as to feel
none of the mud of life.
Adieu, for to-day, my saintly and beautiful creature, you the principle
of my life and courage. You who love, who are beautiful, who have
everything and have given yourself to a poor youth. Ah! my heart will
be always young, fresh, and tender for you. In the immensity of days I
see no storm possible that can come to us. I shall always come to you
with a soul full of love, a smile upon my lips, and a soft word ready
to caress you in the ear. My Eva, I love you.
Thursday morning, 31.
No more anxieties, all is arranged! Here are six thousand francs found,
five thousand five hundred paid! There remains to the poor poet five
hundred francs in a noble bank-bill. Joy is in the house. I ask if
Paris is for sale. My love, you'll end by knowing a bachelor's life!
Yesterday, all was doubtful. In two hours of time all was settled. I
started to find my doctor, an old friend of my family, seeing that I
had nothing to hope from bankers. Ah! in the course of the way I met
R... who took me by the hand and led me to his wife. They were getting
into a carriage. Caresses, offers of service, why did they never see
me? why...? A thousand questions, and Madame R... began to make eyes at
me as she did at Aix, where she tried to seize my portrait on the sly.
Can't you see me, my love, in conference with a prince of money,--me,
who couldn't find four sous! Was anything ever more fantastic? A single
word to say, and my twelve thousand francs of notes of hand went into
the gulf. I said nothing about it, and certainly he would not have
taken a sou of discount. I laughed like one of the blest, as I left
him, at the situation.
I resume; seeing that I had nothing to hope from bankers, I reflected
that I owed three hundred francs to my doctor; I went and paid them
with one of my commercial notes, and he returned me seven hundred
francs, less the discount. From there I went to my landlord, an old
wheat-dealer in the Halle; I paid him my rent, and he returned me
on my note, which he accepted, seven hundred more francs, less the
discount. From there I went to my tailor, who at once took one of
my thousand-franc notes and put it in his memorandum of discount
[_bordereau d'escompte_--cash account?] and returned me a thousand
francs!
Finding myself in the humour, I got into a cabriolet and went to see
a friend, a double millionnaire, a friend of twenty years' standing.
He had just returned from Berlin. I found him; he turned to his desk
and gave me two thousand francs, and took two of my notes from Madame
Bêchet without looking at them. Oh! oh! I came home, I sent for my wood
merchant and my grocer to come and settle our accounts, and to each I
paid, in bank-bills, five hundred francs! At four o'clock I was free,
my payments for to-day prepared. Here I am, tranquil for a month. I
resume my seat on my fragile seasaw and my imagination rocks me. _Ecco,
signora!_
My dear, faithful wife, did I not owe you this faithful picture of
your Paris household? Yes, but there are five thousand francs of the
twenty-seven thousand eaten up, and I have, before I can go to Geneva,
ten thousand francs to pay: three thousand to my mother, one thousand
to my sister, and six thousand in indemnities. "Yah! monsieur, where
will you get all that?" In my inkbottle, dearly beloved Eva.
I am dressed like a lord, I have dined with Madame Delphine, and,
after being present at the death agony of "L'Europe littéraire," I
went joyously to Gérard's, where I complimented Grisi, whom I had
heard the night before in "La Gazza ladra" with Rossini, who, having
met me Tuesday on the Boulevard, forced me to go to his opera-box to
talk _un poco_; and as on that Tuesday your poor Honoré had dined with
Madame d'A[brantès] who had to render him an account of the great
negotiation (which missed fire) with Mame, he had, your poor youth, to
drown his sorrows in harmony. What a life, _ma minette_! What strange
discordances, what contrasts!
At Gérard's I heard the admirable Vigano. She refused to sing, snubbed
everybody; I arrived, I asked her for an air; she sat down at the
piano, sang, and delighted us. Thiers asked who I was; being told,
he said, "It is all plain, now." And the whole assembly of artists
marvelled.
The secret of it is that I was, last winter, full of admiration for
Madame Vigano; I idolize her singing; she knows that, and I am a
Kreizler to her. I went to bed at two o'clock after returning on
foot through the deserted, silent streets of the Luxembourg quarter,
admiring the blue sky and the effects of moon and vapour on the
Luxembourg, the Pantheon, Saint-Sulpice, the Val-de-Grâce, the
Observatoire, and the boulevards, drowned in torrents of thought and
carrying two thousand francs upon me--though I had forgotten them; my
valet found them. That night of love had plunged me in ecstasy; you
were in the heavens! they spoke of love; I walked, listening whether
from those stars your cherished voice would fall, sweet and harmonious,
to my ears, and vibrate in my heart; and, my idol, my flower, my life,
I embroidered a few arabesques on the evil stuff of my days of anguish
and toil.
To-day, Thursday, here I am back again in my study, correcting proofs,
recovering from my trips into the material world, resuming my chimeras,
my love; and in forty-eight hours the charms of midnight rising, going
to bed at six in the evening, frugality, and bodily inaction will be
resumed.
We have had, for the last week, an actual summer; the finest weather
ever created. Paris is superb. Love of my life, a thousand kisses are
committed to the airs for you; a thousand thoughts of happiness are
shed during my rushing about, and I know not what disdain in seeing
men. They have not, as I have, an immense love in their hearts, a
throne before which I prostrate myself without servility, the figure of
a madonna, a beautiful brow of love which I kiss at all hours, an Eve
who gilds all my dreams, who lights my life.
Adieu, my constant thought, _à demain_. I may not be so talkative;
to-morrow comes toil.
Friday.
I have worked all day at two proofs which have taken me twenty hours;
then I must, I think, find something to complete my second volume of
"Scènes de la Vie de province" because to make a fine book the printers
so compress my manuscript that another Scene is wanted of forty or
fifty pages. Nothing to-day, therefore, to her who has all my heart;
nothing but a thousand kisses, and my dear evening thoughts when I go
to sleep thinking of you.
To-morrow, pretty Eve.
Saturday.
Certainly, my love, you will not act comedy. I have not spoken to you
of that. I have just re-read your last letter. It is a prostitution to
exhibit one's self in that way; to speak words of love. Oh! be sacredly
mine! If I should tell you to what a point my delicacy goes, you would
think me worthy of an angel like yourself. I love you in me. I wish
to live far away from you, like the flower in the seed, and to let my
sentiments blossom for you alone.
To-day I have laboriously invented the "Cabinet des Antiques;" you will
read that some day. I wrote seventeen of the _feuillets_ at once. I
am very tired. I am going to dress to dine with my publisher, where I
shall meet Béranger. I shall get home late; I have still some business
to settle.
My cherished love, as soon as the first part appears and the second
is printed I shall fly to Geneva and stay there a good three weeks. I
shall go to the Hôtel de la Couronne, in the gloomy chamber I occupied
[in 1832]. I quiver twenty times a day at the idea of seeing you. I
meant to speak to you of Madame de C[astries], but I have not the time.
Twenty-five days hence I will tell you by word of mouth. In two words,
your Honoré, my Eva, grew angered by the coldness which simulated
friendship. I said what I thought; the reply was that I ought not to
see again a woman to whom I could say such cruel things. I asked a
thousand pardons for the "great liberty," and we continue on a very
cold footing.
I have read Hoffmann through; he is beneath his reputation; there is
something of it, but not much. He writes well of music; he does not
understand love, or woman; he does not cause fear; it is impossible to
cause it with physical things.
One kiss and I go.
Sunday.
Up at eight o'clock; I came in last night at eleven. Here are my hours
upset for four days. Frightful loss! I awaited the old gentleman
on whose behalf I implored Delphine. He did not come. It is eleven
o'clock,--no letter from Geneva. What anxiety! O my love, I entreat
you, try to send me letters on regular days; spare the sensibility of
a child's heart. You know how virgin my love is. Strong as my love is,
it is delicate, oh! my darling. I love you as you wish to be loved,
solely. In my solitude a mere nothing troubles me. My blood is stirred
by a syllable.
I have just come from my garden; I have gathered one of the last
violets in bloom there; as I walked I addressed to you a hymn of love;
take it, on this violet; take the kisses placed upon the rose-leaf.
The rose is kisses, the violet is thoughts. My work and you, that is
the world to me. Beyond that, nothing. I avoid all that is not my Eva,
my thoughts. Dear flower of heaven, my fairy, you have touched all
here with your wand; here, through you, all is beautiful. However
embarrassed life may be, it is smooth, it is even. Above my head I see
fine skies.
Well, to-morrow, I shall have a letter. Adieu, my cherished soul! Thank
you a thousand times for your kind letters; do not spare them. I would
like to be always writing to you; but, poor unfortunate, I am obliged
to think sometimes of the gold I draw from my inkstand. You are my
heart; what can I give you?
PARIS, Wednesday, November 6, 1833.
The agonies you have gone through, my Eve, I have very cruelly felt,
for your letter arrived only to-day. I cannot describe all the horrible
chimeras which tortured me from time to time; for the delay of one of
your letters puts everything in doubt between you and me; the delay of
one of mine does not imply so many evils to fear.
As to the last page of your letter, endeavour to forget it. I pardon
it, and I suffer at your distress. To be unjust and ill-natured! You
remind me of the man who thought his dog mad and killed him, and then
perceived that he was warning him not to lose his forgotten treasure.
You speak of death. There is something more dreadful, and that is pain;
and I have just endured one of which I will not speak to you. As to
my relations with the person you speak of, I never had any that were
very tender; I have none now. I answered a very unimportant letter,
and, apropos of a sentence, I explained myself; that was all. There are
relations of politeness due to women of a certain rank whom one has
known; but a visit to Madame Récamier is not, I suppose, _relations_,
when one goes to see her once in three months.
_Mon Dieu!_ the man who seems to be justifying himself has just been
stabbed to the heart. He smiles to you, my Eve, and this man does not
sleep--he, rather a sleepy man--more than five hours and a half. He
works seventeen hours, to be able to stay a week in your sight; I sell
years of my life to go and see you. This is not a reproach. But you may
say to me, you, that perhaps I love the pages I write _from necessity_
better than my love. But with you I am not proud, I am not humble. I
am, I try to be, you. You have suffered; I suffer,--you wished to make
me suffer. You will regret it. Try that it may not happen again; you
will break the heart that loves you, as a child breaks a toy to look
inside of it. Poor Eva! So we do not know each other? Oh, yes, we do,
don't we?
_Mon Dieu!_ to punish me for my confidence! for the joy that I feel
more and more in solitude! I don't know where my mother is; it is two
months that no one has any news of her. No letters from my brother. My
sister is in the country, guarded by duennas fastened on her by her
husband, and he is travelling. So I have no one to tell you about. The
_dilecta_ is with her son at Chaumont, with the devil. I am myself in a
torrent of proofs, corrections, copies, works. And it is at the moment
when I expected to plunge into all my joys that, after your first
pages, I find the pompous praise of ..., _mon Dieu!_ and my accusation
and condemnation, which will bleed long in a heart like mine.
I am sad and melancholy, wounded, weeping, and awaiting the serenity
that never comes full and complete. If you wished that, if you wished
to pour upon my life as much pain as I have toil (impossible now), Eva,
you have succeeded. As to anger, no; reproaches? what good are they?
Either you are in despair at having pained me, or you are content to
have done so. I do not doubt you. I would like to console you; but
you have cruelly abused the distance that separates us, the poverty
that prevents my taking a post-chaise, the engagements of honour which
forbid me to leave Paris before the 25th or 26th of this month. You
have been a woman; I thought you an angel. I may love you the better
for it; you bring yourself nearer to me. I will smile to you without
ceasing. Ever since I knew the Indian maxim, "Never strike, even with
a flower, a woman with a hundred faults," I have made that the rule
of my conduct. But it does not prevent me from feeling to the heart,
more violently than those who kill their mistresses feel, insults, and
suspicions of evil. I, so exclusive, tainted with commonness! made
petty enough to be lowered to vengeance! What! that love so pure, you
stain it with suspicion, with blame, with doubt! God himself cannot
efface what has been; he may oppose the future, but not the past!
I cannot write more; I rave; my ideas are confused. After twelve hours
of toil I wanted a little rest, and to-day I must rest in suffering.
Oh! my only love, what grief to look on what I write to you, to weigh
my words, and not say all that is without evasion, because I am without
reproach. Oh! I suffer. I have not a passing passion, but a one sole
love!
November, 10, 1833.
I posted a letter last night, not expecting to be able to write again;
I suffered too much. My neuralgia attacked me. That is a secret between
me and my doctor; he made me take some pills, and I am better this
morning. But, can I help it? your letter burns my heart. I will go to
Geneva, I will pass my winter there. At least you shall not have the
right to emit suspicions. You shall see my life of toil, and you will
perceive the barbarity there is in arming yourself with my confidence
in opening my heart to you. I, who want to think in you! I, who detach
myself from everything to be more wholly yours!
Deceive you! But, as you say yourself, that would be too easy. Besides,
is that my character? Love is to me all confidence. I believe in you
as in myself. What you say of that compatriot [Madame de Castries is
meant] makes me surfer, but I do not doubt it. I shall not speak to you
of the cause of your imprecation, "Go to the feet of your marquise"
[_Va aux pieds de ta marquise_], except verbally.[1]
I have five important affairs to terminate, but I shall sacrifice
all to be on the 25th in Geneva, at that inn of the Pré-l'Évêque.
But we shall see each other very little. I must go to bed at six in
the evening, to rise at midnight. But from midday till four o'clock
every day I can be with you. For that I must do things here that seem
impossible; I shall attempt them. If they cause me a thousand troubles
I shall go to Geneva, and forget everything there to see but one thing,
the one heart, the one woman by whom I live.
I would give my life that that horrible page had not been written. To
reproach me for my very devotion! Do you believe that I would not
leave all, and go with you to the depths of some retreat? You arm
yourself with the phrase in which I sacrifice (the word meant nothing,
there is no sacrifice) to you all!
Why have you flung suffering into what was so sweet? You have made me
give to grief the time that belonged to the toil which facilitates my
means of going to you sooner.
I await, with an impatience beyond words, a letter, a line; you have
completely upset me. No, you do not know the childlike heart, the
poet's heart, that you have bruised. I am a man to suffer, then!
Adieu. Did I tell you the story of that man who wrote drinking-songs
in order to bury an adored mistress? To work with a heart in mourning
is my fate till your next letter comes. You owe me your life for this
fatal week. Oh! my angel, mine belongs to you. Break, strike, but love
me still. I adore you as ever; but have mercy on the innocent. I do not
know if you have formed an idea of what I have to do. I must finish
with the printing of four volumes before I can start, I must compound
with five difficulties, pay eight thousand francs; and the four volumes
make one hundred _feuilles_, or one hundred times sixteen pages, to be
revised each three or four times, without counting the manuscripts.
Well, I will lose sleep, I will risk all, but you will see me near you
on the 20th at latest.
To-morrow I shall write openly to Madame Hanska to announce my parcel.
May I put here a kiss full of tears? Will it be taken with love? Make
no more storms without cause in what is so pure.
It is midday. That you may get this in time, I send it to the general
post-office.
[Footnote 1: This whole presentation of Madame Hanska justifies, and
even demands, a few words here. Judging her by the genuine letters in
this volume,--which are, so far as I know, our only means of judging
her at all at this distance of time,--she was a woman of principle,
dignity, intelligence, and good-breeding; with a strong sense of duty,
and a certain deliberateness of nature, shown in the fact that it was
eight years after M. Hanski's death before she consented to marry
Balzac. Her love for him was plainly much less than his for her; but
she was proud of his devotion, and always unwilling to lose it. That a
woman of her position and character ever wrote to Balzac those words,
"_Va aux pieds de ta marquise_," is an impossibility. There are certain
things that a woman of breeding cannot do or say; though some who do
not know what such women are do not perceive this.
Writing a few weeks later than the above letter (from Geneva in
January, 1834) to his intimate friend, Madame Carraud, Balzac bears the
following little testimony to Madame Hanska's feeling to his friend:
"I hope you know what the security of friendship is, and that you will
not say to me again, 'Bear me in memory,' when some one here [Madame
Hanska] says to me, 'I am happy in knowing that you inspire such
friendships; that justifies mine for you.'" (Éd. Déf. vol. xxiv, p.
192). This is the woman whose memory a few men are now endeavouring to
smirch.--TR.]
PARIS, Thursday, November 12, 1833.
It is six o'clock; I am going to bed, much fatigued by certain errands
[_courses_] made for pressing affairs; for I have hope, at the cost of
three thousand francs in money, of compromising on the litigious affair
which causes me the most anxiety. On returning home I found your letter
sent Friday, with that kind page which effaces all my pain.
O my adored angel, as long as you do not fully know the bloom of
sensitiveness which constant toil and almost perpetual seclusion have
left in my heart, you will not understand the ravages that a word, a
doubt, a suspicion can cause. In walking this morning through Paris I
said to myself that commercially the most simple contract could not be
broken without attainting probity; but have you not broken, without
hearing me, a promise that bound us forever?
This is the last time that I shall speak to you of that letter except
when, in Geneva, I shall explain to you what gave rise to it. Fear
nothing; I have finished all my visits, and shall not go again to
Gérard's. I refuse all invitations, I hibernate completely, and the
woman most ambitious of love could find nothing to blame in me.
But alas! all that I have been able to do has been to take one more
hour from sleep. I must sleep five hours. My doctor, whom I saw this
morning, and who knows me since I was ten years old (a friend of the
house), is always fearful on seeing how I work. He threatens me with an
inflammation of the integuments of my cerebral nerves:--
"Yes, doctor," I told him, "if I committed excess upon excess; but for
three years I have been as chaste as a young girl, I never drink either
wine or liquors, my food is weighed, and the return of my neuralgia
comes less from work than from grief."