_Cara contessina_, I did not have a moment to myself in which to write
to you from Paris on my return from Berry. The above date will show
you that I am twenty hours from Sardinia, where I make my expedition.
I am waiting for an opportunity to cross over to that island, and on
arrival I shall have to do five days' quarantine,--for Italy will not
give up that custom. They believe in contagion and cholera; it broke
out in Marseille six months ago, and they still continue their useless
precautions.
During the few days I remained in Paris I had endless difficulties to
conquer in order to make my journey; money was laboriously obtained,
for money is scarce with me. When you know that this enterprise is
a desperate effort to put an end to the perpetual struggle between
fortune and me, you will not be surprised by it. I risk only a month of
my time and five hundred francs for a fairly fine fortune. M. Carraud
decided me; I submitted my conjectures, which are scientific in their
nature, to him, and as he is one of those great _savants_ who do
nothing, publish nothing, and live in idleness, his opinion was given,
without any restriction, in favour of my ideas,--ideas that I can only
communicate to you by word of mouth if I succeed, or in my next letter
if I fail. Successful or unsuccessful, M. Carraud says that he respects
such an idea as much as a fine discovery, considering it an ingenious
thing. M. Carraud was for twenty years director of our Military School
of Saint-Cyr; he is the intimate friend of Biot, whom I have often
heard deplore, in the interest of science, the inaction in which M.
Carraud now lives.
In truth, there is no scientific problem that he cannot discuss
admirably when questioned; but the trouble is that these vast
mathematical minds judge life by what it is, and, not seeing a logical
conclusion of it, they await death to be rid of their time. This
vegetable existence is the despair of Madame Carraud, who is full of
soul and fire. She was stupefied on hearing M. Carraud declare, when
I submitted my conjectures to him, that he would go with me, he who
never leaves the house even to look after his own estate. However, the
natural man returned, and he gave up the project. His opinion ended by
bringing my own incandescence to the highest point; and in spite of
the terrible equinox in the Gulf of Lyon, in spite of five days and
four nights to spend in a diligence, I started. I have suffered much,
especially at sea. But here I am, in the native town of the Napoleons,
giving myself to all the devils because I am obliged to wait for the
solution of my problem within twenty hours' distance of that problem.
One must not think of going through Corsica to the straits which
separate it from Sardinia, for the land journey is long, dangerous, and
costly, both in Corsica and Sardinia. Ajaccio is an intolerable place.
I know no one, and there is no one to know. Civilization is what it is
in Greenland; the Corsicans do not like strangers. I am wrecked, as
it were, on a granite rock; I go and look at the sea and return to
dinner, go to bed, and begin over again,--not daring to work, because
at any moment I may start; this situation is the antipodes of my
nature, which is all resolution, all activity.
I have been to see the house where Napoleon was born; it is now a poor
hovel. I have rectified a few mistakes. His father was a rather rich
land-owner, and not a clerk, as several lying biographies have said.
Also, when Napoleon reached Ajaccio on his return from Egypt, instead
of being received by acclamations, as historians declare, and obtaining
a general triumph, he was shot at, and a price was put upon his head;
they showed me the little beach where he landed. He owed his life to
the courage and devotion of a peasant, who took him to the mountains
and put him in an inaccessible retreat. It was the nephew of the mayor
of Ajaccio who put the price upon his head, that told me these details.
After Napoleon was First Consul the peasant went to see him. Napoleon
asked him what he wanted. The peasant asked for one of his father's
estates, called "Il Pantano," which was worth a million. Napoleon gave
it to him. The son of that peasant is to-day one of the richest men in
Corsica.
Napoleon had already given his father's estates to the Ramolini,
his mother's family,--having no right to do so. The Bonapartes said
nothing, for during his power they obtained everything from him. Since
his death, and recently, they have brought suits to recover this
property from the Ramolini.
Pozzo di Borgo triumphs in Corsica as he triumphed over his enemy
Napoleon,--Metternich, Wellington, and Talleyrand aiding. His nephew,
who is paymaster here, has an income of more than one hundred thousand
francs. I am lodging in one of his houses.
I am going to Sassari, the second capital of Sardinia, and shall stay
there a few days. What I have to do there is a small matter for the
moment; the grand question, whether or not I am mistaken, will be
decided in Paris; it suffices if I can procure a specimen of the thing.
Do not crack your brains in trying to find out what it can be; you will
never discover it.
I am so weary of the struggle about which I have so often told you,
that now it must end, or I shall succumb. Here are ten years of toil
without any fruit; the only certain results are calumnies, insults,
and lawsuits. You tell me as to that the noblest things in the world;
but I answer you that all men have but one quantum of strength, blood,
courage, hope; and mine is exhausted. You are ignorant of the extent
of my sufferings; I ought not, and I could not tell you all of them. I
have renounced happiness, but in default of that I must, at least, have
tranquillity. I have therefore formed two or three plans for fortune.
This is the first; if it fails, I shall go to the second. After which,
I shall resume my pen, which I shall not have entirely relinquished.
Yesterday I wanted to write to you, but I was overcome by gleams of an
inspiration which dictated the plot of a comedy that you have already
condemned: "La Première Demoiselle" [afterwards "L'École des Ménages"].
My sister thought it superb; George Sand, to whom I related it at
Nohant, predicted the greatest success; it was this that made me take
it in hand again, and the most difficult part is now done; namely, that
which is called the _scenario_,--the arrangement of all the scenes,
the entrances and exits, etc. I undertook the "Physiologie du Mariage"
and the "Peau de Chagrin" against the advice of the angel whom I have
lost. I am now, during this delay in my journey, undertaking this play
against yours.
AJACCIO, March 27.
I don't know from where I can send you this letter, for I have so
little money that I must consider a postage that costs five francs;
but from Sassari I go to Genoa, and from Genoa to Milan. That is the
least expensive way of returning, on account of not being forced to
stay anywhere, because opportunities are frequent. In Milan I have a
banker on whom I can count; in Genoa also. Therefore, you must not be
surprised at the great delay of this letter. After leaving Corsica, I
shall probably have neither time nor facilities for writing; but the
letter is all ready, and I shall pay the postage when I can.
The Mediterranean has been very bad; there are merchants here who
think their ships are lost. To risk as little as possible, I took the
land route from Marseille to Toulon, and the steamboat that carries
despatches from Toulon here. Nevertheless, I suffered terribly, and
spent much money. I think, however, that the sea route to Odessa would
be the safest, most direct, and least costly way of going to you.
From Marseille to Odessa by sea it is only four hundred francs. From
Odessa to Berditchef it ought not to cost much, especially if you came
to Kiew to meet me. You see that wherever I go I think of your dear
Wierzchownia.
Corsica is one of the most beautiful countries in the world; there are
mountains as in Switzerland, but no lakes. France is not making the
most of this fine country. It is as large as ten of our departments,
but does not yield as much as one of them; it ought to have five
million of inhabitants, but there are barely three hundred thousand. We
are beginning to make roads and clear forests which will yield immense
wealth, like the soil, which is now completely neglected. There may be
the finest mines in the world of marble, coal, and metals, etc.; but
no one has studied the country, on account of bandits and the savage
state in which it is left.
In the midst of my maritime sufferings on the steamboat I bethought
me of the indiscretion I committed in asking you to get me a hookah
from Moscow, in my passionate ardour for the latakia which I smoked
at George Sand's, and which Lamartine had brought her. I was so
spasmodically unhappy about it that I laugh now as I remember my
sickness. I am sorry I could not get a hookah in Paris; it would have
wiled away my time here and dispelled the ennui which, for the first
time in my life, has laid hold upon me; this is the first time that I
have known what a desert with semi-savages upon it is.
This morning I have learned that there is a library here, and
to-morrow, at ten o'clock, I can go there to read. What? That is an
anxious question. There are in this place neither reading-rooms, nor
women, nor popular theatres, nor society, nor newspapers, nor any
of the impurities that proclaim civilization. The women do not like
foreigners; the men walk about the whole day, smoking. The laziness is
incredible. There are eight thousand souls, much poverty, and extreme
ignorance of the simplest current events. I enjoy a complete incognito.
No one knows what literature or social life is. The men wear velveteen
jackets; there is so much simplicity in clothing that I, who have
dressed myself to seem poor, look like a rich man. There is a French
battalion here, and you should see the poor officers, idling in the
streets from morning till night. There is nothing to do! I shall now
begin to sketch scenes and lay out projects. I must work with fury. How
people must love on this desert rock! and truly the place swarms with
children, like gnats of a summer's evening.
Adieu for to-day. I was only eighteen hours at Marseille and ten at
Toulon, and so could not write to you until to-day.
AJACCIO, April 1.
I leave to-morrow for Sardinia in a little row-boat. I have just
re-read what I wrote to you, and I see I did not finish about the
hookah. You understand that if it gives you the least trouble you are
to drop my commission. As for the latakia, I have just discovered
(laugh at me for a whole year) that Latakia is a village of the island
of Cyprus, a stone's throw from here, where a superior tobacco is made,
named from the place, and that I can get it here. So mark out that item.
I have just seen a poor French soldier who lost both hands by a
cannon-ball, and has nothing but stumps; he earns his living by
writing, beating a drum, playing the violin, playing at cards, and
shaving in the streets. If I had not seen it I never should believe it.
The Ajaccio library has nothing. I have re-read "Clarissa Harlowe,"
and read for the first time "Pamela" and "Sir Charles Grandison,"
which I found horribly dull and stupid. What a fate for Cervantes and
Richardson to have been able to do but one work! The same might be said
of Sterne.
I have had the misfortune to be recognized by a cursed law-student
of Paris, just returned to make himself a lawyer in his own land.
He had seen me in Paris. Hence an article in a Corsican paper. And
I, who wanted to keep my journey as secret as possible! Alas, alas!
What a bore! Is there no way for me to do either good or evil without
publicity? This is the eighth day of my placid life. But Ajaccio is
like one household.
I have had a great escape. If I had not taken the route I did take, and
had come direct from Marseille, I should have encountered a dreadful
tempest which wrecked three ships on the coast.
AJACCIO, April 2.
This evening, at ten o'clock, a little boat will carry me away; then I
have five days' quarantine at Alghiero, a little harbour you may see on
the map of Sardinia. It is there, between Alghiero and Sassari, that
the district of Argentara lies, and it is there that I am going to see
mines, abandoned at the time of the discovery of America. I cannot tell
you more than that.
When this letter is in your possession in that pretty room at beautiful
Wierzchownia, I shall be either a fool or a man of wisdom; perhaps
neither the one nor the other, simply an ambitious heart defeated in an
ingenious hope.
_Addio, cara_; I hope that all goes well at Wierzchownia, that you have
wept a little over "César Birotteau," that you have written me your
feelings and impressions about that book, and that I shall thus be
rewarded for it in this world. All caressing things to those you love.
I have again put off writing to M. Hanski, because I shall do so at
Milan after receiving certain news. But give him my regards, and keep
for yourself the most attaching and coquettish, which are your due.
Off ALGHIERO, SARDINIA, April 8.
I am here, after five days of rather lucky navigation in a coral-boat
on its way to Africa. But I now know the privations of sailors; we had
nothing to eat but the fish we caught, which they boiled into execrable
soup. I had to sleep on deck and be devoured by fleas, which abound,
they say, in Sardinia. And finally, although here, we are condemned to
remain five days in quarantine on this little boat, in view of port,
and those savages will give us nothing. We have just gone through a
frightful tempest; they would not let us fasten a cable to a ring on
the quay; but, as we are Frenchmen, one sailor jumped into the water
and fastened it himself by force. The governor came down and ordered
the cable loosed as soon as the sea calmed down; which, under their
system of contagion, was absurd; because we had already given the
cholera or we had not given it. It was a pure notion of the governor,
who wants things done as he says. Africa begins here; I see a ragged
population, almost naked, brown as Ethiopians.
CAGLIARI, April 17.
I have just crossed the whole of Sardinia and seen things such as
they relate of the Hurons and about Polynesia. A desert kingdom, real
savages, no husbandry; long stretches of palm-trees and cactus; goats
everywhere browsing on the undergrowth and keeping it down to the level
of the waist. I have been seventeen and eighteen hours on horseback--I
who have not mounted a horse these four years--without seeing a single
dwelling. I came through a virgin forest, lying on the neck of my
horse in fear of my life; for I had to ride down water-courses arched
over with branches and climbing plants which threatened to put out my
eyes, break my teeth or wrench off my head. Gigantic oaks, cork-trees,
laurel, and heather thirty feet high,--nothing to eat.
No sooner did I reach the end of my expedition than I had to think of
returning; so, without taking any rest, I started on horseback from
Alghiero to Sassari, the second capital of the island, from which a
diligence, lately established, was to bring me here, where there is,
in port, a steamboat for Genoa. But, as the weather is bad here I must
stay for two days.
From Sassari to Cagliari I came through the whole of Sardinia, through
the middle of it. It is alike everywhere. There is one district
where the inhabitants make a horrible bread by pounding acorns of
the live-oak to flour and mixing it with clay, and this within sight
of beautiful Italy! Men and women go naked with a strip of linen,
a tattered rag, to cover their nudity. I saw masses of human beings
trooped in the sun along the walls of their hovels, for Easter-day.
No habitation has a chimney; they make their fires in the middle of
the huts, which are draped with soot. The women spend their days in
pounding the acorns and kneading the bread; the men tend the goats
and the cattle; the soil is untilled in this, the most fertile spot
on earth! In the midst of this utter and incurable misery there are
villages which have costumes of amazing richness.
GENOA, April 22.
Now I can tell you the object of my journey. I have been both right and
wrong. Last year, at this time, in Genoa, a merchant told me that the
careless neglect of Sardinia was so great that there were, in a certain
locality, disused silver mines with mountains of scoriæ containing
refuse lead from which the silver had been taken. At once, I told him
to send me specimens of these scoriæ to Paris, and that after assaying
them I would return and get a permit in Turin to work those mines with
him. A year passed, and the man sent me nothing.
Here is my reasoning: The Romans and the metallurgists of the middle
ages were so ignorant of docimasy that these scoriæ must, necessarily,
still contain a great amount of silver. Now, a friend of Borget, a
great chemist, possesses a secret by which to extract gold and silver
in whatever way and in whatever proportion they are mixed with other
material, at no great cost. By this means I could get all the silver
from these scoriæ.
While I was waiting and expecting the specimens, my Genoese merchant
obtained for himself the right to work the mine; and, while I was
inventing my ingenious deduction, a Marseille firm went to Cagliari,
assayed the lead and the scoriæ, and petitioned, in rivalry with
the Genoese, for a permit in Turin. An assayer from Marseille, who
was taken to the spot, found that the scoriæ gave ten per cent of
lead, and the lead ten per cent of silver by the ordinary methods. So
my conjectures were well-founded; but I had the misfortune not to act
promptly enough. On the other hand, misled by local information, I rode
to the Argentara, another abandoned mine, situated in the wildest part
of the island, and I brought away specimens of mineral. Perhaps chance
may serve me better than the reasonings of intellect.
I am detained here by the refusal of the Austrian consul to _viser_
my passport for Milan, where I must go before returning to Paris, to
get some money. I will send you my letter from there, which is in the
Austrian dominions, and time will be saved in its going to Brody.
I thought I should only be a month on this trip, and I shall have been
from forty-five to fifty days. I do not surfer less in my affairs than
in my habits by such a break. It is now fifty days since I had news of
you! And my poor house which is building! Grant it be finished, and
that I may be able to regain time lost. I must do three works at once
without unharnessing.
Adieu, _cara_. If you have seen Genoa you know how dull the life is
here. I shall go to work on my comedy. Do not scold me too much when
you answer this letter about my journey, for the vanquished should be
consoled. I have thought often of you during my adventurous trip; and I
imagined that M. Hanski was saying more than once, "What the devil is
he doing in that galley?"
_À propos_, the statue from Milan has been received in Paris
[Puttinati's statue], and is thought bad; so I shall not insist on
sending you a copy; you have enough of me on Boulanger's canvas.
MILAN, May 20, 1838.
Dear countess, you know all that this date says [his birthday]. I begin
the year at the end of which I shall belong to the great and numerous
regiment of resigned souls; for I swore to myself in the days of
misfortune, struggle, and faith which made my youth so wretched, that
I would struggle no longer against anything when I reached the age of
forty. That terrible year begins to-day,--far from you, far from my
own people, in a mortal sadness which nothing alleviates, for I cannot
change my fate myself, and I no longer believe in fortunate accidents.
My philosophy will be the child of lassitude, not of despair.
I came here to find an opportunity to get back to France, and I have
remained to do a work, the inspiration for which has come to me here
after I had vainly implored it for some years. I have never read a
book in which happy love is pictured. Rousseau is too impregnated with
rhetoric; Richardson is too much of a reasoner; the poets are too
flowery; the romance-writers are too slavish to facts; and Petrarch too
busy with his images, his _concetti_; he sees poesy better than he sees
woman. Pope has given too many regrets to Héloïse. None have described
the unreasoning jealousies, the senseless fears, or the sublimity of
the gift of self. It may be that God, who created love with humanity,
alone understands it, for none of his creatures have, as I think,
rendered the elegies, imaginations, and poesies of that divine passion,
which every one talks of and so few have known.
I want to end my youth--not my earliest youth--by a work outside of all
my other work, by a book apart, which shall remain in all hands, on
all tables, ardent and innocent, containing a sin that there may be a
return, passionate, earthly and religious, full of consolations, full
of tears and joys; and I wish this book to be without a name, like the
"Imitation of Jesus Christ." I would I could write it here. But I must
return to France, to Paris, re-enter my shop of vendor of phrases, and
between now and then I can only sketch it.
Since I wrote you nothing new has happened. I have seen once more the
Duomo of Milan, and I have made the tour of the Corso. But I have
nothing to say of all that which you do not know already. I have made
acquaintance with the Chimæras of the grand chandelier on the altar
of the Virgin, which I had seen superficially; with Saint Bartholomew
holding his skin as a mantle; with certain delightful angels sustaining
the circle of the choir; and that is all. I have heard, at the Scala,
the Boccabadati in "Zelmira." But I go nowhere; the Countess Bossi came
bravely up to me in the street and reminded me of our dear evening at
the Sismondis'. She was not recognizable. The change in her forced me
to a terrible examination of myself.
It is now two months that I have had no news of you. My letters remain
in Paris; no one writes to me because I have been wandering in lands
where there are no mails. Nothing has better proved to me that I am an
animal living by caresses and affection, neither more nor less like a
dog. Skin-deep friendships do not suit me; they weary me; they make me
feel more vividly what treasures are inclosed in the hearts where I
lodge. I am not a Frenchman, in the frivolous acceptation of that term.
The inn became intolerable to me, and I am, by the kindness of Prince
Porcia, in a little chamber of his house, overlooking gardens, where
I work much at my ease, as with a friend who is all kindness for me.
Alphonso-Serafino, Principe di Porcia, is a man of my own age, the
lover of a Countess Bolognini, more in love this year than he was last
year, unwilling to marry unless he can marry the countess, who has a
husband from whom she is separated _a mensâ et thero._ You see they are
happy. The countess is very witty. The prince's sister is the Countess
San-Severino, about whom I think I have already told you.
Milan is all excitement about the coronation of the emperor as King
of Lombardy; the house of Austria has to spend itself in costs and
fireworks. Though I have seen Florence only through the crevice of a
half-week, I prefer Florence to Milan as a residence. If I had the
happiness to be so loved by a woman that she would give me her life,
it would be upon the banks of the Arno that I should go and spend my
life. But after all, in spite of the romances of my friend George Sand,
and my own, it is very rare to meet with a Prince Porcia who has enough
fortune to live where he likes. I am poor, and I have wants. I must
work like a galley-slave. I cannot say to Arabella d'Agoult (see the
"Lettres d'un Voyageur"), "Come to Vienna, and three concerts will give
us ten thousand francs; let us go to Saint-Petersburg, and the ivory
keys of my piano will buy us a palace." I need that insulting Paris,
its publishers, its printing-offices, twelve hours' stupefying work a
day. I have debts, and debt is a countess who loves me too tenderly. I
cannot send her away; she puts herself obstinately betwixt peace, love,
idleness, and me. It is too hideous, that fate, to cast upon any one,
even my enemies. There is only one woman in the world from whom I could
accept anything, because I am sure of loving her all my life; but if
she did not love me thus, I should kill myself in thinking of the part
I had played.
You see I must, within a few months, take refuge in the life of La
Fontaine. Whichever side I turn I see only difficulties, toil, and
vain and useless hope. I have not even the resource of two years at
Diodati on the Lake of Geneva, for I am now too hardened in work to die
of it. I am like a bird in its cage, which has struck against all its
bars, and now sits motionless on its perch, above which a white hand
stretches the green net that protects it from breaking its head. You
would never believe what gloomy meditations this happy life of Porcia's
costs me; he lives upon the Corso, ten doors from the Bolognini. But I
am thirty-nine to-day, with one hundred and fifty thousand francs of
debt upon me; Belgium has the million I have earned, and----I have not
the courage to go on, for I perceive that the sadness which consumes me
would be cruel upon paper, and I owe to friendship the grace of keeping
it in my heart.
To-morrow, after writing a few letters for my lovers, I shall be gayer,
and I will come to you with a virtue that shall make a saint despair.
May 23.
_Cara_, I have home-sickness! France and its sky--gray for most of
the time--wrings my heart beneath this pure blue sky of Milan. The
Duomo, decked with its laces, does not lift my soul from indifference;
the Alps say nothing to me. This soft, relaxing air fatigues me; I go
and come without soul, without life, without power to say what the
matter is; and if I stay thus for two weeks longer, I shall be dead.
To explain is impossible. The bread I eat has no savour; meat does not
nourish me, water can scarcely slake my thirst; this air dissolves me.
I look at the handsomest woman in the world as if she were a monster,
and I do not even have that common sensation that the sight of a flower
gives. My work is abandoned. I shall recross the Alps, and I hope in a
week to be in the midst of my own dear hell. What a horrible malady is
nostalgia! It is indescribable. I am happy only at the moment when I
write to you, and say to myself that this paper will go from Milan to
Wierzchownia; then only does thought break through this black existence
beneath the sun, this atony which relaxes every fibre of the life. That
is the only operative force which maintains the union of soul and body.
May 24.
I have again seen the Countess Bossi; and I am struck with the few
resources of Italian women. They have neither mind nor education; they
scarcely understand what is said to them. In this country criticism
does not exist, and I begin to think that the saying is right which
attributes to Italian women something too material in love. The only
intelligent and educated woman I have met in Italy is La Cortanza of
Turin.
I have been to see the Luini frescos at Saronno; they are worthy of
their reputation. The one that represents the Marriage of the Virgin is
of peculiar sweetness. The faces are angelical, and, what is rare in
frescos, the tones are soft and harmonious.
There is no present opportunity to return to France. I must resolve
to take the wearisome and fatiguing means of the Sardinian and French
mail-carts.
June 1, 1838.
My departure is fixed for to-morrow, errors excepted, and I think that
never shall I have seen France again with such pleasure, though my
affairs must be greatly tangled by this too long absence. If I am six
days on the road that will make three months, and, in all, it has been
seven months of inaction. I need eight consecutive months of work to
repair this damage. I shall enter my new little house to spend many
nights in working.
June 5.
I have just been to the post-office to see if any one had had the idea
to write to me _poste restante_. There I found a letter from the kind
Countess Loulou [Louise Turheim], who loves you and whom you love, and
in whose letter your name is mentioned in a melancholy sentence which
drew tears from my eyes; for, in the species of nostalgia under which
I am, imagine what it was to me to recall the Landstrasse and the
Gemeindegasse! I sat down on a bench before a café and stayed there for
nearly an hour, with my eyes fixed on the Duomo, fascinated by all that
letter recalled; and the incidents of my stay in Vienna passed before
me, one by one, in their truth, their marble candour. Ah! what do I not
owe--not to her who causes such memories, but--to this frail paper that
awakens them! You must remember that I am without news of you for three
months, by my own fault. You know why. But you will never know whence
this thirst for making a fortune comes to me.
I am going to write to the good chanoinesse without telling her all she
has done by her letter, for such things are difficult to express, even
to that kind German woman. But she spoke of you with such soul that
I can tell her that what in her is friendship in me is worship that
can never end. She says so prettily that _one_ of my friends--not the
_veritable_ one, but the _other_--is in Venice; truly, she moved me to
tears. What perpetual grief to be always so near you in thought and so
distant in reality! Ah, dear, the Duomo was very sublime to me on the
5th of June at eleven o'clock! I lived there a whole year.
Well, adieu. I leave to-morrow, and in ten days I shall answer all your
letters, treasures amassed during this dreadful journey. May God guard
you and yours, and forget not the poor exile who loves you well.
AUX JARDIES, SÈVRES, July 26, 1838.
I receive to-day your number 44, and I answer it, together with the
three letters I found awaiting me in the rue des Batailles a month ago.
In the first place, dear, you must know that the "Veuve Durand" no
longer exists. The poor woman was killed by the little journals which
pushed their baseness towards me so far as to betray a secret which to
any men of honour would have been sacred. So now I am established for
always at Sèvres, and my hovel is called "Les Jardies;" therefore my
address now is and long will be: "M. de Balzac, aux Jardies, à Sèvres."
You predicted truly in your last letter; I ought to pass a month here
doing nothing but turning round and round to settle myself upon my
muck-heap. I am still in the midst of plasterers, masons, diggers,
painters, and other workmen. I arrived quite full of that book which
does not exist, which has never been done, and which I desire to do,
and I found the most foolish mercantile hindrances; the two volumes
of "La Femme Supérieure," taken from the "Presse," lack a few pages
before they can be sold as a book, which I must fill out by adding the
beginning of "La Torpille." I found the contractor for my house at bay;
I found the hounds of my debts awaiting me, with annoyances of all
kinds. I have enough to do for a month in goings and comings, etc. I
took a week to rest; my journey back was very fatiguing; I risked an
ophthalmia on the Mont Cenis; having left the great heat of Lombardy, I
came, in a few hours, into twenty degrees below freezing on the summit
of the Alps, with snow and wind.
August 7.
Fifteen days' interruption, during which this letter has been
constantly under my eyes, on my table, without my being able to tell
you that the wind on the Mont Cenis drove a fine dust into my eyes,
which pricked them with blinding particles. I know that my letters,
which tell you my life, give you as much pleasure as yours give me.
Only, your words sustain and refresh me; whereas mine communicate to
you my vertigoes, my worries, my disappointments, my lassitudes, my
terrors, my toils. Your existence is calm, gentle, and religious; it
rolls slowly along, like a stream on its gravelly bed between two
verdant shores. Mine is a torrent, all noise and rocks. I am ashamed
of the exchange, in which I bring you only troubles, and obtain from
you the treasures of peace. You are patient; I am in revolt. You have
not understood the last cry I uttered, at Milan. I had, there, a
double nostalgia, and I had not, against the more dreadful of the two,
the resource, horrible as it is, of my struggles here. Here, moral
and physical combat, debts, and literature have something exciting,
bewildering. See it yourself; I am interrupted in a sentence in the
middle of the night, and I cannot resume that sentence for perhaps two
weeks.
I have a world of things to tell you. In the first place, remove
from your tranquil life a trouble like that of procuring my hookah.
Just fancy! all that came of my ignorance! I thought you lived near
Moscow, and that Moscow was the principal market for such things. That
was all,--except that I wanted to receive from you an article which
is, they say, a _chasse-chagrin_. But if it causes you the slightest
trouble it will be painful to me to see it.
Among the thousand and one things that I have had to do I must put in
the front line a negotiation about the "Mariage de Joseph Prudhomme,"
with a theatre that agrees to give me twenty thousand francs on the day
the play is read; and you can imagine what thirst a man has for twenty
thousand francs when he is building a house, and how he must work to
obtain them!
I am, therefore, in spite of the doctor's orders forbidding me to live
in freshly plastered rooms, at Les Jardies. My house is situated on the
slope of the mountain, or hill, of Saint-Cloud, half-way up, backing
on the king's park and looking south. To the west I see the whole of
Ville d'Avray; to the south I look down upon the road to Ville d'Avray,
which passes along the foot of the hills where the woods of Versailles
begin; and easterly I overlook Sèvres and rest my eyes upon a vast
horizon where lies Paris, its smoky atmosphere blurring the edges of
the famous slopes of Meudon and Bellevue; beyond which I see the plains
of Montrouge and the Orléans highroad which leads to Tours. It is all
strangely magnificent, with ravishing contrasts. The depths of the
valley of Ville d'Avray have all the freshness, shade, and verdure of
the Swiss valleys, adorned with charming buildings. The horizon on the
other side shines on its distant lines like the open sea. Woods and
forests everywhere. To the north is the royal residence. At the end of
my property is the station of the railway from Paris to Versailles, the
embankment of which runs through the valley of Ville d'Avray without
injury to any part of my view.
So, for ten sous and in ten minutes I can go from Les Jardies to the
Madeleine in the heart of Paris! Whereas at Chaillot, and in the rue
Cassini it took an hour and forty sous at least. Therefore, thanks to
that circumstance, Les Jardies will never be a folly, and its value
will be some day doubled. I have about one acre of land, ending,
towards the south, in a terrace of one hundred and fifty feet and
surrounded by walls. At present nothing is planted in it, but this
autumn I shall make this little corner of the earth an Eden of plants
and shrubs and fragrance. In Paris or its environs anything can be had
for money; so, I shall get magnolias twenty years old, _tiyeuilles_
of sixteen, poplars of twelve years, birches, etc., transplanted with
balls of roots, and white Chasselas grapes, brought in boxes, that I
may gather them next year. Oh! how admirable civilization is! To-day my
land is bare as my hand. In the month of May it will be surprising. I
must buy two more acres of ground about me, to have a vegetable garden
and fruit, etc. That will cost some thirty thousand francs, and I shall
try to earn them this winter.
The house is a parrot's perch; there is one room on each floor, and
there are three floors. On the ground-floor a dining-room and salon;
on the first floor a bedroom and dressing-room; on the second floor a
study, where I am writing to you at this moment in the middle of the
night. The whole is flanked by a staircase that somewhat resembles a
ladder. All round the building is a covered gallery to walk in, which
rises to the first floor. It is supported on brick pilasters. This
little pavilion, Italian in appearance, is painted brick-colour, with
stone courses at the four corners, and the appendix in which is the
well of the staircase is painted red also. There is room in it only for
me.
Sixty feet in the rear, towards the park of Saint-Cloud, are the
offices, composed, on the ground-floor, of a kitchen, scullery, pantry,
stable, coach-house, and harness-room, bath-room, woodhouse, etc. Above
is a large apartment which I can let if I choose, and above that again
are servants' rooms and a room for a friend, [He says elsewhere that
this building was the peasant's house, bought with the land.] I have a
supply of water equal to the famous Ville d'Avray water, for it comes
from the same source. There is no furniture here as yet; but all that I
own in Paris will be brought here, little by little. I have, just now,
my mother's old cook and her husband to serve me. But for at least a
month longer I shall live in the midst of masons, painters and other
workmen; and I am working, or am going to work to pay them. When the
interior is finished I will describe it to you.[1]
I shall stay here until my fortune is made; and I am already so pleased
with it that after I have obtained the capital of my tranquillity I
believe that I shall end my days here in peace, bidding farewell,
without flourish of trumpets, to my hopes, my ambitions--to all! The
life that you lead, that life of country solitude, has always had great
charms for me. I wanted more, because I had nothing at all, and in
making to one's self illusions it costs a young man no more to make
them grand. To-day my want of success in everything has wearied my
character--I do not say my heart, which will hope ever. That I may have
a horse, fruits in abundance, the material costs of living secured,
such is my place in the sunshine, obtained, not paid for, but sketched
out. I pay the interest on capital, instead of paying rent. That is the
change of front I have performed. I am in my own home, instead of being
in the house of an oppressive landlord. My debt and my money anxieties
remain the same; but my courage has redoubled under the lessening of my
desires.
To-morrow, _cara_, I will continue my chatter and send it to you this
week.
[Footnote 1: See Théophile Gautier's description of that interior;
"Memoir of Balzac," pp. 224, 225.--TR.]
Wednesday, August 8.
There are many things in your last four letters to which I ought to
reply; but they are locked up in Paris, and before I can get them too
much time will have passed. I will answer in another letter, quickly
following this.
But among other things that struck me in them was the extreme
melancholy of your religious ideas. You write to me as if I believed
in nothing, as if you wished to send me to La Grande-Chartreuse, or as
if you meant to say to me, "Earth no longer interests me." You cannot
think how many inductions, possibly false, I draw from that state of
mind; but (and you tell me so with sincerity) you express to me what
you feel; otherwise you would be false and distrustful when you should
be all truth with a friend like me. Even if I displease you, I must say
to you with confidence that I am not satisfied, and I would rather see
you otherwise. To go thus to God is to renounce the world; and I do not
comprehend why you should renounce it when you have so many ties that
bind you to it, so many duties to accomplish. None but feeble souls
will take that course. The reflections that I make on this subject are
not of a nature to be communicated to you. They are, moreover, very
selfish, and concern only me. Like those that I expressed in Milan,
they would displease you, because, as you say, they trouble you; and
for those my heart sinks down. I see clearly that happiness will never
come to me; and who would have no bitterness in thinking that thought?
I was very unhappy in my youth, but Madame de Berny balanced all by an
absolute devotion, which was understood to its full extent only when
the grave had seized its prey. Yes, I was spoilt by that angel; I prove
my gratitude by striving to perfect that which she sketched out in me.
I meant to speak to you of new vexations; but I ought to be silent.
In one of my letters, I don't know which, there is a promise that I
made to us both not to speak to you again of my troubles, to write
to you only at the moments when all looked rosy, and to tell my
jeremiads to the passing clouds, going northward. When you see them
look gray they are telling them to you. How many black confidences
have I not smothered! There is many a corner that I hide from you;
and it is those corners that would amaze you could you penetrate them
and find--behind so many agitations, preoccupations, toils, travels,
"inward dissipations," as you say--a fixed idea, daily more intense,
which surely has little virtue since it cannot remove mountains, that
miracle promised to faith! Often, friends have seen me turn pale at the
loud cracking of a whip and rush to the window. They ask me what the
matter is; and I sit down, palpitating, and saddened for days. Such
fevers, such starts, shaken by inward convulsions, break me, crush
me. There are days when I fancy that my fate is being decided, that
something happy or unhappy will occur to me, is preparing, and I not
there! These are the follies of poets, comprehended by them alone.
There are days when I take real life and all about me for a dream; so
much is this present life, for me, against nature. But now all that
will cease amid these fields, which always calm me.
Have I secured material existence, beneath which I would fain compress
the life of the heart that I see is lost and useless, in spite of the
ten good years that still remain to me?--for my passion has a will of
which you can form to yourself no idea. It must have all or nothing.
As to that, I am as I was on the day I left college. I am much to
be pitied, and I will not be pitied. I have never done anything to
disprove the absurd and silly lies of society which give me the good
graces of charming women, all of which are derived from the coquetries
of Madame de Castries and a few others. I have accepted the accusation
of self-conceit; I am willing that absurdity on absurdity should
accumulate about me to hide the true man, who has but one sentiment,
one ideal!
I am at this moment-engaged in doing a part of my book on love, which
will be detached; I want to paint well the soul of a young girl before
the invasion of that love (which will lead her into a convent), and I
have thought it true to make her abhor the Carmelites (to whom she will
eventually return) at the beginning of life, when she longs for the
world and its pleasures. As she has been eight years in the convent,
she arrives in Paris as much a stranger to it as Montesquieu's Persian;
and by the power of that idea I shall make her judge and depict the
modern Paris, instead of employing the dramatic method of novels. That
is a novel idea, and I am putting it into execution.
Nevertheless, it is very difficult for me to resume my life of labour,
getting up at midnight and working till five in the afternoon. This is
the first morning that I have passed without dozing between six and
eight o'clock. Six months' interruption have made ravages; there are
forces that come from habit, and when habit is broken, farewell forces.
I hope to continue working for three or four months, in order to repair
the breaches caused by absence, and, if my plays succeed, perhaps I
shall have earned, over and above my debts, enough capital for the
bread and water on my table, and my flowers and fruit. The rest may
come, perhaps, hereafter.
_Addio, cara_; I could not tell you how my comic-opera house, that
cottage they push forward on the stage and where lovers give themselves
a rendezvous, has awakened the housekeeping and bourgeois instincts in
me. One could be so happy here! All the advantages of Paris, and none
of its disadvantages! I am here as at Saché, with the possibility of
being in Paris in fifteen minutes--just time enough to reflect on what
one is going to do there.
_Mon Dieu!_ have you read in the "Lettres d'un Voyageur" the part
about Moulin-Joli? the engraving of which I saw in _her_ house without
then knowing the terrible passage to which it gave rise, terrible to
ill-mated beings. Well, Les Jardies are Moulin-Joli without the woman
who engraves. If you do not know this history, read it. George Sand
never related anything as well.
I send you many caressing homages and all those flowers of the soul
which are so exactly the same that I fear they bore you. Many kind
remembrances to those about you. I cannot send you an autograph,
unfortunately; I had one of Manzoni for you, but they have just lit
my fire with it! This is the second time something precious has been
burned up here.
The newspapers have told you of the deplorable end of the poor Duchesse
d'Abrantès. She has ended like the Empire. Some day I will explain her
to you,--some good evening at Wierzchownia.
I can now reply to your bucolics on your beautiful flowers and turf by
idyls on my own; but alas! there's a difference in quantity. You have
a thousand acres, and I have a thousand square feet!
All affectionate and good things. Do not neglect to tell me about your
health, your beauty, your incidents in the depths of the Ukraine; you
will do so if you form the least idea of the value I attach to the most
minute particular.
AUX JARDIES, September 17, 1838.
Since I last wrote I have done nothing but work desperately; for one
must conquer during the last years, or bury one's self under a barren
success.
I have just written for the "Presse" the beginning of "La Torpille,"
and the "Presse" would not have it. I have written the beginning of "Le
Curé de Village," the religious pendant of the philosophical book you
know as "Le Médecin de campagne." I have written the preface to two
volumes about to be published, containing "La Femme Supérieure," "La
Maison Nucingen," and "La Torpille." I have written two volumes in 8vo,
entitled, "Qui Terre a, Guerre a;" and finally, I have written for the
"Constitutionnel" the end of "Le Cabinet des Antiques," under the title
of "Les Rivalités de Province."
You will understand from that, _cara_, that I have been unable to write
you even two lines in the midst of this avalanche of ideas and labour.
Nothing of all that gives me a sou. I had prepared, to save me, certain
dramas, and they are all begun; but I wish to go to the _grand_, and I
am discontented; so much so that, seeing how ill I do things while I
see such fine things to do, I have abandoned my attempts. And yet, my
salvation is in the theatre. A success there would give me a hundred
thousand francs. Two successes would clear me, and two successes are
only matters of intelligence and toil,--nothing else.
At the moment of present writing I have begun a drama in three acts,
entitled, "La Gina." It is Othello the other way. La Gina will be
a female Othello. The scene is in Venice. I _must_ essay the stage.
Proposals are not lacking to me. I am offered in one direction twenty
thousand francs first payment for fifteen acts; and I have the fifteen
acts in my head, but not on paper.
Well, all the manuscripts are at the printing-office; proofs are
rolling; the printers will not beat me in rapidity, for it is not the
mechanical invention with its thousand arms that gets on fastest, it is
the brain of your poor friend!
September 18.
The time to turn the page, and I find "La Gina" too difficult. Reasons
have killed it. In "Othello" Iago is the pillar which supports the
conception; I have only a money motive, instead of the motive of hidden
love. I found my personage inadmissible. A vaudeville writer would not
have been stopped by that difficulty. So I return to a former play,
imagined some time ago, called "Richard Cœur-d'Éponge." I will tell
you about it if I do it.
My house does not get on. I have the walls of the enclosure still
to do, and much to the interior. It is alarming. I have found a
source--not of fortune! only clear water.
October 1.
I am into money matters up to my neck. It is demoralizing. I have not
had two hours to myself for reflection since I wrote you the above few
lines. Do not be vexed with me. I need calmer times to relate to you
a life like mine. I must say mass every second, and ring it. I have
had the hope of buying out my publishers, who are ruining me, and I
have just spent two weeks in Paris in crushing, killing efforts. You
must remember that I have no help or succour, but, on the other hand,
infinite obstacles, without number. If I cannot overcome them I shall
go to you for six months' rest at Wierzchownia, where I can write my
plays in peace before returning here. Many persons whom I love and
esteem advise this, telling me to "go somewhere." But as for me, I
cannot abandon a battlefield.
The two volumes containing "La Femme Supérieure," "La Maison Nucingen,"
and "La Torpille" are out.
October 10.
For the last seven years or so, whenever I have read a book in which
Napoleon was mentioned, if I found any new and striking thought said by
him, I put it at once into a cook-book that never leaves my desk and
lies on that little book you know of, which will belong to you--alas,
soon, perhaps--in which I put my subjects and my first ideas. In a day
of distress (one of my recent days), being without money, I looked to
see how many of those thoughts there were. I found five hundred; hence,
the finest book of the century; I mean the publication of the "Maximes
et Pensées de Napoléon." I sold the work to a former hosier, who is the
big-wig of his arrondissement, and wants the cross of the Legion of
honour, which he can have by dedicating this book to Louis-Philippe. It
is about to appear. Get it. You will have one of the finest things of
the day; the soul, the thought of that great man, gathered through much
research by your moujik, Honoré de Balzac. Nothing has made me laugh so
much as this idea of getting the cross for a sort of grocer, who may
perhaps recommend himself to your Grace by his title of administrator
of a charitable enterprise. Napoleon will have brought me four thousand
francs and the hosier may get a hundred thousand. I had such great
distrust of myself that I would not work my own idea. To the hosier,
both fame and profit. But you will recognize the hand of your serf in
the dedication to Louis-Philippe. May the shade of Napoleon forgive
me![1]
[Footnote 1: This book, extremely rare to-day, appeared at the close of
the year 1838, without the name of any publisher, under the following
title: "Maximes et Pensées de Napoléon, recueillies par J. L. Gaudy
jeune. Paris. 1838."]
October 15.
I receive to-day your answer to my last letter. Never before did it
happen to me to receive a reply to one letter while I was writing
another. This phenomenon takes place now at the end of five years,
during which time I have written to you once a fortnight at least. To
tell you all the whys and wherefores belongs to the domain of _talk_,
not to that of epistolary conversation.
_Cara_, you are more than ever bent on _converting_ me. Your letter is
that of a grave and serious abbess and an omnipotent, _omni-scavante_,
gracious and witty Countess Hanska. I kneel at your feet, dear and
beautiful sister-Massillon, to tell you here that the sorrow of my
life is a long prayer, that my soul is very white, not because I do
not sin, but because I have no time to sin, which makes it perhaps
all the blacker in your eyes. But you know that I have in the shrine
of my heart a madonna who sanctifies all. What have I said or done to
you that should bring me all this Christian advice? I work so hard
that I have not always time to sleep or, more alarming symptom, to
write to you. A man so unfortunate is either the most guilty or the
most innocent of men on earth; and in either case there's nothing to
be done. Would you know what that means? I am weary of the life thus
allotted to me, and, were it not for my duties, I would take another.
I must have received many blows, be very tired of my fate, to abandon
myself to chance, as I do to-day, with a character as strongly tempered
as mine.
You have reticences about my affections which grieve me all the more
because I cannot reply to them (the reticences), and you ask me
superfluous questions about my health. Why have you not divined, with
that grand perspicacious forehead of yours and your other attributes,
that the unhappy are always robust in health? They can pass through
seas, conflagrations, battles, bivouacs, and fresh plaster; they
are always sound and well! Yes, I am perfectly well, without aches
or pains, in my young house. Have no uneasiness as to that. Beyond a
great and general fatigue after my excesses of work during the last
fortnight, I am well, and if white hairs did not abound I should think
I were the younger by ten years.
_Mon Dieu!_ how I suffer when, in reading your letter, I see that you
have suffered from my silence, and that you have taken to heart my
anxieties and the agonies of my poor life. Do you know it? do you feel
it? No--never see me, as you say, joyous and tranquil! When I write to
you joyously all is at its worst, and I am trying to conceal how ill
that is. When things are going ill with me if I do not write to you,
it is because--No, I cannot write it to you; I will talk of it to you
some day, and then you will regret having written to me some words
that are sweet and cruel both in relation to my delayed letters. There
are things that you will never divine. Do not fear that anything can
change or diminish an attachment like mine. You think me light-minded,
giddy; it makes me laugh. Believe, once for all, that he in whom you
have been good enough to recognize some depth of thought, has depth in
his heart, and that while he displays such courage in the battle he
is fighting, there is just as great constancy in his affections. But
you are ignorant of the claims of each day; the dreadful difficulties
on which I spend myself. If you knew what wiles were necessary--like
those of the "Mariage de Figaro"--to make that hosier pay four thousand
francs for the thoughts and maxims of Napoleon; if you realized that my
publishers will not give me money; that I am trying to break up that
agreement; that to break it I must pay them fifty thousand francs; and
that after believing that my life was secured and tranquil it is now
more in peril than ever, you would not treat as folly my enterprise in
Sardinia! Oh! I entreat you, do not advise or blame those who feel
themselves sunk in deep waters and are struggling to the surface.
Never will the rich comprehend the unfortunate. One must have been
one's self without friends, without resources, without food, without
money, to know to its depths what misfortune is. I have the knowledge
of all that; and I no longer complain that I am the victim of a poor
unfortunate man who, for food, sells a jest of mine that I may have
said on the boulevard, but which, when published, forms a horrible
attack upon me. I complain no longer of calumnies and insults; those
poor unfortunates live upon them, and though I would rather die than
live so, I have not the courage to blame them, for I know what it is to
suffer.
However rare my letters are, they are the _only ones_ that I write
to-day (except those on business); and what quarrels and ill-will I
have brought upon myself by not answering letters! You cannot know what
a literary life busy as mine is must be. Whatever they tell you, or
however my silence may appear to you, know this: that I work day and
night; that the phenomenon of my production is doubled, trebled; that
I have brought myself to correct a volume in a single night, and to
write one in three days. The world is foolish. It thinks that a book is
spoken. This grieves me only from you; I laugh with pity at others.
I have done eight works since the month of last November. _Cara_, each
of those eight works would have foundered for a year the strongest of
the French writers, who barely do half a volume a year. Among those
eight I do not mention the book of love, of which I have told you
something, which is there, on my table, beneath your letter; I have
about twenty-five _feuilles_ of that written. Neither do I speak of
five "Contes Drolatiques" written within two months.
_Mon Dieu!_ I have not one soul to understand me; I have never had but
one. Poor, dear Madame de Berny came to see me daily in those days when
she thought that I should perish beneath my burden. What would she say
now if she saw it tenfold heavier? Yes, I work tenfold harder in 1838
than I did in 1828, 1830, 1831, 1832, 1833. In those days I believed in
fortune; to-day I believe in misery. There are men who want me to sell
myself to the present order of things. I would rather die! I must have
my freedom of speech.
When you speak to me of fatal death, such as that of your cousin, I
call it happy death, for I do not believe we are placed here below for
happiness. Withold was right; I pity his mother much; but he is happy,
believe it.
You asked me when I shall calm that French fury which carried me to
Italy, to Sardinia. Is not that asking me when I shall be imbecile? Do
you expect a man who can write in five nights "Qui Terre a, Guerre a"
or "César Birotteau" to measure his steps like a capitalist who takes
his dog to walk on the boulevard, reads the "Constitutionnel," comes
home to dinner, and plays billiards in the evening? I will allow you
here five seconds to laugh at the most charming person in the world,
who, to my thinking, is Madame Eve. Nothing remains now but to blame
_la furia_ which will take me to see certain Northern people in their
steppe. Know, beautiful great lady, that if I abandoned myself to
Providence, as you propose to me, Providence would already have put me
in prison for debt; and I don't see that there is anything providential
in a sojourn at Clichy. What would the plants that creep out of caves
in search of the sun say if they heard a pretty dove asking them why
they climbed that fissure to the air? You curse our civilization;
I await you in Paris! But I would also like to know who are the
impertinent people who write to you about me; and who think there is a
sun for me elsewhere than in the North.
Théophile Gautier is a young man of whom I think I have spoken to you.
He is one of the talents that I discovered; but he is without force
of conception. "Fortunio" is below "Mademoiselle de Maupin," and his
poems, which have pleased you, alarm me as a decadence in poesy and
language. He has a ravishing style, much intellect, of which I think
he will not make the most because he is in journalism. He is the son
of a custom-house receiver at the Versailles barrier of Paris. He is
very original, knows a great deal, and talks well on art, of which he
has the sentiment. He is an exceptional man, who will, no doubt, lose
his way. You have divined _the man_; he loves colour and flesh; but he
comprehends Italy, without having seen it.
I am struck by the manner in which you return, three several times to
the "levity of my character, and the multiplicity of my enthusiasms."
There must be under all that some calumny which has snaked its way to
Wierzchownia, God knows how!
Well, I must bid you farewell, without having said one tenth part of
the things I had to say to you, and which I will return to later. After
all, it would be only describing to you the worries of my present
life, which are innumerable. I must correct for to-morrow "Le Curé de
Village" for it annoys me to have further dealings with the "Presse."
Adieu, dear azure flower; keep all safely for one who lays up treasures
of affections and feelings in your direction. I know not why you say
that old friendships are timid; mine grows very bold with time.
All graceful things to those about you, and to M. Hanski my friendly
regards.
October 16.
I am in treaty with the "Débats" to take all my prose at a franc a
line. That would make M. Sedlitz, the German poet, howl; but he is
a baron, and has estates, and was scandalized in the Landstrasse at
hearing me talk about the profits of literature. If this _affair_ comes
off you will see me very soon at Wierzchownia. I want to be there in
winter.
Much tenderness, preaching or laughing, mundane or Catholic. _À
bientôt._
AUX JARDIES, November 15, 1838.
To-day I meant to have closed and sent to you a letter begun a month
ago; but it is lost,--lost from my desk. I have spent three hours of
this night in looking for it. I am vexed, I weep for it, because, to
me, all expression of the soul fallen into the gulf of oblivion seems
irreparable. You would have known what has happened to me since the
date of my last letter. In two words, I am about to enter a happier
period, or, to use a truer word, a less unhappy period than the past,
financially speaking. A few days more and I shall, perhaps, have paid
off half my debt. Material success is coming; it begins. My works are
to be issued in several _formats_ at the same time. My publishers allow
me to buy off my agreement, which bound me too closely, and I am going,
in a few months, to be free. These are results. You will be ignorant,
until I can tell them to you, of the marches and countermarches, and
goings and comings, and conferences which have made me mount and
descend all the rungs of the ladder of hope.
My pen will have brought in mounds of gold this month.[1] "Qui Terre
a, Guerre a" more than ten thousand francs; "Le Cabinet des Antiques"
five thousand francs, etc., etc.; "Massimilla Doni" a thousand francs.
I have sold for twenty thousand francs the right to sell thirty-six
thousand 18mo volumes, selected from my works. "La Physiologie du
Mariage" in 18mo has been sold for five thousand francs. In short, it
is a sudden, unhoped-for harvest, and it comes in the nick of time. I
hope, between now and five months hence, to have paid off one hundred
thousand francs of my debt. But I have eight volumes to finish.
They have bought prefaces of a _feuille_ in length for five hundred
francs. All this will give you pleasure, will it not? Nothing will as
yet give me any ease; for this money goes only to clear off the old
debt; but at least I can breathe. Another thing that will give you
pleasure and rejoice your Catholic soul is that my affairs took on this
smiling aspect from the day when my mother hung about my neck a medal
blessed by a saint, which I have religiously worn with another amulet
[probably her miniature], which I believe to be more efficacious. The
two talismans get on very well together, and have not displeased each
other. I am not willing to disappoint my mother, but this miracle does
not convert me, because I am ignorant which of the two charms is the
most powerful.
I have been very miserable of late; my publishers are piling up
their ducats, while I have not had a brass farthing, and this war of
diplomatic conferences costs me much. I have now returned to my shell,
at Sèvres, where nothing is yet finished or habitable. I have the
removal of my furniture to do and many other expenses besides.
The moral is less satisfactory than the material condition. I am
growing older, I feel the need of a companion, and every day I regret
the adored being who sleeps in a village cemetery near Fontainebleau.
My sister, who loves me much, can never receive me in her own home. A
ferocious jealousy bars everything. My mother and I do not suit each
other, reciprocally. I must rely on work unless I have a family of
friends about me; which is what I should like to arrive at. A good and
happy marriage, alas! I despair of it, though no one is more fitted
than I for domestic life.
I have interior griefs that I can tell only to you, which oppress
me. Ever since I have had ideas and sentiments I have thought wholly
of love; and the first woman that I met was a faultless heroine,
angelic in heart, a mind most keen, education most extensive, graces
and manners perfect. Diabolical Nature placed its fatal _but_ upon
all this. _But_ she was twenty-two years older than I; so that if the
ideal was morally surpassed, the material, which is much, erected
insurmountable barriers. Therefore, the unlimited passion that has
always been in my soul has never found true fulfilment. The half of all
was lacking. Do you think, therefore, that I can meet with it now that
time is flying at a gallop with me? My life will be a failure, and I
feel it bitterly. There is no fame that lasts; I am resigned to that.
There are no chances for me. My life is a desert. That which I desired
is lacking,--that for which I could have made the greatest sacrifices,
that which will never come to me, that on which I must no longer
count! I say it mathematically, without the poesy of wailing, which
I could lift to the height of Job; but the fact is there. I should
not lack adventures; I could play, if I chose, the rôle of a man _à
bonnes fortunes_, but my stomach turns against it with disgust. Nature
made me for one sole love. I am an ignored Don Quixote. I have ardent
friendships. Madame Carraud, in Berry, has a noble soul; but friendship
does not take the place of love,--the love of every day, of every hour;
which gives infinite pleasures in the sound at all moments of a voice,
a step, the rustle of a gown through the house; such as I have had,
though imperfectly, at times in the last ten years. Add to this that I
hold in profound detestation all young girls, that I count much higher
developed beauties than those that will develop, and the problem is
still more difficult to solve.
Madame Carraud, whose letters give me great pleasure--if that word can
be employed for other letters than yours---has divined my situation.
She awakes my sorrows by a letter I have just received from her, in
which she talks marriage to me, which makes me furious for a long time.
I will not listen to it. You know how fixed my opinion is. I must have
much fortune for that, and I have none. I must have a person who knows
me well, and I doubt if that is possible in one who is, after all, a
stranger. What a sad thing is life, _cara_!
You will certainly see me when my great works are done. At the first
inanition of the brain I shall turn to your dear Wierzchownia, and pay
you a visit; for I cannot endure to be so long without seeing you. Last
night at the Opera, where I heard Duprez in "Guillaume Tell," I was the
whole evening in Switzerland,--the Switzerland of Pré-l'Évêque and the
two shores of the lake where we walked together. There are details of
our trips to Coppet and Diodati which occupy me more than my own life.
Looking at the scene of the Lake of the Four Cantons, I remembered,
_word for word_, all you said to me as we passed the Galitzin house,
and what you said about such and such a portrait at Coppet. And I said
to myself--in my way of telling myself the future--"Such a period will
not pass without my seeing the Ukraine; as I live so much by memories,
these are the treasures I ought to seek, and not silver mines." I was
happier in that Opera-Switzerland than the millionnaire Greffulhe, who
yawned above me.
From those letters of yours, so serious, so dun-coloured and ascetic,
I fear to find you changed. No matter, we must love our friends as they
are.
What I do not like in your last letter is the remark that "old
friendships are timid." In that there is a distrust of yourself or
of me that I do not like. You know that nothing can prevail against
you, that you are apart from whatever may happen to me, like a true
king who can never be reached. I am afraid that you forge ogres. If my
letters are delayed, be sure there is some good reason; that I have
been hurried about night and day, without truce or rest; that I have
not written to a living soul, and that, if I were ill or happy, you, in
spite of distance, would be the first informed of it.
You know the good your letters do me, whatever they are, religious, or
sad, or gay, or domestic. I am the more reserved because I have nothing
but troubles to send you, and no flower other than that of an eternal
affection, as much above all petty, worldly imitations as Mont Blanc is
above the lake. Do not be surprised therefore if I hold back a letter
which tells you of misery and toil without other compensation than that
of talking to you about them.
You complain of Polish divorces, whereas here we are doing all we can
to restore the admirable section on divorce to the Civil Code such
as Napoleon contrived it; which met all social disasters, without
giving an opening to libertinism, change, vice, or passion. It is the
only institution which can secure happy marriages. There are in Paris
forty thousand households on promise only, without either civil or
religious contract; and they are among the best, for each fears to lose
the other. This is not said publicly, but the statistic is correct.
Cauchois-Lemaire, for instance, is married in that way. The Napoleonic
law allowed only _one_ divorce in a woman's life, and forbade even that
after ten years of marriage. In this it was wrong. There are tyrannies
which can be borne in youth, that are later intolerable. I knew an
adorable woman who waited till she was forty-five and her daughters
were married, in order to separate from her husband; having put off
until that moment when she could no longer be suspected the liberation
without which she would have died.
What! do you dare to tell us there is but _one_ man in this "stupid
nineteenth century"? Napoleon is he? And Cuvier, _cara_! And Dupuytren,
_cara_! And Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, _cara_! And Masséna, _carina_!
And Rossini, _carissima_! And our chemists, our secondary men, who are
equal to the talents of the first order! And Lamennais, George Sand,
Talma, Gall, Broussais (just dead), etc.! You are very unjust. Lord
Byron, Walter Scott, and Cowper belong to this century. Weber also, and
Meyerbeer; also several _gamins de Paris_ who could make a revolution
by a wave of their hand. Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and Musset are, they
three, the small change of a poet, for neither of them is complete.
Apropos, "Ruy Blas" is immense nonsense, and an infamy in verse. The
odious and the absurd never danced a more dissolute saraband. He has
cut out two horrible lines:--
_... affreuse compagnone,
Dont la barbe fleurie et dont le nez trognonne;_
but they were said at the first two representations. At the fourth
representation, when the public became aware of them, they were hissed.
I cannot tell you anything of the war in the Caucasus, except that I
deplore for you the loss that grieves you [Count Withold Rzewuski].
_Cara_, I would like you to explain to me how I have deserved a phrase
thus worded and addressed to me in your last letter: "The natural
levity of your character." In what do I show levity? Is it because
for the last twelve years I pursue, without relaxing, an immense
literary work? Is it because for the last six years I have had but one
affection in my heart? Is it because for twelve years I have worked
night and day to pay an enormous debt which my mother saddled upon me
by a senseless calculation? Is it because in spite of so many miseries
I have not asphyxiated or drowned myself, or blown out my brains?
Is it because I work ceaselessly, and seek to shorten by ingenious
schemes, that fail, the period of my hard labour? Explain yourself. Is
it because I flee society and intercourse with others to give myself
up to my passion, my work, my release from debt? Can it be because I
have written twelve volumes instead of ten? Can it be because they do
not appear with regularity? Is it because I write to you with tenacity
and constancy, sending you with incredible levity autographs? Is it
because I go to live in the country, away from Paris, in order to have
more time and spend less money? Come, tell me; have no hidden thought
from your friend. Can it be because, in spite of so many misfortunes,
I preserve some gaiety and make campaigns into China and Sardinia?
For pity's sake, be fearless, and speak out. Can it be because I am
delaying to write my plays that I may not risk a fiasco? Or is it
because you are--through the blind confidence of a son for his mother,
a sister for a brother, a husband for a wife, a lover to his mistress,
a penitent to his confessor, an angel towards God, all, in short, that
is most confiding and most a _unit_--so aware of what passes in my poor
existence, my poor brain, my poor heart, my poor soul, that you arm
yourself with my confidences to make of _me_ another _myself_ whom you
scold and lecture and strike at your ease?
Levity of nature! Truly, you are like the worthy bourgeois who, seeing
Napoleon turn to right and left, and on all sides to examine his field
of battle, remarked: "That man cannot keep quiet in one place; he has
no fixed ideas." Do me the pleasure to go wherever you have put the
portrait of your poor moujik and look at the space between his two
shoulders, thorax and forehead, and say to yourself: "There is the
most constant, least volatile, most steadfast of men." That is your
punishment. But, after all, scold, accuse your poor Honoré de Balzac;
he is your thing; and I do wrong to argue; for if you will have it so,
I will be frivolous in character, I will go and come without purpose,
and say sweet things without object to the Duchesse d'O...; I will
fall in love with a notary's wife, and write feuilletons to enrage the
actresses, and I will make myself a superlative rip. I will sell Les
Jardies; I will await your sovereign orders. There is but one thing in
which I shall disobey you, and that is the thing of my heart--where,
nevertheless, you have all power.
I entreat you to add also that I am a light-weight in body and thin as
a skeleton. The portrait will then be complete.
Explain also, if you can, the "multiplicity of my dissipations
[_entraînements_],"--I, of whom it is said that no one can make me
do anything but what I choose to do! (Those who say so do not know
that I am moujik on the estate of Paulowska, the subject of a Russian
countess, and the admirer of the autocratic power of my sovereign.)
Alas! I never doubt you, I never rebel against anything--except the
invasion of mystical ideas. And even that is from an admirable instinct
of jealousy. Moreover, if I must say so, I hold the _devout spirit_ in
horror. It is not piety which alarms me, but devoutness. To fly from
this and that to the bosom of God, so be it; but the more I admire
those sublime impulses, the more the minute practices of devoutness
harden me. Quibbling is not law.
Addio, _cara_; I must finish "Massimilla Doni," do the opening part of
"Le Curé de Village" (in that book you will adore me in the quality of
Brother of the Church; it will be pure Fénelon), correct "Qui Terre a,
Guerre a," and, finally, deliver within ten days the manuscript of "Un
Grand homme de Province à Paris," which is the conclusion of "Illusions
Perdues." So you see that my idleness is a busy one.
Find here all treasures of affection, and prayers for the happiness of
you and yours in the present and in the future. If God heard or paid
attention to what I ask of him, you would have no anxieties, and you
would be the happiest woman upon earth.
I have busied myself about your Parisian pearls, and I shall have an
opportunity to send them. God grant they may get to you in time for the
New Year. Did you receive the autographs of Scribe, Hugo, and Byron? I
sent them all.
[Footnote 1: In the midst of this constant calculation of the money to
be gained by his work, it is well to remind ourselves now and then that
_never_ did he sacrifice that work, the fruit of his genius, to gain,
terrible as his need of money was. His difficulty in his art was with
_form_; and his laborious nights were spent in unflinching efforts to
remedy that defect in his mechanism.--TR.]