Part 36

My mother is very unwell. She sinks under the distress which the precarious position of her children gives her; for we have to take charge, my brother-in-law, my sister and myself, of the children of my poor dead sister Laurence. What makes me spur the principle of my courage so much is my desire to succeed in time to gild her old age.

Do you know that your letter is dated July 27, and that I received it August 21?--a whole month! A month without news of you is a very long time for a friendship watching for it at all hours, and often, between two proofs, taking its head in its hands and asking itself, "What is she thinking of?"

Well, adieu, for my fatigue is returning; I am going to bed and shall think of all I have not told you, forgetfulnesses which come of so short a letter; in Paris I shall have more to tell you. But, no matter what I say, find ever on my pages the purest and sweetest flowers of an affection that distance cannot lessen, which springs across that distance,--an affection known to you, and which, in a word, is ever prolix.

PARIS, September 1, 1837.

_Cara_, I hasten to tell you that the inflammation, which turned into bronchitis, is now cured. But I must begin work again, and God knows what will happen in consequence of new excesses. Though all goes well physically, all goes ill pecuniarily; and I will not tell you the particulars, lest they bring upon me more unjust suspicions.

I begin this evening a comedy in five acts, entitled, "Joseph Prudhomme;" for I must come to that last resource; I am in the condition of "My kingdom for a horse!"

Three months hence you will receive three very important works: "César Birotteau," the third _dizain_, and the "Lettres de deux Amants, ou le nouvel Abeilard." I count the comedy as nothing. I think I have never done anything that can be compared to "Berthe la Repentie," the diamond of the third _dizain_. You brought luck to that poem, for the first chapter was written in Geneva, three days after my arrival.

I wish not to tell you anything about the "Lettres de deux Amants;" that is a surprise I desire to make to my dear preacheress, to teach her to comprehend that when one has undertaken to paint the whole of a moral world, one must paint it under all its aspects, with believers and unbelievers, and every one in his place. Apropos of the comedy which I am now going to attempt and to put upon the stage, I admire to see how persistence is necessary in art. That comedy has been in my head for ten years; it has come back and back under divers faces, it has been a score of times cast and recast, modified, made, remade, and made again, and now it is about to come to the surface, new and vulgar, grand and simple. I am delighted with it; I foresee a great success and a work which may maintain itself on the repertory among the score of plays which make the glory of the Théâtre-Français. I have a second sight about it, as about "La Peau de Chagrin" and "Eugénie Grandet." After being reassured by the friend to whom I confided the first doubt I had about it, I have seen in it the elements of a great thing. There is comedy and dumb tragedy, laughter and tears both. It has five acts, as long and fertile as those of "Le Mariage de Figaro." This work, brought to birth in the midst of my present miseries, is, at this moment, like a carbuncle glowing in the shadows of a muddy grotto. A terrible desire seizes me to go and write it in Switzerland, at Geneva; but the dearness of living among those Swiss alarms me.

I have just seen the drawings made for "La Peau de Chagrin," and they are wonderful. This enterprise is gigantic. Four thousand steel engravings, drawn on copper-plate in the text itself. One hundred per volume! In short, if this affair succeeds, the "Études Sociales" will be brought forth in their entirety, in a magnificent costume, with regal trappings.

Admit that if, in a few months, Fortune visits my threshold, I shall have earned her well; and be sure that I shall cling fast hold on whatever she deigns to fling to me.

Never did I find myself in such a tempest as now, and never did hope show herself so serene or so beautiful; she is lustrous in her turquoise, she smiles to me, and I let myself go to that smile which helps me to bear my misfortunes. Without these celestial apparitions what would become of poets and of artists when unhappy?

Adieu, dear. I must not tire you too long with the echoes of the storm--unless, indeed, they make Wierzchownia the sweeter to you, and the long expanse of the Ukraine more placid to your eye.

I do not understand bow it is that I am not, in the middle of August, installed in some corner of your mansion, duly framed and mounted, with all the monastic dignity that painter gave me.

You cannot imagine how beautiful Paris is becoming. We needed the reign of a trowel to arrive at such grand results. This magnificence, which advances daily and on all sides, will make us worthy of being the capital of the world. The boulevards paved with asphalt, lighted by bronze candelabra with gas, the increasing splendour of the shops, of that fair, two leagues long, perpetually going on and varied by ever new handiworks, compose a spectacle that is unequalled. In ten years we shall be clean; "Paris mud" will be out of the dictionaries; we shall become so magnificent that Paris will be really a great lady, the first of queens, crowned with battlements.

I renounce Touraine and remain a citizen of the intellectual metropolis. But I shall exempt myself from the draconian tyranny of the National Guard by putting three leagues of distance between me and this terrible queen. Respect is good taste towards royalties. An obscure village will receive my miseries and my grandeurs. Your moujik will have a very humble cottage, whence he will now and then depart at half-past six to reach the Italian Opera at eight, for music is a distraction, the only one that remains to him. Those beneficent voices refresh both soul and mind.

Adieu, dear. You share in sorrows; it is right that I should send you rays of gentle hope when she makes an azure rift athwart the dais of gray cloud. God grant that star may not fall like others, but lead me to some treasure-trove.

I please myself in thinking that you are happy; that your life has taken, after the departure of your guests, its accustomed way, that Paulowska brings you in her golden fleeces, that no one steals your books, that no wicked page of mine has furrowed that brow so full of dazzling majesty; in short, that you have all the crumbs of little happiness, for that is much. Materialities, which are the half of life, are not lacking to you; and if they bring monotony, at least the energy that may spend itself in sacred regions--where you bear it to the detriment of this poor passionate earth--is not exhausted. You know, this long time, what wishes I make that life be light upon you. I hope that Anna, and your tall young ladies, and the master, and the Swiss maid, in short, all your household, are well, and that you have no grief that makes you lift your eyes to heaven.

After that phrase I pick up my spade, I mean my pen, and dig in the field "Birotteau," which still needs delving and rolling and raking and watering; and when you read the letter of François to César, remember that it was there that my thought made a pause to turn to you and send you this letter across your steppe, like a flower of friendship asking asylum in your soil, which, in spite of wintry snows, will be always coloured and perfumed by a sincere affection.

SÈVRES, October 10, 1837.

Much time has gone by without my writing to you; I have lived so tempestuously that I am not sure whether on my return from Touraine and after my convalescence I thought to tell you that my chest was quite well and had nothing the matter with it.

In order to put myself outside of that atrocious law of the National Guard, I have removed from the rue Cassini and the rue des Batailles, and legally quitted Paris; that is to say, I have gone before three mayors and declared that I quitted the capital; after which I installed myself and live here at Sèvres. Therefore take note that after you receive this letter you must address your letters to "Monsieur Surville, rue de la Ville-d'Avray, Sèvres, Seine-et-Oise," for I must receive my letters under that name for some months to come, so that my address may not be known at the post-office, partly for secret reasons (which are Werdet's failure, and the pursuit which I must endure till I can earn the money to pay up my indorsements), and partly to escape the great quantity of letters with which unknown men and women overwhelm me.

I have bought here a bit of ground containing some forty rods, on which my brother-in-law is going to build me a tiny house, where I shall henceforth live until my fortune is made, or where I shall remain forever if I stay a beggar. When it is built, and I am in it, which will be in January next, I will let you know, and you can then write to me under my own name, and put the address of my poor hermitage, which is "Les Jardies," the name of the piece of ground on which I hang like a worm on a green leaf. Land about Paris is so parcelled out that I had to negotiate with three peasants to collect this lot of forty rods, and a rod contains only seventeen square feet. I am here at a distance which allows me to go and come from Paris in two hours. I can go to the theatre and sleep at home. I am in Paris without being there. There are neither heavy taxes nor tolls; living is cheaper, and the day when I can make sure of having a thousand francs a month for myself I can have a carriage. And finally, I escape that perpetual inquisition which publishes every step I take and every word I say. I shall neither see nor receive any one. Then instead of spending twenty thousand francs with other people where I may lodge, I shall spend them on my own home, and nothing shall ever get me out of that. You would never believe how I like fixedness. Constancy is one of the corner-stones of my nature.

You can easily understand that these turmoils have not left me a minute to myself. I have looked at a hundred houses around Paris, and been in negotiations for several. For a whole month I have roamed the environs to find what I wanted on the exact boundary of the department of the Seine and Seine-et-Oise. I came very near buying one house; but after convincing myself that I should have to spend twenty thousand francs in repairs and alterations to suit myself, I determined to buy a piece of ground and build; for a house would cost only twelve thousand francs, built as I wished it, and the land, with the peasant's house on it, came to not more than five thousand. Reckoning the interior at three thousand, the whole would be twenty thousand, and allowing five thousand for mistakes, that would make twenty-five thousand; that is, a rental of twelve hundred francs a year, and the comfort of having one's cabin to one's self without the annoyances of noise, for my land backs upon the park of Saint-Cloud. I have retained the apartment in the rue de Batailles for a few months to store my furniture until I install myself at Les Jardies.

I hasten to write to you, because to-morrow I begin "La Maison Nucingen" for the "Presse." That means fifty columns to hatch out before the end of the month, and then?--then my pen will be free, for my new editors have compromised with the defunct "Figaro," now about to rise from its ashes, and I have finished that third _dizain_. So, about November 1 my pen will owe nothing to any one, and I can begin the execution of my new treaty by the publication of "César Birotteau." But, as that work cannot appear before January 1, and as I have had an advance of two months, I shall receive no money till March. My distress must therefore go on for six months longer, and it is frightful.

This illness has made me lose six irreparable weeks. I think ever, if my embarrassments are too great, of going to take refuge with you for three months. I keep that project for a last resource, and I now repent that I have not already put it into execution; for when I am known to be travelling everybody waits, and nobody says anything. After that, returning with one or two plays in hand, all my money troubles could be pacified. But I cannot do that until I have paid my pen debts and given one work to my new editors; which throws me over to the month of February,--if, always, my house is finished and I am in it.

I cannot give you an idea of the turmoil in which I have been for the last six weeks, and the disconnectedness of my life, usually (in body) so peaceful. And all the while I had to read proofs and write. You are ignorant, in your Ukraine, of what Parisian removals are; nothing describes them but a provincial saying: "Three removals are equal to one conflagration."

In the midst of these worries and fatigues I have had two joys: they are your two letters, which I shall answer in a few days, for I have united them with their elders in a precious casket which I took to my sister, in order not to subject them to these removal agitations. I think there is something in them I ought to answer.

It is probable that I shall not go to the Opera, and this will be, I assure you, a great privation; because there is nothing that distracts my mind like music, and I do not know how else to relax my soul. Nothing will remain to me but the contemplation of the azure waves of hope, and I don't know whether this hovering with spread wings above that infinite, which recedes as we approach it, is not a pain--which pleases perhaps, but is none the less painful.

I have had many griefs since I wrote to you. In the passing crisis in which I am, every one has fled me like a leper. I am all alone. But I prefer this solitude within my solitude to the fawning hatred which is called, in Paris, friendship.

I have still a _conte_ to write for my third _dizain_, to replace one which was too free, and it is now a month that I have been trying to find something, without avail. Nothing but the want of that _feuille_ delays the publication.... Next month the announcement of our tontine on the "Études Sociales" will, no doubt, appear; and from the 1st to the 15th the magnificent edition will be ready. They have begun with "La Peau de Chagrin." The second volume will be "Le Médecin de campagne," and the third "Le Lys dans la Vallée." God grant that the affair succeed!

I am in despair at hearing that your _cassolette_ is in Warsaw, and I cannot imagine why it has not been sent to you by some opportunity. Is there no communication between you and Warsaw? There are now strong reasons for suspecting the person in question, whose journey is inexplicable. I add to this letter a line for him, which you must seal and send to him, to hasten the delivery of that jewel.

Write me a line, I beg of you, to let me know if the picture has reached Brody. Double the time it ought to have taken has elapsed, and I am very impatient to know if anything unlucky has happened to it on the journey. I hear nothing of the statue from Milan. Those Italians are really very singular.

You wrote me that you might go to Vienna, but have never again mentioned that project. If you go there I could bring you, myself, a whole _library_ of manuscripts which belong to you, and are beginning to be difficult to transport.

This is the first time I have ever answered two letters from you; for if you reckon up, you will see that in letter-writing I have the advantage, in spite of what you call, so insultingly, your chatter. Whatever it is, I am grieved when I do not get it, and it is now a fortnight since I have seen Auguste enter, bearing respectfully a little packet, neatly folded and very spruce, which comes from such distance and yet has nothing of the immensity of the steppes in its form.

My play, the comedy in five acts, is all laid out, and as your opinion has made me change and modify the one I first began, I dare not tell you this one, because when your reply comes it will be written, and if you are against it you will throw me into terrible perplexities. Is not this falling on one's knees before one's critic? Wherefore, behold me there! I place myself at your feet with a good grace, entreating you to pay no attention to what I have just said, and to go your way with your female scissors through my plot, and cut up my dramatic calico mercilessly, for, in my present situation, this play represents a hundred thousand francs, and I must make it a masterpiece well and quickly, or succumb.

You know "Monsieur Prudhomme," the type made by Henri Monnier? I take it boldly; because in order to seize success one must not have to obtain acceptance for a creation. One must, like the ambassador making love, buy it ready-made. Hence, there is no anxiety about the personage; I am sure of the laughter so far. Only, I must annihilate Monnier, and my Prudhomme must be _the_ Prudhomme. Monnier made only a poor vaudeville of burlesques; I shall make five acts for the Théâtre-Français.

Prudhomme, as type of our present bourgeoisie, as image of the Gannerons, of the Aubés, of the National Guard, of that middle-class on which _il padrone_ rests, is a personage far more comic than Turcaret, droller than Figaro. He is wholly of the present day. Here is the subject:--

At thirty-seven years of age, Prudhomme is seized with a passion for the daughter of a porter,--charming person, who studies at the Conservatoire and has carried off prizes. She sees before her the career of Mademoiselle Mars; she has distinction, jargon, she is quite _comme il faut_; she is eighteen, but she has been already betrayed in a first love; she has had a son by a pupil at the Conservatoire, who has gone to America out of love for his child, being alarmed by his poverty, and resolved to make his fortune. Pamela mourns him, but she has the child on her arms. The desire to support and bring up her child makes her marry Prudhomme, from whom she conceals her situation. Prudhomme, at thirty-seven, possesses thirty thousand francs in savings; he has invested them in the mines of Anzin in 1815, and his shares are worth, in 1817, three hundred thousand francs. That incites him to marry. The marriage takes place. He has a daughter by his wife. The thousand-franc shares of Anzin are worth, in 1834, one hundred and fifty thousand francs. This is the prologue; for the play itself begins in 1834, eighteen years later.

Monsieur Prudhomme has realized fifteen hundred thousand francs on half his shares, and keeps the rest. He has made himself a banker; and, as happens to all imbeciles, he has prospered under the advice of his wife, who is an angelic and superior woman, full of propriety and good taste. She has known how to play the rôle of a woman of means. But her attachment to her husband, inspired by the really good qualities of that ridiculous man, strengthened by the passion that he has for her, by the comfort that he gives her through his wealth, is balanced by the maternal sentiment exalted to the highest pitch which Pamela bears to her first child, whom, thanks to this wealth, she was enabled to bring up, with an invisible hand, until two years earlier, when she introduced him into her own home, without his knowing the truth. Adolphe is made head clerk, and the poor mother has played her dreadful part so carefully that no one, not even Adolphe, suspects the great love that envelops him. M. Prudhomme is very fond of Adolphe. Mademoiselle Prudhomme is seventeen years old. The play is entitled "Le Mariage de Mademoiselle Prudhomme." M. Prudhomme, rich from the shares of Anzin, rich with the profits of his bank, and possessing much private property, will give his daughter a million. She is, therefore, with a million and expectations, one of the best matches in Paris.

I must tell you that, unlike the Antonys, Adolphe is a gay, practical young fellow, happy in his position, delighted not to have either father or mother, and never inquiring about them. In that lies a dreadful drama between the mother and her son, for poor Madame Prudhomme is tortured a dozen times a day by the indifference of her son in the matter of his mother, and by a crowd of circumstances I cannot explain here; they make the play itself.

The fortune of Mademoiselle Prudhomme tempts a young notary, who owes his business to his predecessor, who is eager to be paid for it. This old notary is a friend of Prudhomme; he has introduced the young notary to the house. Madame Prudhomme's tenderness for Adolphe does not escape his eye; he believes that she intends to give him her daughter; and the two notaries open Prudhomme's eyes to his wife's love for Adolphe. Here, then, is the wife unjustly accused of an imaginary sin, from which she does not know how to vindicate herself. The comedy comes, you understand, from the _pathos_ of Prudhomme, and from his efforts to convict his wife. His wife accepts the singular combat of silencing her husband as if she were guilty, which is a satirical situation completely in the style of Molière. But she sees whence the blow has come. She fences with the two notaries, and, pressed by them, she shows them the infamy of their conduct, and declares that she will never give her daughter to a man capable of soiling the honour of the mother to obtain the daughter. They are forced to retract to Prudhomme, and the mother, to secure the tranquillity of her husband, is forced to separate from her son.

That is the main play; but, you understand, there is an enormous quantity of situations, scenes, movements. Servants are mixed up in it. It is a picture of our present bourgeoisie. There is a return of Adolphe's father, which complicates everything, and brings about the dénouement. There is a horrible scene in which Prudhomme, in order to get light on his wife's passion, proposes the marriage of brother and sister, and arms himself with his wife's terror. There is also the most fruitful of all subjects, great ridicule of men and things through Prudhomme's magniloquence. Madame Prudhomme is the Célimène of the bank, the true character of our women of the present day. But there is, above all, a keen satire on manners and morals. Prudhomme, accepting this false disaster, vanquished by the superiority of his wife, is a figure that was lacking to the stage. The solid happiness, marred by the slander of self-interested persons and restored by them for their own interests, has the true ring of comedy. Mademoiselle Prudhomme does not marry. Apparently, all this is vague; but the vagueness and want of outline is that of the "Misanthrope," the plot of which is in ten lines. The rôle of Madame Prudhomme, who is forty years old, can be played only by Mademoiselle Mars; but, with her tacit maternity, crushed down at every moment, she can be superb.

_Ecco, cara_, the card on which I am about to stake my whole future; for I have but that chance left, so deplorable is the state of the publishing business now; and I must, if our grand affair fails, have something to fall back upon. I shall not do that play only. I shall do two others at the same time, so as to obtain the receipts of two theatres at least.

_Addio._ I will write you between now and November 1, when I shall have got some pressing matters off my hands. But, I entreat you, do not forget, and continue to me the tale of your tranquil Ukrainean life. I have flowers beneath my windows, dahlias, plants that make me think of your gardens. When I open the book in which I put all the thoughts of my work, and so many other things, I turn ever to the one saying, "I will be Richelieu to preserve you." That, in this great corral of my ideas, is the flower that my eye caresses oftenest.