Part 11

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 me, I love you as a woman loves and as a man loves. In my life to come there is nothing but you and work. My dear gift, my dear star, my sweet spirit, let yourself be caressed by hope, and say to yourself that I am not amorous or passionate; all that passes. I love you, I adore you _in æternum_. I believe in you as I do in myself. _Mon Dieu!_ I would like to know words which could infuse into you my soul and my thought, which could tell you that you are in my heart, in my blood, in my brain, in my thought,--in short, the life of my life; that each beating of my heart gives birth to a desire full of thee. Oh! you do not know what are three years of chastity, which spring at every moment to the heart and make it bound, to the head and make it palpitate. If I were not sober and did not work, this purity would drive me mad. I alone am in the secret of the terrible emotions which the emanations from your dear person give me. It is an unspeakable delirium which, by turns, freezes my nature by the omnipotence of desire, and makes me burn. I resist follies like those of the young seigneur cut down by the Elector.

We have, both of us, our sufferings; do not let us dispute that. Let us love each other, and do not refuse me that which makes all accepted. In other respects, in all things, angel, I am submissive to you as to God. Take my life, ask me to die, order me all things, except not to love you, not to desire you, not to possess you. Outside of that all is possible to me in your name.

[Footnote 1: Madame de Berny is meant, and the invention of this letter is infamous. See letter to Madame Carraud in Appendix, written _at the same time_ as this spurious letter.--TR]

GENEVA, January, 1834.

If you only knew the superstitions you give me! When I work I put the talisman on my finger; I put it on the first finger of the left hand, with which I hold my paper, so that your thought clasps me. You are there, with me. Now, in seeking from the air for words and ideas, I ask them of that delicious ring; in it I have found the whole of "Séraphita."

Love celestial, what things I have to say to you, for which one needs the sacred hours during which the heart feels the need of baring itself. The adorable pleasures of love are the only means of arriving at that union, that fusion of souls. Dear, with what joy I see the fortunes of my heart and the fate of my soul secured to me. Yes, I will love you alone and solely through my life. You have all that pleases me. You exhale, for me, the most intoxicating perfume a woman can have; that alone is a treasure of love.

I love you with a fanaticism that does not exclude the quietude of a love without possible storms. Yes, say to yourself well that I breathe by the air you breathe, that I can never have any other thought than you. You are the end of all for me. You shall be the young _dilecta_--already I call you the _pre dilecta_.

Do not murmur at this alliance of the two sentiments. I should like to think I loved you in her, and that the noble qualities which touched me and made me better than I was were all in you.

I love you, my angel of earth, as they loved in the middle ages, with the most complete fidelity, and my love will always be grand, without stain; I am proud of my love. It is the principle of a new life. Hence, the new courage that I feel under my last adversities. I would be greater, be something glorious, so that the crown to place upon your head should be the most leafy, the most flowery of all those that great men have nobly won!

Never, therefore, have fear or distrust; there are no abysses in heaven! A thousand kisses full of caresses; a thousand caresses full of kisses! _Mon Dieu!_ shall I never be able to make you see how I love you, you, my Eve!

_À bientôt_; a thousand kisses will be in my first look.

GENEVA, January, 1834.

My loved love, with a single caress you have returned me to life. Oh! my dearest, I have not been able to either sleep or work. Lost in the remembrance of that evening, I have said to you a world of tendernesses. Oh! you have that divine soul to which one remains attached during a lifetime. My soul, you have, through love, the delicious language of love which makes all griefs and annoyances fly away on wings. Loved angel, do not obscure with any doubt the inspirations of love of which your dear caress is but the interpreter. Do not think you can ever enter into comparison with any one, no matter who. But, my loved darling, my flower of heaven, do you not understand, you, all charm and all truth, that a poor poet can be struck at finding the same heart, at being loved beyond his hopes? My adored wife, yes, it was for you that the heart of the most delicate and sweetest woman that ever was brought me up. I shall be permitted to say to her: "You wished to be twenty years old to love me better and give me even the pleasures of vanity. Well, I have met with what you wished me." She will be joyous for _us_. Dear eternal idol, my beautiful and holy religion, I know how the memories of another love must wound a proud and delicate love. But not to speak of it to you would be to deprive you of nameless fêtes of the soul, and joys of love. There are such identities of tenderness and soul that I am proud for you, and I know not if it is you I loved in her. Then, an ungovernable jealousy has so habituated me to think with open heart, and say all to her in whom I live, that I could never hide from you a thought. No, you are my own heart.

Yes, to you all is permitted. I shall tell you naïvely all that I think that is fine, and all that I think that is bad. You are an I, handsomer, prettier.

My love has neither exaltation, nor more, nor less, nor anything that is terrestrial. Oh! my dear Eve, it is the love of the angel always at the same degree of force, of exaltation. To feel, to touch your hand of love, that hand of soft, _proud_ sentiments,--do you understand me, my angel, tender, kind, passionate,--that hand, polished and relaxed of love, that is a happiness as great as your caress of honey and of fire.

This is what I wished to say to my timid angel, who thought that all caresses were not _solidaire_. One, the lightest as the most passionate, comprises all. In that you see to the bottom of my soul. A kiss on your cherished lips,--those virgin lips that have no souvenirs yet (which makes you in my eyes as pure as the purest young girl),--a kiss will be a talisman for the desires of love, when it contains all the caresses of love. Our poor kiss, still disinherited of all our joys, only goes to your heart, and I would that it enwrapped all your person. You would see that possession augments, enlarges love. You would know your Honoré, your husband; and you would know that he loves you more daily.

My dearest Eva, never doubt me, but doubt yourself less. I have told you that there is in you, in your letters, in your love, in its expression, a something I know not what that is more than in other letters and expressions that I thought inimitable. But you are twenty-eight years old,--that is the grand secret. But, dear treasure, you have the most celestial soul that I know, and you have intoxicating beauties. _Mon Dieu!_ how shall I tell you that I am drunk at the faintest scent of you, and that had I possessed you a thousand times you would see me more intoxicated still, because there would be hope and memory where now there is only hope.

Do you remember the bird that has but one flower? That is the history of my heart and my love. Oh! dear celestial flower, dear embalming perfumes, dear fresh colours, my beautiful stalk, do not bend, guard me always. At each advance of a love which goes and ever will go on increasing, I feel in my heart _foyers_ of tenderness and adoration. Oh! I want to be sure of you as I am of myself. I feel at each respiration that I have in my heart a constancy that nothing can alter.

I wept on the road to Diodati, when, after having promised me all the caresses that you have granted me, a woman was able, with a single word, to cut the woof she seemed to have taken such pleasure in weaving. Judge if I adore you, you who perceive nothing of these odious manœuvres, who deliver yourself up with candour and happiness to love, and who speaks thus to all my natures.

There is my confession made. I think that you have all the noblenesses of the heart, for, adored angel, one should respect the weakness and even the crimes of a woman, and if I hide nothing from your heart, it is that it ought always to be _mine_. So I send you my sister's chatter and the letter of Madame de C[astries] on condition that you burn all, my angel. I know you so true, so great; ah! I would not hesitate to read you the letter of the _dilecta_ if you wish it, for you are really myself. I would not hide from you the shadow of a thought, and you ought, at all hours, to enter my heart, as into the palace you have chosen to spread your treasures in, to adorn it, and find pleasure in it. All should there be yours.

If Madame C...'s letter displeases you, say so frankly, my love. I will write to her that my affections are placed in a heart too jealous for me to be permitted to correspond with a woman who has her reputation for beauty, for charm, and that I act frankly in telling her so. I wish to write this letter from myself. I would like well that you should tell it to me.

As for my money troubles, do not be uneasy about them. It is the basis of my life, till the end of July, love, which makes everything easy to me to bear.

Pardon me for having made known to you yesterday's trouble. Oh, dear, always beautiful flower, I am ashamed to have made you know the extent of your mission, but you are an inexhaustible treasury of affection, of love, of tenderness, and I shall always find in you more consolations than I have troubles. You have put into my thoughts and all my hours a light, a gleam, which makes me endure all.

I wake up happy to love you; I go to bed happy to be loved. It is the life of angels; and my despair comes from feeling in it the discord which my want of fortune and of liberty puts between the desires of my heart, the impulses of my nature, and the works which keep me in an ignoble cabin like the moujiks of Paulowska. If I were only at Paulowska! I would that you were I for a moment to know how you are loved. Then I would be sure that seeing so much love, so much devotion, such great security of sentiment, you would never have a doubt, and you would love _in æternum_ a heart that loves you thus.

A thousand kisses, and may each have in itself a thousand caresses to you like that of yesterday to me.

GENEVA, January, 1834.

Dear soul of my soul, I entreat you, attach yourself solely--your cares, your thoughts, your memory--to what will be in my life a constant thought. Let the piece of malachite become by you alone an inkstand. I will explain the shape. It should be cut six-sided; the sides should be about the dimensions of the sides of your card-basket, except that they ought to end, at the top, squarely, as at the base; they should go up, enlarging from the base to the top, and, to decide, logically, the conditions of the stand, the pot for the ink (hollowed out in the malachite) must have at its surface a diameter equal to this line [drawn]. The cover, shaped like a _marchepain_, must be round, and sunk in the pot; it should be simple, and end in a silver-gilt knob. Let the stand have a handle, fastened on by simple buttons, and this handle, of bronzed silver-gilt, should be like that of your card-basket. Have engraved upon it our motto: _Adoremus in æternum_, between the date of your first letter and that of Neufchâtel.

The inkstand should be mounted on a pedestal, also of six sides, suitably projecting; and on each side, at the junction of the pedestal and the stand, there should be, in art-term, a moulding of silver-gilt, which is simply a round cordon, which must harmonize with the proportions of the inkstand. Then I think that at the top of the sides this moulding should be repeated. In the middle of each side of the pedestal put a star; then, in small letters, in the middle of each large side, these words: _Exaudit,--Vox,--Angeli_, separated by stars (which makes "Eva").

If you want to be magnificent you will add a paper-knife of a single piece of malachite and a powder-pot, the shape of which I will explain to you.

Not to displease that person I will give him Décamp's drawing which you can get back, and I will ask him, in exchange, for a piece of malachite for my alarm-clock.

Here is Susette. I can only say that this will make me renounce the pleasure of making you pick up on the shores of the lake the pebbles I intended to have made into an alarm-clock. I went, yesterday, to see if we could walk along the shore. I wanted to connect you with these souvenirs, to make you see that one can thus enlarge life and the world, and have the right to surround you with my thought through a thousand things, as I would like to surround myself with yours. Thus sentiment moulds material objects and gives them a soul and a voice.

What! _bébête_, did you not guess that the dedication was a surprise which I wished to give you? You are, for longer than you think, the thought of my thought.

Yes, I shall try to come to-night at nine.

GENEVA, January 19, 1834.

My loved angel, I am almost mad for you, as one is mad. I cannot put two ideas together that you do not come between them. I can think of nothing but you. In spite of myself my imagination brings me back to you. I hold you, I press you, I kiss you, I caress you; and a thousand caresses, the most amorous, lay hold upon me.

As to my heart, you will always be there, _willingly_; I feel you there deliciously. But, _mon Dieu!_ what will become of me if you have taken away my mind. Oh! it is a monomania that frightens me. I rise every moment, saying to myself, "Come, I'll go there!" Then I sit down again, recalled by a sense of my obligations. It is a dreadful struggle. It is not life. I have never been like this. You have consumed the whole of me. I feel stupefied and happy when I let myself go to thinking of you. I roll in a delicious revery, where I live a thousand years in a moment.

What a horrible situation. Crowned with love, feeling love in all my pores, living only for love, and to find oneself consumed by grief and caught in a thousand spider's-webs.

Oh! my dearest Eva, you don't know. I have picked up your card; it is there, before me, and I speak to it as if you were there. I saw you yesterday, beautiful, so admirably beautiful. Yesterday, all the evening, I said to myself, "She is mine!" Oh! the angels are not as happy in Paradise as I was yesterday.

GENEVA, February, 1834.

MADAME,--Bautte [chief clock-maker in Geneva] is a great seigneur who is bored by small matters; and as you deign to attach some importance to the chain of your slave, I send you the worthy Liodet, who will understand better what is wanted, and will put more good-will into doing it. I have told him to put a link to join the two little chains.

Accept a thousand compliments, and the respectful homage of your moujik,

HONORÉ.

GENEVA, February, 1834.

The Sire de Balzac is very well indeed, madame, and will be, in a few moments, at your fireside for a chat; he is too avaricious of the few moments that remain to him to spend in Geneva, and if he had not had some letters to answer, he would have gone there already this morning. A thousand affectionate compliments to M. Hanski, and to you a thousand homages full of friendship.

PARIS, Wednesday, February 12, 1834.

I prefer saying nothing more than that. I love you with increasing intoxication, with a devotion that difficulties increase, to telling you imperfectly my history for the last three days. Sunday I will post a complete journal. I have not a minute to myself. Everything hurries me at once, and time presses. But, adored angel, you will divine me.

The _dilecta_ [Madame de Berny] is better, but the future seems bad to me. I wait still before despairing.

_Mon Dieu!_ may my thoughts of love echo in your ears and cradle you.

PARIS, Thursday, February 13, 1834.

MADAME,--I arrived much fatigued, but I found troubles at home, of which you can conceive the keenness. Madame de Berny is ill, and seriously ill,--more ill than she is aware of. I see in her face a fatal change. I hide my anxiety from her; it is boundless. Until my own doctor or a somnambulist reassure me, I shall not feel easy about that life which you know to be so precious.

I have delayed a day in writing to you, because on Wednesday morning I had to rush to the rue d'Enfer, and when I could write to you there was no longer time; the public offices closed earlier on account of Ash-Wednesday.

The sight of that face so gracious, aged in a month by twenty years, and horribly contracted, has greatly increased the grief I felt. Even if the health is restored, and I hope it, it will be always painful to me to see the sad change to old age. I can say this only to you. It seems as if nature had avenged herself suddenly, in a moment, for the long protestation made against her and time. I hope most ardently that the life may be saved; but I recognized symptoms that I saw with horror in my father before the irreparable loss. So, I have sorrow upon sorrow.[1] Now, after confiding to you these distresses, I can, madame, give you some consoling news. The publisher has understood my delay, and is not angry with me. I have, certainly, to work enormously, but, at least, I shall not have the annoyance of being blamed. As for M. Gosselin, that is only a loss of money. So, you who felt such affectionate fears lest the prolongation of my stay would prove a burden may be reassured. I shall have had complete joy, and no remorse; and now that there is no remorse, I should like a little. It is so sweet to bear something for those whose friendship is precious to us. I can tell you from afar, with less trembling in my voice and redness in my eyes, that the forty-four days I spent in Geneva have been one of the sweetest halts that I have made in my life of a literary foot-soldier. That rest was necessary for me, and you have made it into a joy. It was a sleep with the sweetest dreams,--dreams which will be realities. True friendship, sweet, kind, noble and good sentiments are so rare in life that there must mingle a little gratitude in the return we owe, and I feel as much gratitude as friendship.

I shall forget nothing of our affectionate little agreements: neither the album, nor the coffee, nor anything. To-day I can only tell you that I arrived without any hindrance, except great fatigue. The cold was keen. Saturday morning I crossed the Jura on foot through the snow, and on reaching the stone where two years ago I sat down to look at the wonderful spectacle of France and Switzerland separated by a brook, which is the Lake of Geneva, and a ditch, which is the valley between the Mont Blanc and the Jura, I had a moment of joy mingled with sadness. Two years ago I wept over lost illusions [refers to his rupture with Mme. de Castries], and to-day I had to regret the sweetest things that have ever come to me, outside of family feelings,--hours of friendship, the value of which a poor writer from necessity must feel more keenly than others, because there is in him a great poet for all that is emotion of the heart.

Yes, I am proud of my personal feelings, but it is a great grief to know the joys of friendship to their full extent, and lose them, even momentarily.

To-day I replunge into work, and it is crushing. I have promised that the second Part of the "Études de Mœurs" shall appear February 25th. That is only ten days for completing you know how much. My punctuality must excuse the delays. You see that in writing I am as indiscreet as when I went to see you.

Well, adieu, madame; believe that I am not "French" in the matter of memory, and that I know all that I leave of good and true beyond the Jura. In the hours when I am worn-out I shall think of our evenings; and the word _patience_, written in the depths of my life, will make me think of our games. You know all that I would say to the Grand Maréchal of the Ukraine, and I am certain that my words will be more graceful from your lips than from my pen. Tell Anna that _her horse_ sends her his remembrances and kisses her forehead. A thousand affectionate compliments to Mademoiselle Séverine; inform Mademoiselle Borel that I have _not_ broken my neck, and keep, I entreat you, madame, at your feet, my most sincere and most affectionate homage; your noble beauty assures you of sincerity, and as to the affection, I wish I could prove it to you in some way that would not involve misfortune.

"Do not forget _to-morrow_," was one of your recommendations when I told you that I did not believe in morrows; but now I do believe in them, for, by chance, I have a future, and my publisher has proved it to me. He is jubilant at the sale of "Eugénie Grandet," and said to me solemnly, "It sells like bread." I tell this to you who think you see cakes in it, while most people expect to see me _faire brioches_ of it [fiasco]. Excuse this studio jest, you who like artists.

Devotion and friendship.

[Footnote 1: Madame de Berny was the friend of his parents, and twenty-four years older than himself. When the family lived at Villeparisis the de Bernys lived near them in a hired house, their own estate being at Saint-Firmin. Madame de Berny recognized Balzac's genius in his early youth, when parents and friends denied it. For a time, while at Villeparisis, he taught her son with his own brother Henry. When Balzac's father opposed his literary career, it was she who, with Mme. Surville and her husband, induced the old man to advance him part of his inheritance for the printing-office, and later another portion to avoid bankruptcy. When the crisis came, in 1828, and his father would do no more for him, Madame de Berny lent him money from time to time to meet his load of business debts. The total amount lent by her, at five per cent interest, was 45,000 francs, the last 6,000 of which he paid in full in 1836. Madame de Berny had cruel trials of her own. Two of her children were insane, one idolized son and two daughters died before her in the prime of their youth. The illness here mentioned was one form of heart disease, from which she rallied for a time, but died in July, 1836, in the sixty-first year of her age. Of Balzac's grief at this event his sister says: "My brother was then (1836) overwhelmed by a great heart-sorrow ... the death of a person very dear to him.... I have never read anything so eloquent as his expression of that grief."

Writing, himself, to a friend at that time, he says: "She whom I have lost was more than a mother, more than a friend, more than any creature can be to another creature. I can explain her only by divinity. She sustained me during great storms by words, by actions, by devotion. If I live, it was through her. She was all to me; and though for the last two years illness and lapse of time had separated us, yet we were visible to each other from a distance. She re-acted upon me. She was, as it were, my moral sun. Madame de Mortsauf in the _Lys_ is a pale expression of her noble qualities; it is but a distant reflection of her, for I have a horror of prostituting my own emotions."--TR.]

PARIS, February 15, 1834, eleven o'clock.

My darling Eva, to you belongs this part of my night. Since Wednesday morning of this week I have been like a balloon; but as I went and came, and bustled through this Paris, I walked along, exciting myself with one fixed idea,--the idea of being forever near to you.