[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Dresden.]
Dear countess; I leave Paris by the mail coach on the 22nd, just as you
are starting from Mulhausen, and I shall be at Chalon at five o'clock
on the 25th, just in time to give you a hand on getting out of your
carriage. My place is booked and paid for. How do you expect me to
write you from Paris _Wednesday_ a letter to Frankfort-on-the-Main,
when you leave that town on Thursday? I received your third letter
yesterday at Passy, in which you give me these directions, impossible
to follow. I groan the more as I cannot send you a letter for the
custom-house at Strasburg, where I wanted to recommend you to
attention.
Tell your social fortune-teller that her cards have lied; that I am
not preoccupied with any blonde, except Dame Fortune. No, I have no
words except the mute language of the heart wherewith to thank you for
that adorable letter No. 2, in which your gaiety breaks out with its
sparkling gush, sweet treasure of a charming wit which the fine weather
has brought back to you; for, as you once said to me, "It is only
wrong-doers who stay sad when the joyful sun shines."
I make use of the excellent M. Silbermann, who will take to you these
lines, not so much to tell you that you will find me at Chalon (your
instinct will have told you that), but to paint to you my delight on
reading your letter. Your infantine and purely physical joy enters my
heart; I admire that adorable nature, so playful, so spontaneous, and
so serious withal, because it is composed of lively impressions and
deep sentiments. My eyes were filled with tears in thanking God with
fervour that he had restored that health which you value for the sake
of others,--those who love you, like your children and your old and
faithful serf. Every time I go to breathe your atmosphere, your heart,
your presence, I come back desperate at the obstacles that prevent
me from staying in that heaven. I work, God knows how, for God alone
knows why. When you hold this letter I shall probably have no debts
whatever, except to my family. We will talk of my affairs on the boat
between Chalon and Lyon. I shall have much to tell you thereupon, and I
hope this time you will not be discontented with your servant. I have
enormously much to do, write, correct, in order to meet you. I hope
to take you as far as Genoa. But to whom could I confide the care of
holding your head if you are sea-sick? If you will let me do as I wish
I will go to Naples. I would give up everything, even fortune, to guard
a friend like you and care for her in case of illness. I cannot think
of you given over to strangers, to indifferent persons. I want to be
with you, dear countess, my brilliant star, my happiness!
All this week I have been like a balloon; you know what my tramps
on business errands are in Paris; I have been really overwhelmed by
them. Minutes are worth hours to me if I do not want to lose money by
travelling, for I must myself collect the sums due me. Also Les Jardies
will be paid for this week; and I have been five times to see Gavault
without finding him. You see I tell you all; it is stupid to talk of
these things here when we shall have a whole day on the boat from
Chalon to Lyon, and another from Lyon to Avignon. I will try to have
lodgings prepared for you in advance, as on our other journeys, for I
think you will be obliged to stop sometimes to rest.
I have not received the cup. I don't know whether the post takes charge
of such things. In any case, however, it cannot be lost. You know I
want to make a symbolic souvenir of it. It is to be supported by four
figures: Constancy, Labour, Friendship, Victory.
Baden was to me a bouquet of flowers without a thorn. We lived there
so sweetly, so peacefully, so heart to heart! I have never been as
happy in my life; I seemed to catch a glimpse of that future I call
to, I dream of, amid my troubles and my crushing labour. I would go
to the end of the world on foot to tell you that your letters are to
me in absence what you were yourself in Baden,--a masterpiece of the
heart which is not met with twice in life. Oh! if you knew how you are
blessed and invoked at every moment. My eyes are filled with happy
tears as I think of all you are to me; those are thoughts I dwell
on with a sweetness of recollection that nothing equals; that is my
excess; I allow myself that, as your dainty daughter allows herself
peaches.
I leave you; I have five folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE to correct. I
will write you to-morrow before beginning work. You can tell yourself
that in spite of toil, errands, business of all kinds and at all hours,
I am thinking of you; that your name is on my lips, in my head, in my
heart, and that I only live and breathe in you. You can add that I am
saying and repeating to myself incessantly: "On the 24th I shall see
her! I shall live ten days of her life!"
October 16.
Dear countess, I am working much; I wrote you in such haste yesterday
that I had no time to read over what I had written. I shall see you
perhaps this day week.
With the enticing prospect of that blessed 24th it is impossible for me
to put two ideas together; on the other hand, I have the sad certainty
of being unable to do fine literary work so long as I cannot see
daylight in my business affairs and have not paid integrally all my
creditors. Worried on that side, and absorbed on the other by a deep,
exclusive, passionately controlling sentiment, I can do nothing--the
mind is no longer here. This is not a complaint, nor a compliment,
it is truth. I have just come to a decision which will obviate this
misfortune; it is to end the twelfth volume of the COMÉDIE HUMAINE with
"Madame de la Chanterie." That relieves me from making seven folios
(which would have brought in nine thousand francs). Far from you I
am only happy when I am seeing you in thought and memory, when I am
thinking of you; and I think of you too much _for copy_.
I have received the pretty cup, and I want to make a marvel of it.
When you hold this letter, tell yourself that we are each going toward
the other. Take care in every way. Attend to your health; it is the
property of your child--I dare not say mine, and yet, what have I else
in this world? If anything in what I say displeases you, excuse it by
the haste in which I scribble. I have only time to close my letter by
saying, _à bientôt_.