BERLIN, October 14, 1843.
Dear countess,[1] I arrived here this morning at six o'clock,
having had for all rest twelve hours at Tilsit, from which must be
deducted three hours given to the director of posts, to whom I had an
introduction, and who did me so many services that I took tea with him
in the evening. I arrived too late to dine there with Stieglitz, as we
desired.
As long as I was on Russian soil I seemed to be still with you, and,
without being exactly of a frolicking gaiety, you must have seen by my
little letter from Taurogen that I had strength enough left to joke at
my grief. But once on foreign soil, I can say nothing at all, except
that this journey may be made to go to you, but not on quitting you.
The aspect of Russian lands, without culture, without inhabitants,
seemed to me natural; but the same sight seen in Prussia was horribly
sad, and in keeping with the sadness that seized upon me. These barren
tracts, this sterile soil, this cold desolation, this poverty, gripped
and chilled me. I felt myself as much saddened as if there had been a
contrast between my heart and Nature. Black grief swooped down upon me
more and more heavily as physical fatigue increased. But do not pity
me for taking the land journey, because these late storms must have
made the navigation of the Baltic very bad.
I know how you are by the way I feel; I feel within me an immense
void, which enlarges and deepens more and more, and from which
nothing distracts me. So I have renounced going to Dresden; I do not
feel the courage to go there. Holbein's Madonna will not be stolen
between now and a year hence; the scene of the battle and the defiles
of the Kulm will not change, and I shall have a reason, next May,
to make the journey again with other ideas. Don't blame me for my
faint-heartedness; nothing now pleases me in this journey, which did so
please me in the salon of the Hotel Koutaitsof when you said, "You will
go here--and there." I listened to you, I went, for it was you who told
me. But now, how can I help it? far from you all is lifeless, without
a soul. Next year, perhaps; but now, I have nothing but the gulf of my
toil, and I go to it by the shortest way.
I slept this morning from seven o'clock till midday, a few tired,
restless hours. I have breakfasted, dressed, and paid three visits: to
Bresson, Redern, and Mendelssohn; and on my return I sit down to write
to you, for to talk with you is the greatest, the most vital instinct
of the moment.
I was interrupted by Comte Bresson, who came immediately to invite me
to dinner for to-morrow, because he leaves, or rather his wife leaves,
the day after; she goes before him to Madrid. As far as I can judge, he
is a man of intelligence and great good sense; above all, without any
species of pretension, which is rare in diplomatists, and I prize it
much. He advised me to write a line to Humboldt, of whom I saw much in
Paris at Gérard's and elsewhere; he will, no doubt, show me Potsdam. M.
Bresson goes to Spain, and Salvandy to Turin.
I resume my dear laments, and I must tell you that the highway from
Petersburg to Tilsit is only practicable at two sections: from
Petersburg to Narva, and from Riga to Taurogen; so that for more than
half way the road is detestable when it rains, and it had rained a
great deal, alas! Imagine the jolts we made! but the vehicles are
excellent; they resisted them. All that is Russian has a very tough
life. A roadway is laid down across the sands of Livonia with gorse;
out though the road has the gorse _characteristics_, it has, none
the less, a disquieting aspect and a boggy style. It is a miracle to
get over the road in three days and a half; and that gives a great
idea of Russian stubbornness. We had eight horses, and sometimes ten,
in certain places. Where the chaussée [paved road] is made it is
magnificent. Ah! I shall have pleasure in going over it again! but
_then_ it will not be over gorse but flowers that I shall be jolted.
Literally, one eats nothing by the way, for there is nothing to eat;
but the way-stations are very handsome, and there is always excellent
Russian tea. I am therefore able to honour my grief by thinness, due
to the diet of the journey; if I suffered, my mental condition was
such that I did not become conscious of it; the grief of quitting you
quelled hunger, just as the pleasure of meeting you had already quelled
sea-sickness. You are above all.
I am here at the Hôtel de Russie, which is passably good and not too
dear. From Berlin I shall go to Leipzig and Frankfort-on-the-Main, by
the Prussian _Schnell-post_; and from Frankfort to France by steamboat,
or railroad all the way; which is, I think, more economical than any
other way of travelling.
I have found two road companions, two sculptors, one of whom, as I
told you, speaks an almost incomprehensible French, and I have just
made the rounds of Berlin with him. These young men have been full of
attentions to me all the way, especially from Riga, where I parted
from my first companion, the Frenchman. The artist-nature is everywhere
the same. These two young fellows got me out of all difficulties at
inns, and I have just invited them to dinner (a _rapin_ dinner, be it
understood). It is the least I can do for such obliging lads to thank
them for their good care before we part.
This sulky Berlin is not comparable to sumptuous Petersburg. In the
first place, one might cut a score of mean little towns like the
capital of the Brandebourg out of the great city of the vast European
empire, and there would still remain enough space built upon to crush
the score of extracted little Berlins without injury to its vast
extent. But, at first sight, Berlin seems the more populated; for
I have perceived several individuals in the streets, which is not
often the case in Petersburg. However, the houses here, without being
handsome, seem well built; one can see that they are not wanting in
comfort inside. The public buildings, rather ugly of aspect, are of
handsome freestone; and the space around them is so managed as to set
them off. Very likely it is to this artfulness that Berlin owes its
air of being more populous than Petersburg; I should have said more
_animated_ if it concerned any other people; but the Prussian, with his
brutish heaviness, is never anything but ponderous; less beer and bad
tobacco, and more French or Italian wit is needed to produce the stir
of the other great capitals of Europe, or else the grand industrial and
commercial ideas which have caused the great development of London; but
Berlin and its inhabitants will never be otherwise than an ugly little
town inhabited by ugly fat people.
However, it must be admitted, to whoso returns from Russia, Germany
has an indefinable air which can only be explained by the magic word
LIBERTY, manifested by free manners and customs, or, I should say, by
freedom in manners and customs. The principal public buildings of
Berlin are grouped about the hotel where I am, so that I could see them
all in an hour. Fatigue is seizing me; I aspire to dinner: the first I
have eaten since the splendours of Russia.
Till to-morrow, dear countess.
[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at St. Petersburg. Balzac has just left
her after a visit of two months.--TR.]
October 15.
Our dinner was composed of soup, venison, mayonnaise of fish, macaroni
with cheese, a little dessert, a half-bottle of madeira, and a bottle
of bordeaux. _Ecco, signora!_ At eight o'clock I dismissed my guests
and went to bed, the first bed that resembled a bed since I left
Dunkerque. Before going to sleep I thought of you and of what you
might be doing at eight o'clock of a Saturday evening. I imagined you
were at the theatre; I saw the Michel theatre; but I did not have the
cruel pleasure, as in _Schnell-post_ or in _Karéta potchtôvaïa_, to
think till midnight, for at midnight I was sound asleep, and in the
morning I slept till eight o'clock. You have so often subdued the most
imperious things in nature that you will pardon poor nature for taking
its revenge for once. Exclusively tender souls have a worship for
memories, and your memory, you cannot doubt it, is always in my heart
and in my thought. I give myself the fête of thinking of it during
that short half-dreaming moment when we feel ourselves betwixt slumber
and sleep; and all the sweet impressions of the two months I have
spent with you return to enchant my soul with their radiant images,
so full of harmony. You see that the Virgin of Poland is the same as
the Notre-Dame of France, and that if my journey is saddened by a
separation such as I have now borne three times, all is otherwise well
with me.
I have received from M. de Humboldt the note which encloses mine; it
is, certainly, curious under present circumstances. I send it to you;
and I can speak of it openly, as this letter will be carried to you by
Viardot, whom I have just met, and who agrees very willingly to take
it; he is one of the most honourable men I know; in whom one can put
the utmost confidence; he will give it into your own hand.
October 16.
I have just dined with Madame Bresson, _née_ de Guitaut. There was a
great dinner at the Embassy on occasion of the King's fête. Except
the ambassadress, everybody was old and ugly or young and hideous;
the handsomest woman, if not the youngest, was the one I took into
dinner; guess who,--the Duchesse de Talleyrand (ex-Dino) who was there
with her son, the Duc de Valençay, who looked to be ten years older
than his mother. The conversation was about people's names and little
incidents happening at court within forty-eight hours. But at any rate,
it explained to me Hoffmann's jests about German courts. Impossible to
join Redern; I had his wife on one side of me,--the face of an heiress,
and a very rich heiress to make him forget such lack of charm.
Nothing can be more wearisome than Berlin. I am consumed with
ennui--ennui has entered me to the bone, and I am afraid of being ill.
I write this before going to bed; it is nine o'clock; but what can one
do in Berlin? For all amusement there's "Medea," translated from the
German, and played literally! Yesterday they played before the court
Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream," also translated literally! The
King of Prussia protects letters, but, as you see, they are mostly dead
letters.
I leave to-morrow, and go to Leipzig by the railway to reach Mayence;
after which by the same to Dresden to see the Gallery.
M. de Humboldt made me a visit of an hour this morning, charged, he
said, with the compliments of the King and the Princess of Prussia. He
gave me all necessary information as to how to find Tieck at Potsdam,
and I shall profit by it to study the physiognomy of that great barrack
of Frederick the Great, of whom de Maistre said: "He was not a great
man; at the most a great Prussian."
I went out by the railway, and on getting into a carriage I found the
fantastic Duchesse de Talleyrand, with her hair dressed in a mass of
flowers and diamonds, like an apparition of a midsummer night's dream.
She was on her way to court in full dress, to dine with the Princess
of Prussia. We had also for third the Comte de Redern, a mouldy old
Prussian fop, dry as a Genevese and important as a retired diplomatist.
I requested the shepherdess of threescore to lay my respects at the
feet of the princess.
I saw Tieck in his home; he seemed pleased with my homage. There was
an old countess, his contemporary in spectacles, octogenarian perhaps,
a mummy with a green eye-shade, who seemed to me a domestic divinity.
I have just returned; it is half-past six o'clock, and I have eaten
nothing since morning. Berlin is the city of ennui; I should die of
it in a week. Poor Humboldt is dying of it; he drags about with him a
nostalgia for Paris. As I start to-morrow morning by the railway, I
must bid you adieu. I cannot write again until I get to Mayence.
In talking this morning with Comte Bresson, I told him I had been
driven from Petersburg by the tattle of porters and ignoble gossip;
that no one believed in generous and disinterested sentiments, and that
I was angry with the Russian people for attacking my sacred liberty
by imagining that I should do like Loëve-Weymar. M. Bresson strongly
approved; and said that a Frenchman should never marry any but a
French-woman; I told him I was of his opinion, and that was what I
should do! I am told that if I stay here a week fêtes will be made for
me. But a week means three hundred francs, and really, for Berlin, that
is too dear. If I could only get away from this dreadful town by paying
that sum, I don't say it would be too much; I would even add a little
to be off the quicker. More than ever do I see that nothing is possible
to me without you, and the more space I put between us, the more I feel
the strength of the tie that holds me. I live by the past only, and I
live in it only, withdrawn into the depths of my heart. Must it not
be horrible suffering to be alone as I am, with the continual memory
of these two months, from which my thought plucks flowers, blossom by
blossom, with melancholy and religious tenderness?
October 17.
I leave you afresh this morning, for it is like a fresh leaving not
to write to you in the evening what I have done during the day. I go
to Leipzig, where I shall book my place in the _Schnell-post_ for
Frankfort. I shall sleep at Leipzig; the next day go to Dresden, and
return, on the 20th, to take the Prussian conveyance.
The loneliness that takes the place of intimacy has all the ways
of remorse--I feel a violent need of changing from place to place,
stirring, going, coming; as if at the end of this physical agitation
and all these useless movements I should find you. I look with
tenderness at this paper which I shall carry in a moment to Viardot,
thinking how your pretty fingers will hold it in that salon where the
hours fled so sweetly and so rapidly. Viardot will faithfully deliver
to you this packet, in which I may say that my life will be one long
anguish till I see you again. From Mayence you shall have a letter
which will tell you of my acts and deeds after leaving Berlin. I shall
reach Passy about November 10; therefore write me on the 3rd, of your
style.
Adieu; if I have failed in our agreement, if anything displeases you in
this letter, be, as ever, kind and forgive me. Think of my grief, my
loneliness, my sorrow, and you will be full of pity and indulgence for
the poor exile.
DRESDEN, October 19, 1843.
I left Berlin with ennui, dear, but I have found nostalgia here.
Nothing that I eat nourishes me, nothing that I see distracts me. I
have seen the famous Gallery, and Raffaelle's Virgin, also Holbein's,
and I said to myself, "I love my love too well!" In going through the
famous treasury, I would have given all for one half-hour on the Neva.
To add to my troubles I am here for two days longer than I wished to
be; and this is why. From Berlin I went to Leipzig and passed the
night. I had counted without the fair at Leipzig; all the seats were
taken in the _Schnell-post_. I then asked the landlord to book my seat
and keep my luggage, instead of my dragging it to Dresden and back, for
they demand an infinite number of thalers for overweight of luggage.
The landlord said it was doubtful if he could get me a seat for the
20th, the day I wished to start, and I have just received a letter from
him saying I can have no place till the 22nd.
Yesterday, on arriving, having missed the hour for the Gallery, I
walked about Dresden in all directions, and it is, I assure you,
a charming city; very preferable as a residence to that mean and
melancholy Berlin. It has the look of a capital; partly a Swiss, partly
a German town; the environs are picturesque and all is charming. I
can conceive of living in Dresden; there is a mixture of gardens
and dwellings that delights the eye. As for the palace begun by
Augustus the Strong, it is really a most curious masterpiece of rococo
architecture. As a fantasy it is almost as fine as gothic, and as art
it is exquisite. What a misfortune that so enchanting a conception
is unfinished, and is left in a deplorable state. It would take,
of course, millions to repair, complete, arrange, and furnish this
delightful gem. There is nothing in Petersburg, still less in Prussia,
nor in the whole North to compare to it. What a man was that Augustus,
calling himself Elector in Poland, and King in Saxony!
I saw so many Titians in Florence and Venice that those in the Dresden
gallery had less value in my eyes. Correggio's "Night" seemed to me
over-praised; but his Magdalen, two Virgins of his, the two Madonnas
of Raffaelle, and the Dutch and Flemish pictures are well worth the
journey. The treasury is nonsense; its two or three millions in
diamonds could not dazzle eyes that had just seen those of the Winter
Palace. Besides, the diamond says nothing to me; a dew-drop, sparkling
in a ray of the rising sun, is to me more beautiful than the finest
diamond in the world--just as a certain smile is more beautiful to
me than the finest picture. So I must return to Dresden with you in
order that the pictures may speak to me. Rubens moved me somewhat,
but the Rubens of the Louvre are more complete. The true masterpiece
of the Gallery is Holbein's Madonna, which extinguishes all the rest.
How I regretted that I could not hold your hand in mine while I
admired it with that inward delight and plenitude of happiness which
the contemplative enjoyment of the beautiful bestows! The Madonna of
Raffaelle, one expects it; but Holbein's Madonna is the unexpected, and
it grasps one.
Dear countess, you will never form to yourself a complete idea of
my dreadful loneliness. Not speaking the language and not knowing a
person to speak to, I have not uttered a hundred sentences since I
left Riga and that French merchant. I am always in front of myself,
and the scenery being a desert and a plain, I have nothing to
interest the eye; the heart has passed from excess of riches to the
most absolute pauperism. The recapitulation mentally of those hours
that flew by, alas! so rapidly, the dreamy thoughts that followed them
gave such bitter sadness to a nature naturally gay and laughing that
my two sculptors said to me--that is, the one who thought he spoke
French--"What is it? what is the matter?" Another fortnight like this
and I shall gently, gently die, without apparent illness.
I see that I must renounce the Rhine and Belgium and return to strong
occupation in the affairs and toils of Paris. This air does me harm; I
am inwardly debilitated; nothing restores my tone, nothing cheers my
courage, I thirst for nothing. I have two nostalgias: one for the banks
of the Neva which I leave, the other for the France to which I go.
German railway trains are a pretext for eating and drinking; they stop
at every moment; the passengers get out and drink and eat, and get in
only to do it all over again; so that the mail-cart in France goes
faster than the trains in Germany.
It is eleven at night; I am in a hotel where every one is asleep.
Dresden is quiet as a sick-room; I feel no desire to sleep. Have I
grown old that the Gallery has given me so few emotions? or has the
source of my emotions changed? Ah! surely, I recognize the infinite
of my attachment and its depth in the immense void there now is in my
soul. To love, for me, is to live; and to-day more than ever I feel
it, I see it, all things prove it to me, and I recognize that there
will never be for me any other taste, any other absorption, any other
passion than that you know, which fills not only my heart but my entire
brain.
October 20.
Absolutely nothing to tell you but what you already know. I have just
returned from the theatre, which is certainly one of the most charming
I ever saw. Despléchin, Séchan, and Diéterle, the three decorators who
did our French Opera house, came here to arrange it. Nothing could be
prettier. If you choose Dresden for a residence Anna will have the
loveliest hall she ever dreamed of. They sang a German version of "Fra
Diavolo" which seemed to me an excellent preparation for sleep. I had
seen the collections of porcelains and antiquities in the morning. I
feel tired. Fatigue is a power; and I am now going to bed at eleven
o'clock. You know of whom I shall dream as I sleep.
October 21.
I leave to-morrow; my place is booked, and I will finish my letter,
because I wish to put it in the post myself. I have a head like an
empty pumpkin, and I am in a state which makes me more uneasy than I
can tell you. If I continue thus in Paris I must return. I have no
feeling for anything, no desire to live, not the slightest energy,
nor do I feel any will. You will never know until I explain it to you
verbally, the courage I display in writing to you. This morning I
stayed till eleven o'clock in bed, unable to get up. It is horrible
suffering which has its seat nowhere; which cannot be described; which
attacks both heart and brain. I feel stupid, and the farther I go,
the worse the malady becomes. I will write you from Mayence if I feel
better. But as for the present, I can only describe my condition as
Fontenelle, a centenarian, explained his,--"a difficulty of being." I
have not smiled since I left you; it is spleen of the heart; and that
is very serious, for it is a double spleen.
Adieu, dear star thrice blessed! there may come a moment when I can
express to you the thoughts that oppress me; to-day I can only tell
you that I love you too well for my peace; for, after this August
and this September, I feel that I can only live beside you and that
your absence is death. Oh! how happy I should be were I walking and
conversing with you in the little garden overhanging the bridge of
Troïsk, where there is nothing yet but broomsticks to mark where
they mean to plant the trees. To me, there was no garden in Europe
more lovely--when you were in it, I mean. There are moments when I
see clearly the least little objects that surround you; I look at
the cushion with a pattern of black lace worked upon it on which
you leaned, and I count the stitches! Never was my memory so fresh;
my inward sight, on which are mirrored the houses that I build, the
landscapes I create, is now all given to the service of the most
completely happy memories of my life. You could never imagine the
treasures of revery which glorify certain hours; there are some which
fill my eyes with tears. My inward eyes behold those angular bronzes
against which I struck my knees as I wound my way through your blue
salon, and the little chair in which you reposed your dreamy thoughts!
What power and happiness there is in these returns to a past which thus
we see again. Such moments are more than life; for the whole of life
is in this one hour withdrawn from real existence to the profit of
these memories which flood my soul in torrents. What sweetness and what
strength lies in the simple thought of certain material objects, which
attracted but little notice in the happy days that are past; and how
happy I feel myself to feel thus!
Adieu; I am going to carry my letter to the post. All tenderness to
your child a thousand times blessed; my regards to Lirette, and to you
all that there is in my heart, my soul, my brain.
PASSY, February 5, 1844.
Yesterday I did errands; for I must think about getting "Les Petits
Bourgeois" set up by a printer at the cost of a new publisher. I went
to see the successor of M. Gavault, and there I found a summons from
that dreadful Locquin-coquin. No one more audacious than a swindler! he
cries, "Murder! thieves!" to hang his victim. All this stirred my bile,
and as I had been up since three in the morning I felt very weary, and
went to bed at six to rise at four. While I slept the dear journal
came; I put it aside for my waking and have just read it. All these
opposing emotions, some exasperating, others gentle, not to say divine,
have done me harm; I feel exhausted, which seldom happens to me. I
must be at M. Gavault's at nine o clock for consultation with him and
his successor, M. Picard, on the Locquin affair; now, to get there at
nine o'clock supposes breakfasting at seven; and I who have still five
_feuillets_ to write for Hetzel, promised to him for this morning! I
had kept them back in order to have a _calm night_ to search them out;
they needed mind, and my mind was all upset!
I entreat you, do not be worried about the Reviews; it would even be
a pity were it otherwise. A man is lost in France the moment he makes
himself a name, and is crowned in his lifetime. Insults, calumnies,
rejection, all that suits me. Some day it will be known that if I lived
by my pen there never entered two centimes into my purse that were
not hardly and laboriously earned, that praise or blame were equally
indifferent to me, that I have built up my work amid cries of hatred
and literary musketry, and have done so with a firm and imperturbable
hand. My revenge is to write, in the "Débats," "Les Petits Bourgeois;"
which will make my enemies say with fury, "At the moment one might
think his bag was empty he produces a masterpiece." That is what Madame
Reybaud said on reading "David Séchard," "Honorine," etc. You will
read the strange history of "Esther." I will send it to you thoroughly
corrected; you will there see a Parisian world which is, and always
will be, unknown to you, very different from the false world of "Les
Mystères" and ever comic; in which the author, as George Sand said,
applies a whip that strips off all the plasters put on to hide the
wounds he uncovers. You write me: "What a volume is that which contains
'Nucingen,' 'Pierre Grassou,' and 'Les Secrets de la Princesse de
Cadignan'!" Perhaps you are right; I am proud of it (between ourselves).
You will see if the corruption of the Spanish abbé, which annoys you,
was not necessary to develop the history of Lucien in Paris, ending in
a frightful suicide. Lucien had already served as an easel on which to
paint journalism; he serves again to paint the piteous and pitiable
class of kept women; the corruption of the flesh, after the corruption
of the mind. Next comes "Les Petits Bourgeois," and, for conclusion,
"Les Frères de la Consolation." Nothing will then be lacking in my
Paris but _artists_, the _stage_, and the _savants_. I shall then have
painted the great modern monster under all its aspects.
To sum up: here is the stake I play for,--four men have had in this
half-century an immense influence: Napoleon, Cuvier, O'Connell; and I
desire to be the fourth. The first lived on the blood of Europe, he
inoculated himself with armies; the second espoused the globe; the
third has incarnated himself in a people; and I shall have carried a
whole social world in my brain. Better live thus than call out every
evening, "Spades, hearts, trumps!" or find out why Madame such a one
has done such or such a thing. But there will always be in me something
greater than the writer, happier than he, and that is, your serf. My
sentiment is nobler, grander, more complete than all the satisfactions
of vanity or fame. Without this plenitude of heart I could not have
accomplished one tenth of my work; I should not have had this ferocious
courage. Tell yourself often this truth in your moments of melancholy,
and you will divine by the toil-effect the grandeur of its cause.
Your journal has done me good to read, and I shall re-read it again
to-morrow, more than once. It is six o'clock; I must see about
inventing and then writing the little trifles for Hetzel. I leave you,
sending to you all flowers of the heart.
February 6.
Yesterday I went out, but I suffered much; that thief who sues me,
your letter, all these violent and opposing emotions did me harm. If
the colic, as Lord Byron says, puts love to flight it certainly knocks
down imagination; not only have I suffered, but my brain has been as
if veiled. Last night was dreadful, and the waking not pleasant. After
breakfasting, I feel rather better; but I have to go out for current
affairs, and I cannot think of it without repugnance, so weak and
ill do I still feel. I have, nevertheless, corrected the article for
Hetzel, and added _la coda,_ the most difficult part to wrench out. I
still have one horribly difficult chapter to do of three _feuillets_;
after which I shall be delivered. But while breakfasting the idea
of a pretty comedy in three acts came to me; I will tell it to you
if I write it. This week I must finish "Le Programme," and then set
seriously to work on "Mercadet."
I dine to-day with Girardin, and shall pay a visit to M. de Barante
to thank him for his letter. I perceive, sadly, that my hard labour
has aged me much; if I do not go to Germany by the grace of God and
yourself, I shall make a trip on foot among the Alps.
Do not think that I ever tire of the Daffinger. I give it to myself as
a reward when I have done my task, and at night it is there, beside me,
on my table, and I search my ideas in it.
February 7.
I am still not well, and I have even gone to bed during the day; but
I feel a little better now and shall dine with my doctor. I have just
done the article for Hetzel, which will be, like all things wrenched
out in spite of Minerva, detestable. Yesterday I consulted M. Roux
(Dupuytren's successor, alas!), and he strongly advised me that journey
on foot as the only means of arresting the inclination of my cerebral
organs to inflame.
I am now going to two printing-offices to negotiate affairs, and, among
others, to arrange with a publisher for "Les Petits Bourgeois."
February 8.
When I do not suffer in my head I suffer in the intestines, and I have
at all times a little fever; nevertheless, this morning, at the moment
of writing to you, I am well, or rather, I feel better.
Yesterday I talked with a publisher named Kugelmann. He is a German,
who seems to me full of good-will; we shall settle something to-day
when I have done with the "Débats;" I go to Bertin at eleven o'clock.
If the two affairs can be arranged I shall have nearly twenty thousand
francs for "Les Petits Bourgeois." They want to illustrate either
"Eugénie Grandet" or "La Physiologie du Mariage," and have made me
proposals to that effect. If these proposals lead to any result you
shall know it, of course. Yesterday I met Poirson, manager of the
Gymnase, in an omnibus, and he proposed to me to give him the comedy
of "Prudhomme," and have it played by Henri Monnier. That is one of my
crutches for this year; I shall go and explain it to him next Monday;
and if it suits him, I shall set to work upon it immediately, so as to
have it played in March--or rather in May, for March has twice been
fatal to me.
Adieu for to-day, celestial star, implored and followed with so much
religion. Every day I say to myself, thinking of your dear household
of three, "I hope they are happy! that nothing troubles them! that
Lirette sanctifies herself more and more; that Anna goes sometimes to
the theatre (for her health, as she says so prettily); and that madame
will from time to time look down the Neva to where Paris lies." As for
me, I think only of that rococo salon, and so thinking, I make a little
mental prayer to a human divinity, especially about nine o'clock, when
tea makes me think that you are taking yours in the lamplight at that
white table, the yellow wavelets of which I see at moments, together
with the samovar. What friends are things, when they surround beloved
beings! There is even a stupid ivory elephant that returns to my memory
at times. As for the causeuse, the little carpet, the Louis XIV.
screen, and the chair on which you rested your noble, cherished head,
they are objects of worship. Do you feel yourself loved even in the
outward objects to which you have given more real life than living and
moving beings have to me? Your sadnesses make me smile, and I say to
myself, "She was not _then_ sitting in her chair; she was not looking
then at her chimney-corner." But it would have been a pity not to
write those four pages; they are sublime; and were it not for the deep
respect I have for you, I would put them proudly into one of my books,
to give you the enjoyment of seeing how superior you are to scribblers
like the rest of us. That letter is a true diamond as style and as
thought; you have the inspiring influence, dear lady!--
See how I chatter with you! Can I help it? I make my letters one of
those cat-like sensuous joys to which we grow used, and which wrap us
so softly that we forget they are but the _copy_ of their cause!--
Well, one more look at that dear rue Millionne, and a deep, deep sigh,
alas! not to be there. Why should you not have a poet as others have a
dog, a parrot, a monkey?--and all the more because I am a little of all
three, and repeat to you ever the one phrase, "I am faithful!" (Here
the countess throws up her head and casts a superb glance.)
Adieu till to-morrow; I have recovered a little gaiety the last two
days; are some happy events happening to you? God owes them to you.
Have you not suffered enough to expiate the fault of all who surround
you?--for as to you, you have never understood or practised anything
but the good and the beautiful.
February 10.
Yesterday Bertin was ill, but he sent word that the affair held good.
I went to the printing-office, but the publisher did not come; a bad
sign. Here's a strange thing! the printer fell so in love with the
title "Les Petits Bourgeois de Paris" that he wants to buy the book of
me for twenty thousand francs and publish it illustrated! I came home
to dinner and went to bed, for I had this morning to read seven folios
of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE and the whole of Hetzel's article. It crushed me
down. I went to bed after breakfast and slept till dinner-time, and
as I could not sleep again from six in the evening till three next
morning, I took some coffee, and here I am at nine in the evening,
writing at my table.
If I have luck I shall sell the right to illustrate "Eugénie Grandet,"
and the "Petits Bourgeois" affair will come off, and this will bring
me out of these matters (I mean the annoying matters). They played
a new tragedy at the Odéon last night, but I did not go; I reserve
myself for Tuesday, when the "Mystères de Paris" are brought out at the
Porte-Saint-Martin.
February 14.
"Les Mystères" ended this morning at half-past one after midnight. I
did not get back to Passy till three in the morning. It is now one
o'clock, and I am just up. Frédérick Lemaître was in fear of a cerebral
congestion; I found him yesterday at midday in bed; he had just
plunged into a mustard bath up to his knees. Twice the night before
he lost his eyesight. "Les Mystères" is the worst play in the world,
but Frédérick's talent will make a furor for it. As actor, he was
magnificent. You never can describe such effects, they must be seen. I
am satisfied with the success he will give to "Les Mystères," because
it gives me time to finish "Mercadet." The princes were in a proscenium
box, and as the Prince de Joinville had never seen me, the Duc de
Nemours pointed me out to him.
Since then I have written to Poirson that I will go and see him Friday
to agree about "Prudhomme." I am to dine with my old friend the
Duchesse de Castries, who, just now, for one reason or another, renews
her kind attentions to your servant. All my prose is ready for Hetzel.
To-day I dine with Lingay, the man who wanted to put to the profit
of the State, so he said, my talent of observation. He does not seem
vexed with me for my want of compliance, or perhaps he has too much
intelligence not to have understood me.
February 16.