little propitious to a start on "César Birotteau" which I make to-day
and must push with the greatest celerity. I have robbed you of the
manuscript and proofs of "La Femme Supérieure" to the profit of my
_cara sorella_, who has none of these things, and who, on seeing the
bound proofs brought home to me for you, said, in a melancholy tone,
"Am I never to have any of them myself?" So I thought to give her those
of "La Femme Supérieure;" I will keep those of the reprints for you.
On coming out of my painful labour of forty-five days, I have
religiously put your dear Anna's heart's-ease into my "Imitation of
Jesus Christ," where there is another on a fragment of a yellow sash.
What events, what thoughts have passed beneath heaven's arch in seven
years! and what terror must one feel as one sees one's self advancing
ever, with no lull in the storm! One must not think of happy fancies
pictured on the horizon, especially when the soul is ever in mourning.
I send you a thousand caressing desires; I would that you had all the
happiness that flees from me. I see but too well that my life can
never be other than a life of toil, and that I must place my pleasure
there, in the occupation by which I live. And yet, when my pen is
free, two or three months hence, I shall once more tempt fortune; I
shall make a last effort. But if I do so, it is because there is no
risk of money. After that, if nothing comes of it, I shall retire into
some corner, to live there like a country curate without parishioners,
indifferent to all material interests, and resting on my heart and
my imagination,--those two great motive powers of life. This is only
telling you that you count for more than half in that vision.
I did not finish "Berthe la Repentie" without thinking at every line
that I began it with fury at Pré-l'Évêque in 1834, now nearly four
years ago. I ought never to have had debts; I ought to have lived like
a canon in the Ukraine, having no other function than to drive away
your blue devils and those of M. Hanski and write a _dizain_ every
year. 'T would have been too beautiful a life. Between repose and me
there are twelve thousand ducats of debt, and the farther I go, the
more they increase. Chateaubriand is dying of hunger. He sold his past
as author, and he has sold his future. The future gives him twelve
thousand francs a year, so long as he publishes nothing; twenty-live
thousand if he publishes. That to him is poverty; he is seventy-five
years old, an age at which all genius is extinct, but the memories of
youth reflower. That is how we love--the first time in reality, the
second time in memory.
_Addio, cara._ I must leave you to take up my _dizain_ and "César
Birotteau" alternately. I would give I know not what, all, except our
dear friendship, to have finished those two works which will bring me
in nothing but insults.
I think it surprising that you had not received my New Year's gift in
June, for Colonel Frankowski has been in Poland three months. Put a
kiss on Anna's forehead from her horse, the quietest she will ever have
in her stables. Remember me to all about you and to M. Hanski. I send
nothing to you who possess the whole of this Parisian moujik.
I conceived yesterday a work grand in its thought, small in its volume;
it is a book I shall do immediately. It will be called by some man's
name, such as "Jules, or the new Abeilard." The subject will be the
letters of two lovers led to the religious life by love, a true heroic
romance _à la_ Scudéry.
PARIS, July 19, 1837.
_Cara_, you will end by being so weary of my jeremiads that when you
receive a letter from me you will fling it into the fire without
opening it, certain that it is a garretful of blue devils and the
amplest stock of melancholy in the world. If my fat and daring
countenance is at this moment installed before you, you will never
behold my griefs on that swelling forehead--less ample, less beautiful
than yours--nor on those rotund cheeks of a lazy monk. But so it is. He
who was created for pleasure and happy carelessness, for love and for
luxury, works like a galley-slave.
I was talking to Heine yesterday about writing for the stage. "Beware
of that," he said; "he who is accustomed to Brest cannot accustom
himself to Toulon. Stay in your own galley."
I am the lighter by three works: here is the third _dizain_ done in
manuscript, but not in proofs; here is "Gambara" finished, and I am at
the last proof of "Massimilla Doni;" and finally, in three days I shall
begin the end of "César Birotteau." I hope the woodman brings down
trees; I hope the workman is no bungler. But I am always meeting worthy
people, Parisians, who say to me, "Why don't you publish something?"
Yesterday, after leaving Heine, I met Rothschild on the boulevard,
that is to say, all the wit and money of the Jews; and he said to me,
"What are you doing now?" "La Femme Supérieure" has been inundating the
"Presse" for the last fortnight!
_Cara_, you talk to me still of my dissipation, my travels, and
society. That is wrong in you. I travel when it is impossible to rouse
my broken-down brain. When I return, I shut myself up and work night
and day until death comes--of the brain, be it understood, though a man
may die of work. I did wrong not to go to the Ukraine, but I am the
first punished; that wrong was caused by my poverty. But I have just
discovered an economical means of conveyance which I shall use as soon
as I am free. It is to go from here to Havre, Havre to Hamburg, Hamburg
to Berlin, Berlin to Breslau, Breslau to Lemberg, Lemberg to Brody.
I think that route will not be dear, as so much is done by water.
From Paris to Hamburg, four days, is two hundred francs, everything
included. Only, will you come and fetch me at Brody, where I shall be
without a vehicle and ignorant of the language? That is the project I
am caressing; and it makes me hasten my work.
There is nothing new about the grand affair of my publication on the
tontine plan. But the petty newspapers are already laughing at this
enterprise, which they know nothing about, and solely because it makes
to my profit.
Is not this singular? I was just here when Auguste brought me your kind
and very amiable number 30--in the sense that there is an adorable
number of pages. In the first place, _cara_, I see that you are not
speaking to me with a frank heart in fearing that your letter would be
flung down with disdain! and you came near using a worse word. Ah! have
we never understood each other? Have you no idea of friendship,--no
knowledge of true sentiments? It must be so, if you can imagine I am
not more interested in your missing book and all that happens around
you than I am in the finest or the most hideous events of the world.
I am so angry, so shaken by that passage in your letter that my hand
trembles as if I had killed my neighbour. It is you who have killed
something in me. But you can revive it by pouring out to me without
fear your reveries. Next, you tell me that I am hiding from you some
gambling loss, some disaster, and that I am a poor head financially.
Dear and beautiful châtelaine, you talk of poverty like one who does
not know it and who never will know it. The unfortunate are always
wrong, because they begin by being unfortunate.
Must I for the fifth or sixth time explain to you the mechanism of my
poverty, and how it is that it only grows and increases? I will do so,
if only to prove to you that I am the greatest financier of the epoch.
But we will never return to the subject again, will we?--for there is
nothing sadder than to relate troubles from which we still suffer:--
In 1828 I was flung into this poor rue Cassini, when my family would
not even give me bread, in consequence of a liquidation to which they
compelled me, owing one hundred thousand francs and being without a
penny. There, then, was a man who had to have six thousand francs to
pay his interests, and three thousand francs on which to live; total,
nine thousand francs a year. Now, during the years 1828, 1829, and 1830
I did not earn more than three thousand francs, for M. de Latouche paid
only one thousand for "Les Chouans;" the publisher Mame failed and paid
me only seven hundred and fifty francs, instead of fifteen hundred, for
the "Scènes de la Vie privée;" the "Physiologie du Mariage" brought
me only one thousand francs, through the bad faith of the publisher;
and M. de Girardin paid me only fifty francs a _feuille_ [16 pages]
in his paper "La Mode." Thus in the course of three years my debt was
increased by twenty-four thousand francs.
1830 came; general disaster to the publishing business. "La Peau de
Chagrin" paid me only seven hundred francs; three thousand later by
adding the "Contes Philosophiques" to it. Then the "Revue de Paris"
took ten _feuilles_ a year, at one hundred and sixty francs: total,
sixteen hundred francs. So 1830 and 1831 together gave me only ten
thousand francs; but I had to pay eighteen thousand francs for interest
and my living. Thus I increased the debt by eight thousand francs.
The capital of the debt then amounted to one hundred and thirty-two
thousand francs.
1833 came; and then by making my agreement with Madame Bêchet I found
myself equal to my living and my debt; that is to say, I could live
and pay my interest; because from 1833 to 1836 I earned ten thousand
francs a year; I then owed six thousand two hundred francs interest,
and I supposed I could live on four thousand francs. But, at this
moment of success, new disasters came.
A man who has only his pen, and who must meet ten thousand francs a
year when he does not have them, is compelled to many sacrifices. It
was soon, not one hundred and thirty-two thousand francs that I owed,
but one hundred and forty thousand, for how did I fight the necessity
that pressed upon me? With an aide-de-camp who may be compared to the
vulture of Prometheus [Werdet]; with usurers who made me pay nine, ten,
twelve, twenty per cent interest, and who consumed in applications,
proceedings, and errands fifty per cent and more of my time. Moreover,
I had signed agreements with publishers who had advanced me money on
work to be done; so that when I signed the Bêchet agreement I had
to deduct from the thirty thousand francs she was to pay me for the
first twelve volumes of the "Études de Mœurs" ten thousand francs
to indemnify Gosselin and two other publishers. So it was not thirty
thousand, but twenty thousand francs only; and those twenty thousand
are reduced to ten thousand by a loss I have lately met with, of copies
that were worth that sum. The fire in the rue du Pot-de-Fer consumed
the volumes I bought back from Gosselin.
So my position in 1837 exactly corresponds with these facts, when it
places me with one hundred and sixty-two thousand francs of debt; for
all that I have earned has never covered interests and expenses. My
expenditure in luxury, for which you sometimes blame me, is produced
by two necessities. First: when a man works as I do, and his time is
worth to him twenty to fifty francs an hour, he heeds a carriage, for
a carriage is an economy. Then he must have lights all night, coffee
at all hours, much fire, and everything orderly about him; it is that
which constitutes the costly life of Paris. Second: in Paris, those
who speculate in literature have no other thought than to extort from
it. If I had stayed in a garret I should have earned nothing. This is
what ruins the men of letters in Paris,--Karr, Goslan, etc. They are
needy, and it is known; publishers pay them five hundred francs for
what is worth three thousand. I therefore considered it good business
to exhibit an exterior of fortune, so as not to be bargained with and
to fix my own price.
If you do not regard with admiration a man who, bearing the weight of
such a debt, writing with one hand, lighting with the other, _never
committing a baseness_, cringing to no usurer, nor to journalism,
imploring no man, neither his creditor nor his friend, never tottering
in the most suspicious, most selfish, most miserly country in the
world, where they lend to the rich only,---a man whom calumny has
pursued and is still pursuing, a man who they said was in Sainte
Pélagie when he was with you in Vienna,--then you know nothing of the
world! [1]
The enterprise of the "Chronique de Paris" was undertaken to play a
bold stroke and pay off my debt. Instead of winning, I lost.
It was a horrible reverse.
And in the midst of this hell of conflicting interests, of days without
bread, of friends who betrayed me, of jealousies that tried to injure
me, I had to write ceaselessly, to think, to toil; to have droll ideas
when I wept, to write of love with a heart bleeding from inward wounds,
with scarce a hope on the horizon--and that hope reproachful, and
asking from a knight brought back from the battle, where and why he was
wounded.
_Cara_, do not condemn in the midst of this long torture the poor
struggler who seeks a corner where to sit down and recover breath,
where to breathe the sweet air of the shore and not the dusty air of
the arena; do not blame me for having spent a few miserable thousand
francs in going to Neufchâtel, Geneva, Vienna, and twice to Italy. (You
do not comprehend Italy; in that you are dull, and I will tell you
why.) Do not blame me for going to spend two or three months near you;
for without these halts I should be dead.
Imprint this very succinct explanation in your beautiful and noble,
pure, sublime head, and never return to these ideas that I gamble,
etc.; for I have never gambled, never had any other disasters than
those into which my own kindness dragged me.
Alas! I thought my pious offering for the new year had reached your
hands; for allow me the intoxicating pleasure of thinking that what I
give you caused me a little privation. It is in that way that poverty
can equal riches. If that poor man has sold it he must have been much
in need. But I shall never console myself for knowing that the chain
you gave me in Geneva is not in your hands. The misfortune I can
repair. What is irreparable is that the mails arrive without bringing
me any letters from you. You make to yourself false ideas about me, and
you do not know to what black dragons I fall a victim when a fortnight
passes without manna from the Ukraine.
What! you did not receive that letter from Sion? In future, when I
travel I shall prepay my letters myself. Oh! the honour of Swiss
innkeepers! The rascal in whom I trusted must have burned the letter
and kept the francs I gave him to prepay it.
You and I are not of the same opinion on religious questions, but I
should be in despair if you adopted my ideas; I like better to see
you keep your own; and I shall never do anything, even though I think
I am right, to destroy them. Only, knowing you to be a good and true
Catholic, I prefer the pages in which you disappoint me to those
in which you preach to me Catholicism; and yet, they all give me
the greatest pleasure. That is only telling you that I want both. I
conceive of Catholicism as poesy, and I am preparing a work in which
two lovers are led by love to the religious life; then that _bag of
nails_ whom you call your aunt will like me much and declare that I
make a good use of my talents!
_Addio_. You have very cruelly proved to me that you have a prudent
friendship for me; you judge very sternly the poor strivings of a
stormy life which, from its youth up, has never had the satisfaction of
saying to itself, "This is really mine."
I send you a letter I received yesterday from my sister; you will see
that the poor child cannot help weeping when I weep, and laughing when
I laugh. But then, it is true, she is near me, and you are in the
Ukraine. And besides, those who are truly beloved are always sure of
not wounding, for from them all is dear--even unjust blame.
A thousand friendly compliments to M. Hanski and remembrances to all.
A kiss on the hair of your dear Anna. Thanks for the heart's-ease.
[Footnote 1: For a fuller understanding of this, I refer the reader to
his sister's account of his pecuniary trials, and to a brief statement
of the then existing system of literary payments, which will be found
in my "Memoir of Balzac," pp. 70, 71, 81, 89, 90, 158-160. It is
possible that had Balzac _been another man_ he might have rid himself
of his incubus of debt--though it is difficult to say how a young man
owing 100,000 francs and 6 per cent interest on them, without one penny
to pay either debt or interest, could have done so. But the question
here is: Could the man whose business it was to know men live apart
from their lives, a beggar in a garret? Can the genius whose mission
it was to grasp the whole of human society be judged in his business
methods like a city banker? Edmond Werdet, the publisher, who said he
suffered through his publication of Balzac's works, and who, nine years
after his death, wrote a book upon him partly for revenge ("Portrait
intime de Balzac, sa vie, son humeur, et son caractère." 1 vol., Paris,
1859), brought no charge against him of want of probity, or of failure
to keep his money engagements. On the contrary, he says in one place:
"He was an honest man; an honest man in debt, not a business man in
debt, as M. Taine has said of him." In another place he says: "Balzac
had his absurdities if you will, but he was exempt from vices."--TR.]
_For you only._
I should be most unjust if I did not say that from 1823 to 1833 an
angel sustained me through that horrible war. Madame de Berny, though
married, was like a God to me. She was a mother, friend, family,
counsellor; she made the writer, she consoled the young man, she
created his taste, she wept like a sister, she laughed, she came daily,
like a beneficent sleep, to still his sorrows. She did more; though
under the control of a husband, she found means to lend me as much as
forty-five thousand francs, of which I returned the last six thousand
in 1836, with interest at five per cent, be it understood. But she
never spoke to me of my debt, except now and then; without her, I
should, assuredly, be dead. She often divined that I had eaten nothing
for days; she provided for all with angelic goodness; she encouraged
that pride which preserves a man from baseness,--for which to-day my
enemies reproach me, calling it a silly satisfaction in myself--the
pride that Boulanger has, perhaps, pushed to excess in my portrait.
Therefore, that memory is for much in my life; it is ineffaceable,
for it mingles with everything. Tears are in me now for two persons
only,--for her who is no more, and for her who still is, and, I hope,
ever will be. Thus I am inexplicable to all; for none have ever known
the secret of my life; I would not deliver it up to any one. You have
detected it; keep it for me securely.
_Addio._ It was natural that I should not mix this great history of
the heart with the tale of my disasters and that of a material life so
difficult. But I could not let your analytical forehead cast a thought
on my confession of misery that would say I had forgotten her who gave
me the strength to resist it, or her who continues that rôle.
But let us leave all this henceforth. Let me take up once more my
burden. I bear it alone; and I can but smile at those who ask why I do
not run thus laden.
But neither do I wish you, in thinking of me, to see me always
suffering and harassed. There come hours when I look from my window,
my eyes to the sky, forgetting all, lost as I am in memories. If the
sorrowful had not the power to forget their sorrows, if they could not
make themselves an oasis where the springs and the palms are, what
would become of us?
Adieu; do not blame me again without thinking of all that ought to keep
you from saying that I conceal some great catastrophe. Do you think
that I lose millions in the boudoir of an opera girl?
SACHÉ, August 25, 1837.
I receive your number 31 here. I ended by getting an inflammation of
the lungs, and I came to Touraine by order of the doctor, who advised
me not to work, but to amuse myself, and walk about. To amuse myself
is impossible. Nothing but travel can counterbalance my work. As for
working, that is still impossible; even the writing of these few lines
has given me an intolerable pain in the back between the shoulders; and
as for walking, that is still more impossible; for I cough so _agedly_
that I fear to check the perspiration it causes by passing from warm to
cool spots and breezy openings. I thought Touraine would do me good.
But my illness has increased. The whole left lung is involved, and I
return to Paris to submit to a fresh examination. But as I must, no
matter what state I am in, resume my work and leave a mild and milky
regimen for that of stimulants, I feel that toil will carry me off.
I have reached a point where I no longer regret life; hopes are too
distant; tranquillity too laborious to attain. If I had only moderate
work to do I would submit without a murmur to this fate; but I have
too much grief, too many enemies. The third Part of the "Études
Philosophiques" is now for sale. Not a paper has noticed it. Fourteen
copies have been sold, though nearly all was new and unpublished! The
indorsements I so imprudently gave to that miserable Werdet have given
rise to a keener pursuit of me than I ever had for real debt; for I
never met with such severity, having, ever since I lived in the world,
been strictly punctual. Never was an illness more untimely for my
affairs.
You must think that your dear letter came as a benefaction from
Providence in the solitude of Saché. But, dear, why do you make, like
those spiteful little feuilletonists and so many others, the false
reasoning that considers an author guilty of all that he puts into the
mouth of his actors? Because I paint a journalist without faith or law,
make him talk as he thinks, and begin the portrait of that hideous
and cancerous sore, does it follow that my literature is that of a
commercial traveller? You are so wrong in this that I will not insist;
only, I don't like to find my polar star at fault, nor to catch myself
smiling as I kiss her pages. You are infallible for me. Do not quarrel
with me too much in the little time I have to live.
The grand affair is coming on. They engrave, design, and print
vigorously. But, if there is success, success will come too late. I
feel myself decidedly ill. I should have done better to go and pass six
months at Wierzchownia than to stay on the battle-field, where I shall
end by being knocked over. When one has neither supports nor ammunition
there comes a moment when one must capitulate. The whole world of Paris
rises in arms against inflexible virtue, and beats it down at any cost.
I meditate retiring to Touraine; but I cannot be there alone. There is
no one to see there. One must have all in one's own home.
The moments when my energy deserts me are becoming more frequent, and,
in those terrible phases, it is impossible to answer for one's self.
There is neither reasoning, nor sentiment, nor doctrine that can quell
the excesses of that crisis, when the soul is, so to speak, absent.
Journeys cost so much money, and ruin me for a year or more; thus I am
forced to remain in France. The law about the National Guard drives me
into going to Touraine, for it is impossible for me to submit to that
rule. So I think that towards the middle of September I shall have
chosen a little house on the banks of the Cher or the Loire. I am even
in treaty for one now, which would suit me very well, but there are
serious difficulties.
I am surprised that you have not yet received Boulanger's picture. They
assured me it would go by a flying-waggon which went so fast that in a
month it would be delivered in Brody. Now it is more than two months
since I announced to you its departure.
This distance between us is something very dreadful. Your letter has
been so delayed that I feared illnesses; I feared lest your fatigues
had affected your health. I see now that you and yours are well. I will
write you from Paris after seeing the doctor.
Why are you vexed with me for not having told you of Madame Contarini?
I shall be angry with you till death for always believing that I need
foreign female preachers to refresh my memory of _my country_. Alas!
I think of it too much. I have too much subordinated all my thoughts
to what you, so distant from me, think, to be happy. In short, I am
neither converted nor to be converted, for I have but one religion and
I do not divide my sentiments. If my religion is too terrestrial, the
fault is in God, _who made it what it is_. Madame Contarini did not
know that she was following in your religious foot-prints; for it is
you who have undertaken my conversion.
You are always the providence of some one. That poor Swiss girl, will
she love you better than the other? For we ought never to judge those
we love; I am very fixed on that principle. The affection that is not
blind is no affection at all.
I resume this letter at midnight, before going to bed. My bedroom
here, which people come to see out of curiosity, looks out on woods
that are two or three times centennial, and I take in a view of the
Indre and the little château that I called Clochegourde. The silence is
marvellous.
I leave to-morrow, 26th, for Tours with M. de Margonne, and the 28th
for Paris, where my deplorable affairs need me. I always leave this
lonely valley with regret.
My mother is very unwell. She sinks under the distress which the
precarious position of her children gives her; for we have to take
charge, my brother-in-law, my sister and myself, of the children of
my poor dead sister Laurence. What makes me spur the principle of my
courage so much is my desire to succeed in time to gild her old age.
Do you know that your letter is dated July 27, and that I received it
August 21?--a whole month! A month without news of you is a very long
time for a friendship watching for it at all hours, and often, between
two proofs, taking its head in its hands and asking itself, "What is
she thinking of?"
Well, adieu, for my fatigue is returning; I am going to bed and shall
think of all I have not told you, forgetfulnesses which come of so
short a letter; in Paris I shall have more to tell you. But, no matter
what I say, find ever on my pages the purest and sweetest flowers of
an affection that distance cannot lessen, which springs across that
distance,--an affection known to you, and which, in a word, is ever
prolix.
PARIS, September 1, 1837.
_Cara_, I hasten to tell you that the inflammation, which turned into
bronchitis, is now cured. But I must begin work again, and God knows
what will happen in consequence of new excesses. Though all goes well
physically, all goes ill pecuniarily; and I will not tell you the
particulars, lest they bring upon me more unjust suspicions.
I begin this evening a comedy in five acts, entitled, "Joseph
Prudhomme;" for I must come to that last resource; I am in the
condition of "My kingdom for a horse!"
Three months hence you will receive three very important works: "César
Birotteau," the third _dizain_, and the "Lettres de deux Amants, ou le
nouvel Abeilard." I count the comedy as nothing. I think I have never
done anything that can be compared to "Berthe la Repentie," the diamond
of the third _dizain_. You brought luck to that poem, for the first
chapter was written in Geneva, three days after my arrival.
I wish not to tell you anything about the "Lettres de deux Amants;"
that is a surprise I desire to make to my dear preacheress, to teach
her to comprehend that when one has undertaken to paint the whole of a
moral world, one must paint it under all its aspects, with believers
and unbelievers, and every one in his place. Apropos of the comedy
which I am now going to attempt and to put upon the stage, I admire to
see how persistence is necessary in art. That comedy has been in my
head for ten years; it has come back and back under divers faces, it
has been a score of times cast and recast, modified, made, remade, and
made again, and now it is about to come to the surface, new and vulgar,
grand and simple. I am delighted with it; I foresee a great success
and a work which may maintain itself on the repertory among the score
of plays which make the glory of the Théâtre-Français. I have a second
sight about it, as about "La Peau de Chagrin" and "Eugénie Grandet."
After being reassured by the friend to whom I confided the first doubt
I had about it, I have seen in it the elements of a great thing. There
is comedy and dumb tragedy, laughter and tears both. It has five acts,
as long and fertile as those of "Le Mariage de Figaro." This work,
brought to birth in the midst of my present miseries, is, at this
moment, like a carbuncle glowing in the shadows of a muddy grotto. A
terrible desire seizes me to go and write it in Switzerland, at Geneva;
but the dearness of living among those Swiss alarms me.
I have just seen the drawings made for "La Peau de Chagrin," and
they are wonderful. This enterprise is gigantic. Four thousand steel
engravings, drawn on copper-plate in the text itself. One hundred per
volume! In short, if this affair succeeds, the "Études Sociales" will
be brought forth in their entirety, in a magnificent costume, with
regal trappings.
Admit that if, in a few months, Fortune visits my threshold, I shall
have earned her well; and be sure that I shall cling fast hold on
whatever she deigns to fling to me.
Never did I find myself in such a tempest as now, and never did
hope show herself so serene or so beautiful; she is lustrous in her
turquoise, she smiles to me, and I let myself go to that smile which
helps me to bear my misfortunes. Without these celestial apparitions
what would become of poets and of artists when unhappy?
Adieu, dear. I must not tire you too long with the echoes of the
storm--unless, indeed, they make Wierzchownia the sweeter to you, and
the long expanse of the Ukraine more placid to your eye.
I do not understand bow it is that I am not, in the middle of August,
installed in some corner of your mansion, duly framed and mounted, with
all the monastic dignity that painter gave me.
You cannot imagine how beautiful Paris is becoming. We needed the reign
of a trowel to arrive at such grand results. This magnificence, which
advances daily and on all sides, will make us worthy of being the
capital of the world. The boulevards paved with asphalt, lighted by
bronze candelabra with gas, the increasing splendour of the shops, of
that fair, two leagues long, perpetually going on and varied by ever
new handiworks, compose a spectacle that is unequalled. In ten years we
shall be clean; "Paris mud" will be out of the dictionaries; we shall
become so magnificent that Paris will be really a great lady, the first
of queens, crowned with battlements.
I renounce Touraine and remain a citizen of the intellectual
metropolis. But I shall exempt myself from the draconian tyranny of
the National Guard by putting three leagues of distance between me
and this terrible queen. Respect is good taste towards royalties. An
obscure village will receive my miseries and my grandeurs. Your moujik
will have a very humble cottage, whence he will now and then depart
at half-past six to reach the Italian Opera at eight, for music is a
distraction, the only one that remains to him. Those beneficent voices
refresh both soul and mind.
Adieu, dear. You share in sorrows; it is right that I should send you
rays of gentle hope when she makes an azure rift athwart the dais of
gray cloud. God grant that star may not fall like others, but lead me
to some treasure-trove.
I please myself in thinking that you are happy; that your life has
taken, after the departure of your guests, its accustomed way, that
Paulowska brings you in her golden fleeces, that no one steals your
books, that no wicked page of mine has furrowed that brow so full of
dazzling majesty; in short, that you have all the crumbs of little
happiness, for that is much. Materialities, which are the half of life,
are not lacking to you; and if they bring monotony, at least the energy
that may spend itself in sacred regions--where you bear it to the
detriment of this poor passionate earth--is not exhausted. You know,
this long time, what wishes I make that life be light upon you. I hope
that Anna, and your tall young ladies, and the master, and the Swiss
maid, in short, all your household, are well, and that you have no
grief that makes you lift your eyes to heaven.
After that phrase I pick up my spade, I mean my pen, and dig in the
field "Birotteau," which still needs delving and rolling and raking and
watering; and when you read the letter of François to César, remember
that it was there that my thought made a pause to turn to you and send
you this letter across your steppe, like a flower of friendship asking
asylum in your soil, which, in spite of wintry snows, will be always
coloured and perfumed by a sincere affection.
SÈVRES, October 10, 1837.
Much time has gone by without my writing to you; I have lived so
tempestuously that I am not sure whether on my return from Touraine and
after my convalescence I thought to tell you that my chest was quite
well and had nothing the matter with it.
In order to put myself outside of that atrocious law of the National
Guard, I have removed from the rue Cassini and the rue des Batailles,
and legally quitted Paris; that is to say, I have gone before three
mayors and declared that I quitted the capital; after which I
installed myself and live here at Sèvres. Therefore take note that
after you receive this letter you must address your letters to
"Monsieur Surville, rue de la Ville-d'Avray, Sèvres, Seine-et-Oise,"
for I must receive my letters under that name for some months to come,
so that my address may not be known at the post-office, partly for
secret reasons (which are Werdet's failure, and the pursuit which I
must endure till I can earn the money to pay up my indorsements), and
partly to escape the great quantity of letters with which unknown men
and women overwhelm me.
I have bought here a bit of ground containing some forty rods, on which
my brother-in-law is going to build me a tiny house, where I shall
henceforth live until my fortune is made, or where I shall remain
forever if I stay a beggar. When it is built, and I am in it, which
will be in January next, I will let you know, and you can then write to
me under my own name, and put the address of my poor hermitage, which
is "Les Jardies," the name of the piece of ground on which I hang like
a worm on a green leaf. Land about Paris is so parcelled out that I had
to negotiate with three peasants to collect this lot of forty rods,
and a rod contains only seventeen square feet. I am here at a distance
which allows me to go and come from Paris in two hours. I can go to the
theatre and sleep at home. I am in Paris without being there. There
are neither heavy taxes nor tolls; living is cheaper, and the day when
I can make sure of having a thousand francs a month for myself I can
have a carriage. And finally, I escape that perpetual inquisition which
publishes every step I take and every word I say. I shall neither see
nor receive any one. Then instead of spending twenty thousand francs
with other people where I may lodge, I shall spend them on my own home,
and nothing shall ever get me out of that. You would never believe how
I like fixedness. Constancy is one of the corner-stones of my nature.
You can easily understand that these turmoils have not left me a minute
to myself. I have looked at a hundred houses around Paris, and been in
negotiations for several. For a whole month I have roamed the environs
to find what I wanted on the exact boundary of the department of the
Seine and Seine-et-Oise. I came very near buying one house; but after
convincing myself that I should have to spend twenty thousand francs
in repairs and alterations to suit myself, I determined to buy a piece
of ground and build; for a house would cost only twelve thousand
francs, built as I wished it, and the land, with the peasant's house
on it, came to not more than five thousand. Reckoning the interior at
three thousand, the whole would be twenty thousand, and allowing five
thousand for mistakes, that would make twenty-five thousand; that is, a
rental of twelve hundred francs a year, and the comfort of having one's
cabin to one's self without the annoyances of noise, for my land backs
upon the park of Saint-Cloud. I have retained the apartment in the rue
de Batailles for a few months to store my furniture until I install
myself at Les Jardies.
I hasten to write to you, because to-morrow I begin "La Maison
Nucingen" for the "Presse." That means fifty columns to hatch out
before the end of the month, and then?--then my pen will be free, for
my new editors have compromised with the defunct "Figaro," now about
to rise from its ashes, and I have finished that third _dizain_. So,
about November 1 my pen will owe nothing to any one, and I can begin
the execution of my new treaty by the publication of "César Birotteau."
But, as that work cannot appear before January 1, and as I have had an
advance of two months, I shall receive no money till March. My distress
must therefore go on for six months longer, and it is frightful.
This illness has made me lose six irreparable weeks. I think ever, if
my embarrassments are too great, of going to take refuge with you for
three months. I keep that project for a last resource, and I now repent
that I have not already put it into execution; for when I am known to
be travelling everybody waits, and nobody says anything. After that,
returning with one or two plays in hand, all my money troubles could
be pacified. But I cannot do that until I have paid my pen debts and
given one work to my new editors; which throws me over to the month of
February,--if, always, my house is finished and I am in it.
I cannot give you an idea of the turmoil in which I have been for the
last six weeks, and the disconnectedness of my life, usually (in body)
so peaceful. And all the while I had to read proofs and write. You
are ignorant, in your Ukraine, of what Parisian removals are; nothing
describes them but a provincial saying: "Three removals are equal to
one conflagration."
In the midst of these worries and fatigues I have had two joys: they
are your two letters, which I shall answer in a few days, for I have
united them with their elders in a precious casket which I took to my
sister, in order not to subject them to these removal agitations. I
think there is something in them I ought to answer.
It is probable that I shall not go to the Opera, and this will be, I
assure you, a great privation; because there is nothing that distracts
my mind like music, and I do not know how else to relax my soul.
Nothing will remain to me but the contemplation of the azure waves of
hope, and I don't know whether this hovering with spread wings above
that infinite, which recedes as we approach it, is not a pain--which
pleases perhaps, but is none the less painful.
I have had many griefs since I wrote to you. In the passing crisis in
which I am, every one has fled me like a leper. I am all alone. But I
prefer this solitude within my solitude to the fawning hatred which is
called, in Paris, friendship.
I have still a _conte_ to write for my third _dizain_, to replace one
which was too free, and it is now a month that I have been trying to
find something, without avail. Nothing but the want of that _feuille_
delays the publication.... Next month the announcement of our tontine
on the "Études Sociales" will, no doubt, appear; and from the 1st
to the 15th the magnificent edition will be ready. They have begun
with "La Peau de Chagrin." The second volume will be "Le Médecin de
campagne," and the third "Le Lys dans la Vallée." God grant that the
affair succeed!
I am in despair at hearing that your _cassolette_ is in Warsaw, and I
cannot imagine why it has not been sent to you by some opportunity. Is
there no communication between you and Warsaw? There are now strong
reasons for suspecting the person in question, whose journey is
inexplicable. I add to this letter a line for him, which you must seal
and send to him, to hasten the delivery of that jewel.
Write me a line, I beg of you, to let me know if the picture has
reached Brody. Double the time it ought to have taken has elapsed, and
I am very impatient to know if anything unlucky has happened to it on
the journey. I hear nothing of the statue from Milan. Those Italians
are really very singular.
You wrote me that you might go to Vienna, but have never again
mentioned that project. If you go there I could bring you, myself, a
whole _library_ of manuscripts which belong to you, and are beginning
to be difficult to transport.
This is the first time I have ever answered two letters from you;
for if you reckon up, you will see that in letter-writing I have the
advantage, in spite of what you call, so insultingly, your chatter.
Whatever it is, I am grieved when I do not get it, and it is now a
fortnight since I have seen Auguste enter, bearing respectfully a
little packet, neatly folded and very spruce, which comes from such
distance and yet has nothing of the immensity of the steppes in its
form.
My play, the comedy in five acts, is all laid out, and as your opinion
has made me change and modify the one I first began, I dare not tell
you this one, because when your reply comes it will be written, and if
you are against it you will throw me into terrible perplexities. Is
not this falling on one's knees before one's critic? Wherefore, behold
me there! I place myself at your feet with a good grace, entreating
you to pay no attention to what I have just said, and to go your way
with your female scissors through my plot, and cut up my dramatic
calico mercilessly, for, in my present situation, this play represents
a hundred thousand francs, and I must make it a masterpiece well and
quickly, or succumb.
You know "Monsieur Prudhomme," the type made by Henri Monnier? I
take it boldly; because in order to seize success one must not have
to obtain acceptance for a creation. One must, like the ambassador
making love, buy it ready-made. Hence, there is no anxiety about the
personage; I am sure of the laughter so far. Only, I must annihilate
Monnier, and my Prudhomme must be _the_ Prudhomme. Monnier made only
a poor vaudeville of burlesques; I shall make five acts for the
Théâtre-Français.
Prudhomme, as type of our present bourgeoisie, as image of the
Gannerons, of the Aubés, of the National Guard, of that middle-class on
which _il padrone_ rests, is a personage far more comic than Turcaret,
droller than Figaro. He is wholly of the present day. Here is the
subject:--
At thirty-seven years of age, Prudhomme is seized with a passion
for the daughter of a porter,--charming person, who studies at the
Conservatoire and has carried off prizes. She sees before her the
career of Mademoiselle Mars; she has distinction, jargon, she is quite
_comme il faut_; she is eighteen, but she has been already betrayed
in a first love; she has had a son by a pupil at the Conservatoire,
who has gone to America out of love for his child, being alarmed by
his poverty, and resolved to make his fortune. Pamela mourns him, but
she has the child on her arms. The desire to support and bring up her
child makes her marry Prudhomme, from whom she conceals her situation.
Prudhomme, at thirty-seven, possesses thirty thousand francs in
savings; he has invested them in the mines of Anzin in 1815, and his
shares are worth, in 1817, three hundred thousand francs. That incites
him to marry. The marriage takes place. He has a daughter by his wife.
The thousand-franc shares of Anzin are worth, in 1834, one hundred and
fifty thousand francs. This is the prologue; for the play itself begins
in 1834, eighteen years later.
Monsieur Prudhomme has realized fifteen hundred thousand francs on
half his shares, and keeps the rest. He has made himself a banker;
and, as happens to all imbeciles, he has prospered under the advice
of his wife, who is an angelic and superior woman, full of propriety
and good taste. She has known how to play the rôle of a woman of
means. But her attachment to her husband, inspired by the really good
qualities of that ridiculous man, strengthened by the passion that he
has for her, by the comfort that he gives her through his wealth, is
balanced by the maternal sentiment exalted to the highest pitch which
Pamela bears to her first child, whom, thanks to this wealth, she was
enabled to bring up, with an invisible hand, until two years earlier,
when she introduced him into her own home, without his knowing the
truth. Adolphe is made head clerk, and the poor mother has played her
dreadful part so carefully that no one, not even Adolphe, suspects the
great love that envelops him. M. Prudhomme is very fond of Adolphe.
Mademoiselle Prudhomme is seventeen years old. The play is entitled
"Le Mariage de Mademoiselle Prudhomme." M. Prudhomme, rich from the
shares of Anzin, rich with the profits of his bank, and possessing much
private property, will give his daughter a million. She is, therefore,
with a million and expectations, one of the best matches in Paris.
I must tell you that, unlike the Antonys, Adolphe is a gay, practical
young fellow, happy in his position, delighted not to have either
father or mother, and never inquiring about them. In that lies a
dreadful drama between the mother and her son, for poor Madame
Prudhomme is tortured a dozen times a day by the indifference of her
son in the matter of his mother, and by a crowd of circumstances I
cannot explain here; they make the play itself.
The fortune of Mademoiselle Prudhomme tempts a young notary, who owes
his business to his predecessor, who is eager to be paid for it. This
old notary is a friend of Prudhomme; he has introduced the young notary
to the house. Madame Prudhomme's tenderness for Adolphe does not escape
his eye; he believes that she intends to give him her daughter; and
the two notaries open Prudhomme's eyes to his wife's love for Adolphe.
Here, then, is the wife unjustly accused of an imaginary sin, from
which she does not know how to vindicate herself. The comedy comes,
you understand, from the _pathos_ of Prudhomme, and from his efforts
to convict his wife. His wife accepts the singular combat of silencing
her husband as if she were guilty, which is a satirical situation
completely in the style of Molière. But she sees whence the blow has
come. She fences with the two notaries, and, pressed by them, she
shows them the infamy of their conduct, and declares that she will
never give her daughter to a man capable of soiling the honour of the
mother to obtain the daughter. They are forced to retract to Prudhomme,
and the mother, to secure the tranquillity of her husband, is forced to
separate from her son.
That is the main play; but, you understand, there is an enormous
quantity of situations, scenes, movements. Servants are mixed up in
it. It is a picture of our present bourgeoisie. There is a return of
Adolphe's father, which complicates everything, and brings about the
dénouement. There is a horrible scene in which Prudhomme, in order to
get light on his wife's passion, proposes the marriage of brother and
sister, and arms himself with his wife's terror. There is also the most
fruitful of all subjects, great ridicule of men and things through
Prudhomme's magniloquence. Madame Prudhomme is the Célimène of the
bank, the true character of our women of the present day. But there is,
above all, a keen satire on manners and morals. Prudhomme, accepting
this false disaster, vanquished by the superiority of his wife, is a
figure that was lacking to the stage. The solid happiness, marred by
the slander of self-interested persons and restored by them for their
own interests, has the true ring of comedy. Mademoiselle Prudhomme
does not marry. Apparently, all this is vague; but the vagueness and
want of outline is that of the "Misanthrope," the plot of which is in
ten lines. The rôle of Madame Prudhomme, who is forty years old, can
be played only by Mademoiselle Mars; but, with her tacit maternity,
crushed down at every moment, she can be superb.
_Ecco, cara_, the card on which I am about to stake my whole future;
for I have but that chance left, so deplorable is the state of the
publishing business now; and I must, if our grand affair fails, have
something to fall back upon. I shall not do that play only. I shall
do two others at the same time, so as to obtain the receipts of two
theatres at least.
_Addio._ I will write you between now and November 1, when I shall have
got some pressing matters off my hands. But, I entreat you, do not
forget, and continue to me the tale of your tranquil Ukrainean life. I
have flowers beneath my windows, dahlias, plants that make me think of
your gardens. When I open the book in which I put all the thoughts of
my work, and so many other things, I turn ever to the one saying, "I
will be Richelieu to preserve you." That, in this great corral of my
ideas, is the flower that my eye caresses oftenest.
Be indulgent to the poor third _dizain_, the third of which was written
at the hôtel de l'Arc. "Berthe la Repentie" is decidedly the finest
thing in the "Contes Drolatiques." I gossip to you about my poor
thoughts; my life is such a desert; there are so many misconceptions,
recent betrayals, difficulties, that I dare not talk to you of my
material life. It is too sad.
October 12.
The "Conte" is rewritten and sent to the printing-office, and I can say
that I am heartily glad to have finished at last that eternally "in the
press" _dizain_. I have many other books to finish also. "Massimilla
Doni" lacks a chapter on "Moïse," which requires long studies of the
score; and as I must make them with a consummate musician, I cannot
be master of my own work. Next I have a preface to sew on, like a
collaret, to "La Femme Supérieure;" and a fourth Part also, like a
bustle; for the sixty-five columns in the "Presse" did not furnish
forth a volume; hence the preface and the added end of the volume. You
cannot imagine how these mendings, these replasterings, weary me; I am
worn-out with such secondary toils.
I have forgotten to tell you, I think, about Mademoiselle de Fauveau,
who remembers you very well. She and her sister are such Catholics
that the latter made difficulties about marrying the son of Bautte
(the millionaire jeweller of Geneva where you and I went together, you
remember?) on account of his religion, and yet these two poor women
are in great poverty. Is not that splendid in faith? Mademoiselle de
Fauveau, to whom I said that many persons objected to what I made
Madame de Mortsauf say before dying, fell into a holy wrath with such
profane ones, for she holds in admiration the "Lys dans la Vallée."
When I told her that I had modified the cries of the flesh she said:--
"At least, do not take out: I will learn English to say 'my dear.'"
She thought the Catholic theme magnificently laid down; for it is the
combat of mind over matter.
"Unhappily," I said to her, "it seems that none but you and I see it
so."
She is a charming person, but rather too mystical and mythic. She made
me go to San Miniato to see primitive triglyphs, superb, in relation to
the Trinity; but I saw nothing of the kind. Don't call me a "commercial
traveller" again, on account of that blindness. I would like to be a
traveller and travel to your _cara patria_, but not a commercial one.
Adieu; I hope that this frail paper will tell you all I think, and
that you will not think of my distress, or of my griefs; but that you
will do as I do myself--lift, gaily and sadly both, my head to heaven,
whence I have awaited, from my youth up, the Orient of full happiness.
Do not scold me too much, _cara_, for my silence, for there has been
no truce or rest to me since my last letter; and I have been saying
to myself that I must have made you anxious, without being able to
sit down and write; for to write one word only is what I can never do.
Some day, beside your fire, make me relate to you this month; you will
then see what it has been. These are real novels that must be kept for
private talks; and then the lord of Wierzchownia will laugh, as he did
when I told him of my campaigns in China.
CHAILLOT, October 20, 1837.
I receive this morning your number 34 and have just read the tale of
your journey. I am here for my mother's fête-day.
Those cursed builders demand the whole month of November to arrange my
cabin at Sèvres; and I shall be here at least a fortnight to attend
to the proofs of "La Maison Nucingen." My editors have arranged with
the "Figaro" and have bought back my agreement with it, so that my
pen owes nothing to any one, no matter who, after the publication of
"La Maison Nucingen." I am unusually content with the third _dizain_.
But you don't know how that literature is proscribed; it is so blamed
for obscenity that I should not be surprised at a general hue and cry
against it. English manias are gaining on us; it is enough to make one
adore Catholicism.
"Massimilla Doni," another book which will be much misunderstood, gives
me immense labour from its difficulties; but I have never caressed
anything so much as those mythical pages, because the myth is so
profoundly buried beneath reality. You have, no doubt, before this read
"Gambara" in the "Revue de Saint-Pétersbourg;" for those worthy pirates
will not have overlooked that work, which cost me six months toil.
I have seen Versailles; Louis Philippe's action was so far good, as it
saved the palace; but it is the most ignoble and the silliest piece
of work in itself I ever saw; so bad is it in art and so niggardly in
execution. When you see it you will be amazed; and when I explain
to you what is Louis XIV., Louis XV., Louis XVI., and Empire, you
will think the rest horribly mean and bourgeois. Your Aunt Leczinska
is there a dozen times in family portraits, and I took pleasure in
looking at her and saying to myself with a laugh, "Better a live
emperor than a buried dowdy;" for you are a queen of beauty, and she
an ugly dowdy; though that must be the fault of the painters, for she
was really very handsome. An extraordinary thing is, that there is not
one of her portraits that is like another; so many portraits, so many
different women. She was, no doubt, variable. What is really fine at
Versailles, worthy of Titian and all that is noblest in painting, is
the "Consecration of Napoleon" and the "Crowning of Josephine," the
"Blessing of the Eagles" and "Napoleon pardoning Arabs" in the pictures
of David and Guérin. What a great painter David is! He is colossal. I
never saw those three pictures before.
I write to you also in presence of a friend [her portrait] in the
contemplation of whom I lose myself as in the infinite. I have a
quarrel to make with you, apropos of an insincere sentence in your
number 33, about your regret at not having friends who can travel for
your benefit. That sentence is one of the wounds that reach my heart;
for you know well that if for you and yours it were necessary that I
should go to the ends of the earth, or do daily something difficult and
binding (which is more than exhibiting one's self in greater ways), I
would not reflect a moment, I would do it with the blind obedience of a
dog. If you know that, your remark is bad; if you do not know it, put
me to the proof. My character, my manners and morals, all that is I, is
so horribly calumniated that despair seizes me when I see that I have
not even one little corner where doubt and suspicion do not enter.
You tell me that I write to you less often; there is not a letter
of yours without an answer, and I often write to you in a scramble
amid the desperate struggles I maintain, which will end, perhaps, in
conquering my courage.
The announcement of our grand affair is postponed to the period of
the general elections, a moment when the newspapers are much read.
The first number will probably appear November 15. It will be my
Austerlitz, or my Waterloo.
You spoke of the material obstacles to your presence among the works at
Wierzchownia; but I own that if you understand very little my material
obstacles, I understand yours still less; I cannot conceive expense
in the solitude of a steppe. Make me your bailiff, and you will see
that the man who created Grandet understands domestic economy. I would
rather be your bailiff than be Lord Byron; Lord Byron was not happy,
and I should be very happy.
The farther I go, the more frequent are my moments of depression and
despair. This solitude and this constant toil without compensation kill
me. Every day I think back to those days when the person of whom I
have told you provisioned me with courage, and shared my labour. What
an immense loss! What can fill it? An image? That image is mute and
does not even look at me. But, whatever she be, and in spite of the
imperfections of memory, she gilds my solitude and I can say that she
enlightens it.
You cannot think how many dark distresses have resulted from the blow
that deprived me of Madame de Berny. First, the tardy reparations of
all my family, who did not like her, and who repeated the scene of
"Clarissa Harlowe." Then, all those little things of the heart which
ought to lie burned, or remain in one's own possession. Her son has
understood nothing of all that; he has not returned me such things,
and I do not venture to ask for them. So that I, whom neither work,
nor grief, nor anything else seems likely to kill, I am making
arrangements as if I were to die to-morrow, that I may grieve the heart
of none.
I heard yesterday your dear "Norma." But Rubini was replaced by a
wretched tenor and they skipped his airs. I came away before the scene
where Norma declares her passion to the Druids. The strangest set of
people were in the boxes, for no one has yet returned from the country;
the vine harvest was late this year, and the weather superb. Prince Ed.
Schonberg occupied the box of the Apponys, who are still absent. But no
princess.
Was I not right when I said to you in Vienna that the fortnight I
passed there was like an oasis in my life? Since that moment I have
never had a day or an hour of repose. I travelled to gain a truce to
such life; and no doubt the month, or months, I might again take, in
which Paris could be completely forgotten, would be another oasis. But
can I take them? There are days when a ferocious desire seizes me to
drop everything. It would have been wise had I committed that folly.
That alone would enable me to bring back a play; here, I am too much
pursued by my obligations.
You can hardly imagine how your letters carry me to you; and how those
which seem to you long and diffuse are precious to me. Where there is
heart and constancy, one cannot dwell on the merit and the grace that
mark each detail; but I do assure you they make me very fastidious.
There come heavy and peculiarly gloomy hours when I have only to read
through some past page, taken at random, to soothe my soul; it is as if
I issued from a dungeon to cast eyes on a lovely landscape. Only--there
have been some sad things, or rather, saddening things; for example,
when you believe on the word of your sister Caroline; when you say
you would not know what to do at Wierzchownia with a Parisian, a wit,
who needs Paris and would be bored in the Ukraine. That proves that a
hundred letters will not make you know me, nor the forty-five days we
spent together. I own I am not saddened, but humiliated, by that tirade
from a charming creature.
Apropos of the third _dizain_; I earnestly desire that you will not
read it until M. Hanski has first passed judgment on it; for if it
were likely to injure me in your mind I would rather that it should
never go upon your bookshelves. It is specially a book for men; and I
suffer when that easy and inoffensive pleasantry is ill-understood or
ill-taken. Do me this favour; let it unwrinkle the boyard's brow when
he has his blue devils; but hide the book away.
I believe you are right as to the route I had better take, and that
from Havre to Lubeck and from Lubeck to Berlin would be best. But by
Berlin, one must go through Warsaw; and I wanted to avoid Warsaw,
because I hate those stupid occasions when one is recognized and
receptions are made for one without heart or soul, purely from vanity.
But it is the better route Perhaps also the least costly.
When you spoke to me in your number 33 of a happiness that I did not
dream of in the rue de Lesdiguières, believing that I should see
disappointment in a peaceful, obscure, secluded existence, happy in a
home and confidence, you did not know how much ballast I have thrown
into the sea, how many of my soap-bubbles have burst, how little I now
cling to that which men call fame (which is here the privilege of being
calumniated, vilified, disgraced). Reputation, political consistency,
all is in the water. That which is not in the water, and on which I
rely, is the youth of heart that will enable me to love for twenty
years a woman who might then be forty-six--this counts the form for
little, and the soul for all!
Why do you speak to me of a journal in which I am a shareholder?
Journal yourself, as the school-boys say. You believe in
advertisements! You think our names are respected! People take them for
puffs of a spurious Macassar, a sham perfume; but whoever would attack
this singular humbug would be well scoffed at. I shall never again
concern myself in business or a newspaper; a scalded cat fears cold
water.
I have a persecutor who wants to put me in prison (always that business
of Werdet, who has got his certificate of bankruptcy and walks about
Paris free of creditors). Jules Sandeau quarrelled with this man, whom
he despised on his personal account. Well, he has now made up with him,
and dines with him. I have been a father to Jules. I cry to myself,
"Here's another man stricken from the list of the living for me!" Do
you think that makes me love Paris?
Adieu for to-day. I will write you a few more lines before closing
my letter. I must now apply myself to "La Maison Nucingen" and, like
Sisyphus, roll my rock.
Monday, 23.
I don't know anything more wearying than to sit a whole night, from
midnight till eight o'clock, beneath the light of shaded candles,
before blank paper, unable to find thoughts, listening to the noise of
the fire and that of carriages sounding beyond the window panes from
the Barrière des Bons-Hommes and the quay. This is what your servant
has done for five nights past, without meeting the moment when some
inner voice, I know not what it is, says to him, "Go on!" Such useless
fatigues count for nothing to every one.
Thursday, 26.
Three days during which I have not been able to do anything--except
torture myself.
Yesterday I met one of your guests at Geneva, that relater of
anecdotes, who spoke of the Z... He is to come and see me this
morning; and I would like much to know, by return mail, whether,
in case he returns to _la cara patria_, I can give him some of the
manuscripts that belong to you; for I think they will have to be sent
in detachments.
My brain must be fatigued by the proofs of "Les Contes Drolatiques" and
of "Massimilla Doni," for complete impotence in respect to what I have
to do reigns there. I have often had these checks, but they have never
before lasted so long.
I must bid you farewell and send this letter, which, by the blessed
invention of the "bon roy Loys le unzième," will be in your hands
within twenty days. Winter is about to begin, so all chance of going to
see you is postponed till spring,--though snow-drifts do not terrify
me any more than wolves; those who are very unhappy need fear no
accidents. They are the anointed of sorrows. Death respects them.
I will own to you that when I found myself so ill at Saché I had a sort
of sensuous tranquillity in feeling my dull pains, for _I live from
duty only_.
I am now to make two grand essays for fortune: the tontine affair and
my comedy. After that, I shall let myself go with the current and see
what comes of it. Believe that after a struggle of eighteen years, and
a bitter fight of seven, if "a campaign of France" should end them,
I must, willing or unwilling, find my Saint Helena. Between now and
the month of April all will be decided. The tontine will have failed,
"Mademoiselle Prudhomme" will have been hissed, and I shall have flung
myself into a diligence from Lubeck to Berlin in search of a rest most
needful. You will see a literary soldier covered with wounds to nurse.
But he will not be hard to amuse, "quoi qu'on die."
Well, adieu. Write to me oftener, and do not forget to remember me
to your colony. Tell M. Hanski that I think I have found a means to
naturalize madder in Russia. That will wake him up. Many caressing
things to your Anna. Tell me confidentially of something that would
please her from Paris, and find here the homage of my attachment, and
the flowers of a heart that can never be withered of them.
CHAILLOT, November 7, 1837.
I have decidedly begun my comedy; but, after defining its principal
lines, I perceived the difficulties, and that gives me a profound
admiration for the great geniuses who have left their works on the
stage.
Yesterday I went to hear Beethoven's symphony in C minor. Beethoven is
the only man who makes me know jealousy. I would rather be Beethoven
than Rossini or Mozart. There is a divine power in that man. In that
_finale_, it seems as though some enchanter raised you into a land of
marvels, amid the noblest palaces filled with the treasures of all
arts; and there, at his command, gates, like those of the Baptistry,
turn on their hinges, letting you see beauties of an unknown kind--the
fairy land of fantasy. There, flutter beings with the beauties of
woman and the rainbow-tinted wings of the angel; you are bathed in an
upper air, that air which, according to Swedenborg, sings and sheds
fragrance, has colour and feeling, which flows to you, and beatifies
you!
No, the mind of the writer can never give such joys, because what we
paint is finite, fixed, and what Beethoven flings to you is infinite!
You understand that I only know the symphony in C minor, and that
fragment of the Pastoral symphony which we heard rattled off at Geneva
on a second floor--of which I heard little, because two steps away
from you stood a young man, who asked me, with straining eyes and a
petrified air, if I knew who that beautiful lady was; the which was
you, and I was proud as though I were a woman, young, beautiful, and
vain.
I live so solitary a life that I have nothing to tell you of Paris, nor
can I paint its life, or repeat its cancans. I can only speak to you of
myself, a subject of perpetual sadness. My little house gets on; the
masonry will be finished by the 30th of this month. But, no doubt, it
will not be habitable for three or four months.
I am plunged at this moment into laughable trouble, in the sense that
I have in my own home one of the pleasures of wealth. My "faithful"
Auguste doubts my future fortune and leaves me, alleging a certain
paternal will which desires him to abandon domestic service for
commerce; but the real truth of this flight is his own disbelief in my
future opulence, and a species of certainty that my present distress
will last, and thus prevent him from doing his own little business. I
let him go; and I groan at having to find some other rascal. I like
those I know; though this one cared as little for me as for the year
I. of the Republic. He paid no attention to anything; he left me, ill
in bed, one whole day without a drop to drink; though when he was ill
I gave him a nurse, and I paid a thousand francs this year to exempt
him from the conscription. He had become intolerable to me through his
negligence, so that his present ingratitude suits me.
Imagine that for the last three years, at least, I have had on my
hands an Irish lady, a Miss Patrickson, who has appointed herself to
translate my works and propagate them in England. The story is droll.
Madame de C..., furious against me for various reasons, took her to
teach English to R... and invented a trick to play me through her.
She made her write me a love-letter signed "Lady Nevil." I take the
English "Almanach" and I could not find in it either a Lord or a Sir
Nevil. Moreover, the letter was very equivocal. You know that when such
things are feigned there is either too much or too little of them; I
saw therefore what it was. I replied with ardour. A rendezvous was
given me at the Opera. I went that day to see Madame de C..., who made
me stay to dinner. But I excused myself, saying I had an engagement at
the Opera. She said, "Very good, I'll take you there." But in saying
so she could not help exchanging a glance with her _demoiselle de
compagnie_, and that glance sufficed me. I guessed all. I saw she was
laying a trap for me and meant to make me ridiculous forever after. I
went to the Opera. No one there. Then I wrote a letter, which brought
the miss, old, horrible, with hideous teeth, but full of remorse for
the part she had played, full also of affection for me and contempt
and horror for the marquise. Though my letters were extremely ironical
and written for the purpose of making a woman masquerading as a false
Lady blush, she had got them back into her own possession. Thus I had
the whip hand of Madame de C... and she ended by divining that in this
intrigue she was on the down side. From that time forth she vowed me a
hatred which will end only with life. In fact, she may rise out of her
grave to calumniate me. She never opened "Séraphita" on account of its
dedication, and her jealousy is such that if she could annihilate the
book she would weep for joy.
So this horrible, old, and toothless Miss Patrickson, feeling herself
bound to make reparation, lives only as my translator. I met at Poissy
a Madame Saint-Clair, daughter of some English admiral, I don't know
who, sister of Madame Delmar, who is also infatuated to translate
me, and has proposed to me a lucrative arrangement with the English
reviews. I have said neither yes nor no, on account of my Patrickson.
As it is now three years that the poor creature has been struggling
with the affair, which is her livelihood, I imagined she would be glad
of this help. I went to see her Wednesday evening, she lives on a fifth
floor, but I myself know nothing more grandiose than poverty. I mount,
I arrive! I find the poor creature as drunk as a Suisse. Never in my
life was I so embarrassed; she spoke between her teeth; she did not
know what I was saying; and finally, when she did understand that I
was proposing to her collaboration in her translations, she burst into
tears; she told me that if this work did not remain solely hers she
would kill herself; that it was her living and her glory; and then she
told me her troubles. I never listened to anything so dreadful; I came
away frozen with horror, not knowing whether she drank from a liking
for it, or to drown the sense of her misery. I therefore refused Madame
Saint-Clair. You could not imagine the filth, the hole, the frightful
disorder in which that woman lives. It surpasses her ugliness. That is
the chief episode of my week.
In the desert of her life that woman has clung to my work as to a
fruitful palm-tree, but it will be to her unfruitful, and I have no
money with which to succour her. Yesterday, however, I went by chance
into the rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg, where there is an English pastry-cook
who makes the most delicious oyster-patties; I had an English lady
on my arm. Whom did I find there? My Patrickson at table, eating and
drinking. Certainly I am neither a monk nor a ninny, and I comprehend
that the more unhappy one is the more compensations are sought, and
it is lucky indeed to find them at a pastry-cook's. But the lady who
was with me said she was sure that this unfortunate woman _drank gin_,
for she had all the characteristics of a person who drank gin. I had
said nothing to her about my miss of the translations. But whether she
drinks gin or not, she is none the less in the greatest poverty. It
remains to be discovered whether she is in poverty because she drinks
gin, or whether she drinks gin because she is miserable. As for me, the
misery of others wrings my heart. I never condemn the unfortunate. I am
stoical under my own misfortunes; I would give my bread while dying
of hunger. That has happened to me several times, and those I served
never returned it to me. Example: Jules Sandeau, who for two months
never came to see me, and would not if I were dying. Well, though I
know that, I don't acquire experience. If I marry, my wife must rule
my property and interpose between me and the whole world, or I shall
exhaust the treasures of Aladdin on others. Happily, I have nothing.
When I do have something, I shall have to make myself fictitiously
avaricious.
I have taken my mother to Poissy, to a very agreeable _pension_. I took
her by the railroad, by which one goes very fast. My heart bled in
taking her there; I, who have dreamed of making her a comfortable end
of life with a fine fortune, and who advance so little that my poverty
is becoming, as I told you, burlesque. It has taken more diplomacy to
get wood to burn this month than it would take to negotiate a treaty
of peace between France and any power you please ten years hence. And
the comedy gets on but slowly; it is like my portrait, which I was
told yesterday had arrived, but the despatching agent did not know in
what town! I hope it is Brody. God grant the same may not happen to my
comedy! What I perceive most at this moment is the immense judgment
that is needed for the poet of comedy. Every word must be a verdict
pronounced on the manners and morals of an epoch. The subjects chosen
must not be thin or paltry. The poet must go to the bottom of things;
he must steadily embrace the whole social state and judge it under a
pleasing form. There are a thousand things to say, but only the good
things must be said. This work confounds me. I need not say that in
saying this I am considering works of genius; for as to the thirty
thousand plays given to us in the last forty years, nothing would be
easier to write. I am absorbed by this comedy; I think of nothing
else, and each thought extends the difficulties. It is not only the
doing of it, there is also the representing of it, and it may fail. I
am in despair at not having gone to Wierzchownia and shut myself up
this winter to keep to this work in your cenobitic life. I should have
done like Beaumarchais, who ran to read his comedy, scene by scene, to
women, and rewrote it by their advice.
I am now at a moment of extreme depression. Coffee does nothing for
me; it does not bring to the surface the inner man, who stays in his
prison of flesh and bones. My sister is ill, and when Laure is ill the
universe seems to me topsy-turvy. My sister is all to me in my poor
existence. I am not working with facility. I do not believe in what
they call my talent. I spend nights in despairing.
"La Maison Nucingen" is there in proofs before me, and I cannot touch
it; yet it is the last link in my chain, and with three days' work I
should break it. The brain will not stir. I have taken two cups of
clear coffee; it is just as if I had drunk water. I am going to try
a change of place and go to Berry, to Madame Carraud, who has been
expecting me these two years; every three months I have said that I am
going to see her. My little house will not be ready till December; the
workmen will be in it until my return.
To crown all troubles, no letters from you. You might write to me
every week, but you scarcely write every fortnight. You have much more
time than I have, in your steppe, where there are neither symphonies
of Beethoven, asphalt boulevards, operas, newspapers, books to write,
proofs to correct, nor other miseries, and where you have a forest of
a hundred thousand acres. _Dieu!_ if you had that near Paris you would
have an income of two millions, and your forest would be worth fifty
millions. All is in juxtaposition; I am here, and you are there.