Part 42

_Cara_, you are more than ever bent on _converting_ me. Your letter is that of a grave and serious abbess and an omnipotent, _omni-scavante_, gracious and witty Countess Hanska. I kneel at your feet, dear and beautiful sister-Massillon, to tell you here that the sorrow of my life is a long prayer, that my soul is very white, not because I do not sin, but because I have no time to sin, which makes it perhaps all the blacker in your eyes. But you know that I have in the shrine of my heart a madonna who sanctifies all. What have I said or done to you that should bring me all this Christian advice? I work so hard that I have not always time to sleep or, more alarming symptom, to write to you. A man so unfortunate is either the most guilty or the most innocent of men on earth; and in either case there's nothing to be done. Would you know what that means? I am weary of the life thus allotted to me, and, were it not for my duties, I would take another. I must have received many blows, be very tired of my fate, to abandon myself to chance, as I do to-day, with a character as strongly tempered as mine.

You have reticences about my affections which grieve me all the more because I cannot reply to them (the reticences), and you ask me superfluous questions about my health. Why have you not divined, with that grand perspicacious forehead of yours and your other attributes, that the unhappy are always robust in health? They can pass through seas, conflagrations, battles, bivouacs, and fresh plaster; they are always sound and well! Yes, I am perfectly well, without aches or pains, in my young house. Have no uneasiness as to that. Beyond a great and general fatigue after my excesses of work during the last fortnight, I am well, and if white hairs did not abound I should think I were the younger by ten years.

_Mon Dieu!_ how I suffer when, in reading your letter, I see that you have suffered from my silence, and that you have taken to heart my anxieties and the agonies of my poor life. Do you know it? do you feel it? No--never see me, as you say, joyous and tranquil! When I write to you joyously all is at its worst, and I am trying to conceal how ill that is. When things are going ill with me if I do not write to you, it is because--No, I cannot write it to you; I will talk of it to you some day, and then you will regret having written to me some words that are sweet and cruel both in relation to my delayed letters. There are things that you will never divine. Do not fear that anything can change or diminish an attachment like mine. You think me light-minded, giddy; it makes me laugh. Believe, once for all, that he in whom you have been good enough to recognize some depth of thought, has depth in his heart, and that while he displays such courage in the battle he is fighting, there is just as great constancy in his affections. But you are ignorant of the claims of each day; the dreadful difficulties on which I spend myself. If you knew what wiles were necessary--like those of the "Mariage de Figaro"--to make that hosier pay four thousand francs for the thoughts and maxims of Napoleon; if you realized that my publishers will not give me money; that I am trying to break up that agreement; that to break it I must pay them fifty thousand francs; and that after believing that my life was secured and tranquil it is now more in peril than ever, you would not treat as folly my enterprise in Sardinia! Oh! I entreat you, do not advise or blame those who feel themselves sunk in deep waters and are struggling to the surface. Never will the rich comprehend the unfortunate. One must have been one's self without friends, without resources, without food, without money, to know to its depths what misfortune is. I have the knowledge of all that; and I no longer complain that I am the victim of a poor unfortunate man who, for food, sells a jest of mine that I may have said on the boulevard, but which, when published, forms a horrible attack upon me. I complain no longer of calumnies and insults; those poor unfortunates live upon them, and though I would rather die than live so, I have not the courage to blame them, for I know what it is to suffer.

However rare my letters are, they are the _only ones_ that I write to-day (except those on business); and what quarrels and ill-will I have brought upon myself by not answering letters! You cannot know what a literary life busy as mine is must be. Whatever they tell you, or however my silence may appear to you, know this: that I work day and night; that the phenomenon of my production is doubled, trebled; that I have brought myself to correct a volume in a single night, and to write one in three days. The world is foolish. It thinks that a book is spoken. This grieves me only from you; I laugh with pity at others.

I have done eight works since the month of last November. _Cara_, each of those eight works would have foundered for a year the strongest of the French writers, who barely do half a volume a year. Among those eight I do not mention the book of love, of which I have told you something, which is there, on my table, beneath your letter; I have about twenty-five _feuilles_ of that written. Neither do I speak of five "Contes Drolatiques" written within two months.

_Mon Dieu!_ I have not one soul to understand me; I have never had but one. Poor, dear Madame de Berny came to see me daily in those days when she thought that I should perish beneath my burden. What would she say now if she saw it tenfold heavier? Yes, I work tenfold harder in 1838 than I did in 1828, 1830, 1831, 1832, 1833. In those days I believed in fortune; to-day I believe in misery. There are men who want me to sell myself to the present order of things. I would rather die! I must have my freedom of speech.

When you speak to me of fatal death, such as that of your cousin, I call it happy death, for I do not believe we are placed here below for happiness. Withold was right; I pity his mother much; but he is happy, believe it.

You asked me when I shall calm that French fury which carried me to Italy, to Sardinia. Is not that asking me when I shall be imbecile? Do you expect a man who can write in five nights "Qui Terre a, Guerre a" or "César Birotteau" to measure his steps like a capitalist who takes his dog to walk on the boulevard, reads the "Constitutionnel," comes home to dinner, and plays billiards in the evening? I will allow you here five seconds to laugh at the most charming person in the world, who, to my thinking, is Madame Eve. Nothing remains now but to blame _la furia_ which will take me to see certain Northern people in their steppe. Know, beautiful great lady, that if I abandoned myself to Providence, as you propose to me, Providence would already have put me in prison for debt; and I don't see that there is anything providential in a sojourn at Clichy. What would the plants that creep out of caves in search of the sun say if they heard a pretty dove asking them why they climbed that fissure to the air? You curse our civilization; I await you in Paris! But I would also like to know who are the impertinent people who write to you about me; and who think there is a sun for me elsewhere than in the North.

Théophile Gautier is a young man of whom I think I have spoken to you. He is one of the talents that I discovered; but he is without force of conception. "Fortunio" is below "Mademoiselle de Maupin," and his poems, which have pleased you, alarm me as a decadence in poesy and language. He has a ravishing style, much intellect, of which I think he will not make the most because he is in journalism. He is the son of a custom-house receiver at the Versailles barrier of Paris. He is very original, knows a great deal, and talks well on art, of which he has the sentiment. He is an exceptional man, who will, no doubt, lose his way. You have divined _the man_; he loves colour and flesh; but he comprehends Italy, without having seen it.

I am struck by the manner in which you return, three several times to the "levity of my character, and the multiplicity of my enthusiasms." There must be under all that some calumny which has snaked its way to Wierzchownia, God knows how!

Well, I must bid you farewell, without having said one tenth part of the things I had to say to you, and which I will return to later. After all, it would be only describing to you the worries of my present life, which are innumerable. I must correct for to-morrow "Le Curé de Village" for it annoys me to have further dealings with the "Presse."

Adieu, dear azure flower; keep all safely for one who lays up treasures of affections and feelings in your direction. I know not why you say that old friendships are timid; mine grows very bold with time.

All graceful things to those about you, and to M. Hanski my friendly regards.

October 16.

I am in treaty with the "Débats" to take all my prose at a franc a line. That would make M. Sedlitz, the German poet, howl; but he is a baron, and has estates, and was scandalized in the Landstrasse at hearing me talk about the profits of literature. If this _affair_ comes off you will see me very soon at Wierzchownia. I want to be there in winter.

Much tenderness, preaching or laughing, mundane or Catholic. _À bientôt._

AUX JARDIES, November 15, 1838.

To-day I meant to have closed and sent to you a letter begun a month ago; but it is lost,--lost from my desk. I have spent three hours of this night in looking for it. I am vexed, I weep for it, because, to me, all expression of the soul fallen into the gulf of oblivion seems irreparable. You would have known what has happened to me since the date of my last letter. In two words, I am about to enter a happier period, or, to use a truer word, a less unhappy period than the past, financially speaking. A few days more and I shall, perhaps, have paid off half my debt. Material success is coming; it begins. My works are to be issued in several _formats_ at the same time. My publishers allow me to buy off my agreement, which bound me too closely, and I am going, in a few months, to be free. These are results. You will be ignorant, until I can tell them to you, of the marches and countermarches, and goings and comings, and conferences which have made me mount and descend all the rungs of the ladder of hope.

My pen will have brought in mounds of gold this month.[1] "Qui Terre a, Guerre a" more than ten thousand francs; "Le Cabinet des Antiques" five thousand francs, etc., etc.; "Massimilla Doni" a thousand francs. I have sold for twenty thousand francs the right to sell thirty-six thousand 18mo volumes, selected from my works. "La Physiologie du Mariage" in 18mo has been sold for five thousand francs. In short, it is a sudden, unhoped-for harvest, and it comes in the nick of time. I hope, between now and five months hence, to have paid off one hundred thousand francs of my debt. But I have eight volumes to finish. They have bought prefaces of a _feuille_ in length for five hundred francs. All this will give you pleasure, will it not? Nothing will as yet give me any ease; for this money goes only to clear off the old debt; but at least I can breathe. Another thing that will give you pleasure and rejoice your Catholic soul is that my affairs took on this smiling aspect from the day when my mother hung about my neck a medal blessed by a saint, which I have religiously worn with another amulet [probably her miniature], which I believe to be more efficacious. The two talismans get on very well together, and have not displeased each other. I am not willing to disappoint my mother, but this miracle does not convert me, because I am ignorant which of the two charms is the most powerful.

I have been very miserable of late; my publishers are piling up their ducats, while I have not had a brass farthing, and this war of diplomatic conferences costs me much. I have now returned to my shell, at Sèvres, where nothing is yet finished or habitable. I have the removal of my furniture to do and many other expenses besides.

The moral is less satisfactory than the material condition. I am growing older, I feel the need of a companion, and every day I regret the adored being who sleeps in a village cemetery near Fontainebleau. My sister, who loves me much, can never receive me in her own home. A ferocious jealousy bars everything. My mother and I do not suit each other, reciprocally. I must rely on work unless I have a family of friends about me; which is what I should like to arrive at. A good and happy marriage, alas! I despair of it, though no one is more fitted than I for domestic life.

I have interior griefs that I can tell only to you, which oppress me. Ever since I have had ideas and sentiments I have thought wholly of love; and the first woman that I met was a faultless heroine, angelic in heart, a mind most keen, education most extensive, graces and manners perfect. Diabolical Nature placed its fatal _but_ upon all this. _But_ she was twenty-two years older than I; so that if the ideal was morally surpassed, the material, which is much, erected insurmountable barriers. Therefore, the unlimited passion that has always been in my soul has never found true fulfilment. The half of all was lacking. Do you think, therefore, that I can meet with it now that time is flying at a gallop with me? My life will be a failure, and I feel it bitterly. There is no fame that lasts; I am resigned to that. There are no chances for me. My life is a desert. That which I desired is lacking,--that for which I could have made the greatest sacrifices, that which will never come to me, that on which I must no longer count! I say it mathematically, without the poesy of wailing, which I could lift to the height of Job; but the fact is there. I should not lack adventures; I could play, if I chose, the rôle of a man _à bonnes fortunes_, but my stomach turns against it with disgust. Nature made me for one sole love. I am an ignored Don Quixote. I have ardent friendships. Madame Carraud, in Berry, has a noble soul; but friendship does not take the place of love,--the love of every day, of every hour; which gives infinite pleasures in the sound at all moments of a voice, a step, the rustle of a gown through the house; such as I have had, though imperfectly, at times in the last ten years. Add to this that I hold in profound detestation all young girls, that I count much higher developed beauties than those that will develop, and the problem is still more difficult to solve.

Madame Carraud, whose letters give me great pleasure--if that word can be employed for other letters than yours---has divined my situation. She awakes my sorrows by a letter I have just received from her, in which she talks marriage to me, which makes me furious for a long time. I will not listen to it. You know how fixed my opinion is. I must have much fortune for that, and I have none. I must have a person who knows me well, and I doubt if that is possible in one who is, after all, a stranger. What a sad thing is life, _cara_!

You will certainly see me when my great works are done. At the first inanition of the brain I shall turn to your dear Wierzchownia, and pay you a visit; for I cannot endure to be so long without seeing you. Last night at the Opera, where I heard Duprez in "Guillaume Tell," I was the whole evening in Switzerland,--the Switzerland of Pré-l'Évêque and the two shores of the lake where we walked together. There are details of our trips to Coppet and Diodati which occupy me more than my own life. Looking at the scene of the Lake of the Four Cantons, I remembered, _word for word_, all you said to me as we passed the Galitzin house, and what you said about such and such a portrait at Coppet. And I said to myself--in my way of telling myself the future--"Such a period will not pass without my seeing the Ukraine; as I live so much by memories, these are the treasures I ought to seek, and not silver mines." I was happier in that Opera-Switzerland than the millionnaire Greffulhe, who yawned above me.

From those letters of yours, so serious, so dun-coloured and ascetic, I fear to find you changed. No matter, we must love our friends as they are.

What I do not like in your last letter is the remark that "old friendships are timid." In that there is a distrust of yourself or of me that I do not like. You know that nothing can prevail against you, that you are apart from whatever may happen to me, like a true king who can never be reached. I am afraid that you forge ogres. If my letters are delayed, be sure there is some good reason; that I have been hurried about night and day, without truce or rest; that I have not written to a living soul, and that, if I were ill or happy, you, in spite of distance, would be the first informed of it.

You know the good your letters do me, whatever they are, religious, or sad, or gay, or domestic. I am the more reserved because I have nothing but troubles to send you, and no flower other than that of an eternal affection, as much above all petty, worldly imitations as Mont Blanc is above the lake. Do not be surprised therefore if I hold back a letter which tells you of misery and toil without other compensation than that of talking to you about them.

You complain of Polish divorces, whereas here we are doing all we can to restore the admirable section on divorce to the Civil Code such as Napoleon contrived it; which met all social disasters, without giving an opening to libertinism, change, vice, or passion. It is the only institution which can secure happy marriages. There are in Paris forty thousand households on promise only, without either civil or religious contract; and they are among the best, for each fears to lose the other. This is not said publicly, but the statistic is correct. Cauchois-Lemaire, for instance, is married in that way. The Napoleonic law allowed only _one_ divorce in a woman's life, and forbade even that after ten years of marriage. In this it was wrong. There are tyrannies which can be borne in youth, that are later intolerable. I knew an adorable woman who waited till she was forty-five and her daughters were married, in order to separate from her husband; having put off until that moment when she could no longer be suspected the liberation without which she would have died.

What! do you dare to tell us there is but _one_ man in this "stupid nineteenth century"? Napoleon is he? And Cuvier, _cara_! And Dupuytren, _cara_! And Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, _cara_! And Masséna, _carina_! And Rossini, _carissima_! And our chemists, our secondary men, who are equal to the talents of the first order! And Lamennais, George Sand, Talma, Gall, Broussais (just dead), etc.! You are very unjust. Lord Byron, Walter Scott, and Cowper belong to this century. Weber also, and Meyerbeer; also several _gamins de Paris_ who could make a revolution by a wave of their hand. Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and Musset are, they three, the small change of a poet, for neither of them is complete. Apropos, "Ruy Blas" is immense nonsense, and an infamy in verse. The odious and the absurd never danced a more dissolute saraband. He has cut out two horrible lines:--

_... affreuse compagnone, Dont la barbe fleurie et dont le nez trognonne;_

but they were said at the first two representations. At the fourth representation, when the public became aware of them, they were hissed.

I cannot tell you anything of the war in the Caucasus, except that I deplore for you the loss that grieves you [Count Withold Rzewuski].

_Cara_, I would like you to explain to me how I have deserved a phrase thus worded and addressed to me in your last letter: "The natural levity of your character." In what do I show levity? Is it because for the last twelve years I pursue, without relaxing, an immense literary work? Is it because for the last six years I have had but one affection in my heart? Is it because for twelve years I have worked night and day to pay an enormous debt which my mother saddled upon me by a senseless calculation? Is it because in spite of so many miseries I have not asphyxiated or drowned myself, or blown out my brains? Is it because I work ceaselessly, and seek to shorten by ingenious schemes, that fail, the period of my hard labour? Explain yourself. Is it because I flee society and intercourse with others to give myself up to my passion, my work, my release from debt? Can it be because I have written twelve volumes instead of ten? Can it be because they do not appear with regularity? Is it because I write to you with tenacity and constancy, sending you with incredible levity autographs? Is it because I go to live in the country, away from Paris, in order to have more time and spend less money? Come, tell me; have no hidden thought from your friend. Can it be because, in spite of so many misfortunes, I preserve some gaiety and make campaigns into China and Sardinia? For pity's sake, be fearless, and speak out. Can it be because I am delaying to write my plays that I may not risk a fiasco? Or is it because you are--through the blind confidence of a son for his mother, a sister for a brother, a husband for a wife, a lover to his mistress, a penitent to his confessor, an angel towards God, all, in short, that is most confiding and most a _unit_--so aware of what passes in my poor existence, my poor brain, my poor heart, my poor soul, that you arm yourself with my confidences to make of _me_ another _myself_ whom you scold and lecture and strike at your ease?

Levity of nature! Truly, you are like the worthy bourgeois who, seeing Napoleon turn to right and left, and on all sides to examine his field of battle, remarked: "That man cannot keep quiet in one place; he has no fixed ideas." Do me the pleasure to go wherever you have put the portrait of your poor moujik and look at the space between his two shoulders, thorax and forehead, and say to yourself: "There is the most constant, least volatile, most steadfast of men." That is your punishment. But, after all, scold, accuse your poor Honoré de Balzac; he is your thing; and I do wrong to argue; for if you will have it so, I will be frivolous in character, I will go and come without purpose, and say sweet things without object to the Duchesse d'O...; I will fall in love with a notary's wife, and write feuilletons to enrage the actresses, and I will make myself a superlative rip. I will sell Les Jardies; I will await your sovereign orders. There is but one thing in which I shall disobey you, and that is the thing of my heart--where, nevertheless, you have all power.

I entreat you to add also that I am a light-weight in body and thin as a skeleton. The portrait will then be complete.

Explain also, if you can, the "multiplicity of my dissipations [_entraînements_],"--I, of whom it is said that no one can make me do anything but what I choose to do! (Those who say so do not know that I am moujik on the estate of Paulowska, the subject of a Russian countess, and the admirer of the autocratic power of my sovereign.)

Alas! I never doubt you, I never rebel against anything--except the invasion of mystical ideas. And even that is from an admirable instinct of jealousy. Moreover, if I must say so, I hold the _devout spirit_ in horror. It is not piety which alarms me, but devoutness. To fly from this and that to the bosom of God, so be it; but the more I admire those sublime impulses, the more the minute practices of devoutness harden me. Quibbling is not law.

Addio, _cara_; I must finish "Massimilla Doni," do the opening part of "Le Curé de Village" (in that book you will adore me in the quality of Brother of the Church; it will be pure Fénelon), correct "Qui Terre a, Guerre a," and, finally, deliver within ten days the manuscript of "Un Grand homme de Province à Paris," which is the conclusion of "Illusions Perdues." So you see that my idleness is a busy one.