1. A purchaser wants my Florentine furniture. People have come from
all parts to see it, even the antiquity dealers; and they are all in
a flutter of admiration. You don't know what this means. It was the
article in the "Messager" (which you will doubtless read copied into
the "Débats") which has roused all this attention.
2. The matter of "Les Petits Bourgeois" rests, so far, with the
"Débats." But the publisher wants the book; no doubt to illustrate with
"Eugénie Grandet" and the "Physiologie du Mariage."
3. Poirson thinks the idea of the play excellent and proposes to
_guide me!_--and if the execution is equal to the plot, he assures me
of all the advantages I can desire. So I may appear once more before
the public about April 1. Here I am, with "Prudhomme" and "Les Petits
Bourgeois" on my hands; but no money. I must coin it in a manner to
conquer tranquillity for three months. It is terrifying. This is
Shrove-Saturday; I must spend it working, Sunday too, with a fury that
is not French, but Balzacian.
February 17.
You know, dear countess, that there are days when the brain becomes
inert. In spite of my best will I have sat all day long in my
arm-chair, turning over the leaves of the "Musée-des-Familles!"--what
do you say to that?--and in gazing from time to time at my Daffinger,
without finding aught there than the most sublime and charming creature
in the world and not a line of _copy_! I wanted to return to "Madame de
la Chanterie," but I could only write two _feuillets_.
February 18.