Part 18

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 life---I won't say for an infidelity, but--for a thought. It wouldn't be a merit; I am even ashamed of myself. I should have to do six hundred leagues on foot, go to Wierzchownia on a pilgrimage, to present myself in youthful shape, for I am so fat that the newspapers joke me, the wretches! That is France, _la belle France_; they laugh at ills produced by toil; they laugh at my "abdomen." So be it! they have nothing else to say. They cannot find in me either baseness or cowardice, or anything of what dishonours them; and, as Philippon of "La Caricature" said to me: "Be happy; _all who do not live by writing_ admire your character as much as your works." I grasped his hand well that day. He gave me back my strength.

You know by the announcement of the fourth Part, that I am busy with the second volume of the "Scènes de la Vie privée," but what you did not know of is "Le Père Goriot," a master work! the painting of a sentiment so great that nothing can exhaust it, neither rebuffs, nor wounds, nor injustice; a man who is _father_, as a saint, a martyr is Christian. As for "César Birotteau," I have told you about him.

Yes, I inhaled a little of the autumn in Touraine; I played _plant_ and _oyster_, and when the skies were clear I thought it was an omen, and that a dove was coming from Vienna with a green leaflet in her beak.

I am now in my winter condition, in my study, with the Chartreuse gown you know of, working for the future. As for my joys, they are innocent,--the refurnishing of my bedroom, a cane that has made all Paris gabble, a divine opera-glass which my chemists have had made for me by the optician of the Observatoire; besides which, gold buttons on my blue coat; buttons chiselled by fairy hands,--for the man who carries, in the nineteenth century, a cane worthy of Louis XIV. cannot keep upon his coat ignoble pinchbeck buttons. It is these little innocent crotchets that make me pass for a millionaire. I have created the sect of Canophilists in the fashionable world, and they take me for a frivolous man. It is very amusing.

It is a month now since I have set foot at the Opera. I have, I think, a box at the Bouffons. Is not that, you will say to me, very comfortable poverty? But remember that music, chased gold canes, buttons, and opera-glasses, are my sole amusements. No, you will not blame them.

Shall I send you the corrected "Peau de Chagrin"? Yes. Ten days hence that Baron Sina, who fills my mind on account of his name, will receive, addressed to him, a package containing five 12mo volumes, in the style of the four of "Le Médecin de campagne," which Maître Werdet calls pretty little volumes. They are frightful; but this edition is an edition intended to fix, definitively, the type of the grand general edition of the work which, under the title of "Études Sociales," will include all these fragments, shafts, columns, capitals, bas-reliefs, walls, cupolas, in short, the building, which will be ugly or beautiful, which will win me the _plaudite cives_ or the gemoniæ. Be tranquil; in that day, when the illustrated edition comes, we shall find asses on whose skin to print you a unique copy, enriched with designs. That shall be the votive offering of the _pardoned one._ Well, forget my fault, but I shall never forget it myself.

Do not fear, madame, that Zulma-Dudevant will ever see me attached to her chariot.... I only speak of this because more celebrity is fastened on that woman than she deserves; which is preparing for her a bad autumn.

Madame de Berny does not like "Volupté;" she condemns the book as full of rhetoric and empty of feeling. She was revolted by the passage where the lover of Madame de Couaën goes into evil places, and thinks that character ignoble. She has made me come down from my judgment; but there are, nevertheless, fine pages, flowers in a desert.

"Jacques," Madame Sand's last novel, is advice given to husbands who inconvenience their wives to kill themselves in order to leave them free. The book is not dangerous. You could write ten times better if you made a novel in letters. This one is empty and false from end to end. An artless young girl leaves, after six months of marriage, a _superior_ man for a popinjay; a man of importance, passionate and loving, for a dandy, without any reason, physiological or moral. Then, there is a love for mules, as in "Lélia" for unfruitful beings; which is strange in a woman who is a mother, and who loves a good deal in the German way, instinctively. All these authors roam the void, astride of a hollow; there is no truth there. I prefer ogres, Tom Thumb, and the Sleeping Beauty.

M. de G... has made a decent little failure. Those who have wounded me never prosper; isn't that singular? Decidedly, fate wills that I shall not see Madame de Castries. Each time that I rustle against her gown some misfortune happens to me. The last time, I went to Lormois, the residence of the Duc de Maillé, to see her, I came back on foot (to get thin). Between Lonjumeau and Antony, a sharp point inside my boot pushed up and wounded my foot. It was half-past eleven at night,--an hour at which a road is not furrowed with vehicles. I was just about to go to bed in a ditch, like a robber, when the cabriolet of one of my friends came by, empty. The groom picked me up and took me home. I believe in fate. It is in their harshness that we judge women. This one showed me a dry heart. As Eugène Sue says, the viscera were tinder; they would have stopped the blood instead of making it circulate. Pardon me; this is the remains of the nail in my boot.

Fancy, I am going to give myself the pleasure of seeing myself acted. I have imagined a buffoonery that I want to enjoy: "Prudhomme, bigamist." Prudhomme is miserly; keeps his wife very short; she does the household work and is a servant disguised by the title of wife. She has never been to an Opera ball. Her neighbour wants to take her, and being informed of the conjugal habits of Joseph Prudhomme, she assists the wife in making a lay figure resembling Madame Prudhomme, which the women put in the bed, and go off to the masked ball. Prudhomme comes home, says his monologues, questions his wife, who is asleep, and finally goes to bed. At five o'clock the wife returns; he wakes, and finds himself with two wives. You can never imagine the fun our actors will make of that sketch; but I swear to you that, if it takes, Parisians will come and see it a hundred times. God grant it! It will only cost me a morning, and may perhaps be worth fifteen thousand francs. It is the best of buffoonery! But all depends on so many things. Some one must lend me a name; the theatres are sinks of vice, and my foot is virgin of stain. Perhaps the first and last representation will be in this letter. Better one fine page not paid for than a hundred thousand francs for a worthless farce. I have never separated fame from poverty,--poverty with canes, buttons, and opera-glasses, be it understood, and a fame easy to carry. That will be my lot.

Have I hid my real griefs? have I chattered gaily enough? Would you believe that I suffer,--that this morning I took up life with difficulty, I rebelled against my solitude, I wanted to roam the world, to see what the Landstrasse was, to put my fingers in the Danube, to listen to the Viennese stupidities--in short, to do anything but write pages; to be _living_ instead of turning pale over phrases?

I await, with impatience, till your white hand writes a few lines in compensation of my toil; for to him who counts suffrages and estimates them, yours are worth millions. I await, as Bugeaud said, "my peck;" then I shall start off, joyous once more, on a new course across the fields of thought. Who will unfasten my bridle and take off my bit; who will give me my freedom; when shall I begin to write "Philippe le Discret," to work at my ease--to-day, a scene; to-morrow, nothing,--and date my work Wierzchownia?

Do you know what a _doublion_ is? It is the key of the fields,--it is freedom! Come, come! another day, my sadness! to-day the moujik is all gaiety at having kissed the hand of his lady, as in church they kiss the golden pax the priest holds out. I am well of opinion of those who love Musset; yes, he is a poet to put above Lamartine and V. Hugo; but this is not yet the gospel.

I place on you the care of thanking M. Hanski for his last letter. But I am sorry in my joy. I wish it had been any other cause than the dear little Anna's illness that detained you in Vienna. Kiss her for me, on the forehead, if that proud infant suffers it. And finally, remember me to all about you.

You cannot have the bound "Séraphita" until New Year's day. I would like to know if I may send Anna a little souvenir without fear of the inquisitive nose and hands of the German custom-house.

Adieu; I have given you my hours of sleep so as not to rob Werdet, or Madame Bêchet; a thousand respectful affections, and deign to accept my profound obedience.

Sunday, 19th, three in the morning.

I have not slept; I had not read all my letters. My last two difficulties are arrangeable. Two thorns less in my foot.

I have read over my scribblings. I am afraid you cannot read them; what shall I do? Have I told you all? Oh! no. There are many things that are never told.

My mother is very proud of the "Absolu;" my sister writes that she wept with joy in reading it and in saying to herself that I was her brother. Madame de Berny finds some spots upon it. She does not like that Claës should turn out his daughter; she thinks that forced. Madame de Castries writes me that she wept over it. I am sorry for the distance between Paris and Vienna. I would have liked to have your opinion first.

Ah! I may go to England for a few days (in all, ten, to go and return). My brother-in-law has just invented something wonderful, he says, relating to railroads, which might be sold for a good little million to the English. I shall try.

Did I speak to you of Prince Puckler-Muskau, and of my dinner with him at the house of a species of German monster who calls herself the widow of Benjamin Constant, but has all the air of being a good woman? Well, if I did not speak of it it will be the subject of a conversation when I am on the estates of your Beauteousness.

On my way to England I shall stop one week at Ham. The illustrious Peyronnet has expected me there for six months, and the trip has always been delayed. The Duc de Fitz-James writes to invite me to Normandy; refused.

_Mon Dieu!_ forty letters read; it is a sort of drunkenness. Among them are two unknown ladies. One modestly asks me to make her portrait and write her life. She has green eyes and she is a widow--that's the physical and the moral of her. The other sends me execrable verses. At last I understand the _cachets_ of Voltaire. They were not vanity; they were simply to avoid any but the letters of friends. This is what it is to have--I, a poor devil--neither Ferney, nor two hundred thousand francs income, nor one hundred francs for postage.

Sandeau will be lodged like a prince. He can't believe in his luck. I embark him on a career of masterpieces by a thousand crowns of debt, which we hypothecate on a bottle of ink. Poor lad! He does not know what duty is. He is free. I chain him. I am sorry for it. He is at this moment loved. A pretty young woman casts upon his wounds the balm of her smiles.

Re-adieu.

PARIS. October 6, 1834.

I have been for the last few days so busy in settling Sandeau and furnishing him with everything, for he is a child, that I have not been able to write to you; and now I shall have to do so by fits and starts, according to the order of my ideas and not that of logic.

Ah! in the first place, can you conceive that they are finding fault with me for the name MARGUERITE in the "Recherche de l'Absolu." It is a Flemish name, and that is all there is to say about it. I must be very irreproachable when they have to find fault with me for that!

Next Saturday I give a dinner to the Tigers of my opera-box, and I am preparing sumptuosities out of all reason. I shall have Rossini and Olympe, his _cara donna_ [afterwards his wife], who will preside. Next Nodier; then five _tigers_, Sandeau, and a certain Victor Bohain (a man of great political talent, unjustly smirched), the most exquisite wines of Europe, the rarest flowers, the best cheer; in short, I intend to distinguish myself.

I don't know who told me that your bitter-sweet cousin expected me in Geneva! _Mon Dieu!_ how queer! If I wanted to be gallant I should tell you that I would not cross the Jura in winter for any one in the world after having had the Maison Mirabaud [Mme. Hanska's house] for joy during that stay in Geneva. Well, believe it.

I have worked much at "Père Goriot," which will be in the "Revue de Paris" for November. My first part of the "Études Philosophiques," the pieces of which have been corrected with excessive severity, will appear in a few days. I shall then busy myself with the "Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée," a delightful composition, and with "César Birotteau," which is taking immense proportions. Also Emmanuel Arago and Sandeau are going to do a great work in five acts, in which I have a third,--a fine subject, which will pay Sandeau's debts and mine; a drama, entitled "Les Courtisans." It will go first to the Porte-Saint-Martin; but it will certainly get to the Français. It is magnificent! (I am a little like Perrette and her jug of milk.) If we win the stage, and our anonymous society, under the title of E. J. San-Drago (Sand-Arago), is successful, I shall be free all the sooner, and Sandeau, trained by me to keep house, will allow me to travel. It is impossible that a man who destines himself to politics should not see Europe, not judge fundamentally of manners, morals, and interests. The struggle between France and other countries will always be decided by the North. I must know the North at any cost, and, as M. de Margonne says, one has to be young to travel. Therefore, my liberty! oh, how I long for it!

I shall go to Ham about November 5, and, perhaps, from there to England; but I shall return for the 15th in Paris. My life is varied only by ideas; physically, it is monotonous. I speak confidentially with no one but Madame de Berny or with you. I find that one should communicate but little with petty minds; one leaves one's wool there, as on bushes. I am vowed to great sentiments, unique, lofty, unalterable, exclusive, and it _is_ an odd contrast with my apparent levity. I assure you it would take at least five or six years to know to what point solitude has made me susceptible, and of how many sacrifices I am capable without ostentation. What of sentiments, feelings, I have made visible in my work is but the faint shadow of the light that is in me. Up to the present time one woman only, Madame de Berny, has really known what I am, because she has seen my smile, always otherwise expressive, never cease.[1] In twelve years I have had neither anger nor impatience. The heaven of my heart has always been blue. Any other attitude is, to my thinking, impotence. Strength should be a unit; and after having for seven years measured myself with misfortune and vanquished it, and risen, to gain literary royalty, every night with a will more determined than that of the night before, I have, I think, the right to call myself strong. Thus inconstancy, infidelity are _incomprehensibilities_ for me. Nothing wearies me; neither waiting nor happiness. My friendship is of the race of the granites; all will wear-out before the feeling I have conceived. Madame de Berny is sixty years old; her griefs have changed and withered her. My affection has redoubled. I say it without pride, because I see no merit in it. It is my nature; which God has made oblivious of evil, while ceaselessly in presence of the good. A being who loves me always makes me quiver. Noble sentiments are so fruitful; why should we go in search of bad ones? God made me to smell the fragrance of flowers, not the fetor of mud. And why too, should I entangle myself in meannesses? All within me tends toward what is great. I choke in the plains, I live on the mountains! And then, I have undertaken so much! We have reached the _era of intelligence_. Material monarchs, brutal forces are passing away. There are worlds intellectual, in which Pizarro, Cortez, Columbus must appear. There will be sovereigns in the kingdom of thought. With this ambition no baseness, no pettiness is possible. Nothing wastes time like petty things; and so, I need something very great to fill my mind outside of this circle where I find the infinite. There is but one thing--to the infinite, the infinite--an immense love. If I have it, should I go in search of a Parisian woman, a Madame de ----? (Some one told me yesterday that she wished a scandal; that her husband left her free, but her vanity is such--I believe it--that she wants to be talked about.) I have such a horror of the women of Paris that I camp upon my work from six in the morning till six at night. At half-past six my hired coupé comes for me, and takes me one day to the Opera, another to the Italians, and I go to bed at midnight. Thus I have not a minute to give to any one. I receive visitors while I dine; I talk of our plans for the plays during dinner. I correspond with no one but you, Madame de Berny, my sister, and my mother. All other letters wait till Sunday, when I open them, and all that are not on business are handed over to Sandeau, who offers me his hand as secretary.

So doing, I shall end by extinguishing this fire of debt and accomplishing my promised work. Without it, no salvation, no liberty. The deuce! you will get the proof of what I now have the pleasure of writing to you, and of my firmness, when you see my books; for a man can't coquet and amuse himself, and bring out such publications. Toil and the Muse; that means that the toiling Muse is virtuous,--she is a virgin. It is deplorable that in this nineteenth century we are obliged to go to the images of Greek mythology; but I have never been so struck as I am now by the powerful truth of those myths.

Do not think that what I have been writing is a round-about way of telling you that, whatever be your age and face, my affection for you would be the same. I should not take circuitous ways to tell you a thing it would give me pleasure to express if I did not think you had enough perspicacity to have felt it, divined it. No; I was examining myself in good faith without any intention of showing myself off. I wish to be so great by intellect and fame that you can feel proud of my true friendship. Each of my works, which I want to make more and more extended, better thought, better written, will be a flattery for you, a flower, a bouquet that I shall send you! Distance alone admits of flowers of rhetoric.

My brother-in-law has just discovered a process which, in his opinion, solves on railways the problem of inclined planes, and will save great costs in construction and traction. It is possible to sell this invention to the English; here he has taken out a patent, and the English purchaser can take out an export patent. My brother-in-law does not want to go to London, and I am going to attempt this affair in the interests of my sister. That is the history of my journey to London.

We are not satisfied with our brother in Normandy. His wife is pregnant. He has complicated, still further, the difficulties of his life, poor creature. My mother is not well; I wish I could see her in good health to enjoy what I am preparing for her. But, good God! she has had many trials. To-day she turns to me, and heartily; she seems to recognize, without admitting it, the great wrong of her slight affection for my sister and me; she is punished in the child of her choice in a dreadful way. Henry is nothing, and will be nothing. He has spoiled the future his brother-in-law or I might have made for him by his marriage. All this is horribly sad.

Yesterday I re-read your letters. As I was putting them away, pressing them together to arrange them better, they exhaled a fragrance, I know not what, of grandeur and distinction that could not be mistaken. Those who talk of your forehead are not in error. But what is surprising in your letters is a turn of phrase, all your own, which issues from your heart as your glance from your eyes; it is our language written as Fénelon wrote it. You must have read Fénelon a great deal, or else you have in your soul his harmonious thought. When these letters come I read them first like a man in a hurry to talk with you; I do not really taste them till the second reading, which happens capriciously. When some thought saddens me I have recourse to you. I bring out the little box in which is my elixir, and I live again in your Italian journey. I see Diodati; I stretch myself on that good sofa of the Maison Mirabaud I turn the leaves of the "Gotha," that pretty "Gotha;" and then, after an hour or two, all is serene. I find something cool within me. My soul has rested on a friendly soul. No one is in my secret. It is something like the prayer of the mystic, from which he rises radiant. Will you think me very poetic? But it is true.

My Sandeau has brought out a book which is already sold. It is "Madame de Sommerville." Read it, this first book of a young man. Hold out your hand to him; do not be severe. Keep your severities for me; they are my privilege. Madame de Berny pays me no more compliments. From her, criticisms. Criticisms are sweet when made by a friendly hand; we believe them; they sadden because they are, no doubt, true, but they do not rend.

Well, adieu. You ought to be reading my last letter at the moment I am writing this. If you wrote to me so that I should receive your letters on Sundays, I would answer on Mondays. We should gain by not crossing each other.

I shall send, without letter of advice, to Sina's address, the first part of the "Études Philosophiques." You know all that; but let me believe that you take an interest in these enormous corrections _à la_ Buffon (he corrected immensely), which ought to make my work, when completed ("Études Sociales," about which I told you), a monument in our fine language.[2] I believe that in 1838 the three parts of this gigantic work will be, if not wholly finished, at least built up, so that a judgment can be formed of the mass.

The "Études de Mœurs" will represent all social effects, without a single situation in life, physiognomy, character of man or woman, manner of living, profession, social zone, French region, or anything whatever of childhood, maturity, old age, politics, justice, or war, having been forgotten.

That done, the history of the human heart traced thread by thread, the social history given in all its parts, there is _the base_. The facts will not be imaginary; they will be what is happening everywhere.

Then, the second structure is the "Études Philosophiques;" for after the _effects_ will come the _causes_. I shall have painted in the "Études de Mœurs" sentiments and their action, life and its deportment. In the "Études Philosophiques" I shall tell _why_ the sentiments, _on what_ the life; what is the line, what are the conditions beyond which neither society nor man exist; and, after having surveyed society in order to describe it, I shall survey it again in order to judge it. So, in the "Études de Mœurs" _individualities_ are typified; in the "Études Philosophiques" _types_ are individualized. Thus I shall have given life everywhere: to the type by individualizing it, to the individual by typifying him. I shall have given thought to the fragment; I shall have given to thought the life of the individual.