I am reading over your letter to see if I have forgotten anything. No;
I have answered all, and only omitted to tell you one thing, because
it is too daily: it is that I press, across space, the pretty hand you
hold out to me so graciously, and wish a thousand pleasures to your
caravan.
_À bientôt_ in Rome; for work, alas! will make me consume the time with
terrifying rapidity. Adieu, I cannot quit my pen any better than I
could quit your house in Geneva.
You chose to laugh, _à la_ Française, at my "beautiful marquise, whose
fine eyes make me die of love." I will play the Frenchman and tell you
to turn that speech round, except as to the beauty of the eyes. Fie!
it is not nice to be always showing me the rock on which my vanity was
wrecked. Come, admit that you have not been frank, or it will be the
ground of a quarrel in Rome--if one could quarrel with you on meeting
again.
PARIS, May 10, 1834.
I have this moment received, madame, your letter of April 30. Alas! I
have buried my hopes of the Rome trip. It always costs me horribly to
renounce an illusion; all my illusions seem to be one and inseparable.
I have but a moment to answer you, for in order that you may get this
letter before you leave Florence, on the 20th, it must be posted
to-day, and it is now twelve o'clock. You do not tell me where you are
going. Is it to Milan? What will be your address? How long shall you
stay? I could see you there if I went with Borget. But at any rate, in
September, at Vienna. That is more reasonable.
_Mon Dieu!_ yes, the advice you give is impossible to follow. With the
certainty of risk, I risk myself. There are no thanks worthy of the
kindness you show in speaking to me so frankly of what I do; and you
will not know, except in course of years, how grateful I am for this
frankness. Do not be afraid; go on, blaming boldly.
You tell me to go to Gérard's; have I the time? Time melts in my
fingers. To bring to an end my crushing liabilities I have undertaken
a tragedy, in prose, called, "Don Philippe et Don Carlos." It is the
old subject of Don Carlos already treated by Schiller. All must march
abreast; the little literature of copper coins, the puerilities, the
studies of manners and morals, and the great thoughts that are not
understood,--"Louis Lambert," "Séraphita," "César Birotteau," etc.
My life is always the same. I rise to work, I sleep little. Sometimes
I let myself go to gentle reveries. Since I last wrote to you, I have
had but one recreation; I heard Beethoven's symphony in C minor at
the Conservatoire. Ah! how I regretted you. I was alone in a stall--I
alone! It was suffering without expression. There exists in me a need
of expansion which toil beguiles, but which the first emotion brings to
the surface like a gush of tears. Yes, I am alone, deplorably alone. To
find happiness I need the evening hour, silence, not work, but solitude
and my inmost thoughts.
Write me quickly where I shall send you "Les Chouans," which will
appear on the 15th, five days hence. Florence will certainly see me;
you have been happy there. I shall go and pick up your thoughts in
seeing those beautiful places, those noble works. I am only jealous of
the illustrious dead: Beethoven, Michel Angelo, Raffaelle, Poussin,
Milton,--all that was ever grand, noble, and solitary stirs me.
All is not said about me yet; I am only at the little details of a
great work. When a man has undertaken what I have to do,--ah! madame,
permit me to confide this to your heart,--it is impossible to fall into
the petty and base intrigues of this world; sentiments ought to be as
great as the works desire to be great. My ambition is even stronger on
the side of sentiments than it is for a fame which, after all, shines
only upon graves! So, I live alone, more alone than ever; nothing
drags me from my contemplations: to love and to think, to act and to
meditate. To develop all one's strength on two great things,--work and
the richest emotions of the soul,--what can one ask more than that? A
drop of friendship, a little sunshine; to press a hand by which we can
support ourselves.
Your advice upon my writings proves to me that on one point you have
crowned my ambition. I would that I could send into your soul by this
paper the emotions of pleasure your letter has caused me. But that is
difficult.
So I cannot see you again until Vienna! Till then I shall not listen
again to the only person who has made me hear a language completely
poetical and largely generous. I must stop, for you will take truth
for flattery. What a hindrance is writing; how often one look has more
meaning than all words. Well, you will divine whatever I think that is
good, and all that time prevents me from saying. You wall tell yourself
that it is impossible for a solitary man--a man often crushed by work
and lost in Paris--not to think, every day, of persons who love him
truly; you will know that I am occupied with you, and am gathering for
you those autographs.
_Mon Dieu!_ what a number of things to tell you! How the Academy wanted
to give the Montyon prize to the "Médecin de campagne," and what I
did to avoid being put in the competition,--as many applications and
proceedings were needed as the other competitors made to obtain the
prize. And about my tragedy, and my other works in hand! But it is very
difficult not to forget one's self in thinking of you.
If you go to Milan, if you stay some time, if I can go and say
_bonjour_ to you for a few days, tell me; for from the 20th to the 30th
of June I should be very glad of an object for a trip, and I know none
that would give me such keen happiness. I will inquire about Bartolini;
but I see plainly you do not know our sculptors. In the Exhibition
there was a statue of Modesty which might crush the antique; in
sculpture we have great talents that are real. You like Bartolini, so I
will like him, and I will make Gérard like him. But you think no longer
of Grosclaude; do you know that your admirations have something which
might alarm any other heart than a sincerely friendly one?
You have shown such exquisite feeling for my poor "Chouans" that, to
make it less unworthy of you and me, I have delivered myself up to
patient toil such as my printer alone has an idea of. You will re-read
the book in Milan, no doubt. The third Part of the "Études de Mœurs"
will not be ready before the first days of June. I should much like to
have Susette take them to you from the author, who would then solicit
an audience and recover from the fatigues of the journey through the
hope of seeing you.
Alas! I have such business on hand that the devil and his horns could
not get away. But I am a three-horned demon, of the race, rather
degenerated, of Napoleon.
A thousand gracious thoughts and memories. Find here all that you can
wish in a heart full of gratitude and devotion.
What! will you really be in Vienna in July? So soon! These distances
placed between us seem to me like farewells. But I shall go to Germany
in September. I shall arrive rich with some successes; which please
me now only because you take an interest in them; you make them more
essential to me for this reason.
Well, here is the hour. I do not know where to write to you, but I
shall write all the same, and when your new box comes I will send it to
you. There is no lake at Vienna, therefore give me the hope of seeing
the Lago Maggiore with you. At Vienna I shall do my reconnoitring on
the Danube, in order to paint the battle of Wagram, and the fight
at Essling, which are to be my work during the coming winter in the
Ukraine, if you will have me. But I must also see the countries through
which Prince Eugène marched from Italy across the Tyrol.
Adieu, adieu, you whom one does not like to leave. You know as well as
I all that I think, and you must be kind enough to give expression to
my sentiments to your travelling companions. Oh! how I wish I could
have seen with you the city of flowers!
PARIS, June 3rd--June 21, 1834.
I have this moment received, madame, the last letter you did me the
honour to write to me from Florence; I hope, therefore, that this one
will find you in Milan in time to prevent false hopes, as you are so
kind as to interest yourself in my excellent Borget. He is still at
Issoudun, and will take Italy by way of the Tyrol, beginning by both
banks of the Rhine; therefore he will have no chance of meeting you. I
am sorry. His is one of those fine souls one needs to know in order to
judge of man and have some ideas of the future.
I myself renounce with sorrow the pleasure I had planned, of bidding
you good-day in Milan. You put such grace and urgency into your
inquiries as to my situation that I cannot help speaking of it to
you after summing it up for myself. I still owe six thousand ducats
[sixty to eighty thousand francs]; this will be comprehensible to you
if turned into your currency. Between now and the last of October, I
must pay off two thousand. The remaining four thousand are owing to my
mother. But until the end of October I have five hundred ducats to pay
monthly; and since my return from Geneva my pen and my courage have
sufficed until now to pay that sum. If by the end of September I am
free, I shall have done marvels. But until then neither truce nor rest.
My tranquil, joyous winter must be won at this cost. The doctor thinks
well of the Baden waters. This is my situation.
For the last two months I have worked night and day at the work
you honour with your preference. You have had much influence on my
determination relating to that work ["Les Chouans"]. In the desire to
make it worthy of your friendship I have re-made it. It is not yet
perfect, because, absorbed in the faults of the _ensemble_, I have let
pass faults of detail and several mistakes. But, such as it is, it
may now bear my name and you can avow your charitable protection. It
has needed a courage no one will give me credit for; but the secret
of my perseverance and my love for this work has been in my desire to
be agreeable to you, and to deserve one of those approbations which
intoxicate me with pleasure, and to hear from your lips, when I have
shaken off the enormous weight of my troubles, that the work pleases
you. I shall send it to Florence to M. Borri, requesting him to forward
it to you in Milan; and I shall also send it to Trieste, so that this
poor first flower may be certain to receive your friendly glances. I
have been delighted with it, and I have let myself be persuaded that
you are right in liking it. I have tried to justify your preference.
Marie de Verneuil is much finer, and the work has been well cleaned up;
but, as the printer said to me: "It is not forbidden to put butter on
spinach,"--a saying worthy of Charlet.
Great news! Pichot is dismissed from the "Revue de Paris;" I return
there with several pecuniary advantages, which will help me to get
free. "Séraphita" serves me to re-enter with great éclat. The work has
surprised Parisians. When the last number appears I shall add a letter
of _envoi_ to you, in which you will find the dedication, which I shall
try to make worthy of you, simple and grand. It was not put in the
beginning because I did not wish to dedicate to you a book not finished.
Here is a whole long month that I have worked to pure loss on my third
Part. I am dissatisfied, vexed with what I do. Nevertheless, you will
find it at Trieste. I must make a composition in the style of "Eugénie
Grandet," to sustain this Part [of the Études de Mœurs].
My affairs are, at this moment, complicated by a transaction I have
proposed to M. Gosselin, to annul our contracts, which will require
six thousand francs in cash paid to him, for which he will return my
agreements. That point obtained, I shall have no engagements except
with Madame Bêchet; and by three months of great labour I could, by
the end of September, take the road to Germany, poor, but without
anxieties, carrying my tragedy to do, and idleness to enjoy near you.
If you knew what cares, debates, labours were necessary to reach this
result! But what happiness to recover liberty, what pleasure to do what
one likes!
Spachmann is no longer Coquebin. By my efforts, and those of my sister,
he has just married a young and pretty girl who will have some fortune.
She brings him five hundred ducats, which make him rich, and she has
four thousand more in expectation. Mademoiselle Borel was quite wrong;
here's a happy man made. I thought of you in marrying this poor binder,
about whom we laughed and talked at your fireside in Geneva.
The greatest sorrows have overwhelmed Madame de Berny. She is far from
me, at Nemours, where she is dying of her troubles. I cannot write you
about them; they are things that can only be spoken of ear to ear. But
I am all the more alone, deplorably alone,--as much alone, that is, as
I can be, for treasures are in my thought during the hours of repose
and calmness which I take with delight. All is hope for me, because all
is belief.
If you knew how much there is of you in each rewritten phrase of
the "Chouans"! You will only know it when I can tell you in the
chimney-corner at Vienna, in some hour of calm and silence when the
heart has neither secrets nor veils.
The correction of the second edition of "Le Médecin de campagne"
draws to a close, and I am half-way on with the third _dizain_,--so
that I now am driving abreast nine volumes. My life is sober, silent,
self-contained. Nevertheless, a _lady_ has crossed the straits and
written me a beautiful letter _in English_, to which I have answered
that I only understand French, and that I respect ladies too much to
give it out for translation. The affair stopped there. I received
a letter from Madame Jeroslas ..., delightful in style and quite
surprising. I have not yet replied.
Those are all the events of my life since I wrote you last.
"Philippe le Réservé" is put aside. Nevertheless, the literary world
is very curious about my play. In reply to what you deign to write
me about it, I must tell you that Carlos was so deeply in love with
the Queen that there is sufficient proof that the child of which she
died pregnant ("treated for dropsy, for God took pity on the throne
of Spain, and blinded the doctors," says the sensitive Mariano) was
the Infant's. So in my play the Queen is guilty, according to received
ideas. Carlos idem; Philippe II. and Carlos are fooled by Don John
of Austria. I conform to history and follow it step by step. However,
according to all appearance, this work will be done under your eye, for
it is the only thing that can be done while travelling, and you shall
then judge of the political depths of that awful tragedy. It needs a
lead well guarded by ropes to gauge it! Two of my friends are ardently
rummaging historical manuscripts that I may miss nothing. I want to
obtain even the plans of the palace and the rules of etiquette of the
Spanish court under Philippe II.
MM. Berryer and Fitz-James wish to have me nominated for deputy, but
they will fail. The matter will be decided within a month, and you
will know it, no doubt, at Trieste. If I were nominated I should have
myself ordered to Baths, for the portfolio of prime minister would not
induce me to renounce the dear use I mean to make of the first moment
of liberty I have ever won in my life.
The farther I go on, the higher is the ideal I form of true happiness.
For me, a happy day is more than worlds. When I want to give myself
a magnificent fête I shut my eyes and lie down on a sofa, and absorb
myself in remembering the silly things I said to you with my _pa'ole
d'ôneû panachée_,[1] beside the Lake of Geneva, and I go over again
that good day at Diodati, which effaced a thousand pangs I had felt
there a year before. You have made me know the difference between a
true affection and a simulated affection, and for a heart as childlike
as mine there is cause there for eternal gratitude.
Yesterday I went to see my mother and found her much changed, very
ill and quite resigned. I have been sad ever since. In settling and
clearing up our accounts a fortnight ago she fretted greatly about what
would happen to me if she died, and that constant foresight pained me.
Yesterday I was far more sad. She is very good to me. She has sent for
me, but to-day I cannot go because I am expecting an arbitrator to whom
I must explain the Gosselin affair. But to-morrow I shall go quickly. I
have now only fifteen days in which to do a volume which is impatiently
demanded, and never did I have less warmth of imagination.
[Footnote 1: Fashionable speech of the "Incroyables."--TR.]
June 20.
You are at Milan. I am not there! This letter, begun seventeen days
ago, has remained unfinished by force of circumstances. In the first
place, the return of my brother from the West Indies with a wife (was
it necessary to go five thousand miles to find a wife like that?); then
annoyances, vexations without number, besides work. The publisher of
"Les Chouans" has not paid me. Here I am, with notes falling due. Then,
M. Gosselin demands ten thousand francs, nearly a thousand ducats,
to break our contract; I am trying to find them. But the greatest
misfortune is this: after much trouble I had succeeded in finding a
subject for my third Part; but after doing _half a volume_ I flung
it into the box of embryos, and have begun anew with a grand, noble,
magnificent subject, which will give you, I hope, both honour and
pleasure. According to my ideas, and according to my critics, it is
above everything else. But I have had to make up for time lost. Ah!
madame, what hours of despair and terrible insomnia between the 3rd and
the 20th of June. There must have been sympathy!
Believe in me, I entreat you. Whether you go to Vienna or to
Wierzchownia, my winter is destined to you. I want to flee Paris; I
want absolutely to dig out in silence my Philippe II. You will see me
arrive with the rapidity, the fidelity of a swallow.
I shall go, in July, to Nemours to write, away from Paris, which is
intolerable in summer, my fourth and fifth Parts of the "Études de
Mœurs." If I can end them in September I shall make untold efforts to
get the last printed by the beginning of November. Perhaps you will
still be in Vienna the first fifteen days of that month. I would like
to know your itinerary, for I shall take, as soon as I can, fifteen
days' liberty, and shall go, naturally, to the country you are in.
I send to-day, to Trieste, the "Chouans" for you, and the second
edition of the "Médecin de campagne" for Monsieur Hanski, as you have
yours. I will send my third Part later, for I am very impatient to have
your opinion about this new production. When "Séraphita" is finished
I will bring her to you, bound by the husband of the pretty girl of
Versailles. You will see he had not the heart to continue Coquebin to
do that savage binding of cloth and satin. But if I could know how long
you stay at Trieste, I could leave here July 10th and be at Trieste the
16th, see you for three days, and get back again. I have a thousand
things to bring you; the _cotignac_, the perfumes, and _tutti quanti_.
I shall end this letter by saying: _à bientôt_. The hope of crossing
many countries to find you at the end of the journey gives me courage.
I work, now, twenty consecutive hours. Well, I must bid you adieu,
saying, as gracefully as I can, that you are less a memory to me than
a heart-thought, and that you would be very unkind to fling in my face
forever that I am a Frenchman. Remember, madame, that I am a Coquebin
who does not marry, or at least only marries with the Muses. I have
been alarmed by reading in Hoffmann (article on Vows) a severe judgment
on Polish women; still, I had, to tell the truth, a pleasurable
evening in thinking that the article was true for you in all that was
flattering, and false in all that was cruel.
Our poor Sismondi has been roughly demolished (the word is true) in the
"Revue de Paris" of last Sunday. His "Histoire des Français" has been
rased, destroyed--from garret to cellar.
Poor Madame de Castries is going away, dying, and so dying that I
blame myself for not having been there for a month, for those infamous
Parisians have deserted her because she suffers. What a sad sentiment
is that of pity. Therefore!--Ah!
Friday, 21.
I have been for several days sad and distressed. I did not tell you
this yesterday. The post hour went by, and I kept this letter. Yes, I
have failed in hope, I who live only by hope, that noble virtue of the
Christian life. "Le Médecin de campagne" reappears to-morrow. What will
be its fate?
I have been very happy this morning; you could never, perhaps, guess
why. I should have to paint to you the state of a poor solitary who
stays in his cell, rue Cassini, and whose only rejoicing is in a tiny
winged insect which comes from time to time. The poor little gleam was
late in coming, and I was horribly afraid, saying to myself: "Where
is she? Is anything amiss with her? She has been eaten up!" At last
the pretty little creature came. Once more I saw my _bête à bon dieu_,
iridescent, a little mournful; but I put it on my paper and asked it,
as if it were a person: "Have you come from Italy? How are my friends?"
You will take me for a lunatic--no, for I have heart and intellect, and
only trespass through excess, not want, of sensibility. That is how a
man who wrote the "Treize" can weep with joy on again beholding the
scales of his little insect.
Well, adieu. I wish that _you_ might have the same quiverings. That
is only saying that one is still young, that the heart beats strong,
that life is beautiful, that one feels, one loves, and that all the
riches of the earth are less than one hour of sensuous joy such as I
had with my little insect. And, also, do you know how much of joy,
amber, flowers, grace of the countries it flies through, that little
creature can bring back? See all that poesy can invent about a _bête à
bon dieu_, and what lunatics are hermits and dreamers!
Well, adieu; be happy on your journey; see all those fine countries
well. As for me, I am furious at being nailed to this little mahogany
table, which has been so long the witness of my thoughts, sorrows,
miseries, distresses, joys--of all! Thus I will never give it except
to ----. But I will not tell you all my secrets to-day.
To-day I am gay. I have been so sad nearly all this month! There are my
beautiful blue flowers in the barren fields between the Observatoire
and my window drooping their heads. It is hot. Nevertheless, if I want
to see you this winter I must mind neither weariness, nor heat, nor
weakness.
Would you believe that the second edition of the "Physiologie du
Mariage" does not appear, that those men will not pay me, and that I
shall have another lawsuit on my hands? _Mon Dieu!_ What have I done to
those fellows!
Kiss Anna on the forehead. Oh! how I wish I were her horse again.
Offer my regards to M. Hanski. Put all that is most flowery in French
courtesy at the feet of your two companions, and keep for yourself,
madame, whatever you will of my heart.
PARIS, July 1, 1834.
Ah! madame, nature is avenging herself for my disdain of her laws; in
spite of my too monastic life my hair is falling out by handfuls, it is
whitening to the eye! the absolute inaction of my body is making me fat
beyond measure. Sometimes I remain twenty-five hours seated. No, you
won't recognize me any more! The moments of despair and melancholy are
more frequent. Griefs of all sorts are not lacking to me.
I wrote three half-volumes before finding anything suitable for the
third Part of the "Études de Mœurs." It will at last appear on the
20th of this month. (Be satisfied, it is not I who am elected deputy.)
You will tell me, will you not? where I am to send my third Part. Do
not deprive me of the happiness of being read by you, which is one of
my rewards. I still have three months' arduous labour before me; shall
I finish before October? I don't know. I am like the bird flying above
the face of the waters and finding no rock on which to rest its feet. I
should be unjust if I did not say that the flowery island where I could
repose is in sight of my piercing eyes; but it is far, far-off.
I should like to write to you only good news; but, although arranged,
my compromise with M. Gosselin is not yet signed. I must find a
thousand ducats, and in our book business nothing is so scarce; for
_books_ are not _francs_--and not always _français_!
I laugh, but I am profoundly sad. "La Recherche de l'Absolu" will
certainly extend the limits of my reputation; but these are victories
that cost too dear. One more, and I shall be seriously ill. "Séraphita"
has cost me many hairs. I must find exaltations that do not come at the
cost of life. But that work which belongs to you ought to be my finest.
Tell me to what Baths you are going, for it is possible
if--if--if--that I may myself bring you various little things, such as
a faultless new edition of the "Médecin de campagne," my third Part,
and the manuscript of "Séraphita," which will be finished in August.
Yes, stay at some place where I can go till September l5th.
If I compromise with Gosselin, I can free myself only by alienating
an edition of the "Études Philosophiques." That will be work added to
work. In the total solitude in which I live, sighing after a poesy
which is lacking to me and which you know, I plunge into music. I have
taken a seat in a box at the Opera, where I go for two hours every
other day. Music to me is memories. To hear music is to love those we
love, better. It is thinking with joys of the senses of our inward
joys; it is living beneath eyes whose fire we love; it is listening to
the beloved voice. So Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from half-past
seven to ten o'clock, I love with delight. My thought travels.
Well, I must say _<au revoir_; as soon as my compromise is made I will
write to you about it in detail. Never find fault with my devoted
friendship; it is independent of time and space. I think of you nearly
all day, and is not that natural? The only happy moments I have known
for a year, moments when there was neither work nor the worries of
material life, were enjoyed near you; I think of you and of your
wandering colony as one thinks of happiness, and since I left you I
have lived only the burning life of unfortunate artists.
Was M. Hanski gratified by my attention? You shall have, madame, an
edition for yourself; an edition which I shall try to make ravishing,
and in which there will be a secret coquetry. Ah! if I had had your
features I would have pleased myself in having them engraved as La
Fosseuse. But though I have memory enough for myself, I should not have
enough for a painter.
Day before yesterday, I had a visit from Wolff, the pianist from
Geneva. I could have thrown the house out of windows for joy. Was it
not he who asked me: "Who is that admirable lady?" So the poor lad
found me very cordial, very splendidly hospitable. To see him was to
fancy myself back in Pré-l'Évêque, ten steps from your house, and
breathing the Genevese air.
I hope to be able to write you more at length a few days hence. I
reserve to myself the right to write my tragedy at Wierzchownia. I
have amused myself like a boy in naming a Pole M. de Wierzchownia, and
bringing him on the scene in the "Recherche de l'Absolu." That was a
longing I could not resist, and I beg your pardon and that of M. Hanski
for the great liberty. You couldn't believe how that printed name
fascinates me.
What a good winter to be far from the annoyances of Paris, absorbed in
a tragedy, struggling with a tragedy, laughing every evening with you
and making the master laugh, for whom I'll invent "Contes Drolatiques"
expressly for him! If I have to get to you through driving snow-storms
I shall come! And after that, I'll go to the Emperor Nicholas himself
to obtain permission for you to come to Paris and see the fiasco of my
play!
Adieu, you who are seeing every day new countries, while I can see but
one! I hope Anna is well, and that M. Hanski has none of his _black
dragons_, that Mademoiselle Borel smiles, that Susette sings, that
Mademoiselle Séverine still retains her graceful indifference, and you,
madame, that vigorous constitution which is a principle of living joys;
but also of pains; my desire is that God shall take all sorrow from
your cup. Do not forget to tell me where you will stay after Trieste.