Part 5

Benjamin Constant has made, as I think, the arraignment of men of the world and intriguers; but there are noble exceptions. When you have read the Confession in the "Médecin de campagne" you will change your opinion, and you will understand that he who, for the first time, revealed his heart in that book ought not to be classed among the cold men who calculate everything. O my unknown love, do not distrust me, do not think evil of me. I am a child, that is the whole of it--a child, with more levity than you suppose, but pure as a child and loving as a child. Stay in Switzerland or near France. In two months I must have rest. Well, you shall hear, perhaps without terror, a "Conte Drolatique" from the lips of the author. Oh! yes, let me find near you the rest I need after this twelvemonth of labour. I can take a name that is not known, beneath which I will hide myself. It will be a secret between you and me. Everybody would suspect M. de Balzac, but who knows M. d'Entragues? Nobody.[3]

_Mon Dieu!_ what you wish, I wish. We have the same desires, the same anxieties, the same apprehensions, the same pride. I, too, cannot conceive of love otherwise than as eternal, applying that word to the duration of life. I do not comprehend that persons [_on_] should quit each other, and, to me, one woman is all women. I would break my pen to-morrow if you desired it; to-morrow no other woman should hear my voice. I should ask exception for my _dilecta_, who is a mother to me. She is nearly fifty-eight years old, and you could not be jealous of her--you, so young. Oh! take, accept my sentiments and keep them as a treasure! Dispose of my dreams, realize them? I do not think that God would be severe to one who presents herself before him followed by an adorable cortège of beautiful hours, happiness, and delightful life given by her to a faithful being. I tell you all my thoughts. As for me, I dread to see you, because I shall not realize your preconceived ideas; and yet I wish to see you. Truly, dear, unknown soul who animate my life, who bid my sorrows flee, who revive my courage during grievous hours, this hope caresses me and gives me heart. You are the all in all of my prodigious labour. If I wish to be something, if I work, if I turn pale through laborious nights, it is, I swear to you, because I live in your emotions, I try to guess them in advance; and for this I am desperate to know if you have finished "Ferragus;" for the letter of Madame Jules is a page full of tears, and in writing it I thought much of you; offering to you there the image of the love that is in my heart, the love that I desire, and which, in me, has been constantly unrecognized. Why? I love too well, no doubt. I have a horror of littlenesses, and I believe in what is noble, without distrust. I have written in your "Louis Lambert" a saying of Saint Paul, in Latin: _Una fides_; one only faith, a single love.

_Mon Dieu!_ I love you well; know that. Tell me where you will be in October. In October I shall have a fortnight to myself. Choose a beautiful place; let it be all of heaven to me.

Adieu, you who despotically fill my heart; adieu. I will write to you once every week at least. You, whose letters do me so much good, be charitable; cast, in profusion, the balm of your words into a heart that is athirst for them. Be sure, dear, that my thought goes out to you daily; that my courage comes from you; that one hard word is a wound, a mourning. Be good and great; you will never find (and here I would fain be on my knees before you that you might see my soul in a look) a heart more delicately faithful, nor more vast, more exclusive.

Adieu, then, since it must be. I have written to you while my solicitor has been reading to me his conclusions, for the case is to be judged the day after to-morrow, and I must spend the night in writing a summary of my affair.

Adieu; in five or six days you will have a volume that has cost much labour and many nights. Be indulgent to the faults that remain in spite of my care; and, my adored angel, forget not to cast a few flowers of your soul to him who guards them as his noblest wealth; write to me often. As soon as the judgment is rendered I will write to you; it will be on Thursday.

Well, adieu. Take all the tender regards that I place here. I would fain envelop you in my soul.

[Footnote 1: This is not true. The antipathy, if any, was to Émile de Girardin, and it put an end for a time to Balzac's visits to the house. See Éd. Déf., vol. xxiv., p. 198.--TR.]

[Footnote 2: Mlle. Henriette Borel was governess in the Hanski family. She was a native of Neufchâtel, and M. Hanski employed her to select and engage a furnished house there for himself and family, to which they went in May, 1833. She was the "Lirette" who took the veil in Paris (December, 1845); of which ceremony Balzac gives a vivid account in one of the following letters.--TR.]

[Footnote 3: If Balzac ever wrote this paragraph (which I believe to be an interpolation made to fit the theory in "Roman d'Amour") he fell ludicrously short of his design; for he wrote letters to friends about this journey, two from Neufchâtel during the five days he stayed there (pp. 181-183, vol. xxiv., Éd. Déf.); he stopped half way to see manufacturers and transact business with them in his own name; he took with him to Neufchâtel his artist-friend, Auguste Borget; and he made the acquaintance, not of Madame Hanska only, but of Monsieur Hanski, who remained his friend through life and his occasional correspondent.--TR.]

PARIS, end of August, 1833.

My dear, pure love, in a few days I shall be at Neufchâtel. I had already decided to go there in September; but here comes a most delightful pretext. I must go on the 20th or 25th of August to Besançon, perhaps earlier, and then, you understand, I can be in the twinkling of an eye at Neufchâtel. I will inform you of my departure by a simple little line.

I have given to speculators a great secret of fortune, which will result in books, blackened paper,--salable literature, in short.[1] The only man who can manufacture our paper lives in the environs of Besançon. I shall go there with my printer.

Ah! yes, I have had money troubles; but if you knew with what rapidity eight days' labour can appease them! In ten days I can earn a hundred louis at least. But this last trouble has made me think seriously of no longer being a bird on a branch, thoughtless of seed, fearing nought but rain, and singing in fine weather. So now, at one stroke, I shall be rich--for one needs gold to satisfy one's fancies. You see I have received your letter in which you complain of life, of your life, which I would fain render happy.

Oh! my beloved angel, now you are reading, I hope, the second volume of "Le Médecin de campagne;" you will see one name written with joy on every page. I liked so much to occupy myself with you, to speak to you. Do not be sad, my good angel; I strive to envelop you in my thought. I would like to make you a rampart against all pain. Live in me, dear, noble heart, to make me better, and I, I will live in you to be happy. Yes, I will go to Geneva after seeing you at Neufchâtel; I will go and work there for a fortnight. Oh! my dear and beloved Evelina, a thousand thanks for this gift of love. You do not know with what fidelity I love you, unknown--not unknown of the soul--and with what happiness I dream of you. Oh! each year, to have so sweet a pilgrimage to make! Were it only for one look I would go to seek it with boundless happiness! Why be displeased about a woman fifty-eight years old, who is a mother to me, who folds me in her heart and protects me from stings? Do not be jealous of her; she would be so glad of our happiness. She is an angel, sublime. There are angels of earth and angels of heaven; she is of heaven.

I have the contempt for money that you profess; but money is a necessity; and that is why I am putting such ardour into the vast and extraordinary enterprise which will burst forth in January. You will like the result. To it I shall owe the pleasure of being able to travel rapidly and to go oftener toward you.

_Una fides_; yes, my beloved angel, one sole love and all for you. It is very late for a young man whose hairs are whitening; but his heart is ardent; he is as you wish him to be, naïve, childlike, confiding. I go to you without fear; yes, I will drive away the shyness which has kept me so young, and stretch to you a hand old in friendship, a brow, a soul that is full of you.

Let us be joyous, my adored treasure; all my life is in you. For you I would suffer everything!

You have made me so happy that I think no longer of my lawsuit. The loss is reckoned up. I have done like _le distrait_ of La Bruyère--established myself well in my ditch. For three thousand eight hundred francs flung to that man, I shall have liberty on a mountain.

I will bring you your Chénier, and will read it to you in the nook of a rock before your lake. Oh, happiness!

What a likeness between us! both of us mismanaged by our mothers. How that misfortune developed sensitiveness. Why do you speak of a "cherished lamb"? Are you not my dear Star, an angel towards whom I strive to mount?

I have still three pages on which to talk with you, but here comes business, lawyers, conferences. _À bientôt_, A thousand tendernesses of the soul.

You speak to me of a faithless woman; but there is no infidelity where there was no love.

[Footnote 1: This was one of his amusing visions of making a fortune.--TR.]

PARIS, September 9, 1833.

Winter is already here, my dear soul, and already I have resumed my winter station in the corner of that little gallery you know of. I have left the cool, green salon from which I saw the dome of the Invalides over twenty acres of leafage. It was in this corner that I received and read your first letter, so that now I love it better than before. Returning to it, I think of you more specially, you, my cherished thought; and I cannot resist speaking a little word to you, conversing one fraction of an hour with you. How could it be that I should not love you, you, the first woman who came across the spaces to warm a heart that despaired of love. I had done all to draw to me an angel from on high; fame was only a pharos to me, nothing more. Then you divined all,--the soul, the heart, the man. And yesterday, re-reading your letter, I saw that you alone had the instinct to feel all that is my life. You ask me how I can find time to write to you. Well, my dear Eve (let me abridge your name, it will tell you better that you are all the sex to me, the only woman in the world, like the first woman to the first man),--well, you alone have asked yourself if a poor artist to whom time lacks, does not make sacrifices that are immense in thinking of and writing to her he loves. Here, no one thinks of that; they take my hours without scruple. But now I would fain consecrate my whole life to you, think only of you, and write for you only.

With what joy, if I were free of cares, would I fling all palms, all fame, and my finest works like grains of incense on the altar of love. To love, Eve,--that is my life!

I should long ago have wished to ask you for your portrait if there were not some insult, I know not what, in the request. I do not want it until after I have seen you. To-day, my flower of heaven, I send you a lock of my hair; it is still black, but I hasten it to defy time. I am letting my hair grow, and people ask why. Why? Because I want enough to make you chains and bracelets!

Forgive me, my dearest, but I love you as a child loves, with all the joys, all the superstitions, all the illusions of its first love. Cherished angel, how often I have said to myself: "Oh! if I were loved by a woman of twenty-seven, how happy I should be; I could love her all my life without fearing the separations that age decrees." And you, my idol, you are forever the realization of that ambition of love.

Dear, I hope to start on the 18th for Besançon. It depends on imperative business. I would have broken that off if it did not concern my mother and many very serious interests. I should be thought a lunatic, and I have already trouble enough to pass for a man of sense.

If you will take "L'Europe littéraire" from the 15th of August you will find the whole of the "Théorie de la Démarche" and a "Conte Drolatique" called "Perseverance d'amour," which you can read without fear. It will give you an idea of the first two _dizains_.

You have now read "Le Médecin de campagne." Alas! my critical friends and I have already found more than two hundred faults in the first volume! I thirst for the second edition, that I may bring the book to its perfection. Have you laid down the book at the moment when Benassis utters the adored name?

I am working now at "Eugénie Grandet," a composition which will appear in "L'Europe littéraire" when I am travelling.

I must bid you adieu. Do not be sad, my love; it is not allowable that you should be when you can live at all moments in a heart where you are sure of being as you are in your own, and where you will find more thoughts full of you than there are in yours.

I have had a box made to hold and perfume letter-paper; and I have taken the liberty to have one like it made for you. It is so sweet to say, "She will touch and open this little casket, now here." And then, I think it so pretty; besides, it is made of _bois de France_; and it can hold your Chénier, the poet of love,--the greatest of French poets, whose every line I would like to read to you on my knees.

Adieu, treasure of joy, adieu. Why do you leave blank pages in your letters? But leave them, leave them. Do nothing forced. Those blanks I fill myself. I say to myself, "Her arm passed here," and I kiss the blank! Adieu, my hopes. _À bientôt._ The mail-cart goes, they say, in thirty-six hours to Besançon.

Well, adieu, my cherished Eve, my eloquent and all-gracious star. Do you know that when I receive a letter from you a presentiment, I don't know what, has already announced it. So to-day, 9th, I am certain I shall get one to-morrow. Your lake--I see it; and sometimes my intuition is so strong that I am sure that when I really see you I shall say, "'Tis _she_!"--"_She_, my love, _is thou_!"

Adieu; _à bientôt_.

PARIS, September 13, 1833.

Your last letter, of the 9th, has caused me I cannot tell what keen pain; it has entered my heart to desolate it. It is now three hours that I have been sitting here plunged in a world of painful thoughts. What crape you have fastened on the sweetest, most joyous hopes which ever caressed my soul! What! that book, which I now hate, has given you weapons against me? Do you not know with what impetuosity I spring to happiness? I was so happy! You put God between us! You will not have my joys, you divide your heart: you say, "There, I will live with him; here, I will live no more." You make me know all the agonies of jealousy against ideas, against reason! _Mon Dieu_, I would not say to you wicked sophisms; I hate corruption as much as violation; I would not owe a woman to seduction, nor even to the power of good. The sentiment which crowns me with joy, which delights me, is the free and pure sentiment which yields neither to the grace of evil nor to the attraction of good; an involuntary sentiment, roused by intuitive perception and justified by happiness. You gave me all that; I lived in a clear heaven, and now you have flung me into the sorrows of doubt. To love, my angel, is to have nothing in the heart but the person loved. If love is not that, it is nothing. As for me, I have no longer a thought that is not for you; my life is you. Griefs?--I have had none to speak of for several days. There are no longer griefs or pains to me but those you give me; the rest are mere annoyances. I said to myself, "I am so happy that I ought to pay for my happiness." Oh! my beloved, she who presents herself in heaven accompanied by a soul made happy by her can always enter there! I have known noble hearts, souls very pure, very delicate; but these women never hesitated to say that to love is the virtue of women. It is I who ought to be the good and the evil for you. Confess yourself? Good God! to whom, and for what? My angel, live in your sphere; consider the obligations of the world as a duty imposed upon your inward joys; live in two beings; in the _unknown you_, the most delightful, and the _known you_--two divisions of your time; the happy dreams of night, the harsh toils of day.

If what I say to you here is evil, my God! it is without my knowledge. Do not put me among the Frenchmen whom people believe they have the right to accuse of levity, fatuity, and evil creeds about women. There is nothing of that in me. To betray love for a man or an idea is one and the same thing. Oh! I have suffered from this betrayal! A glacial cold has seized me at the mere apprehension of new sorrows. I shall resist no more; I am not strong enough. I must be done with this life of tender sentiments, exalted feelings, happiness dreamed of, constant, faithful love which you have roused for the first and the last time in all its plenitude. I have often risen to gather in the harvest, and have found nothing in the fields, or else I have brought back unfructifying flowers. I am more sad than I have told you that I am, and from the nature of my character, my feelings go on increasing. I shall be the most unhappy man in the world until your answer comes; I can still receive it here before my departure for Besançon and consequently for Neufchâtel. I leave Saturday, 21st; I shall be at Besançon 23rd, and on the 25th at Neufchâtel. My journey is delayed by the box I am taking to you. There are many things to do to it. I have sought for the cleverest workman in Paris for the secret drawer, and what I wish to put into it requires time. With what joy I go about Paris, bestir myself, keep myself moving for a thing that will be yours! It is a life apart, it is ineffable! The Chénier is impossible; we must wait for the new edition.

You ask me what I am doing. _Mon Dieu!_ business; my writings are laid aside. Besides, how could I work knowing that Saturday evening I shall be going towards you? One must know how the slightest expectation makes me palpitate, to understand all the physical evil that I endure from hope. God has surely given me iron membranes if I do not have an aneurism of the heart.

Here all the newspapers attack "Le Médecin de campagne." Every one rushes to give his own stab. What saddened and angered Lord Byron makes me laugh. I wish to govern the intellectual life of Europe; only two years more of patience and labour, and I will walk upon the heads of those who strive to tie my hands, retard my flight! Persecution, injustice give me an iron courage. I am without strength against kind feelings. You alone can wound me. Eve, I am at your feet; I deliver to you my life and my heart. Kill me at a blow, but do not make me suffer. I love you with all the forces of my soul; do not destroy such glorious hopes.

Thank you a thousand times for the view; how good and merciful you are! The site resembles that of the left bank of the Loire. The Grenadière is a short distance away from that steeple. There is a complete resemblance. Your drawing is before my eyes until there is no need of a drawing.

_À bientôt._

In future my letters will be always _poste restante_; there is more security for you in that way.

PARIS, September 18, 1833.

DEAR, BELOVED ANGEL,--I have a conviction that in coming to Neufchâtel I shall do more than all those heroes of love of whom you speak to me; and I have the advantage over them of not talking about it. But that folly pleases me.

I cannot leave till the 22nd; but the mail-cart, the quickest vehicle, more rapid than a post-chaise, will take me in forty hours to Besançon. The 25th, in the morning, I shall be at Neufchâtel, and I shall remain there until your departure.

Unhappily, I do not know if your house is Andrea or Andrée. Write me a line, _poste restante_, at Besançon on this subject.

A thousand heart-feelings, a thousand flowers of love. Dear, loved one, in two years I shall be able to travel a thousand leagues, and pass through the dangers of Arabian Tales to seek a look; but that will be nothing extraordinary in comparison with the impossibilities of all kinds that my present journey presents. It is not the offering to God of a whole life; no, it is the cup of water which counts in love and in religion for more than battles. But what pleasures in this madness! How I am rewarded by knowing proudly how much I love you!

I start Sunday, 22nd, at six in the evening. I should like to stay three days at Neufchâtel. Do not leave till the 29th.

Adieu, cherished flower. What thoughts, solely filled with you, throughout the hours of this journey! I will be yours only. I have never so truly lived, so hoped!

_À bientôt._

NEUFCHÂTEL, Thursday, September 26, 1833.

_Mon Dieu!_ I have made too rapid a journey, and I started fatigued. But all that is nothing now. A good night has repaired all. I was four nights without going to bed.

I shall go to the Promenade of the faubourg from one o'clock till four. I shall remain during that time looking at the lake, which I have never seen. Write me a little line to say if I can write to you in all security here, _poste restante_, for I am afraid of causing you the slightest displeasure; and give me, I beg of you, your exact name [_et donnez-moi, par grâce, exactement votre nom_].

A thousand tendernesses. There has not been, from Paris here, a moment of time which has not been full of you, and I have looked at the Val de Travers with you in my mind. It is delightful, that valley.

_À bientôt._

PARIS, October 6, 1833.[1]

My dearest love, here I am, very much fatigued, in Paris. It is the 6th of October, but it has been impossible to write to you sooner. A wild crowd of people were all the way along the road, and in the towns through which we passed the diligence refused from ten to fifteen travellers. The mail-cart was engaged for six days, so that my friend in Besançon could not get me a place. I therefore did the journey on the imperial of a diligence, in company with six Swiss of the canton de Vaud, who treated me corporeally like cattle they were taking to market, which singularly aided the packages in bruising me.

I put myself into a bath on arriving and found your dear letter. O my soul! do you know the pleasure it gave me? will you ever know it? No, for I should have to tell you how much I love you, and one does not paint that which is immense. Do you know, my dearest Eva, that I rose at five in the morning on the day of my departure and stood on the "Crêt" for half an hour hoping--what? I do not know. You did not come; I saw no movement in your house, no carriage at the door. I suspected then, what you now tell me, that you stayed a day longer, and a thousand pangs of regret glided into my soul.

My angel, a thousand times thanked, as you will be when I can thank you as I would for what you send me.

Bad one! how ill you judge me! If I asked you for nothing it was that I am too ambitious. I wanted enough to make a chain to keep your portrait always upon me, but I would not despoil that noble, idolized head. I was like Buridan's ass between his two treasures, equally avaricious and greedy. I have just sent for my jeweller; he will tell me how much more is needed, and since the sacrifice is begun, you shall complete it, my angel. So, if you do have your portrait taken, have it done in miniature; there is, I think, a very good painter in Geneva; and have it mounted in a very flat medallion. I shall write you openly by the parcel I am going to send.