Part 10

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, your joy makes me joyous. I am in your heart; I listen to your voice at times. In short, I have the eternal, imperishable, angelic love that I desired. You are the beginning and the end, my Eve,--do you understand?--_the Eve!_ I am as exclusive as you can be. In short, _Adoremus in æternum_ is my motto; do you hear me, darling?

Well, it is getting late. I must send this to the general post-office, that you may get it Wednesday.

My love, why make for yourself useless bitterness? What I said to you, I will repeat: "It would be too odd if that were she," was my thought when I saw you first on leaving the Hôtel du Faucon [at Neufchâtel].

Adieu; I have no flowers this time; but I send you an end of a cedar match I have been chewing while I write; I have given it a thousand kisses.

_Mon Dieu!_ I don't know how I shall get over the time on the journey, in view of the palpitations of my heart in writing to you. You will receive only one more letter, that of Sunday next; after that I shall be on the way. O my darling, to be near you, without anxieties; to have my time to myself, to be free to work well and read to you by day what I do at night! My angel, to have my kiss,--the greatest reward for me under heaven! Your kiss!

No, you will only know how I love you ten years from now, when you fully know my heart, that heart so great, that you fill. I can only say now, _à bientôt_.

Well, adieu, dear. Thanks for the talisman. I like it. I like to have a seal you have used. My love, do not laugh at my fancies. Ah? if you could see Bra's "Two Angels," and "Mary with the child Jesus." I have in my heart for you all the adoration he found in his sublime genius to express angels. You are God to me, my dear idol. Adieu!

PARIS, Sunday, December 8.

My dearest, no, not a line for you in eight days! But tears, effusions of the soul sent with fury across the hundred and fifty leagues that part us.

If I get off Thursday next, 12th, I shall regard myself as a giant. No, I will not soil this paper full of love which you will hold, by pouring money troubles on it, however nobly confided they be. The printers would not work; I am their slave. The calculations of the publisher, of the master-printers, and my own have been so cruelly frustrated by the workmen that my books announced as published yesterday will not appear till Thursday next. I am in a state of curious destitution, without friends from whom I can ask an obole, yet I must borrow the money for my journey on Tuesday or Wednesday, but I do not know where. I will tell you all about it.

I have no time to write. I have been forty-eight hours this week without sleeping. Old Dubois told me yesterday I was marching to old age and death. But how can I help it? I have considered nothing but my pleasure, our pleasure, and I have sacrificed all--even you and myself--to that object.

Alas, my dearest, I have not the time to finish this letter. The publisher of "Séraphita" is here. He wants it by new year's day. Nevertheless, I shall be on Sunday near you.

Adieu, my love; _à bientôt_, but that _bientôt_ will not be till Sunday, 15th, for I have inquired, and the diligence starts only every other day, and takes three days and a half to get there. I have a world of things to tell you, but I can only send you my love, the sweetest and most violent of loves, the most constant, the most persistent, across space. O my beloved angel, do you speak to me again of our promise? Say nothing more to me about it. It is saintly and sacred like our mutual life.

Adieu, my angel. I cannot say to you "Calm yourself,"--I, who am so unhappy at these delays. You must suffer, for I suffer.

GENEVA, December 25th, 1833.

I shall tell you all in a moment, my beloved, my idolatry. I fell in getting into the carriage, and then my valet fell ill. But we will not talk of that. In an instant I shall tell you more in a look than in a thousand pages. Do I love you! Why, I am near you! I would it had been a thousand times more difficult and that I should have suffered more. But here is one good month, perhaps two, won.

Not one, but millions of caresses. I am so happy I can write no more. _À bientôt._

Yes, my room is very good, and the ring is like you, my love, delicious and exquisite.[1]

[Footnote 1: At the end of this year, as this vitiated portion of the correspondence draws to a close, I shall venture to make a few comments on it.

Very early in life Balzac formed for himself a theory of woman and of love. See Memoir, p. 261. When I wrote that Memoir I was not aware of the character of these letters. I now see from certain of them (those from the time he received Mme. Hanska's first letter till he met her at Neufchâtel) that he kept that ideal before him up to his 34th year, making, apparently, various attempts to realize it, which failed (if we except one lifelong affection) until he met with Mme. Hanska. No one, I think, can read those letters, without recognizing that they are the expression of an ideal hope, in a soul striving to escape from the awful (it was nothing less than awful) struggle between its genius and its circumstances into the calmer heaven for which all his life he had longed. They are imaginative, rash to folly, but they are in keeping with his nature, his headlong need of expansion, and the elsewhere recorded desires of his spirit. That mind must be a worldly one, I think, that cannot see the truth about this man, clinging, through the turmoil of his life and of his nature, to his "star," and dying of exhaustion at the last. But what shall we think of the men who have not only shut their eyes to the purity of this story, the strongest testimony to which is in this very volume, but have used it to cast upon this man and this woman the glamour of "voluptuousness"?

Enough has been told in the Preface to prove: (1) deception; (2) the forgery of one passage; (3) the falsification of dates. Coupling those facts with the literary impossibility that Balzac ever wrote a portion of the letters just given, we are justified in believing that a certain number of the letters that here follow are forgeries.

I class them as follows:--

During Balzac's stay in Geneva (from Dec. 25 to Feb. 8) nineteen letters are given; all dated indiscriminately "Geneva, January, 1834." Eleven of these are friendly little notes, such as would naturally pass between friends in daily intercourse. The remaining eight contain matters so disloyal that I place in an Appendix a letter from Balzac to his friend Madame Carraud, _written at the same time_, and leave the reader to form his own judgment.

Next follow twelve letters (from Feb. 15 to March 11, 1834) which I characterize as infamous forgeries. But their refutation is not far to seek; it is _here_, in this volume,--in letters from Balzac that bare his soul in the tragic struggle of his life; letters that show the deep respect of his heart and of his mind for the woman whom he held to be his star and the guide of his spirit.--TR.]

II.

LETTERS DURING 1834.

GENEVA, January, 1834.

MADAME,--I do not know if I had the honour to tell you yesterday that I might, perhaps, not have the pleasure of dining with you to-day. I should be in despair if you could think I did not attach an extreme value to that favour by making you wait for me in vain. Your cousin has engaged me for Thursday next; I have accepted so as not to seem absurd in my seclusion. I hope you will see nothing "French" in this sentiment.

I hope this continual rain has not made you sad, and I beg you to present my most distinguished sentiments to M. Hanski, and accept my most affectionate homage and obedience.

DE BALZAC.

GENEVA, January, 1834.

MADAME,--Here is the first part of your _cotignacian_ poems. But you will presently see a man in despair. I do not like to bring you the Chénier, and yet I hesitate to send it back. Of all that I ordered, nothing has been done. Binding execrably ugly, covering silly. One should be there one's self to have things done. If you accept it you must remember only the good intentions with which I took charge of your book; that is the only way to give it value.

I have been into town; I made myself joyous; I thought I had found something that would give you pleasure. I have _deranged_ myself. If you permit it, I will compensate my annoyance by coming to see you earlier.

A thousand graceful homages.

HONORÉ

I considered the _cotignac_ so precious I would not delay your gastronomic joys.

GENEVA, January, 1834.

MADAME,---Will you exchange colonial products? Here is a little of my coffee. My sister writes that I shall have more to-morrow; therefore, take this. You shall have your coffee-pot to-morrow. Will you give me _a little_ tea for my breakfast? I want strictly a little.

Have you passed a good night? Are you well? Have you had good dreams? I hope your health is good, so that we can go and take a walk [_nous promener, bromener_]. The treasury? ... _Furth!_

TO HER MAJESTY RZEWUSKIENNE, MME. HANSKA.

GENEVA, January, 1834.

Very dear sovereign, sacred Majesty, sublime queen of Paulowska and circumjacent regions, autocrat of hearts, rose of Occident, star of the North, etc., etc., etc., fairy of _tiyeuilles_.[1]

Your Grace wished for my coffee-pot, and I entreat your Serene Highness to do me the honour to accept one that is prettier and more complete; and then to tell me, to fling me from your eminent throne a word full of happiness, amber, and flowers, to let me know if I am to be at Your sublime door in an hour, with a carriage, to go to Coppet.

I lay my homage at the feet of your Majesty, and entreat you to believe in the honesty of your humble moujik, HONORESKI.

[Footnote 1: _Bromener_ and _tiyeuilles_ (_tilleuls_ lindens), make fun of her pronunciation.--TR.]

GENEVA, January, 1834.

Never did an invalid less merit that name. He is ready to go to walk, to fetch his proofs, and when his business is finished, which will be in about a quarter of an hour, he will go and propose to Madame _la doctrice_ to profit by this beautiful day to take an air-bath on the Crêt of Geneva, along the iron railings; unless the laziness of the Hanski household concurs with that of the poor literary moujik who lays at your feet, madame, his strings of imaginary pearls, the treasure of his heroes, his fanciful Alhambra, where he has carved, everywhere, not the sacred name of God, but a human name that is sacred in other ways. But all this immense property may not be worth, in reality, the four games won yesterday.

GENEVA, January, 1834. I have slept like a dormouse, I feel like a charm, I love you like a madcap, I hope that you are well, and I send you a thousand tendernesses.

GENEVA, January, 1834.

If I must come this evening, and dress myself because you have your _charaders_, permit me to come a little earlier. There is a dinner here; they are singing and making such a noise while I write that it is enough to drive the devil away. _Ecco._ I can calculate. Wednesday I shall be _encandollé_ [dinner with M. de Candolle]. Thursday is taken. To-morrow I work without intermission, for I shall have proofs. So, out of five days, when one has but one in prospect, it is no flattery to add a few hours. Yes? Very good.

Allow me to return your "Marquis" by a good "Maréchale."

GENEVA, January, 1834.

_Willingly_, but you will bring me back to your house, will you not?--for I can't get accustomed to be two steps away from you, doing nothing, without better employing my time.

If you go into the town I will ask you to be so kind--No, I will go myself.

GENEVA, January, 1834.

MADAME,--To a man who considers happy moments as the most profitable moments of existence, it is permitted to wish not to lose any part of the sums he amasses. It is only in the matter of joy that I wish to be Grandet.

If I take this morning the time that you would give me, from three to ten o'clock, would you refuse me? No? Good. If you love me?--yes--you will be visible at twelve or one o'clock.

Forgive my avarice; I possess as yet nothing but the happiness which heaven bestows. Of that I may be avaricious, since I have nothing else. To you, a thousand affectionate respects, and my obeisances to the honourable Maréchal of the Ukraine and noble circumjacent regions.

GENEVA, January, 1834.

I cannot come because I am more unwell than I expected to be, and going out might do me harm. If you would have the kindness to send me back a little orgeat you would do me a real service, for I don't know what to drink, and I have a consuming thirst.

I have spent my day very sadly, trying to work, and finding myself incapable of it. So, I think I shall go to bed in a few hours.

A thousand thanks, and present my respects to the Grand Maréchal.

GENEVA, January, 1834.

MADAME,--If it were not that I get impatient and suffer at losing so much time, both for that which gives me pleasure and also for my work, I should be this morning well, and like a man who has had a fever. I don't know whether I had better go out or keep my room; but I frankly own that here, alone, I worry horribly.

A thousand thanks for your good care, and forgive me that, yesterday, I was more surprised than grateful at your visit, which touched me deeply after you had left. I don't know if you know that there are things that get stronger as they get older.

A thousand thanks and grateful regards to M. Hanski. How stupid I am to have made you anxious for so slight a matter; but how happy I am to know that you have as much friendship for me as I for you.

GENEVA, January, 1834.

My love, this morning I am perfectly well. I was embarrassed yesterday because there were for you, under the things you moved about, two letters I send with this.

_Mon Dieu!_ my love, I am afraid that step of yours (your visit to my room) may be ill taken, and that you exposed the two letters. For other reasons, _Mon Dieu!_ certainly, I wanted to see you here! I have such need to cure my cold that if I go out it cannot be till this evening.

I am up; I could not stay in bed longer, I am too uncomfortable. I must talk or have something to do. Inaction kills me. Yesterday, I spent a horrible evening thinking of what I had to do. I am this morning like a man who has had a fever.

A thousand tender caresses. _Mon Dieu!_ how I suffer when I don't see you. I have a thousand things to tell you.

GENEVA, January, 1834.

What have I done that last evening should end thus, my dear, beloved Eve? Do you forget that you are my last hope in life? I don't speak of love, or human sentiments, you are more than all that to me. Why do you trample under your feet all the hopes of our life in a word? You doubt one who loves you freely with delights; to whom to feel you is delirious happiness, who loves you _in æternum_, and you do not doubt...!

O my love! you play very lightly with a life you chose to have, and which, moreover, has been given to you with an entire devotion which I should have given you if you had not demanded it. I like better that you did wish for it.

I love you with too much constancy that such disputes should not be mortal to me. _Mon Dieu!_ I have told you the secrets of my life, and you ought, in return for such unlimited confidence, to spare him who lives in you the torture of such doubts. You hold me by the hand, and the day you withdraw that adored hand you alone will know the reason of what becomes of me.

My beloved Eve, I commit extravagance on extravagance. It is impossible to think of anything but you. It is not a _desire_, though I have fully the right to desire pleasure more keenly than other men, and this desire renders me stupefied at times; no, it is a need to breathe your air, to see you, and yesterday you gave me eternal memories of beauty.

If I had no sacred pecuniary obligations (and I commit the folly of forgetting them sometimes), we would not think of the rue Cassini. No. Yesterday at Diodati I said to myself: "Why should I quit my Eve; why not follow her everywhere?" I wish it, myself. I accept all sufferings when I see you; and you, you wounded me yesterday.

But you do not love as I do; you do not know what love is; I, for my sorrow, have known its delights, and I see that from Neufchâtel to my death I can reach the end desired through my whole youth, and concentrate my life and my affections on a single heart!

Dearest, dearest, I am too unhappy from the things of life not to make it a cruelty in her I love and idolize to cause me a shadow of grief. I would like better the most horrible of agonies to causing you pain.

Must I come and seek a kiss?

GENEVA, January, 1834.

Your doubts do me harm. You are more powerful than all. Angel of my life, why should I not follow you everywhere? Because of poverty. _Mon Dieu_, you have nothing to fear. From the day on which I told you that I loved you, nothing has altered this delicious life; it is my only life. Do not dishonour it by suspicions; do not trouble our pleasures. There was no one before you in my heart; you will fill it forever. Why do you arm yourself with thoughts of my former life? Do not punish me for my beautiful confidence. I wish you to know all my past, because all my future is yours. Break your heart! Sacrifice you to anything whatever! Why, you don't know me! I am ashamed to bring you sufferings. I am ashamed not to be able to give you a life in harmony with the life of the heart. I suffer unheard-of woes, which you efface by your presence.

Pardon, my love, for what you call my coquetries. Pardon a Parisian for a simple Parisian talk; but what you will shall be done. I will go to see no one. Two visits of a quarter of an hour will end all. Perish a thousand times the society of Geneva rather than see you sad for a quarter of an hour's conversation. It would be ridiculous (for others) that I should occupy myself with you only. I was bound to respect you, and in order to talk to you so much it was necessary that I should talk with Madame P... Besides, what trifles! Before the Ocean of which you talk, are you going to concern yourself about a miserable spider? _Mon Dieu!_ you don't know what it is to love _infinitely_.

What I wrote you this morning is of a nature to show you how false are your fears. I never ceased to look at you while talking to Madame P...

Ah! dearest, my dear wife, my Eva, I would willingly sell my talent for two thousand ducats! I would follow you like a shadow. Do you wish to go back to Wierzchownia? I will follow you and stay there all my life. But we must have pretexts, and, unfortunate that I am, I cannot leave Paris without satisfying editors and creditors.

I have received two letters; one from that good Borget, the other from my sister. Troubles upon troubles. To have at all moments the sight of paradise and the sufferings of hell,--is that living?

GENEVA, January, 1834.

My love, my only life, my only thought, oh! your letter! it is written forever on my heart.

Listen, celestial angel, for you are not of this earth. I will reply to you on these things once for all. Fame, vanity, self-love, literature, they are scarcely clouds upon our sky. You trample all that twenty times a day beneath your feet, which I kiss twenty times.

Oh, my angel, see me at your knees as I tell you this: if I have had the most fugitive of reputations it has come when I did not want it. I was drunk for it till I was twenty-two. I wanted it as a pharos to attract to me an angel. I had nothing with which to please; I blamed myself. An angel came; I let myself suffer in her bosom, hiding from her my desires for a young and beautiful woman. She saw those desires and said to me: "When she comes I will be your mother, I will have the love of a mother, the devotion of a mother."[1]

Then one day the misery of my life grew greater. The toils of night and day began. She who had offered me, on her knees, her fortune, which I had taken, which I was returning at the peril of my life, she watched, she corrected, she refined, as I refined, corrected, watched. Then all my desires were extinguished in work. It was no longer a question of fame, but of money. I _owed_, and I had nothing.

Three years I worked without relaxation, having drawn a brass circle around me from 1828 to 1831. I abhor Madame de C[astries], for she broke that life without giving me another,--I do not say a comparable one, but without giving me what she promised. There is not the shadow of wounded vanity, oh! but disgust and contempt.

You alone have made me know the vanities of fame. When I saw you at Neufchâtel I wanted to be something. In you then begins, more splendid than I dreamed it, that dreamed life.

Oh! my Eve, you alone in my life to come!--Alas! like Louis Lambert I wish that I could give you my past. Thus, nothing that is _success, fame, Parisian distractions_, moves me. There is but one power that makes me accept my present life: _Toil_. It calms the exactions of my fiery temperament. It is because I fear myself that I am chaste.

As for this seclusion that you want, hey! I want it as much as you. It is not being a fop to tell you that since Neufchâtel three ravishing women have come to the rue Cassini, and that I did not even cast a man's glance on seeing them.

My Eve, I love you better than you love me, for I am alone in the secret of what I lose, and you know nothing of love but the sentiments of love. Besides, I love you better, for I have more reasons to love you. If I were free I would live near you, happy to be the steward of your fortune and the artisan of your wealth, as Madame Carraud's brother is for Madame d'Argout. I have a security of love, a plenitude of devotion, which you will only know with time. It needs time to fathom the infinite. To suffer the whole of life with you, taking a few rare moments of happiness, yes! To have a lifetime in two years, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years, and die, yes! Never to speak to a woman, to refuse myself to all, to live in you, oh, angel! but that is my thought at all hours. The ... which I told you about Madame P... was because she had vexed you, and before your suffering I became besotted, as you before mine.

_Mon Dieu!_ if we lived together, if I had twenty ducats a month, to you should belong my poems. I would write books, and read them to you, and we would burn them in our fire. My adored _minette_, I weep sometimes in thinking that I sell my ideas, that people read me! Ah! you do not know what I could be if, free for one evening, I could speak to you, see you, caress you by my thoughts and by myself. Oh! you would then know that your thoughts of purity, of exclusive tenderness are mine. Angel of my life, I live in you, for you, by you. Only, if I am mistaken, tell me so without anger. There is never any false or bad intention in me. I obey my heart in all that is sentiment. I have never known what a calculation is. If I mistake, it is in good faith.

My love, let us never separate. In six months I shall be free. Well, then, no power on earth can disunite us. _La dilecta_ was forty-six when I was twenty-two. Why talk about your forty years? We have thirty years before us. Do you think that at sixty-four a man betrays thirty years' affection?