Letters to Madame Hanska, born Countess Rzewuska, afterwards Madame Honoré de Balzac, 1833-1846

The secret of it is that I was, last winter, full of admiration for Madame Vigano; I idolize her singing; she knows that, and I am a Kreizler to her. I went to bed at two o'cloc...

Benjamin Constant has made, as I think, the arraignment of men of the world and intriguers; but there are noble exceptions. When you have read the Confession in the "Médecin de...

All is much changed since my last letter. Alas! I had the ambition to be near you on the 20th of January, and I began to work eighteen hours a day. I stood it for fifteen days,...

What! you think that the opera, the salons, fame can distract me from you? Then you don't know how I love you. I shall be more angry at that than you at Madame P... No, believe...

You have awakened many diverse curiosities in me; you are capable of a delightful coquetry which it is impossible to blame. But you do not know how dangerous it is to a lively i...

_Bébête_, in ten years you will be thirty-seven and I forty-five, and, at that age we can love, marry, and adore each other for a lifetime. Come, my noble companion, my dear Eve...

On waking at two this morning, I took up your journal number 10, which I read very rapidly yesterday and have now re-read; I have given one hour to it; it is now three o'clock--...

Before the sublime Fossin deigned to leave the diadems and crowns of princes to set the pebbles picked up by your daughter, I had to entreat him, and be very humble, and often l...

I finished this very morning "L'Enfant Maudit." You will not recognize that poor nugget; it is chased, mounted, and set with pearls. Read it again in the "Études Philosophiques"...

At Civita Vecchia I landed, in memory of you, and went to see that antiquity-shop, where you sat down. I there learned that Madame Bocarmé had been telling tales about my journe...

My dear idol, I have never had so much courage in my life; or rather, I have a new life. I read your name in me, I see you; everything seems easy to me to attain to seeing you a...

My dear wife of love, let Anna [her daughter] wear the little cross I shall have made of her pebbles; I shall engrave on the back, _Adoremus in eternum_. That is a delicious wom...

Spachmann [binder] has done your album, and I am beginning to collect the autographs. It will take long, but you shall have it, with patience. I begin with the oldest. Pigault-L...

Oh! dearest, what a day I have had! atrocious, dreadful, awful! I had errands to do; I was to go to Froment-Meurice, then to M. Gavault, then to a ship-builder who is building a...

Find here all treasures of affection, and prayers for the happiness of you and yours in the present and in the future. If God heard or paid attention to what I ask of him, you w...

Madame de Berny is dead. I can say no more on that point. My sorrow is not of a day; it will react upon my whole life. For a year I had not seen her, nor did I see her in her la...

I have met Frankowski twice, once in Milan and again in Venice; he will take to you my New-Year's souvenir, or else he will send it to you. Each time that I have seen him the ac...

Adieu, adieu, you whom one does not like to leave. You know as well as I all that I think, and you must be kind enough to give expression to my sentiments to your travelling com...

Be indulgent to the poor third _dizain_, the third of which was written at the hôtel de l'Arc. "Berthe la Repentie" is decidedly the finest thing in the "Contes Drolatiques." I...

_Cara_, you are more than ever bent on _converting_ me. Your letter is that of a grave and serious abbess and an omnipotent, _omni-scavante_, gracious and witty Countess Hanska....

The sorrowful eloquence of your dear letter of a wounded heart made me weep; my heart was wrung as I read, at its close, your assurances of old affection, when in me all was the...

Yes, I live in you, as you live in me. Never will God separate what he has put together so strongly. My life is your life. Do not frighten me thus again. Your sadness saddens me...

[Footnote 3: It seems, at first sight, rather astonishing that a man so deeply in debt should talk of buying property. But in a letter to his sister respecting his building of "...

Work, occupation, difficulties in regulating the payments of the last sixty thousand francs of debt, all that mass of fixed or floating cares, repress within my heart the desire...

Madame Visconti, of whom you speak to me, is one of the most amiable of women, of an infinite, exquisite kindness; a delicate and elegant beauty. She has helped me much to bear...

I know that what I write will give you infinite pain; but is it not better to tell you of it and explain my reasons, than leave you to hear it brutally from the newspapers? But...

However, let me tell you that there are two hearts here that are full of you and love you for yourself only: Lirette and I. Lirette, with whom I have been talking at her convent...

My dear Laure, I feel in advance the pleasure you will enjoy in thinking that your brother has put his hand to the pen in the city of the Cæsars, popes, and others. Give you a d...

Truly, I am writing with a gay pen, and I am sad; but my sadness is so great that I am afraid to send you the expression of it. I would sell my fame and all my literary baggage...

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...

I shall have three houses to let, each looking out on inclosed gardens; and I will only let this elegant village to extremely distinguished people. Our railway will begin to run...

I did not finish "Berthe la Repentie" without thinking at every line that I began it with fury at Pré-l'Évêque in 1834, now nearly four years ago. I ought never to have had debt...

I am perfectly well again and have gone back to work. This is a piece of good news worth telling you at once. But oh! dearest, a year is a year, don't you see? The heart cannot...

Yesterday the most horrible thing happened to me. You know, or you don't know, that waiting in expectation is dreadful torture to me. Sandeau went to the rue Cassini, and there...

It is now three months since I last saw Madame de Berny; judge of my life by that feature of it. Ah! if I were loved, my mistress might sleep in peace; there is no place in my l...

Adieu; this scrap of a letter is scribbled on a pile of proofs that would frighten even a proof-reader. A thousand homages, and kindly present my obeisances to M. Hanski. I retu...

I have just read "Aymar," by Henri de Latouche; his is a poor mind, falling into childishness. "Lautreamont," by Sue, is a work _laché_, as the painters say; it is neither done,...

But this would lead me too far. The proofs are waiting, and I must plunge into the Augean stable of my style, and sweep out its faults. My life offers nothing now but the monoto...

To bring the question home to ourselves--which of us, after reflection and comparison, can suppose that the paltry, immature, contemptibly vulgar stuff of the letters here desig...

My cherished angel, do not share my troubles more than you must in knowing them; heaven has given me all the courage necessary to support them. I would not have a single one of...

Your semi-compatriot Walewski is to marry, they say, Mademoiselle Ricci, grand-daughter of Stanislas Poniatowski, and descendant of Macchiavelli through the women. She has, I am...

When I have finished with Madame Bêchet and Werdet, yes, then I shall have six months before me. On that day I shall owe nothing to any one, for the approaching reissue of the "...

Our dinner was composed of soup, venison, mayonnaise of fish, macaroni with cheese, a little dessert, a half-bottle of madeira, and a bottle of bordeaux. _Ecco, signora!_ At eig...

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 Ma...

My mother is very unwell. She sinks under the distress which the precarious position of her children gives her; for we have to take charge, my brother-in-law, my sister and myse...

If I have been long without writing to you it is because I have awaited your answer to my letters, being ignorant as to whether you received them. Even now I do not know where t...

Then, after _effects_ and _causes_, will come the "Études Analytiques," of which the "Physiologie du Mariage" is a part; for after _effects_ and _causes_ we must search for _pri...

I have just been to the post-office to see if any one had had the idea to write to me _poste restante_. There I found a letter from the kind Countess Loulou [Louise Turheim], wh...

Yesterday, after finishing my work, I went to see my sister, on a letter she had written me saying that her eldest daughter was dying. Sophie had really nothing more than a slig...

I am going to Sassari, the second capital of Sardinia, and shall stay there a few days. What I have to do there is a small matter for the moment; the grand question, whether or...

I needed your letter this morning, for this morning I received a letter from a mutual friend of Madame Bêchet and me, telling me of her commercial distresses. If my book is not...

It is now two years since I saw you. So, when my head refuses ideas, when the ink-pot of my brain is empty, and I must have rest, by that time I hope I shall have bought, throug...

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 a...

Therefore, to-day I have piously effaced about a hundred lines, which, according to many persons, disfigure that creation. I have not regretted a single word, and each time that...

I do not owe more than one hundred and fifty thousand; and though age is advancing on me, and work becomes each day more toilsome, I conceive the hope of ending this horrible de...

It can only be in two years hence that we shall propose to ourselves to make a journey for the education of little Anna, and I have a presentiment, monsieur, that we shall find...

Adieu for to-day, celestial star, implored and followed with so much religion. Every day I say to myself, thinking of your dear household of three, "I hope they are happy! that...

I have taken my mother to Poissy, to a very agreeable _pension_. I took her by the railroad, by which one goes very fast. My heart bled in taking her there; I, who have dreamed...

I. LETTERS DURING 1833 II. LETTERS DURING 1834 III. LETTERS DURING 1835 IV. LETTERS DURING 1836 V. LETTERS DURING 1837 VI. LETTERS DURING 1838 VII. LETTERS DURING 1839, 1840, 18...

The rest of this sad story will be found in the Memoir to this edition, pp. 318-349; and in the Correspondence, vol. xxiv. of the Édition Définitive, pp. 561-662.--TR.]