PARIS, January 4, 1835.
I have had the happiness to receive two letters from you within a
few days of each other, while you have doubtless received both mine.
I return to _mes moutons_ by asserting that you can write to me
regularly, and that it is not permissible in you to deprive me of my
sun.
Bah! I have not seen either K... or T... again. Why do you scold me?
Don't take my magic-lantern views for realities.
All is much changed since my last letter. Alas! I had the ambition to
be near you on the 20th of January, and I began to work eighteen hours
a day. I stood it for fifteen days, from my last letter till December
31; then I risked an insomnia; and I am now waking from a sleep of
seventeen hours, taken at intervals, which has saved me. What has the
public gained? "Le Père Goriot," on which these stupid Parisians dote.
"Père Goriot" is put above everything else.
I wait till I have finished "Séraphita" to send it at the same time as
the manuscript of "Séraphita," in its binding of cloth and silk as you
wished, simple and mysterious as the book itself; also the manuscript
of "Le Père Goriot" with the printed book, the first Part of the
"Études Philosophiques," and the fourth of the "Études de Mœurs."
My works are beginning to be better paid. "Père Goriot" has brought me
seven thousand francs, and as it will go into the "Études de Mœurs" in
a few months, I may say that it will bring me a thousand ducats. Oh!
I am very deeply humiliated to be so cruelly fastened to the glebe of
my debts, to be able to do nothing, never to have the free disposal of
myself. These are bitter tears, shed day and night in silence; they are
sorrows inexpressible, for the power of my desires must be known, to
comprehend that of my regrets.
So you fatigue yourself by going into society,--you, flower of
solitude, and so beauteous in worldly inexperience! Your letter brought
the whole social life of Vienna into this study where I work without
ceasing. I became a worldling with you.
Alas! I am threatened with a grief that will spread over all my life.
I went for two days to see Madame de Berny, who is eighteen leagues
from here. I was witness of a terrible attack. I can no longer doubt
it, she has aneurism of the heart. That life, so precious, is lost.
At any moment death may take from me an angel who has watched over me
for fourteen years; she, too, a flower of solitude, whom the world has
never touched, and who has been my star. My work is not done without
tears. The attentions due to her cast uncertainty upon any time of
which I could dispose, though she herself unites with the doctor in
advising me some strong diversions. She pushes friendship so far as to
hide her sufferings from me; she tries to seem well for me. You will
understand that I have not drawn Claës to do as he did. Great God! what
changes in her have been wrought in two months! I am overwhelmed. To
feel one's self well-nigh mad with grief, and yet to be condemned to
toil! To lose that grand and noble part of my life and to know you so
far away from me is enough to make one throw one's self into the Seine!
The future of my mother which rests upon me, and that hope which
shines afar, so far! are like two branches to which I cling. Therefore
your _scolds_ about the K.s and the P.s and my dissipations make me
smile sadly. Nevertheless, I have put your letter next to my heart,
with that profound sense of egotism which makes us clasp the last
friend who is left to us. You will be, if this person is taken from me,
the only and sole person who has opened my heart. You alone will know
the Sesame, for the feeling of Madame Carraud of Issoudun is in some
sort the double of that of my sister.
You will never know with what power of cohesion I have recourse to the
memories of that young friendship, while weeping to-day over a feeling
which death is about to destroy, leaving all its ties behind it in me.
The reading of the second number of "Père Goriot" gave Madame de Berny
such pleasure that she had an attack of the heart. So I, who did not
suspect the gravity of the harm, was the innocent cause of suffering.
I began a letter quite gaily, after having received yours of the 12th;
but I threw it into the fire. Its gaiety hurt me. You will forgive me,
will you not, for that chastity of feeling?--.you, so like to _her!_
you in whom I find so many of the ideas, graces, noblenesses, which
have made me name that person: my conscience.
Between this sorrow and the distant light I love, what are men, the
world, society! There is nothing possible but the constant work into
which I throw myself--work, my saviour, which will give me liberty,
and return to me my wings. I quivered on reading your reasoning: "No
letters; he is coming." That idea naturally came to you; I have too
often been tortured by it. I am seized with periodic furies to leave
all behind me, to escape, to spring into a carriage! Then the chains
clang down; I see the thickness of my dungeon. If I come to you it
will be as a surprise, for I can no longer make decisions on that
subject. I must finish for Madame Bêchet the fifth Part of the "Études
de Mœurs," finish the second part of the "Études Philosophiques" for
Werdet, finish "Séraphita," and provide the necessary money to pay
all here in my absence, and I have not a single friend of whom I can
ask a farthing; it has all to be drawn from my inkstand. _There_ is
my Potosi; but to work it I must do without sleep and lose my health.
Poverty is a horrible thing. It makes us blame our own heart; it
denaturalizes all things. In my case it is necessary that talent or
power of writing be as punctual to time as the falling due of my notes.
I must not be ill, or suffering, or ill-disposed for work. I must be,
like the scales of the Mint, of iron and steel, and coining always!
Yet I exist only by the heart. And so I suffer! Oh! I suffer, as much
as any creature can suffer who is all independence, feeling, open to
happiness, but clogged and groaning under the iron weight of the chain
with which necessity crushes him!
At this time last year I was without my chain, far from my worries,
near you. What a looking back to the past! Then I did not think about
being able to release myself, I was thoughtless about my debts. To-day
I believe in my liberation; I have nearly reached it. Six months more
of sacrifices and I am saved, I become myself, I am free! I shall go
and eat with you the first bit of bread that belongs to me, that will
not be steeped in tears and ink and toil.
I do not want to sadden you, I only want to tell you that if I am
oppressed I feel as keenly the happiness there is in being able to tell
of it. But you neglect me as if you were nothing to me; you write me
seldom. Why will you not give me, to me alone, one day in the week for
a letter. Suppose I were in Vienna and went to see you every Sunday, I,
poor workman, you would give me that day. Well, I declare to you that
if I am not in Vienna in the body I can be there in thought. Write me
therefore on that day. I shall then have a letter every week when this
rolling of letters is once established. I will answer you. You have not
written me a single letter to which I have not instantly replied.
I offer you no special New Year's wishes. Those wishes I make daily for
you and yours.
I shall send by diligence to-day the first Part of the "Études
Philosophiques" so that you may not wait but may always keep the run
of my work. You will easily guess that the Introduction has cost me as
much as it has M. Félix Davin, whom I had to teach and recorrect until
he had suitably expressed my thought.
I do not know if the "Revue de Paris" reaches Vienna. You will have
seen in it a "Letter" of mine to the French authors of our century, in
which I expose our ills. If you have not seen it, tell me, and I will
send you a copy.
The end of "Séraphita" is a work of great difficulty. The Germans have
sent translators to Paris to get it hot.
Adieu; do not leave me again without letters, or I shall think myself
abandoned for society, which returns you nothing. To whom do you think
I should repeat your judgment on M. Anatole de Th...? You always
think that I go and come and belong in the world of idlers. That is
an opinion rooted in your mind; and because you are going and coming
yourself you want me to be your accomplice in that grand conspiracy of
ennui.
All your judgments on Vienna have been confirmed by Alphonse Royer, who
stayed there. Thanks to you, I know Vienna by heart; but as long as you
are there nothing could disgust me with it, were it a hundred times
more stupid and more gluttonous. Ah! they still have reserved sofas,
but they reserve nothing in their hearts.
PARIS, January 16, 1835.
In spite of constant work and the greatest efforts of concentrated
will, I have not been able to finish what I ought to do in order to
have the power to leave to-day, to profit by this mild weather (which
reminds me of the winter of Geneva), and reach Vienna on the 26th.
Everything is against it. The "Revue de Paris" would not double its
number so that "Père Goriot" could be finished. I have still my "Cent
Contes Drolatiques" on my hands, the purchase of them being delayed for
a few days. I have not failed about anything, but men have failed me.
If I finish all by the middle of February I shall count myself lucky,
and have about a month during which the journey will be to me the
sweetest of necessities.
I have, however, sacrificed everything, even writing to you, to that
object.
You will receive, by diligence, the manuscript of "Père Goriot" and
the two numbers printed in the "Revue." Here, every one, friends and
enemies, agree in saying that this composition is superior to all else
that I have done. I know nothing about it. I am always on the wrong
side of my tapestry. But you will tell me your opinion.
Now I have to finish "L'Enfant Maudit" and "Séraphita," which will
appear during the first ten days in February. Next, to finish "La Fille
aux yeux d'or," and do "Sœur Marie des Anges." The latter is a female
"Louis Lambert" [it was never written]. You will read it. It is one of
my least bad ideas. The abysses of the cloister are revealed; a noble
heart of woman, a lofty imagination, ardent, all that is grandest,
belittled by monastic practices; and the most intense divine love so
killed that Sœur Marie is brought to no longer comprehend God, the
love and adoration of whom have brought her there. Then I have to do
"La Fleur des Pois" and the counterpart of "Louis Lambert," entitled
"Ecce Homo."
I am much fatigued, much tormented, much worried, especially about
money. That wire, which pulls one back at every moment from on high
into this heap of mud, is intolerable; it saws my neck.
I have dined with Madame Delphine P..., but I left nothing there of my
sentiments. A pretty little creature was present, a Princess Galitzin,
and I made her laugh by telling her there was a silly, stupid creature
at Genthod who did her great wrong by synonymy. I thought Madame
Delphine neither affectionate, nor kind, nor _grande dame_. I made a
rapid turn to you and burned incense before you, recalling to mind
certain of those perfections about which you will not let me speak to
you. A few intonations in M. Mitgislas ...'s voice, vaguely reminded me
of yours and made my heart beat.
How cold society is! I came home joyfully to my hermitage, of which you
will find a drawing some day at Wierzchownia; for did you not tell me
that you had subscribed to "Les Maisons de personnages célèbres"? Well,
I am in it; which does not prove that I am a personage or celebrated,
when you see what silly folk are there made famous.
A year without seeing you! How many times the desire has seized me to
drop everything, to laugh at publishers, and flee away! Then I said to
myself that though you might be glad to see me, you might, perhaps,
blame me also, and that what makes us worthy of esteem and grand, ought
never to make us less friends, you and me. Reassure me, tell me that
you do not love me less because I have not been able to find a month
in a year. The proof of my seclusion is in what I have _done_, which
astonishes even publishers. Yet there are people who still say, "He
brings nothing out."
But all this labour will seem nothing, so long as it gives me liberty,
independence. When I think that I still need seventy thousand francs
for that, and to get them I must spread six bottles of ink on
twenty-four reams of paper, it makes me shudder. They offered me
yesterday twelve thousand francs for the "Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée."
But I prefer the four thousand of the "Revue de Paris" and the four
thousand for a thousand copies bought by a publisher, to putting the
three thousand copies on the public market. I tell you my little
affairs.
Madame de Berny is better. She declares that the worst symptoms have
ceased, but I am going there to assure myself of the truth of what may
be a divine lie, of which I know her capable. To help me bear my burden
she would fain take from me all anxieties and dry my tears. Oh! she is
a noble angel! There is none but you to continue her to me. So, all
these days, during my grief, my eyes, my hopes turn ever to you with a
force that might make me believe you have heard me.
Oh! leave me, to me so far away from you, the sad privilege of telling
you how sweet and good and precious your friendship is to me. What
proud courage it gives me here against many a snare, what a principle
of laborious constancy it has put into my life! But I lack a collar on
which is printed, "Moujik de Paulowska."
Well, adieu; think a little of him who always thinks of you, of a
Frenchman who has the heart of which you are all so boastful across the
Danube, who never forgets you, who will bring you from here his white
hairs and his big monk's face subdued by a cloister regimen,--a poor
_solitary_, who pines for the talks, and would like to cast at your
feet a thousand glorious crowns to serve you as floor, as pillow!
Well, re-adieu. Kiss Anna's forehead for me; remember me to all about
you and those I had the pleasure to know. They seem to me so happy
in being near you. Remind M. Hanski of his lively guest, who has now
laid up a fine stock of hearty laughs, for he has been sad enough this
long time. Write me always a little. I don't know how it is I have
not had a line these ten days. Does society absorb you? Alas! your
moujik has been himself _un poco_ into that market of false smiles and
charming toilets; he has made his début at Madame Appony's,--for the
house of Balzac must live on good terms with the house of Austria,--and
your moujik had some success. He was examined with the curiosity
felt for animals from distant regions. There were presentations on
presentations, which bored him so that he went to collogue in a corner
with Russians and Poles. But their names are so difficult to pronounce
that he cannot tell you anything about them, further than that one was
a very ugly dame, friend of Madame Hahn, and a Countess Schouwalof,
sister of Madame Jeroslas ... Is that right? The moujik will go every
two weeks, if his lady permits him.
Among the autographs sent, have I included one from Bra, who is one of
our present sculptors? He is a curious man in this, that he was led to
mysticism by the death of his wife, and for two months he went to evoke
her from her grave. He told me that he saw her every evening. He has
now remarried. Here is a saying of Stendhal: "We feel ourselves the
intimate friend of a woman when we look at her portrait in miniature;
we are so near to her! But oil-painting casts us off to a great
distance." What shall we say of sculpture?
PARIS, January 26, 1835.