Part 37

Be indulgent to the poor third _dizain_, the third of which was written at the hôtel de l'Arc. "Berthe la Repentie" is decidedly the finest thing in the "Contes Drolatiques." I gossip to you about my poor thoughts; my life is such a desert; there are so many misconceptions, recent betrayals, difficulties, that I dare not talk to you of my material life. It is too sad.

October 12.

The "Conte" is rewritten and sent to the printing-office, and I can say that I am heartily glad to have finished at last that eternally "in the press" _dizain_. I have many other books to finish also. "Massimilla Doni" lacks a chapter on "Moïse," which requires long studies of the score; and as I must make them with a consummate musician, I cannot be master of my own work. Next I have a preface to sew on, like a collaret, to "La Femme Supérieure;" and a fourth Part also, like a bustle; for the sixty-five columns in the "Presse" did not furnish forth a volume; hence the preface and the added end of the volume. You cannot imagine how these mendings, these replasterings, weary me; I am worn-out with such secondary toils.

I have forgotten to tell you, I think, about Mademoiselle de Fauveau, who remembers you very well. She and her sister are such Catholics that the latter made difficulties about marrying the son of Bautte (the millionaire jeweller of Geneva where you and I went together, you remember?) on account of his religion, and yet these two poor women are in great poverty. Is not that splendid in faith? Mademoiselle de Fauveau, to whom I said that many persons objected to what I made Madame de Mortsauf say before dying, fell into a holy wrath with such profane ones, for she holds in admiration the "Lys dans la Vallée." When I told her that I had modified the cries of the flesh she said:--

"At least, do not take out: I will learn English to say 'my dear.'"

She thought the Catholic theme magnificently laid down; for it is the combat of mind over matter.

"Unhappily," I said to her, "it seems that none but you and I see it so."

She is a charming person, but rather too mystical and mythic. She made me go to San Miniato to see primitive triglyphs, superb, in relation to the Trinity; but I saw nothing of the kind. Don't call me a "commercial traveller" again, on account of that blindness. I would like to be a traveller and travel to your _cara patria_, but not a commercial one.

Adieu; I hope that this frail paper will tell you all I think, and that you will not think of my distress, or of my griefs; but that you will do as I do myself--lift, gaily and sadly both, my head to heaven, whence I have awaited, from my youth up, the Orient of full happiness.

Do not scold me too much, _cara_, for my silence, for there has been no truce or rest to me since my last letter; and I have been saying to myself that I must have made you anxious, without being able to sit down and write; for to write one word only is what I can never do. Some day, beside your fire, make me relate to you this month; you will then see what it has been. These are real novels that must be kept for private talks; and then the lord of Wierzchownia will laugh, as he did when I told him of my campaigns in China.

CHAILLOT, October 20, 1837.

I receive this morning your number 34 and have just read the tale of your journey. I am here for my mother's fête-day.

Those cursed builders demand the whole month of November to arrange my cabin at Sèvres; and I shall be here at least a fortnight to attend to the proofs of "La Maison Nucingen." My editors have arranged with the "Figaro" and have bought back my agreement with it, so that my pen owes nothing to any one, no matter who, after the publication of "La Maison Nucingen." I am unusually content with the third _dizain_. But you don't know how that literature is proscribed; it is so blamed for obscenity that I should not be surprised at a general hue and cry against it. English manias are gaining on us; it is enough to make one adore Catholicism.

"Massimilla Doni," another book which will be much misunderstood, gives me immense labour from its difficulties; but I have never caressed anything so much as those mythical pages, because the myth is so profoundly buried beneath reality. You have, no doubt, before this read "Gambara" in the "Revue de Saint-Pétersbourg;" for those worthy pirates will not have overlooked that work, which cost me six months toil.

I have seen Versailles; Louis Philippe's action was so far good, as it saved the palace; but it is the most ignoble and the silliest piece of work in itself I ever saw; so bad is it in art and so niggardly in execution. When you see it you will be amazed; and when I explain to you what is Louis XIV., Louis XV., Louis XVI., and Empire, you will think the rest horribly mean and bourgeois. Your Aunt Leczinska is there a dozen times in family portraits, and I took pleasure in looking at her and saying to myself with a laugh, "Better a live emperor than a buried dowdy;" for you are a queen of beauty, and she an ugly dowdy; though that must be the fault of the painters, for she was really very handsome. An extraordinary thing is, that there is not one of her portraits that is like another; so many portraits, so many different women. She was, no doubt, variable. What is really fine at Versailles, worthy of Titian and all that is noblest in painting, is the "Consecration of Napoleon" and the "Crowning of Josephine," the "Blessing of the Eagles" and "Napoleon pardoning Arabs" in the pictures of David and Guérin. What a great painter David is! He is colossal. I never saw those three pictures before.

I write to you also in presence of a friend [her portrait] in the contemplation of whom I lose myself as in the infinite. I have a quarrel to make with you, apropos of an insincere sentence in your number 33, about your regret at not having friends who can travel for your benefit. That sentence is one of the wounds that reach my heart; for you know well that if for you and yours it were necessary that I should go to the ends of the earth, or do daily something difficult and binding (which is more than exhibiting one's self in greater ways), I would not reflect a moment, I would do it with the blind obedience of a dog. If you know that, your remark is bad; if you do not know it, put me to the proof. My character, my manners and morals, all that is I, is so horribly calumniated that despair seizes me when I see that I have not even one little corner where doubt and suspicion do not enter.

You tell me that I write to you less often; there is not a letter of yours without an answer, and I often write to you in a scramble amid the desperate struggles I maintain, which will end, perhaps, in conquering my courage.

The announcement of our grand affair is postponed to the period of the general elections, a moment when the newspapers are much read. The first number will probably appear November 15. It will be my Austerlitz, or my Waterloo.

You spoke of the material obstacles to your presence among the works at Wierzchownia; but I own that if you understand very little my material obstacles, I understand yours still less; I cannot conceive expense in the solitude of a steppe. Make me your bailiff, and you will see that the man who created Grandet understands domestic economy. I would rather be your bailiff than be Lord Byron; Lord Byron was not happy, and I should be very happy.

The farther I go, the more frequent are my moments of depression and despair. This solitude and this constant toil without compensation kill me. Every day I think back to those days when the person of whom I have told you provisioned me with courage, and shared my labour. What an immense loss! What can fill it? An image? That image is mute and does not even look at me. But, whatever she be, and in spite of the imperfections of memory, she gilds my solitude and I can say that she enlightens it.

You cannot think how many dark distresses have resulted from the blow that deprived me of Madame de Berny. First, the tardy reparations of all my family, who did not like her, and who repeated the scene of "Clarissa Harlowe." Then, all those little things of the heart which ought to lie burned, or remain in one's own possession. Her son has understood nothing of all that; he has not returned me such things, and I do not venture to ask for them. So that I, whom neither work, nor grief, nor anything else seems likely to kill, I am making arrangements as if I were to die to-morrow, that I may grieve the heart of none.

I heard yesterday your dear "Norma." But Rubini was replaced by a wretched tenor and they skipped his airs. I came away before the scene where Norma declares her passion to the Druids. The strangest set of people were in the boxes, for no one has yet returned from the country; the vine harvest was late this year, and the weather superb. Prince Ed. Schonberg occupied the box of the Apponys, who are still absent. But no princess.

Was I not right when I said to you in Vienna that the fortnight I passed there was like an oasis in my life? Since that moment I have never had a day or an hour of repose. I travelled to gain a truce to such life; and no doubt the month, or months, I might again take, in which Paris could be completely forgotten, would be another oasis. But can I take them? There are days when a ferocious desire seizes me to drop everything. It would have been wise had I committed that folly. That alone would enable me to bring back a play; here, I am too much pursued by my obligations.

You can hardly imagine how your letters carry me to you; and how those which seem to you long and diffuse are precious to me. Where there is heart and constancy, one cannot dwell on the merit and the grace that mark each detail; but I do assure you they make me very fastidious. There come heavy and peculiarly gloomy hours when I have only to read through some past page, taken at random, to soothe my soul; it is as if I issued from a dungeon to cast eyes on a lovely landscape. Only--there have been some sad things, or rather, saddening things; for example, when you believe on the word of your sister Caroline; when you say you would not know what to do at Wierzchownia with a Parisian, a wit, who needs Paris and would be bored in the Ukraine. That proves that a hundred letters will not make you know me, nor the forty-five days we spent together. I own I am not saddened, but humiliated, by that tirade from a charming creature.

Apropos of the third _dizain_; I earnestly desire that you will not read it until M. Hanski has first passed judgment on it; for if it were likely to injure me in your mind I would rather that it should never go upon your bookshelves. It is specially a book for men; and I suffer when that easy and inoffensive pleasantry is ill-understood or ill-taken. Do me this favour; let it unwrinkle the boyard's brow when he has his blue devils; but hide the book away.

I believe you are right as to the route I had better take, and that from Havre to Lubeck and from Lubeck to Berlin would be best. But by Berlin, one must go through Warsaw; and I wanted to avoid Warsaw, because I hate those stupid occasions when one is recognized and receptions are made for one without heart or soul, purely from vanity. But it is the better route Perhaps also the least costly.

When you spoke to me in your number 33 of a happiness that I did not dream of in the rue de Lesdiguières, believing that I should see disappointment in a peaceful, obscure, secluded existence, happy in a home and confidence, you did not know how much ballast I have thrown into the sea, how many of my soap-bubbles have burst, how little I now cling to that which men call fame (which is here the privilege of being calumniated, vilified, disgraced). Reputation, political consistency, all is in the water. That which is not in the water, and on which I rely, is the youth of heart that will enable me to love for twenty years a woman who might then be forty-six--this counts the form for little, and the soul for all!

Why do you speak to me of a journal in which I am a shareholder? Journal yourself, as the school-boys say. You believe in advertisements! You think our names are respected! People take them for puffs of a spurious Macassar, a sham perfume; but whoever would attack this singular humbug would be well scoffed at. I shall never again concern myself in business or a newspaper; a scalded cat fears cold water.

I have a persecutor who wants to put me in prison (always that business of Werdet, who has got his certificate of bankruptcy and walks about Paris free of creditors). Jules Sandeau quarrelled with this man, whom he despised on his personal account. Well, he has now made up with him, and dines with him. I have been a father to Jules. I cry to myself, "Here's another man stricken from the list of the living for me!" Do you think that makes me love Paris?

Adieu for to-day. I will write you a few more lines before closing my letter. I must now apply myself to "La Maison Nucingen" and, like Sisyphus, roll my rock.

Monday, 23.

I don't know anything more wearying than to sit a whole night, from midnight till eight o'clock, beneath the light of shaded candles, before blank paper, unable to find thoughts, listening to the noise of the fire and that of carriages sounding beyond the window panes from the Barrière des Bons-Hommes and the quay. This is what your servant has done for five nights past, without meeting the moment when some inner voice, I know not what it is, says to him, "Go on!" Such useless fatigues count for nothing to every one.

Thursday, 26.

Three days during which I have not been able to do anything--except torture myself.

Yesterday I met one of your guests at Geneva, that relater of anecdotes, who spoke of the Z... He is to come and see me this morning; and I would like much to know, by return mail, whether, in case he returns to _la cara patria_, I can give him some of the manuscripts that belong to you; for I think they will have to be sent in detachments.

My brain must be fatigued by the proofs of "Les Contes Drolatiques" and of "Massimilla Doni," for complete impotence in respect to what I have to do reigns there. I have often had these checks, but they have never before lasted so long.

I must bid you farewell and send this letter, which, by the blessed invention of the "bon roy Loys le unzième," will be in your hands within twenty days. Winter is about to begin, so all chance of going to see you is postponed till spring,--though snow-drifts do not terrify me any more than wolves; those who are very unhappy need fear no accidents. They are the anointed of sorrows. Death respects them.

I will own to you that when I found myself so ill at Saché I had a sort of sensuous tranquillity in feeling my dull pains, for _I live from duty only_.

I am now to make two grand essays for fortune: the tontine affair and my comedy. After that, I shall let myself go with the current and see what comes of it. Believe that after a struggle of eighteen years, and a bitter fight of seven, if "a campaign of France" should end them, I must, willing or unwilling, find my Saint Helena. Between now and the month of April all will be decided. The tontine will have failed, "Mademoiselle Prudhomme" will have been hissed, and I shall have flung myself into a diligence from Lubeck to Berlin in search of a rest most needful. You will see a literary soldier covered with wounds to nurse. But he will not be hard to amuse, "quoi qu'on die."

Well, adieu. Write to me oftener, and do not forget to remember me to your colony. Tell M. Hanski that I think I have found a means to naturalize madder in Russia. That will wake him up. Many caressing things to your Anna. Tell me confidentially of something that would please her from Paris, and find here the homage of my attachment, and the flowers of a heart that can never be withered of them.

CHAILLOT, November 7, 1837.

I have decidedly begun my comedy; but, after defining its principal lines, I perceived the difficulties, and that gives me a profound admiration for the great geniuses who have left their works on the stage.

Yesterday I went to hear Beethoven's symphony in C minor. Beethoven is the only man who makes me know jealousy. I would rather be Beethoven than Rossini or Mozart. There is a divine power in that man. In that _finale_, it seems as though some enchanter raised you into a land of marvels, amid the noblest palaces filled with the treasures of all arts; and there, at his command, gates, like those of the Baptistry, turn on their hinges, letting you see beauties of an unknown kind--the fairy land of fantasy. There, flutter beings with the beauties of woman and the rainbow-tinted wings of the angel; you are bathed in an upper air, that air which, according to Swedenborg, sings and sheds fragrance, has colour and feeling, which flows to you, and beatifies you!

No, the mind of the writer can never give such joys, because what we paint is finite, fixed, and what Beethoven flings to you is infinite! You understand that I only know the symphony in C minor, and that fragment of the Pastoral symphony which we heard rattled off at Geneva on a second floor--of which I heard little, because two steps away from you stood a young man, who asked me, with straining eyes and a petrified air, if I knew who that beautiful lady was; the which was you, and I was proud as though I were a woman, young, beautiful, and vain.

I live so solitary a life that I have nothing to tell you of Paris, nor can I paint its life, or repeat its cancans. I can only speak to you of myself, a subject of perpetual sadness. My little house gets on; the masonry will be finished by the 30th of this month. But, no doubt, it will not be habitable for three or four months.

I am plunged at this moment into laughable trouble, in the sense that I have in my own home one of the pleasures of wealth. My "faithful" Auguste doubts my future fortune and leaves me, alleging a certain paternal will which desires him to abandon domestic service for commerce; but the real truth of this flight is his own disbelief in my future opulence, and a species of certainty that my present distress will last, and thus prevent him from doing his own little business. I let him go; and I groan at having to find some other rascal. I like those I know; though this one cared as little for me as for the year I. of the Republic. He paid no attention to anything; he left me, ill in bed, one whole day without a drop to drink; though when he was ill I gave him a nurse, and I paid a thousand francs this year to exempt him from the conscription. He had become intolerable to me through his negligence, so that his present ingratitude suits me.

Imagine that for the last three years, at least, I have had on my hands an Irish lady, a Miss Patrickson, who has appointed herself to translate my works and propagate them in England. The story is droll. Madame de C..., furious against me for various reasons, took her to teach English to R... and invented a trick to play me through her. She made her write me a love-letter signed "Lady Nevil." I take the English "Almanach" and I could not find in it either a Lord or a Sir Nevil. Moreover, the letter was very equivocal. You know that when such things are feigned there is either too much or too little of them; I saw therefore what it was. I replied with ardour. A rendezvous was given me at the Opera. I went that day to see Madame de C..., who made me stay to dinner. But I excused myself, saying I had an engagement at the Opera. She said, "Very good, I'll take you there." But in saying so she could not help exchanging a glance with her _demoiselle de compagnie_, and that glance sufficed me. I guessed all. I saw she was laying a trap for me and meant to make me ridiculous forever after. I went to the Opera. No one there. Then I wrote a letter, which brought the miss, old, horrible, with hideous teeth, but full of remorse for the part she had played, full also of affection for me and contempt and horror for the marquise. Though my letters were extremely ironical and written for the purpose of making a woman masquerading as a false Lady blush, she had got them back into her own possession. Thus I had the whip hand of Madame de C... and she ended by divining that in this intrigue she was on the down side. From that time forth she vowed me a hatred which will end only with life. In fact, she may rise out of her grave to calumniate me. She never opened "Séraphita" on account of its dedication, and her jealousy is such that if she could annihilate the book she would weep for joy.

So this horrible, old, and toothless Miss Patrickson, feeling herself bound to make reparation, lives only as my translator. I met at Poissy a Madame Saint-Clair, daughter of some English admiral, I don't know who, sister of Madame Delmar, who is also infatuated to translate me, and has proposed to me a lucrative arrangement with the English reviews. I have said neither yes nor no, on account of my Patrickson. As it is now three years that the poor creature has been struggling with the affair, which is her livelihood, I imagined she would be glad of this help. I went to see her Wednesday evening, she lives on a fifth floor, but I myself know nothing more grandiose than poverty. I mount, I arrive! I find the poor creature as drunk as a Suisse. Never in my life was I so embarrassed; she spoke between her teeth; she did not know what I was saying; and finally, when she did understand that I was proposing to her collaboration in her translations, she burst into tears; she told me that if this work did not remain solely hers she would kill herself; that it was her living and her glory; and then she told me her troubles. I never listened to anything so dreadful; I came away frozen with horror, not knowing whether she drank from a liking for it, or to drown the sense of her misery. I therefore refused Madame Saint-Clair. You could not imagine the filth, the hole, the frightful disorder in which that woman lives. It surpasses her ugliness. That is the chief episode of my week.

In the desert of her life that woman has clung to my work as to a fruitful palm-tree, but it will be to her unfruitful, and I have no money with which to succour her. Yesterday, however, I went by chance into the rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg, where there is an English pastry-cook who makes the most delicious oyster-patties; I had an English lady on my arm. Whom did I find there? My Patrickson at table, eating and drinking. Certainly I am neither a monk nor a ninny, and I comprehend that the more unhappy one is the more compensations are sought, and it is lucky indeed to find them at a pastry-cook's. But the lady who was with me said she was sure that this unfortunate woman _drank gin_, for she had all the characteristics of a person who drank gin. I had said nothing to her about my miss of the translations. But whether she drinks gin or not, she is none the less in the greatest poverty. It remains to be discovered whether she is in poverty because she drinks gin, or whether she drinks gin because she is miserable. As for me, the misery of others wrings my heart. I never condemn the unfortunate. I am stoical under my own misfortunes; I would give my bread while dying of hunger. That has happened to me several times, and those I served never returned it to me. Example: Jules Sandeau, who for two months never came to see me, and would not if I were dying. Well, though I know that, I don't acquire experience. If I marry, my wife must rule my property and interpose between me and the whole world, or I shall exhaust the treasures of Aladdin on others. Happily, I have nothing. When I do have something, I shall have to make myself fictitiously avaricious.