Part 48

The sorrowful eloquence of your dear letter of a wounded heart made me weep; my heart was wrung as I read, at its close, your assurances of old affection, when in me all was the same as ever while you were blaming me. These flashes of joy on learning that all our pain came from neither you nor myself, and that amid this disaster, which has darkened eight months of our life, we each had the same confidence in the other--though you were saddened and I impatient, almost unjust--were needed to send some balm into my heart. Must I again tell you that you and my sister are the sole deities of my heart. It was, dear, extreme misfortune which made me give you that hope of my visit. But I have been stronger against excessive work than I expected. After ten months of labour, to have written "Ursule Mirouët" in twenty days is one of those things which printers and witnesses of that remarkable effort will not believe. It has nothing analogous to it but "César Birotteau."

Well! God owed me the joy, mingled with tears, that your letter brought me; without it I might not have been able to do another like effort this month, when I must give a rival to "Le Médecin de campagne." To win the Montyon prize for 1842, I am now writing "Les Frères de la Consolation." They talk of giving me the cross, for which I care very little; it is not at forty years of age that it can give pleasure; but I could not refuse Villemain.

"Les Mémoires de deux jeunes Mariées" will be out in a few days. In another month I shall finish, in the "Presse," my story of "La Rabouilleuse," the first part of which appeared under the title of "Les Deux Frères."

I have great need to see Germany thoroughly in order to be able to write the "Scènes de la Vie militaire;" and I shall go straight to Dresden to view the battle-field.

The affair of the publication of my great work, under the title of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE in which all my compositions will be classed and definitively corrected, is about to begin. In order to travel, I must leave four volumes ready with my publishers, four _compact_ volumes. The whole will be in twenty-eight volumes at four francs, with illustrations.

Doesn't your head swim in reading me? Now you see where the travail of my nights goes. And by the end of December I shall finish a comedy called "Les Rubriques de Quinola." Do you feel what there is under all this? There is _you_! Your friend must be a giant, a truly great man; and it is with the greatest of men that I set up a rivalry. I hope that when we meet again you will find the Honoré of Geneva much taller, that you will not be so old as you say you are, and that after so much time spent apart from each other we may have, both of us, a second youth. Don't calumniate yourself, dear.

Borget, who has returned from China after making the tour of the world, will reduce the Wierzchownia landscape and make a pretty picture of it. Alas! it is still unframed in my study; you will not believe my poverty till it is all over and I tell you about it. I suffer less on that account than I have done, without as yet being at ease; I must still be earning the bread of the morrow; but Gavault maintains with firmness the plan formed for my release from debt and my freedom.

I no longer have Les Jardies, and I do not live under my own name; consequently no more prosecutions and costs. I am in reality as if I owed nothing; I am asked for nothing, and all my earnings are accumulating in Gavault's hands without loss, until they reach the total of my debt; and I live on three hundred francs a month at Passy. There, dear. Ten more novels and two plays, if they succeed, will buy me back Les Jardies and liberty. When once I reach that point, I shall think of making myself a fortune equal to that I have earned to pay my debts, and that will give me an income of twenty thousand francs a year!

After the sensation of grief your letter gave me came the unspeakable pleasure of knowing you still my friend, though pained; but why not have taken, dear, the following course on the return of the first letter? What had you done with your wits? Has the heart no wits? At any rate, put this into your beautiful head, behind that splendid forehead: direct always to "M. de Balzac, Paris, _poste restante_." Even a husband cannot obtain the letters for his wife; the post gives them only to her without her husband; it writes to the person to whom they are addressed to come and fetch them; and as the post is always informed of my whereabouts, a letter _poste restante_ will always reach me.

I cannot write to you, dear, oftener than once a month; but I will never fail in that, unless from illness, or too hard labour. By the end of October I may be able to send you, through Bellizard, the original edition, fifty copies only being printed, of "Les Frères de la Consolation."

January 5, 1842.

I have this instant received, dear angel, your letter sealed with black [telling him of the death of M. Hanski, on November 10, 1841], and, after reading it, I could not perhaps wish to have received any other from you, in spite of the sad things you tell me about yourself and your health. As for me, dear, adored one, although this event makes me attain to that which I have ardently desired for nearly ten years, I can, before you and God, do myself this justice, that I have never had in my heart any other thing than complete submission, and that I have not, in my most cruel moments, stained my soul with evil wishes. No one can prevent certain involuntary transports. Often I have said to myself, "How light my life would be with _her_!" No one can keep his faith, his heart, his inner being without hope. Those two motive powers, of which the Church makes virtues, have sustained me in my struggle.

But I conceive the regrets that you express to me; they seem to me natural and true; especially after a protection that has never failed you since that letter at Vienna. I am, however, joyful to know that I can write to you with open heart to tell you all those things on which I have kept silence, and disperse the melancholy complaints you have founded on misconceptions, so difficult to explain at a distance. I know you too well, or I think I know you too well, to doubt you for one moment; and I have often suffered, very cruelly suffered, that you have doubted me, because, since Neufchâtel, you are my life. Let me say this to you plainly, after having so often proved it to you. The miseries of my struggle and of my terrible work would have worn-out the greatest and strongest men; and often my sister has desired to put an end to them, God knows how; I always thought the remedy worse than the disease. It is therefore you alone who have supported me till now; yet I have never counted on more than we saw--that day at Les Chênes, you remember?--of that old couple Sismonde de Sismondi, Philemon and Baucis, which so touched us. Nothing in me has changed.

I have redoubled in work to go and see you this year, and I have succeeded. Since I last wrote to you I have not slept more than two hours of a night, and I have written, above my promised books and articles, two plays in live acts, one with a prologue, which begin their rehearsal to-morrow at the Odéon. I hoped by working for some months longer like the last eighteen months to pay my crushing debts and save Les Jardies. This constant labour has, especially during the last five years, parted me wholly from society. To-day I want my patent of eligibility, for Lamartine has a rotten-borough for me, and to be one of the coming legislature is a future for us.

To conceive of this in the thick of the battle, is it not loving well to have such courage, such boldness, when, your letters becoming so rare, I was tortured, week by week, with the desire to go to you and learn the reason of your silence?--for the few words, almost illegible, which ended your letters were always to me fresh beams of hope. "Be patient," you said to me; "you are loved as much as you love. Do not change, for others change not."

We have both been courageous, one as much as the other; why, therefore, should we not be happy to-day? Do you think it was for myself that I have been so persistent in magnifying my name? Oh! I am perhaps very unjust, but such injustice comes from the violence of my heart. I would have liked two words for me in your letter, but I sought them in vain; two words for him who, since the scene you live in is before his eyes, has not passed, while working, ten minutes without looking at it; I have there sought all, ever since it came to me, that we each have asked in the silence of our spirits. I have not been able to part with it to let Borget make his copy. The certainty of knowing you free has made me gentle, or I should have been more angry, were you not mourning.

O my beloved angel, be prudent and take care of yourself; take care of your precious health. I shall not work much before my departure. I start for Germany March 20th, and I will not cross Saxony without your permission; but I cannot any longer have so many leagues between us. I have already signified to my publishers that they must at once print enough Parts to have no need of me until after September.

I have carefully buried my joy, just as I hid my griefs and my memories, in the depths of my heart. But I will tell it to you. I remained, all stupefied, for twenty-four hours, locked in my study, not willing that any one should speak to me. When I came out I was hot in the midst of intense sudden cold. Let me tell you of a little superstition, a little circumstance which has made a great impression upon me. On November 1 I lost one of the two shirt buttons Madame de Berny had given me, which I wore one day, and yours the next day. After losing it, I could only wear yours; and this little chance matter troubled me to a point you will imagine when I tell you that my mother and all about me noticed it. I said to myself, "There is in it some warning from heaven!" I love you so, and it has cost me so horribly to keep silence about it since Vienna, that I value the solitude of my study at Passy, where no one penetrates, and where I can be with you.

Ah! dear, you have put so many things into your letter that I do not start at once. I await your answer here; you will then have had time to reflect how difficult it is for me to remain in Paris when for six years I have longed to see you. Oh! write me that your existence shall be wholly mine, that we shall now be happy, without any possible cloud. Will you ever know how much strength it has needed to write to you thus, without saying a word to paint to you the ardour of this unique love, preserved as my one treasure, my only hope! Oh! how many times, under my most bitter disappointments, in struggles, in griefs, I have turned to the North,--to me the Orient, peace, happiness!

To speak now of business, I have made a great step. On the 5th or 7th of February they play at the Odéon "L'École des Grands Hommes," an immense comedy on the struggle of a man of genius with his epoch. The scene is in 1560, in Spain. It relates to the man who sailed a steamboat in the port of Barcelona, let her sink to the bottom, and disappeared. If I have a success, I start; if I fail, I must write four volumes to get the money for my journey. But I have still another play at the Vaudeville.

My complete works are being rapidly printed, and will be issued during my journey.

If I have two successes, I shall leave the money to buy back Les Jardies, and pay off some lesser creditors, and I am sure, in two years, to complete my liberation. Only I must have enough to buy back the house for my mother, to whom I owe the sum of forty thousand francs.

Gavault, my lawyer, is satisfied. Every one believes in a great success for "Les Ressources de Quinola," the false title of my play. I keep the one I have just told you for the last moment.

The "Mémoires de deux jeunes Mariées," published in the "Presse," has had the greatest success. But the finest work this year is "Ursule Mirouët."

I send this little line, written in haste. I will write you more in detail within three or four days. I am worn-out with work, and I am still up all night, for there is much to be done to the play. I have three acts to add to the second play, and my newspaper articles on my shoulders.

As for your letters, dear, adored one, be without anxiety. If I die suddenly there is nothing to fear. They are in a box like the one you have; and above them is a notice, which my sister knows of, to put them all into the fire without looking at them, and I am sure of my sister. But why this uneasiness now? Why? I ask myself that question in terrible anxiety. You must be more ill than you have told me. You did not fill the last page in your letter! You have put so much uneasiness around that which makes me happy that I know not what to think. Alas! do you not feel, my cherished angel, my flower of heaven, that all you wish of me shall be done as you wish? Do I not love you even more for you than for myself?

I entreat you, on receiving my letter, write me two words only, to let me know if I can write to you with open heart (for I am still hampered by what you say to me), and how you are; I need to know nothing more than that. You, all is you, dearest; I am only uneasy about your health. Take care of yourself; you owe this to me.

Adieu, my dear and beautiful life that I love so well, and to whom I now can tell it. _Sempre medesimo._

* * * * *

NOTE.--The "Lettres à l'Étrangère" end here. The letters that follow are those to Madame Hanska, given in Balzac's Correspondence, vol. xxiv. of the Édition Définitive of his works. No letters have, so far, been published between the one dated above, January 5, 1842, and the one that here follows, dated October 14, 1843, written after a visit paid by Balzac to Madame Hanska in St. Petersburg.

So far as can now be ascertained, the history of their relationship from this date is as follows: Madame Hanska would not, or could not, consent to marry Balzac after Monsieur Hanski's death for the following reasons: 1. Her duty to her daughter, to whom she was left guardian, with the care, conjointly with the child's uncle, of enormous estates in the Ukraine. 2. Russian law, which required relinquishment of property on marriage with a foreigner. 3. The difficulty of obtaining the Emperor's consent to such marriage.

The first difficulty was removed by the marriage of her daughter Anna, in 1846, to Count Georges Mniszech, the owner of vast estates in Volhynia; and in September of that year Balzac was summoned to meet Madame Hanska at Wiesbaden, at or about which time it is said that she pledged herself definitively to marry him.

Meantime, he had met her at several places, and had travelled with her in Germany, Holland, and Italy, as will be seen by the following letters. In the summer of 1845 Madame Hanska paid a visit to Paris with her daughter; but in secrecy to avoid the displeasure of the Russian government. During this visit Balzac took her to Tours, Vendôme, and the valley of the Cher, to show her the places of his childhood. The visit to Vendôme is recorded in a letter written after his death to M. Armand Baschet by M. Mareschal-Duplessis, director of the College, who was also director when Balzac was a pupil there. M. Mareschal mentions that he was accompanied by a lady; but he mistakes Madame Hanska's nationality and calls her an Englishwoman; or she may herself have conveyed that idea for the sake of her incognito, which was all-important to her.

In October of the same year (1845) Balzac accompanied Madame Hanska to Naples for a few days only; but he met her in Rome in March, 1846, and stayed there a month. His visit to Wiesbaden, mentioned above, took place in October, 1846. In December Balzac went to Dresden, returning some weeks later with Madame Hanska, who remained in Paris till April, 1847, when she returned to Wierzchownia. Balzac left Paris in September, 1847, and paid his first and long desired visit to Wierzchownia, arriving about the first of October. He stayed there until February, 1848, when he returned to Paris, leaving it again early in September for Wierzchownia; where he lived until one month after his marriage to Madame Hanska, which took place March 15, 1850. He returned to Paris with his wife May 20, and died three months later, August 19, 1850.--TR.

VIII.

LETTERS DURING 1843, 1844, 1845.

BERLIN, October 14, 1843.

Dear countess,[1] I arrived here this morning at six o'clock, having had for all rest twelve hours at Tilsit, from which must be deducted three hours given to the director of posts, to whom I had an introduction, and who did me so many services that I took tea with him in the evening. I arrived too late to dine there with Stieglitz, as we desired.

As long as I was on Russian soil I seemed to be still with you, and, without being exactly of a frolicking gaiety, you must have seen by my little letter from Taurogen that I had strength enough left to joke at my grief. But once on foreign soil, I can say nothing at all, except that this journey may be made to go to you, but not on quitting you. The aspect of Russian lands, without culture, without inhabitants, seemed to me natural; but the same sight seen in Prussia was horribly sad, and in keeping with the sadness that seized upon me. These barren tracts, this sterile soil, this cold desolation, this poverty, gripped and chilled me. I felt myself as much saddened as if there had been a contrast between my heart and Nature. Black grief swooped down upon me more and more heavily as physical fatigue increased. But do not pity me for taking the land journey, because these late storms must have made the navigation of the Baltic very bad.

I know how you are by the way I feel; I feel within me an immense void, which enlarges and deepens more and more, and from which nothing distracts me. So I have renounced going to Dresden; I do not feel the courage to go there. Holbein's Madonna will not be stolen between now and a year hence; the scene of the battle and the defiles of the Kulm will not change, and I shall have a reason, next May, to make the journey again with other ideas. Don't blame me for my faint-heartedness; nothing now pleases me in this journey, which did so please me in the salon of the Hotel Koutaitsof when you said, "You will go here--and there." I listened to you, I went, for it was you who told me. But now, how can I help it? far from you all is lifeless, without a soul. Next year, perhaps; but now, I have nothing but the gulf of my toil, and I go to it by the shortest way.

I slept this morning from seven o'clock till midday, a few tired, restless hours. I have breakfasted, dressed, and paid three visits: to Bresson, Redern, and Mendelssohn; and on my return I sit down to write to you, for to talk with you is the greatest, the most vital instinct of the moment.

I was interrupted by Comte Bresson, who came immediately to invite me to dinner for to-morrow, because he leaves, or rather his wife leaves, the day after; she goes before him to Madrid. As far as I can judge, he is a man of intelligence and great good sense; above all, without any species of pretension, which is rare in diplomatists, and I prize it much. He advised me to write a line to Humboldt, of whom I saw much in Paris at Gérard's and elsewhere; he will, no doubt, show me Potsdam. M. Bresson goes to Spain, and Salvandy to Turin.

I resume my dear laments, and I must tell you that the highway from Petersburg to Tilsit is only practicable at two sections: from Petersburg to Narva, and from Riga to Taurogen; so that for more than half way the road is detestable when it rains, and it had rained a great deal, alas! Imagine the jolts we made! but the vehicles are excellent; they resisted them. All that is Russian has a very tough life. A roadway is laid down across the sands of Livonia with gorse; out though the road has the gorse _characteristics_, it has, none the less, a disquieting aspect and a boggy style. It is a miracle to get over the road in three days and a half; and that gives a great idea of Russian stubbornness. We had eight horses, and sometimes ten, in certain places. Where the chaussée [paved road] is made it is magnificent. Ah! I shall have pleasure in going over it again! but _then_ it will not be over gorse but flowers that I shall be jolted. Literally, one eats nothing by the way, for there is nothing to eat; but the way-stations are very handsome, and there is always excellent Russian tea. I am therefore able to honour my grief by thinness, due to the diet of the journey; if I suffered, my mental condition was such that I did not become conscious of it; the grief of quitting you quelled hunger, just as the pleasure of meeting you had already quelled sea-sickness. You are above all.

I am here at the Hôtel de Russie, which is passably good and not too dear. From Berlin I shall go to Leipzig and Frankfort-on-the-Main, by the Prussian _Schnell-post_; and from Frankfort to France by steamboat, or railroad all the way; which is, I think, more economical than any other way of travelling.

I have found two road companions, two sculptors, one of whom, as I told you, speaks an almost incomprehensible French, and I have just made the rounds of Berlin with him. These young men have been full of attentions to me all the way, especially from Riga, where I parted from my first companion, the Frenchman. The artist-nature is everywhere the same. These two young fellows got me out of all difficulties at inns, and I have just invited them to dinner (a _rapin_ dinner, be it understood). It is the least I can do for such obliging lads to thank them for their good care before we part.

This sulky Berlin is not comparable to sumptuous Petersburg. In the first place, one might cut a score of mean little towns like the capital of the Brandebourg out of the great city of the vast European empire, and there would still remain enough space built upon to crush the score of extracted little Berlins without injury to its vast extent. But, at first sight, Berlin seems the more populated; for I have perceived several individuals in the streets, which is not often the case in Petersburg. However, the houses here, without being handsome, seem well built; one can see that they are not wanting in comfort inside. The public buildings, rather ugly of aspect, are of handsome freestone; and the space around them is so managed as to set them off. Very likely it is to this artfulness that Berlin owes its air of being more populous than Petersburg; I should have said more _animated_ if it concerned any other people; but the Prussian, with his brutish heaviness, is never anything but ponderous; less beer and bad tobacco, and more French or Italian wit is needed to produce the stir of the other great capitals of Europe, or else the grand industrial and commercial ideas which have caused the great development of London; but Berlin and its inhabitants will never be otherwise than an ugly little town inhabited by ugly fat people.

However, it must be admitted, to whoso returns from Russia, Germany has an indefinable air which can only be explained by the magic word LIBERTY, manifested by free manners and customs, or, I should say, by freedom in manners and customs. The principal public buildings of Berlin are grouped about the hotel where I am, so that I could see them all in an hour. Fatigue is seizing me; I aspire to dinner: the first I have eaten since the splendours of Russia.

Till to-morrow, dear countess.

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at St. Petersburg. Balzac has just left her after a visit of two months.--TR.]

October 15.