Your answer is of great importance to my tranquillity; for I must
discover through what causes your letters have not been delivered to me.
Nothing ever made such an impression on me as your little letter sent
through my publisher. I have more than suffered, I have been ill
from it. I have had a species of congestion of the head, which was,
apparently, the result of it. The letter you will have received a few
days before you receive this will paint to you my anxieties. When
putting it myself into the post, I spoke to the postmaster, telling
him that I had put four letters into his office to which I had had no
answer; and that never had my correspondence, lasting eight or nine
years, been thus interrupted; that I did not know whether my letters
were received, and I feared this might be on account of some error in
the prepayment of mine. He answered that if there had been an error it
was his affair and would not affect the delivery of the letters. But if
I had not received this letter through Souverain, or your answer to my
last in the needed time (two and a half months), I should have started,
dear, even if so rash a journey had stopped the species of prosperity
which Gavault, the lawyer, is introducing into my affairs. Imagine,
therefore, what a revulsion there was in my mind on reading your letter
so full of melancholy, of deep sadness, which shows me that _some evil
trick_ has been played, to repress which I have need of an answer to
the above questions.
Dear, and very dear, you must know that my activity the past year
has been cruel; I can only use that word. I have made an agreement
to write forty thousand lines in the newspapers from October, 1841,
to October, 1842; and if I obtain two francs and a half a line, all
my indebtedness will be cleared off, or nearly so, and I shall have
won an independence I have never had since I existed. I shall owe not
a sou nor a line to any one in the world. It is to that result that
I have immolated my dearest affections, and renounced that journey I
had planned. But it is impossible that after the coming winter I shall
not need some violent and long diversion, and in April I will go to
Germany, and beyond it, to you.
The sorrowful eloquence of your dear letter of a wounded heart made
me weep; my heart was wrung as I read, at its close, your assurances
of old affection, when in me all was the same as ever while you were
blaming me. These flashes of joy on learning that all our pain came
from neither you nor myself, and that amid this disaster, which has
darkened eight months of our life, we each had the same confidence
in the other--though you were saddened and I impatient, almost
unjust--were needed to send some balm into my heart. Must I again tell
you that you and my sister are the sole deities of my heart. It was,
dear, extreme misfortune which made me give you that hope of my visit.
But I have been stronger against excessive work than I expected. After
ten months of labour, to have written "Ursule Mirouët" in twenty days
is one of those things which printers and witnesses of that remarkable
effort will not believe. It has nothing analogous to it but "César
Birotteau."
Well! God owed me the joy, mingled with tears, that your letter brought
me; without it I might not have been able to do another like effort
this month, when I must give a rival to "Le Médecin de campagne." To
win the Montyon prize for 1842, I am now writing "Les Frères de la
Consolation." They talk of giving me the cross, for which I care very
little; it is not at forty years of age that it can give pleasure; but
I could not refuse Villemain.
"Les Mémoires de deux jeunes Mariées" will be out in a few days.
In another month I shall finish, in the "Presse," my story of "La
Rabouilleuse," the first part of which appeared under the title of "Les
Deux Frères."
I have great need to see Germany thoroughly in order to be able to
write the "Scènes de la Vie militaire;" and I shall go straight to
Dresden to view the battle-field.
The affair of the publication of my great work, under the title of
LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE in which all my compositions will be classed and
definitively corrected, is about to begin. In order to travel, I must
leave four volumes ready with my publishers, four _compact_ volumes.
The whole will be in twenty-eight volumes at four francs, with
illustrations.
Doesn't your head swim in reading me? Now you see where the travail
of my nights goes. And by the end of December I shall finish a comedy
called "Les Rubriques de Quinola." Do you feel what there is under all
this? There is _you_! Your friend must be a giant, a truly great man;
and it is with the greatest of men that I set up a rivalry. I hope that
when we meet again you will find the Honoré of Geneva much taller, that
you will not be so old as you say you are, and that after so much time
spent apart from each other we may have, both of us, a second youth.
Don't calumniate yourself, dear.
Borget, who has returned from China after making the tour of the world,
will reduce the Wierzchownia landscape and make a pretty picture of it.
Alas! it is still unframed in my study; you will not believe my poverty
till it is all over and I tell you about it. I suffer less on that
account than I have done, without as yet being at ease; I must still be
earning the bread of the morrow; but Gavault maintains with firmness
the plan formed for my release from debt and my freedom.
I no longer have Les Jardies, and I do not live under my own name;
consequently no more prosecutions and costs. I am in reality as
if I owed nothing; I am asked for nothing, and all my earnings are
accumulating in Gavault's hands without loss, until they reach the
total of my debt; and I live on three hundred francs a month at Passy.
There, dear. Ten more novels and two plays, if they succeed, will buy
me back Les Jardies and liberty. When once I reach that point, I shall
think of making myself a fortune equal to that I have earned to pay my
debts, and that will give me an income of twenty thousand francs a year!
After the sensation of grief your letter gave me came the unspeakable
pleasure of knowing you still my friend, though pained; but why not
have taken, dear, the following course on the return of the first
letter? What had you done with your wits? Has the heart no wits? At
any rate, put this into your beautiful head, behind that splendid
forehead: direct always to "M. de Balzac, Paris, _poste restante_."
Even a husband cannot obtain the letters for his wife; the post gives
them only to her without her husband; it writes to the person to whom
they are addressed to come and fetch them; and as the post is always
informed of my whereabouts, a letter _poste restante_ will always reach
me.
I cannot write to you, dear, oftener than once a month; but I will
never fail in that, unless from illness, or too hard labour. By the
end of October I may be able to send you, through Bellizard, the
original edition, fifty copies only being printed, of "Les Frères de la
Consolation."
January 5, 1842.
I have this instant received, dear angel, your letter sealed with black
[telling him of the death of M. Hanski, on November 10, 1841], and,
after reading it, I could not perhaps wish to have received any other
from you, in spite of the sad things you tell me about yourself and
your health. As for me, dear, adored one, although this event makes
me attain to that which I have ardently desired for nearly ten years,
I can, before you and God, do myself this justice, that I have never
had in my heart any other thing than complete submission, and that I
have not, in my most cruel moments, stained my soul with evil wishes.
No one can prevent certain involuntary transports. Often I have said
to myself, "How light my life would be with _her_!" No one can keep
his faith, his heart, his inner being without hope. Those two motive
powers, of which the Church makes virtues, have sustained me in my
struggle.
But I conceive the regrets that you express to me; they seem to me
natural and true; especially after a protection that has never failed
you since that letter at Vienna. I am, however, joyful to know that I
can write to you with open heart to tell you all those things on which
I have kept silence, and disperse the melancholy complaints you have
founded on misconceptions, so difficult to explain at a distance. I
know you too well, or I think I know you too well, to doubt you for
one moment; and I have often suffered, very cruelly suffered, that you
have doubted me, because, since Neufchâtel, you are my life. Let me
say this to you plainly, after having so often proved it to you. The
miseries of my struggle and of my terrible work would have worn-out
the greatest and strongest men; and often my sister has desired to put
an end to them, God knows how; I always thought the remedy worse than
the disease. It is therefore you alone who have supported me till now;
yet I have never counted on more than we saw--that day at Les Chênes,
you remember?--of that old couple Sismonde de Sismondi, Philemon and
Baucis, which so touched us. Nothing in me has changed.
I have redoubled in work to go and see you this year, and I have
succeeded. Since I last wrote to you I have not slept more than two
hours of a night, and I have written, above my promised books and
articles, two plays in live acts, one with a prologue, which begin
their rehearsal to-morrow at the Odéon. I hoped by working for some
months longer like the last eighteen months to pay my crushing debts
and save Les Jardies. This constant labour has, especially during the
last five years, parted me wholly from society. To-day I want my patent
of eligibility, for Lamartine has a rotten-borough for me, and to be
one of the coming legislature is a future for us.
To conceive of this in the thick of the battle, is it not loving well
to have such courage, such boldness, when, your letters becoming so
rare, I was tortured, week by week, with the desire to go to you and
learn the reason of your silence?--for the few words, almost illegible,
which ended your letters were always to me fresh beams of hope. "Be
patient," you said to me; "you are loved as much as you love. Do not
change, for others change not."
We have both been courageous, one as much as the other; why, therefore,
should we not be happy to-day? Do you think it was for myself that I
have been so persistent in magnifying my name? Oh! I am perhaps very
unjust, but such injustice comes from the violence of my heart. I would
have liked two words for me in your letter, but I sought them in vain;
two words for him who, since the scene you live in is before his eyes,
has not passed, while working, ten minutes without looking at it; I
have there sought all, ever since it came to me, that we each have
asked in the silence of our spirits. I have not been able to part with
it to let Borget make his copy. The certainty of knowing you free has
made me gentle, or I should have been more angry, were you not mourning.
O my beloved angel, be prudent and take care of yourself; take care
of your precious health. I shall not work much before my departure. I
start for Germany March 20th, and I will not cross Saxony without your
permission; but I cannot any longer have so many leagues between us. I
have already signified to my publishers that they must at once print
enough Parts to have no need of me until after September.
I have carefully buried my joy, just as I hid my griefs and my
memories, in the depths of my heart. But I will tell it to you. I
remained, all stupefied, for twenty-four hours, locked in my study,
not willing that any one should speak to me. When I came out I was
hot in the midst of intense sudden cold. Let me tell you of a little
superstition, a little circumstance which has made a great impression
upon me. On November 1 I lost one of the two shirt buttons Madame de
Berny had given me, which I wore one day, and yours the next day. After
losing it, I could only wear yours; and this little chance matter
troubled me to a point you will imagine when I tell you that my mother
and all about me noticed it. I said to myself, "There is in it some
warning from heaven!" I love you so, and it has cost me so horribly to
keep silence about it since Vienna, that I value the solitude of my
study at Passy, where no one penetrates, and where I can be with you.
Ah! dear, you have put so many things into your letter that I do not
start at once. I await your answer here; you will then have had time
to reflect how difficult it is for me to remain in Paris when for six
years I have longed to see you. Oh! write me that your existence shall
be wholly mine, that we shall now be happy, without any possible cloud.
Will you ever know how much strength it has needed to write to you
thus, without saying a word to paint to you the ardour of this unique
love, preserved as my one treasure, my only hope! Oh! how many times,
under my most bitter disappointments, in struggles, in griefs, I have
turned to the North,--to me the Orient, peace, happiness!
To speak now of business, I have made a great step. On the 5th or
7th of February they play at the Odéon "L'École des Grands Hommes,"
an immense comedy on the struggle of a man of genius with his epoch.
The scene is in 1560, in Spain. It relates to the man who sailed a
steamboat in the port of Barcelona, let her sink to the bottom, and
disappeared. If I have a success, I start; if I fail, I must write four
volumes to get the money for my journey. But I have still another play
at the Vaudeville.
My complete works are being rapidly printed, and will be issued during
my journey.
If I have two successes, I shall leave the money to buy back Les
Jardies, and pay off some lesser creditors, and I am sure, in two
years, to complete my liberation. Only I must have enough to buy back
the house for my mother, to whom I owe the sum of forty thousand francs.
Gavault, my lawyer, is satisfied. Every one believes in a great success
for "Les Ressources de Quinola," the false title of my play. I keep the
one I have just told you for the last moment.
The "Mémoires de deux jeunes Mariées," published in the "Presse," has
had the greatest success. But the finest work this year is "Ursule
Mirouët."
I send this little line, written in haste. I will write you more in
detail within three or four days. I am worn-out with work, and I am
still up all night, for there is much to be done to the play. I have
three acts to add to the second play, and my newspaper articles on my
shoulders.
As for your letters, dear, adored one, be without anxiety. If I die
suddenly there is nothing to fear. They are in a box like the one you
have; and above them is a notice, which my sister knows of, to put
them all into the fire without looking at them, and I am sure of my
sister. But why this uneasiness now? Why? I ask myself that question in
terrible anxiety. You must be more ill than you have told me. You did
not fill the last page in your letter! You have put so much uneasiness
around that which makes me happy that I know not what to think. Alas!
do you not feel, my cherished angel, my flower of heaven, that all you
wish of me shall be done as you wish? Do I not love you even more for
you than for myself?
I entreat you, on receiving my letter, write me two words only, to let
me know if I can write to you with open heart (for I am still hampered
by what you say to me), and how you are; I need to know nothing more
than that. You, all is you, dearest; I am only uneasy about your
health. Take care of yourself; you owe this to me.
Adieu, my dear and beautiful life that I love so well, and to whom I
now can tell it. _Sempre medesimo._
* * * * *
NOTE.--The "Lettres à l'Étrangère" end here. The letters that follow
are those to Madame Hanska, given in Balzac's Correspondence, vol.
xxiv. of the Édition Définitive of his works. No letters have, so far,
been published between the one dated above, January 5, 1842, and the
one that here follows, dated October 14, 1843, written after a visit
paid by Balzac to Madame Hanska in St. Petersburg.
So far as can now be ascertained, the history of their relationship
from this date is as follows: Madame Hanska would not, or could not,
consent to marry Balzac after Monsieur Hanski's death for the following
reasons: 1. Her duty to her daughter, to whom she was left guardian,
with the care, conjointly with the child's uncle, of enormous estates
in the Ukraine. 2. Russian law, which required relinquishment of
property on marriage with a foreigner. 3. The difficulty of obtaining
the Emperor's consent to such marriage.
The first difficulty was removed by the marriage of her daughter Anna,
in 1846, to Count Georges Mniszech, the owner of vast estates in
Volhynia; and in September of that year Balzac was summoned to meet
Madame Hanska at Wiesbaden, at or about which time it is said that she
pledged herself definitively to marry him.
Meantime, he had met her at several places, and had travelled with
her in Germany, Holland, and Italy, as will be seen by the following
letters. In the summer of 1845 Madame Hanska paid a visit to Paris with
her daughter; but in secrecy to avoid the displeasure of the Russian
government. During this visit Balzac took her to Tours, Vendôme, and
the valley of the Cher, to show her the places of his childhood. The
visit to Vendôme is recorded in a letter written after his death to
M. Armand Baschet by M. Mareschal-Duplessis, director of the College,
who was also director when Balzac was a pupil there. M. Mareschal
mentions that he was accompanied by a lady; but he mistakes Madame
Hanska's nationality and calls her an Englishwoman; or she may herself
have conveyed that idea for the sake of her incognito, which was
all-important to her.
In October of the same year (1845) Balzac accompanied Madame Hanska
to Naples for a few days only; but he met her in Rome in March, 1846,
and stayed there a month. His visit to Wiesbaden, mentioned above,
took place in October, 1846. In December Balzac went to Dresden,
returning some weeks later with Madame Hanska, who remained in Paris
till April, 1847, when she returned to Wierzchownia. Balzac left
Paris in September, 1847, and paid his first and long desired visit
to Wierzchownia, arriving about the first of October. He stayed there
until February, 1848, when he returned to Paris, leaving it again early
in September for Wierzchownia; where he lived until one month after his
marriage to Madame Hanska, which took place March 15, 1850. He returned
to Paris with his wife May 20, and died three months later, August 19,
1850.--TR.