_Pages_104, 112, 113: _regarding Madame de Berny_.
Letters to Madame Carraud, written at the same time as the letters from
Geneva. (Édition Définitive, pp. 191, 178.)
GENEVA, January 30, 1834.
"Do not accuse me of ingratitude, my dearest flower of
friendship! I have thought of you much. I have even
talked of you with pride, congratulating myself in having
a second conscience in you.
"Go to Frapesle? of course I will. _Mon Dieu!_ you are
angelically good to have thought of her whom all my
friends (I mean my sister and Borget) call my good angel.
[Madame Carraud had invited Madame de Berny, who was ill,
to stay at her house with Balzac.] If I have not written
to you, or to our Borget, it is because I am so little
my own master here. Keep this secret at the bottom of
your heart; but I think my future is fixed, and that,
according to Borget's earnest wish, I shall never share
my crown, if crown there be.
"After April, yes, I can go to Frapesle.... Some
day, _cara_, you will know, when reading the 'Études
de Mœurs' and the 'Études Philosophiques' in your
chimney-corner at Frapesle, why I write to you now so
disconnectedly. I am congested with ideas that crowd upon
me, I hunger for repose; and besides, I am weary of my
position as bird upon a branch.... It is written above
that I shall never have complete happiness, freedom,
liberty, all, except in prospect. But, dear, I can at
least say this, with all the tenderest effusions of my
heart, that in my long and painful way four noble beings
have constantly held out their hands to me, encouraged,
loved, and pitied me; that you are one of those hearts
that have in mine the unalterable privilege of priority
over all my affections....
"If Frapesle were only on my way back to Paris! but
neither Frapesle nor Angoulême now for me! I return,
three days hence, to Paris, through that wearisome
Bourgogne, to resume my yoke of misery, after refusing
from hands of love money that would have freed me in a
moment; but I will owe my gold to no one but myself, my
liberty to none but me....
"Yes, be sure of it, I will go to Frapesle, and I think
I shall obtain the company of Madame de Berny.... That
life is so much to mine! Oh! no one can form a true idea
of that deep affection which sustains my efforts and
soothes at every moment my wounds. You know something
of it--you who know friendship so well, you so kind and
affectionate...."
Now, is it possible that Balzac wrote those words with the same
pen, the ink not dry upon it, that is supposed to have written the
insinuation made on pages 112, 113? No, never!
A few months earlier, August, 1833, he had said to Madame Carraud: "You
are right, dear noble soul, in loving Madame de Berny. In each of you
are striking resemblances of thought; the same love of the right, the
same enlightened liberality, the same love of progress, same desires
for the good of the masses, same elevation of soul and thought, same
delicacy in your natures. And for that I love you much."