Part 12

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 again. I am afraid of nothing. My tears, my regrets, my sadness of love,--all that falls upon my heart at the moment when I get into bed. Then, alone with myself, I am all grief not to be at the "Arc," not to have seen my darling, and I go over in memory the smallest details of those days when, for all grief, I had that of being waked three hours too soon, hours that separated my rising from the moment when I set out to go to you.

The next day I work with an ardour of enthusiasm. What shall I tell you of these four days? I had to see two editors (they came) and the printer, to finish my proofs, to nurse Mme. de Berny, who is better,--but what a change! she is still a little feeble, incapable of correcting my proofs. Everything will suffer for that, but what does it matter? I want to see that life out of danger.

I felt there how I loved you. A horrible sensation told me that I could not bear any danger to you. All that recalled my terror at the time of your nervous attack. Oh, _mon Dieu!_ to see you seriously ill, you, who sum up and hold all my affections in your heart, my life in your life,--why! I should die, not of your death, but of your sufferings. No, you do not know what you are to me. Near you, I feel too much to tell you egotistical thoughts; here I talk to you all day long. You are woven into my thought. I find no word but that to express my situation. As soon as I found myself in Paris I thought of the means of going to see you for a single day in Geneva.

Here I find violent family troubles. To-day I have had my brother-in-law and my mother to dinner. That tells you that from five o'clock to half-past ten I have been given up to them. Yesterday I had to dine with my sister, my mother, and my brother-in-law; then I was forced to give them from four to eleven o'clock. Those poor heads are distracted. I must have courage, ideas, energy, _economy_ for all of them.

The morning of this Friday I set myself to learn all that has happened here. I had to go out early, to see the doctor, negotiate a payment for to-day, 15th, and consult him. So you see the employment of to-day and yesterday. Thursday was taken up by the publishers, a little sleep and a bath, also by Madame de Berny, to whom I wished at any rate to read "Ne touchez pas à la hache." Wednesday, the day after my arrival, I wrote you in the evening, I ran about all the morning, set my affairs in order, attended to a thousand little things,--which I don't particularize, as they are all mere necessary nothings,--made up my accounts, wrote, etc. After this avalanche of small things here I am, not much rested, rather less anxious about the _dilecta_, before a pile of proofs and enormous debts for the end of the month. Madame D... has urgent need of half her money by the end of February. It is now the 15th, the month is a short one, I must finish my two volumes; I must finish "Ne touchez pas" and write "La Femme aux yeux rouges."

My adored, my darling _minette_, I tell you things that are terrifying, but do not be alarmed. Vienna is traced out before me; all will be well. Your desire to see me, your love, all _you_ hovers above me. I believe in you only; I want new successes, new fame, new courage; I _will_ in short, that you shall be a thousand times prouder of your husband of love than of your lover. Yes, dear celestial Eva, I am melancholy because I am here and you are down there, but I have no more discouragements, no more depressions. When I raise my eyes I see something better than God, I see a sure happiness, a tried happiness. Oh! you do not know, my treasure, my dear life, what such sweet certainty is to my soul. You don't know what you did with your infernal jesting, you remember? You tried upon a most loving heart a weapon you did not know was loaded. A moment more, and I was lost. My eternal love could be placed on you alone; I see it, I know it now, for now I desire you more than ever. My dearest soul, I have for myself all the efforts that I make to meet you again; I materialize my hope. But, my beautiful myself, you, what are you doing? Ah! my beautiful, saintly creature, I know it is not on him of Paris that the burden is heaviest; it is our Geneva love, it is you who, bearing all our happiness, feel most our pains, our sorrows. Neither do I ever look _at us two_ without a smile full of hope, but also slightly tainted with sadness. Oh! my idolized angel, you in whom all my future resides, all my happiness, and for whom I desire all the fine glories that make a happy woman, you whom I love with all the ardour of a young sentiment, of a first and a last love in one, yes, know it well, no sufferings, ideas, joys, which can agitate your soul fail to come and agitate mine.[1]

At this moment when I write to you, having left all to plunge into your heart, to come nearer to you, no, I feel space no longer; we are near one to the other; I see you, and one of my senses is intoxicated by the memory of one of those little voluptuous moments which made me so happy! I am very proud of you. I cry out to myself that I love you! You see, a poet's love has a little madness in it. None but artists are worthy of women, because they are somewhat women too. Oh! what need I have always to hear myself told that I am loved, to hear you repeat it! You, you are all. You will know only when you hear my voice how ardently I tell you that you are the only well-beloved, the only wife. Now I shall rush there more amorously than the two preceding times. You know why, my dear, naïve wife? Because I know you better, because I know all there is of divine and girlish in your dear, celestial character, because--. No, I never dreamed so ambitiously the perfections that are agreeable to me because I know that I can love ever. Going to Neufchâtel I _wanted to_ love you; returning from Geneva it is impossible not to love you!

Who will ever know what the road to Ferney is at the spot where, having to leave on the morrow, I stood still at the sight of your dear, saddened face. _Mon Dieu!_ if I tried to tell you all the thoughts there are in my soul, the voluptuous pleasures which my heart contains and desires, I should never cease writing, and, unfortunately, the word "Vienna" is there. I am cruel to both of us in the name of a continued happiness; yes, _one year_ passed together will prove to you that you can be better loved each day, and I aspire to September...

My dearest, I have many griefs; this flaming happiness is surrounded by briars, thorns, stones. I cannot speak to you of family troubles; they are endless. You will know them from one word, you who feel through a sister what, in another order of things, I feel through my mother. My mother has committed, with good intentions, follies that bring a person into disrepute. Here am I, I, so busy, forced to undertake the education of my mother, hold her in check, make a child of her.[2] Dear angel, what a sad thing to think that if the world has accumulated obstacles in my life, my family have done worse in being of no use to me, and secretly hampering me. One day or other the world counts us as a victor to have beaten it. But family griefs are between _us_ and God.

I told Borget that September would see me in Vienna, and a whole year in the Ukraine and the Crimea, and you know I wrote him that he could meet you in Italy. I send you a scrap of a letter from that excellent friend; it will please you; you will see in it that nobility of soul, that beauty of sentiment, that make us love him. What rush of love he has to those who love his friend! But do not go and love him too much, _Madame_. He will take to you _your chain_, the sketches of my apartment, and your seal, if it is done, without knowing what he hands to you. So tell me the day you will be in Venice; he will go there. He is my Thaddeus, you see. What he does for me, I should do for him. One is never jealous of fine sentiments. As much as _death_ entered cold into your husband's heart when you spoke of a coquetry to Séverine, so much should I go joyously to accomplish in your name a service to your Thaddeus.

From to-day, Sunday, I shall write to you every day a word, on a little diary. Yes, the Würtemberg Coquebin shall alone touch the manuscript of "Séraphita," which will be coarsely bound in the gray cloth which slipped so easily on the floors. Am I not a little of a woman, hey, _minette_? Have I not found a pretty use for what you wanted destroyed, and a souvenir? Nothing can be more precious, or simpler. Book of celestial love, clothed in love and in joys terrestrial as complete as it is possible to have here below. Yes, angel, complete, full! Yes, my ambitious one, you fill all my life! Yes, we can be happy every day, feeling every day new joys.

_Mon Dieu!_ Friday at dinner I saw in my sister's home one of those scenes which prove that inspired love, that jealous love, that nothing in Paris can resist continued poverty. Oh! dear angel, what a terrible reaction in my heart, thinking of the little home in the rue Cassini. How I swore to myself then, with that iron will, never to expose the flowers of my life to be in the brown pot in which were the pinks of Ida's mother,--you know, in "Ferragus." No, no, I never could have that experience, for never shall I forget the 14th of February, 1834, any more than the 26th of January; there is a lesson in it for me. Yes, I want too much; there exists in my being an invincible need to love you always better, that I may never expose my love to any misunderstanding. Oh, my heart, my soul, my life, with what joy I recognize at every step that I love you as you dream of being loved. The most indifferent things enter into this circumference.

No, your young girl's chain shall remain pure. I would like to employ it. It is too pretty for a man. That is why I wanted your head by Grosclaude. What a delicious border I could have made of it, and what a delicious thought to surround you, you, my dear wife, with all the superstitions of your childhood which I adore. Your childhood was mine. We are brothers and sisters through the sorrows of childhood.

There is one of your smiles of happiness, a ravishing little contraction, a paleness that takes you at the moment of joy, which returns to stab me with intoxicating memories. Oh! you do not know with what depth you correspond to the caprices, the loves, the pleasures, the poesies, the sentiments of my nature!

Come, adieu. Think, my beloved, that at every instant of the day a thought of love surrounds you; that a light more brilliant and secret gilds your atmosphere; that my thought is all about you; that my interior eyes see you; that a constant desire caresses you; that I work in your name and for you. Take good care of yourself; and remember that the only serious order that is given to you by him who loves you and whom you have told me you wished to obey is to _walk_ a great deal whatever the weather may be. You must. Ah! the doctor laughed at my fears. Nevertheless, there are baths to be taken, and some precautions, "fruits of my excessive labour," he said. "So long as you lead your chaste, monkish life and work your twelve hours a day, take every morning an infusion of _wild pansy_." Isn't his prescription droll?

You know all the caressing desires that I send you. Well, I hope that every Wednesday you will know how to draw my letter from the claws of the post. From now till the end of the month I shall work only my twelve hours, sleep seven, and spread out the five others in rest, reading, baths, and the bustle of life. Your Bengali is wise. Well, a thousand flowers of the soul. All reflection made, I shall send your ostensible letter by Borget.

[Footnote 1: This ridiculous stuff is carefully translated word for word. The reader must make what he can of it. It is ludicrous to suppose that Balzac ever wrote those vapourings of a shop-boy to his female kind.--TR.]

[Footnote 2: His whole correspondence, and all that we know and can gather of his life go to prove that he never could have written this. His family then consisted of his mother and Mme. Surville. His affection for M. and Mme. Surville appears in every part of his life. His mother seems to have been at times irritating, and very injudicious with him, but not in the way suggested. At one period he intrusted her with all his affairs, and she was his business agent. He shows in his life and writings a strong respect for the Family bond, and his last letter to his mother is signed "Ton fils soumis"--"Your submissive son."--TR.]

PARIS, February 17--February 23, 1834.

No letter to-day, my dearest Eve. _Mon Dieu!_ are you ill? What tortures one has at such a distance! If you are ill, and they have taken your letters! A thousand thoughts enter my brain and make me desperate.

To-day I work much, but get on little. To-morrow I am forced to go and dine with M. de Margonne, the lord of Saché. Nevertheless, I get up at half-past one in the morning and go to bed at half-past six. My habits of work are resumed and the fatigues of toil; but I bear them well. I find unheard-of difficulties in doing well what I have to do at this moment. At every instant of the day my thought flies to you. I have mortal fears of being less loved. I adore you with such complete abandonment! I have such need of knowing myself loved! I can be happy only when I receive a letter from you, not every day, but every two days. Your letters refresh my soul; they cast into it celestial balm.

You cannot doubt me; I work night and day, and every line brings me nearer to you. But you, my beloved angel, what are you doing? You are idle; you still see a little company. _Mon Dieu!_ what ties are between us! They will not break, say! You do not know how much I am attached to you by all the things that you thought would detach me. There is not only ungovernable love, passions, happiness, pleasures, there is also, from me to you, I know not what profound esteem of moral qualities. Your mind will always please me; your soul is strong; you are fully the _wife_ I desire for mine. I go over deliciously within me those forty-five days, and everything proves to me that I am right in my love. Yes, I can love you always; always hold out to you a hand full of true affection and receive you in a heart that is always full of you. I like to speak to you of your superiority because it is real. Every sound your soul gives out is grand, strong, and true. I am very happy through you in thinking that you have all the qualities which perpetuate attachment in life.

My dear flower of love, I wrote in my last letter that I wished you to walk; but I wish more, I also wish you to give up coffee _au lait_ and tea. I wish you to obey me, and I desire that you shall only eat dark meats. Above all, that you bring yourself gradually to using cold water when you dress. Will you not do all that when it is asked of you in the name of love? Do not depart in any way from that regimen. As for walking, begin by short walks and increase every day till you can do six miles on foot. Take your walk fasting, getting up, and coming back to breakfast on a little meat, but dark and always roasted. If you love me you will manage yourself in this way with a constancy that nothing hinders. Then your beauty will remain the same; you will get slightly thinner, your health will be good, and you will prevent many illnesses. Oh! I implore you, follow this regimen, and when you are near the sea take sea-baths. You do not know how I love you.

Tuesday, 18.

Still no letter; what anguish! I have just returned from Madame de C[astries], whom I do not want for an enemy when my book comes out, and the best means of obtaining a defender against the faubourg Saint-Germain is to make her approve of the work in advance; and she greatly approved of it. I carried to Madame Appony Madame Potoçka's letter. The ambassadress [of Austria] was at her toilet; I did not see her, and, on the whole, I am content; I do not want to be disturbed, I wish to go nowhere, and the singular idea has come to me of shaving my head like a monk so as to be unable to go out of the house. I have to go to a ball Saturday at Dablin's; he has done me services, and I am forced to have some gratitude.

Do you know there is some question of my taking my mother, sister, and brother-in-law to live here? I await a family council upon it. I see many inconveniences; the lessening of my liberty, though nothing would prevent my going to the Ukraine and Vienna and absenting myself two years. But, for the last two days, my reason tells me to refuse this union; and yet it is the only means to prevent my mother from committing follies. What vexations and impediments! I have worked little to-day and have rushed about much.

Wednesday, 19.

Furious work. The "Duchesse de Langeais" costs me more than I can tell you. In my opinion it is colossal in work, but it will be little appreciated by the crowd. My publisher refuses me any money for my month's bills; here I am constrained to a thousand annoying efforts, and shall I succeed? he is right; he represents Madame Bêchet, and tells me he can't ask her to pay in advance; the new Part must absolutely be brought out. So I send you a thousand tendernesses. Here, reading this line, you must think that the heart of your lover was full of love, that he had _need_ to write to you a thousand gracious things, but that he must be silent and work! Till to-morrow.

Thursday, 20, five o'clock.

My mother, sister, and brother-in-law are coming to dinner to talk over affairs. I have worked since one hour after midnight till three hours after midday without leaving off. Now, angel of mine, decidedly you will shudder, you will palpitate, when you read the "Duchesse de Langeais," for it is the greatest thing in women that I have so far done. No woman of this Faubourg resembles her.

You have a thousand thoughts of love, a thousand caresses, a thousand prettinesses. I think of you and your pleasure when I hear my name uttered gloriously everywhere. I wish to become great for a sentiment greater still.

Till to-morrow. A kiss to the wife, a little _pigeonnerie_ to Eve. A thousand souls for you in my soul.

Friday, 21.

I have your letter, the second letter written to your dearest one. _Mon Dieu!_ how I love you! The thousand desires, the hopes of happiness which fired my heart at each turn of the wheel as I went to Neufchâtel, the certain delights that I went to find in Geneva and which made you sublime, ravishing, in short a wife, forever mine,--well, I have felt all those divers emotions once more, augmented by dear joys, by the adorable security of an angel in his sky.

Oh! my love, what rapid wings have borne me near to you! Yes, my thought has kissed your magnificent forehead, my heart has been in your heart, my thought in your beautiful hair, and my mouth--I dare not say, but certainly it breathed love and kissed you with unheard-of ardour. Oh! dear Eve, dear treasure of happiness, dear, noble soul, dear light, dear world, my only happiness, how shall I tell you fully that I felt there that I loved you _in æternum_? I ought to have read that letter on my knees before your portrait! What courage you communicate to me!

_Eh bien_, I am glad at what you inform me of. To have it so, it must be the fruit of conscientious thought. Oh! dear darling, I want that this other _you_, this other _we_, well, I wish he may have all that can flatter the vanities of a mother, that he may be tall, that he have your forehead, my energy, that he be handsome and noble, a great heart and a fine soul. For all that, wisdom! At Vienna, my love, at Vienna, we will try. What delights in chastity, in fame, in work that has an object. Fidelity, fame, toil, all that for a woman, one only, for her whose love shines already upon me for all my life. Yes, Eva, Eva of love, my beautiful and noble mistress, my pretty, naïve servant, my great sovereign, my fairy, my flower, yes, you light all things! Persist in your projects; be a woman as superior in your conduct as you are in your plans. Be as strong in your house as you are in your love.

Oh! your letters, they ravish me, they stir me; oh! you make me dote upon you! What a soul, what a heart, what a dear mind! You crown my ambitions, and yesterday I was saying to Mme. de B... that you were--you, the unknown of Geneva and Neufchâtel--the realization of the ambitious programme I had made of a woman.

Ah! my love, it is something, after the triumph that all women desire to obtain over the senses and the heart of their lovers, to obtain also the complete and entire assurance that they are admired from afar, that we can always esteem them, cherish them, take pleasure beside them. Such as you have seen me near you, such I shall ever be. To you all my smiles, to you the flowers of heart and love, inexhaustible in their bloom. To you the candour and freshness of my sentiments, to you all. To you, who understand the mind, the gaiety, the melancholy, the grandeur, the transports of the ever diverse love of a poet! Oh! I stop, kissing your eyes.

To-morrow I rush, about; I have tiresome business matters; but this is the last time. I shall finish at one blow the difficulty about the "Physiologie du Mariage," and by the end of March I shall not owe a sou to Madame Delannoy. After? Well, I shall resume work to accomplish the rest. I tell you nothing of these tramps, but they take much time, weary me, exhaust me, and my love, as much as necessity, cries to me every morning, "March!"

My love, my Eve, night and day I go to sleep and wake in your heart, in your thought. To suffer, to work for you, these are pleasures. Till to-morrow.

Saturday, 22.

I have just received your ostensible letter and have answered it. I spoke _stupidly_ of your chain, but I have not the heart to throw the letter into the fire and write it over again. I am tired. To-night I must go to a ball; I, at a ball! But, my love, I must. It is at the house of the only friend who has ever gallantly served me. I will send you the pattern of a chain, that of Vaucanson; have it made solid, and Liodet can send it to me and draw on me for the cost. Tell me if bronze-gilt things can enter Russia. I have had an admirable three-branched candelabrum made here, and I should like to send you one; also an inkstand and an alarm-clock (a very useful thing to a woman), in short, all that I use here to be the same with you. If I had been richer do you think I would not have substituted to you a chain like yours and taken yours, in order that you might say to yourself while playing with it, "He plays with that chain!" But I can make such joys for ourselves later. Answer me about the bronze, because I want you to have that masterpiece before your eyes. Think, what happiness to see as you write to me, _Exsultat vitam angelorum_, which I shall see in writing to you. Oh! I am greedy, hungry for such things, which put two lovers unceasingly in each other's hearts! I shall have your room at Wierzchownia made just like mine here. I want you to have the same carpet.

Oh! I adore you. Just now I wept on thinking of the floor of your house in Geneva. How lucky to have the strength not to cough! These tears have told me that I shall be at Vienna, September 10, and that I shall press you, happy one, on this heart that is all yours.