Part 43

Find here all treasures of affection, and prayers for the happiness of you and yours in the present and in the future. If God heard or paid attention to what I ask of him, you would have no anxieties, and you would be the happiest woman upon earth.

I have busied myself about your Parisian pearls, and I shall have an opportunity to send them. God grant they may get to you in time for the New Year. Did you receive the autographs of Scribe, Hugo, and Byron? I sent them all.

[Footnote 1: In the midst of this constant calculation of the money to be gained by his work, it is well to remind ourselves now and then that _never_ did he sacrifice that work, the fruit of his genius, to gain, terrible as his need of money was. His difficulty in his art was with _form_; and his laborious nights were spent in unflinching efforts to remedy that defect in his mechanism.--TR.]

VII.

LETTERS DURING 1839, 1840, 1841.

AUX JARDIES, February 12, 1839.

When this letter reaches you, it is probable that the fate of "L'École des Ménages" [formerly "La Première Demoiselle"] will have been decided; and while you read these words they may be representing that play, so long meditated, which perhaps may fall flat in two hours. It has taken on great proportions; there are five leading rôles and the subject is vast. It touches the painful spot of modern morals: marriage; but perhaps the personages lack certain conditions in order to become types. To my eyes, the play is precisely the bourgeois family. But it has a certain inferiority through that very thing.

I am going to-morrow to come to an understanding with the managers of the Renaissance, after many protocols exchanged between them and a friend who has undertaken to fight for my interests; the play will be mounted in twenty days. I took, to lay out my ideas and write them down for me, a poor young man of letters, named Lassailly, who has not written two lines worth preserving. I never saw such incapacity. But he has been useful to me in making the first germ, on which I can work. Nevertheless, I would have liked some one of more intelligence and wit. Théophile Gautier is coming to do the second play in five acts, and I expect much from him.

Nevertheless, dear countess, it is impossible for me to do all that I have undertaken, and all that I must do to get out of my embarrassments. Here is what I have accomplished the last month: "Béatrix, ou Les Amours Forcés," two volumes 8vo, wholly written and corrected, which is coming out in the "Siècle;" "Un Grand homme de Province à Paris," the end of "Illusions Perdues," of which only the second volume remains to do, and that will be done this week. Besides which, three plays: "L'École des Ménages," "La Gina," and "Richard Cœur d'Éponge."

Well, after such great labour (for I have just as much for the month of March) shall I gain my liberty, shall I owe nothing to any one, shall I have the tranquillity of soul of a man from whom no one has money to demand? I begin to feel some fatigue. Just now, on beginning to go to work, I found it impossible to take it up with my usual ardour; I thought of you; I wanted to tell you across space how often you are here, and to confide to you my little sorrows and my great works, or, if you like, my little works and my great sorrows.

March 13.

How many things have happened in my life since I wrote the last lines! In the first place, twenty days employed in correcting and rewriting my play for the people of the Renaissance theatre; who have brutally rejected it from want of money to make the first payment agreed upon. Then, the reading of it before certain of the actors and the director of the Théâtre Français who thought it magnificent, but impossible to act as it then was, because of the union of tragedy and comedy. They want it either the one or the other. Next, a reading at the house of Madame Saint-Clair, sister of Madame Delmar, in presence of three ambassadors, English, Austrian, and Sardinian, with their wives, Madame Molé, M. de Maussion, Custine, etc. Delight and criticism. After which, second and last reading at Custine's, in presence of another wave of the great world, who all wish to see it performed. I have coldly put away my play in a box, and this morning Planche came and asked me for it, to see what it is like. He is to give me his opinion next Sunday.

So, dear, much to do, much company, much annoyance, and little result. However, let me tell you that Taylor, the collector of Spanish pictures and former Commissary for the King to the Théâtre Français, and the director Védel and Desmousseaux have taken so high an opinion of me as a dramatic writer that they have asked me to give them, as soon as possible, a play entirely comic, saying that they would have it played immediately. They are convinced that I can write for the stage.

March 16.

Planche took my play to read; he is to return it in two days, and will doubtless tell me what it is worth. Stendhal, who was present at the reading at Custine's, writes me the little line which I enclose in this letter, and which he signs, by an inexplicable habit, Cotonet. He never signs, except officially, his real name, Henri Beyle.

I am not well in body or in mind. I feel a horrible lassitude, which, in regard to my head, is not without danger. I have no longer either force or courage. The obstacles I have been accustomed to overcome increase enormously and terrify me. Anxieties about money have become for me what the Furies were to Orestes. I am without support, enervated, without even kindly sentiments, without the faculty of feeling any, of any kind. I am a negation. Ah! these moments are terrible, especially when, for want of money, I cannot shake myself together by a journey. There are no pleasures for me; none but those of the heart. That is the only thing that intellect has not yet overrun; it is the only thing it can never displace.

Adieu; this is a letter on which I have written for two months; for two months it has lain among my papers and I take it up when I have exhausted the _feuillets_ beneath which I place it.

April 14.

Dear, here is another month gone by. What a month! I have just received your letter. If my irregularity grieves you, yours kills me; it has made me think you did not want any more of my letters, and that you have left me like a body without a soul. I have, however, been working day and night. The endless corrections of the "Grand homme de Province" and of "Béatrix," also articles to write, obliged me to put myself into a garret in Paris, where I am close to the printing-offices, and thus lose no time. I have not had even a fleeting moment to continue this letter; I have only slept by chance, when I dropped from fatigue. I am wholly weaned from life, and absolutely indifferent whether I live or do not live.

Here is the news. You will see M. de Custine; he goes to Russia. He will take you the manuscript of "Séraphita,"--the manuscript, you understand, not the proofs; they are too voluminous. He will see you; he is rich; he is happy in being able to travel at his ease! He will make, if necessary, a _détour_ to see you.

I have reached a point when, in contemplating coldly my situation, I see I have now but two ways of cutting the Gordian knot. Either I must sell my work, to be made the most of by others during ten years, for one hundred and fifty thousand francs; or, if I do not succeed in recovering tranquillity by that means, I must insure my life for that sum, which is the total of my debt, and fling myself into work as into a gulf from which I know I shall never issue; for, from the weakness that assails me after my toil has passed a certain limit, I feel that a man can die from excess of it.

Planche has brought back my play. He thinks it is above what is now being done; but we are not of the same opinion as to its faults. Brought to the point of view of art, it has many.

Beyle has just published the finest book, as I think, which has appeared these fifty years. It is called "La Chartreuse de Parme." I don't know whether you can procure it. If Macchiavelli had written a novel, it would have been this one. Jules Sandeau has lately dragged George Sand through the mire in a book called "Marianna." He has given himself a fine rôle, that of Henry! He! good God! You will read the book and it will horrify you, I am sure. It is anti-French, anti-gentleman. Henry ends as Jules ought to have ended (when one loves truly and is betrayed),--by death. But to live, and write this book, is awful.

Dear, do not blame my friendship. Some day you will know the life I am now leading, the burdens I am bearing. The terrace walls of Les Jardies have all rolled down. I must buy more ground, with a house on it, and I have no money. This house, my dream of tranquillity, my dear Chartreuse, needs fifteen or twenty thousand francs to settle me in it; and I don't know if ever my days can flow here peacefully. Twelve years of toil, of pain and grief, have left me as I was the first day, with a burden as heavy and as difficult to remove. Madame de Staël said, "Fame is the brilliant mourning of happiness."

Your project of coming to the banks of the Rhine makes my heart beat. Oh! come. But you will not come. It would be so easy for me to go to Baden and see the Rhine; the journey is neither long nor costly, and a journey is so necessary to me. The mail-cart goes to Strasburg, and from there, in two minutes, to Germany; it is only ten days and twenty louis. Oh! I don't know if you have not warmed up my courage, and re-tempered my soul. I will not give the manuscript to M. de Custine. I will bring it to you, that and the others. If you do this, I will bring you a fine pianist for Anna; I will--I don't know what I will not do, for those lines in your letter have warmed me,--I have returned to the idea that life is endurable.

You will find me much changed, but physically; horribly aged, with white hairs,--in short, _un vieux bonhomme_. "You show now that you wear your laurels," M. de Beauchesne said to me the other day. The speech was pretty, if exaggerated. I am sure that on the other side of the Rhine I shall grow young again. When I think that as soon as this letter reaches you (which takes a month) you may be coming, and that I shall see you in June, precisely at the moment when I shall be unable to write and in need of rest!--But it is all a dream; I must return to post and letter-paper, to the power of the imagination of the heart, to memory.

Adieu; in my next letter I will tell you what happens, and how the present crisis ends for me; the matters pending between Louis-Philippe and the Chambers have complicated it.

AUX JARDIES, June 2, 1839.

I received your last letter to-day when I have just missed, fortunately, breaking my leg in going to see the devastation of my grounds produced by a storm. My foot slipped; and the whole weight of the _body_ came on the left foot which twisted under me and all the muscles about the ankle were violently wrenched, and cracked with a great noise. The amount of will I put into supporting myself gave me a pain of extreme violence in the solar plexus; I suffered there more than I did in the ankle, though that pain made me suppose I had broken my leg. The head surgeon of the hospital at Versailles came, and I shall have to stay in bed two weeks. There, dear countess! I find one compensation, namely: that all my horrible financial and literary affairs, etc., being interrupted by a superior power, I can write you to my heart's content, for it is very long since I have been with you. Alas! I have had so much to do. Les Jardies have cost me many wakeful nights. But we won't speak of that.

Well, as M. de Talleyrand used to say, foresee griefs and you are sure to be a prophet. No more trip to the banks of the Rhine! However, for one piece of bad news I will give you a good piece. If the Chamber of Deputies votes our law on literary property I shall doubtless have to go to Saint Petersburg, and I shall return through the Ukraine. But in any case, dear of dears, my first journey will be to you. So long as Les Jardies are not in order I cannot travel; it would be too great a folly, it would be ruin. Happily my accident has happened just as I had finished "Un Grand homme de Province à Paris." Otherwise, I don't know what would have become of me with my publishers.

M. de Custine is not going to Russia; only as far as Berlin. So I took your precious manuscript out of its hiding-place for nothing.

During the two days that I have been in bed a rage, a veritable rage, possesses me to see you. Every time that I am alone, that I re-enter myself, that my brain is cleared, that I am with my heart, it is always so. Your letter distressed me. It came when I was in the midst of those sweet reveries that are my elysium, and I thought your letter cold, ceremonious, religious. I hated you for two days. I hid that letter; it put me out of temper. You say in it that you are my old friend. If that is so, learn that I have loved you only since yesterday. Treat me with more coquetry. When have you received a letter without an autograph? Know, countess, that out of your eleven million friends in France and other countries there is not half a million who would have perpetuated that little attention; it shows a perennial affection which proves that my friendship is still in its spring. Were you fifty years old, my eyes would always see you in that heart's-ease-coloured gown, looking as you did on the Crêt at Neufchâtel. You have no idea of either my heart or my character. Fy! Do not think it so easy to get rid of me.

My health has borne up under work which has amazed literary men. I am at my twelfth volume. You must read "Un Grand homme," a book full of vigour, in which you will find those great personages of my work, as you are good enough to call them,--Florine, Nathan, Lousteau, Blondet, Finot. That which will commend the work to foreigners is its audacious painting of the inner manners and morals of Parisian journalism, which is fearful in its accuracy. I alone was in a position to tell the truth to our journalists, and fight them to the death. That book will not be forbidden in Russia.

I have at this moment under my pen "Le Curé de Village" to finish, the second episode of which, entitled "Véronique," will appear in the "Presse." This book will be loftier, grander, and stronger than "Le Lys dans la Vallée" and "Le Médecin de campagne;" the two known fragments of it have justified my promises.

In a life as busy as mine nothing produces much effect; I have worked as usual through the riots. But a month or so ago Planche and I said to each other, "Shots will be fired within six weeks." And so it was.

A Russian professor from Moscow came to see me lately,--M. Chevireff; I love all that ends in _eff_ on account of Berditchef; I am child enough to fancy it brings me nearer to you. It is thus that the words "Geneva," "Vienna" never sound in my ears without effect. The longer I love, the more Hoffmannesque I become on that subject.

So it is all over about the Rhine! You could not believe what agitation was caused me by those two fatal lines, written perhaps unconsciously, in which you tell me that your journey is put off. It was so easy for me to go to the Rhine, even with all my business matters and the newspapers on my hands. The mail-carts go so rapidly now from Paris to the Rhine. Well, I must put this, too, with many a golden dream! The springtide will console you; nothing consoles me. I see by the date of your letter that you wrote on my fête-day, and you did not think of it! I still my complaints; for I should seem very ridiculous in both cases; but I remarked that you put fewer lines in your pages, and that you were, in point of fact, getting rid of me. Perhaps I deserve it for telling you, in one of my former letters, how little time I have to write to you, with an air as if I boasted of my fidelity. Alas! that was only a bit of childish candour, which you ought not to punish. Some day I will tell you the truth about that passage; you will be touched, and ashamed that you were ever angry with me.

Do not think that because there are four hundred leagues between us I do not know how to read the thoughts that lie beneath your sublime forehead. I can parade them before you, one by one. It suffices me to examine your letter with the attention of a Cuvier to know the exact frame of mind in which it was written; and you had, when writing this letter, something against me, no doubt. You will tell me later what it was.

My Jardies get on but slowly. The buildings are still of little importance; but all is heavy on those who have nothing. I am beginning to have trouble with my eyes, and that grieves me; I shall have to cease working at night.

Did I tell you that "Béatrix" is finished? You will see it, no doubt, in the "Revue de Saint Pétersbourg," but bad and emasculated. It will only be good in the 8vo edition now in press. Those puritans of liberalism who manage the "Siècle" in which "Béatrix" appeared assume to have morals, and demolish the archbishop's palace! This is the buffoonery of folly. They are afraid of the word "bosom," and trample morality under foot! they will not allow the word _volupté_ to be printed, but they upset social order! The wife of the director-in-chief is as scraggy as a bag of nails, and they suppressed a joke of Camille Maupin on the bones of Béatrix! I will make you laugh heartily when I tell you all the negotiations required to get into that newspaper a joke on the bitch of M. de Halga. Unfortunately for me, you will read that book mangled and expurgated.

What a pretty nest Les Jardies will be when finished! How happy one might be here! What a beautiful valley, cool as a Swiss valley. The royal park a few steps off! Paris in a quarter of an hour, and Paris a hundred leagues away! What a beautiful life if--But I begin to think like the capucin monk: we are not placed here below to take our comfort.

The Exhibition of pictures has been very fine this year. There were seven or eight masterpieces, in several styles: a superb Decamps; a magnificent Cleopatra by Delacroix; a splendid portrait by Amaury Duval; a charming Venus Anadyomene by Chassériau, a pupil of Ingres. What a misfortune to be poor when one has the heart of an artist!

The first _young girl_ work that I do I shall dedicate to your dear Anna; but I shall await a word about that in your next letter; for I must know if it be agreeable to you that I should do this.

It seems there is to be, next autumn, a dahlia-Balzac. If you would like a cutting tell me how to send it to you. It will be, they say, a magnificent flower; in case the attempt to vary the stock succeeds.

You wish me the tranquillity of soul that you enjoy. Alas! I have passions, or, to speak more correctly, passion, too living, too palpitating, to be able to extinguish my soul. You would never imagine in what agitations I live; for me, nothing is lost or forgotten; all that affects me is of yesterday. The tree, the water, the mountain, the dress, the look, the fear, the pleasure, the danger, the emotion, even the sand, the colour of a wall, the slightest incident, all things shine in my soul, as fresh, and more extended daily. I forget all that is not within the domain of the heart; or, at least, whatever is in the domain of imagination needs to be recalled and firmly meditated. But all that belongs to my love is my life; and when I yield myself to it, it seems to me that then, alone, I live. I count those hours of delightful abandonment only; those are my hours of sunshine and of joy. But you will never imagine that; it is the poesy of the heart, heightened by an incredible power of intuition. I never pride myself on what is called talent; nor yet on my will which is held to be kindred with that of Napoleon. But I do render thanks and take pride in my heart, in the constancy of my affections. _There_ is my wealth; _there_ are the treasures beyond the reach of the one who coined that gold; the workman who made those ducats is far away, but the miser holds them ever in his hand. "I know you have a great and noble soul; and I know where to touch you; I will make you blush for me." That speech is one of my ducats. For many a fool it would have been nothing; to me it rings sublime; and if I did not love like an imbecile, a collegian, a ninny, a madman, like anything you please that is most extravagant, I should have worshipped that woman as a divinity.

I don't know whether all this will not seem to you Swedenborgian; but it belongs to my history, and I will some day explain it to you. At any rate, I will say this. Those words were said to me by a rather extraordinary woman, whom I will not name, in a fit of mistaken jealousy. Well, I assure you that a month never passes that I do not remember the look of the sky at the moment they were said, and the colour of the cloud I saw there.

Adieu. In ten days my leg will be much better; but I shall have written to you again before then. I will tell you my reveries, one by one. You will count for much in my idleness; which is for me the mother of memories.

I am glad to know that all goes well in your States. But, on the word of an honest man, I don't understand why the count does not arrange his affairs so as to have no longer any care. When I have settled mine--and I shall then be, incontestably, a far greater financier than he--I will go and offer him my services to make something out of nothing--forgive that joke!

All gracious things to Mademoiselle Séverine, and to your dear Anna; my affectionate compliments to the Grand Marshal, and to you the most precious and sweetest offerings of my heart.

No Custine, no pearls; that is a loss to you, for the set is very fine; you would have been queen of the balls at Kiew next winter. But you will be that without the pearls.

AUX JARDIES, July, 1839.

I am cured. The accident, which kept me in bed forty days without moving, has left no traces except some pain in the muscles. But your silence disquiets me much. Is anything going wrong with you? Are you travelling? All this exercises my mind, tortures me, besieges me with a thousand dragon-fancies.

I am overwhelmed with business. The disaster of my fallen walls is not yet repaired. I have been obliged to purchase land, which has ruined me. The masons must be here for another month. It is all the more impossible for me to get away because my illness has put my work into arrears, and also because I have let one of the three houses on the place to the Visconti family.[1]

A novel of mine is about to appear, named "Pierrette," with which you will no doubt be pleased. "Une Princesse Parisienne" will also be out soon. "Véronique," the second fragment of the "Curé de village," is already out. "Les Paysans," that is, "Qui Terre a, Guerre a," is in process of being bought and published by the "Constitutionnel." And finally "Le Ménage d'un Garçon" and "Le Martyr calviniste" are in the hands of the compositors of the "Siècle;" "Massimilla Doni," appears with the true edition of "La Fille d'Ève;" "Béatrix" is nearly printed. I am now going to work on the last part of "Illusions Perdues," finish the "Curé de village," and do a great drama for the Porte-Saint-Martin.

There, dear, there is where we now are; and I have certainly drawn down upon me the hatred of all the men of the pen by "Un Grand homme de Province." Growls resound in the press. But you see I continue my work intrepidly, keeping on with even steps, and tolerably insensible to calumny--like all those who have never given cause for slander.