I find my affairs in horrible disorder. Werdet had paid the bill of
exchange, but he had not been able to pay my notes falling due on the
15th and the 31st of May, so that my sister, to whom such affairs
are not familiar, being terrified, took--not my diamonds, but--my
silver-ware and pawned it. So now I must work night and day to repair
the stupidities they have done me.
I have therefore three or four months at "hard labour," during which I
must ask you to have indulgence for me. I can't write to you as often
as I would like. I must produce, one after another, "Le Lys," "Les
Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée," the Part for Werdet, and that for Madame
Bêchet. They are all complaining of me horribly. But feel no remorse; I
shall never regret the journey, however short it was, nor, above all,
the time, brief as it was, society left us to ourselves.
I am not pleased with Munich. There are too many frescos, and too many
bad frescos. Those of the upper ceiling of the Pinakothek, and those
of the lower halls of the Kœnigsbaugh(?), are alone of value. All the
rest is not above the level of our café decorations in Paris.
Adieu, for to-day. Kiss Anna's pretty little knuckles for me, offer my
regards to M. Hanski, and recall me to the memory of all about you.
You will find the ducat for Jean, the _valet de place_, in the first
volume of "Père Goriot."
CHAILLOT [rue des Batailles], July 1, 1835.
What I send you will decidedly be subjected to the chances that
politics may have of sending a courier to M. de la Rochefoucauld; for
the lucky attaché was married and gone before I knew it.
Since I last wrote you time has elapsed; but that time was taken up
by enormous troubles, such as whiten or thin the hair. The person who
is with my mother writes me, confidentially, that it is a question of
saving her life or her reason, for that if she does not die, grief may
make her crazy. My brother, incapable in every way, reduced to the
deepest distress, talks of blowing out his brains, instead of trying to
do something for himself. My sister is in a state that grows worse; her
illness had made frightful advances. All this is killing my mother.
So, in four days there is added to the difficulties created by my
journey, my financial crisis and delayed work, that of two existences
to guide and providentially manage!
It is a gloomy evening. I am seated at my window; I have gazed through
space at the lands I have just quitted, and where I went to seek,
near you, youth, rest, strength--to refresh both heart and head, to
forget the hell of Paris; and sitting here, a few tears fall. I measure
the extent of the abyss; I weigh the burden; I seek in the depths
of my heart the corner where lies the principle of my power; and I
resign myself. Of these great scenes, the secret lies between God and
ourselves. My God!--If you could see me you would know why I was so
sad in leaving you, you would comprehend the meaning of what I said
when I cried out with apparent gaiety: "I go to plunge back into the
vat and renew my miseries."
By what sweet destiny is it that for two years past I owe to you the
only calm and peaceful intervals in my life?
Now, I have begun to raise a barrier, not to be surmounted, between my
mother and her children, between her and the world of self-interests
that come roaring round her. I have secured to her the peace and
calmness of her retreat. Next, I have formed a plan of liquidation for
my brother, and another plan to provide for two years for his family
subsistence. In fifteen days all this will be settled. Then in the
course of those two years I shall be able to find him a position.
If you will think for a moment that small interests are more
complicated and more difficult to handle than great ones, you will
divine the goings and comings, the difficulties, the conferences of
all this. I had my own financial crisis to overcome. The continual
calumnies in the newspapers piling lampoons upon me--that I had
absconded, that I was in Sainte-Pélagie--found credence in the stupid
part of Paris; and that belief has paralyzed the resources of credit
that I had. But, at the hour of my present writing I have vanquished
all for myself as well as for my mother and for my brother. Still a day
or so, and I shall be astride of the prettiest winged courser I ever
mounted in the fields of the classic valley; and I shall fire away in
both Revues in July and August, while my two Parts--of the "Études de
Mœurs" and the "Études Philosophiques"--will appear simultaneously.
The purely pecuniary damage done by my journey will be repaired. Then I
shall work deliciously once more, thinking that my reward will be the
journey to Wierzchownia without a care.
It was under these circumstances that I busied myself about your
paper-knife and your pen-holder; I thought those trifles would be the
dearer to you, and that M. Hanski would suffer friendship to impinge
upon his rights. So, into the midst of my troubles a sweet thought
glided when I went to Lecointe, the jeweller. Oh! preserve me, very
pure and very bright, that affection which, you see, is a source of
consolation amid the tortures of life.
I presume your long silence comes from your journey to Ischl.
Nevertheless, I had news of you yesterday. It was not good. From
the 27th to the 28th you were ill, harassed. You saw Madame de
Lucchesi-Palli [Duchesse de Berry]. A somnambulist whom I had put to
sleep told me that. She must have told the truth, for she spoke of
certain annoyances which you feel, and of which she could know nothing
except from you. The last experiments that I have made here in Paris
since my return decide me to always have somnambulists at hand. This
one told me that you wrote to Paris (or intended to write to Paris) for
information about me. But she saw this so confusedly that it proved
nothing clearly. She thought your heart was larger than it ought to
be, and advised me earnestly to tell you to avoid painful emotions and
live calmly; but she said there was no danger. Your heart is, like your
forehead, an organ largely developed. I was much moved when she said
to me with that solemn expression of somnambulists: "These are persons
very much attached to you, who love you very truly."
What an imposing and awful power! To know what is passing in the soul
of others at a great distance! To know what they do! I will try to give
you a proof of this. Tell M. Hanski to write me a letter, calculate
the day I shall receive it, and then remember all he says, and does,
and thinks on that day, so that he may know whether I, in Paris, have
seen Ischl. It will be the finest of our experiments. A month hence I
shall have several somnambulists. It is one means not to be cheated
by anyone. I have nothing of Anna's, so I cannot know anything about
her. If you are curious to consult, send me a little piece of linen or
cotton, which you must put on her stomach during the night, and which
she must put _herself_ (without any one touching it) into a paper which
_she_ must put inside your letter.
I have to-day resumed my great labours. Madame de Castries seems
satisfied with what I did for her; but I did well to put my relations
with her on the footing of social politeness. If you have read, or if
you should read "Léone Léoni," you must know that Madame Dudevant has
been far beneath d'U..., the husband of the Wallachian. I have heard
strange things about that household, but I cannot write them; they
go beyond the limits of a letter. I will keep them for an evening at
Wierzchownia. Good God! what a life!
Yesterday the most horrible thing happened to me. You know, or you
don't know, that waiting in expectation is dreadful torture to me.
Sandeau went to the rue Cassini, and there heard that a package had
come by post from Vienna, and, the postage being thirty-six francs,
Rose had refused to take it in, not having the money. My head gave
way. I felt that no one but you could be sending to me from Vienna. I
sent Auguste off in a cabriolet, told him where to get the money, and
to bring me the package, living or dead. Auguste was gone four hours.
I was four hours in hell, inventing dramas. What do you suppose he
brought? That copy of "Père Goriot," which I asked you to give to any
one who might like it, and it was returned to me from Vienna!--by the
post! They may refuse me entrance to paradise, "Philippe le Discret"
may be a failure--such would be mere misfortunes, but this! I did as
the possessor of slippers did in the Arabian Nights,--I burned that
copy lest it might cause me some other misfortune.
I have had another grief. A little Savoyard, whom T call Anchises
[Grain-de-mil], who was zeal, discretion, honesty, intelligence
personified,--my little groom, to whom I was singularly attached,--died
at the Hôtel-Dieu on the twenty-first day after an operation performed
by M. Roux, Dupuytren's successor, and done with great success,--the
removal of a large tumour on the knee. The-putrid reaction of so large
a wound set in violently. I am grieved. He decided on the operation,
which became necessary in my absence, in order that I might find him
cured and relieved of an infirmity which would in the end have carried
him off. Poor child! all those who knew him regret him; he pleased
every one.
After a few more words to you I must go and put myself to finishing
"l'Enfant Maudit." I am in a suitable frame of mind to do that work
of melancholy. Now that I have returned to my life of eighteen hours'
daily toil I shall write you a species of journal every day, and send
you the whole weekly. This is written Sunday, June 28, twenty-four days
after leaving you, and fifteen days since I last wrote to you. But
these fifteen days have been fatally full of griefs, occupations, and
difficulties of all sorts; such things cannot be told. It would need
volumes to explain what is done and thought in an hour. You have it
in bulk. Werdet has been to London to see about our counterfeits and
translations.
Monday, 29.
It was midnight when I finished. I said adieu to you in my heart and
went to bed. I should like to change something in my way of life. I
should like to get up at four in the morning, and go to bed at nine in
the evening. I would then sleep seven hours and work fifteen. It is
difficult to change, for my hours are so inverted.
Here Auguste comes in and tells me that all the arrangements I had made
for my payments to-morrow, 30th, are overturned by a discounter who
sends me back, not accepting it, a note of Spachmann's for one thousand
francs. So I must dress and rush out. Conceive of such a life! I was
about to begin, in peace, a work of melancholy, and here's a bombshell
fallen into my study! But it is not a despatch I have to write, and I
can't say, like Charles XII., "What has a bombshell to do with L'Enfant
Maudit?" Adieu, for to-day.
Tuesday, 30.
I got to bed late, but I managed my affair and shall have the money,
less a few ducats, to-day.
In my tramps I went to see a somnambulist; she told me you were on
the road to Ischl, thus contradicting the other, who said you had
seen Madame Lucchesi-Palli. But I know how this happened. It would
take too long to explain it to you. I have, unfortunately, too little
time to myself to study these effects according to my new ideas, and
to classify my observations. The difficulty of getting subjects, the
necessities imposed on a magnetizer, all interfere with what I would
like to do. Here, as in the case of writing a play, one must have time
and quiet; now time and quiet are for me the two causes of fortune, and
fortune is that which stops me in all things. Recapitulation made: I
must have a year of toil and much luck in that toil to be entirely free
and liberated.
Well, adieu; I have before me one whole month of tranquillity, for I
have nothing to pay before July 31.
_Mon Dieu!_ how I wish I had two good somnambulists! I should know
every morning how you are, what you are doing; and this small
satisfaction joined to my constant work would keep me happy.
July 1st.
Yesterday I had to rush about to complete the payments, which was only
done this morning. These 30ths of a month bring strange commotions!
To-night I am very sad. The east wind blows, I have no strength. I have
not yet recovered my power of work; I have neither inspiration nor
anything fructifying. Nevertheless, the necessity is great. I shall
take to coffee again. When one has no illusions as to fame and looks
for one's reward elsewhere, it is very grievous to be alone with one's
work.
A thousand tender affections. Write me often, for your writing is a
talisman. You know what belongs to all those about you. Don't walk too
much, only a little. At Ischl the air suffices. Besides, a carriage
in any case suits you best; I have observed that; so the great doctor
says: "No more walking."
CHAILLOT, July 18, 1835.
I have no time to write to you. Calumny has ruined my credit. Men who
would never have thought of coming to ask for money and everybody else
have swooped down upon me. My omnipotent pen must coin money; and yet
nothing must be sacrificed to necessity at the expense of art. Do you
know what I am doing? I am working twenty-four hours running. Then I
sleep five hours; which gives me twenty-one hours and a half to work
per day.
Your letter grieves me, for you make me responsible for Liszt's letter.
_Mon Dieu!_ how is it that with such a splendid forehead you can think
little things. I do not understand why, knowing my aversion for George
Sand, you make me out her friend.
You have not given me your address at Ischl. I send this to Sina. Pray
let me know how long you stay there, that I may send you a package of
books. "Louis Lambert" is finished. I have also finished a volume for
Madame Bêchet, and in eight days more I shall have only two to finish.
Werdet will also get his two Parts of the "Études Philosophiques"
within twenty days. I go on by the grace of God; when I fall--well, I
shall have fallen; but one must fight and grow greater.
You tell me to write to the Countess Loulou.[1] But how can I? Explain
to her yourself my involuntary tardiness. I can't attend to my own
affairs, I do not go out, I only write pages. In all conscience, I
cannot seek for the impossible. No one here would accept the small
salary the prince offers and _three hundred_ francs for the journey!
A reader who _knows how to read_ is not an ordinary man, and yet the
prince denies him a seat at his table. A man of intelligence can earn
more here than three hundred francs a month by literature, and to read
_well_ is literature. I do not undertake the impossible. Every one,
even those who die of hunger, laugh in my face. Leave Paris for Vienna
for such pay as that! They had rather die of hunger in Paris, with
hopes, than live without cares elsewhere. I will write to the princess
and to the countess when I can, but I must provide for the defence of
all points attacked, and I am firing from the three batteries of the
Revues and my "Études."
Tell the countess that the novel by Madame de Girardin, "The Marquis de
Pontanges," is worth reading. It is the only one in six months.
Adieu; I will write when I have done something, and obtained results
which will put your soul at rest about my works and my vigils. These
strivings of a man with his thought, ink, and paper, have nothing very
poetic about them. It is silence; it is obscurity. Lassitude, efforts,
tension, headaches, weariness, all go on between the four walls of that
rose-and-white boudoir which you know by its description in the "Fille
aux yeux d'or." And I have nothing to console me but that distant
affection,--which is angry with me at Ischl for a few words written
foolishly while I was in Vienna,--and the prospect of going to seek
harshness at Wierzchownia, when I shall be, in six or seven months,
dying as a result of my efforts! I ought to say, like some general, I
don't know who, "A few more such victories and we are beaten."
Adieu; I kiss Anna on the forehead, and send you and M. Hanski a
thousand assurances of affection. Think of me as much as I think of
you; that will content me. But from you no letter since June 26, and
here it is July 18. You are punishing me.
[Footnote 1: Countess Louise Turheim, chanoinesse, whose
brother-in-law, Prince Rasumofski, had asked Balzac to send him a
reader from Paris.]
PARIS, August 11, 1835.
I have just returned from Berry, where I went to see Madame Carraud,
who had something to say to me, and I find on my return your last
letter, the one in which you speak of the visit you paid to MADAME [the
Duchesse de Berry] at the moment when our newspapers were representing
her as inventing the infernal machine of Fieschi and awaiting its
success at Aix, where she conferred about it with Berryer! Try to
govern a people who, for twenty-four hours and over two hundred square
leagues, can be made to believe such things as that!
You complain very amiably of the rarity of my letters, but you know I
write as often as I can. I work now twenty hours a day. Can I endure
it? I do not know.
I do not understand why you did not receive my parcel. The Austrian
embassy took it under their protection, and it is addressed to M. de la
Rochefoucauld. Inquire for it, I beg of you.
I am surprised at your enthusiasm for Lherminier. It is plain that you
have not read his other works. They have prevented me from reading "Au
delà du Rhin," the fragments of which published in the "Revue des Deux
Mondes" did not seem to me very strong. Do not confound Lherminier and
Capefigue with the roses and lilies. Leave them among the thistles,
which are dear, for more reasons than one, to their Excellencies. You
will oblige me to read "Au delà du Rhin;" but I fear--in spite of your
fine forehead.
I did not "chant marvels" to you about Madame de Girardin's book. It is
better than what she has so far done; it is not a very remarkable work,
but it is literature, and not dogmatic politics.
_Mon Dieu!_ have I not already written to you that the two
somnambulists forbid you to walk? Why, then, do you walk?
Your letter saddens me; it seems cold and indifferent, as if the ice on
which thrones rest had invaded you. I like it better when you quarrel
with me, find fault with me. If you do not stay long in Vienna, how
shall I send you the manuscripts of "Séraphita," and the "Lys dans la
Vallée"? The end of "Séraphita" will not appear in the "Revue de Paris"
till the third, or perhaps fourth Sunday in October. If you leave, give
me some certain address at Brody; you will there find the precious
package.
_Mon Dieu!_ I need an almost exaggerated tenderness on the part of my
friends, for I assure you that a cruel conviction is laying hold of
me: I do not hope to bear up under such heavy toil. One may indeed
be broken down by violent efforts in art, sciences, and letters, and
in this increase of labor which has come upon me, driven as I am by
necessity, nothing sustains me. Work, always work; nights of flame
succeeding nights of flame, days of meditation to days of meditation,
execution to conception, conception to execution. Little money in
comparison with what I need, immensity of money in relation to the
thing done. If each of my books were paid like those of Walter Scott,
I could bring myself safely out of this. But, although well paid, I
do not come out of it. I shall have earned twelve thousand francs
in August. The "Lys" has brought me eight thousand,--half from the
"Revue des deux Mondes," half from the publishers. The article in
the "Conservateur" will receive three thousand francs. I shall have
finished "Séraphita," begun the "Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée," and
finished the last Part for Madame Bêchet. I don't know that brain, pen,
and hand have ever done such a feat of strength. And there exists a
dear person, sacredly beloved, who complains that the correspondence
languishes, although I answer scrupulously all her letters.
It is impossible for me to speak to you in letters of Fieschi and his
machine. The wise men in politics, and I myself, who am not without a
certain gift of second-sight, believe that it is neither the Republic
nor Carlism which is the author of the attempt. _Fieschi has told
nothing_; of that you may be sure. He will probably never speak.
Lisfranc, the surgeon, who is taking care of him in prison, told this
to my sister whom he is attending. He has had much money given him.
Perhaps he himself does not know _who_ made him act.
I am on the eve of beginning a political existence. I am cowardly
enough to wish to hold back in order not to risk my journey to
Wierzchownia. The two Revues form a large party, for the "Revue des
Deux Mondes" has fifteen hundred subscribers, five hundred being in
Europe; it becomes, therefore, a power. They unite in me, take me
as head, for I have vanquished many men and things by my _Bedouck_!
They support me. I shall make two other newspapers. That will give us
four, and we are to-day in treaty for a fifth! We think of calling
ourselves the party of the _Intelligentials_, a name which lends
itself but little to ridicule, and will constitute a party to which
many will feel flattered to belong. To be head of this in France, that
is worth thinking of. For a long time these principal lines of our
work have been discussed between me and a man powerful by his will,
who organized four years ago and directed the "Revue des Deux Mondes"
[Charles Rabou]. We have had several conferences. The two newspapers,
the two Revues enable us to skim the cream of the salons, to assimilate
them, to unite the seriously able intellects; and nothing can resist
this amicable league of a press which will have nothing blind, nothing
disorganized about it.
You see that as I advance in my own work I act on another and parallel
line, important and broader; in a word, I shall not stop short in
politics any more than in literature. Time presses, events are
complicating. I should have been stopped for want of a hundred thousand
francs; but I think I am about to write a drama, under the name of
my future secretary, to procure them. I must be done with this money
question which strangles me.
You see that, in spite of your coldness, I keep you informed of the
great operations of your devoted moujik. But if the law passes, the new
law which requires that political articles be signed, I shall have to
renounce a great deal in order to go to Paulowska. In short, we cannot
have intellect for nothing!
To speak to you of my every-day affairs would be to tell you of too
many great miseries. I have always an infinite number of errands,
goings and comings to pay my notes and meet my engagements, without
ever being able to end them. In Paris everything involves a frightful
loss of time, and time is the great material of which life is made.
So, when I am bending over my paper in the light of my candles in the
salon of the "Fille aux yeux d'or," or lying, weary, on the sofa, I am
breathless with pecuniary difficulties, sleeping little, eating little,
seeing no one,--in short, like a republican general making a campaign
without bread, without shoes. Solitude, however, pleases me much. I
hate society. I must finish what I have begun, and whatever turns me
from it is bad, especially when it is wearisome.
You ask me, I think, about Madame de C... She has taken the thing, as
I told you, tragically, and now distrusts the M... family. Beneath
all this, on both sides there is something inexplicable, and I have
no desire to look for the key of mysteries which do not concern me. I
am with Madame de C... on the proper terms of politeness and as you
yourself would wish me to be.
Do not make any comparison between the affection which you inspire,
and that which you grant; for in that, those who love you have the
advantage. Never believe that I cease to think of you, for even though
I be occupied as I am now, it is impossible that in hours of fatigue
and despair, hours when our energy relaxes, and we sit with pendent
arms and sunken head, body weary and mind distressed, the wings of
memory should not bear us back to moments when we refreshed our soul
beneath green shades, to her who smiled to us, who has nothing in her
heart that is not sincere, who is to us a spirit, who reanimates us,
and renews, so to speak, by distractions of the soul, those powers to
which others give the name of talent. You are all these things to me,
you know it; therefore never jest about my feelings; I fear lest there
mingle in it too much of gratitude.
Adieu. At Wierzchownia! I must cross Europe to show you an aging face,
but a heart that is ever deplorably young, which beats at a word,
at a line ill-written, an address, a perfume, as though it were not
thirty-six years old.
I hope when you are regularly settled in your Wierzchownia, that
you will write me the journal of your daily life and be to me more
faithfully a friend, so that we shall be as if we had seen ourselves
yesterday when I arrive. A thousand kind things to M. Hanski. Write
me whether the parcel is lost or you received it. I am afraid it went
to Ischl after you had left. Also write me by return of courier,
inclosing in your letter a seal in red wax of your arms, which are to
be engraved on the title-page of "Séraphita," in the edition of the
"Études philosophiques" and "Le Livre Mystique." Isn't it a piece of
gallantry to sound the heraldic chord which you have within you, I know
not where, for it is not in your heart? Kiss Anna on the forehead for
me. All tender sentiments, and recall me to the recollection of the
Viennese, to whom I owe memories.
PARIS, August 24, 1835.
My letters are becoming short, you say, and you no longer know whom I
see. I see no one; I work so continually that I have not a moment for
writing. But I do have moments of lassitude for thinking. Some day you
will be astonished at what I have been able to do, and yet write to a
friend at all.
Listen: to settle this point, reflect on this: Walter Scott wrote
two novels a year, and was thought to have luck in his labour; he
astonished England. This year I shall have produced: (1) "Le Père
Goriot;" (2) "Le Lys dans la Vallée;" (3) "Les Mémoires d'une jeune
Mariée;" (4) "César Birotteau." I have done three Parts of the
"Études de Mœurs" for Madame Bêchet; and three Parts of the "Études
Philosophiques" for Werdet. And, finally, I shall have finished the
third _dizain_, and "Séraphita." But then, shall I be living, or in
my sound mind in 1836? I doubt it. Sometimes I think that my brain is
inflaming. I shall die on the breach of intellect.
These efforts have not yet saved me from my financial crisis. This
fearful production of books, involving as it does such masses of
proofs, has not sufficed to liquidate me. I must come to the stage; the
returns of which are enormous compared to those we get from books. The
intellectual battle-fields are more fatiguing to work than the fields
where men die or the fields where they sow their corn; know this.
France drinks brains, as once she cut off noble heads.
Yes, I can only write you a few pages, and soon I may only send you
despairing ones; for courage is beginning to desert me. I am weary
of this struggle without rest, of this constant production without
productive success. A fine thing truly to excite moral sympathies when
a mother and a brother are needing bread! A fine thing to hear silly
compliments on works that are written with one's blood and do not sell,
while M. Paul de Kock sells three thousand copies of his, and the
"Magasin Pittoresque" sixty thousand! We shall see each other again if
I triumph, but I doubt success!
Monday, 24.
Forgive me for having uttered that cry of pain, and do not be too much
alarmed by it. But if I perish, carried off by excess of toil, it must
not surprise you. The end of "Séraphita" cannot appear in the "Revue
de Paris" before September. The corrections, the efforts are crushing.
Already there have been one hundred and sixty hours' work on the first
proof; and I don't know what the others will cost.
If you are kind you will write me oftener. It seems as though the air
were fresher about me, my brain cooler, as if I were in an oasis, when
I have read your letters. They make me think I am at some wayside
haven. Fifteen days had passed without one when I received the last
from Ischl. I am well advanced in corrections of the "Lys dans la
Vallée." It will appear in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" while you are
travelling. I think I have not done a finer work as painting of an
interior. I have rewritten and finished "Gobseck." In "La Fleur des
Pois" I have swung round upon myself. Hitherto, I have painted the
misfortunes of wives; it is time to show also the sorrows of husbands.
Here is something singular: it is that I was composing this work while
you were thinking of its leading idea, and during the time it took
your letter in which you spoke of the sufferings that fall upon men
to reach me! Is it not enough to make one believe that space does not
exist and that we had talked together?
Adieu, I have no more time to write. But, as I told you, I have time to
think, and I think of you in all my hours of recreation. I must earn
money to go to the Ukraine, for in order to travel tranquilly I cannot
owe anything here.
Adieu; remember me to all about you.
CHAILLOT, October 11, 1835.
Do not be surprised at my silence; it is easily explained by the
abundant work I have done. For the last forty days I have risen at
midnight and gone to bed at six o'clock. Between those periods there
has been nothing but work, ardent, passionate work,--the desperate
struggle of battle-fields.
Do me the favour not to believe that the friendship you grant me is the
common friendship of women; consider _quand même_ to be the noblest of
mottoes. Yes, I shall not perish; yes, I shall triumph!
But you ought to have received two letters through Sina, one of which
carried to you the dedication. By the first of next March I shall owe
nothing to any one. And thus will end this horrible battle between
misfortune and me. My wealth will be my pen and my liberty.
Yesterday, returning along the quays on foot, meditating the
corrections of "Séraphita," I saw, in a carriage that went by rapidly,
Madame Kisseleff. Imagine my astonishment! She was returning no doubt
from Bellevue, the residence of the Austrian embassy.
Another piece of news. By getting up at midnight and going to bed
at six o'clock for forty days I am beginning to get thin during my
eighteen hours' vigil and toil. I wish the "Lys" and "Séraphita" and
the new "Louis Lambert" to be the culminating points of my literary
life so far.
We are reprinting the "Médecin de campagne." I am having a
travelling-carriage built; and I think of buying a house, so that when
you come to Paris I can offer you a whole one to yourself, in thanks
for the hospitality you promise me at Wierzchownia. M. de Custine is in
Paris, faithless man!
Will you permit me to have a watch made for you in Geneva? I will bring
it to you with the manuscripts that belong to you. I will thus repair
the disaster of your journey; you are too far from Geneva to do it
yourself.
Take care of yourself. Play Grandet and Benassis. I will be your critic
when I come, as you are mine on my works.
Oh! I entreat you, have confidence in me. Do not be vexed with me
for anything, neither the brevity, nor the careless scribbling of my
letters. I must work on,--nothing can be allowed to wait; and I have
always around me three or four volumes in proofs to read; and besides
this, financial matters. In truth, I do not live; but, in my most weary
hours, I can rest my head upon the mantel-piece and lose myself in
dreams, like a woman.
A thousand kind memories to all, and to _you_ all the friendships.
I expect to hear from you on "Le Lys dans la Vallée." I worked long
over that book. I wanted to use the language of Massillon, and that
instrument is heavy to wield.
Ardent wishes for all that is dear to you; my friendship to the Grand
Marshal.
CHAILLOT, October, 1835.
I have received your letter from Brody, and thank you from the bottom
of my heart. The more you forbid me to go to Wierzchownia, under
pretext of too great fatigue, the quicker I shall go. But be easy;
I cannot breathe the air of liberty, or feel myself free of chains,
before April, May, or June. But I shall surely go and do "Philippe II."
and "Marie Touchet" at Wierzchownia tranquilly; or a few good works
which will give me my financial independence,--the three francs a day
that the dethroned Napoleon wanted.
Yes, Madame Kisseleff is in Paris. Happy Monsieur E...! I am out of
society; until my liberation I see no one, and I work as I told you.
You will not read till you reach Wierzchownia "Le Livre Mystique,"
which is composed of my new "Louis Lambert" and "Séraphita." The
Emperor Nicholas will not forbid those books.
I should like to be able to buy the house of which I spoke to you. It
would be a good investment, and I should be forced to be economical.
I am getting a bad opinion of your firmness. In proportion as you
approach your _caret patria_ your sublime resolutions as to government
vanish, and you are becoming once more the great lady, creole and
indolent. Come, be queen of Wierzchownia; do not be an unpublished
Benassis at Paulowska. Be, rather, an intellectual growth, develop that
fine forehead where shines the most luminous of divine lights.
I wish to reach Wierzchownia by travelling through Germany,--that
country worthy of the renown against which we lie so much. From now
to seven months hence I shall have accomplished great works. "César
Birotteau" will have been followed by many others. But the "Lys"! If
the "Lys" is not a female breviary, I am nothing. The virtue in it is
sublime, and not wearying. To be dramatic with virtue, to be ardent and
use the language and style of Massillon,--let me tell you, that is a
problem, to solve which, in the first number, cost three hundred hours
of corrections, four hundred francs to the "Revue" and to me a trouble
in my liver. Dr. Nacquart put me into a bath for three hours a day,
on ten pounds of grapes, and wanted me not to work; but I do work all
night.
Madame de Berny is much better; she has borne a last shock, the illness
of a beloved son whose brother has gone to bring him home from Belgium.
I was there to lessen her sorrows. She told me she could say but one
word about my "Lys": that it was indeed the Lily of the Valley. From
her lips that is great praise; she is very hard to satisfy. The first
number is finished and I have two others; at twenty days apiece, that
makes forty days. Sainte-Beuve worked four years at "Volupté." Compare
that!
I send you many heartfelt wishes, and beg you to recall me to the
memory of all. Your paper-knife broke in my hand; it almost cut me; I
felt grieved about it. Besides which, I don't know where the little
pencil-case of Geneva has hid itself; I am grieved about that also; but
it may be found in some pocket. I am so full of ideas and work that
here is distraction beginning. But the heart has none, only the head.
CHAILLOT, November 22, 1835.
Do not be surprised at the number of days since I have written to
you. This interruption is due to the sharpness of the conflict,
the necessity of a work that takes days and nights. I am in fear
of succumbing. Also, events have become very serious in my family.
Something had to be done about my brother,--get him off to India, or
induce him to go.
You, so little concerned about money, you will never know, until I
relate them to you by the fireside in your steppe, the difficulties
there are in paying ten thousand francs a month, without other resource
than one's pen. Still, I have almost the hope of arriving, if not
free, at least with honour safe and no misfortune, at December 31.
You will comprehend nothing of these two months until you see the
frightful labour on "Séraphita" and the "Lys" bound in green and placed
upon your bookshelves. Then you will ask yourself, seeing that mass of
proofs and corrections, if there were years in those months, days in
those hours.
Madame Bêchet has paid us our thirty-three thousand francs; and we are
offered forty-five thousand for the thirteen following volumes, which
will complete, in twenty-five volumes, the first edition of the "Études
de Mœurs." That is how our affairs stand now. We owe thirty-five
thousand francs, and we possess, in expectation, fifty thousand.
There's the account of our household. The sole point now is, not to die
of fatigue on the day when the burden becomes endurable!
To-morrow, Sunday, 22, the first number of the "Lys dans la Vallée"
appears in the "Revue de Paris." But learn from one fact the nature
of my struggle and my daily combats. Since my return from Vienna
the "Revue de Paris" made immense sacrifices for "Séraphita." After
six months of toil and money spent, "Séraphita," finished, was
to have appeared to-morrow. Suddenly the director told me it was
incomprehensible, and that he preferred not to publish it on account
of the long interruption which had occurred between the first numbers
and the end, with a hundred other reasons which I spare you. I at once
proposed to pay him his costs and take back my article. Accepted.
I rushed to Werdet, and told him about it. He rushed to Buloz with
the money; and the wrath of publisher and author is such that
"Séraphita" has gone from one printing-press to the other and that
the "Livre Mystique," will appear on Saturday, 28th. The literature
of the periodical press will seize upon the singular anecdote of this
refusal; it will make such an uproar, inasmuch as the editor of the
"Revue" is not liked, that Werdet feels sure of selling "Séraphita"
in a single day.[1] There is a copy on Chinese paper for you, besides
the collection of manuscripts and proofs. But such displays of force
require prodigious efforts: they are like the campaigns of Italy.
You understand that in a literary campaign like mine society is
impossible. Therefore I have openly renounced it. I go nowhere, I
answer no letter and no invitation. I only allow myself the Italian
opera _once_ a fortnight. Thursday last I saw Madame Kisseleff
there. Alas! how little effect her beauty made! If you only knew how
everything becomes belittled in Paris! In spite of her protecting
passion for Poggi, she understands what I tried to tell her in
Vienna, and Poggi now gives her the impression of a full stop in the
Encyclopædia after hearing Rubini.
I cannot tell you the memories that assailed me when I found myself
beside some one from Vienna, a friend of yours, and listening to the
"Somnambula" which recalled to me two of our evenings. The Princess
Schonberg was there also. I paid a visit of politeness to her; and I
shall also go and see Madame Kisseleff once.
So, my life is a strange monotony, and your letters are so rare that I
have no longer the regular event that varied it,--your letters, that
always came of a Monday. I have no longer my good Monday. I can only
tell you about my work and my payments,--a chant as monotonous as that
of the waves of ocean surging upon a granite rock.
I am going to dine in town to get you an autograph of Sir Sidney Smith,
the hero of Saint-Jean-d'Acre. I will also send you one of Alphonse
Karr.
[Footnote 1: Werdet gives a long account of this affair ("Portrait
intime de Balzac" pp. 147-169). On it, he bases a bitter complaint
against Balzac of unfairly and to his, Werdet's, injury, delaying the
publication fifteen months; which charge falls to the ground under
the above evidence that M. Buloz returned "Séraphita," November 21,
1835 (not 1834 as Werdet says), and Werdet published the book two
weeks later, December 2, 1835, on which day every copy was sold, and
two hundred and fifty were promised. The second edition was published
December 28, 1835.--TR.]
Sunday, 22.
I beg of you to number your letters, beginning with the year 1836, as
I do myself with this one; so that we may mutually know if our letters
reach us safely; and when we want special answers to any question, the
mention of the number will settle everything.
I have had, and I still have, violent griefs on the side of Nemours.
Madame de Berny was decidedly better; her dreadful palpitations were
relieved. There were hopes of saving her. Suddenly, the only son who
resembles her, a young man handsome as the day, tender and spiritual
like herself, like her full of noble sentiments, fell ill, and ill of a
cold which amounts to an affection of the lungs. The only child out of
_nine_ with whom she can sympathize! Of the nine, only four remain; and
her youngest daughter has become hysterically insane, without any hope
of cure. That blow nearly killed her. I was correcting the "Lys" beside
her; but my affection was powerless even to temper this last blow. Her
son (twenty-three years old) was in Belgium, where he was directing
an establishment of great importance. His brother Alexandre went to
fetch him, and he arrived a month ago, in a deplorable condition. This
mother, without strength, almost expiring, sits up at night to nurse
Armand. She has nurses and doctors. She implores me not to come and
not to write to her. You know how at moments, when all within us is
tension, the slightest shock, whether it comes from tried affection or
from clumsiness, breaks us down. What a situation! So that I have a
double anxiety in that direction, where I live so much.
My mother and my brother give me other anxieties of so cruel and
disastrous a kind that I do not speak to you of them, for they are not
of a nature to be written. One must have much faith in the future to
live thus,--to take up, every morning, one's heavy burden. My friends
have all limited means, and cannot relieve my financial situation,
which twenty-five thousand francs would render endurable, were they
only lent to me for six months. I must still march on to the last
moment in triple distresses,--those of my family, those of my work,
those of my finances. I don't speak of calumnies or of the wretches who
throw sticks between my legs when I run. That is nothing. That which
would kill an artist I scarcely consider an annoyance.
I have of late been twenty-six hours in my study without leaving it. I
get the air at that window which commands all Paris, which I will some
day command.
I have received your last letter written from your desolate land. I
reckon that by this time you have reached Wierzchownia, reviewed your
wheat-fields, resumed your habits, and that you can surely write to me
twice a month. Following your custom, you have given me your address
very imperfectly, and that of the Chanoinesse with a perfection quite
hieroglyphic. Write and tell her that for me it is as impossible to
write to her as it would be to take the moon in my teeth. Society
people, the rich, the idle, imagine nothing of the busy lives of
artists and poor men. It is humorous to a degree. Especially do they
believe in our ingratitude, our forgetfulness; they never view us
as toiling night and day. To explain myself wholly, think of those
seventeen volumes manufactured by me without help; compute that that
makes three hundred _feuilles_ [4800 octavo pages], each read more
than ten times, and that makes three thousand [48,000], besides the
conception and the writing; and also that beyond the will to do I must
have _du bonheur_ [the luck of inspiration].
So, whatever they tell you of me, laugh at it, and think of this, the
proof of which exists. One of my bitterest literary enemies says of me:
"Talent, genius, his incredible power of will, I can understand, I can
believe it; _but where, and how, does he manufacture_ TIME?"
Ah! madame, I have brought myself, I, such a sleeper, to do without
sleep; I sleep only four hours; and I, so eager, so much a child, I
have resolved my whole life into dreams of hope. I live by suffering,
work, and hope only. My fortune will be made by three months spent at
Wierzchownia without care, without anxieties, in writing two fine plays.
By the singular will of Providence your friendship is joined to the
three halts I have made during the last three years. Neufchâtel,
Geneva, Vienna, have been to me three oases. There, I thought of
nothing; I renewed my strength. You will see me arrive dying at
Wierzchownia, and I shall leave it living.
Adieu; my friendly regards to the Benassis of Wierzchownia. My
compliments to the three young ladies. A kiss on Anna's forehead. Be
without anxiety as to the manner in which I shall make the journey.
I shall come alone, without anything to contest at the custom-house,
without books, without papers,--only linen and clothes. I will write
you, in advance, the names of the books I shall need, to see if you
have them in your library; that is the only tax I shall place upon you.
I shall not bring a score of heavy books. I have all my intellectual
riches in my head, and all my treasures in my heart. You must have
indulgence for my one coat, my poet's wardrobe. I shall go light as an
arrow, rapid as an arrow, but heavy with hopes, with pleasures to take
in that chimney-corner by which you entice me.
CHAILLOT, November 25, 1835.
If "Séraphita" is not for sale on Saturday there will be no winter for
me in Russia; Werdet is ruined if "Séraphita," that is to say, "Le
Livre Mystique," is not a great success, and if the second and third
Parts of the "Études Philosophiques" do not appear in December and
January. I lose six thousand francs with Madame Bêchet if her last Part
does not appear in February. Keep the above before your eyes so that
you may not blame me. I must fulfil my engagements or I die, killed at
last by grief. To write a letter is impossible. People who lead a fixed
life, by whom the want of money is never felt, are unable to judge of
the lives of those who work night and day, and have to beg for the
money they earn.
I had forty thousand francs to pay after my return from Vienna, and
before this coming December. Therefore judge what efforts and resources
I needed to make head against that without credit; so that what you
say to me in the letter I received to-day seems to me very singular.
You do not know the bitterness of the epigram which your fear has made
upon a poor artist, in hiding on account of the National Guard, who for
five months has gone to bed at six o'clock (with rare exceptions) to
rise at midnight, and who is working superhumanly to earn a few months'
freedom in order to go and see you. To ask me for letters under these
circumstances is as if you had been a Frenchman and asked some colonel
to write to you during the retreat from Moscow--with this difference,
that the warmth of my soul can never lessen, and triumph will take the
place of defeat.
_Mon Dieu!_ I can't foresee any peace under three months, unless
through fortunate events that are impossible: exhausted editions that
would give me money, or falling ill myself. Then I would write to you.
But would you not rather have my silence, which tells you I am working
fruitfully, and bringing nearer the happy day of my freedom? Have I
made you too great in counting on your intelligent friendship to divine
these things?
Here comes Werdet with _ten feuilles_, one hundred and sixty pages, to
correct! I have, since I wrote letter No. 1, now on its way, quarrelled
with the Revues, for the same causes that I quarrelled with Pichot; you
know them.
Well, adieu. I have lived a few minutes with you in the pretty home of
your sister, for you are indeed a good painter.
Though I am not ill, I am horribly fatigued,--more than I have ever
been. I have not been able to go and breathe my native air of Touraine,
which would revive me.
A thousand caressing things. Never doubt your poor future guest again.
P. S. I have lost in a diligence my Geneva pencil-case with the _Ave_.
I did not have the luck that you had with your watch. I have not
recovered it.
CHAILLOT, December 18, 1835.
I receive to-day the letter in which you tell me you have read the
first number of the "Lys." When you receive this letter you will
doubtless have read the second. (Shameful cheatery has sold them to
Bellizard, and I shall prosecute such thefts; that is, if I have the
courage to protest against a fraud which hastens the enjoyment that you
say you take in my things.)[1] You will understand better the three
hundred hours. I leave the enervating corrections of the third number
to write to you.
You are right in your philological criticisms. I perceive my faults
every day, and correct them. You will find, some day, a great
difference between the acknowledged work and all preceding editions.
Imagine my happiness! Thomassy [a collaborator of Augustin Thierry]
came to embrace me after reading "Séraphita." He told me that he
regarded the "Livre Mystique" as one of the masterpieces of the French
language, and that he saw no fault to find with it.
There must be some faults still in "La Grenadière;" but these last
stains upon the white robe shall be removed by the soap of patience
and the wash-board of courage, which love of art for art's sake gives.
It is useless to tell you what the "Lys" has cost me. I have now spent
fifteen days on the third number, and I need eight more.
A dreadful misfortune has happened to me. The fire in the rue du
Pot-de-Fer destroyed the hundred and sixty first pages, printed at
my cost, of the third _dizain_ of the "Contes Drolatiques," and five
hundred volumes, which cost me four francs each, of the first and
second _dizains_. Not only do I lose an actual amount of three thousand
five hundred francs in money and interest, but I also lose an agreement
for six thousand francs, on which I counted to pay my expenses at the
end of the year, which is now broken, because I have nothing to give
Werdet and an associate in this affair who bought the three _dizains_.
I must face this misfortune, which comes at the moment when _hope_ was
no longer a vain word, when gleams of blue were lighting up my heaven,
beside the lovely form so rarely seen there. Well! I have always shown
an iron front to trouble; there's nought but happiness which breaks me
down--for I ill know how to bear it. Madame de Berny has kept silence
since this fatal event. That is another trouble. And my journey to
Wierzchownia recedes.
You have no idea of our civilization; the trouble it is to do business;
what distances, what visits wasted on moneyed people; their caprices,
which make the promise of one day withdrawn the next! My life is a
torrent. I sleep only five hours. To go and see you would be a rest, no
matter how fatiguing a rapid journey might be.
I have few events to tell you. I have dined once with Madame Kisseleff;
and once at the Austrian embassy, and I went to a rout at the latter
place. One must keep up relations there. I have seen Princess
Schonberg. But I do no more than is necessary.
I am to have two secretaries, two young men who espouse the hopes of
my political life, which, alas! is dawning. I am embarrassed how to
tell you when, how, and why, because you have forbidden the subject;[2]
but you will guess all when I tell you that five days ago I bought a
political newspaper. These young men are: (1) The Comte de Belloy,
friend of Sandeau, nephew of the cardinal; twenty-four years old,
face happy, wit abundant, conduct bad, poverty dreadful, talent and
future rich, confidence and devotion entire, nobility immemorial. (2)
A Comte de Gramont, one of whose ancestors went security for a Duc de
Bourgogne. He does not belong to the family of the Ducs de Grammont. I
know him less than I do de Belloy. These are my two aides-de-camp.
You will be surprised to see Sandeau excluded. But Sandeau is not,
like these gentlemen, legitimist; he does not share my opinions. That
says all. I have done everything to convert him to the doctrines of
absolute power, he is as silly as a propagandist.
You see that here is a second mine; a second cause for arduous work.
You see also that _Bedouck_ is not a talisman without force in me. But
it needs much money, and still more talent. I don't know where to get
the money.
You are very right to economize; and I do not understand why you do
not beat M. Hanski into sending away forty out of his eighty workmen.
Shickler and all our great seigneurs here do not employ more than forty.
Reserve your sublime analytical thoughts to act like your neighbour,
the Countess Branicka. Money can do everything to vanquish material
obstacles. Be miserly by juxtaposition; miserly with an object.
My brother-in-law is negotiating the purchase of my house. I desire
it extremely. It fulfils all the conditions that you require in a
dwelling. How I wish that you could so arrange your affairs that you
might be in it three years hence, without M. Hanski having one anxiety.
Is not M. Mitgislas P... happy as a king? He has all the wealth that
he wants, and possesses enough in the public funds to bring down the
stock by a sale! Nothing is easier to administer and collect than such
revenues, nothing harder than _literary revenues_, although they are so
simple that nothing is simpler!
"If you love me" (Anna's style) you will make me a pretty little daily
journal, not a periodical one; so that every eight days I shall receive
your letter, and mine will cross yours. Can you do less for a man who
writes only to you in all the world?
As for my present life, I have returned to the rue des Batailles. I
go to bed at seven and get up at two; between those two periods see
me in the boudoir of the "Fille aux yeux d'or," seated at a table
and working without other distraction than to go to my window and
contemplate that Paris which I will some day subjugate. And here I am
for three months, until my house is bought, and my new arrangements for
lodging and living made.[3]
I imagine that Anna is well, that you flourish in _la cara patria_,
that M. Hanski is busy, that Mesdemoiselles Séverine and Denise are at
their best, that Mademoiselle Borel has restored her good graces to the
author of "Séraphita," and prays God for him after praying for you and
Anna, that all goes well, even Pierre, that the confectioner makes you
delicious things, and, in short, that nothing is lacking in your Eden
but a poor foreigner who glides there in thought. At night, when the
fire crackles or a spark darts from a candle, say to yourself, "'Tis
he!" Think, then, that a too ardent memory has crossed the spaces and
fallen on your table like an aërolite detached from a distant sphere.
Farewell again. I would that I could say _à bientôt_. When you begin
the third number of the "Lys" you will know that if the first pages are
bad it is because you have taken the time necessary to make them good,
and that nothing is sweeter to me than to abandon for you my author's
vanity and the public.
[Footnote 1: The publication of "Le Lys dans la Vallée" in Russia. See
"Memoir of Balzac," pp. 160, 161, 231-237.--TR.]
[Footnote 2: All his political interests and occupations were excluded
from his letters to Russia, in fear of the censorship.--TR.]
[Footnote 3: It seems, at first sight, rather astonishing that a man
so deeply in debt should talk of buying property. But in a letter to
his sister respecting his building of "Les Jardies," he says it is
as an investment for his mother, who was one of his creditors. The
same statement is made by Théophile Gautier in his record of Balzac.
From this point of view, a purchase of real estate was safety, not
extravagance.--TR.]