My letter was again interrupted. Yesterday, I dined with the Abbé de
Lamennais, Berryer, and I don't know whom besides. I saw the abbé for
the first time; as for Berryer, we are old acquaintances. I was shocked
at the atrocious face of the Abbé de Lamennais; I tried to seize a
single feature to which one could attach one's self, but there was none.
Berryer takes a trip to Saint Petersburg. I advised him strongly to
return by land and pass through the Ukraine. I told him that I had
hopes of going to the Ukraine towards September; but I dare not yield
myself to any hope at all. On the 20th I start for Saché [a beautiful
estate near Tours, belonging to a family friend, M. de Margonne].
The "Chronique de Paris" is very well _posed_, politically speaking.
But it needs funds. Berryer told me how fruitful the idea of a Right
Centre was in results.
Madame de Berny is getting worse and worse. I hope to go and see her on
my return from Touraine. But she cannot bear the least emotion.
Adieu; you will pardon my silence when you know all my griefs and
pains. I send you many flowers of memory and affectionate homage.
Present my friendly remembrances to Monsieur Hanski, to whom I shall
write next, and recall me to the recollection of those about you.
SACHÉ, June, 1836.
I receive here your last letter in which you speak to me of Madame
Rosalie and of "Séraphita." In relation to your aunt, I own that I
am ignorant by what law it is that persons so well born and bred can
believe such base calumnies. I, a gambler! Can your aunt neither
reason, combine, nor calculate anything except whist? I, who work, even
here, sixteen hours a day, how should I go to a gambling-house that
takes whole nights? It is as absurd as it is crazy.
I went for the first time, at thirty-six years of age, and out of
curiosity, to Frascati, where I found Bernhard. One night Bernhard
presented me to the Cercle des Étrangers, where he invited me to
dinner. I went for the third time the day he gave the dinner. Since
then, though I have been invited several times, I have never returned
there. The last time, I asked Bernhard to include me in his stake for a
certain sum, which denotes the most profound ignorance of the passion.
In all, during my life, I have lost thirty ducats at cards. So much for
gambling. That vice will never catch me. I play for a stake far dearer
and nobler.
Let your aunt judge in her way of my works, of which she knows neither
the whole design nor the bearing; it is her right to do so. I submit to
all judgments. That is one of the evils through which we have to pass.
Resignation is one of the conditions of my existence.
Your letter was sad; I felt it was written under the influence of your
aunt. To comprehend is to equal, said Raphael; and as you yourself
declare that our poor age does not take the trouble to comprehend, it
follows that our equals are few. That which I can pretend to for myself
and my own person is the usage of a faculty given to man,--_reason_.
Your aunt makes me a gambler and a debauchee; she _has the proofs_, you
say. It is now seven or eight years that I work, as I have told you,
sixteen hours a day. If I am a gambler and a debauchee, the man who has
written thirty volumes in seven years must disappear. Both cannot live
in the same skin; or, if they do, it must have pleased God to make an
extraordinary creature--which I am not.
I was beginning to recover life and strength here, where I have been
for the last five days. On leaving I told them with regard to the
letters that might come, "Send me none but those from Russia;" and
your letter has crushed me more than all the heavy nonsense that
jealousy and calumny, lawsuit and money matters have cast upon me. My
sensibility is a proof of friendship; there are none but those we love
who can make us suffer. I am not angry with your aunt, but I am angry
that a person as distinguished as you say she is should be accessible
to such base and absurd calumny. But you yourself, at Geneva, when
I told you I was free as air, you believed me to be married, on the
word of one of those fools whose trade it is to sell money. I laughed.
Here I cannot laugh; I have the horrible privilege of being horribly
calumniated. A few debates like this, and I shall retire into Touraine,
isolating myself from everything, renouncing all, striving to make
myself an egoist, desiring neither sentiment nor happiness, and living
by thought, and for thought.
Your aunt makes me think of the poor Christian who, entering the
Sistine chapel just as Michel-Angelo had drawn a nude figure, asked
why the popes allowed such horrors in Saint Peter's. She judges a work
of at least the same range in literature, without putting herself at a
distance and awaiting its end. She judges the artist without knowing
him, and by the sayings of ninnies. All that gives me little pain for
myself, but much for her, if you love her. But that you should let
yourself be influenced by such errors, that _does_ grieve me and makes
me very uneasy, for I live by my friendships only.
This is enough about that, or you will think me an angry author, a
personage that does not exist in me. I forbade him ever to appear. Now
let us come to what you say to me of "Séraphita." It is strange that
no one sees that "Séraphita" is _all faith_. Faith affirms, and the
whole is said. The angel has descended from the angelic sphere to come
into the midst of the quibbles of reasoning; he opposes reasoning with
reasoning. It is not for him to formulate doubt. As to his answer, no
sacred author has ever more energetically proven God. The proof drawn
from the infinitude of numbers has surprised learned men. They have
lowered their heads. It was beating them on their own ground with their
own weapons.
As for the orthodoxy of the book. Swedenborg is diametrically opposed
to the Court of Rome; but who shall dare pronounce between Saint Peter
and Saint John? The mystical religion of Saint John is logical; it will
ever be that of superior beings. That of Rome will be that of the crowd.
As you say, one must try to penetrate the meaning of "Séraphita" in
order to criticise the work; but I never counted on a success after
"Louis Lambert" was so despised. These are books that I make for myself
and a few others. When I have to write a book for all the world I know
very well what ideas to appeal to, and what I must express. "Séraphita"
has nothing of earth; if she loved, if she doubted, if she suffered, if
she were influenceable by anything terrestrial, she would not be the
angel. No one in Paris has comprehended the vision of old David, when
he speaks of the efforts of all the elementary substances to recover
their creature _with_ the spirit she has conquered; whereas they can
have nought but her mortal remains. Séraphita is, as it were, a flower
of the globe; all that has nourished her yearns after her. The "Path
to God" is a far more lofty religion than that of Bossuet; it is the
religion of Saint Teresa, of Fénelon, of Swedenborg, of Jacob Boehm,
and of M. Saint-Martin.
But I am repeating myself. Your belief leads to it as much as mine.
I thought I was making a beautiful and grand work, but I may have
deceived myself. It is what it is; and it is now delivered over to the
disputes of this world.
At the moment when I write you have doubtless read the "Lys dans la
Vallée," another Séraphita, who, this one, is orthodox. But I will not
say anything more about them. Literature and its accompaniments bore
me. When a book is done, I like to forget it; I do forget it; and I
never return to it except to purge its faults a year or two later. You
will read the book in its flesh, not its skeleton, and I hope it may
give you pleasure.
I have undertaken to do here the two volumes for Madame Bêchet, as I
must have written you before I left Paris. Touraine has given me back
some health, but at the moment I was working most, with your letter
came a letter from a friend, who sent me a puff of vexations. Such
things dishearten one for living. Happily, the book I am now writing,
"Illusions Perdues," is sufficiently in that tone. All that I can put
into it of bitter sadness will do marvellously well. It is one of the
"novels" that will be understood. It is breast-high of all men.
I am at this moment in the little bedroom at Saché, where I have worked
so much! I see again the noble trees I have so often looked at when
searching out ideas. I am not more advanced in 1836 than I was in 1829;
I owe, and I work, always. I still have in me the same young life, the
heart, still childlike, though you ask me to say how many sentiments
a man's existence can consume. It seems as though, like gamblers,
I have an "angélique" which multiplies. My pretended successes are
still another of the agreeable fables fastened on me. I don't know
which critic it was who said that I had known very intimately all my
models. But I will never reply to these exaggerations. Berryer is of
my opinion, and I shall never forgive myself for having quitted my
silent attitude to descend into this arena of mud, as I did in the
Introduction to "Le Lys dans la Vallée."
I have, within the last few days, been contemplating the extent of my
work and what still remains to do. It is enormous. And, therefore,
looking at that immense fresco, I have a great mind to sell out the
"Chronique," renounce all species of political ambition, and make some
arrangements which would allow me to retire to a "cottage" in Touraine
and there accomplish peaceably, without anxieties, a work which will
help me to pass my life, if not happily, at least tranquilly. That my
life should be _happy_, many other circumstances are needed.
What! Anna has been ill? Do not nurse her too much; excess of care, a
great physician told me, is one of the evils that threaten the children
of the rich. It is a way of bringing the influence of evils to bear
upon them. But you know much already on this head. What I say is not
one of those commonplaces addressed to mothers; it is the cry of a deep
conviction. My sister adored a little girl whom she lost because she
gave ear to everything for her. Her little Valentine is, to-day, on the
contrary, left to herself and she is magnificent.
My brother still gives us much anxiety. My mother is consumed with
grief. But my brother-in-law is succeeding better. The lateral canal of
the Loire has been voted by both Chambers. Nothing is needed now but to
find the capital to build it. Also he has lately obtained the building
of a bridge in Paris, which is an excellent affair. So the skies are
brightening, at least for him. But he has needed, like myself, much
perseverance and courage.
In re-reading your letter, I think you make me out rather greater
than I am, and you demand more of me than I can give. The desire to
do well has brought me to certain means to produce that result, but
the exercise of intellectual faculties does not bring with it real
grandeur; one remains, humanly speaking, what one is: a poor being very
_impressible_, whom God had made for happiness, and whom circumstances
have condemned to the most wearying toil in the world.
At this moment I must leave you to complete my work; in five or six
days, when I am delivered of these two volumes, which will terminate
the hardest of the obligations I have ever contracted, I will write you
at length, with a heart more joyful; for just now things are causing me
more pain than pleasure. My soul and spirit are too strained by work. I
am as nervous as a fashionable woman, but I shall, perhaps, recover a
little gaiety when I feel myself the lighter by two volumes. Touraine
is very beautiful just now. The weather is extremely warm, which has
brought the vineyards into bloom. Ah! my God, when shall I have a
little place, a little château, a little park, a fine library! and
shall I ever inhabit it without troubles, lodging within it the love of
my life?
The farther I go, the more these golden wishes take the tint of dreams;
and yet to renounce them would be death to me. For ten years past I
live by hope only.
Well, adieu; a thousand kindly things to M. Hanski. I place on Anna's
forehead a kiss, full of good wishes, and I beg you to find here
those pretty flowers of the soul, those caressing thoughts, which you
awaken and which belong to you, sad or not; for mine is one of those
unalterable friendships which resemble the sky; clouds may pass beneath
it, the atmosphere may be more or less ardent, but above them the
heavens are ever blue. When you are sad, all you need do is to go up a
little higher.
I have thought of you much during these last days, not receiving any
letters; and now I regret having begun this letter with harshness
towards a person you love and who loves you, though from her portrait I
should judge her very cold.
Adieu again; I confide all I think to this little paper, which,
unfortunately, will be very discreet. You will talk to me about the
"Lys," and say a little more than you have said this time?
PARIS, August 22, 1836.
This date, _cara_, is not without significance. All will be explained
to you by three events which will leave their mark within my soul and
on the history of my misfortunes.
Madame de Berny is dead. I can say no more on that point. My sorrow is
not of a day; it will react upon my whole life. For a year I had not
seen her, nor did I see her in her last moments. This was why: at the
moment when I ought to have been at Nemours I was obliged to wind up
the affairs of the "Chronique" in Paris--in the midst of its greatest
success. We could not support competition with daily papers at forty
francs a year, while we cost sixty-four and appeared semi-weekly. To
keep on, we needed fifty thousand francs, and no one could or would
advance a farthing in the present circumstances of the press. I went to
see all the shareholders and guaranteed to them the integral payment
of what they had put in; so that at the moment when I received the
heaviest blow my heart has ever known--for never, since the death of
my grandmother, have I sounded so deeply the selfish gulf of eternal
separation--at that moment I was meeting a loss of forty thousand
francs. It was too much. Immediately after, Madame Bêchet, married, as
I told you, to a certain Jacquillart, was constrained by him to sue me
for my volumes; I was thus under the weight of a new suit which is all
clear loss to me, for by the deed itself I am condemned to pay fifty
francs for every day's delay, and I am now two months behind, since the
time I received the summons.
The last letter of the angel who has now escaped the miseries of life,
and who in her last days was not spared them,--for in two years her
two finest children, her best loved son, twenty-three years old, he
who was all _herself_, and her most beautiful daughter of nineteen,
are both dead; her youngest daughter of seventeen, mad; and her
remaining son the cause of her greatest grief,--well, her last letter
came in the midst of those worries of mine; and _she_, who was always
so lovingly severe to me, acknowledged that the "Lys" was one of the
finest books in the French language; she decked herself at last with
the crown which, fifteen years earlier, I had promised her, and, always
coquettish, she imperiously forbade me to come and see her, because
she would not have me near her unless she were beautiful and well.
The letter deceived me. I waited until I had, by dint of efforts,
conferences, and much ability, made Werdet buy the "Études de Mœurs"
from Madame Bêchet for thirty thousand francs before I started for
Nemours, and then, suddenly, the fatal news came, and almost killed me.
I do not speak to you here in detail of these forty and some days. I
have given you the chief features, the outline. Some day I will tell
you more. I will tell you how in this intelligent Paris we succumbed;
how in order to settle the affair of the "Études de Mœurs" and the
last lawsuit by which I can ever be threatened, the devotion of my
tailor and the savings of a poor workingman were needed,--two men who
had more faith in me than all the pompous admiration of men in high
places.
When all was over,--struck down in the clearest illusions of my heart,
ruined in money, undergoing a second Beresina such as befell me in
1828, and wearied out,--Werdet gave me twenty days' freedom, and we
arranged for my payments till August 20. Rothschild gave me a letter
of credit for Italy, and I seized a pretext of going to Milan to do
a service to a man with whom I had a box at the opera, M. Visconti
[Count Guidoboni-Visconti]. In twenty days I went there by the Mont
Cenis, returning over the Simplon, having for companion a friend of
Madame Carraud and Jules Sandeau [Madame Caroline Marbouty, to whom
he dedicated "La Grenadière"]. You will divine that I lodged in your
hotel Piazza Castello, and that in Geneva I stayed at the Arc with the
Biolleys, and went to see Pré-l'Évêque and the Maison Mirabaud.
Alas! It is not forbidden to those who suffer to go and breathe a
perfumed air. You alone and your memories could refresh a heart in
mourning. I went over the road to Coppet and to Diodati. _Cara_, the
Porte de Rive is enlarged, just as, suddenly, the affection I bear
you is enlarged by all that I have lost. One no longer waits to enter
Geneva; we can now come and go at any hour of the night. I stayed only
one day in Geneva, and saw no one but de Candolle, who came near dying,
but is better.
Here I am, returned, bearing a wound the scar of which will be ever
visible, but which you alone have soothed unconsciously.
You must have had much uneasiness in consequence of my silence. Forgive
me, dear. It was impossible for me to write, or think. I could only let
myself be drawn along in a carriage, led by an inoffensive hand, guided
like a dying man. My mind itself was crushed; for the failure of the
"Chronique" came upon me at Saché, at M. de Margonne's, where I was,
by a wise impulse, plunged in work to rid myself of that odious Bêchet
(it was that which kept me from going to Nemours!); in eight days I
had invented, composed, "Les Illusions Perdues," and I had written a
THIRD of it! Think what such work was. All my faculties were strained;
I wrote fifteen hours a day; I got up with the sun and wrote till the
dinner-hour without taking anything but coffee.
One day, after dinner, which I naturally made substantial, the letters
arrived, and I read that which announced to me the crisis of the
"Chronique." I went out with M. and Mme. de Margonne into the park,
and fell, struck down by a rush of blood to the head, at the foot of a
tree. I could not write a word, I saw all my prospects ruined. I said
to myself that nothing remained for me but to go and hide myself at
Wierzchownia, and amass enough work and money to come back some day
and pay all I owed. In short, I was stunned. Courage came back to me.
I flew to Paris; I struggled; then the rest came unexpectedly, blow
on blow. I was at Saché after the "Lys" appeared and my suit was won.
Touraine had cured my fatigue then and restored my brain. I was enabled
there to make a last effort.
The journey I have just made only did me good at Geneva. In seeing that
lake, finding myself again in places where I won a friendship that is
so sweet to me, I was wrapped in a delightful atmosphere which shed a
balm upon the bleeding wounds. You will find all in that sentence.
I wished to go to Neufchâtel; but the twenty days were too short. That
is what prevented me from going to you,--the little time and the little
money; for I am still in debt. All illness costs.
Here I am returned, in face of my obligations. To be able to make the
journey, I obtained the price of the "Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée;"
so that I have four volumes 8vo to do, on which I shall not receive
another sou. I have, besides, enormous engagements; and no resources
to sustain them. I must have recourse to credit; that means paying
enormous interest. What a position! Oh! _cara_, what a life! Apathy
saved me. If I had felt it all fully, I should have flung myself into
some torrent on the Simplon.
Yes, all the papers have been hostile to the "Lys;" they have all cried
shame, they have spit upon it. Nettement tells me that the "Gazette de
France" attacked it "because I do not go to mass." The "Quotidienne"
from a private vengeance of the editor; in short all, for some reason
or other. Instead of selling two thousand, as I hoped, for Werdet, we
are only as far as thirteen hundred. Thus all material interests are
endangered. There are some ignorant persons who cannot understand the
beauty of Madame de Mortsauf's death; they do not see the struggle of
matter with mind, which is the foundation of Christianity. They see
only imprecations of the disappointed flesh, of the wounded physical
nature; they will not do justice to the sublime placidity of the soul
when the countess confesses and dies a saint.
When I am thus hurt I spring toward you,--toward you alone now; toward
you who comprehend me, and who judge with enough critical mind to
give value to your praises. With what happiness we feel ourselves
appreciated, judged, by some one who loves us. A word, an observation
from the celestial creature of whom Madame de Mortsauf is a pale
representation made more impression upon me than the whole public, for
she was true; she wanted only my good and my perfection. I make you her
heir, you who have all her noble qualities; you who could have written
that letter of Madame de Mortsauf, which is but the imperfect breath of
her constant inspirations, you who could, at least, complete it.
I must plunge into stupefying work; I can live only in that way, for
where are my hopes? They are very distant. Happiness and material
tranquillity are very far from me. I shall go conscientiously before
me, striving to be sufficient for each day.
Only, _cara_, do not aggravate my griefs by dishonouring doubts;
believe that, to a man so heavily burdened otherwise, calumny is a
light thing, and that now I must let it all be said against me without
distressing myself. In your last letters, you know, you have believed
things that are irreconcilable with what you know of me. I cannot
explain to myself your tendency to believe absurd calumnies. I still
remember your credulity in Geneva when you thought me married.
I hope to go and see you next spring, wherever you are. Perhaps some
fortunate circumstances may happen. My brother-in-law's affairs are
doing pretty well. He has the building of a bridge in Paris, and of
a short railway, besides which the law on the lateral canal of the
Lower Loire is promulgated. It is only necessary to find the money for
it. At any rate it is an acquired right, and nothing can now destroy
it. In that direction I may be able to arrange some good matter of
business. The only thing which at this moment is serious is my double
condition,--that of a man wounded to the heart, who has not yet
recovered his vitality, and of a man garroted by material interests in
jeopardy.
In the midst of these storms, I have received M. Hanski's inkstand,
which has the misfortune of being far too magnificent for a man
condemned to poverty. It is of a style that demands a mansion, horses,
majordomos. Express to him, I beg of you, my admiring thanks for this
beautiful thing, which I can only use in one way, namely: by placing
it among my precious things, to remind me of our good days in Vienna,
Geneva, and Neufchâtel when, seeking for ideas, my eyes may light upon
it.
I do not think I commit sacrilege in sealing this letter to you with
the seal I used to Madame de Berny. I have mislaid the key of the
drawer where I keep my little articles. I made a vow always to wear
this ring on my finger.
I received a letter from you at Saché, of later date than a letter I
have since received in Paris. Perhaps this will make some confusion in
what I wrote to you about "Séraphita" in reply to what you said in the
letter received at Saché. Consider that I said nothing, if anything
that I did say pained you. I received your number 15 yesterday.
No one knows what has become of Mitgislas ... He has left Paris without
paying his debts, having sold everything, and allowing all sorts of
suspicions to hover over him. But I do not concern myself with such
things; I neither listen nor repeat.
You are right; I have no more serviceable friends than my enemies. The
violence and absurdity of the attacks made upon me have revolted all
honest men. Did I tell you that M. de Belleyme came to see me after the
trial? The Court blamed the lawyer on the other side, Chaix d'Estanges.
It seems to me that you have divined my situation in what you say of
sorrow, and also in what you say of those who, like Robert Bruce,
return ever to the light in spite of their defeats.
Adieu! it has done me good to write this long letter. But time does not
belong to me wholly. The most horrible wound of my life is to be never
able to give myself up to my affections, joyous or sad. It is always
work, under pain of perishing, and I have no right to perish. My death
would injure too many. I owe money to devoted friends who give me of
their blood. Therefore I am much misjudged.
Adieu; to you the most beautiful and richest flowers of my soul and
memory. I did not know all that the Pré-l'Évêque was to me, and the
hill from which we see the lake and the bridge; I had to see it all
again, alone and unhappy, to know the value of those memories.
CHAILLOT, October 1, 1836.
Friendship ought to be an infallible consolation in the great
misfortunes of life. Why should it aggravate them? I ask myself sadly
that question on reading to-night your last letter. In the first place,
your sadness reacts strongly upon me; then it betrays such wounding
sentiments. There were phrases in it that pierced my heart. Doubtless
you did not know what profound sorrow was in my soul, nor what sombre
courage accompanies this, my second great disaster, undergone in
middle life. When I was wrecked the first time, in 1828, I was only
twenty-nine years old and I had an angel at my side. To-day I am at an
age when a man no longer inspires the lovable sentiment of a protection
which has nothing wounding, because it is of the essence of youth to
receive it, and it seems natural that youth be aided. But to a man who
is nearer to forty than to thirty, protection must needs be wanting;
it would be an insult. A weak man, without resources at that age, is
judged in all lands.
Fallen from all my hopes, having abdicated wholly, forced to take
refuge here in Jules Sandeau's former garret at Chaillot on September
30, the day when, for the second time in my life, I failed to honour
my signature, and when to the lamentations of integrity, which weeps
within me, was added the sense of solitude,--for here, this time,
I am alone,--I thought, soothingly, that at least I lived complete
in certain chosen hearts. I thought of you. Your letter, so sad, so
discouraged, came. With what avidity I took it, with what tears I
locked it up before taking the little sleep I allow myself! But I
cling to your last words as to the last branch of a tree when the
current is bearing us away. Letters are endowed with a fatal power.
They possess a force which is either beneficent or fatal, according to
the sensations in the midst of which they come to us. I would that,
between two friends very sure of themselves, signs were agreed upon
by which from the aspect of a letter each might know if it was one of
expansive gaiety or plaintive moaning. We could then choose the moment
for reading it.
I had but nineteen days before me; I could not go to the Ukraine and
return. Talma's letter was given to me in Gérard's salon. What trifles
you lay hold of! Perhaps you will not even remember what you have
written to me on this subject when you receive this letter. Am I to
send you that of Mademoiselle Mars? Will you not think that she has
been _paid_? If you ever go to Italy and pass through Turin, I wish you
may see Madame la Marquise de Saint-Thomas. You would know then what
the autographs of Silvio Pellico and Nota _cost_.
You told me that your sister Caroline was the most dangerous of women;
and in your letter she is an angel, and you tell me she is about to do
what I call signal folly; for I have not forgotten what you wrote to me
about the colonel. She will be very unhappy.
I am cast down, but not without courage; what Boulanger has painted,
and what I am pleased with, is the persistence _à la_ Coligny, _à la_
Peter the Great, which is the basis of my character,--the intrepid
faith in the future.
Must I renounce the Italian Opera, the only pleasure that I have in
Paris, because I have no other seat than in a box where there is also a
charming and gracious woman [Countess Guidoboni-Visconti]? I was in a
box among men who were an injury to me, and brought me into disrepute.
I had to go elsewhere, and, in all conscience, I was not willing for
Olympe's box. But let us drop the subject.
The feeling of abandonment and of the solitude in which I am stings
me. There is nothing selfish in me; but I need to tell my thoughts, my
efforts, my feelings to a being who is not myself; otherwise I have no
strength. I should wish for no crown if there were no feet at which to
lay that which men may put upon my head. What a long and sad farewell
I have said to my lost years, engulfed beyond return! they gave me
neither complete happiness nor complete misery; they kept me living,
frozen on one side, scorched on the other! To be no longer held to life
by aught but the sentiment of duty!
I entered the garret where I am with the conviction that I should die
exhausted with my work. I thought that I should bear it better than I
do. It is now a month that I have risen at midnight and gone to bed at
six; I have compelled myself to the least amount of food that will keep
me alive, so as not to drive the fatigue of digestion to the brain.
Well, not only do I feel weaknesses that I cannot describe, but so much
life communicated to the brain has brought strange troubles. Sometimes
I lose the sense of vertically, which is in the cerebellum. Even in bed
my head seems to fall to right or left, and when I rise I am impelled
by an enormous weight that is in my head. I understand how Pascal's
absolute continence and his immense labour led him to see an abyss
around him, so that he could not do without two chairs, one on each
side of him.
I have not abandoned the rue Cassini without pain. To-day, I do not
know if I shall save some parts of my furniture to which I am attached,
or have my library. I have made, in advance, every sacrifice of lesser
pleasures and memories that I may keep the little joy of knowing that
these things are still mine. They would be trifles indeed to quench the
thirst of creditors, but they would slake mine during my march across
the desert, through the sands. Two years of toil would pay my debt in
full; but it is impossible that I should not succumb under two years of
such a life. Besides which, piracy is killing us. The farther we go,
the less my books sell. Have the newspapers influenced the sale of the
"Lys"? I do not know; but what I do know is that out of two thousand
copies Werdet sold only twelve hundred, while Belgium has sold three
thousand! I have the certainty, from that fact, that my works do not
find purchasers in France. Consequently, the success of sales that
might save me is still distant.
I am here with Auguste, whom I have kept. Can I still keep him? As yet
I know not.
To let you know how far my courage goes, I must tell you that "Le
Secret des Ruggieri" was written in a single night. Think of that
when you read it. "La Vieille Fille" was written in three nights. "La
Perle brisée," which ends at last the "Enfant Maudit," was written in
a single night. It is my Brienne, my Champaubert, my Montmirail, my
campaign of France! But it was the same with "La Messe de l'Athée" and
"Facino Cane." I wrote the first fifty _feuillets_ of the "Illusions
Perdues" in three days at Saché.
What kills me is the corrections. The first part of "L'Enfant Maudit"
cost me more than many volumes. I wanted to bring that part up to the
level of "La Perle brisée" and make them a sort of little poem of
melancholy in which there would be nothing to gainsay. That took me a
dozen nights. And now, at the moment of writing to you, I have before
me the accumulated proofs of four different works which ought to appear
in October. I must be equal to all that. I have promised Werdet to
bring out his third Part of the "Études Philosophiques" this month, and
also the third _dizain_, and to give him for November 15 "Illusions
Perdues." That makes five volumes 12mo, and three volumes 8vo. One
must surpass one's self, inasmuch as purchasers are indifferent; and
surpass one's self in the midst of protested notes, griefs, cruel
embarrassments, and solitude!
This is the last plaint that I shall cast into your heart. In my
confidences there has been something selfish which I must put an end
to. When you are sad I will not aggravate your sadness, for your
sadness aggravates mine. I know that the Christian martyrs smiled.
If Guatimozin had been a Christian he would have gently consoled his
minister, and not have said to him, "And I--am I on a bed of roses?" A
fine saying for a savage, but Christ has made us more courteous, if not
better.
I see with pain that you read the mystics. Believe me, such reading
is fatal to souls constituted like yours. It is poison; it is an
intoxicating narcotic. Such books have an evil influence. There is
madness in virtue as there is madness in dissipation. I would not deter
you if you were neither wife, nor mother, nor friend, nor relation,
because then you could go into a convent if it pleased you, though your
death would there come quickly. But, in your situation, such reading is
bad. The rights of friendship are too weak for my voice to be listened
to. I address you, on this subject, a humble prayer. Do not read
anything of that kind. I have been there; I have experience of it.
I have taken all precautions that your wishes shall be fulfilled
relating to the sternest of your requests, but under circumstances
which your intelligence will no doubt lead you to foresee. I am not
Byron; but I know this: Borget is not Thomas Moore; he has the blind
fidelity of a dog, as your faithful moujik has also.
Send me word exactly the way by which I must despatch Boulanger's
picture--about which no one will say to you what you heard about
that very wretched thing of Grosclaude's;--it is not enough to say
to Rothschild, "For Russia." To what house am I to address it?
Grosclaude is an artist, but nothing eminent. He sees form, but he goes
no farther; he has no style, he is common, without elevation. His
_Buveurs_ are good painting, but the nature is low. If he were in Paris
he would re-form himself. But in Geneva he will stay what he is. Your
portrait by him is an infamous daub. Daffinger, in Vienna, caught your
likeness much better; but I do not like miniature very much, unless it
is that of Madame de Mirbel. I saw some others in the last Exhibition,
and I perceived then that Daffinger was much beneath her. We must
still, if we want to have good portraits, spring back to the principles
of Rubens, Velasquez, Van Dyck, and Titian.
I am astonished that you have not yet received Werdet's "Lys;" the true
"Lys" in which there is a portrait. They say that I have painted Madame
Visconti! Such are the judgments to which we are exposed! You know that
I had the proofs in Vienna, and that portrait was written at Saché, and
corrected at La Boulonnière before I ever saw Madame Visconti. I have
received five _formal complaints_ from persons about me, who say that I
have unveiled their private lives. I have very curious letters on this
subject. It appears that there are as many Monsieurs de Mortsauf as
there are angels at Clochegourde; angels rain down upon me, but _they
are not white_.
A thousand, little cavillings of this kind make me take to solitude
with less regret. Yesterday, September 29, my sister, for her birthday,
gave herself the little pleasure of coming to see me, for we see each
other very little. Her husband's affairs move slowly, and her life
also; she is running to waste in the shade; her fine powers exhaust
themselves in a hidden struggle without credit. What a diamond in
the mud! The finest diamond that I know in France. For her fête we
exchanged our tears! And, poor little thing! she held her watch in her
hand; she had but twenty minutes. Her husband is jealous of me. For
coming to see a brother for a pleasure trip!
Adieu, the day is dawning, my candles pale. For three hours I have
been writing to you, line after line, hoping that in each you would
hear the cry of a true friendship, far above all petty and transitory
irritations, infinite as heaven, and incapable of thinking it can ever
change, because all other sensations are below it. Of what good would
intellect be if not to place a noble thing on a rock above us, where
nothing material can touch it?
But this would lead me too far. The proofs are waiting, and I must
plunge into the Augean stable of my style, and sweep out its faults.
My life offers nothing now but the monotony of work, which the work
itself varies. I am like the old Austrian colonel who talked about his
gray horse and his black horse to Marie Antoinette; sometimes I am on
one, sometimes on the other; six hours on the "Ruggieri," six hours on
"L'Enfant Maudit," six hours on "La Vieille Fille." From time to time
I rise, I contemplate that ocean of houses which my window overlooks,
from the École Militaire to the Barrière du Trône, from the Pantheon
to the Étoile; and then, having inhaled the air, I go back to my work.
My apartment on the second floor is not yet vacant; I play at garret;
I like it, like the duchesses who eat brown bread by chance. There
is not in all Paris a prettier garret. It is white and coquettish as
a grisette of sixteen. I shall make a bedroom of it to supplement
mine in case of illness; for below I sleep in the passage, in a bed
two feet wide which leaves only room to pass. The doctors say it is
not unhealthy; but I am afraid it is. I need much air; I consume it
enormously. My apartment costs me seven hundred francs. I shall be no
longer in the National Guard; but I am still pursued by the police and
the _état-major_ for eight days in prison. Not going out of the house,
they cannot catch me. My apartment is taken under another name than
mine [that of his doctor], and I am living ostensibly in a furnished
hotel.
Well, I wish I could send you some of my courage. Find it here with my
tender respects.
CHAILLOT, October 22, 1836.
I had great need of the letter I have just received from you, to efface
the grief your last had caused me; for, I may now tell you, it pained
me by the uncertainty it revealed, and perhaps that pain may have
acted on my answer, though I am tolerably stoic. But when an affection
as devoted, as pure of all storms, as that of Madame de Berny has
perished, and around us little else remains, if then, amid dreadful
misfortunes, the branch on which our beliefs are hanging breaks also,
the skies are very sombre, and the fall to earth is heavy.
That letter came, full of doubts and reproaches wrapped in your pretty
phrases, while I was in my garret, which I shall not quit until I owe
nothing; and was it not a cruelly facetious thing to be told that one
is dissipated in one's fortieth year, and when the doctors cannot
explain to themselves how it is that I bear such work? They see my
monkish life; they will not believe in it. They are like you.
A dreadful misfortune has come to crown my misery. Werdet, who never
had a sou, is about to fail, and drags me into the gulf; for, to
sustain him, I had the weakness to sign bills of exchange, the value of
which I never received, and notes to the amount of thirteen thousand
francs which I must honour. I have already taken precautions to weather
this storm.
To-morrow I shall have moved all from the rue Cassini, which I have
left never to return. My apartment here is taken in the name of a third
person. I did this to evade the National Guard; also my furniture is
secured from attachment, for I have to face the immediate payment of
fifty thousand francs without the resource of my own credit, or that of
a publisher.
Under these circumstances, which have made this month of October a true
Beresina for me, I longed to go and ask you for an asylum and bread
for two years, during which time I could earn, by working, the hundred
thousand francs I need. But my life would have been too stained by
that flight, although my most sensitive and upright friends advised
it. I have been greater than my misfortune. In fifteen days' time I
have sold fifty columns to the "Chronique de Paris" for a thousand
francs; one hundred and twenty columns to the "Presse" for eight
thousand; twenty columns to a "Revue Musicale" for one thousand; an
article to the "Dictionnaire de la Conversation" for a thousand. That
makes eleven thousand francs in fifteen days. I have worked thirty
nights without going to bed. I have written "La Perle brisée" (for the
"Chronique") "La Vieille Fille" (for the "Presse"). I have done the
"Secret des Ruggieri" for Werdet. I have sold for two thousand francs
my last _dizain_ (that makes thirteen thousand). And now I am doing
"La Torpille" for the "Chronique," and "La Femme Supérieure," and "Les
Souffrances d'un Inventeur" for the "Presse." At the same time I am
in process of selling the reprinting [in book form] of "La Torpille,"
"La Femme Supérieure," "Le Grand homme de Province à Paris," and "Les
Héritiers Boirouge," both begun; that will give me in all thirty-one
thousand francs. Then, having no longer that rotten plank Werdet to
rest on, I shall contract with a rich and solid firm for the last
fourteen volumes of the "Études de Mœurs," which ought to amount to
fifty-six thousand francs for author's rights, on which I want thirty
thousand at once. If that succeeds I shall have sixty-one thousand
francs, which will save me. Not only shall I then owe nothing, but I
shall have some money for myself. But I must work day and night for six
months, and after that at least ten hours a day for two years.