HONORÉ DE BALZAC (continued 7)

Tell the countess that the novel by Madame de Girardin, "The Marquis de Pontanges," is worth reading. It is the only one in six months.

Adieu; I will write when I have done something, and obtained results which will put your soul at rest about my works and my vigils. These strivings of a man with his thought, ink, and paper, have nothing very poetic about them. It is silence; it is obscurity. Lassitude, efforts, tension, headaches, weariness, all go on between the four walls of that rose-and-white boudoir which you know by its description in the "Fille aux yeux d'or." And I have nothing to console me but that distant affection,—which is angry with me at Ischl for a few words written foolishly while I was in Vienna,—and the prospect of going to seek harshness at Wierzchownia, when I shall be, in six or seven months, dying as a result of my efforts! I ought to say, like some general, I don't know who, "A few more such victories and we are beaten."

Adieu; I kiss Anna on the forehead, and send you and M. Hanski a thousand assurances of affection. Think of me as much as I think of you; that will content me. But from you no letter since June 26, and here it is July 18. You are punishing me.

Paris, August 11, 1835.

I have just returned from Berry, where I went to see Madame Carraud, who had something to say to me, and I find on my return your last letter, the one in which you speak of the visit you paid to Madame [the Duchesse de Berry] at the moment when our newspapers were representing her as inventing the infernal machine of Fieschi and awaiting its success at Aix, where she conferred about it with Berryer! Try to govern a people who, for twenty-four hours and over two hundred square leagues, can be made to believe such things as that!

You complain very amiably of the rarity of my letters, but you know I write as often as I can. I work now twenty hours a day. Can I endure it? I do not know.

I do not understand why you did not receive my parcel. The Austrian embassy took it under their protection, and it is addressed to M. de la Rochefoucauld. Inquire for it, I beg of you.

I am surprised at your enthusiasm for Lherminier. It is plain that you have not read his other works. They have prevented me from reading "Au delà du Rhin," the fragments of which published in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" did not seem to me very strong. Do not confound Lherminier and Capefigue with the roses and lilies. Leave them among the thistles, which are dear, for more reasons than one, to their Excellencies. You will oblige me to read "Au delà du Rhin;" but I fear—in spite of your fine forehead.

I did not "chant marvels" to you about Madame de Girardin's book. It is better than what she has so far done; it is not a very remarkable work, but it is literature, and not dogmatic politics.

Mon Dieu! have I not already written to you that the two somnambulists forbid you to walk? Why, then, do you walk?

Your letter saddens me; it seems cold and indifferent, as if the ice on which thrones rest had invaded you. I like it better when you quarrel with me, find fault with me. If you do not stay long in Vienna, how shall I send you the manuscripts of "Séraphita," and the "Lys dans la Vallée"? The end of "Séraphita" will not appear in the "Revue de Paris" till the third, or perhaps fourth Sunday in October. If you leave, give me some certain address at Brody; you will there find the precious package.

Mon Dieu! I need an almost exaggerated tenderness on the part of my friends, for I assure you that a cruel conviction is laying hold of me: I do not hope to bear up under such heavy toil. One may indeed be broken down by violent efforts in art, sciences, and letters, and in this increase of labor which has come upon me, driven as I am by necessity, nothing sustains me. Work, always work; nights of flame succeeding nights of flame, days of meditation to days of meditation, execution to conception, conception to execution. Little money in comparison with what I need, immensity of money in relation to the thing done. If each of my books were paid like those of Walter Scott, I could bring myself safely out of this. But, although well paid, I do not come out of it. I shall have earned twelve thousand francs in August. The "Lys" has brought me eight thousand,—half from the "Revue des deux Mondes," half from the publishers. The article in the "Conservateur" will receive three thousand francs. I shall have finished "Séraphita," begun the "Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée," and finished the last Part for Madame Bêchet. I don't know that brain, pen, and hand have ever done such a feat of strength. And there exists a dear person, sacredly beloved, who complains that the correspondence languishes, although I answer scrupulously all her letters.

It is impossible for me to speak to you in letters of Fieschi and his machine. The wise men in politics, and I myself, who am not without a certain gift of second-sight, believe that it is neither the Republic nor Carlism which is the author of the attempt. Fieschi has told nothing; of that you may be sure. He will probably never speak. Lisfranc, the surgeon, who is taking care of him in prison, told this to my sister whom he is attending. He has had much money given him. Perhaps he himself does not know who made him act.

I am on the eve of beginning a political existence. I am cowardly enough to wish to hold back in order not to risk my journey to Wierzchownia. The two Revues form a large party, for the "Revue des Deux Mondes" has fifteen hundred subscribers, five hundred being in Europe; it becomes, therefore, a power. They unite in me, take me as head, for I have vanquished many men and things by my Bedouck! They support me. I shall make two other newspapers. That will give us four, and we are to-day in treaty for a fifth! We think of calling ourselves the party of the Intelligentials, a name which lends itself but little to ridicule, and will constitute a party to which many will feel flattered to belong. To be head of this in France, that is worth thinking of. For a long time these principal lines of our work have been discussed between me and a man powerful by his will, who organized four years ago and directed the "Revue des Deux Mondes" [Charles Rabou]. We have had several conferences. The two newspapers, the two Revues enable us to skim the cream of the salons, to assimilate them, to unite the seriously able intellects; and nothing can resist this amicable league of a press which will have nothing blind, nothing disorganized about it.

You see that as I advance in my own work I act on another and parallel line, important and broader; in a word, I shall not stop short in politics any more than in literature. Time presses, events are complicating. I should have been stopped for want of a hundred thousand francs; but I think I am about to write a drama, under the name of my future secretary, to procure them. I must be done with this money question which strangles me.

You see that, in spite of your coldness, I keep you informed of the great operations of your devoted moujik. But if the law passes, the new law which requires that political articles be signed, I shall have to renounce a great deal in order to go to Paulowska. In short, we cannot have intellect for nothing!

To speak to you of my every-day affairs would be to tell you of too many great miseries. I have always an infinite number of errands, goings and comings to pay my notes and meet my engagements, without ever being able to end them. In Paris everything involves a frightful loss of time, and time is the great material of which life is made.

So, when I am bending over my paper in the light of my candles in the salon of the "Fille aux yeux d'or," or lying, weary, on the sofa, I am breathless with pecuniary difficulties, sleeping little, eating little, seeing no one,—in short, like a republican general making a campaign without bread, without shoes. Solitude, however, pleases me much. I hate society. I must finish what I have begun, and whatever turns me from it is bad, especially when it is wearisome.

You ask me, I think, about Madame de C... She has taken the thing, as I told you, tragically, and now distrusts the M... family. Beneath all this, on both sides there is something inexplicable, and I have no desire to look for the key of mysteries which do not concern me. I am with Madame de C... on the proper terms of politeness and as you yourself would wish me to be.

Do not make any comparison between the affection which you inspire, and that which you grant; for in that, those who love you have the advantage. Never believe that I cease to think of you, for even though I be occupied as I am now, it is impossible that in hours of fatigue and despair, hours when our energy relaxes, and we sit with pendent arms and sunken head, body weary and mind distressed, the wings of memory should not bear us back to moments when we refreshed our soul beneath green shades, to her who smiled to us, who has nothing in her heart that is not sincere, who is to us a spirit, who reanimates us, and renews, so to speak, by distractions of the soul, those powers to which others give the name of talent. You are all these things to me, you know it; therefore never jest about my feelings; I fear lest there mingle in it too much of gratitude.

Adieu. At Wierzchownia! I must cross Europe to show you an aging face, but a heart that is ever deplorably young, which beats at a word, at a line ill-written, an address, a perfume, as though it were not thirty-six years old.

I hope when you are regularly settled in your Wierzchownia, that you will write me the journal of your daily life and be to me more faithfully a friend, so that we shall be as if we had seen ourselves yesterday when I arrive. A thousand kind things to M. Hanski. Write me whether the parcel is lost or you received it. I am afraid it went to Ischl after you had left. Also write me by return of courier, inclosing in your letter a seal in red wax of your arms, which are to be engraved on the title-page of "Séraphita," in the edition of the "Études philosophiques" and "Le Livre Mystique." Isn't it a piece of gallantry to sound the heraldic chord which you have within you, I know not where, for it is not in your heart? Kiss Anna on the forehead for me. All tender sentiments, and recall me to the recollection of the Viennese, to whom I owe memories.

Paris, August 24, 1835.

My letters are becoming short, you say, and you no longer know whom I see. I see no one; I work so continually that I have not a moment for writing. But I do have moments of lassitude for thinking. Some day you will be astonished at what I have been able to do, and yet write to a friend at all.

Listen: to settle this point, reflect on this: Walter Scott wrote two novels a year, and was thought to have luck in his labour; he astonished England. This year I shall have produced: (1) "Le Père Goriot;" (2) "Le Lys dans la Vallée;" (3) "Les Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée;" (4) "César Birotteau." I have done three Parts of the "Études de Mœurs" for Madame Bêchet; and three Parts of the "Études Philosophiques" for Werdet. And, finally, I shall have finished the third dizain, and "Séraphita." But then, shall I be living, or in my sound mind in 1836? I doubt it. Sometimes I think that my brain is inflaming. I shall die on the breach of intellect.

These efforts have not yet saved me from my financial crisis. This fearful production of books, involving as it does such masses of proofs, has not sufficed to liquidate me. I must come to the stage; the returns of which are enormous compared to those we get from books. The intellectual battle-fields are more fatiguing to work than the fields where men die or the fields where they sow their corn; know this. France drinks brains, as once she cut off noble heads.

Yes, I can only write you a few pages, and soon I may only send you despairing ones; for courage is beginning to desert me. I am weary of this struggle without rest, of this constant production without productive success. A fine thing truly to excite moral sympathies when a mother and a brother are needing bread! A fine thing to hear silly compliments on works that are written with one's blood and do not sell, while M. Paul de Kock sells three thousand copies of his, and the "Magasin Pittoresque" sixty thousand! We shall see each other again if I triumph, but I doubt success!

Monday, 24.

Forgive me for having uttered that cry of pain, and do not be too much alarmed by it. But if I perish, carried off by excess of toil, it must not surprise you. The end of "Séraphita" cannot appear in the "Revue de Paris" before September. The corrections, the efforts are crushing. Already there have been one hundred and sixty hours' work on the first proof; and I don't know what the others will cost.

If you are kind you will write me oftener. It seems as though the air were fresher about me, my brain cooler, as if I were in an oasis, when I have read your letters. They make me think I am at some wayside haven. Fifteen days had passed without one when I received the last from Ischl. I am well advanced in corrections of the "Lys dans la Vallée." It will appear in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" while you are travelling. I think I have not done a finer work as painting of an interior. I have rewritten and finished "Gobseck." In "La Fleur des Pois" I have swung round upon myself. Hitherto, I have painted the misfortunes of wives; it is time to show also the sorrows of husbands.

Here is something singular: it is that I was composing this work while you were thinking of its leading idea, and during the time it took your letter in which you spoke of the sufferings that fall upon men to reach me! Is it not enough to make one believe that space does not exist and that we had talked together?

Adieu, I have no more time to write. But, as I told you, I have time to think, and I think of you in all my hours of recreation. I must earn money to go to the Ukraine, for in order to travel tranquilly I cannot owe anything here.

Adieu; remember me to all about you.

Chaillot, October 11, 1835.

Do not be surprised at my silence; it is easily explained by the abundant work I have done. For the last forty days I have risen at midnight and gone to bed at six o'clock. Between those periods there has been nothing but work, ardent, passionate work,—the desperate struggle of battle-fields.

Do me the favour not to believe that the friendship you grant me is the common friendship of women; consider quand même to be the noblest of mottoes. Yes, I shall not perish; yes, I shall triumph!

But you ought to have received two letters through Sina, one of which carried to you the dedication. By the first of next March I shall owe nothing to any one. And thus will end this horrible battle between misfortune and me. My wealth will be my pen and my liberty.

Yesterday, returning along the quays on foot, meditating the corrections of "Séraphita," I saw, in a carriage that went by rapidly, Madame Kisseleff. Imagine my astonishment! She was returning no doubt from Bellevue, the residence of the Austrian embassy.

Another piece of news. By getting up at midnight and going to bed at six o'clock for forty days I am beginning to get thin during my eighteen hours' vigil and toil. I wish the "Lys" and "Séraphita" and the new "Louis Lambert" to be the culminating points of my literary life so far.

We are reprinting the "Médecin de campagne." I am having a travelling-carriage built; and I think of buying a house, so that when you come to Paris I can offer you a whole one to yourself, in thanks for the hospitality you promise me at Wierzchownia. M. de Custine is in Paris, faithless man!

Will you permit me to have a watch made for you in Geneva? I will bring it to you with the manuscripts that belong to you. I will thus repair the disaster of your journey; you are too far from Geneva to do it yourself.

Take care of yourself. Play Grandet and Benassis. I will be your critic when I come, as you are mine on my works.

Oh! I entreat you, have confidence in me. Do not be vexed with me for anything, neither the brevity, nor the careless scribbling of my letters. I must work on,—nothing can be allowed to wait; and I have always around me three or four volumes in proofs to read; and besides this, financial matters. In truth, I do not live; but, in my most weary hours, I can rest my head upon the mantel-piece and lose myself in dreams, like a woman.

A thousand kind memories to all, and to you all the friendships. I expect to hear from you on "Le Lys dans la Vallée." I worked long over that book. I wanted to use the language of Massillon, and that instrument is heavy to wield.

Ardent wishes for all that is dear to you; my friendship to the Grand Marshal.

Chaillot, October, 1835.

I have received your letter from Brody, and thank you from the bottom of my heart. The more you forbid me to go to Wierzchownia, under pretext of too great fatigue, the quicker I shall go. But be easy; I cannot breathe the air of liberty, or feel myself free of chains, before April, May, or June. But I shall surely go and do "Philippe II." and "Marie Touchet" at Wierzchownia tranquilly; or a few good works which will give me my financial independence,—the three francs a day that the dethroned Napoleon wanted.

Yes, Madame Kisseleff is in Paris. Happy Monsieur E...! I am out of society; until my liberation I see no one, and I work as I told you. You will not read till you reach Wierzchownia "Le Livre Mystique," which is composed of my new "Louis Lambert" and "Séraphita." The Emperor Nicholas will not forbid those books.

I should like to be able to buy the house of which I spoke to you. It would be a good investment, and I should be forced to be economical.

I am getting a bad opinion of your firmness. In proportion as you approach your caret patria your sublime resolutions as to government vanish, and you are becoming once more the great lady, creole and indolent. Come, be queen of Wierzchownia; do not be an unpublished Benassis at Paulowska. Be, rather, an intellectual growth, develop that fine forehead where shines the most luminous of divine lights.

I wish to reach Wierzchownia by travelling through Germany,—that country worthy of the renown against which we lie so much. From now to seven months hence I shall have accomplished great works. "César Birotteau" will have been followed by many others. But the "Lys"! If the "Lys" is not a female breviary, I am nothing. The virtue in it is sublime, and not wearying. To be dramatic with virtue, to be ardent and use the language and style of Massillon,—let me tell you, that is a problem, to solve which, in the first number, cost three hundred hours of corrections, four hundred francs to the "Revue" and to me a trouble in my liver. Dr. Nacquart put me into a bath for three hours a day, on ten pounds of grapes, and wanted me not to work; but I do work all night.

Madame de Berny is much better; she has borne a last shock, the illness of a beloved son whose brother has gone to bring him home from Belgium. I was there to lessen her sorrows. She told me she could say but one word about my "Lys": that it was indeed the Lily of the Valley. From her lips that is great praise; she is very hard to satisfy. The first number is finished and I have two others; at twenty days apiece, that makes forty days. Sainte-Beuve worked four years at "Volupté." Compare that!

I send you many heartfelt wishes, and beg you to recall me to the memory of all. Your paper-knife broke in my hand; it almost cut me; I felt grieved about it. Besides which, I don't know where the little pencil-case of Geneva has hid itself; I am grieved about that also; but it may be found in some pocket. I am so full of ideas and work that here is distraction beginning. But the heart has none, only the head.

Chaillot, November 22, 1835.

Do not be surprised at the number of days since I have written to you. This interruption is due to the sharpness of the conflict, the necessity of a work that takes days and nights. I am in fear of succumbing. Also, events have become very serious in my family. Something had to be done about my brother,—get him off to India, or induce him to go.

You, so little concerned about money, you will never know, until I relate them to you by the fireside in your steppe, the difficulties there are in paying ten thousand francs a month, without other resource than one's pen. Still, I have almost the hope of arriving, if not free, at least with honour safe and no misfortune, at December 31.

You will comprehend nothing of these two months until you see the frightful labour on "Séraphita" and the "Lys" bound in green and placed upon your bookshelves. Then you will ask yourself, seeing that mass of proofs and corrections, if there were years in those months, days in those hours.

Madame Bêchet has paid us our thirty-three thousand francs; and we are offered forty-five thousand for the thirteen following volumes, which will complete, in twenty-five volumes, the first edition of the "Études de Mœurs." That is how our affairs stand now. We owe thirty-five thousand francs, and we possess, in expectation, fifty thousand. There's the account of our household. The sole point now is, not to die of fatigue on the day when the burden becomes endurable!

To-morrow, Sunday, 22, the first number of the "Lys dans la Vallée" appears in the "Revue de Paris." But learn from one fact the nature of my struggle and my daily combats. Since my return from Vienna the "Revue de Paris" made immense sacrifices for "Séraphita." After six months of toil and money spent, "Séraphita," finished, was to have appeared to-morrow. Suddenly the director told me it was incomprehensible, and that he preferred not to publish it on account of the long interruption which had occurred between the first numbers and the end, with a hundred other reasons which I spare you. I at once proposed to pay him his costs and take back my article. Accepted. I rushed to Werdet, and told him about it. He rushed to Buloz with the money; and the wrath of publisher and author is such that "Séraphita" has gone from one printing-press to the other and that the "Livre Mystique," will appear on Saturday, 28th. The literature of the periodical press will seize upon the singular anecdote of this refusal; it will make such an uproar, inasmuch as the editor of the "Revue" is not liked, that Werdet feels sure of selling "Séraphita" in a single day.[1] There is a copy on Chinese paper for you, besides the collection of manuscripts and proofs. But such displays of force require prodigious efforts: they are like the campaigns of Italy.

You understand that in a literary campaign like mine society is impossible. Therefore I have openly renounced it. I go nowhere, I answer no letter and no invitation. I only allow myself the Italian opera once a fortnight. Thursday last I saw Madame Kisseleff there. Alas! how little effect her beauty made! If you only knew how everything becomes belittled in Paris! In spite of her protecting passion for Poggi, she understands what I tried to tell her in Vienna, and Poggi now gives her the impression of a full stop in the Encyclopædia after hearing Rubini.

I cannot tell you the memories that assailed me when I found myself beside some one from Vienna, a friend of yours, and listening to the "Somnambula" which recalled to me two of our evenings. The Princess Schonberg was there also. I paid a visit of politeness to her; and I shall also go and see Madame Kisseleff once.

So, my life is a strange monotony, and your letters are so rare that I have no longer the regular event that varied it,—your letters, that always came of a Monday. I have no longer my good Monday. I can only tell you about my work and my payments,—a chant as monotonous as that of the waves of ocean surging upon a granite rock.

I am going to dine in town to get you an autograph of Sir Sidney Smith, the hero of Saint-Jean-d'Acre. I will also send you one of Alphonse Karr.

Sunday, 22.

I beg of you to number your letters, beginning with the year 1836, as I do myself with this one; so that we may mutually know if our letters reach us safely; and when we want special answers to any question, the mention of the number will settle everything.

I have had, and I still have, violent griefs on the side of Nemours. Madame de Berny was decidedly better; her dreadful palpitations were relieved. There were hopes of saving her. Suddenly, the only son who resembles her, a young man handsome as the day, tender and spiritual like herself, like her full of noble sentiments, fell ill, and ill of a cold which amounts to an affection of the lungs. The only child out of nine with whom she can sympathize! Of the nine, only four remain; and her youngest daughter has become hysterically insane, without any hope of cure. That blow nearly killed her. I was correcting the "Lys" beside her; but my affection was powerless even to temper this last blow. Her son (twenty-three years old) was in Belgium, where he was directing an establishment of great importance. His brother Alexandre went to fetch him, and he arrived a month ago, in a deplorable condition. This mother, without strength, almost expiring, sits up at night to nurse Armand. She has nurses and doctors. She implores me not to come and not to write to her. You know how at moments, when all within us is tension, the slightest shock, whether it comes from tried affection or from clumsiness, breaks us down. What a situation! So that I have a double anxiety in that direction, where I live so much.

My mother and my brother give me other anxieties of so cruel and disastrous a kind that I do not speak to you of them, for they are not of a nature to be written. One must have much faith in the future to live thus,—to take up, every morning, one's heavy burden. My friends have all limited means, and cannot relieve my financial situation, which twenty-five thousand francs would render endurable, were they only lent to me for six months. I must still march on to the last moment in triple distresses,—those of my family, those of my work, those of my finances. I don't speak of calumnies or of the wretches who throw sticks between my legs when I run. That is nothing. That which would kill an artist I scarcely consider an annoyance.

I have of late been twenty-six hours in my study without leaving it. I get the air at that window which commands all Paris, which I will some day command.

I have received your last letter written from your desolate land. I reckon that by this time you have reached Wierzchownia, reviewed your wheat-fields, resumed your habits, and that you can surely write to me twice a month. Following your custom, you have given me your address very imperfectly, and that of the Chanoinesse with a perfection quite hieroglyphic. Write and tell her that for me it is as impossible to write to her as it would be to take the moon in my teeth. Society people, the rich, the idle, imagine nothing of the busy lives of artists and poor men. It is humorous to a degree. Especially do they believe in our ingratitude, our forgetfulness; they never view us as toiling night and day. To explain myself wholly, think of those seventeen volumes manufactured by me without help; compute that that makes three hundred feuilles [4800 octavo pages], each read more than ten times, and that makes three thousand [48,000], besides the conception and the writing; and also that beyond the will to do I must have du bonheur [the luck of inspiration].

So, whatever they tell you of me, laugh at it, and think of this, the proof of which exists. One of my bitterest literary enemies says of me: "Talent, genius, his incredible power of will, I can understand, I can believe it; but where, and how, does he manufacture Time?"

Ah! madame, I have brought myself, I, such a sleeper, to do without sleep; I sleep only four hours; and I, so eager, so much a child, I have resolved my whole life into dreams of hope. I live by suffering, work, and hope only. My fortune will be made by three months spent at Wierzchownia without care, without anxieties, in writing two fine plays.

By the singular will of Providence your friendship is joined to the three halts I have made during the last three years. Neufchâtel, Geneva, Vienna, have been to me three oases. There, I thought of nothing; I renewed my strength. You will see me arrive dying at Wierzchownia, and I shall leave it living.

Adieu; my friendly regards to the Benassis of Wierzchownia. My compliments to the three young ladies. A kiss on Anna's forehead. Be without anxiety as to the manner in which I shall make the journey. I shall come alone, without anything to contest at the custom-house, without books, without papers,—only linen and clothes. I will write you, in advance, the names of the books I shall need, to see if you have them in your library; that is the only tax I shall place upon you. I shall not bring a score of heavy books. I have all my intellectual riches in my head, and all my treasures in my heart. You must have indulgence for my one coat, my poet's wardrobe. I shall go light as an arrow, rapid as an arrow, but heavy with hopes, with pleasures to take in that chimney-corner by which you entice me.

Chaillot, November 25, 1835.

If "Séraphita" is not for sale on Saturday there will be no winter for me in Russia; Werdet is ruined if "Séraphita," that is to say, "Le Livre Mystique," is not a great success, and if the second and third Parts of the "Études Philosophiques" do not appear in December and January. I lose six thousand francs with Madame Bêchet if her last Part does not appear in February. Keep the above before your eyes so that you may not blame me. I must fulfil my engagements or I die, killed at last by grief. To write a letter is impossible. People who lead a fixed life, by whom the want of money is never felt, are unable to judge of the lives of those who work night and day, and have to beg for the money they earn.

I had forty thousand francs to pay after my return from Vienna, and before this coming December. Therefore judge what efforts and resources I needed to make head against that without credit; so that what you say to me in the letter I received to-day seems to me very singular. You do not know the bitterness of the epigram which your fear has made upon a poor artist, in hiding on account of the National Guard, who for five months has gone to bed at six o'clock (with rare exceptions) to rise at midnight, and who is working superhumanly to earn a few months' freedom in order to go and see you. To ask me for letters under these circumstances is as if you had been a Frenchman and asked some colonel to write to you during the retreat from Moscow—with this difference, that the warmth of my soul can never lessen, and triumph will take the place of defeat.

Mon Dieu! I can't foresee any peace under three months, unless through fortunate events that are impossible: exhausted editions that would give me money, or falling ill myself. Then I would write to you. But would you not rather have my silence, which tells you I am working fruitfully, and bringing nearer the happy day of my freedom? Have I made you too great in counting on your intelligent friendship to divine these things?

Here comes Werdet with ten feuilles, one hundred and sixty pages, to correct! I have, since I wrote letter No. 1, now on its way, quarrelled with the Revues, for the same causes that I quarrelled with Pichot; you know them.

Well, adieu. I have lived a few minutes with you in the pretty home of your sister, for you are indeed a good painter.

Though I am not ill, I am horribly fatigued,—more than I have ever been. I have not been able to go and breathe my native air of Touraine, which would revive me.

A thousand caressing things. Never doubt your poor future guest again.

P. S. I have lost in a diligence my Geneva pencil-case with the Ave. I did not have the luck that you had with your watch. I have not recovered it.

Chaillot, December 18, 1835.

I receive to-day the letter in which you tell me you have read the first number of the "Lys." When you receive this letter you will doubtless have read the second. (Shameful cheatery has sold them to Bellizard, and I shall prosecute such thefts; that is, if I have the courage to protest against a fraud which hastens the enjoyment that you say you take in my things.)[1] You will understand better the three hundred hours. I leave the enervating corrections of the third number to write to you.

You are right in your philological criticisms. I perceive my faults every day, and correct them. You will find, some day, a great difference between the acknowledged work and all preceding editions.

Imagine my happiness! Thomassy [a collaborator of Augustin Thierry] came to embrace me after reading "Séraphita." He told me that he regarded the "Livre Mystique" as one of the masterpieces of the French language, and that he saw no fault to find with it.

There must be some faults still in "La Grenadière;" but these last stains upon the white robe shall be removed by the soap of patience and the wash-board of courage, which love of art for art's sake gives. It is useless to tell you what the "Lys" has cost me. I have now spent fifteen days on the third number, and I need eight more.

A dreadful misfortune has happened to me. The fire in the rue du Pot-de-Fer destroyed the hundred and sixty first pages, printed at my cost, of the third dizain of the "Contes Drolatiques," and five hundred volumes, which cost me four francs each, of the first and second dizains. Not only do I lose an actual amount of three thousand five hundred francs in money and interest, but I also lose an agreement for six thousand francs, on which I counted to pay my expenses at the end of the year, which is now broken, because I have nothing to give Werdet and an associate in this affair who bought the three dizains.

I must face this misfortune, which comes at the moment when hope was no longer a vain word, when gleams of blue were lighting up my heaven, beside the lovely form so rarely seen there. Well! I have always shown an iron front to trouble; there's nought but happiness which breaks me down—for I ill know how to bear it. Madame de Berny has kept silence since this fatal event. That is another trouble. And my journey to Wierzchownia recedes.

You have no idea of our civilization; the trouble it is to do business; what distances, what visits wasted on moneyed people; their caprices, which make the promise of one day withdrawn the next! My life is a torrent. I sleep only five hours. To go and see you would be a rest, no matter how fatiguing a rapid journey might be.

I have few events to tell you. I have dined once with Madame Kisseleff; and once at the Austrian embassy, and I went to a rout at the latter place. One must keep up relations there. I have seen Princess Schonberg. But I do no more than is necessary.

I am to have two secretaries, two young men who espouse the hopes of my political life, which, alas! is dawning. I am embarrassed how to tell you when, how, and why, because you have forbidden the subject;[2] but you will guess all when I tell you that five days ago I bought a political newspaper. These young men are: (1) The Comte de Belloy, friend of Sandeau, nephew of the cardinal; twenty-four years old, face happy, wit abundant, conduct bad, poverty dreadful, talent and future rich, confidence and devotion entire, nobility immemorial. (2) A Comte de Gramont, one of whose ancestors went security for a Duc de Bourgogne. He does not belong to the family of the Ducs de Grammont. I know him less than I do de Belloy. These are my two aides-de-camp.

You will be surprised to see Sandeau excluded. But Sandeau is not, like these gentlemen, legitimist; he does not share my opinions. That says all. I have done everything to convert him to the doctrines of absolute power, he is as silly as a propagandist.

You see that here is a second mine; a second cause for arduous work. You see also that Bedouck is not a talisman without force in me. But it needs much money, and still more talent. I don't know where to get the money.

You are very right to economize; and I do not understand why you do not beat M. Hanski into sending away forty out of his eighty workmen. Shickler and all our great seigneurs here do not employ more than forty.

Reserve your sublime analytical thoughts to act like your neighbour, the Countess Branicka. Money can do everything to vanquish material obstacles. Be miserly by juxtaposition; miserly with an object.

My brother-in-law is negotiating the purchase of my house. I desire it extremely. It fulfils all the conditions that you require in a dwelling. How I wish that you could so arrange your affairs that you might be in it three years hence, without M. Hanski having one anxiety. Is not M. Mitgislas P... happy as a king? He has all the wealth that he wants, and possesses enough in the public funds to bring down the stock by a sale! Nothing is easier to administer and collect than such revenues, nothing harder than literary revenues, although they are so simple that nothing is simpler!

"If you love me" (Anna's style) you will make me a pretty little daily journal, not a periodical one; so that every eight days I shall receive your letter, and mine will cross yours. Can you do less for a man who writes only to you in all the world?

As for my present life, I have returned to the rue des Batailles. I go to bed at seven and get up at two; between those two periods see me in the boudoir of the "Fille aux yeux d'or," seated at a table and working without other distraction than to go to my window and contemplate that Paris which I will some day subjugate. And here I am for three months, until my house is bought, and my new arrangements for lodging and living made.[3]

I imagine that Anna is well, that you flourish in la cara patria, that M. Hanski is busy, that Mesdemoiselles Séverine and Denise are at their best, that Mademoiselle Borel has restored her good graces to the author of "Séraphita," and prays God for him after praying for you and Anna, that all goes well, even Pierre, that the confectioner makes you delicious things, and, in short, that nothing is lacking in your Eden but a poor foreigner who glides there in thought. At night, when the fire crackles or a spark darts from a candle, say to yourself, "'Tis he!" Think, then, that a too ardent memory has crossed the spaces and fallen on your table like an aërolite detached from a distant sphere.

Farewell again. I would that I could say à bientôt. When you begin the third number of the "Lys" you will know that if the first pages are bad it is because you have taken the time necessary to make them good, and that nothing is sweeter to me than to abandon for you my author's vanity and the public.

IV.

LETTERS DURING 1836.

Chaillot, January 18, 1836.

In spite of my entreaty, your letter, which I received to-day, after nearly one month's interregnum, is neither dated nor numbered; so that it is impossible to answer each other understandingly at such a distance.

Your letter contains two reproaches which have keenly affected me; and I think I have already told you that a few chance expressions would suffice to make me go to Wierzchownia, which would be a misfortune in my present perilous situation; but I would rather lose everything than lose a true friendship.

In the first place, as for letters, count up those that you have written me, and my replies; the balance will be much in my favour. When you speak of the rarity of my letters you make me think that some must be lost, and I feel uneasy. In short, you distrust me at a distance, just as you distrusted me near by, without any reason. I read quite despairingly the paragraph of your letter in which you do the honours of my heart to my mind, and sacrifice my whole personality to my brain.

I laughed much at your reckoning of my work by quantity, not quality. I laughed, because I thought of your analytical forehead; I laughed, because I thought that at the moment when I was reading those falsely accusing pages, you, perhaps, were holding in your hand "Séraphita" and making me in the depths of your heart some honourable amends.

Ah! cara, if you were in the secret of those work-sessions, which begin at midnight and end at midday, if you knew that the new edition of the "Médecin de campagne" and the second of the "Livre Mystique" have cost me six hundred hours, that I must deliver February 1 the manuscripts of two new octavo volumes, and that I have business and lawsuits besides, you would see, with pain, that you have accused a friend falsely, that "Marie Touchet" is going on, and that—that—etc.

To-day, I have so much on my hands that I am compelled to extreme rapidity. I am irreconcilably parted from the two Revues. I have in my own hands "La Chronique de Paris," a newspaper that comes out twice a week, and expresses my royalist sympathies. I have begun the year by "La Messe de l'Athée," a work conceived, written, and printed in a single night. I must deliver in February a work entitled "L'Interdiction," which is equivalent to seventy pages of the "Revue de Paris." This is over and above what I have to do for Madame Bêchet and Werdet. In two months I shall have ended the agreement with Madame Bêchet, and be free of her.

In the enumeration which you make of my works you count as nothing the enormous corrections which the reprints cost me. Is it not sad to have to count up with you,—to make for friendship calculations such as I have to make with my publishers? You took amiss what I said to you in asking you not to cause me false sorrows, because I was bending beneath the weight of real ones. To tell you those, I should have to write you volumes. They are such that the success of "Séraphita" did not bring into my soul the slightest joy. Did there not come a moment when Sisyphus neither wept nor smiled, but became of the nature of the rocks he was ever lifting?

My life is becoming too much that of a steam-engine. Toil to-day, toil to-morrow; always toil, and small results. 1836 is begun. I shall soon be thirty-seven years old. I have six months before me, during which I have accumulated fifty thousand francs to pay. Those paid, I shall have paid off what I owe to strangers. There remains my mother. But I shall have spent nine years of life at the edge of a table, with an inkstand before me. I have had but three diversions, permit me to say three happinesses: my three journeys,—three recreations snatched, stolen, perilously torn from the midst of my battles, leaving the enemy to make headway; three halts, during which I breathed!

And you find fault with the poor soldier who has resumed his life of abnegation, his life militant, the poor writer who has not taken a penful of ink these two years without looking at your visiting card placed below his inkstand.

No, surely, I would not have you hide from me a single one of the sad or gay thoughts that come to you; but while I sympathize keenly with all that is of you, believe that I suffer horribly from the worries that you make for yourself about me, by supposing facts or sentiments that are false or foreign to my nature. Then it is that I measure the distance that parts us, and drop my head. The wound is given, here, at the moment when at Wierzchownia you ought, on receiving a letter from me, to regret having been too quick to blame a heart which is wholly devoted to you. Here are explanations enough.

I am very desirous that you should have the second edition of the "Livre Mystique" in which I have made some changes, but all is not done yet in the matter of corrections. Madame de Berny sent me her observations too late, and I could not rewrite the second chapter, entitled "Séraphita." She alone had the courage to tell me that the angel talked too much like a grisette; that what seemed pretty so long as the end was not known is paltry. I see now that I must synthesize woman, as I have all the rest of the book. Unhappily, I need six months to remake this part, and during that time noble souls will all blame me for that fault which will be so obvious to their eyes.

I send Hammer a copy of the second edition, in memory of his kind deeds and his friendly reception.

Did I tell you that the Princess Schonberg has put her child here in the house where I am, on account of its vicinity to the Orthopædic hospital? Yesterday I met her in the garden and we talked Vienna; she did not tell me a word about you, but much about Loulou. She said that Lady ... had again run away with a Greek, that Prince Alfred had prevented her from getting beyond Stuttgard. The husband arrived, fought a duel with the Greek, and took back his wife. What a singular wife!

Forgive me this gossip. I was so happy in the solitude of this house, rue des Batailles! The landlord said to me one morning that a Prince Schudenberg had come. I replied, "No, there are only Counts of Schuttenberg." The next day on the staircase I saw a German valet, who looked at me, smiling, and three days later Prince Schonberg told me, at Madame Appony's, that he had put his heir under the care of our good air and garden.

If the play of "Marie Touchet" succeeds I can buy the house I have in view. With what delight I shall enjoy a home of my own! But the damned seller will not accept my terms of payment; he wants twenty-five thousand francs down, and I don't know when I shall have them. If I earn them in six months the house may then have been sold. Well, one must submit.

I have still twenty days' more work on the "Médecin de campagne;" only one volume is printed; I must finish the second. I hope that this time the text will be definitive, and that it will be pure, without spot or blemish.

You see, nothing can be more monotonous than my life in the midst of this whirling Paris. I refuse all invitations; laboriously I do my work; I amass—to win a few days' freedom. One more journey that I want to make! Some nights more of toil and perhaps I can go and see you about the middle of this year. It cannot be until after I clear my debt. I would not show you even once that anxious face that so struck you the day you were singing and I was looking out across the Waltergarten.

No, you never spoke to me of that Roger. You commit little sins, which, like spoilt children, you do not own till a long time afterwards.

At this moment I am a prey to the horrible spasmodic cough I had at Geneva, and which, since then, returns every year at the same time. Dr. Nacquart declares that I ought to pay attention to it, and that I got something, which he does not define, in crossing the Jura. The good doctor is going to study my lungs. This year I suffer with it more than usual. If I am at Wierzchownia this time next year you will have an old man to nurse.

I am in despair at the delay the "Revue de Paris" makes in bringing out the "Lys dans la Vallée." No work ever cost more labour. The "Lys," "Séraphita," the "Médecin de campagne" are the three gulfs into which I have flung the most nights, money, and thoughts. The finest part, the end, is that which has not yet appeared.

We are reprinting at this moment the fourth volume of the "Scènes de la Vie privée," in which I have made great changes in relation to the general meaning in "Même Histoire;" so that Hélène's flight with the murderer is rendered more probable. It took me a long time to make these last knots.

To sum up your questions: my health is not good just now; business matters are multiplying; work also; I am under suspicion by you, whereas I am exterminating myself to earn money here. No pleasures, many annoyances. Nothing has varied since my last letter, neither my heart nor my occupations. I am awaiting some news. I have imagined a thousand evils; I fancied that Anna, or you, or M. Hanski were ill. I now learn that you really are suffering with your heart. Remember all that I have written to you about it. Avoid emotions, do not make violent exertions, and no harm will come of it. As for the cure, when you come to Paris it will be completed; we have physicians very learned on that point. It needs digitalis in doses adapted to the temperament.

January 22.

Since the night I last wrote to you, this letter has lain here without my having one moment in which to finish or close it. This wheel, this machine of a life must be seen to be understood. Werdet saw the mother of the woman who is near him burned on New Year's day. He tried to put out the flames and burned his hands. The poor old woman died in ten minutes; and Werdet has had to keep his bed twenty days to cure his burns. I had to do his business for him, for Werdet is I. I had to obtain five thousand francs for myself and eight thousand for him. We have ten months' distress before us, both he and I. The last four days have been spent in marches and countermarches. What hours lost! I am never at home except to sleep a few hours. I have a dreadful month of February before me, full of work that will not return me a farthing.

Well, I must bid you adieu, to you and all those about you; work is waiting; the case of proofs is full, and I am in arrears with several folios of copy still to do. I have more work than generals on a campaign, but such work is obscure. You can imagine that a soldier on a campaign cannot write, and yet you expect a writer forced along on four lines of combat to be liberal of his letters. I assure you that the problem of my time is more than ever insoluble. When I am with you, ask me why, and I will tell you. As for writing it, it would take volumes, and I must now rely on the confidence that should exist between friends to take my devotion, my testimonies of heart and soul under their simplest expression; certain that that expression will suffice, in spite of distance, to make us comprehend each other. Is that true? Say yes—"if you love me."

Adieu; accept the wishes that I make for your happiness such as you wish it. If I were God! Ah!

You are not ignorant of how rare lofty sentiments are; I do not speak here of talents; no, I mean sentiments enlightened by pure intelligence.

Did I tell you that the little silver pencil-case for which I cared so much, and on which I had the Ave engraved, that gracious and religious Faber, I lost from my pocket while asleep in a public conveyance? I will not have another; I cared for that one so much! It fell from my pocket; it needed a chain; I thought of that too late. The lizard chain of my watch is taken off. It was so easily broken; it caught in everything. I return it to you in idea; Lecointe has put a cassolette upon it. I shall keep it for you preciously, and you will some day wear it.

Excuse me for talking of such trifles, but I wanted to explain the absence of the Ave—a prayer I often make.

Dear, I would that when looking at your flowers you heard the gentle words my heart is saying at this moment to you; I would that in breathing their perfume you might feel the spirit that consoles; I would that the silence were eloquent; that all Nature in what she has that is most endearing were my interpreter. But these, perhaps, are not all the things we should require; we should live too happy in their contact. We need to flee to loftier regions, to the bare and stormy summits, where all will make us humble by its grandeur and by the demonstration of vast struggles. You could find in what I do not tell you of myself something analogous. But I have not the sad courage to uncover all my wounds.

Well, adieu. Like the fisherman in Walter Scott's "Antiquary," I must saw my plank without risking the blunder of an inch; I must write. Oh! cara, write! when one's soul is mourning, and when the sister-soul is mourning also, and something is lost to us of our faith in losing the soul that inspired it!—Let us bury that secret in our hearts.

There is an autograph for you in the envelope of this letter. It is that of Silvio Pellico.

A thousand greetings to M. Hanski and to those about you. May heaven dictate to them the honey words, the tender silences, the grace of heart, the religious efforts of the mind, which are so needed in those terrible transition days which we call bad days, sad days.

Accept a very affectionate pressure of the hand.

Paris, January 30, 1836.

Cara, I have this moment received yours of December 24 (old style), in which you speak to me of Princess G..., "that little stupid." I should have laughed at your suspicions, if you had not revealed your displeasure in those three furious pages, the fury of which I adore. I have never but once set foot in the house of that "little stupid," for, without having read your adorable advice relative to society, I have followed it to the letter. All that you say convinces me that our thoughts are identical. Let me repeat, for the last time, that in the situation in which I am placed I am the subject of gossip and calumnies without foundation, and that those who wish to pull me down will never know the secrets of my heart. I can deliver up my works to them, I can let them say all they like about my person, and about my business affairs; but all that you do not hear directly from me about the matters that trouble you, believe it to be false. I hasten to write you these few words so as not to delay this letter, so important to friendship.

I saw Madame Kisseleff at the Opera, and she talked to me of you and of your brother; she begged me to remember her to you with many amiable expressions. She has never said any harm of you; on the contrary, she praised me much for my attachment to you, without saying anything to lessen it. But she did say of your brother what you told me yourself in Vienna. I share the grief you express to me on the fatal event; but I am not entirely of your opinion. Among specialists, judgments go more to the root of things. If Count Henry is all that you say of him, you should consider the nervous disposition of poets, of men who live in thought. Yes, the whole world will condemn him, and especially for the last phases of the affair. But believe that there are some souls who, without absolving him—for a man cannot be absolved for a failure of moral character—will pity him as they pity "Louis Lambert," of whom you speak. Without comparing your brother to a seer, there are in the nature of men of mobile and changeable impressions, lacunæ, lassitudes, solutions of continuity under the pressure of misfortunes, of which we should take account. As judge, I should cut him off, as you do, from communion with the faithful; but I should open to him my poet's heart and comfort him, as you are doing. Yes, cara, the union of talent, genius, poesy, love, and a great, indomitable character, a rectangular will, is a miracle of nature—possibly an effect of temperament. I will not go farther on this dolorous subject.

The "Chronique de Paris" takes all my time. I sleep only five hours. But if your affairs and M. Hanski's are doing well, mine are beginning to prosper. Subscriptions are received in miraculous abundance, and the shares I possess have risen to a value of ninety thousand francs capital in one month.[1] It is impossible for me to go into society; I am even uncivil. I hardly see my most intimate friends. If you were a witness of my life you would pity it. But my thirst for work is in direct ratio to my thirst for independence. I have renewed negotiations for the Beaujon house. My lawsuit will be called before the court to-morrow. It is now five o'clock in the morning. I am preparing the means of defence for my lawyer. I thank you much for your good long letter. There's a letter—a pretty letter—in in which affection scolds, and caresses as it scolds, but tells me all that you are doing!

I have broken the last frail relations of politeness with Madame de Castries. She makes her society now of MM. Jules Janin and Sainte-Beuve, who have so outrageously wounded me. It seemed to me bad taste, and now I am happily out of it.

"Marie Touchet" is getting on. You ought to have "Séraphita" by this time. The second edition of the "Livre Mystique" appears on February 1. I am sorry you should read the bad edition before this one, though this has faults and must still undergo some changes. Werdet is quite pleased; yesterday he sold a hundred and fifty copies to foreign countries; he hopes to sell as many more from that advertisement. I have ten days more of corrections on the "Médecin de campagne," third edition, 8vo. Ask for it; it is fine, in type, printing, and paper; except for a few imperceptible blemishes, the text is settled, fixed, as that of "Louis Lambert" is fixed. "Louis Lambert" is much changed; it is now complete. The last thoughts accord with "Séraphita;" all is co-ordinated. Moreover, the gap between college and Blois is filled up; you will see that.

The "Messe de l'Athée" has had the greatest success in the "Chronique de Paris." To-morrow the first chapter of the "Interdiction" will appear. And you think I court society! I think it is you who are the "little stupid."

A thousand pretty flowers of affection; take them, gather them, wear them on that intelligent brow, which refuses only one comprehension, that of understanding the extent of the affections you inspire. You saw them in Vienna, you doubt them in Paris. Oh! that is not right; above all, when it concerns one who is devoted to you at all points, like your poor moujik.

Do not fail to remember me to every one about you; and M. Hanski will find here affectionate compliments, and all friendly things.

Paris, March 8, 1836.

Nothing can describe my anxiety. It is now more than a month since I have heard from you. A silence of a month can only have been caused by some grave event. Is M. Hanski ill? Is it Anna? Is it you? What has happened? Are you so busy at Kiew that you have not found a single little moment to give to so old and devoted a friendship? Has a letter been lost? Has some foolish story reached you, like that of a journey to Saint-Petersburg?—for, in my presence, a person who did not know me, but who said he did, declared I was there.[1] Others assert that I am in Naples.

The truth being, that I work more now than I ever did in my life; and that never before have I had such a desire for independence. Rossini encouraged me by telling me he had never breathed at his ease until the day when he was certain of having bread. I am not there yet.

My suit with the "Revue" gives me many worries. I must sustain the "Chronique," master my financial crisis, work for Werdet, and work for Madame Bêchet. It is enough to die of! And, speaking literally, I am killing myself. Physical strength is beginning to fail me. If I had the money I should be on my way, for there is no other resource for me than a journey of three months, at the least.

You have not said anything to me of "Séraphita." Another month, and the true "Lys dans la Vallée" will be finished and out. In the opinion of all critics, and mine, it will be my most perfect work in style, regarding "Séraphita" and "Louis Lambert" as exceptions.

It appears that they are making from Dantan's bad caricature a horrible lithograph of me for foreign countries, and "Le Voleur" has published one also. This obliges me to have myself painted, and abandon my habit of modesty. After examining the present condition of French art, and in default of your dear Grosclaude, who left me in the lurch, I have elected Louis Boulanger to portray me. As you wished for a copy of that which Grosclaude desired to do, I ask you candidly if you would like a second original of the portrait which Boulanger is to make? I ask this the more easily as the price is very much less. I think he does not ask more than fifteen hundred francs, which will be full length, the size of nature. If you would like the bust only, say so.

I am at this moment in a state of moral and physical exhaustion of which I can give you no idea. I have even extreme sufferings. Every evening an inflammation of the eyes warns me that I have gone beyond my strength, and yet I was never so much in need of it.

Never have I gone through such extremes of hope and of despair. Sometimes the affair of the "Cent Contes Drolatiques" (which would wholly liquidate me) seems to be settled, sometimes it will not be settled at all. Sometimes my money matters have an air of arranging themselves, and then all fails. Around me my friends are in trouble. Madame de Berny has not yet been willing since the death of her son to see me. She sees no one but her eldest son. My heavy cold has returned. Body and soul are wrung. The newspapers are full of redoubled hate and malevolence. That is nothing to me, but there are many men who would not be as philosophical.

And now, to crown this poesy of ill, this sorrowful situation, you leave me one whole month without letters, to run the gamut of suppositions and believe daily that some grievous news will reach me. For several days past, life, thus made, seems odious. Nine years of toil without immediate result, without means of living obtained—this kills me, in addition to all the other causes of distress I have enumerated.

I have not been out three times this winter. I dined with Madame Kisseleff, and once with Madame Appony, and I went to a fancy ball given by an Englishman, and, six times in all, to the Italian Opera. But nothing distracts my mind or amuses me. Since the pleasure that I had in travelling so rapidly to Vienna I have tasted the delights of Nature seen on a grand scale; I have conceived the mightiest of arts—that which puts into the soul the sentiment of Nature. To grasp vast landscapes, to see the earth under its many colours, its thousand aspects, and to have an object at the end of this kaleidoscopic vision—I know nothing that equals that passage through space. There are moments when I stand with my head buried on the chimney-piece, engaged in recalling the vast incidents of that last journey.

I am going to order a carriage, and await my first bag of two thousand ducats, and my first month of liberty.

I entreat you, whatever happens, never leave me a month again without news, and, if you are ill, dictate one line to M. Hanski. You don't know what troubles it puts into my poor solitary life.

Jules Sandeau has been one of my blunders. You cannot imagine such indolence, such nonchalance. He is without energy, without will. The noblest sentiments in words, nothing in action, or in reality. No devotion of thought or of body. When I had spent on him what a great seigneur would spend on a caprice, I said to him:

"Jules, here is a drama, write it. And after that another, and a vaudeville for the Gymnase."

He answered that it was impossible for him to put himself in the train of any one, no matter who. As that implied that I speculated on his gratitude, I did not insist. He would not even put his name to a work done in common.

"Well, then, get a living by writing books?"

He has not, in three years, written half a volume. Criticism? He thinks that too difficult. He is a stable horse. He is the despair of friendship, as he was the despair of love. That's over; as soon as I get the La Grenadière, I shall leave the rue Cassini.

The two young men, de Belloy and de Gramont, have not the firm will that enables a man to rise above adversity and men, and to make for himself the events of his life. They will not subordinate themselves to reach a result. In France, associations of men are impossible, partly because of individual pretensions, partly because of wit, talent, name, and fortune, four causes of insubordination. Since I have taken Diogenes' lantern to look through this vaunted Paris for men of talent I have heard many a cry of poverty; but when you offer to those who utter the cry money for work well done, they "can't do it," and I have not obtained the work.

Capefigue is my editor [on the "Chronique de Paris"] and takes my directions. A good little political condottiere! Mon Dieu, how heartily you would laugh if I were in the chimney-corner at Wierzchownia explaining to you what I see here daily.

Well, here are piles of proof to send off, and much work to finish. My spirit, one moment let loose to roam across your lands, must resume its yoke of misery. I am in the rue Cassini; I have no autograph to send you; I came near asking at the Court of Peers for one of Fieschi, but I thought it might not be agreeable to you.

The other day I went to Frascati, out of curiosity, to see a gambling-house. There I found a person of your acquaintance—one who was the devoted, in Geneva, of Madame Marie. He told me he had come there for the first time. He was playing craps [a game of dice] with incredible facility, practice, and cleverness; and all the women who were present knew him. I laughed in my sleeve. Day before yesterday he invited me to a magnificent dinner at the Rocher de Cancale, where were Madame Kisseleff and Madame Hamelin, an elderly celebrity. Among the guests was an illustrious friend of the present King of Sardinia, who has just returned to power. I set a trap for the friend of the dear Countess Marie. On leaving at eleven o'clock I said to him:—

"It is too late for the theatres, will you go and play?"

We went to the "Salon des Étrangers." He was as well known in that place as Barabbas, and, to my great astonishment, I found there all the most virtuous and rangés men of the great world. And what did I see a quarter of an hour later? The friend of the King of Sardinia, who had told us he had a rendezvous to avoid coming out with us! And this dear Italian said to me, pointing to our late Amphytrion:—

"You know the Italian proverb: 'gambler like a Pole.'"

The friend of the Countess Marie is henceforth to me a book in which I can read at any time. Little Komar was there also. That young man, old in the flower of his age, makes me ache to see him. I perceive that in order to understand society I must go to such places three times a year, to know the men with whom one has to do. These are the only two times in my life that I have set foot in such dens. I shall return to the Salon once more to see Hope play; he stakes a hundred thousand francs with supernatural indolence, confronting chance, as one power stands facing another power.

Addio! I am awaiting a letter from you. Last night I dreamed that I saw a letter and a parcel sent by you; in the parcel were apples. I never had so real a dream. When Auguste came to wake me at five in the morning, I said, "Where are the apples?" He saw I had been dreaming. I wish I could explain these dreams.

Paris, March 24, 1836.

At length I have received your last letter, numbered 5, a whole month after its predecessor! Being in the rue Cassini, I cannot verify whether I have received No. 4.

To what you ask of me, the friend says: No. But there is, in me, another personage, too proud to answer otherwise than by a yes when the matter concerned is something that amuses you. There are two things in my nature: childlike trust, and a total lack of egoism.

You are amusing yourself at Kiew, while I am interdicted even the Italian Opera. Never was my solitude so complete, nor my work so cruelly continuous. My health is so affected that I cannot pretend to recover that air of youth to which I had the weakness to cling. All is said. If, at my age, a man has never tasted pure, unshackled happiness, Nature will later prevent its being possible for him to wet his lips in the cup. White hairs cannot approach it. Life will have been for me a most sorrowful jest. My ambitions are falling one by one. Power is a small matter. Nature created in me a being of love and tenderness, and chance has constrained me to write my desires instead of satisfying them.

If between now and three years hence nothing is changed in my existence, I shall retire, peacefully, to Touraine, living on the banks of the Loire, hidden from all, and working only to fill the empty hours. I shall even abandon my great work. My forces are being exhausted in this struggle; it is lasting too long; it is wearing me out.

And yet, the affair of the "Cent Contes Drolatiques" seems as if it might be settled, and that would render my financial condition endurable; but it drags along in a despairing way. It will save me when I am dead. I have earned in the mass this year a sum much greater than what I owe; but the debts have fixed dates for becoming due, and the receipts are capricious.

Around me I have no one, or else only powerless friendships; for the nature of certain souls is to attach themselves only to those who suffer.

Frightened by this struggle, and not being willing even to see it, Jules Sandeau has fled from here, leaving me his rent, and a few debts on my hands. He is a man at sea, drifting, as they say of a vessel wrecked in mid-ocean, and battered by the gale. Like Medea, I have myself only against all. Nothing is changed in my situation. I might write you for six months, and say but one thing: I toil. I have no longer any distractions, any amusements—the desert, and the sun!

I smiled in thinking that Madame Eve Hanska, to whom "Séraphita" is dedicated, plays lansquenet, and that this solitary personage is immersed in all mundane things.

Wednesday, 23.

My lawsuit with the "Revue de Paris" will be tried the day after to-morrow, Friday. The verdict will enable me to fix the day for putting out "Le Lys dans la Vallée" for sale. You can only know what that book is by reading it in full in Werdet's edition, which makes two handsome volumes, 8vo. The first is printed; I have just, before writing to you, signed the order to print the last feuille of that volume. I had several sentences to re-write in a letter from Madame de Mortsauf to Félix, which made Madame Hamelin weep—so she told me. Nothing of all that was in your infamous "Revue;" nor was there anything of all my labour, which turned my bad manuscript into a work of style. You read the manuscript in Vienna.

Yesterday they brought me all the writings of "Séraphita" bound. The manuscript is in gray cloth, with the inside of black satin, and the back of Russia leather, to ward off worms. I have also all the writings of the "Lys." But how can I send you these things? I can't understand how it is that you have not received my letters, for I answer all yours regularly; and I wrote you one, lately, full of anxiety, which this one, just received, has calmed. But I imagine that having always addressed them to Berditchef they are still at Wierzchownia, unless they have sent them to you in a mass to Kiew.

I have been twice to the Exhibition at the Museum. We are not strong. If you had money to spend on objects of art I should have asked you to make a few fine purchases, for there are two or three things that are really beautiful,—a Venus by Pradier, and one or two pictures. Your friend Grosclaude has nothing in it, and I hear nothing more about him.

I am wholly taken up with the last work for Madame Bêchet, who, did I tell you? is marrying, and quits publishing for happiness. Nothing will be fully decided about my poor finances until after the publication of the last volume for Madame Bêchet. That is, for me, one of the culminating points of my fortune; for I can then begin the publication of the thirteen succeeding volumes, and receive about twelve thousand francs for the copies which belong to me.

I know nothing of you except from you, for of the country you are now in I know nothing but that which you tell me; I imagine you welcomed, fêted, as you would be wherever you went. But such pleasure, is it really pleasure? You were tired of it in Vienna, but you renew it at Kiew!

You would know how I love you if you had seen me searching through your letter all at once, taking in, at a glance, each page, to see if Anna, if you, if M. Hanski, if all, were well. Then, seeing that no one but a niece was ill, and that she had recovered, I gave a great sigh of relief. You would then have known how restricted are my affections; how few beings interest me. This solitude is sad, because, believe me, one wearies of the labours that fill it, and the heart never loses its claims; it needs expansions. I often make sad elegies when, weary of writing, I lie back in my chair, and rest my head upon it, and ask myself why a soul like mine is here, alone, without other joy than a few memories, as few as they are great. And when I see that what remains to me of life is the least fortunate half, the least active, the least loved, the least lovable, I am not exempt from a sadness that sheds tears.

I will write you as soon as I have finally arranged a thing which may settle my troubles; for I have resolved to sell some of my shares in the "Chronique de Paris" in order to liquidate myself more rapidly. To-day, I am in the greatest uncertainty and overwhelmed with claims.

Well, adieu. In a few days I may write to you of gayer things. But I doubt it. My health is extremely bad. Coffee no longer procures me mental force. I must be rich enough to travel.

Thursday, 21.

I open my letter to add several things.

The first is about your cramps. Have two irons made that you can grasp at the moment the cramps seize you; have them made strongly magnetic. Here is the shape: O. As soon as you hold them in your hand the cramps will cease. If that does not stop them, write to me. But be sure the irons are strongly magnetized, and keep them near you, at your bed's head.

Fear nothing about corrections. In our language there are incontestable things. Ask for the third edition of the "Médecin de campagne," just out; read it. You will see if it is not improved. There are still a hundred incorrectnesses. It will only be perfect in the fourth edition. Re-read "Louis Lambert" in the "Livre Mystique,"—that is, if such work pleases you; if not, it becomes wearisome.

No, no, style is style. Massillon is Massillon, and Racine is Racine. According to the critics, the "Lys" is my culminating point. You will judge of it.

In re-reading your letter I find some bitter little epigrams against life; but, surely, there are enormous sufferings which you do not know, and never can know. The openings of life are never delightful except in the matter of sentiment. I will prove to you that there is something more delightful: I mean the perfect quietude of a life beloved, of a constancy intellectual enough to destroy monotony.

Adieu, re-adieu—if, indeed, that word is a friend's word. It should be au revoir, for in writing to you I have, like all solitaries, the gift of second sight, and I see you perfectly. Kiss Anna on the forehead from me for the joys she gives you; have the irons made at once, so that you may no longer curse life; which is a serious insult to those who love you; amuse yourself without dissipation; for dissipation fritters away the soul, and is to the detriment of all affections.

Here is a return to the lansquenet, and for that I beg your pardon; you have a soul rich enough to throw a little of it into cards if it pleases you. As for me, who live under the despotic rule of a Chartreux, I find I have not soul enough to suffice for my work and my affections. But I have not the luck to be a woman.

Paris, March 27, 1836.

I receive to-day your good packet, my dear number 7, in which you tell me of two afflicting deaths, but in which you also give me much pleasure by the exact detail of what happens to you. I am going, therefore, to write you at length on all that you inquire about; but on condition that you write to me punctually every week.

Your passage about fidelity, understood, after the Wronski manner, as intuitive truth, made my heart bound with joy. We love to find our own ideas expressed by a friend and to know that the moral sensations of both are of equal purity. Is not this the sentiment that a fine passage of Beethoven makes us feel, by representing to us, in its purest expression, a whole sentiment, a whole nature? For myself, I am convinced that in carrying very high our sentiments we multiply a thousand-fold our pleasures; a little lower, and all would be suffering; but in the heaven above us all is infinite. This is what your "Séraphita" shows. How is it you have not received February 24 (old style) a book published here in December? It is no longer even spoken of in France. What grief that I cannot obtain a permit for a single parcel to Wierzchownia. I'll go myself to Saint Petersburg and ask one of the Emperor! What! you, to whom the statue belongs, you have not seen it! It is not in the temple for which it was made! Everybody here has wondered over the dedication, and you have not read it printed, when the author is your devoted moujik. The world is upside down!

You are always talking to me of that detestable "Lys" which is not my "Lys." Wait, in order to know "Le Lys dans la Vallée," for Werdet's edition.

Your poor moujik will never be impertinent or defiant. But, writing in great haste, from heart to heart, and never reading over a letter, there may have been, apropos of Roger, a little too hearty a laugh—which was not right. No, cara, Nature gave me a trustfulness unbounded, a soul that is proof against everything. I have always had in me a something, I don't know what, which leads me to do quite otherwise than other people, and it may be that in me fidelity is pride. Having no other point of support but myself, I have been forced to magnify it, to reinforce the myself. All my life is there; a life without vulgar pleasures. None of those who are near me would live it "at the price of Napoleon's and Byron's fame united," de Belloy said to me. But de Belloy saw only the hermit on his rock with his cruse and his loaf not bestowing a glance on the siren tempters. He did not see the ecstasy in the heavens, he did not know the revery, the evenings, the chimney-corner, the poems of Hope! I am a gambler, poor to the eyes of all; but I play my whole fortune once a year, when I gather in that which others squander!

My lawsuit has been postponed for a fortnight. Chaix d'Estange, who pleads against me, had to plead a case in the provinces. There's the "Lys" delayed!

You ask for details about the "Chronique de Paris." I have not given you any because it was a paper both political and literary—Bedouck!—I forget nothing that I ought to do. Did I not tell you in Geneva that within three years I should begin to build the scaffolding for my political preponderance? Did I not repeat it in Vienna? Well, the "Chronique" is the old "Globe" (same idea) but placed to the Right instead of being to the Left; it is the new doctrine of the Royalist party. We make the Opposition, and we preach autocratic power; that means that on arriving at the management of affairs we shall not be found in contradiction with what we have said. I am the supreme director of this journal, which appears twice a week, in a monstrous quarto form. It gives the amount of four feuilles of the "Revue de Paris," which makes eight a week; and we cost only sixty francs a year, whereas the "Revue" costs eighty, and gives only four feuilles a week. The higher criticism of politics, literature, art, sciences, administration, and a portion devoted to individual work, novels, etc., that is the scheme of the paper.

We have obtained Gustave Planche, an immense and grand critic. We are going to have Sainte-Beuve, and, perhaps, Victor Hugo. Capefigue is charged with domestic politics, and does it pretty well. I have an interest which is equivalent to thirty-two thousand francs capital, and if the "Chronique" goes beyond two thousand subscribers it may bring me in twenty thousand francs income, not counting my work, very dearly paid, and my salary as director. We have enough funds to go on for two years. We are between the "Gazette de France," the "Quotidienne," and the Right Centre. These two newspapers are so placed that they can make no concessions to the present régime, whereas we can, ourselves, compromise. We are going to ask to be allowed to enter Russia, because we are in favour of an alliance with Russia against an English alliance, and for autocracy in the matter of government. Our doctrines as to criticism of art and literature are in favour of the highest moral expression. Is there not something grandiose in this enterprise? So, for the three months that I have now directed it, it has gained daily in respect and authority; only, the costs do crush us. Each feuille pays ten centimes tax to the treasury, and we have to go into bonds for seventy-five thousand francs in specie.

Extraordinary thing! It is this very operation that will financially save me. I hope to-morrow to sell sixteen of my shares (without cutting into the thirty-two). Besides which, the affair of the "Cent Contes Drolatiques," published in numbers and illustrated, appears on the point of being concluded. Louis Boulanger will do the drawings, and Perret the wood-cuts. Six thousand copies are to be struck off, which will give me thirty thousand francs of author's rights. So, in a few days from now, I shall have before me forty-five thousand francs, without counting the twenty-four thousand awaiting me on the day when Madame Bêchet gets her last Part. In all, seventy thousand francs. Now, as I only owe fifty thousand (not counting the debt to my mother), I shall see the end of my miseries.

But let me paint to you one of the thousand dramas of my life as artist and soldier. On my return from Vienna (you know what disasters that absence caused me), my silver-plate was pawned. I have never yet been able to redeem it. I have to pay three thousand francs to do so, and I have never had three thousand francs. I owe on the 31st about eight thousand four hundred. In order to live honourably until now, and meet all my obligations, I have used up my resources; all are exhausted. I am, as it were, at Marengo. Desaix must come and Kellermann must charge; then all is said. But, the men who are to give me sixteen thousand francs for my sixteen shares in the "Chronique" are coming to dine with me. You know that people lend and show confidence to none but the rich. All about me breathes opulence, ease, the wealth of a lucky artist. If at the dinner my silver is hired, all will fail; the man who is arranging the affair is a painter,—an observing race, satirical, deep, like Henri Monnier, in its coup d'œil; he will see the weak spot in the cuirass, he will guess the Mont-de-Piété—which he knows better than any one. Adieu, my affair. All my future lies in redeeming that silver, which is worth five thousand francs and is pledged for three thousand. I must have it to-morrow, or perish. Isn't it curious? This is the 27th; on the 31st of March I must pay six thousand francs, and I haven't a farthing. But on the 5th of April the signing of the "Drolatiques" affair may give me fifteen thousand francs!

I cannot ask a single person in Paris to lend me money, for I am thought rich and my prestige would fall, would vanish away. The affair of the "Chronique" is due to the credit I enjoy. I was able to speak en maître. Put oil on this flame by representing to yourself the perpetual fire, the ardour of a soul that is consuming itself, and tell me if that is not a drama. One ought to be a great financier, a cold, wise, prudent man; one must be!—I say no more, for yesterday one of my friends said truly: "When your statue is made it ought to be in bronze, to rightly picture the man."

My health is at this moment so greatly affected that Dr. Nacquart issues an edict which has to be obeyed. Coffee is suppressed. Every evening they put upon my stomach a linseed poultice. I am kept on chicken broth, and eat nothing but white meat. I drink gum water, and they give me inward sedatives. I have to follow this regimen for ten days and then go to Touraine for a month, to recover life and health. All the mucous membranes are violently inflamed; I cannot digest without horrible suffering.

If my money matters could be well done, and done quickly, instead of going to Touraine I would go and see you for a few days. Would it be possible? I desire it so keenly. A journey would restore me. In any case, do not be vexed with me; it is better to do my business and pay my debts, to recover my sacred liberty, to be able to come and go as I like, to owe neither sou nor line, and postpone the joy of seeing you. Better to put one's fortune in a place inaccessible to storm, than to discount it like a spendthrift.

I may tell you now that the dawn of my liberation begins to show, and that all foretells the end of my troubles. The journey to Vienna was the signal folly of my life. It cost five thousand francs and upset all my affairs. We can laugh about it, and I do not tell it to you now to give myself the smallest little merit, but only to prove to you that if I do not go to see you it is from a wise calculation of friendship; it is a proof of attachment; it will enable me to show you a friend whom you have never yet known, the man a child, without cares, without troubles that gnaw the heart, taking from him his grace, distorting his nature, everything, even to his glance.

If you only knew how, after this solitary life, I long to grasp Nature by a rapid rush across Europe, how my soul thirsts for the immense, the infinite; for Nature seen in the mass, not in detail, judged on its grand lines, sometimes damp with rain, sometimes rich with sun, as we bound across space, seeing lands instead of villages! If you knew this you would not tell me to come, for that redoubles my torture, it fans the furnace on which I sleep.[1]

Grant heaven that I sell the sixteen shares of the "Chronique" and that the matter of the "Drolatiques" may be decided. And then, then! Above all, if Werdet can buy back from Madame Bêchet the "Études de Mœurs," then I could travel, I could go and spend a week at Wierzchownia. You would find the heart of the intellectual moujik ever young, but the moujik himself is deteriorating physically. "No one fights with impunity against the will of Nature," Dr. Nacquart said to me yesterday, ordering me his prescriptions and wanting things I refused: such as not working, and taking much amusement—which the Wronski theory forbids. As for me, I love the noble absolute. I don't forget how indulgent you were in your advice at Vienna; but I have intolerant superstitions.