CHAILLOT, January 18, 1836.
In spite of my entreaty, your letter, which I received to-day, after
nearly one month's interregnum, is neither dated nor numbered; so
that it is impossible to answer each other understandingly at such a
distance.
Your letter contains two reproaches which have keenly affected me; and
I think I have already told you that a few chance expressions would
suffice to make me go to Wierzchownia, which would be a misfortune in
my present perilous situation; but I would rather lose everything than
lose a true friendship.
In the first place, as for letters, count up those that you have
written me, and my replies; the balance will be much in my favour. When
you speak of the rarity of my letters you make me think that some must
be lost, and I feel uneasy. In short, you distrust me at a distance,
just as you distrusted me near by, without any reason. I read quite
despairingly the paragraph of your letter in which you do the honours
of my heart to my mind, and sacrifice my whole personality to my brain.
I laughed much at your reckoning of my work by quantity, not quality.
I laughed, because I thought of your analytical forehead; I laughed,
because I thought that at the moment when I was reading those falsely
accusing pages, you, perhaps, were holding in your hand "Séraphita"
and making me in the depths of your heart some honourable amends.
Ah! _cara_, if you were in the secret of those work-sessions, which
begin at midnight and end at midday, if you knew that the new edition
of the "Médecin de campagne" and the second of the "Livre Mystique"
have cost me six hundred hours, that I must deliver February 1 the
manuscripts of two new octavo volumes, and that I have business and
lawsuits besides, you would see, with pain, that you have accused a
_friend_ falsely, that "Marie Touchet" is going on, and that--that--etc.
To-day, I have so much on my hands that I am compelled to extreme
rapidity. I am irreconcilably parted from the two Revues. I have in
my own hands "La Chronique de Paris," a newspaper that comes out
twice a week, and expresses my royalist sympathies. I have begun
the year by "La Messe de l'Athée," a work conceived, written, and
printed in a single night. I must deliver in February a work entitled
"L'Interdiction," which is equivalent to seventy pages of the "Revue
de Paris." This is over and above what I have to do for Madame Bêchet
and Werdet. In two months I shall have ended the agreement with Madame
Bêchet, and be free of her.
In the enumeration which you make of my works you count as nothing the
enormous corrections which the reprints cost me. Is it not sad to have
to count up with you,--to make for friendship calculations such as I
have to make with my publishers? You took amiss what I said to you in
asking you not to cause me false sorrows, because I was bending beneath
the weight of real ones. To tell you those, I should have to write
you volumes. They are such that the success of "Séraphita" did not
bring into my soul the slightest joy. Did there not come a moment when
Sisyphus neither wept nor smiled, but became of the nature of the rocks
he was ever lifting?
My life is becoming too much that of a steam-engine. Toil to-day, toil
to-morrow; always toil, and small results. 1836 is begun. I shall soon
be thirty-seven years old. I have six months before me, during which I
have accumulated fifty thousand francs to pay. Those paid, I shall have
paid off what I owe to strangers. There remains my mother. But I shall
have spent nine years of life at the edge of a table, with an inkstand
before me. I have had but three diversions, permit me to say three
happinesses: my three journeys,--three recreations snatched, stolen,
perilously torn from the midst of my battles, leaving the enemy to make
headway; three halts, during which I breathed!
And you find fault with the poor soldier who has resumed his life of
abnegation, his life militant, the poor writer who has not taken a
penful of ink these two years without looking at your visiting card
placed below his inkstand.
No, surely, I would not have you hide from me a single one of the sad
or gay thoughts that come to you; but while I sympathize keenly with
all that is of you, believe that I suffer horribly from the worries
that you make for yourself about me, by supposing facts or sentiments
that are false or foreign to my nature. Then it is that I measure the
distance that parts us, and drop my head. The wound is given, here, at
the moment when at Wierzchownia you ought, on receiving a letter from
me, to regret having been too quick to blame a heart which is wholly
devoted to you. Here are explanations enough.
I am very desirous that you should have the second edition of the
"Livre Mystique" in which I have made some changes, but all is not
done yet in the matter of corrections. Madame de Berny sent me her
observations too late, and I could not rewrite the second chapter,
entitled "Séraphita." She alone had the courage to tell me that the
angel talked too much like a grisette; that what seemed pretty so long
as the end was not known is paltry. I see now that I must _synthesize_
woman, as I have all the rest of the book. Unhappily, I need six months
to remake this part, and during that time noble souls will all blame me
for that fault which will be so obvious to their eyes.
I send Hammer a copy of the second edition, in memory of his kind deeds
and his friendly reception.
Did I tell you that the Princess Schonberg has put her child here in
the house where I am, on account of its vicinity to the Orthopædic
hospital? Yesterday I met her in the garden and we talked Vienna; she
did not tell me a word about you, but much about Loulou. She said
that Lady ... had again run away with a Greek, that Prince Alfred had
prevented her from getting beyond Stuttgard. The husband arrived,
fought a duel with the Greek, and took back his wife. What a singular
wife!
Forgive me this gossip. I was so happy in the solitude of this house,
rue des Batailles! The landlord said to me one morning that a Prince
Schudenberg had come. I replied, "No, there are only Counts of
Schuttenberg." The next day on the staircase I saw a German valet, who
looked at me, smiling, and three days later Prince Schonberg told me,
at Madame Appony's, that he had put his heir under the care of our good
air and garden.
If the play of "Marie Touchet" succeeds I can buy the house I have
in view. With what delight I shall enjoy a home of my own! But the
damned seller will not accept my terms of payment; he wants twenty-five
thousand francs down, and I don't know when I shall have them. If I
earn them in six months the house may then have been sold. Well, one
must submit.
I have still twenty days' more work on the "Médecin de campagne;" only
one volume is printed; I must finish the second. I hope that this time
the text will be definitive, and that it will be pure, without spot or
blemish.
You see, nothing can be more monotonous than my life in the midst of
this whirling Paris. I refuse all invitations; laboriously I do my
work; I amass--to win a few days' freedom. One more journey that I
want to make! Some nights more of toil and perhaps I can go and see
you about the middle of this year. It cannot be until after I clear
my debt. I would not show you even once that anxious face that so
struck you the day you were singing and I was looking out across the
Waltergarten.
No, you never spoke to me of that Roger. You commit little sins, which,
like spoilt children, you do not own till a long time afterwards.
At this moment I am a prey to the horrible spasmodic cough I had at
Geneva, and which, since then, returns every year at the same time. Dr.
Nacquart declares that I ought to pay attention to it, and that I got
something, which he does not define, in crossing the Jura. The good
doctor is going to study my lungs. This year I suffer with it more than
usual. If I am at Wierzchownia this time next year you will have an old
man to nurse.
I am in despair at the delay the "Revue de Paris" makes in bringing out
the "Lys dans la Vallée." No work ever cost more labour. The "Lys,"
"Séraphita," the "Médecin de campagne" are the three gulfs into which I
have flung the most nights, money, and thoughts. The finest part, the
end, is that which has not yet appeared.
We are reprinting at this moment the fourth volume of the "Scènes de
la Vie privée," in which I have made great changes in relation to the
general meaning in "Même Histoire;" so that Hélène's flight with the
murderer is rendered more probable. It took me a long time to make
these last knots.
To sum up your questions: my health is not good just now; business
matters are multiplying; work also; I am under suspicion by you,
whereas I am exterminating myself to earn money here. No pleasures,
many annoyances. Nothing has varied since my last letter, neither my
heart nor my occupations. I am awaiting some news. I have imagined a
thousand evils; I fancied that Anna, or you, or M. Hanski were ill.
I now learn that you really are suffering with your heart. Remember
all that I have written to you about it. Avoid emotions, do not make
violent exertions, and no harm will come of it. As for the cure, when
you come to Paris it will be completed; we have physicians very learned
on that point. It needs digitalis in doses adapted to the temperament.
January 22.
Since the night I last wrote to you, this letter has lain here without
my having one moment in which to finish or close it. This wheel, this
machine of a life must be seen to be understood. Werdet saw the mother
of the woman who is near him burned on New Year's day. He tried to put
out the flames and burned his hands. The poor old woman died in ten
minutes; and Werdet has had to keep his bed twenty days to cure his
burns. I had to do his business for him, for Werdet is I. I had to
obtain five thousand francs for myself and eight thousand for him. We
have ten months' distress before us, both he and I. The last four days
have been spent in marches and countermarches. What hours lost! I am
never at home except to sleep a few hours. I have a dreadful month of
February before me, full of work that will not return me a farthing.
Well, I must bid you adieu, to you and all those about you; work is
waiting; the case of proofs is full, and I am in arrears with several
folios of copy still to do. I have more work than generals on a
campaign, but such work is obscure. You can imagine that a soldier
on a campaign cannot write, and yet you expect a writer forced along
on four lines of combat to be liberal of his letters. I assure you
that the problem of my time is more than ever insoluble. When I am
with you, ask me why, and I will tell you. As for writing it, it would
take volumes, and I must now rely on the confidence that should exist
between friends to take my devotion, my testimonies of heart and soul
under their simplest expression; certain that that expression will
suffice, in spite of distance, to make us comprehend each other. Is
that true? Say yes--"if you love me."
Adieu; accept the wishes that I make for your happiness such as you
wish it. If I were God! Ah!
You are not ignorant of how rare lofty sentiments are; I do not speak
here of talents; no, I mean sentiments enlightened by pure intelligence.
Did I tell you that the little silver pencil-case for which I cared
so much, and on which I had the _Ave_ engraved, that gracious and
religious Faber, I lost from my pocket while asleep in a public
conveyance? I will not have another; I cared for that one so much! It
fell from my pocket; it needed a chain; I thought of that too late.
The lizard chain of my watch is taken off. It was so easily broken; it
caught in everything. I return it to you in idea; Lecointe has put a
_cassolette_ upon it. I shall keep it for you preciously, and you will
some day wear it.
Excuse me for talking of such trifles, but I wanted to explain the
absence of the _Ave_--a prayer I often make.
Dear, I would that when looking at your flowers you heard the gentle
words my heart is saying at this moment to you; I would that in
breathing their perfume you might feel the spirit that consoles; I
would that the silence were eloquent; that all Nature in what she has
that is most endearing were my interpreter. But these, perhaps, are not
all the things we should require; we should live too happy in their
contact. We need to flee to loftier regions, to the bare and stormy
summits, where all will make us humble by its grandeur and by the
demonstration of vast struggles. You could find in what I do not tell
you of myself something analogous. But I have not the sad courage to
uncover all my wounds.
Well, adieu. Like the fisherman in Walter Scott's "Antiquary," I must
saw my plank without risking the blunder of an inch; I must write. Oh!
_cara_, write! when one's soul is mourning, and when the sister-soul is
mourning also, and something is lost to us of our faith in losing the
soul that inspired it!--Let us bury that secret in our hearts.
There is an autograph for you in the envelope of this letter. It is
that of Silvio Pellico.
A thousand greetings to M. Hanski and to those about you. May heaven
dictate to them the honey words, the tender silences, the grace of
heart, the religious efforts of the mind, which are so needed in those
terrible transition days which we call bad days, sad days.
Accept a very affectionate pressure of the hand.
PARIS, January 30, 1836.
_Cara_, I have this moment received yours of December 24 (old style),
in which you speak to me of Princess G..., "that little stupid." I
should have laughed at your suspicions, if you had not revealed your
displeasure in those three furious pages, the fury of which I adore.
I have never but once set foot in the house of that "little stupid,"
for, without having read your adorable advice relative to society, I
have followed it to the letter. All that you say convinces me that our
thoughts are identical. Let me repeat, for the last time, that in the
situation in which I am placed I am the subject of gossip and calumnies
without foundation, and that those who wish to pull me down will never
know the secrets of my heart. I can deliver up my works to them, I
can let them say all they like about my person, and about my business
affairs; but _all that you do not hear directly from me_ about the
matters that trouble you, believe it to be false. I hasten to write
you these few words so as not to delay this letter, so important to
friendship.
I saw Madame Kisseleff at the Opera, and she talked to me of you and of
your brother; she begged me to remember her to you with many amiable
expressions. She has never said any harm of you; on the contrary, she
praised me much for my attachment to you, without saying anything to
lessen it. But she did say of your brother what you told me yourself
in Vienna. I share the grief you express to me on the fatal event; but
I am not entirely of your opinion. Among _specialists_, judgments go
more to the root of things. If Count Henry is all that you say of him,
you should consider the nervous disposition of poets, of men who live
in thought. Yes, the whole world will condemn him, and especially for
the last phases of the affair. But believe that there are some souls
who, without absolving him--for a man cannot be absolved for a failure
of moral character--will pity him as they pity "Louis Lambert," of
whom you speak. Without comparing your brother to a _seer_, there are
in the nature of men of mobile and changeable impressions, lacunæ,
lassitudes, solutions of continuity under the pressure of misfortunes,
of which we should take account. As judge, I should cut him off, as
you do, from communion with the faithful; but I should open to him my
poet's heart and comfort him, as you are doing. Yes, _cara_, the union
of talent, genius, poesy, love, and a great, indomitable character,
a rectangular will, is a miracle of nature--possibly an effect of
temperament. I will not go farther on this dolorous subject.
The "Chronique de Paris" takes all my time. I sleep only five hours.
But if your affairs and M. Hanski's are doing well, mine are beginning
to prosper. Subscriptions are received in miraculous abundance, and
the shares I possess have risen to a value of ninety thousand francs
capital in one month.[1] It is impossible for me to go into society;
I am even uncivil. I hardly see my most intimate friends. If you were
a witness of my life you would pity it. But my thirst for work is in
direct ratio to my thirst for independence. I have renewed negotiations
for the Beaujon house. My lawsuit will be called before the court
to-morrow. It is now five o'clock in the morning. I am preparing the
means of defence for my lawyer. I thank you much for your good long
letter. There's a letter--a pretty letter--in in which affection
scolds, and caresses as it scolds, but tells me all that you are doing!
I have broken the last frail relations of politeness with Madame
de Castries. She makes her society now of MM. Jules Janin and
Sainte-Beuve, who have so outrageously wounded me. It seemed to me bad
taste, and now I am happily out of it.
"Marie Touchet" is getting on. You ought to have "Séraphita" by this
time. The second edition of the "Livre Mystique" appears on February
1. I am sorry you should read the bad edition before this one, though
this has faults and must still undergo some changes. Werdet is quite
pleased; yesterday he sold a hundred and fifty copies to foreign
countries; he hopes to sell as many more from that advertisement. I
have ten days more of corrections on the "Médecin de campagne," third
edition, 8vo. Ask for it; it is fine, in type, printing, and paper;
except for a few imperceptible blemishes, the text is settled, fixed,
as that of "Louis Lambert" is fixed. "Louis Lambert" is much changed;
it is now complete. The last thoughts accord with "Séraphita;" all is
co-ordinated. Moreover, the gap between college and Blois is filled up;
you will see that.
The "Messe de l'Athée" has had the greatest success in the "Chronique
de Paris." To-morrow the first chapter of the "Interdiction" will
appear. And you think I court society! I think it is you who are the
"little stupid."
A thousand pretty flowers of affection; take them, gather them, wear
them on that intelligent brow, which refuses only one comprehension,
that of understanding the extent of the affections you inspire. You saw
them in Vienna, you doubt them in Paris. Oh! that is not right; above
all, when it concerns one who is devoted to you at all points, like
your poor moujik.
Do not fail to remember me to every one about you; and M. Hanski will
find here affectionate compliments, and all friendly things.
[Footnote 1: For a brief account of this enterprise, see Memoir, pp.
164, 165.--TR.]
PARIS, March 8, 1836.
Nothing can describe my anxiety. It is now more than a month since I
have heard from you. A silence of a month can only have been caused by
some grave event. Is M. Hanski ill? Is it Anna? Is it you? What has
happened? Are you so busy at Kiew that you have not found a single
little moment to give to so old and devoted a friendship? Has a letter
been lost? Has some foolish story reached you, like that of a journey
to Saint-Petersburg?--for, in my presence, a person who did not know
me, but who said he did, declared I was there.[1] Others assert that I
am in Naples.
The truth being, that I work more now than I ever did in my life; and
that never before have I had such a desire for independence. Rossini
encouraged me by telling me he had never breathed at his ease until the
day when he was certain of having bread. I am not there yet.
My suit with the "Revue" gives me many worries. I must sustain the
"Chronique," master my financial crisis, work for Werdet, and work for
Madame Bêchet. It is enough to die of! And, speaking literally, I _am_
killing myself. Physical strength is beginning to fail me. If I had the
money I should be on my way, for there is no other resource for me than
a journey of three months, at the least.
You have not said anything to me of "Séraphita." Another month, and
the true "Lys dans la Vallée" will be finished and out. In the opinion
of all critics, and mine, it will be my most perfect work in style,
regarding "Séraphita" and "Louis Lambert" as exceptions.
It appears that they are making from Dantan's bad caricature a horrible
lithograph of me for foreign countries, and "Le Voleur" has published
one also. This obliges me to have myself painted, and abandon my habit
of modesty. After examining the present condition of French art, and
in default of your dear Grosclaude, who left me in the lurch, I have
elected Louis Boulanger to _portray_ me. As you wished for a copy of
that which Grosclaude desired to do, I ask you candidly if you would
like a second original of the portrait which Boulanger is to make?
I ask this the more easily as the price is very much less. I think
he does not ask more than fifteen hundred francs, which will be full
length, the size of nature. If you would like the bust only, say so.
I am at this moment in a state of moral and physical exhaustion of
which I can give you no idea. I have even extreme sufferings. Every
evening an inflammation of the eyes warns me that I have gone beyond my
strength, and yet I was never so much in need of it.
Never have I gone through such extremes of hope and of despair.
Sometimes the affair of the "Cent Contes Drolatiques" (which would
wholly liquidate me) seems to be settled, sometimes it will not be
settled at all. Sometimes my money matters have an air of arranging
themselves, and then all fails. Around me my friends are in trouble.
Madame de Berny has not yet been willing since the death of her son to
see me. She sees no one but her eldest son. My heavy cold has returned.
Body and soul are wrung. The newspapers are full of redoubled hate and
malevolence. That is nothing to me, but there are many men who would
not be as philosophical.
And now, to crown this poesy of ill, this sorrowful situation,
you leave me one whole month without letters, to run the gamut of
suppositions and believe daily that some grievous news will reach me.
For several days past, life, thus made, seems odious. Nine years of
toil without immediate result, without means of living obtained--this
kills me, in addition to all the other causes of distress I have
enumerated.
I have not been out three times this winter. I dined with Madame
Kisseleff, and once with Madame Appony, and I went to a fancy ball
given by an Englishman, and, six times in all, to the Italian Opera.
But nothing distracts my mind or amuses me. Since the pleasure that
I had in travelling so rapidly to Vienna I have tasted the delights
of Nature seen on a grand scale; I have conceived the mightiest of
arts--that which puts into the soul the sentiment of Nature. To grasp
vast landscapes, to see the earth under its many colours, its thousand
aspects, and to have an object at the end of this kaleidoscopic
vision--I know nothing that equals that passage through space. There
are moments when I stand with my head buried on the chimney-piece,
engaged in recalling the vast incidents of that last journey.
I am going to order a carriage, and await my first bag of two thousand
ducats, and my first month of liberty.
I entreat you, whatever happens, never leave me a month again without
news, and, if you are ill, dictate one line to M. Hanski. You don't
know what troubles it puts into my poor solitary life.
Jules Sandeau has been one of my blunders. You cannot imagine such
indolence, such nonchalance. He is without energy, without will. The
noblest sentiments in words, nothing in action, or in reality. No
devotion of thought or of body. When I had spent on him what a great
seigneur would spend on a caprice, I said to him:
"Jules, here is a drama, write it. And after that another, and a
vaudeville for the Gymnase."
He answered that it was impossible for him to put himself in the train
of any one, no matter who. As that implied that I speculated on his
gratitude, I did not insist. He would not even put his name to a work
done in common.
"Well, then, get a living by writing books?"
He has not, in three years, written half a volume. Criticism? He
thinks that too difficult. He is a stable horse. He is the despair of
friendship, as he was the despair of love. That's over; as soon as I
get the La Grenadière, I shall leave the rue Cassini.
The two young men, de Belloy and de Gramont, have not the firm will
that enables a man to rise above adversity and men, and to make for
himself the events of his life. They will not subordinate themselves to
reach a result. In France, associations of men are impossible, partly
because of individual pretensions, partly because of wit, talent,
name, and fortune, four causes of insubordination. Since I have taken
Diogenes' lantern to look through this vaunted Paris for men of talent
I have heard many a cry of poverty; but when you offer to those who
utter the cry money for work well done, they "can't do it," and I have
not obtained the work.
Capefigue is my editor [on the "Chronique de Paris"] and takes
my directions. A good little political condottiere! _Mon Dieu_,
how heartily you would laugh if I were in the chimney-corner at
Wierzchownia explaining to you what I see here daily.
Well, here are piles of proof to send off, and much work to finish. My
spirit, one moment let loose to roam across your lands, must resume its
yoke of misery. I am in the rue Cassini; I have no autograph to send
you; I came near asking at the Court of Peers for one of Fieschi, but I
thought it might not be agreeable to you.
The other day I went to Frascati, out of curiosity, to see a
gambling-house. There I found a person of your acquaintance--one who
was the devoted, in Geneva, of Madame Marie. He told me he had come
there for the first time. He was playing _craps_ [a game of dice] with
incredible facility, practice, and cleverness; and all the women who
were present knew him. I laughed in my sleeve. Day before yesterday
he invited me to a magnificent dinner at the Rocher de Cancale, where
were Madame Kisseleff and Madame Hamelin, an elderly celebrity. Among
the guests was an illustrious friend of the present King of Sardinia,
who has just returned to power. I set a trap for the friend of the dear
Countess Marie. On leaving at eleven o'clock I said to him:--
"It is too late for the theatres, will you go and play?"
We went to the "Salon des Étrangers." He was as well known in that
place as Barabbas, and, to my great astonishment, I found there all the
most virtuous and _rangés_ men of the great world. And what did I see a
quarter of an hour later? The friend of the King of Sardinia, who had
told us he had a rendezvous to avoid coming out with us! And this dear
Italian said to me, pointing to our late Amphytrion:--
"You know the Italian proverb: 'gambler like a Pole.'"
The friend of the Countess Marie is henceforth to me a book in which I
can read at any time. Little Komar was there also. That young man, old
in the flower of his age, makes me ache to see him. I perceive that
in order to understand society I must go to such places three times a
year, to know the men with whom one has to do. These are the only two
times in my life that I have set foot in such dens. I shall return to
the Salon once more to see Hope play; he stakes a hundred thousand
francs with supernatural indolence, confronting chance, as one power
stands facing another power.
_Addio!_ I am awaiting a letter from you. Last night I dreamed that I
saw a letter and a parcel sent by you; in the parcel were apples. I
never had so real a dream. When Auguste came to wake me at five in the
morning, I said, "Where are the apples?" He saw I had been dreaming. I
wish I could explain these dreams.
[Footnote 1: This story, with details quite absurd on the face of them,
Werdet quotes from M. Philarète Chasles; which shows how even his
friends and gentlemen united with his enemies in creating myths about
him.--TR.]
PARIS, March 24, 1836.
At length I have received your last letter, numbered 5, a whole month
after its predecessor! Being in the rue Cassini, I cannot verify
whether I have received No. 4.
To what you ask of me, the friend says: No. But there is, in me,
another personage, too proud to answer otherwise than by a _yes_ when
the matter concerned is something that amuses you. There are two things
in my nature: childlike trust, and a total lack of egoism.
You are amusing yourself at Kiew, while I am interdicted even the
Italian Opera. Never was my solitude so complete, nor my work so
cruelly continuous. My health is so affected that I cannot pretend to
recover that air of youth to which I had the weakness to cling. All is
said. If, at my age, a man has never tasted pure, unshackled happiness,
Nature will later prevent its being possible for him to wet his lips
in the cup. White hairs cannot approach it. Life will have been for me
a most sorrowful jest. My ambitions are falling one by one. Power is a
small matter. Nature created in me a being of love and tenderness, and
chance has constrained me to write my desires instead of satisfying
them.
If between now and three years hence nothing is changed in my
existence, I shall retire, peacefully, to Touraine, living on the
banks of the Loire, hidden from all, and working only to fill the
empty hours. I shall even abandon my great work. My forces are being
exhausted in this struggle; it is lasting too long; it is wearing me
out.
And yet, the affair of the "Cent Contes Drolatiques" seems as if
it might be settled, and that would render my financial condition
endurable; but it drags along in a despairing way. It will save me when
I am dead. I have earned in the mass this year a sum much greater than
what I owe; but the debts have fixed dates for becoming due, and the
receipts are capricious.
Around me I have no one, or else only powerless friendships; for the
nature of certain souls is to attach themselves only to those who
suffer.
Frightened by this struggle, and not being willing even to see it,
Jules Sandeau has fled from here, leaving me his rent, and a few debts
on my hands. He is a man at sea, drifting, as they say of a vessel
wrecked in mid-ocean, and battered by the gale. Like Medea, I have
_myself_ only against all. Nothing is changed in my situation. I might
write you for six months, and say but one thing: I toil. I have no
longer any distractions, any amusements--the desert, and the sun!
I smiled in thinking that Madame Eve Hanska, to whom "Séraphita"
is dedicated, plays lansquenet, and that this solitary personage is
immersed in all mundane things.
Wednesday, 23.
My lawsuit with the "Revue de Paris" will be tried the day after
to-morrow, Friday. The verdict will enable me to fix the day for
putting out "Le Lys dans la Vallée" for sale. You can only know what
that book is by reading it in full in Werdet's edition, which makes
two handsome volumes, 8vo. The first is printed; I have just, before
writing to you, signed the order to print the last _feuille_ of that
volume. I had several sentences to re-write in a letter from Madame
de Mortsauf to Félix, which made Madame Hamelin weep--so she told
me. Nothing of all that was in your infamous "Revue;" nor was there
anything of all my labour, which turned my bad manuscript into a work
of style. You read the manuscript in Vienna.
Yesterday they brought me all the writings of "Séraphita" bound. The
manuscript is in gray cloth, with the inside of black satin, and the
back of Russia leather, to ward off worms. I have also all the writings
of the "Lys." But how can I send you these things? I can't understand
how it is that you have not received my letters, for I answer all
yours regularly; and I wrote you one, lately, full of anxiety, which
this one, just received, has calmed. But I imagine that having always
addressed them to Berditchef they are still at Wierzchownia, unless
they have sent them to you in a mass to Kiew.
I have been twice to the Exhibition at the Museum. We are not strong.
If you had money to spend on objects of art I should have asked you to
make a few fine purchases, for there are two or three things that are
really beautiful,--a Venus by Pradier, and one or two pictures. Your
friend Grosclaude has nothing in it, and I hear nothing more about him.
I am wholly taken up with the last work for Madame Bêchet, who, did I
tell you? is marrying, and quits publishing for happiness. Nothing will
be fully decided about my poor finances until after the publication
of the last volume for Madame Bêchet. That is, for me, one of the
culminating points of my fortune; for I can then begin the publication
of the thirteen succeeding volumes, and receive about twelve thousand
francs for the copies which belong to me.
I know nothing of you except from you, for of the country you are now
in I know nothing but that which you tell me; I imagine you welcomed,
fêted, as you would be wherever you went. But such pleasure, is it
really pleasure? You were tired of it in Vienna, but you renew it at
Kiew!
You would know how I love you if you had seen me searching through your
letter all at once, taking in, at a glance, each page, to see if Anna,
if you, if M. Hanski, if all, were well. Then, seeing that no one but
a niece was ill, and that she had recovered, I gave a great sigh of
relief. You would then have known how restricted are my affections;
how few beings interest me. This solitude is sad, because, believe me,
one wearies of the labours that fill it, and the heart never loses
its claims; it needs expansions. I often make sad elegies when, weary
of writing, I lie back in my chair, and rest my head upon it, and ask
myself why a soul like mine is here, alone, without other joy than
a few memories, as few as they are great. And when I see that what
remains to me of life is the least fortunate half, the least active,
the least loved, the least lovable, I am not exempt from a sadness that
sheds tears.
I will write you as soon as I have finally arranged a thing which may
settle my troubles; for I have resolved to sell some of my shares in
the "Chronique de Paris" in order to liquidate myself more rapidly.
To-day, I am in the greatest uncertainty and overwhelmed with claims.
Well, adieu. In a few days I may write to you of gayer things. But I
doubt it. My health is extremely bad. Coffee no longer procures me
mental force. I must be rich enough to travel.
Thursday, 21.