Part 22

When I have finished with Madame Bêchet and Werdet, yes, then I shall have six months before me. On that day I shall owe nothing to any one, for the approaching reissue of the "Études de Mœurs" enlarged by what will be added to them, will release me of all, even my debt to my mother. Wealth will come both for her and for me, in 1837, when my works will be issued as the "Études Sociales." There is my future sketched out. There is my hope and my toil.

If sometimes the grief of not possessing the happiness that I dream saddens and consumes me, the hope of one day seeing my mother happy through me, and my fortune built up, all by myself, without help, sustains me. But what are the hopes of material life compared to the disappointment of the prayers of the heart? And so, now that I advance toward the graver life, and doubt at times of affections, finding myself so changed by toil, there come moments of cruel melancholy and gray hours. Then the weather clears; the azure sky we saw upon the Alps comes back; Diodati, that image of a happy life, reappears, like a star for a moment clouded, and I laugh--as you know I can laugh. I tell myself that so much work will have its recompense, and that I shall some day have, like Lord Byron, my Diodati, and I sing in my bad voice: "Diodati! Diodati!"

What grief for me to delay that glorious apparition of "Séraphita." I tremble lest you should have left Vienna before the prince arrives there. But if so, Sina will forward all.

Be happy on your journey; may no untoward event distress you; return to your penates, and I, under my pressure here, I see that dwelling as an object ... [The letter is unfinished.]

PARIS, May 3, 1835.

I have this instant received yours of April 24. I have written you by the Prince de Schonberg, who was to carry to you all that remains of the manuscript of the "Duchesse de Langeais," of which part was lost in the printing-office, the part I cared for most, that which I did in Geneva beside you, laughing and explaining to you proof corrections.

How many things I have to answer in your last letter. But before doing so I must tell you something that is the best of all answers. You do not leave till May 15th; well, don't leave till the 25th. I have my passports, and you will receive my farewells. I cannot let you plunge back into your desert until I have pressed your hand. I will not commit to any one the manuscript of "Séraphita." I shall bring it to you myself. I want ten days more to print the rest. The 16th, my fête-day, I shall start for Vienna; I can get there in ten days; I shall be there on the 25th or 26th. If I can arrive sooner, I shall be there sooner. Wait for me; give credit for ten days to a friend. I shall stay four days in Vienna, see Essling and Wagram, and return.

I cannot tell you more, for I must spend the days and nights in getting all things in order here, and in finishing the books begun. "Séraphita" must have eight days and nights for herself alone.

I say nothing to M. Hanski, as I shall see you all so soon. I am joyous as a child at the escapade. Quit my galley and see new lands! Well, well, _à bientôt_. I send my things to Sina. Ask him, if they arrive before me, to wait till I come before opening my trunk at the custom-house. It is proper that you should see the cane for which you blame me, and I confide it to the customs.

_Addio._ Kiss Anna on the forehead for her horse.

VIENNA, May, 1835.

Can you lend me your _valet de place_ again this morning?--for I still have not obtained one.

I think you have not read "Obermann;" I send it to you; but I shall want it in two or three days. It is one of the finest books of the period.

A thousand heart compliments.

VIENNA, May, 1835.

My cold is precisely the same. It is nothing at all. I have just received a letter from M. Hammer. I think he is annoyed, for he uses towards me that wealth of civility which is often the irony of great souls.

Did you know that the French are very _coustumiers_ to the fact of bartering Austrian uniforms against victories, but that this ruins young empires?

I shall stay in town only the time necessary to fulfil your Majesty's orders.

I entreat you don't worry about me. People are never ill when they are happy. I do nothing; I let myself go to the happiness of living, and that is so rare with me that when it is so I don't know what could hurt me.

A thousand heart assurances.

VIENNA, May, 1835.

The heat has so prostrated me that I don't know what will become of me; but as for the illness itself, it has ceased. A thousand thanks for your kindness.

I shall rush with the celerity of your valet, who is a veritable kid, and this is difficult for a Mar [Balzac's nickname among his friends was Dom Mar] whose paunch is worthy of all the illustrious paunches your cousin used to laugh at.

I have dreamed _ta_, I have dreamed _ti_, I have dreamed _tchef_, and of his _casalba_. I have come to breathe in the Walter-garten, and I send you "Lauzun" to convince you of the reality of the comedy that could be made of his amours with Mademoiselle, for I think you do not know the book.

VIENNA, May, 1835.

You know, madame, that if anything can equal the respectful attachment that I feel for you it is the will that I am forced to display to keep within the limits that my work imposes on my pleasures.

Here, as in Paris, my life must be completely _inharmonious_ with the life of society. To get my twelve hours of work, I must go to bed at nine o'clock in order to rise at three; and this truly monastic rule, to which I am compelled, dominates everything. I have yielded something of my stern observance to you, by giving myself three hours' more freedom here than in Paris, where I go to bed at six; but that is all I can do.

However sweet and gracious are the invitations, and however flattering the eagerness of which I feel the full value, I am obliged to be the enemy of my dearest pleasures. You know that the persons who love me, and who have every right to be exacting, conform to my ways of going nowhere; and treat me as a spoilt child.

These explanations have a conceited aspect which I dislike, and which would make me ridiculous if you did not constrain me to give my true reasons.

So, I count upon your precious friendship to explain them, and save me from their accompanying dangers. You have long known that I am a soldier on a battlefield, swept onward, without other liberty than that of fighting the enemy and all the difficulties of my position.

You will give--will you not?--what value you can to my regrets, and I shall thus have another obligation to add to the hundred thousand I already owe you. But you are so noble there is no fear in being indebted to you.

Yes, I am altogether better. I have recovered from the fatigues of the journey, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your dear and delicate attentions. A thousand affectionate compliments to M. Hanski. As for you, I should have to express too many things, and, as you see, paper is lacking. Here begin the things of the heart.

VIENNA, May, 1835.

It is impossible for me to work if I have to go out, and I never work merely for an hour or two. You arranged so well that I did not go to bed till one o'clock. Consequently, I did not rise till eight; so from nine till one I have only time to pay you a visit in order to put the visit to the prince between two good things which may weaken the diplomatic influence.

I want to go and see the Prater in the morning, in its solitude. If you will, it would be very gracious; for by not beginning on the "Lys dans la Vallée" till to-morrow I must then work fourteen hours to make up for time lost. I have sworn to myself to do that work in Vienna, or else--throw myself into the Danube.

So, in twenty minutes I shall be with you to ask counsel. As for the seductions of the prince, he caught me once, but I have too much pride to be caught again; I should pass for a ninny.

A thousand heart-felt regards.

VIENNA, May, 1835. I am incapable of writing the nothings that I see come naturally to very intelligent persons; I simply put down just what comes into my head; and what came into my head was one of the things that I have at heart. Excuse me to the countess, and assure her that this is the second time I have failed over an album, and that not having the habit--and even having a horror--of them, I hope she will be indulgent to me.

Though I am not dirty, I am decidedly stupid, for I don't understand a word of what you do me the honour to say about Madame Sophie. I entreat you, have pity on my mental infirmities, and, when you make romances, put them on the level of my intellectual faculties. This may seem impertinent--it is only artless.

I have still another hour to work, and then I will come. I am busy with planning rather than writing, and I can see you _while thinking_; which is not the same as thinking of other things than you while _seeing_ you.

A thousand gracious and humble thoughts before your August Despotism.

VIENNA, May, 1835.

I cannot wait till one o'clock to know if you are better, whether your hoarseness and oppression have lessened, whether the foot-bath was efficacious--in short, whether all is well. Have the charity to send me a word on these important matters--for it is important to subjects to know how their princes are.

Affectionate compliments, and accept my obeisances

VIENNA, June, 1835.

You know well, my dear beloved, that my soul is not narrow enough to distinguish what is yours from what is mine. All is ours--heart, soul, body, sentiments, all, from the least word to the slightest look; from life to death. But do not ruin us, for I should send you back a hundred Austrians for your one, and you would cry out at the folly.

My Eve, adored, I have never been so happy, I have never suffered so much. A heart more ardent than the imagination is vivid is a fatal gift when complete happiness does not quench the daily thirst. I knew what I came to seek of sufferings, and I have found them. In Paris, those sufferings seemed to me the greatest of pleasures, and I was not mistaken. The two parts are equal.

For this you had to be more lovely, and nothing is truer. Yesterday you were enough to render mad. If I did not know that we are bound forever, I should die of grief. Therefore, never abandon me; it would be murder. Never destroy the confidence which is our sole complete possession in this love so pure. Have no jealousies, which never have foundation. You know how faithful the unhappy are; feelings are all their treasure, their fortune, and we cannot be more unhappy than we are here.

Nothing can detach me from you; you are my life, my happiness, all my hopes. I believe in life only with you. What can you fear? My toil proves to you my love; it was preferring the present to the future to come here now; it was the folly of impassioned love, for by it I postponed for many months, that I might enjoy this moment, the days when you think we shall be free--more free, for _free_, oh! I dare not think of that. God must will it! I love you so much, and all things unite us so truly that it must be; but when?

A thousand kisses; for I have a thirst those little sudden pleasures but increase. We have not an hour, nor a minute. And these obstacles fan such ardour that, believe me, I do right to hasten my departure.

I press you on all sides to my heart, where you are held but mentally. Would that I held you there living![1]

[Footnote 1: This letter in itself shows the falseness of those which purport to have been written in January, February, and March. It is that of a man true to himself in one of the greatest struggles of humanity; for, it must be remembered, such trials were not negative in a man of Balzac's nature.--TR.]

MUNICH, June 7, 1835.

I arrived here in Munich at eleven o'clock last night; but I might have come in thirty-six hours instead of forty-eight if it had not been for three bad postilions, whom no human power could make go, and who, each of them, lost me three hours apiece. I slept seven hours, and have just waked to keep the promise I made of writing you a line. Then, at ten o'clock, after seeing the exterior of the public buildings, I shall start again with the same celerity.

I have nothing romantic to tell you of the journey, always sad on leaving kind friends. I had no other adventure than two horses accustomed to fetch sand, who nearly flung me into a quarry, the postilion being unable to prevent them from keeping to their habits. I jumped out in time, and began, like the horses, to go back to Vienna; but it was proved to the horses, by the whip, that they had to go to Hohenlinden, and to me, by necessity, that I had to go to Paris. The postilion was afraid I should scold him. But he did not know that the horses and I were equally faithful to our habits in spite of duty. I made many sad reflections on the manner in which horses and men have no liberty, on the various curbs that are put upon them, on the blows of fate, and the lashing of whips. But I spare you all that. You will tell me that my sadness is too humorous to be believed; whereas, in me, great disappointed affections turn always to a sort of rage, which I express by expending it on some one, as I did Thursday evening at Prince R...'s, where, because I could not do what I wished, I talked magnetism.

In heaven's name, don't forget, I entreat you, to explain to M. Vatischef how it happened that he received neither my card nor my visit; you do not know how much I care about fuelling the duties of politeness punctually.

Though I did not like your _valet de place_, he was useful to me on several occasions. I gave money to all, except to him, and he was not there. Do me the kindness to give him a ducat for me. I will return it in my next letter. One should be neither unjust nor forgetful. Otherwise, nothing is ever great.

I should have liked to go through Munich without stopping; but you asked me to write you a line from here, and so I have stopped. I don't like to stop in this way. The noise and motion of the carriage, the business of paying, and of making the postilions get on, all divert and excite me. But to stop is to think; and there are but sad thoughts on leaving you.

Don't you recognize me, the man of debts, in my leaving two behind me for you to pay--Koller and the _valet de place_? Ask M. Hanski to tell the carriage-maker not to take me for a swindler, and to give me credit till my return, an epoch at which I will order a carriage. You see I mean to return soon.

Well, adieu until Paris; there, I will give you my news. Meanwhile accept a thousand tender thanks.

PARIS, June 12, 1835.

I arrived on the 11th, at two in the morning. So, deducting the time I stayed in Munich, I did the journey in five days. But I am sure now that it can be done in four, and that I can go in eleven days to Wierzchownia.

I arrived horribly tired, brown as a negro, and only able to fling myself on a bed and sleep. I write to you this evening, according to promise.

You will receive from M. de la Rochefoucauld (to whom I beg you to write a line) by the first embassy opportunity,--that of Austria, if M. le Comte Maurice Esterhazy is a good fellow, and will do me this service,--a parcel containing, first, "Le Père Goriot," third edition, in the first volume of which you will find a pen-holder worthy of you, and in the second volume a paper-knife to thank you for the one you gave me; second, a copy of the "Livre des Conteurs," in which is "Melmoth réconcilié."

I will attend to your pearls at the earliest moment.

I find my affairs in horrible disorder. Werdet had paid the bill of exchange, but he had not been able to pay my notes falling due on the 15th and the 31st of May, so that my sister, to whom such affairs are not familiar, being terrified, took--not my diamonds, but--my silver-ware and pawned it. So now I must work night and day to repair the stupidities they have done me.

I have therefore three or four months at "hard labour," during which I must ask you to have indulgence for me. I can't write to you as often as I would like. I must produce, one after another, "Le Lys," "Les Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée," the Part for Werdet, and that for Madame Bêchet. They are all complaining of me horribly. But feel no remorse; I shall never regret the journey, however short it was, nor, above all, the time, brief as it was, society left us to ourselves.

I am not pleased with Munich. There are too many frescos, and too many bad frescos. Those of the upper ceiling of the Pinakothek, and those of the lower halls of the Kœnigsbaugh(?), are alone of value. All the rest is not above the level of our café decorations in Paris.

Adieu, for to-day. Kiss Anna's pretty little knuckles for me, offer my regards to M. Hanski, and recall me to the memory of all about you.

You will find the ducat for Jean, the _valet de place_, in the first volume of "Père Goriot."

CHAILLOT [rue des Batailles], July 1, 1835.

What I send you will decidedly be subjected to the chances that politics may have of sending a courier to M. de la Rochefoucauld; for the lucky attaché was married and gone before I knew it.

Since I last wrote you time has elapsed; but that time was taken up by enormous troubles, such as whiten or thin the hair. The person who is with my mother writes me, confidentially, that it is a question of saving her life or her reason, for that if she does not die, grief may make her crazy. My brother, incapable in every way, reduced to the deepest distress, talks of blowing out his brains, instead of trying to do something for himself. My sister is in a state that grows worse; her illness had made frightful advances. All this is killing my mother.

So, in four days there is added to the difficulties created by my journey, my financial crisis and delayed work, that of two existences to guide and providentially manage!

It is a gloomy evening. I am seated at my window; I have gazed through space at the lands I have just quitted, and where I went to seek, near you, youth, rest, strength--to refresh both heart and head, to forget the hell of Paris; and sitting here, a few tears fall. I measure the extent of the abyss; I weigh the burden; I seek in the depths of my heart the corner where lies the principle of my power; and I resign myself. Of these great scenes, the secret lies between God and ourselves. My God!--If you could see me you would know why I was so sad in leaving you, you would comprehend the meaning of what I said when I cried out with apparent gaiety: "I go to plunge back into the vat and renew my miseries."

By what sweet destiny is it that for two years past I owe to you the only calm and peaceful intervals in my life?

Now, I have begun to raise a barrier, not to be surmounted, between my mother and her children, between her and the world of self-interests that come roaring round her. I have secured to her the peace and calmness of her retreat. Next, I have formed a plan of liquidation for my brother, and another plan to provide for two years for his family subsistence. In fifteen days all this will be settled. Then in the course of those two years I shall be able to find him a position.

If you will think for a moment that small interests are more complicated and more difficult to handle than great ones, you will divine the goings and comings, the difficulties, the conferences of all this. I had my own financial crisis to overcome. The continual calumnies in the newspapers piling lampoons upon me--that I had absconded, that I was in Sainte-Pélagie--found credence in the stupid part of Paris; and that belief has paralyzed the resources of credit that I had. But, at the hour of my present writing I have vanquished all for myself as well as for my mother and for my brother. Still a day or so, and I shall be astride of the prettiest winged courser I ever mounted in the fields of the classic valley; and I shall fire away in both Revues in July and August, while my two Parts--of the "Études de Mœurs" and the "Études Philosophiques"--will appear simultaneously. The purely pecuniary damage done by my journey will be repaired. Then I shall work deliciously once more, thinking that my reward will be the journey to Wierzchownia without a care.

It was under these circumstances that I busied myself about your paper-knife and your pen-holder; I thought those trifles would be the dearer to you, and that M. Hanski would suffer friendship to impinge upon his rights. So, into the midst of my troubles a sweet thought glided when I went to Lecointe, the jeweller. Oh! preserve me, very pure and very bright, that affection which, you see, is a source of consolation amid the tortures of life.

I presume your long silence comes from your journey to Ischl. Nevertheless, I had news of you yesterday. It was not good. From the 27th to the 28th you were ill, harassed. You saw Madame de Lucchesi-Palli [Duchesse de Berry]. A somnambulist whom I had put to sleep told me that. She must have told the truth, for she spoke of certain annoyances which you feel, and of which she could know nothing except from you. The last experiments that I have made here in Paris since my return decide me to always have somnambulists at hand. This one told me that you wrote to Paris (or intended to write to Paris) for information about me. But she saw this so confusedly that it proved nothing clearly. She thought your heart was larger than it ought to be, and advised me earnestly to tell you to avoid painful emotions and live calmly; but she said there was no danger. Your heart is, like your forehead, an organ largely developed. I was much moved when she said to me with that solemn expression of somnambulists: "These are persons very much attached to you, who love you very truly."

What an imposing and awful power! To know what is passing in the soul of others at a great distance! To know what they do! I will try to give you a proof of this. Tell M. Hanski to write me a letter, calculate the day I shall receive it, and then remember all he says, and does, and thinks on that day, so that he may know whether I, in Paris, have seen Ischl. It will be the finest of our experiments. A month hence I shall have several somnambulists. It is one means not to be cheated by anyone. I have nothing of Anna's, so I cannot know anything about her. If you are curious to consult, send me a little piece of linen or cotton, which you must put on her stomach during the night, and which she must put _herself_ (without any one touching it) into a paper which _she_ must put inside your letter.

I have to-day resumed my great labours. Madame de Castries seems satisfied with what I did for her; but I did well to put my relations with her on the footing of social politeness. If you have read, or if you should read "Léone Léoni," you must know that Madame Dudevant has been far beneath d'U..., the husband of the Wallachian. I have heard strange things about that household, but I cannot write them; they go beyond the limits of a letter. I will keep them for an evening at Wierzchownia. Good God! what a life!