"When I did that myself, I was dead at the end of fifteen days, and
then I took fifteen to rest."
I said to him, "I have only a coffin in prospect for my rest; but work
is a fine shroud."
You can comprehend how, in the midst of these multiplied errands, these
torrents of proofs, of manuscripts to write, of this savage struggle,
it is dreadful to receive stones from heaven instead of rays of light.
Not only have I neither pleasure nor time, but I have not been able
since my return to take a bath or go to the Opera, two things (bath and
Opera) which are more essential to me than bread. Everything is going
to ruin within me to the profit of my brain. It makes one shudder.
For having three times in my life--I, feeble--interested myself in
unfortunate men, and taken them _en croupe_ upon my horse or in my
boat,--the printer, Jules Sandeau, and Werdet,--three times have they
broken the tiller, sunk the boat, and flung me into the water naked.
It is over. I will never interest myself again in feeble men. I have
too many obligations, which command me to employ the cold logic of a
banker's strong-box. I shut myself up, in my work and my garret. I grow
more solitary than ever.
See how the whole of society combines to isolate superiorities, how it
drives them to the heights! Affections which ought to be exclusively
kind and tender to us, never judge us, never make a mountain out of
nothing, and a nothing of a mountain, these very affections torture
us by fantastic exactions; they stab us with pin-pricks about silly
things; they want faith for themselves and have none for us; they
will not put into their sentiments that grandeur which separates them
from others. They do not abstract their sentiments, as we do, from
earthly soiling. The protections that we give to the weak are fresh
means by which we fling ourselves more rapidly into the inextricable
difficulties of material life. Indifferent people adopt calumnies which
enemies forge and envious men repeat. No one succours us. The masses do
not understand us; superior persons have no time to read us and defend
us. Fame illumines the grave only; posterity gives us no income, and
I am tempted to cry out, like that English country gentleman from his
place in parliament: "I hear much talk of posterity; I would like to
know what that power has so far done for England."
So you see, _cara_, that short of miracles, poor writers are condemned
to misfortunes under all forms; therefore, I entreat you, do not keep
from me any of your griefs, or your ideas, or anything regarding
yourself, but be indulgent and kind to me. Think always that what I do
has a reason and an object, that my actions are _necessary_. There is,
for two souls that are a little above others, something mortifying in
repeating to you for the tenth time not to believe in calumny. When you
said to me, three letters ago, that I gambled, it was just as true as
my marriage was at Geneva.
_Cara_, the life that I lead cannot endure that the sweet things of
friendship should be converted into constant explanations; the life of
the soul is not that.
You ask me again who is Charles de Bernard. I have already told you;
did you not get my letter? He is a gentleman of Besançon who, on my
passage through that town when I went to Neufchâtel, received me
like an honour, and in whom I found talent. As soon as I owned the
"Chronique de Paris" I sent for him; I advised him, directed him with
paternal affection, telling him that he was a man to gallop straight if
given a horse; and it was true. I conceived of making a newspaper only
by the help of superior men. I had already picked out Planche, Bernard,
Théophile Gautier. I should have unearthed others. But that is all over
now.
A Polish colonel, who returns to Saint-Petersburg by way of Warsaw,
a Monsieur Frankowski, will take to you the _cassolette_ attached to
my watch-chain. The chain, you know, was so delicate that the little
links were continually breaking. As I told you before, it will be safer
fastened to a ring; you will not then destroy it when playing with it.
Lecointe has tried to do it well. You gave me, in Vienna, the right to
recall myself to your memory by such little dainty things. Let Paris
send you, now and then, a few flowers of her industry. Ah! _cara_, if
I had not among so many waking nights the thought that one of them is
spent in sending to you a little thing the gold of which, as Walter
Scott's man says in the "Chronicles of the Canongate," is earned grain
by grain, to testify to you my gratitude, my toil would be too heavy.
M. Frankowski would have taken charge of my manuscripts and sent them
to you with Polish fidelity, but he feared the difficulties of the
custom-house. You have here a veritable library. You would be proud if
you knew the price the magistrates attached to this enormous collection
of manuscripts and proofs, which I was forced to show them in my
lawsuit with the "Revue de Paris." The rage for these things was quite
absurd. M. de Montholon wanted to buy for a hundred francs one of those
"orders to print" which you saw me write in Geneva. But any printer
who abstracted from Madame Hanska a single one of her proofs would be
quitted by me.
Well, _addio_. Take care of yourself. Alas! if I only had money! In
a few days I must have a month's rest, and then I could have gone
and spent a week in your Wierzchownia. But nothing is possible to
poverty--to that poverty which the world envies me!
CHAILLOT, October 28, 1836.
I have received your letter number 19, addressed to the widow Durand,
which ends with a dreadful "Be happy!" I would have preferred another
wish, though less Christian. I write in haste to tell you that I have
received all your letters; there is no reason why, though I am at
Chaillot, I should not get my letters from the rue Cassini.
_La Marchesa_ is a very agreeable old woman who had, they say, all
Turin at her feet thirty years ago. You are not, in spite of your
analytical mind, either generous or attentive; you write me a quantity
of phrases, to which I cannot answer; you even overwhelm me with them,
while I have to read them with my arms crossed, my lips silent, and my
heart sick. But on this point you will find a word in my last letter.
I write now only to say one thing. I have put many anxieties into
your heart, if you have for me all the affection that I have for
you. So, then, you must now be told that the end of so much misery
is approaching. Did I tell you that one day, when a mind astray led
me to the river so frequented by suicides (those are things that I
have hidden from you), I met the former head-clerk of my lawyer, who
was my comrade in legal days. He was the head of the lawyer's office
where Scribe and I were placed. This poor young fellow has, so he
says himself, a saintly respect for genius (that word always makes me
laugh), and he believed me to be at the summit of fortune and honours.
I, who would die like the Spartan with the fox at my vitals rather than
betray my penury, I had the weakness, at that moment when I was bidding
farewell to many things, to pour out a heart too full. It was at a spot
that I shall never forget; rue de Rivoli, before the iron gate of the
Tuileries. This poor man who is--remark this--a business man in Paris,
said, with moist eyelids:--
"Monsieur de Balzac, all that a sacred zeal can do, expect from me. I
ought only to speak to you by results. I shall try to save you."
And yesterday, this brave and devoted young man wrote me that he had
succeeded in making a loan which would liquidate my debts, lift off
the burden of anxiety, and leave me time to pay all. And something
finer still. When the lender heard the name of the borrower, he, who
wanted ten per cent and securities, would take only five per cent and a
mortgage on my works. May those two names be blest! _If this thing is
arranged_, for I own to you I have little faith in luck, I shall escape
a long suicide--that of death by toil.
Besides this loan, a company is to be formed for the management of
my works. I am following up this affair, about which I think I have
already spoken to you, very warmly. It will be done _col tempo_. I have
about forty thousand francs to pay immediately; but I shall have earned
nearly sixty thousand in a short time. Instead of working eighteen
hours, I shall then work nine, and I shall have won, after fourteen
years' labour, the right to come and go as I please. It is too fine; I
don't believe in it.
The five hundred francs sent as you sent them, now instead of a few
months later, have been, between ourselves, a benefit. Boulanger needed
the money; and I am now bestirring myself to get him a thousand francs
for the right to engrave the portrait. That outrageous miser Custine
paid him only three thousand francs for his picture of "Le Triomphe
de Pétrarque," while my portrait will thus have brought him fifteen
hundred francs. But can we get an engraver to pay one thousand for the
right of engraving? That is what I am trying to do.
Now, here is a grave question; I want you to have the original.
Boulanger wants to exhibit it. Though I shall pose for the copy, a
copy never has the indefinable beauty of a canvas on which the painter
has sought out, scrutinized, and seized the soul of his model. We must
therefore wait; for, to the artist, my portrait is a battle to win
before the eyes of his comrades. They are beginning to talk of this
canvas--which is magnificent. The copy will be ready in a month. You
could receive it in January. But if you permit me to send you the
original, it cannot leave till after the Exhibition. I have conferred
with Boulanger; though I pose for the copy, and though he wants to make
as good a thing, he always says to me, "A copy, even done by the artist
himself, is never worth the original."
Let me tell you that my mother, who will be on the Salon catalogue as
having ordered the portrait, will be quite indifferent about having
the copy or the original. (This is between ourselves.) You have time
to answer me about this. The newspapers are beginning to speak of the
portrait. The painters say of it, obligingly, what people said to me of
"Séraphita." I did not think that Boulanger was capable of making such
a picture. In style of art it is masterly. It has cost me two volumes
which I might have made during the last sittings--which I had to give
standing.
Whatever happens, let me confide to you a very bad feeling that I have:
it is that I don't like my friends to judge me; I want them to believe
that what I determine on doing is necessary. A sentiment discussed has
no more existence than a power controlled. Why couple pettiness with
greatness?
As I have added a second sheet to the single one which I intended
to cover with ink and friendship, I will tell you that Werdet is
horrible to me. Another deception about which I must keep silence,
another wound I must receive, more calumnies to listen to calmly.
There is no publisher possible for me so long as he is a publisher
of the publishing _race_. I made every sacrifice for that man, and
now he kills me, he refuses to join in taking measures for our common
interests. I must be willing to lose thirty thousand more francs and be
accused of having wrecked a man for whom I have used all my resources,
put my silver in pawn, lent my signature, etc., and written fifteen
12mo volumes and six 8vo volumes in the course of two years! He's a
sparrow's head on the body of a child!
I must now come to the selfishness of a man who works, not for himself,
but for his creditors. This is the third trial of my life. After this,
my experience ought to be complete. I am expecting Werdet on Sunday.
If he has good sense matters may still be arranged. But he's a perfect
child. After the third month I judged the man to whom I had intrusted
the material interests of my works. But these are secrets one keeps to
one's self. I hoped he would follow my advice; but no! he is like a
child with a sparrow's head, and, over and above it all, as obstinate
as a donkey. Moreover, he has the fatal defect of saying "yes" and
doing the contrary, or else he forgets what he promises.
I am much distressed; all this will help to publish calumnies which
Werdet is already assisting, for he finds it convenient to say that he
fails because of me.
Well, adieu. Remember that I never read over my letters; I have barely
time to write them between two proofs. If anything shocks you, pardon
it. A thousand tender regards. Do not forget to remember me to all.
Write me regularly. If you knew what one of your letters is to me in my
life of toil, you would write out of charity.
TOURS, November 23, 1836.
After the great struggle that I have just maintained, and of which you
have been sole confidant, I felt the need of returning to the _cara
patria_, to rest like a child on the bosom of its mother.
If you find a gap in my letters, you must attribute it to what has
just been taking place, of which you shall now be told in a few words.
_All my debts are paid_; I mean those that harassed me. The prospect
that promised good by a loan failed; everything about me became more
serious, more inflamed. During this month writs, protests, sheriffs,
crowded upon me; I truly think that a stout volume in-folio could be
made of that literature of misfortune.
Then, when flames surrounded me on every side, when all had failed me
on the side of succour, when no friend could or perhaps would save me,
before renouncing France and going to find a country in Russia, in the
Ukraine, I attempted a last effort; and that effort was crowned with
a success which will redouble the bitterness of my enemies. God grant
that you will divine all the agony that lies on this simple page, for
then you will indeed feel pity for your poor moujik.
Nothing still shone on the horizon in this great shipwreck of all my
ambitions but the _una fides_, the principle of which is _adoremus in
æternum_.
I went to find a speculator named Victor Bohain, to whom I had done
some very disinterested services. He immediately called in the man who
had drawn Chateaubriand out of trouble, and a capitalist who has of
late done a publishing business. Here is the agreement that came out of
our four heads:--