P. S. I send you the design of the inkstand before you receive it; that
you may know if you receive the right thing.
To MADAME HANSKA.
PARIS, May 16-June 16, 1836.
One year ago to-day, I was at the Hôtel de la Poire, in Vienna, at one
o'clock, having made the journey in five days, and not having slept for
three nights! At two o'clock, after an hour's sleep, I gave myself the
_fête_ of going to the Walterische Haus. To-day, my only pleasure will
be, in the midst of my perpetual battle, a halt of two hours to write
you a line, _cara contessina_. But instead of sending you a bouquet of
rosy hopes, I have only sad things to tell you. All that I announced
to you of good has failed. Nothing of that which would have freed me
succeeds.
However, to-day Madame Bêchet may perhaps cede her rights in the
"Études de Mœurs" to Werdet; and this is more important than you know
to my tranquillity; for if I have but one publisher I can regulate my
work, I can manage to obtain a month's rest, and you know what I can
make of a month's rest. The "Contes Drolatiques" affair still drags on.
During the last few days a great change has taken place in me.
Ambition has disappeared. I no longer want to enter public life by the
Chamber or by journalism. So my efforts will now tend to rid me of the
"Chronique de Paris." This determination comes to me from the aspect
of the Chamber of Deputies. The folly of the orators, the silliness
of the debates, the little chance there is of triumphing against such
miserable mediocrity, have made me renounce the idea of mixing myself
in it otherwise than as a minister. Therefore, two years hence, I
shall try to open, with cannon-shot, the doors of the Academy; for
academicians can become peers, and I will endeavour to make a large
enough fortune to reach the Upper Chamber and enter power through power
itself.
"Le Lys dans la Vallée" is sapping me. Neither the lawsuit nor the
book is finished. I have ten more _feuilles_, one hundred and sixty
pages, to do wholly--to write and correct. I hope to finish in ten
days, though it is almost a quarter of the book; but it is the easiest
quarter. All is now settled, _posé_. I have only to conclude. The
striking character is decidedly M. de Mortsauf. It was very difficult
to draw that figure; but it is done now. I have raised the statue of
the Emigration. I have collected in one and the same creation all the
features of the _émigré_ returned to his estates, and perhaps all the
features of the husband; for married men do, more or less, resemble M.
de Mortsauf. The book will appear, I hope, by June 1. But how can I
send you your copy? I could send it by the embassy, but I must know the
address of some one who is devoted to you in Saint Petersburg.
June 16.
You could never understand what my life has been between these two
dates. This letter has lain a month on my table without my being able
to add a word. I have received two letters from you and one from M.
Hanski without being able to answer them, and to-day I must lock my
door and take a morning to write to you. I have so many things to tell
you! So many events have happened to me I do not know where to begin.
Besides, it is impossible to tell you all; it would fill volumes.
First, my lawsuit is won and my book is out. I have worked night and
day to finish the book in time to have it appear the very day the
verdict was given. You must know that the same sort of attack that was
made against my credit during my journey to Vienna, when they declared
me in prison for debt, my enemies have again made against my character
and my integrity. All the most ignoble and basest calumny, all the mud
that could be found has been heaped upon me. I had to write a defence,
for the public, _in a single night_. You can read it in the "Lys," to
which it forms an introduction [he suppressed it, later]. I won twice
over, once before the public, and once before the judges, who were
indignant. On what will they now attack me?[1]
Ah! you will never know how burning my life has been during this month.
I was alone to meet it, harassed by the newspaper people demanding
money; harassed by my own payments to meet; harassed by my book,
for which I had day and night to correct proof. No, I wonder I lived
through it. Life is too heavy; I have no pleasure in living.
You have grieved me much by sending back to me the foolish things your
aunt has said,--that I am married to a lady whose name and person I
do not know,--while I am laden here with the foolish things of Paris!
Those from Constantinople are too much! Keep, I beg of you your
credulity for good things. I really do not know what Madame Rosalie
[Rzewuska] means, or what Hammer writes me; he says you are going to
Constantinople, and that he has sent your "Livre Mystique" to your
aunt, who will deliver it to you in person. I am lost in all this
muddle of news.
Though I have won my suit and the "Lys" is out, my affairs do not
prosper; it is one of the victories that kill. Another such, and I am
dead. The production of books does not suffice to extinguish my debts;
I must have recourse to the stage, and there I shall encounter such
keen hatreds that they may bar my entrance, or deceive the public on
the value of the works I produce there.
I received Monsieur Hanski's letter during those days. I have a better
edition of the "Médecin de campagne" to send him. But I still do not
know how to send it, therefore I keep it for him.
I am so encumbered with delayed business, cares, tentatives, that I
write you with a sort of inebriated head that does not allow of logic;
so I hasten to close this letter and send it off. You will receive
another, acknowledging the reception of the inkstand, which from the
drawing seems to me of crushing magnificence for a poor devil.
Boulanger has made a very fine thing of my portrait. It will have,
I think, the honours of the King's corner in the coming Exhibition.
Don't trouble yourself about the money for the copy, which will
be an original, for I am to sit for yours as I did for this one. I
will pay him the five hundred francs, fifty ducats, and when I go to
Wierzchownia you can, if I am not rich, return them; if I am rich
I shall have no need of them. But all artists think that Boulanger
has done a fine thing, which, apart from its merit as a portrait, is
great as a painting. I have had to give sittings of seven and eight
hours--already ten of them--through the storms of this month.
At the moment when I am writing to you and when I need some repose to
revive my brain, which drops like a jaded horse (for it is impossible
not to see that there are organs the strength of which is limited),
the manager of our newspaper sends me missive after missive to pay him
thirteen thousand more francs, the last of the forty-five thousand
which I owe on my purchase. These are pin-pricks into one's spinal
marrow. So I must leave my letter a second time and rush about the city
to realize on certain shares; and I must at the same time finish the
"Ecce Homo" begun in the "Chronique" two days ago.
Again my letter is interrupted. Oh! this time it is too much! Do you
know by what? By a legal notice from Madame Bêchet, who summons me
to furnish her within twenty-four hours my two volumes in 8vo, with
a penalty of fifty francs for every day's delay! I must be a great
criminal and God wills that I shall expiate my crimes! Never was such
torture! This woman has had ten volumes 8vo out of me in two years, and
yet she complains at not getting twelve!
You will be some time without news of me, for I shall probably flee
into the valley of the Indre and there write in twenty days the two
volumes of that woman and get rid of her. For such an enterprise one
must have no distraction, no thought other than that of the work we
write. Yes, if I die for it, I must be done with these obligations.
But if you only knew what an absence of twenty days is to me in my
affairs. It is conflagration. I beg of you, do not be worried. If
I do not write to you, it is that I am either fighting for serious
interests, or working for something urgent, ardent, that brooks no
delay. Here I am, rebeginning a horrible struggle--that of money
interests and books to write! Put an end to the last of my contracts
by satisfying Madame Bêchet, and write a fine book! And I have twenty
days! And it shall be done! The "Héritiers Boirouge" and "Illusions
Perdues" will be written in twenty days!
I leave you, as you see, more harassed, more persecuted, more occupied
than ever. I have the sad presentiment that nothing can end well out of
all this. Human nature has its limits, the strong as well as the weak,
and I shall soon have attained my limit.
Well, adieu; you, one of the three persons who might know me, have you
many doubts, have you left any dark corners without penetrating them,
because I have not had the happiness to be long near you?
[Footnote 1: For a brief account of this lawsuit, which, though won,
left cruel effects upon his life, see his sister's narrative in the
Memoir of this edition, pp. 231, 232.--TR.]