Part 39

I have just read "Aymar," by Henri de Latouche; his is a poor mind, falling into childishness. "Lautreamont," by Sue, is a work _laché_, as the painters say; it is neither done, nor could it be done. To second-rate minds, to persons without education, or those, who, being ill-informed or informed by prejudice, have not the courage to correct for themselves the false bias given to them and are content to accept judgments ready-made without taking the trouble to discuss them, Louis XIV. is a petty mind and a bad king.[1] His faults and his errors are counted to him as crimes, whereas he exactly fulfilled the prediction of Mazarin: he was both a great king and an honest man. He may be blamed for his wars and his rigorous treatment of Protestants; but he always had in view the grandeur of France, and his wars were a means to secure it. They served, according to his ideas, to guarantee us against our two greatest enemies at that period, Spain and England. After having, through the possession of Flanders and Alsace, established solid frontiers against Germany, he preserved France from Spanish intrigues by the conquest of Franche-Comté. Having thus given security to his people, he gave them a splendour which dazzled the world, and a grandeur which subdued it. One must indeed be neither a Frenchman nor a man of sense to blame him stupidly for that affair of the Chevalier de Rohan, a presumptuous fool and a State criminal, who was negotiating with a foreign country, selling France, and striving to light civil war,--a man whom the king had the right to condemn and punish according to the laws of the kingdom he governed. But, as you say, Sue has a narrow and bourgeois mind, incapable of understanding the _ensemble_ of such grandeur; he sees only scraps of the vulgar and commonplace evil of our present pitiable society. He has felt himself crushed by the gigantic spectacle of the great century, and he has resented it by calumniating the finest and greatest epoch of our history, dominated by the powerful and fruitful influence of the greatest of our kings; pronounced Great by his contemporaries, and against whom even his enemies invented no other sarcasm than to call him _"le roi soleil_."

To-morrow, Tuesday, 23rd, I shall begin to finish "Massimilla Doni," which requires great study of music, and will oblige me to go and hear played and replayed to me Rossini's "Moïse," by a good old German musician.

You would hardly believe with what resignation I face the dull and malignant abuse which the publication of "Massimilla Doni" will bring down upon me. Seen on one side only, it is true that the subject is open to criticism; it will be said that I am obscene. But looking at the psychical subject, it is, as I think, a marvel. But I have long been used to such detraction. There are persons who still persist in considering "La Peau de Chagrin" as a novel. But then, serious people and the appreciators of that composition are daily gaining ground. Five years hence "Massimilla Doni" will be understood as a beautiful explanation of the inner process of art. To the eyes of ordinary readers it will be only what it is apparently, a lover who cannot possess the woman he adores because he desires her too much, and so is won by a miserable creature. Make them perceive from that the conception of works of art!

Adieu, _cara_. A thousand tender effusions of friendship, and remember me to all about you. This is a long chatter; I have been writing it during three days, and doing little else. But it is so good to think to you! Think of me as of one entirely devoted, grieved when he gets no letters, happy when he shares your lonely life, for he too is lonely amid this Parisian bustle.

[Footnote 1: This letter is among those which Mme. de Balzac gave to the Édition Définitive (vol. xxiv., pp. 273-282). The passage relating to Louis XIV. is so evidently false in "Lettres à l'Étrangère" that I give it here in Mme. de Balzac's version. In "Lettres à l'Étrangère" it begins thus: "To well-informed minds Louis XIV. is a petty mind, a man _nul_." This being totally out of keeping with Balzac's published opinion of Louis XIV. ("Six Rois de France," Éd. Déf., vol. xxiii., pp. 525-535, written in 1837), I think it more just to Balzac to follow his wife's version here. The following passages are from "Six Rois de France" and give his opinion briefly: "He had known adversity and even misfortune in his youth; it was, no doubt, to this circumstance that he owed the perspicacity, the knowledge of man that distinguished him almost constantly." "This prince, in his adversity, remained ever worthy of the title of Great, which history has preserved to him." See Appendix concerning Mme. Hanska's letters in the Édition Définitive.--TR.]

FRAPESLE, near ISSOUDUN, February 10, 1838.

I have just received your little number 38, and at the moment that I read it you must have in your hands the rather long letter in which I explained my fears and made the inquiry to which you now reply.

I am thankful to know myself in painting at Berditchef, for in my uneasiness about that wretched canvas I was about to sue the despatcher of it. I am curious to know what you will think of the work. It is now said that Boulanger has not given a delicacy that lurks under the roundness of the lines, that he has exaggerated the character of my rather tranquil strength, and bestowed upon me a hectoring and aggressive expression. That is what sculptors and painters said to me a few days before I left Paris, at a dinner at M. de Castellane's, who is having some plays acted in private at his house. The merit of Boulanger is in the fire of the eyes, the material truth of outline, and the rich colouring. In spite of these criticisms, which concern only the moral resemblance--so closely united, however, to physical resemblance--they all said it was one of the finest specimens of the school for the last ten years; so I reflected that, at least, you would not have a daub in your gallery. We shall see what you say to it.

I came here worn-out with fatigue. The body is relaxing. I have come to do, if I can, the preliminary play of which I spoke to you, and the second Part of "Illusions Perdues," the first Part of which pleased you so much. I shall stay in Berry till the middle of March.

They write me from Paris that "Cesar Birotteau," after two months' _incognito_, is obtaining a success of enthusiasm, and that in spite of the silence of some newspapers, and the cruel civilities of others, it is being borne to the clouds above "Eugénie Grandet," with which they crush down so many other things of mine. I tell you that idiocy of Parisians, because you look upon such things benignly as _events_.

Now that I see my inventions to give you little pleasures reach you, write me what Anna would like for her birthday. I have an opportunity to send to Riga. Riga is not far from you, and I will tell you where to send for your idol's gift. Do you want any of that Milanese silver filagree, or anything in the way of Parisian taste? And if at our coming Exhibition M. Hanski wants one or two good pictures, well chosen, to increase his collection, some of those things that become in time of great value, tell him to feel sure that I am at his orders, and at yours equally.

You could not believe how much I thought of you in crossing La Beauce and Berry, for they are your Ukraine on a small scale, and every time I cross them my thought is fixed on Wierzchownia. They are two very high plateaus, for at Issoudun we are six hundred feet above sea-level, and there is nothing on them but wheatfields, vineyards, and woods. In Beauce, however, the land is so precious that not a single tree is planted. You will see that melancholy landscape some day, when you come to France, and perhaps, like me, you will not share the feeling it inspires in ordinary travellers.

I do not know if they told me truly, or if the person who told me was told truly, but my publishers are boasting that they have sold five thousand of the Illustrated Balzac, which leads one to suppose that, time and friendship aiding, we may sell ten thousand. Then all my financial misfortunes will cease in 1839. God grant it!

Do not play the coquette about your thirty-third anniversary; you know well what I think about the age of women, and if you want me to give you new editions of it, I shall think you very greedy of compliments. There are women who will always be young, and you are one of them; youth comes from the soul. Never lose that innocent gaiety which is one of your greatest charms; it makes you able to think aloud to every one, and that will keep you young a long time. In spite of what you say, there are, I think, few clouds above the lake of your thoughts, but always the infinite of blue skies.

If you have a frame made for my portrait, and it requires one, have it made in black velvet. That is economical and beautiful, and very favourable to Boulanger's colour and tones.

Remember that nothing leads to the malady of Lady L... so surely as the mystical ecstasies of which you tell me in Séverine's sister; believe me, for it was in this way that the pure and sublime young daughter of Madame de Berny became insane. The mother died of that, as well as of the death of her son. What did she not say to me on the absurdity of our moralities, in the paroxysm of her sorrow! And what appalling mother-cries!

I beg you never to say to me in a letter, "If I die." I have causes enough for melancholy, and dread, and gloomy black dragons, without the added waves of bitterness that my blood rushes to my heart under the sudden faintness that those words cause me.

Gracious greetings to _tutti quanti_, and to you, all tenderness. I re-read at this moment the silly verses in which I fold my letter, and I send you, laughing, the homage of a poor collegian--for the ruled paper reveals the age of seventeen and its illusions.

FRAPESLE, March 2, 1838.

_Cara contessina_; I am here, without having done a single thing that is worth anything. I am a little better, that is all. I have been ill of a malady that love abhors, caused by the quality of the drinking water, which contained calcareous deposits. Hence, complete dissolution of my brain forces. Poor human beings! See on what fame depends, and the creations of thought! Madame Carraud thinks I have escaped an illness; it is very sure that I have escaped making a comedy or a bad novel.

I heard that George Sand was at her country-place at Nohant, a few leagues from Frapesle, so I went to pay her a visit. You will therefore have your wished-for autographs: one of George Sand, which I send you to-day; the other, signed Aurore Dudevant, you shall receive in my next letter. Thus you will have the curious animal under both aspects. But there is still another; the nickname, given by her friends, of "le docteur Piffoël." When that reaches me I will send it. As you are a curious eminentissime or an eminentissime curious person, I will relate to you my visit.

I arrived at the Château de Nohant on Shrove Saturday, about half-past seven in the evening, and I found comrade George Sand in her dressing-gown, smoking a cigar after dinner in the chimney-corner of an immense solitary chamber. She was wearing pretty yellow slippers trimmed with fringe, coquettish stockings, and red trousers. So much for the moral. Physically, she has doubled her chin like a monk. She has not a single white hair in spite of her dreadful troubles; her swarthy skin has not varied; her beautiful eyes are still dazzling; she has the same stupid look when she thinks, for, as I told her, after studying her, all her physiognomy is in her eye. She has been at Nohant a year, very sad, and working enormously. She leads about the same life as mine. She goes to bed at six in the morning and rises at midday; I go to bed at six in the evening and rise at midnight. But, naturally, I conformed to her habits; and for three days we talked from five o'clock, after dinner, till five next morning; so that I knew her better, and reciprocally, in those three talks, than during the four preceding years, when she came to my house at the time she loved Jules Sandeau, and was connected with Musset. She knew me only as I went to see her now and then.

It was useful for me to see her, for we made mutual confidences on the subject of Jules Sandeau. I, who am the last to blame her for that desertion, have nothing now but the deepest compassion for her, as you will have for me when you know with whom we had to do, she, in love; I, in friendship.

She was, however, even more unhappy with Musset; and she is now in deep retirement, condemning both marriage and love; because in both states she has met with nothing but deceptions.

Her male is rare, that is the whole of it. He is the more so because she is not lovable, and, consequently, will always be difficult to love. She is a lad, she is an artist, she is grand, generous, devoted, chaste; she has the great lineaments of a man: _ergo_, she is not a woman. I did not feel, any more than I formerly felt when beside her, attacked by that gallantry of the epidermis which one ought to employ in France and Poland towards every species of woman. I talked as with a comrade. She has lofty virtues, of the kind that society takes the wrong way. We discussed, with a gravity, good faith, candor, and conscience worthy of the great shepherds who lead herds of men, the grand questions of marriage and liberty: "For," as she said to me with immense pride (I should never have dared to think it for myself), "although by our writings we are preparing a revolution for future manners and morals, I am not less struck by the objections to the one than by those to the other."

We talked a whole night on this great problem. I am altogether for the liberty of the young girl and the slavery of the wife; that is to say, I wish that before marriage she should know what she binds herself to, that she should study it all, because, when she has signed the contract and experienced its chances she must be faithful to it. I gained a great deal in making Madame Dudevant recognize the necessity of marriage; but she will believe it, I am sure, and I think I have done good in proving it to her.

She is an excellent mother, adored by her children; but she dresses her daughter Solange as a boy, which is not right. _Morally,_ she is like a young man of twenty, for she is inwardly chaste and _prudish_; she is only an artist externally. She smokes immoderately; plays the princess a little too much, perhaps; and I am convinced that she has faithfully painted herself in the princess of her "Secrétaire intime." She knows, and said, of herself just what I think, without my saying it to her, namely: that she has neither force of conception, nor gift of constructing plots, nor faculty of reaching the true, nor the art of pathos, but--without knowing the French language--she has _style_; and that is true.

She takes her fame, as I do mine, in jest, and she has a profound contempt for the public, calling it _Jumento_.

I will relate to you the immense and secret devotion of this woman for those two men, and you will say to yourself that there is nothing in common between angels and devils. All the follies that she has committed are titles to fame in the eyes of great and noble souls. She was duped by Madame Dorval, Bocage, Lamennais, etc., etc. Through the same sentiment she is now the dupe of Listz and Madame d'Agoult; but she has just come to see it as to that pair as she did in the case of la Dorval; she has one of those minds that are powerful in the study, through intellect, and extremely easy to entrap on the domain of realities.

Apropos of Listz and Madame d'Agoult, she gave me the subject of "Les Galériens," or "Amours forcés," which I am going to write; for in her position she cannot do so. Keep that secret. In short, she is a man, and all the more a man because she wants to be one, because she has come out of womanhood, and is not a woman. Woman attracts, and she repels; and, as I am very much of a man, if she produces that effect on me she must produce it on all men who are like me; she will always be unhappy. Thus, she now loves a man who is inferior to her, and in that contract there can be only deception and disenchantment for a woman with a fine soul. A woman ought always to love a man superior to herself, or else be so well deceived that it will be as if it were so.

I did not stay at Nohant with impunity; I brought away a monstrous vice; she made me smoke a hookah and latakia; and they have suddenly become a necessity to me. This transition will help me to give up coffee and vary the stimulant I need for work; I thought of you. I want a fine, good hookah, with a lid or extra-bowl; and, if you are very amiable, you will get me one in Moscow; for it is there, or in Constantinople, that the best can be had. Be friendly enough to write at once to Moscow, so that the parcel may reach me with the least possible delay. But on condition only that you tell me what you want in Paris, so that I have my hookah only as barter. If you can also find true latakia in Moscow, send me five or six pounds, as opportunities are rare to get it from Constantinople. And dare I also ask you not to forget the _caravan tea_ you promised me?

I am much of a child, as you know. If it is possible that the decoration of the hookah should be in turquoise, that would please me, all the more because I want to attach to the end of the tube the knob of my cane, which I am prevented from carrying by the notoriety given to it. If you wish, I will send you a set of Parisian pearls, such as you liked; the mounting will be so artistic that, although the pearls are only Parisian, you will have a work of art. Say yes, if you love me. Yes, isn't it?

I will write you a line from Paris, for I must go to Sardinia. Pray to God that I may succeed, for if I do, my joy will carry me to Wierzchownia. I shall have liberty! no more cares, no more material worries; I shall be rich!

_Addio, cara contessina_, for the post has imperious and self-willed hours. Think that in fifteen days I shall be sailing on the Mediterranean. Ah! from there to Odessa, it is all sea--as they say in Paris, it is all pavement. From Odessa to Berditchef it is but a step.

I send you my tender regards, and friendly ones to M. Hanski, with all remembrances to your young companions. You ought to be, as I write, in full enjoyment of the Boulanger, and I await with impatience your _sacro sainct dict_ on the work of the painter.

Think that if I pray it is for you; if I ask God for anything with that cowl lowered it is for you, and that the fat monk now before you is ever the moujik of your lofty and powerful mind.

Have you read "Birotteau"? After that book I shall decidedly write "La Première Demoiselle;" then a love-book, very coquettish, "Les Amours forcés." It is for those who have the adorable sweetness to love according to the laws of their own heart, and to pity the galley-slaves of love.

AJACCIO, MARCH 26, 1838.

_Cara contessina_, I did not have a moment to myself in which to write to you from Paris on my return from Berry. The above date will show you that I am twenty hours from Sardinia, where I make my expedition. I am waiting for an opportunity to cross over to that island, and on arrival I shall have to do five days' quarantine,--for Italy will not give up that custom. They believe in contagion and cholera; it broke out in Marseille six months ago, and they still continue their useless precautions.

During the few days I remained in Paris I had endless difficulties to conquer in order to make my journey; money was laboriously obtained, for money is scarce with me. When you know that this enterprise is a desperate effort to put an end to the perpetual struggle between fortune and me, you will not be surprised by it. I risk only a month of my time and five hundred francs for a fairly fine fortune. M. Carraud decided me; I submitted my conjectures, which are scientific in their nature, to him, and as he is one of those great _savants_ who do nothing, publish nothing, and live in idleness, his opinion was given, without any restriction, in favour of my ideas,--ideas that I can only communicate to you by word of mouth if I succeed, or in my next letter if I fail. Successful or unsuccessful, M. Carraud says that he respects such an idea as much as a fine discovery, considering it an ingenious thing. M. Carraud was for twenty years director of our Military School of Saint-Cyr; he is the intimate friend of Biot, whom I have often heard deplore, in the interest of science, the inaction in which M. Carraud now lives.

In truth, there is no scientific problem that he cannot discuss admirably when questioned; but the trouble is that these vast mathematical minds judge life by what it is, and, not seeing a logical conclusion of it, they await death to be rid of their time. This vegetable existence is the despair of Madame Carraud, who is full of soul and fire. She was stupefied on hearing M. Carraud declare, when I submitted my conjectures to him, that he would go with me, he who never leaves the house even to look after his own estate. However, the natural man returned, and he gave up the project. His opinion ended by bringing my own incandescence to the highest point; and in spite of the terrible equinox in the Gulf of Lyon, in spite of five days and four nights to spend in a diligence, I started. I have suffered much, especially at sea. But here I am, in the native town of the Napoleons, giving myself to all the devils because I am obliged to wait for the solution of my problem within twenty hours' distance of that problem. One must not think of going through Corsica to the straits which separate it from Sardinia, for the land journey is long, dangerous, and costly, both in Corsica and Sardinia. Ajaccio is an intolerable place. I know no one, and there is no one to know. Civilization is what it is in Greenland; the Corsicans do not like strangers. I am wrecked, as it were, on a granite rock; I go and look at the sea and return to dinner, go to bed, and begin over again,--not daring to work, because at any moment I may start; this situation is the antipodes of my nature, which is all resolution, all activity.

I have been to see the house where Napoleon was born; it is now a poor hovel. I have rectified a few mistakes. His father was a rather rich land-owner, and not a clerk, as several lying biographies have said. Also, when Napoleon reached Ajaccio on his return from Egypt, instead of being received by acclamations, as historians declare, and obtaining a general triumph, he was shot at, and a price was put upon his head; they showed me the little beach where he landed. He owed his life to the courage and devotion of a peasant, who took him to the mountains and put him in an inaccessible retreat. It was the nephew of the mayor of Ajaccio who put the price upon his head, that told me these details. After Napoleon was First Consul the peasant went to see him. Napoleon asked him what he wanted. The peasant asked for one of his father's estates, called "Il Pantano," which was worth a million. Napoleon gave it to him. The son of that peasant is to-day one of the richest men in Corsica.

Napoleon had already given his father's estates to the Ramolini, his mother's family,--having no right to do so. The Bonapartes said nothing, for during his power they obtained everything from him. Since his death, and recently, they have brought suits to recover this property from the Ramolini.

Pozzo di Borgo triumphs in Corsica as he triumphed over his enemy Napoleon,--Metternich, Wellington, and Talleyrand aiding. His nephew, who is paymaster here, has an income of more than one hundred thousand francs. I am lodging in one of his houses.