Part 3

You have awakened many diverse curiosities in me; you are capable of a delightful coquetry which it is impossible to blame. But you do not know how dangerous it is to a lively imagination and a heart misunderstood, a heart full of rejected tenderness, to behold thus nebulously a young and beautiful woman. In spite of these dangers, I yield myself willingly to hopes of the heart. My grief is to be able to speak to you of yourself as only a hope, a dream of heaven and of all that is beautiful. I can therefore tell you only of myself; but I abandon myself with you to my most secret thoughts, to my despairs, to my hopes. You are a second conscience; less reproachful perhaps and more kindly than that which rises so imperiously within me at evil moments.

Well, then! I will speak of myself, since it must be so. I have met with one of those immense sorrows which only artists know. After three months' labour I re-made "Louis Lambert." Yesterday, a friend, one of those friends who never deceive, who tell you the truth, came, scalpel in hand, and we studied my work together. He is a logical man, of severe taste, incapable of doing anything himself, but a most profound grammarian, a stern professor, and he showed me a thousand faults. That evening, alone, I wept with despair in that species of rage which seizes the heart when we recognize our faults after toiling so long. Well, I shall set to work again, and in a month or two I will bring forth a corrected "Louis Lambert." Wait for that. Let me send you, when it is ready, a new and fine edition of the four volumes of the Philosophical tales. I am preparing it. "La Peau de chagrin," already corrected, is to be again corrected. If all is not then made perfect, at least it will be less ugly.

Always labour! My life is passed in a monk's cell--but a pretty cell, at any rate. I seldom go out; I have many personal annoyances, like all men who live by the altar instead of being able to worship it. How many things I do which I would fain renounce! But the time of my deliverance is not far off; and then I shall be able to slowly accomplish my work.

How impatient I am to finish "Le Médecin de campagne," that I may know what you think of it--for you will read it no doubt before you receive your own copy. It is the history of a man faithful to a despised love, to a woman who did not love him, who broke his heart by coquetry; but that story is only an episode. Instead of killing himself, the man casts off his life like a garment, takes another existence, and in place of making himself a monk, he becomes the sister of mercy of a poor canton, which he civilizes. At this moment I am in the paroxysm of composition, and I can only speak well of it. When it is finished you will receive the despairs of a man who sees only its faults.

If you knew with what force a solitary soul whom no one wants springs toward a true affection! I love you, unknown woman, and this fantastic thing is only the natural effect of a life that is empty and unhappy, which I have filled with ideas only, diminishing its misfortunes by chimerical pleasures. If this present adventure ought to happen to any one it should to me. I am like a prisoner who, in the depths of his dungeon, hears the sweet voice of a woman. He puts all his soul into a faint yet powerful perception of that voice, and after his long hours of revery, of hopes, after voyages of imagination, the woman, beautiful and young, kills him--so complete would be the happiness. You will think this folly; it is the truth, and far below the truth, because the heart, the imagination, the romance of the passions of which my works give an idea are very far below the heart, the imagination, the romance of the man. And I can say this without conceit, because all those qualities are to me misfortunes. After all, no one attaches himself with greater love to the poesy of this sentiment at once so chimerical and so true. It is a sort of religion, higher than earth, less high than heaven. I like to often turn my eyes toward these unknown skies, in an unknown land, and gather some new strength by thinking that _there_ may be sure rewards for me, when I do well.

Remember, therefore, that there is here, between a Carmelite convent and the Place where the executions take place, a poor being whose joy you are,--an innocent joy according to social laws, but a very criminal one if measured by the weight of affection. I take too much, I assure you, and you would not ratify my dreamy conquests if it were possible to tell you my dreams, dreams which I know to be impossible, but which please me so much. To go where no one in the world knows where I am,--to go into your country, to pass before you unknown, to see you, and return here to write and tell you, "You are thus and so!" How many times have I enjoyed this delightful fancy--I, attached by a myriad lilliputian bonds to Paris, I, whose independence is forever being postponed, I, who cannot travel except in thought! It is yours, that thought; but, in mercy and in the name of that affection which I will not characterize because it makes me too happy, tell me that you write to no one in France but me. This is not distrust nor jealousy; although both sentiments prove love, I think that the suspicions they imply are always dishonouring. No, the motive is a sentiment of celestial perfection which ought to be in you and which I inwardly feel there. I know it, but I would fain be sure.

Adieu; pitiless editors, newspapers, etc., are here; time fails me for all I have to do; there is but a single thing for which I can always find time. Will you be kind, charitable, gracious, excellent? You surely know some person who can make a sepia sketch. Send me a faithful copy of the room where you write, where you think, where you are _you_--for, you know well, there are moments when we are more ourselves, when the mask is no longer on us. I am very bold, very indiscreet; but this desire will tell you many things, and, after all, I swear it is very innocent.

In the month of May two young Frenchmen who are going to Russia can leave with the person you may indicate, in any town you indicate, the parcel containing André Chénier, my poor "Louis Lambert" and your copy of "Le Médecin de campagne." Write me promptly on this subject. They are two young men who are not inquiring; they will do it as a matter of business. Objects of art are not exposed to the brutalities of the custom-house and you will permit a poor artist to send you a few specimens of art. They are only precious from the species of perfection that artists who love each other give to their work for a brother's sake. At any rate, allow Paris the right to be proud of her worship of art. You will enjoy the gift because none but you and I in the world will know that this book, this copy is the solitary one of its kind. The seal I had engraved upon it is lost. It came to me defaced by rubbing against other letters. You will be very generous to send me an impression inside of your reply.

All this shows that I am occupied with you, and you will not refuse to increase my pleasures; they are so rare!

PARIS, end of March; 1833.

I have told you something of my life; I have not told you all; but you will have seen enough to understand that I have no time to do evil, no leisure to let myself go to happiness. Gifted with excessive sensibility, having lived much in solitude, the constant ill-fortune of my life has been the element of what is called so improperly _talent_. I am provided with a great power of observation, because I have been cast among all sorts of professions, involuntarily. Then, when I went into the upper regions of society, I suffered at all points of my soul which suffering can touch; there are none but souls that are misunderstood, and the poor, who can really observe, because everything bruises them, and observation results from suffering. Memory only registers thoroughly that which is pain. In this sense it recalls great joy, for pleasure comes very near to being pain. Thus society in all its phases from top to bottom, legislations, religions, histories, the present times, all have been observed and analyzed by me. My one passion, always disappointed, at least in the development I gave to it, has made me observe women, study them, know them, and cherish them, without other recompense than that of being understood at a distance by great and noble hearts. I have written my desires, my dreams. But the farther I go, the more I rebel against my fate. At thirty-four years of age, after having constantly worked fourteen and fifteen hours a day, I have already white hairs without ever being loved by a young and pretty woman; that is sad. My imagination, virile as it is, having never been prostituted or jaded, is an enemy for me; it is always in keeping with a young and pure heart, violent with repressed desires, so that the slightest sentiment cast into my solitude makes ravages. I love you already too much without ever having seen you. There are certain phrases in your letters which make my heart beat. If you knew with what ardour I spring toward that which I have so long desired! of what devotion I feel myself capable! what happiness it would be to me to subordinate my life for a single day! to remain without seeing a living soul for a year, for a single hour! All that woman can dream of that is most delicate, most romantic, finds in my heart, not an echo but, an incredible simultaneousness of thought. Forgive me this pride of misery, this naïveté of suffering.

You have asked me the baptismal name of the _dilecta_ [Mme. de Berny]. In spite of my complete and blind faith, in spite of my sentiment for you, I cannot tell it to you; I have never told it. Would you have faith in me if I told it? No.

You ask me to send you a plan of the place I live in. Listen: in one of the forthcoming numbers of Regnier's "Album" (I will go and see him on the subject) he shall put in my house for you, oh! solely for you! It is a sacrifice; it is distasteful to me to be put _en évidence_. How little those who accuse me of vanity know me! I have never desired to see a journalist, for I should blush to solicit an article. For the last eight months I have resisted the entreaties of Schnetz and Scheffer, author of "Faust" who wish extremely to make my portrait.

Yesterday I said in jest to Gérard, who spoke to me of the same thing, that I was not a sufficiently fine fish to be put in oils. You will receive herewith a little sketch made by an artist of my study. But I am rather disturbed in sending it to you because I dare not believe in all that your request offers me of joy and happiness. To live in a heart is so glorious a life! To be able to name you secretly to myself in evil hours, when I suffer, when I am betrayed, misunderstood, calumniated! To be able to retire to you!... This is a hope that goes too far beyond me; it is the adoration of God by monks, the Ave Maria written in the cell of a Chartreux,--an inscription which once made me stand at the Grande-Chartreuse, beneath a vault, for ten minutes. Oh! love me! All that you desire of what is noble, true, pure, will be in a heart that has borne many a blow, but is not blasted!

That gentleman was very unjust. I drink nothing but coffee. I have never known what drunkenness was, except from a cigar which Eugène Sue made me smoke against my will, and it was that which enabled me to paint the drunkenness for which you blame me, in the "Voyage à Java." Eugène Sue is a kind and amiable young man, a braggart of vices, in despair at being named Sue, living in luxury to make himself a great seigneur, but for all that, though a little worn-out, worth more than his works, I dare not speak to you of Nodier, lest I should destroy your illusions. His artistic caprices stain that purity of honour which is the chastity of men. But when one knows him, one forgives him his disorderly life, his vices, his lack of conscience for his home. He is a true child of nature after the fashion of La Fontaine. I have just returned from Madame de Girardin's (Delphine Gay). She has the small-pox. Her celebrated beauty is now in danger. This distresses me for Émile, her husband, and for her. She had been vaccinated; present science declares that one ought to be vaccinated every twenty years.

I have returned home to write to you under the empire of a violent annoyance. Out of low envy the editor of the "Revue de Paris" postpones for a week my third number of the "Histoire des Treize." Fifteen days' interval will kill the interest in it, and I had worked day and night to avoid any delay. For this last affair, which is the drop of water in too full a cup, I shall probably cease all collaboration in the "Revue de Paris." I am so disgusted by the tricky enmity which broods there for me that I shall retire from it; and if I retire, it will be forever. To a certain degree my will is cast in bronze, and nothing can make me change it. In reading the "Histoire" in the March number, you will never suspect the base and unworthy annoyances which have been instigated against me in the inner courts of that review. They bargain for me as if I were a fancy article; sometimes they play me monkey tricks [_malices de nègre_]; sometimes insults upon me are anonymously put into the Album of the Revue; at other times they fall at my feet, basely. When "Juana" appeared, they inserted a notice that made me pass for a madman.

But why should I tell you these miserable things? The joke is that they represent me as being unpunctual; promising, and not keeping my promises. Two years ago, Sue quarrelled with a bad courtesan, celebrated for her beauty (she is the original of Vernet's Judith). I lowered myself to reconcile them, and the consequence is the woman is given to me. M. de Fitz-James, the Duc de Duras, and the old court, all went to her house to talk, as on neutral ground, much as people walk in the alley of the Tuileries to meet one another; and I am expected to be more strait-laced than those gentlemen! In short, by some fatal chance I can't take a step that is not interpreted as evil. What a punishment is celebrity! But, indeed, to publish one's thoughts, is it not prostituting them? If I had been rich and happy they should all have been kept for my love.

Two years ago, among a few friends, I used to tell stories in the evening, after midnight. I have given that up. There was danger of my passing for an _amuser_; and I should have lost consideration. At every step there is a pitfall. So now I have retired into silence and solitude. I needed the great deception with which all Paris is now busy to fling myself into this other extremity. There is still a Metternich in this adventure; but this time it is the son, who died in Florence. I have already told you of this cruel affair, and I had no right to tell you. Though separated from that person out of delicacy, all is not over yet. I suffer through her; but I do not judge her. Only, I think that if you loved some one, and if you had daily drawn that person towards you into heaven, and you became free, you would not leave him alone at the bottom of an icy abyss after having warmed him with the fire of your soul. But forget all that; I have spoken to you as to my own consciousness. Do not betray a soul that takes refuge in yours.

You have much courage! you have a great and lofty soul; do not tremble before any one, or you will be unhappy; you will meet in life with circumstances that will make you grieve that you did not know how to obtain all the power which you ought to have had and might have had. What I tell you now is the fruit of the experience of a woman advanced in years and purely religious. But, above all, no useless imprudence. Do not pronounce my name; let me be torn in pieces; I do not care for such criticism, provided I can live in two or three hearts which I value more than the whole world beside. I prefer one of your letters to the fame of Lord Byron bestowed by universal approbation. My vocation on this earth is to love, even without hope; provided, nevertheless, I am a little loved also.

Jules Sandeau is a young man. George Sand is a woman. I was interested in both, because I thought it sublime in a woman to leave everything to follow a poor young man whom she loved. This woman, whose name is Mme. Dudevant, proves to have a great talent. It was necessary to save Sandeau from the conscription; they wrote a book between them; the book is good. I liked these two lovers, lodging at the top of a house on the quai Saint-Michel, proud and happy. Madame Dudevant had her children with her. Note that point. Fame arrived, and cast trouble into the dove-cote. Madame Dudevant asserted that she ought to leave it on account of her children. They separated; and this separation is, as I believe, founded on a new affection which George Sand, or Madame Dudevant, has taken for the most malignant of our contemporaries, H. de L. [Henri de Latouche], one of my former friends, a most seductive man, but odiously bad. If I had no other proof than Madame Dudevant's estrangement from me, who received her fraternally with Jules Sandeau, it would be enough. She now fires epigrams against her former host, so that yesterday I found Sandeau in despair. This is how it is with the author of "Valentine" and "Indiana," about whom you ask me.

There is no one, artist or literary person, whom I do not know in Paris, and for the last ten years I have known many things, and things so sad to know that disgust of these people has seized my heart. They have made me understand Rousseau, they cannot pardon me for knowing them; they pardon neither my avoidance of them nor my frankness. But there are some impartial persons who are beginning to speak truth. My name is Honoré, and I wish to be faithful to my name.

What mud all this is! and, as you write me, man is a perverse animal. I do not complain, for heaven has given me three hearts: _la dilecta_ [Madame de Berny], the lady of Angoulême [Mme. Carraud] and a friend [Auguste Borget] who is at this moment making a sketch of my study for you, without knowing for whom it is; and these three hearts, besides my sister and you,--you who can now do so much for my life, my soul, my heart, my mind, you who can save the future from a past given over to suffering,--are my only riches. You will have the right to say that Balzac is diffuse, not quoting from Voltaire, but of your own knowledge.

At this moment of writing, you must have read "Juana," and have, perhaps, given her a tear. In the last chapter there are sentences in which we can well understand each other: "melancholies not understood even by those who have caused them," etc., etc.

Do you not think that I have said too much good of myself and too much evil of others? Do not suppose, however, that all are gangrened. If H..., married for love and having beautiful children, is in the arms of an infamous courtesan, there is in Paris Monsieur Monteil, the author of a fine work ["L'Histoire des Français des divers états aux cinq derniers siècles"], who is living on bread and milk, refusing a pension which he thinks ought not to be given to him. There are fine and noble characters; rare, but there are some. Scribe is a man of honour and courage. I should have to make you a whole history of literary men; it would not be too beautiful.

I entreat you to tell me, with that _kittenish_, pretty style of yours, how you pass your life, hour by hour; let me share it all. Describe to me the places you live in, even to the colours of the furniture. You ought to keep a journal and send it to me regularly. In spite of my occupations I will write you a line every day. It is so sweet to confide all to a kind and beautiful soul, as one does to God.

To put a stop to some of your illusions, I shall have a sketch made of the "Médecin de campagne" and you will find in it the features, perhaps a little caricatured, of the author. This is to be a secret between you and me. I have been thinking how to send you this copy when it is ready. I think I have found the most natural way, and I will tell it to you, unless you invent a better.

Grant my requests for the details of your life; so that when my thought turns towards you it may meet you, see that work-frame, the flower begun, and follow you through all your hours. If you knew how often wearied thought needs a repose that is partly active, how beneficent to me is the gentle revery that begins: "She is there! now she is looking at such or such a thing." And I--I can give to thought the faculty to spring through space with force enough to abolish it. These are my only pleasures amid continual work.

I have not room to explain to you here what I have undertaken to accomplish this year. In January next you can judge if I have been able to leave my study much. And yet I would like to find two months in which to travel for rest. You ask me for information about Saché. Saché is the remains of a castle on the Indre, in one of the most delicious valleys of Touraine. The proprietor, a man of fifty-five, used to dandle me on his knee. He has a pious and intolerant wife, rather deformed and not clever. I go there for him; and besides, I am free there. They accept me throughout the region as a child; I have no value whatever, and I am happy to be there, like a monk in a monastery. I walk about meditating serious works. The sky is so pure, the oaks so fine, the calm so vast! A league away is the beautiful château d'Azay, built by Samblançay, one of the finest architectural things that we possess. Farther on is Ussé, so famous from the novel of "Petit Jehan de Saintré." Saché is six leagues from Tours. But not a woman! not a conversation possible! It is your Ukraine without your music and your literature. But the more a soul full of love is restricted physically, the more it rises toward the heavens. That is one of the secrets of cell and solitude.

Be generous; tell me much of yourself, just as I tell you much of myself. It is a means of exchanging lives. But let there be no deceptions. I have trembled in writing to you, and have said to myself: "Will this be a fresh bitterness? Will the heavens open to me once more only to drive me out?"

Well, adieu, you who are one of my secret consolations, you, towards whom my soul, my thoughts are flying. Do you know that you address a spirit wholly feminine, and that what you forbid me tempts me immensely? You forbid me to see you? What a sweet folly it would be to do so! It is a crime which I would make you pardon by the gift of my life; I would like to spend it in deserving that pardon. But fear nothing; necessity cuts my wings. I am fastened to my glebe as your serfs to the soil. But I have committed the crime a hundred times in thought! You owe me compensation.

Adieu! I have confided to you the secrets of my life; it is as if I told you that you have my soul.

PARIS, May 29-June 1, 1833.

I have to-day, May 29, received your last letter-journal, and I have made arrangements to answer it as you wish. In the first place I have finally discovered a paper thin enough to send you a journal the weight of which shall not excite the distrust of all the governments through which it passes. Next, I resign myself, from attachment to your sovereign orders, to assume this fatiguing little handwriting, intended for you specially. Have I understood you, my dear star? for there are fearful distances between us, and you shine, pure and bright, upon my life, like the fantastic star attributed to every human being by the astrologers of the middle ages.

Where are you going? You tell me nothing about it. To have all the requirements of a sentiment so grand, so vast, and not to have its confidence, is not that very wrong? You owe me all your thoughts. I am jealous of them.