PARIS, January 1, 1837.
To-day I have had a great happiness; some one came to see me whom I
have not seen for eternities, and who has given me such pleasure that
I have been sitting, all day long, dreamily talking to her;[1] I never
wearied of it. She has made a long journey, but a fortunate one. She
is not changed. Do you not think there are beings in whom resides a
larger portion of our life than in ourselves? You will know this being
some day. I will not have you like her better than I do, but you cannot
prevent yourself from being friendly, were it only on account of my
fanaticism for her. She is a being so good, so constant, so grand, of
so lofty a mind, so true, so naïve, so pure! These are the beings who
serve as foils to all that we see about us. I cannot prevent myself
from telling you of my joy as if you knew her, but I perceive that I
am talking Greek to you. Forgive me that folly. There are, as Chérubin
says, certain moments when we talk to the air, and it is better to talk
to the heart of a friend.
Then this good day came in the midst of my hardest work, for "Illusions
Perdues" must be finished under penalty of lawsuits and summons; at a
moment, too, when I am very weary of the toils of this hard year, so
hard!
I received some days ago your number 21. I have many things to say to
you. But time! when one has to pay fifty francs a day for every day's
delay. I see the moment when I shall escape this vile abyss; but my
wings are weary hovering over it.
You say so little of "La Vieille Fille" that I think the book must have
displeased you. Say so boldly; you have a voice in the chapter; and
I'll tell you my reasons.
It will be difficult to judge of "Illusions Perdues." I can only give
the beginning of the book, and three years must pass (as for "L'Enfant
Maudit") before I can continue it.
I have meditated bringing you my portrait in person. If you hear the
clack of a whip, the French clack, resounding in your courtyard, do
not be much surprised. I need a month's complete separation from
ideas, fatigues, in short, from all there is in France, and I long for
Wierzchownia as for an oasis in the desert. None but myself know the
good that Switzerland did me. Nothing but the question of money can
hinder me.
I was mistaken in my estimation of my debts. They gave me fifty
thousand francs; but I needed fourteen thousand more, and seven
thousand for an endorsement imprudently given to Werdet. But I feel
that the stage and two fine works will save me. To make the two plays,
I need to hide in some desert place that no one knows of; and this is
what I should like: to be one or two months buried in your snows. The
more snow there were, the happier I should be. But these are crazy
projects when I see the thickness of the cable that moors me here.
[Footnote 1: Madame Hanska's miniature by Daffinger, a copy of which
she had sent him.]
January 15, 1837.
I have received another letter from you, in which you manifest anxiety
about the letters you have written me. Do not fear, I have received
them all.
The interruption of this letter is easily explained. I have been ill
the whole time. Finally I had what I seemed to have been in search
of, an inflammation of the bowels, which is scarcely quieted to-day.
I still suffer, but that is a small matter. I have had constant
suffering, and I greatly feared an inflammation for my poor brain after
so painful a year, painful in so many ways, hard in toil, and cruel in
emotions, full of distresses. There was nothing surprising in such an
illness. However, though I can, as yet, digest only milk, all is well
and I resume my work.
"Illusions Perdues" appears this week. On the 17th I have a meeting
to close up all claims from Madame Bêchet and Werdet. So there is one
cause of torment the less. I am now going to work on "La Haute Banque"
and "César Birotteau," and after that it will be but a small matter
to free my pen. All will then be done; and I shall enter upon the
execution of my new conventions, which only oblige me to six volumes a
year,--to me an oasis from the moment that I have no longer the worry
of the financial struggle. As for the fifteen thousand francs I still
owe, I can quickly make head against them with a few plays. Besides,
I have always hopes of the London affair. But I won't count any more
except on that which _is_.
Your last letter did me a good for which I thank you; I was in the
calm state produced by forced confinement to my bed, and the details
of your life delighted me. I think you very happy to be alone. Would
you believe that, in spite of my illness, I was more harassed than ever
about business? But all will now be pacificated. I shall only have to
work, dear monitor. You speak golden words, but they have no other
merit than to tell me more elegantly just what I tell myself. Moreover,
you make me out little defects which I have not, to give yourself the
pleasure of scolding me. No one is less extravagant than I; no one is
willing to live with more economy. But reflect that I work too much
to busy myself with certain details, and, in short, that I had rather
spend five to six thousand francs a year than marry to have order in
my household; for a man who undertakes what I have undertaken either
marries to have a quiet existence, or accepts the wretchedness of La
Fontaine and Rousseau. For pity's sake, don't talk to me of my want of
order; it is the consequence of the independence in which I live, and
which I desire to keep.
To rid myself on this theme of all solicitation on the part of those,
men and women, who worry me about it, I have given out my programme,
and declared that, although I have passed the fatal age of thirty-six,
I wish a wife in keeping with my years, of the highest nobility,
educated, witty, rich, as able to live in a garret as to play the
part of ambassadress, without having to endure the impertinences of
Vienna--like a person you have known--and willing to live without
complaint as the wife of a poor book-workman; also I must be specially
adored, espoused for my defects even more than for my few good
qualities; and this wife must be grand enough, through intelligence, to
understand that in the dual life there must be that sacred liberty by
which all proofs of affection are voluntary and not the effect of duty
(inasmuch as I abhor duty in matters of the heart); and, finally, that
when this phœnix, this only woman who can render the author of the
"Physiologie du Mariage" unhappy, is found,--I'll think about it. So
now I live in perfect tranquillity; yet not without my griefs. When the
brain and the imagination are both wearied, my life is more difficult
than it was in the past. There's a blank that saddens me. The adored
friend is here no longer. Every day I have occasion to deplore the
eternal absence. Would you believe that for six months I have not been
able to go to Nemours to bring away the things that ought to be in my
sole possession? Every week I say to myself, "It shall be this week!"
That sorrowful fact paints my life as it is. Ah! how I long for the
liberty of going and coming. No, I am in the galleys!
Yes, I am sorry you have not written me your opinion of "La Vieille
Fille." I resumed my work this morning; I am obeying the last words
that Madame de Berny wrote me: "I can die; I am sure that you have upon
your brow the crown I wished to see there. The 'Lys' is a sublime work,
without spot or flaw. Only, the death of Madame de Mortsauf did not
need those horrible regrets; they injure that beautiful letter which
she wrote."
Therefore, to-day I have piously effaced about a hundred lines,
which, according to many persons, disfigure that creation. I have not
regretted a single word, and each time that my pen was drawn through
one of them never was heart of man more deeply stirred. I thought I
saw that grand and sublime woman, that angel of friendship, before
me, smiling as she smiled to me when I used a strength so rare,--the
strength to cut one's own limb off and feel neither pain nor regret in
correcting, in conquering one's self.
Oh! _cara_, continue to me those wise, pure counsels, so disinterested!
If you knew with what religion I believe in what true friendship says.
This counsel came to me several days after the enormous labour those
figures, enormous themselves, necessitated. I waited six months till
my own critical judgment could be exercised on my work. I re-read
the letter, weeping; then I took up my work and I saw that the angel
was right. Yes, the regrets should be only suspected; it is the Abbé
Dominis, and not Henriette, who should say the words that say all: "Her
tears accompanied the fall of the white roses which crowned the head
of that married Jephtha's daughter, now fallen one by one." Religion
alone can express, chastely, poetically, with the melancholy of the
Orient, this situation. Besides, what would be the good of Madame de
Mortsauf's testament if she expressed herself so savagely at death?
It was true in nature, but false in a figure so idealized. There are
several defects still in the work. They are in Félix. The animosity
of people in society has pointed them out to me; but they are very
difficult to obviate. I strive to; the character of Félix is sacrificed
in this work; much adroitness is needed to re-establish it. I shall
succeed, however.
_Cara_, I have still at least seven years' labour, if I wish to achieve
the work undertaken. I need some courage to embrace such a life,
especially when it is deprived of the pleasures which a man desires
most. Age advances! I have in my soul a little of the rage that I have
just taken out from that of Madame de Mortsauf.
Adieu; I shall now re-read your last two letters and see if I have in
this--so rambling in consequence of interruptions--forgotten to answer
any of your points; and I will see, too, if I have any fact to tell you
about my life.
We have suddenly lost Gérard. You will never have known his wonderful
salon. What homage was rendered to the genius, to the goodness of
heart, to the mind of that man at his funeral. All the most illustrious
persons were present; the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés could not
hold them. The first gentleman [the Duc de Maillé] and the first
painter of King Charles X. have quickly followed their master. There is
something touching in that.
I shall write to you on the day when I finish the terrible twelve
volumes I have written between our first meeting at Neufchâtel and this
year. Why can I not go and see you, that I might close this work, as I
began it, in the light of your noble forehead!
Adieu; Colonel Frankowski is still here. That grieves me, because you
will not have your pretty _cassolette_ for New Year's day. It is on my
mantelpiece for the last three months. Well, _addio_; grant heaven that
I may go to Germany on the same business that may take me to England.
I shall know as to this in February. I should not consider a matter of
two hundred leagues. If I go to Stuttgard I shall go to Wierzchownia.
You know all I have to say to your little world of the Ukraine. Good
health above all; that is the prayer of those who have just been ill.
PARIS, February 10, 1837.
I have received your last sad letter, in which you tell me of the
illness and convalescence of M. Hanski from the prostration of the
grippe. I have, as to my own health, barring all danger however, the
same thing to tell you. Nearly the whole of my month of January was
taken up by an attack of very intense cholerine, which deprived me
of all energy and all my faculties. Then, after getting over that
semi-ridiculous illness, I was seized by the grippe, which kept me ten
days in bed.
So you have been practising the profession of nurse, _cara_, and
M. Hanski has been ill to the point of keeping his bed for a long
time,--he who went into the deserts of the Ukraine to lead a
patriarchal life. If I joke, it is because I imagine that by the time
my letter reaches you his convalescence will be over and all will be
well with him, and with you--for I am not ignorant of the nursing you
have just done; I know how fatiguing it is. In such cares about a
patient's bed, the limbs swell and cause dull pains which affect the
heart; I have nursed my mother.
Before my grippe I had, luckily, finished the last Part of the "Études
de Mœurs," or God knows what difficulties I should have fallen into!
So that brings the first twelve volumes of the "Études," begun at the
time of my visit to Geneva in 1834, to an end in January, 1837. I
am much grieved not to be able to make you a little visit after this
accomplishment of one of my hardest tasks. You accompanied "Eugénie
Grandet" with a smile; I would have liked to see the same smile on
"Illusions Perdues"--on the beginning and on the end of the way.
You are very right, you who know the empire that my work exercises on
my life, to let drop into a bottomless abyss all the follies that are
said about me, whether they come from a princess or a fish-woman. Did
not some one come and ask me if it was true I had married one of the
Ellslers, a dancer,--I, who cannot endure any of the people who set
foot upon the stage? But here, in Paris, in the same town with me, not
two steps away from me, they tell the most unheard-of things about me.
Some describe me as a monster of dissoluteness and debauchery, others
as a dangerous and vindictive animal whom every one should attack. I
could not tell you all they say of me. I am a spendthrift; sometimes a
lax man, sometimes an intractable one.
But let us leave such nonsense; it is enough that it weighs on me; it
would be too much to let it weigh upon our dear correspondence.
So now I am delivered from the most odious contract and the most odious
people in the world. The last Part was published a few days ago. It
contains "La Grande Bretèche" rearranged; that is to say, better framed
than it was originally, and accompanied by two other adventures. Also
"La Vieille Fille," one of my best things (in my opinion), though it
has roused a cloud of feuilletons against me. But Du Bousquier is as
fine an image of the men who managed affairs under the Republic and
became liberals under the Restoration as the Chevalier de Valois is of
the old remains of the Louis XV. period. Mademoiselle Cormon is a very
original creation, in my opinion. That is one of the figures which are
almost unapproachable for the novelist, on account of the few salient
points they offer to take hold of. But difficulties like these are
little appreciated, and I resign myself in such cases to having worked
for my own ideas.
"Illusions Perdues" is the introduction to a much more extensive work.
These barbarous editors, impelled by money considerations, insist
on their three hundred and sixty pages, no matter what they are.
"Illusions Perdues" required three volumes; there are still two to do,
which will be called "Un Grand Homme de Province à Paris;" this will,
later, be joined to "Illusions Perdues," when the first twelve volumes
are reprinted; just as the "Cabinet des Antiques" will conclude "La
Vieille Fille."
I am now going to take up the last thirteen volumes of the "Études de
Mœurs," which I hope will be finished in 1840.
You will notice a considerable lapse of time between my last letter and
this one; it was taken up by the sufferings (without danger) which my
two little consecutive illnesses caused me. I thought one would save me
from the other, but it was no such thing. I am still very miserable;
the cough is a horrid difficulty; it shakes me and kills me.
I dine to-morrow with Madame Kisseleff, who has promised to make me
know Madame Z..., of whom you have told me so much that I asked for
this dinner, before my grippe, at a beautiful ball given by Madame
Appony to which I went. It is the only one, for I go nowhere--except to
Madame Appony's great soirées, and to those seldom. I do not even go
to the Opera, and I do not dine out, except at certain dinners which
cannot be refused without losing supporters some day; like those of the
Sardinian ambassador, for instance. But except for such things I have
not been ten times in six months outside of my own home.
February 12.
My letter has been interrupted for two days; I have had business to
attend to, for I have still enormous difficulties about the remainder
of the debts I have not been able to pay off.
Madame Z... was not at the dinner. She was taken with grippe the night
before. This grippe stops everything. There are more than five hundred
thousand persons gripped. I have it still. We had the adorer of Madame
P..., Bernhard, Madame Hamelin, the Pole who is seeking treasures by
somnambulism, and a young relation of Madame Kisseleff who squints
badly, also Saint-Marsan. The dinner was quite gay.
I had met Madame Kisseleff the previous evening at the Princess
Schonberg's. A discussion arose about beautiful hands, and Madame
Kisseleff said to me that she and I knew the most beautiful hands in
the world; she meant yours, and I had the fatuity to colour up to my
ears, very innocently, for I find in you so many beautiful qualities,
and something so magnificent in head and figure, that I could not say
at that moment what your hands were like, and I coloured at my own
ignorance. I only know that they are small and plump.
I am writing at this moment, with fury, a thing for the stage, for
_there_ is my salvation. I must live by the stage and my prose
concurrently. It is called "La Première Demoiselle." I have chosen it
for my début because it is wholly bourgeoise. Picture to yourself a
house in the rue Saint-Denis (like La Maison du Chat qui pelote), in
which I shall put a dramatic and tragic interest of extreme violence.
No one has yet thought of bringing the adultery of the husband on
the stage, and my play is based on that grave matter of our modern
civilization. His mistress is in the house. No one has ever thought
of making a female Tartuffe; and the mistress will be Tartuffe in
petticoats; but the empire of _la première demoiselle_ over the master
will be much easier to conceive than that of Tartuffe over Orgon, for
the means of supremacy are much more natural and comprehensible.
In juxtaposition with these two passionate figures, there are an
oppressed mother and two daughters equally victims to the perfidious
tyranny of _la première demoiselle_ [forewoman]. The elder daughter
thinks it wise to cajole the forewoman, who has her supporter in the
house, for the bookkeeper loves her sincerely. The tyranny is so odious
to the mother and daughters that the younger daughter, from a principle
of heroism, desires to deliver her family by immolating herself. She
determines to poison the tyrant; nothing stops her. The attempt fails,
but the father, who sees to what extremities his children will go,
sees also that the forewoman cannot live under his roof, and that, in
consequence of this attempt, all family bonds are broken. He sends her
away; but, in the fifth act, he finds it so impossible to live without
this woman that he takes a portion of his fortune, leaves the rest to
his wife, and elopes with _la première demoiselle_ to America.
Those are the main features of the play. I do not speak of the details,
though they are, I think, as original as the characters, which have
not been, to my knowledge, in any other play. There is a scene of
the family judgment on the young girl; there is the scene of the
separation, etc.
I hope to finish it by March 1 and to see it played early in May. On
its success my journey will largely depend; for the day when I owe
nothing I shall have that liberty of going and coming for which I have
sighed so long.
I await with keen impatience for another letter to tell me how you are,
you and M. Hanski. As soon as I have ended my work and my deplorable
affairs you shall know it; I will tell you if I am satisfied with my
play and with my last compositions, which are now to be done, and
will take my nights and days for two months, for I must immediately
do for the "Figaro" "César Birotteau" and for the "Presse" "La Haute
Banque,"--two books that are quite important.
_Addio, cara._ Be always confident in your ideas; walk with courage
in your own way. It seems to me that all trials have their object and
their reward; otherwise, human life would have no meaning. As for
me, the last pleasure I told you of--the coming of that friend so
unexpectedly--proved to me that the sufferings through which I have
passed were the price of that great pleasure. In all lives there must
be such things.
Adieu; I send you this time a precious autograph, Lamartine; you will
see that the verses are so chosen that they will not be ridiculous in a
collection.
FLORENCE, April 10, 1837.
In one month I have travelled very rapidly through part of France, one
side of Switzerland, to Milan, Venice, Genoa, and after being detained
by inadvertence in quarantine, here I am for the last two days in
Florence, where, before seeing anything whatever, I rushed to Bartolini
to see your bust. This was chiefly the object of this last stage of
my journey, for I must be in Paris ten days hence. The desire to see
Venice, and my quarantine made me spend more time than I could allow
on that trip, and also made me regret not having gone to you. But the
season [the condition of the roads] did not permit it, nor my finances.
The moment the publication of the last part of the "Études de Mœurs"
was over, my strength suddenly collapsed. I had to distract my mind;
and I foresee it will be so every fourth or fifth month. My health is
detestable, disquieting; but I tell this only to you. My mind feels
the effect of it. I am afraid of not being able to finish my work.
Everywhere the want of happiness pursues me, and takes from me the
enjoyment of the finest things. Venice and Switzerland are the two
creations, one human, the other divine, which seem to me, until now, to
be without any comparison, and to stand outside of all ordinary data.
Italy itself seems to me a land like any other.
I have travelled so fast that nowhere had I time to write to you. My
thoughts belonged to you wholly, but I felt a horror of an inkstand
and my pen. The loss I have met with is immense. The void it leaves
might be filled by a _present_ friendship, but afar, in spite of your
letters, grief assails me at all hours, especially when at work. That
other soul which counselled me, which saw all, which was always the
point of departure of so many things, is lacking to me. I begin to
despair of any happy future. Between that soul, absent for evermore,
and the hopes to which I cling in some sweet hours, there is, believe
me, an abyss above which I bend incessantly, and often the vertigo of
misfortune mounts to my head. Every day bears away with it some shred
of that gaiety which enabled me to surmount so many difficulties. This
journey is a sad trial. I am alone, without strength.
You will probably receive my statue in Carrara marble (half-nature,
that is, about three feet high, and marvellously like me) before the
portrait of that rascal Boulanger, who, after the Exhibition, still
wants three months to make the copy. I am vexed. He has five good
paying portraits and an order for Versailles of one hundred and twenty
feet of painting, which absorb him, and, as a friend, he makes me wait.
So it may be that I shall bring the portrait to you myself; for, as I
see it is impossible for me to work more than four months together,
I shall start for the Ukraine in August, through Tyrol and Hungary,
returning by Dresden.
I have a thousand things to tell you. But first, in return for my
statue, I beg M. Hanski to send me a little line authorizing Bartolini
to make me a copy of your bust. If M. Hanski will grant me this
permission, I shall ask Bartolini to make it half size, so as to put it
on my table in the study where I write. That dimension is the one in
which my statue is made, and all artists, Bartolini himself, think it
more favorable for physiognomy; it has more expression. It is better
for the imagination to enlarge a head than for the eyes to see it in
its exact proportions.
My statue has been a work of affection, and it bears the stamp of
it. It was done in Milan by an artist named Puttinati; he would take
nothing for it. I had great trouble to pay even the costs and the
marble. But I shall take him to Paris with me; I will show him Paris
and order a group of Séraphita rising to heaven between Wilfrid and
Minna. The pedestal shall be made of all the species and terrestrial
things of which she is the product. I shall put aside two thousand
francs a year during the three years of its execution, and that will
suffice to pay for it.
Venice, which I saw for only five days, two of which were rainy,
enraptured me. I do not know if you ever noticed on the Grand Canal,
just after the Palazzo Fini, a little house with two gothic windows;
the whole facade being pure gothic.[1] Every day I made them stop
before it, and often I was moved to tears. I conceived the happiness
that two persons might obtain,--living there together, apart from all
the world. Switzerland is costly, but in Venice one needs so little
money to live! The price of the house would not be more than two years'
rent of the Villa Diodati, which you admired so much on account of Lord
Byron. It would just suffice for a little household, such as that of
a poor poet, busy in the hours he must ravish from felicity, to keep
that felicity ever equal in its strength. The summers could be passed
on the Lake of Garda in a house as tiny. Twelve thousand francs a year
would give this luxury. May the angel who so fatally has departed
forgive me, but, now that all is over, I may say to you that the
happiness to which Nature puts an end in our lifetime is not complete
happiness. Twenty years, and more, of difference in age is too great.
We ought to be able to grow old together; and it was permissible in me,
before that house, to wish for the years that I once had, but with a
woman who would be like _her_, with youth added.
The future and the past are melted thus into one emotion, which is
something that of Tantalus, for I have the conviction that I alone am
an obstacle to that beautiful life. My engagements are, for at least
two years to come, a barrier of honour; and when I think that in two
years I shall be forty, and that until that age all my life will have
been toil, toil that uses up and destroys, it is difficult to believe
that I can ever be the object of a passion. Yes, the ice that study
heaps about us may be preservative, but each thought casts snow upon
our heads; and evening finds us with no flowers in our hands. Ah!
believe me, a poor poet as sincerely loving as I shed bitter tears
before that little house.
Yes, I cannot wrong Madame Delannoy, that second mother, who has
intrusted to me as much as twenty-six thousand francs, nor my own
mother whose life is mortgaged on my pen, nor those gentlemen who have
just invested in my inkstand nearly seventy thousand francs. Ah! if
I could win for myself two months of tranquillity at Wierzchownia,
where I might do one or two fine plays, all my life would be changed!
Those two months, so precious, I have just spent, you will tell me, in
travel. Yes, but I started only because I was without ideas, without
strength, my brain exhausted, my soul dejected, worn-out with my last
struggles, which, believe me, were dreadful, horrible! There came a
day of despair when I went to get a passport to Russia. There seemed
nothing for me but to ask you for shelter for a year or two, abandoning
to fools and enemies my reputation, my conscience, my life, which they
would have rent and blasted until the day that I returned to triumph.
But had they known where I was--and they would have known--what would
have been said! That prospect stopped me. I can own it to you, now
that the tempest is lulled, and I have only a few more efforts to
make to reach tranquillity. During this month, though my soul is not
refreshed, at least my brain is rested. I hope, on my return, that
"César Birotteau," the third _dizain_, and "La Haute Banque" may lift
my name to the stars, higher than before. I begin to have nostalgia for
my inkstand, my study, my proofs. That which caused me nausea before I
came away now smiles to me. Moreover, the memory of that little house
in Venice will give me courage; it has made me conceive that after
my liberation fortune will signify nothing; that I shall have enough
by writing one book a year,--and that I may then unite both work and
happiness in that Villa Diodati on the water!
[Footnote 1: Palazzo Contarini-Fasān.--TR.]
April 11.
I have just seen several of the _salas_ in the Pitti. Oh! that portrait
of Margherita Doni by Raffaelle! I stood confounded before it. Neither
Titian, nor Rubens, nor Tintoret, nor Velasquez--no brush can approach
such perfection. I also saw the Pensiero, and I understood your
admiration. I have had much pleasure in looking at what, two years ago,
you admired. I caught up your thoughts. To-morrow I am going to the
Medici gallery, though I have not fully seen the Pitti; I perceive that
one ought to stay months in Florence, whereas I have but hours. Economy
requires that I return by Livorno, Genoa, Milan, and the Splugen. That
is the shortest route in reality, though the longest to the eye; for
one can go from Florence to Milan in thirty-six hours; and from Milan
by the Splugen there are but eighty relays to Paris. By this route I
can see Neufchâtel, and I own I have a tender affection for the street
and the courtyard where I had the happiness of meeting you. I shall go
and see the Île Saint-Pierre and the Crêt, and your house; after which
I shall take that route through the Val de Travers which seemed to me
so beautiful on my way to Neufchâtel.
I am kept here at the mercy of a steamboat which may call for me
to-morrow or six days hence; it is very irregular. If I had not been
detained for this horrible quarantine in a shocking lazaretto (which I
could not have imagined as a prison for brigands), I should have had
enough time to see Florence well. I went yesterday to the Cascine,
where you took your walks; but the day was not fine. Bad weather has
pursued me, everywhere it has snowed and rained; but my troubles began
by losing my travelling companion. I was to have had Théophile Gautier,
that man whose mind so pleases you; he was to share with me the costs
of the journey and write a pendant to his "Voyage en Belgique;" but the
necessity of doing the Exhibition, rendering an account of all that
spoilt canvas in the Louvre, obliged him to remain in Paris. Italy has
lost by it; for he is the only man capable of comprehending her and
saying something fresh about her; but when I make the journey again he
will come. We will choose our time better.
I have met Frankowski twice, once in Milan and again in Venice; he
will take to you my New-Year's souvenir, or else he will send it to
you. Each time that I have seen him the acquaintance ripens. I think
him a man of honour and high integrity. He is a Pole of the _vieille
roche_; his sentiments are frank. You could, that is, M. Hanski could
do him a great service. You have property, I think, that is difficult
to manage, and which, until now, has been badly managed by unfaithful
stewards. Well, I think this brave colonel does not know where to turn
for a living. He came to Paris to see what he could do with a novel.
A man must be at the end of his hopes to land himself in a foreign
country where publishers are refusing two or three hundred manuscripts
a year. He asked me for a letter to M. de Metternich,--as if I could
do anything for him with the prince, whom I never saw, as you know.
However delicate such business is, if M. Hanski is thinking to send
an honest man to manage his distant property and make it profitable,
giving an honourable share to him who would bring it under cultivation,
he might save a married man who, I think, despairs of his present
position, and would blow his brains out rather than fail in the
sternest honour. In case M. Hanski should think of trying this colonel,
write me a line; I will then write to Frankowski to know if the place
suits him; and if he answers affirmatively, I will give him a note for
M. Hanski. Besides, the time this correspondence would take brings me
to the period of my visit to Poland, and he could be useful to me as a
guide in your country. I have a conviction that M. Hanski would do a
good business for himself in doing this good action. I have had means
of studying the colonel; and besides, M. Hanski is too prudent not to
study his compatriot himself. When you see Frankowski, don't speak
to him of the letter he asked of me for Metternich, for he asked it
in a letter that was mad with despair, and I have known so well the
despair of an honest man struggling against misfortune that I divined
everything. I hope that this idea of mine may reach you in time. But,
in all such cases, one should always save a man of honour the terrible
shock of an interest caused only by compassion. This sentiment, in me,
is stripped of what makes it so wounding; but others are not expected
to know that. If all the world knew my heart, of what value would be
the opening of it to those I love? So after explaining all this to
you, you will read it to M. Hanski, and he will do what he thinks
proper. But, in any case, it would be better to find an honest man to
manage his estates well than to sell them; for after the late rise in
value of the lands of Europe there is no doubt that those who possess
them, in whatever part of Europe they may be, will have in the course
of some years an enormous capital.
Not knowing that I should be detained in quarantine, and thinking to
be absent only one month, I ordered my letters to be kept for me; so
that I am without news of you since the last of February. Do you know,
this seemed so hard to me that I inquired at Genoa if there was a
vessel going to Odessa; they told me it took a month to go from Genoa
to Odessa. Then I gazed into the sky at the point where the Ukraine
must be, and I sent it a sorrowful farewell. At that moment I was
capable, had it taken but twelve days to go to Odessa, of going to see
you and not returning to Paris without my play. But then my debts, my
obligations came back to my memory. What a life! Fame, when I have it,
and if I have it, can never be a compensation for all my privations and
all my sufferings!
I saw yesterday at La Pergola, a Princess Radziwill and a Princess
Galitzin (who is not Sophie). There seem to be a good many Princesses
Radziwill and Galitzin! There was also a Countess Orloff, who used to
be an actress in Paris under the name of Wentzell. I hoped to enjoy my
dear incognito; but, as at Milan and at Venice, I was recognized by
strangers. Also I met the husband of a cousin of Madame de Castries,
and Alexandre de Périgord, son of the Duc de Dino. Happily, I came to
Florence _en polisson_, as they used to say for the trips to Marly.
I have neither clothes nor linen nor anything suitable to go into
society, and so I preserve my dear independence.
April 13.
I have seen the gallery of the Medici, but in a hurry. I must come back
here if I want to study art. A letter from the consul at Livorno, just
received, tells me there will be no steamer till the 20th, and I must
be in Paris from the 20th to 25th. So there is nothing for me to do but
to take the mail-cart, and I leave in a few hours. I close my letter,
which I would like to make longer, but will write again at Milan,
through which I pass and where I shall stop two days, for I go by Como
and the Saint-Gothard.
Adieu, _cara contessina_. I hope that all is well and that I shall find
good news of you in Paris. At this moment of writing, you ought to have
received my little souvenirs, if Frankowski is a faithful man. In a few
months I shall have the happiness of seeing you, and that hope will
render life and time the easier to bear. Do not forget to remember me
to all, and permit your moujik to send you the expression--not new, but
ever increasing in strength--of his devoted sentiments and tenderest
thoughts.
PARIS, May 10, 1837.
Here I am, back in Paris. My health is perfect, and my brain so much
refreshed that it seems as though I had never written anything. I found
three long letters from you which are delightful to me. I fished them
out of the two hundred which awaited me and read them in the bath I
took to unlimber me after my fatiguing journey; and certainty, I count
that hour as the most delightful of all my trip. Before beginning my
work, I am going to give myself the festival of a long talk with you.
In the first place, _cara carina_, put into that beautiful forehead,
which shines with such sublime intelligence, that I have blind
confidence in your literary judgment, and that I make you, in that
respect, the heiress of the angel I have lost, and that what you
write to me becomes the subject of long meditations. I now await your
criticisms on "La Vieille Fille;" such as the dear conscience I once
had, whose voice will ever echo in my ears, knew how to make them;
that is to say, read the work over and point out to me, page by page,
in the most exact manner, the images and the ideas that displease you;
telling me whether I should take them out wholly and replace them, or
modify them. Show neither pity nor indulgence; go boldly at it. _Cara_,
should I not be most unworthy of the friendship you deign to feel for
me if in our intimate correspondence I allowed the petty vanity of
an author to affect me? So I entreat you, once for all, to suppress
long eulogies. Tell me on three tones: that is good, that is fine,
that is magnificent; you will then have a positive, comparative, and
superlative, which are so grandiose in their line that I blush to offer
them for your incense-pot. But they are still so far below the gracious
praise you sometimes offer me that they are modest--though they might
seem singular to a third person. I beg you therefore to be concise in
praise and prolix in criticism; wait for reflection; do not write to me
after the first reading. If you knew how much critical genius there is
in what you said to me about my play you would be proud of yourself.
But you leave that sentiment to your friends. Yes, Planche himself
would not have been wiser; you have made me reflect so much that I am
now employed in remodelling my ideas about it. Remember, _carina_, that
I am sincere in all things, and especially in art; that I have none of
that paternal silliness which ties so cruel a bandage round the eyes of
many authors, and that if "La Vieille Fille" is bad, I shall have the
courage to cut it out of my work.
I laughed much at what you write of the three heiresses of Warsaw, and
at the tale you tell me, which was also told and invented in Milan.
There they maintained _mordicus_ that I had just married an immensely
rich heiress, the daughter of a dealer in silks. There is no absurd
story of which I am not made the hero, and I will amuse you heartily by
telling them all to you when I see you.
I received M. Hanski's letter two days ago from the Rothschilds, and
the five hundred francs were at Rougemont de Löwenberg's. The portrait
has just been returned from the Exhibition. Boulanger will make the
copy in a few weeks and the picture will soon be with you. You are
to have the original, which has had the utmost success at the Salon;
many critics consider it among the best of our modern works, and it
has given rise to arguments which must have enchanted Boulanger. I am
very sorry that the admirable frame I unearthed in Touraine cannot
adorn your gallery; but there is no use in opposing the rigours of the
custom-house. The statue will reach you about the same time. You will,
I dare say, order a little corner closet on which to place the statue,
and in it you can keep the enormous collection of manuscripts you
will receive from me; so that, knowing how much you have of the man's
heart, you will have his labours as well. I shall then be wholly at
Wierzchownia.
Your three letters, read all at once, bathed my soul in the purest and
sweetest affections, as the native waters of the Seine refreshed my
body; it was more to me to read again and again those pages full of
your adorable little writing than to rest myself.
I have made a horribly beautiful return journey; but it is good to have
made it. It was like our retreat from Russia. Happy he who has seen
the Beresina and come out, safe and sound, upon his legs. I crossed
the Saint-Gothard with fifteen feet of snow on the path I took; the
road not even distinguishable by the tall stone posts which mark it.
The bridges across the mountain torrents were no more visible than
the torrents themselves. I came near losing my life several times in
spite of the eleven guides who were with me. We crossed the summit
at one o'clock in the morning by a sublime moonlight; and I saw the
sunrise tint the snow. A man must see that once in his life. I came
down so rapidly that in half an hour I passed from twenty-five degrees
below freezing (which it was on the summit) to I don't know what
degree of heat in the valley of the Reuss. After the horrors of the
Devil's bridge, I crossed the Lake of the Four Cantons at four in the
afternoon. It has been a splendid journey; but I must do it again in
summer, to see all those noble sights under a new aspect. You see that
I renounced my purpose of going by Berne and Neufchâtel. I returned by
Lucerne and Bâle, having come by the Ticino and Como. I thought that
route the most economical of time and money, whereas, on the contrary,
I spent enormously of both. But I had the worth of my money; it was
indeed a splendid journey; my excursion has been like a dream, but a
dream in which presided the face of my faithful companion, of her of
whom I have already told you the pleasure I had in seeing her, and _who
did not suffer from the cold_ [her miniature].
Here I am, returned to my work. I am about to bring out immediately,
one after the other: "César Birotteau," "La Femme Supérieure;" I shall
finish "Illusions Perdues," then "La Haute Banque," and "Les Artistes."
After that, I shall fly to the Ukraine, where, perhaps, I shall have
the happiness to write a play which will end my financial agonies. Such
is my plan of campaign, _cara contessina_.
May 11.
I have been very egotistical. I began by speaking of myself, answering
the first things that struck me in your letters, and I ought to have
said at once how glad I was to know you relieved of the deplorable
but sublime duty of nurse, which you fulfilled so courageously and
successfully. The reproach you make me for harshness in a sentence
of mine, I feel very much. That sentence, believe me, was only the
expression of my desire to see you perfect; and perhaps that desire
was rather senseless, for it may be that contrasts are necessary in a
character. But, however it is, I will never complain again, even when
you accuse me unjustly, reflecting that an affection as sincere and as
old as ours can be troubled only on the surface.
We are going no doubt to bring out a new edition of the "Études
Philosophiques," the one in which is "Les Ruggieri." I have just
re-read that fragment, and I see that it shows the effect of the state
of anguish in which I was when I wrote it, and the feebleness of a
brain which had produced too much. It needs much retouching. I do
not know what has been thought of that poor preface to a book called
"Illusions Perdues." I am going now to write the continuation and
complete the work.
Your monotonous life tempts me much; and especially after travelling
about do your tales of it please me. I owe to you the sole Homeric
laugh I have had for a year, when I read of your fib to the Countess
Marie, and when I read her letter so full of oratorical sugarplums. I
do not think that woman true, and I really don't know how to answer
her, for I am as stupid when I have nothing in my heart as I often am
when my heart is full.
May 13.
I have now been at home eight days, and for eight days I have been
making vain efforts to resume my work. My head refuses to give itself
to any intellectual labour; I feel it to be full of ideas, but nothing
comes out. I am incapable of fixing my thought; of compelling it to
consider a subject under all aspects and deciding its march. I don't
know when this imbecility will cease; but perhaps it is only my broken
habit that is in fault. When a workman drops his tools for a time, his
hand gets divorced. He must renew the fraternity that comes from habit,
that links the hand to the tool, as the tool to the hand.
May 14.
I went last night to see "La Camaraderie," and I think the play is
immensely clever. Scribe knows the business, but he does not know
art; he has talent, but he will never have genius. I met Taylor, the
royal comissioner to the Théâtre-Français, who has just brought from
Spain, for a million francs, four hundred Spanish pictures, very fine
ones. In a very few minutes it was arranged between us that he should
undertake to have accepted, rehearsed, and played a piece of mine
at the Théâtre-Français, without my name being known until the time
comes to name the author; also to give me as many rehearsals as I
want, and to spare me all the annoyances which accompany the reception
and representation of a play. Now, which shall I write? Oh! how many
conversations with you I need; for you are the only person--now that
I am widowed of that soul which uplifted, followed, strengthened my
attempts--the only one in whom I have faith. Yes, persons whose hearts
are as noble as their birth, who have contracted the habit of noble
sentiments and of things lofty in all ways, they alone are my critics.
It is now some time since I have accustomed myself to think with you,
to put you as second in my ideas, and you would hardly believe what
sweetness I find in again beginning, after this travelling interregnum,
to write to you the life of my thought--for as to that of my heart I
have no need; in spite of certain melancholy passages, you know well
that souls high-poised change little. Like the summits I have just
seen, the clouds may sometimes cover them, the day may light them
variously; but their snow remains pure and dazzling.
I went yesterday to see Boulanger. The picture has come back to him
from the Exhibition. He wants another three weeks to make the copy
which I give to my mother, but the canvas will start for Berditchef
early in June, so that you will get it before the statue.
Adieu, for to-day. I must examine my thoughts about the stage, and
start upon a journey through the dramatic limbo, to find out to what I
must give life or death. This affair is of the highest importance to my
financial interests, and is very serious for my reputation as a writer.
To-morrow I will close my letter and send it. If I failed to write to
you during my journey you will see by the frequency of my letters that
I am repairing omissions.
May 15.
This is the eve of my fête-day, still my poor fête-day, for my
financial affairs are not beauteous. The law about the National Guard
will oblige me to make a violent move,--that of living in the country
two leagues from Paris; but this time I will live in a house by myself.
I shall thus be obliged very seriously to work my sixteen hours a day
for three or four months; but at least (if the friendly indorsements I
gave to that poor stupid Werdet do not cause trouble) I am all but easy
in mind on financial matters.
Adieu. You will receive still another letter this week. Many tender
things to you and my remembrances to all about you. I reply this week
to M. Hanski.
PARIS, May 20-29, 1837.
I write to you on rising, for this is my birthday, and I shall be all
day long with my sister and mother.
_Mon Dieu!_ how I should like to have news of you; but I am deprived
of it by my own fault, for you have put the _lex talionis_ into our
correspondence by not writing to me when I do not write to you. But
that is very wrong. I am a man, and subject to crises. At this moment,
for instance, Werdet has gone into bankruptcy, and I am summoned to
pay the indorsements I gave him out of kindness, just as he had given
some to me; but with this difference, that I have paid all the notes he
endorsed for me, and he has not paid those I guaranteed for him. So now
I must work night and day to get out of the embarrassment into which I
have put myself.
You could never believe how crushing this last misfortune is. My
business agents all tell me now is the time to make a journey.
Make a journey!--when I owe to Girardin, for the "Presse," "La
Haute Banque" and "La Femme Supérieure;" to the "Figaro," "César
Birotteau," and "Les Artistes;" to Schlesinger, for the "Gazette
Musicale," "Gambara;" and the end of the third _dizain_ to Werdet's
capitalist,--six works, all clamoured for by the four persons to whom I
owe them, and which represent fifteen thousand francs, ten thousand of
which have already been paid.
To pay my most pressing debts. I took all the money my new publishers
gave me, and they only begin their monthly payments to me when I give
them two unpublished volumes 8vo. I need at least three months to
finish the six works named above as due, then three months for their
two new volumes; so that here I am for six months without resources
and without any means of getting money. Happily, the brain is in good
health, thanks to my journey.
This is a bad birthday. I have begun it by dismissing my three
servants and giving up my apartment in the rue des Batailles
[Chaillot], though I don't know whether the proprietor will be willing
to cancel the lease. And finally, I have heroically resolved to live,
if necessary, as I lived in the rue Lesdiguières, and to make an end to
a secret misery which is dishonouring to the conscience.
Apropos of misery; I wrote you from Florence under the impression of
distresses revealed by one of your countrymen. I beg you not to be
vexed with me. Tell M. Hanski that in view of what has just happened to
me, I have made the good resolution never to guarantee any one, either
financially or morally. I beg him to regard all I said about that man
as not said, and, inasmuch as I recommended him through your gracious
lips, I beg him to do nothing in his favour. Do not accuse me of
carelessness, but of ignorance. Later I will explain by word of mouth
the reason of this change. The present makes me alter the past.
May 23.
Boulanger has written me a very free and easy, ungrateful letter, he
will not make the copy he engaged to make, which distresses my mother
and sister. The packer is at this moment making the case for the
original; it leaves in a few days, and I shall address it, according to
M. Hanski's letter, to MM. Halperine, at Brody, by diligence, direct;
for neither the Rothschilds nor Rougemont de Löwenberg are willing to
take charge of so cumbersome a parcel, and the colour-merchant who
is packing the canvas, assures me that he has sent the most valuable
pictures in this way. That's enough about my effigy. It is one of the
finest things of the school. The most jealous painters have admired it.
I am glad you will not be disappointed after waiting so long. I shall
write you a little line the day I put the parcel in the diligence, and
tell you the route it will take.
I have persuaded my mother to go and live two years in Switzerland at
Lausanne. The sight of my struggle and that of my brother kills her.
She sees us always working without pecuniary result, and she suffers
dreadfully without having the material conflict which calls up strength.
If you knew all I have done for Boulanger you would feel the bitterness
that fills my soul at this betrayal; for if he had not trifled with me
for nearly a year you would have had the portrait six months ago, and
it has now become ridiculous.
May 28.
Here I am, as you have often desired to see me. I have broken away from
every one, and I go, in a few weeks, to a hidden garret, having blocked
all the roads about me. I have been making a recapitulation of my work,
and I have enough to do for four years, without, even then, completing
all the series of the "Études de Mœurs." My monk's gown must not be a
lie. I have but two things which make me live: work, and the hope of
finding all my secret desires realized at the close of this toil. To
whoever can live by those two potent ideas, life is still grand; and
if I do not find again in the solitude to which I return that noble
Madame de Berny, whom my sister Laure now calls my Josephine, at least
she is not replaced by a Marie-Louise, but by glorious hope, the sole
companion of a poet in travail. This journey, in refreshing my brain,
rejuvenated me, and gave me back my force; I need it to accomplish my
last efforts.
I have just finished a work which is called "Massimilla Doni,"
the scene of which is in Venice. If I can realize all my ideas as
they present themselves in my brain it will be, assuredly, a book
as startling as "La Peau de Chagrin," better written, more poetic
possibly. I will not tell you anything about it. "Massimilla Doni" and
"Gambara" are, in the "Études Philosophiques," the apparition of Music,
under the double form of _execution_ and _composition_, subjected to
the same trial as Thought in "Louis Lambert:" that is to say, the work
and its execution are killed by the too great abundance of the creative
principle,--that which dictated to me the "Chef-d'œuvre inconnu" in
respect to painting; a study which I rewrote last winter. You will soon
receive two Parts of the "Études Philosophiques" in which the work has
been tremendous.
I have just finished a little study, entitled "Le Martyr calviniste,"
which with "Le Secret des Ruggieri" and "Les Deux Rêves" completes my
study of the character of Catherine de' Medici. I have begun to write
"La Femme Supérieure" for the "Presse," and in a few days I shall have
finished "César Birotteau." All this in manuscript only; for, after
composition, comes the battle of the proofs. You see that my ideas for
the stage are again drowned in the flood of my obligations and my other
work.
As soon as the above manuscripts are done I shall go into Berry, to
Madame Carraud, and there finish the third _dizain_, begun alas! in
Geneva and dated from Eaux-Vives and the dear Pré-l'Évêque!
It is now two years since I saw you. So, when my head refuses ideas,
when the ink-pot of my brain is empty, and I must have rest, by that
time I hope I shall have bought, through privations, the necessary
sum for a journey to Poland and to see Wierzchownia this autumn. God
grant that I then have a mind free of all care, and that I complete
between now and then the books that are to liberate me! Happily, except
for a few sums, it is only a question of blackening paper, and that,
fortunately, is in my own power. I am anxious to finish the two other
volumes which, under the title of "Un Grand homme de Province à Paris"
is to complete "Illusions Perdues" of which the introduction alone has
appeared. That is, certainly, with "César Birotteau," my greatest work
in dimensions.
May 29.
From the way I have started I hope to finish "La Femme Supérieure"
in four days. I am stirred by a species of fury to finish the works
for which I have already received the money. I live before my table;
I leave it only to sleep; I dine there. Never did poet stay thus in
a moral world; but yesterday some one told me I was said to be in
Germany. I hope that the ridiculous stories spread about me will cease
in consequence of the absolute seclusion in which I am about to live.
At any rate, the commercial proceedings instituted against me by
Werdet's creditors will have this good effect, that, being driven to
hide myself, no one can gossip about me. But they will make fantastic
tales about my disappearance!
I entreat you not to forget my request relative to corrections of "La
Vieille Fille" and, in general, to all you find faulty in my works. I
have none but you in the world to do me this friend's service. Be curt
in your verdicts. When there was something very bad Madame de Berny
never discussed; she wrote, "Bad" or, "Passage to be rewritten." Be,
I pray you, my dear star and my literary conscience, as you are in so
many other things my guide and my counsellor. You have a sure taste;
you have the habit of comparison, because you read everything. This
will be, moreover, an occupation in your desert.
Alas! I can only talk to you about myself. I am now without letters
from you, delivered over to all sorts of anxieties, because I had the
misfortune, in travelling, to leave you a month in silence,--though I
wrote to you from Sion in the Valais, and expected to find an answer in
Milan on my return from Florence. I have written to Milan, to Prince
Porcia, to forward your letter here.
Have the kindness to write to Madame Jeroslas ... that I can more
easily go four months hence and lay my homage at her feet than write
her a letter at this moment. Seriously, I go to bed with a tired hand.
I will send you a page for her in my next letter, though I shall not
write you till I can announce the termination of "César Birotteau" and
"La Femme Supérieure," the two great thorns I have in my foot at this
moment. The third _dizain_ may amuse me perhaps at Frapesle, Madame
Carraud's house, where I shall live ten days among the flowers, well
cared for by her, who is like a sister to me. She is very delicate,
very feeble; she will go, too, I foresee it, that fine and noble
intellect; and of the three truly grand women whom I have known, you
alone will remain. Such friendships are not renewed, _cara_. Therefore,
mine for you grows greater from all my losses, and, I dare to say it,
from all the illusions that experience mows down like the flowers of
the field. All my recent griefs, that ignoble little treachery of
Boulanger, this present misfortune due to my attachment to the weak,
all these things cast me with greater force to you, in whom I believe
as in God, to whom the troubles of earth drive us back. There are
affections that are like great rivers; all flows into them. So the
longer I live, the more the river swells; the sea into which it casts
itself is death.
I hope that all goes well with you, and that M. Hanski will be so kind
as not to be vexed with me if I do not answer his gracious letter; I am
so hurried! Tell him all that I would say to him; passing through such
an interpreter that which I should write to him will be bettered. Take
great care of yourself; after the long night-nursing you have borne, I
tremble lest you should be ill; if that should happen, in God's name
let me know; I must go and nurse you.
Adieu. I wish you good health, and Anna also. If my theory on human
forces is true, you ought to live in the atmosphere that my soul makes
for you by surrounding you with sacred wishes. Would that it were like
the thorny hedges placed about private fields, that cattle may neither
feed nor trample there. I would that I could thus drive off all griefs,
all disappointments, all that herd of worries, pain, and maladies. To
you, who give me such strength, would I could return it!
PARIS, May 31, 1837.
I have this instant received yours (number 28) of the 12th, written
after you received the one I wrote you from Florence. But did you not
receive one from Sion? which I do not, however, count as a letter, for
there were only fifteen lines on a page. It is clear that some one kept
the money for the postage, and read, or burned the letter. _Mon Dieu!_
how vexed I am! I stopped at Sion expressly to write it. You ought to
have received it early in March. Let us say no more about it.
I admire the capacity of your intelligence in regard to the person
about whom I wrote you from Florence. The reasons that struck your mind
struck mine later. But your letter grieves me. Such profound sadness
reigns through the religious ideas it expresses. It seems as though
you had lost all hope on earth. You ask me to make you confidences as
I would to my best friend; but have I not told you all my life? I have
often confided too much of my anguish to you, for it did you harm.
This letter comes to me at a bad moment. It has singularly added to the
dumb grief that gnaws me and will kill me. I am thirty-eight years old,
still crippled by debt, with nought but uncertainty as to my position.
Scarcely have I taken two months to rest my brain before I repent them
as a crime when I see the evils that have come through my inaction.
This precarious life, which might be a spur in youth, becomes at my
age an overwhelming burden. My head is turning white, and whatever
pleasant things may be said about it, it is clear that I must soon
lose all hope of pleasing. Pure, tranquil, openly avowed happiness,
for which I was made, escapes me; I have only tortures and vexations,
through which a few rare gleams of blue sky shine.
My works are little understood and little appreciated; they serve to
enrich Belgium, but they leave me in poverty. The only friend who came
to me at my start in life, who was to me a true mother, has gone to
heaven. And you, you write me there are as many _ideas_ as there is
distance between us, and you dissuade me from going to see you!
Your letter has done me great harm. Believe me, there is a certain
measure of religious ideas beyond which all is vicious. You know what
my religion is. I am not orthodox, and I do not believe in the Roman
Church. I think that if there is a scheme worthy of our kind it is that
of human transformations causing the human being to advance toward
unknown zones. That is the law of creations inferior to ourselves;
it ought to be the law of superior creations. Swedenborgianism,
which is only a repetition in the Christian sense of ancient
ideas, is my religion, with the addition which I make to it of the
incomprehensibility of God. That said (and I say it to you because I
know you to be so truly Roman Catholic that nothing can influence your
mind about it), I must surely see more clearly than you see it what
your detachment from all things here below conceals, and deplore it if
it rests on false ideas. To comfort myself as to this, I have read over
a letter in which you told me you wished to be always yourself, to show
yourself--in your hours of melancholy, of piety, and of spring-tide
returns.
June 1.
Your letter has left long traces upon me, and I can scarcely say what
impressions I have had on reading the part where you separate your
readings into profane and religious. There is a whole world between
your last but one letter and this letter. You have taken the veil. I am
deathly sad.
June 2.
I have begun "La Femme Supérieure" in a manner that promised to finish
it in four days, and now it is impossible for me to write a line. My
faculties seem unstrung. I had made my mother decide on spending two
years in Switzerland to spare her the sight of my struggle, the triumph
of which I placed at that date. But she is now ill. Two nephews to
bring up, my mother to support, and my work insufficient!--that is one
of the aspects of my life. Continual injustice, constant calumny, the
betrayal of friends, that is another.[1] The embarrassments into which
Werdet's failure flung me, and my new treaty which keeps me in a state
of extreme poverty, that is a third. The literary difficulties of what
I do and the continuity of toil, that is another. I am worn-out on the
four faces of the square by an equal pressure of trouble. If my soul
finds the ivory door through which it flees into lands of illusion,
dreams of happiness, closed, what will become of it? Solitude, farewell
to the world? It is sorrowful for those who live by the heart to have
no life possible but that of the brain.
When you receive this letter Boulanger's portrait will be on its way
to you; it was packed this week. I wished to have it rolled, but the
colour-dealer and a picture-restorer whom I consulted assured me it
would go safely in a square box the size of the picture. You will
have a fine work, so several painters say. The eyes especially are
well rendered, but more in the general physical expression of the
worker than with the loving soul of the individual. Boulanger saw the
writer, and not the tenderness of the imbecile always taken-in, not the
softness of the man before the sufferings of others, which made all
my miseries come from holding out a helping hand to weaklings in the
rut of ill-luck. In order to do a service in 1827 to a working printer,
I found myself, in 1829, crushed down under a debt of one hundred and
fifty thousand francs and cast, without bread, into a garret. In 1833,
just as my pen was giving signs of enabling me to clear my obligations,
I connected myself with Werdet; I wanted to make him my only publisher,
and in my desire to make him prosper, I signed engagements, so that in
1837, I find myself again with a hundred and fifty thousand francs of
debt, and on that account so threatened with arrest that I am obliged
to live in hiding. I make myself, as I go along, the Don Quixote of
the feeble; I wanted to give courage to Sandeau, and I dropped upon
that head four or five thousand francs that would have saved another
man! I need a barrier between the world and me; I must content myself
with producing without spending; I must shut myself up within a narrow
circle, under pain of succumbing.
[Footnote 1: See Memoir, pp. 231, 232, 329.--TR.]
June 5.
Yesterday I sent away my three servants; Auguste, whom you have seen,
remains, on a salary that my new publishers, the printers, and I pay.
He will carry proofs. I am trying to get rid of my apartment rue des
Batailles; that of rue Cassini is paid up, and the lease ends October
1 of this year. I must resume the life I led in the rue Lesdiguières:
live on little, and work always. Alas! I need a family! Perhaps I will
go and settle in some village in Touraine. A garret in Paris is still
dangerous.
I have seven years' work before me, counting three works a year like
the "Lys," and I shall be forty-five when the principal lines of my
work are defined and the portions very nearly filled in. At forty-five
one is no longer young, in form at least; one must, to preserve a few
fine days, plunge into the ice of complete solitude.
My mind is not tranquil enough to write for the stage. A play is the
easiest and the most difficult work for the human mind; either it
is a German toy, or an immortal statue, Polichinello or Venus, the
"Misanthrope" or "Figaro." The miserable melodramas of Hugo frighten
me. I need a whole winter at Wierzchownia to adjust a play, and I have
four months of crushing work to do before I can know if I shall have
the money, and when and how I shall have it, to enable me to go there.
Perhaps I shall take one of those sublime resolutions which turn life
inside out like a glove. That is very possible. Perhaps I shall leave
literature, to enrich myself, and take it up later if it suits me to do
so; I have been reflecting about this for some days past.
Are you not tired of hearing me ring my song on every key? Does not
this continual _egotistery_ of a man fighting forever in a narrow
circle bore you? Say so, because in your letter you seemed disposed to
turn away from me, as from a beggar who knows nothing but the _Pater_,
and says it over and over again.
_Cara_, I hold Florence to be a great lady, a glorious city, where we
breathe the middle ages; but, as I told you, Venice and Switzerland
are two conceptions which resemble nothing. I have not dared to say
any harm to you of your bust, because it gave me too much joy to see
it. As for the mouth, do not complain of Bartolini; he has made it
beautiful and true. Your mouth is one of the sweetest creations I have
ever seen; in the bust it has, certainly, the expression your aunt and
others blame; but that is only on the surface of the thing. Without
your mouth, the forehead would be hydrocephalus. There is an exact
balance in the two, between sensations and ideas, between the heart
and the brain; there is, above all, in the expression thus blamed, an
extreme nobility and infinite sweetness, two attributes which render
you adorable to those who know you well. No one has analyzed your
head and face more than I. The last time that I could study you, and
have enough coolness to do so, was in Daffinger's studio [in Vienna],
and it was only there that I detected on your lips a few faint signs
of cruel passion. Do not be astonished at those two words: it is
such indications that give to your mouth the expression those ladies
complain of; but such evidences are repressed by goodness. You have
something violent in your first impulse, but reflection, kindness,
gentleness, nobleness, follow instantly. I do not regard this as a
defect. The first impulse has its cause, and I will tell it to you in
your chimney-corner at Wierzchownia, if you think to ask me; and I will
give you proofs of what I say about you, examples taken from what I saw
you do in Vienna--in the affair of the letter, for instance, which was
written under one such impulse. If you were exclusively good you would
be a sheep--which is too insipid.
Well, adieu, _cara_; a thousand tender regards, _quand même_ motto of
the friends of the throne. Many prettinesses to the pretty Anna for her
thought and for herself. I shall write this week to M. Hanski.
PARIS, July 8, 1837.
I just receive your number 29, in which there is an "at last!" which
makes me tremble, dear, for it is now nearly a month since I wrote to
you.
The explanation of my silence is in "La Femme Supérieure," which fills
seventy-five columns of the "Presse" and which was written in a month,
day by day. I sat up thirty nights of that damned month, and I don't
believe that I slept more than sixty-odd hours in the course of it; I
never had time to trim my beard, and I, the enemy of all affectation,
now wear the goat's beard of La Jeune France. After writing this letter
I must take a bath, not without terror, for I am afraid of relaxing
the fibres which are strung up to the highest tension; and I must begin
again on "César Birotteau," which is growing ridiculous on account of
its delays. Besides, it is now ten months since the "Figaro" paid me
for it.
Nothing can express to you the sweeping onward of such mad work. At any
price I must have my freedom of mind, for, another year of this life,
and I shall die at my oar. I have done during this month, "Les Martyrs
ignorés" "Massimilla Doni," and "Gambara." When I have finished "César
Birotteau" I must then do "La Maison Nucingen et Compagnie" and another
book, which will bring me to the end of these miseries that give me
so much toil and no money. I found time to see about the packing of
that portrait, which you will surely have, I think, before this letter
reaches you.
The long delay of your number 29 has added to all my troubles the fear
of some illness in your home; you cannot think what anxiety that puts
into my mind. And I fear so much lest some breath of poisoned slander,
some calumny may reach you, lest the sorrows of my life may have
wearied you, that the failure of your letters puts me in a fever.
I will not talk to you again of the difficulties of my life, for the
affair you know of has rendered them enormous and insurmountable.
While I work night and day to free my pen, my new publishers give me
nothing until I work for them; so that I must run in debt, and all
my money worries will begin again. Werdet's failure has killed me. I
imprudently indorsed for him, I was sued, and I was forced to hide and
defend myself. The men whose duty it is to arrest debtors discovered
me, thanks to treachery, and I had the pain of compromising the persons
who had generously given me an asylum. It was necessary, in order not
to go to prison, to find the money for the Werdet debt at once, and,
consequently, to involve myself again to those who lent it to me.
Such a little episode in the midst of my toil!
I will no longer wring your heart with the details of my struggle.
Besides, it would take volumes to tell you all of them and explain
them. The truth is, I do not live. Always toil! I cannot support
this life for more than three or four months at a time. I have still
forty-five days more of it; after that I shall be utterly broken down,
and then I will go and revive in the solitude of the Ukraine, if God
permits it. I hope to last till the end of "César Birotteau."
"La Femme Supérieure" makes two thick 8vo volumes. It is ended in the
newspaper, but not in the book form; I am adding a fourth Part.
I wish I had strength enough to give the end of "Illusions Perdues."
But that is very difficult; though very urgent, because my payment of
fifteen hundred francs a month does not begin till then.
Not only have I not closed the gulf of sorrows, but I have not closed
that of my business affairs. I have hoped so often that I am weary of
hope, as I told you. I am a prey to deep disgust, and I shut myself
up in complete solitude. Nevertheless, a grand affair is preparing
for me in the publication of my works, with vignettes, etc., resting
upon an enterprise both inciting and attractive to the public. This
is an interest in a tontine, created from a portion of the profit of
subscribers, who are divided into classes and ages; one to ten, ten to
twenty, twenty to thirty, thirty to forty, forty to fifty, fifty to
sixty, sixty to seventy, seventy to eighty. So, the subscriber will
obtain a magnificent volume, as to typographic execution, and the
chance of thirty thousand francs income for having subscribed. Also the
capital of the income will remain to the subscriber's family.
It is very fine; but it needs three thousand subscribers per class
to make it practicable. But imagine that, in spite of the ardour of
my imagination, I have received so many blows that I shall see this
project played with an indifferent eye. An enormous sum is required for
advertising; and four hundred thousand francs for the vignettes alone.
The work will be in fifty volumes, published in demi-volumes. It will
include the "Études de Mœurs" complete, the "Études Philosophiques"
complete, and the "Études Analytiques" complete, under the general
title of "Études Sociales." In four years the whole will have been
published. The vignettes will be in the text itself, and there will
be seventy-five in a volume, which will prevent all piracy in foreign
countries.
But this depends still on several administrative points to settle. May
fate grant it success! It is high time. I feel that a few days more
like the last, and I am vanquished.
I, who know so amply what misfortune is, I cry to you from the depths
of my study, enjoy the material good that M. Hanski bestows upon you,
and which you justly boast of to me. I wish with all the power of my
soul that you may never know such miseries as mine.
If this affair takes place, and taking place, succeeds, you shall
be the first informed of it; and never letter more joyous will rush
through Europe! But I have reached the point of very great doubt in all
business affairs.
You will some day read "La Femme Supérieure," and if ever I needed a
serious and sincere opinion upon a composition, it is on this. Twenty
letters of reprobation reach the newspaper daily, from persons who stop
their subscriptions, etc., saying that nothing could be more wearisome,
it is all insipid gabbling, etc.; and they send me these letters!
There is one, among others, from a man who calls himself my great
admirer, which says that "he cannot conceive the stupidity of such a
composition." If that is so, I must have been heavily mistaken.