Part 50

Adieu for to-day, celestial star, implored and followed with so much religion. Every day I say to myself, thinking of your dear household of three, "I hope they are happy! that nothing troubles them! that Lirette sanctifies herself more and more; that Anna goes sometimes to the theatre (for her health, as she says so prettily); and that madame will from time to time look down the Neva to where Paris lies." As for me, I think only of that rococo salon, and so thinking, I make a little mental prayer to a human divinity, especially about nine o'clock, when tea makes me think that you are taking yours in the lamplight at that white table, the yellow wavelets of which I see at moments, together with the samovar. What friends are things, when they surround beloved beings! There is even a stupid ivory elephant that returns to my memory at times. As for the causeuse, the little carpet, the Louis XIV. screen, and the chair on which you rested your noble, cherished head, they are objects of worship. Do you feel yourself loved even in the outward objects to which you have given more real life than living and moving beings have to me? Your sadnesses make me smile, and I say to myself, "She was not _then_ sitting in her chair; she was not looking then at her chimney-corner." But it would have been a pity not to write those four pages; they are sublime; and were it not for the deep respect I have for you, I would put them proudly into one of my books, to give you the enjoyment of seeing how superior you are to scribblers like the rest of us. That letter is a true diamond as style and as thought; you have the inspiring influence, dear lady!--

See how I chatter with you! Can I help it? I make my letters one of those cat-like sensuous joys to which we grow used, and which wrap us so softly that we forget they are but the _copy_ of their cause!--

Well, one more look at that dear rue Millionne, and a deep, deep sigh, alas! not to be there. Why should you not have a poet as others have a dog, a parrot, a monkey?--and all the more because I am a little of all three, and repeat to you ever the one phrase, "I am faithful!" (Here the countess throws up her head and casts a superb glance.)

Adieu till to-morrow; I have recovered a little gaiety the last two days; are some happy events happening to you? God owes them to you. Have you not suffered enough to expiate the fault of all who surround you?--for as to you, you have never understood or practised anything but the good and the beautiful.

February 10.

Yesterday Bertin was ill, but he sent word that the affair held good. I went to the printing-office, but the publisher did not come; a bad sign. Here's a strange thing! the printer fell so in love with the title "Les Petits Bourgeois de Paris" that he wants to buy the book of me for twenty thousand francs and publish it illustrated! I came home to dinner and went to bed, for I had this morning to read seven folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE and the whole of Hetzel's article. It crushed me down. I went to bed after breakfast and slept till dinner-time, and as I could not sleep again from six in the evening till three next morning, I took some coffee, and here I am at nine in the evening, writing at my table.

If I have luck I shall sell the right to illustrate "Eugénie Grandet," and the "Petits Bourgeois" affair will come off, and this will bring me out of these matters (I mean the annoying matters). They played a new tragedy at the Odéon last night, but I did not go; I reserve myself for Tuesday, when the "Mystères de Paris" are brought out at the Porte-Saint-Martin.

February 14.

"Les Mystères" ended this morning at half-past one after midnight. I did not get back to Passy till three in the morning. It is now one o'clock, and I am just up. Frédérick Lemaître was in fear of a cerebral congestion; I found him yesterday at midday in bed; he had just plunged into a mustard bath up to his knees. Twice the night before he lost his eyesight. "Les Mystères" is the worst play in the world, but Frédérick's talent will make a furor for it. As actor, he was magnificent. You never can describe such effects, they must be seen. I am satisfied with the success he will give to "Les Mystères," because it gives me time to finish "Mercadet." The princes were in a proscenium box, and as the Prince de Joinville had never seen me, the Duc de Nemours pointed me out to him.

Since then I have written to Poirson that I will go and see him Friday to agree about "Prudhomme." I am to dine with my old friend the Duchesse de Castries, who, just now, for one reason or another, renews her kind attentions to your servant. All my prose is ready for Hetzel. To-day I dine with Lingay, the man who wanted to put to the profit of the State, so he said, my talent of observation. He does not seem vexed with me for my want of compliance, or perhaps he has too much intelligence not to have understood me.

February 16.

I went out yesterday for much business.

1. A purchaser wants my Florentine furniture. People have come from all parts to see it, even the antiquity dealers; and they are all in a flutter of admiration. You don't know what this means. It was the article in the "Messager" (which you will doubtless read copied into the "Débats") which has roused all this attention.

2. The matter of "Les Petits Bourgeois" rests, so far, with the "Débats." But the publisher wants the book; no doubt to illustrate with "Eugénie Grandet" and the "Physiologie du Mariage."

3. Poirson thinks the idea of the play excellent and proposes to _guide me!_--and if the execution is equal to the plot, he assures me of all the advantages I can desire. So I may appear once more before the public about April 1. Here I am, with "Prudhomme" and "Les Petits Bourgeois" on my hands; but no money. I must coin it in a manner to conquer tranquillity for three months. It is terrifying. This is Shrove-Saturday; I must spend it working, Sunday too, with a fury that is not French, but Balzacian.

February 17.

You know, dear countess, that there are days when the brain becomes inert. In spite of my best will I have sat all day long in my arm-chair, turning over the leaves of the "Musée-des-Familles!"--what do you say to that?--and in gazing from time to time at my Daffinger, without finding aught there than the most sublime and charming creature in the world and not a line of _copy_! I wanted to return to "Madame de la Chanterie," but I could only write two _feuillets_.

February 18.

I dine to-day with Poirson, the theatre manager.

Yesterday I dined out; a dinner of twenty-five persons at a restaurant; but what a dinner! It would have cost two or three thousand roubles in the 60th degree of latitude. I went this morning to see Bertin and have come home to tell you that all is concluded. Three thousand one hundred and fifty francs a volume, like those of "Les Mystères." That will make nine thousand five hundred. I am going to bed, worn-out with fatigue.

February 19.

Shrove-Tuesday, February 19. Oh joy! I have your letter and have just read it. You ask why I no longer go in the Versailles direction. Simply because one does not seek that which annoys and displeases. Do you want to know the only way in which to cease to be to me _unica_ and _dilecta_? it is to speak of that to me. All that was a bad dream which must be forgotten in order not to blush for it to one's self. Deprived of your letters I no longer lived; nor did I live again until once more I saw your dear handwriting. And you speak to me of Versailles; the very name sickens me, with the ideas attached to it, and this when I am so far from you with vast spaces parting us! But you do not know how in your absence I am deprived of soul and brain. I live by the reception of one letter, and I no sooner have it than I want another.

Ah! your letter was indeed due me amidst the annoyances and troubles of all kinds that assail me and the crushing work which implores peace and has never found it except near you. Even Hetzel, whom I thought a friend, is getting up with Bertin a foolish squabble with me. If you only knew in what a fit of misanthropy I went to bed. It was frightful. But also, with what delight I read those pages so full of sincerity and affection! One hour of such pure, heavenly enjoyment would make one accept the martyrdoms of human existence.

Yes, you have every reason to be proud of your child. It is through seeing young girls of her sphere, those who are the best brought-up here, that I say to you, and repeat it: you have the right to be proud of your Anna. Tell her that I love her, for you, whose happiness she is, and for her own angelic soul which I appreciate so truly. You tell me, dear countess, that, in the midst of your good success, there is something in the supreme decision which thwarts you, but you do not tell me what it is. Please repair that omission; do not let me fancy evil out of this uncertainty. Nothing, no event in the things of life, no woman however beautiful, _nothing_ can disturb that which _is_ for ten years past, because I love your soul as much as your person, and you will ever be to me the Daffinger. Do you know what is the most lasting thing in sentiment? It is _la sorcellerie à froid_--charm that can be deliberately judged. Well, that charm in you has undergone the coolest examination, and the most minute as well as the most extended comparison, and all is more than favourable to you. Dear fraternal soul, you are the saintly and noble and devoted being to whom a man confides his life and happiness with ample security. You are the pharos, the light-giving star, the _sicura richezza, senza brama_. I have understood you, even to your sadnesses, which I love. Among all the reasons which I find to love you--and to love you with that flame of youth which was the only happy moment of my past life--there is not one against my loving, respecting, admiring you. With you no mental satiety can exist: in that I say to you a great thing; I say the thing that makes happiness. You will learn henceforth, from day to day, from year to year, the profound truth of what I am now writing to you. Whence comes it? I know not; perhaps from similarity of characters, or that of minds; but, above all, from that wonderful phenomenon called _entente cordiale_--intimate comprehension--and also from the circumstances of our lives. We have both been deeply tried and tortured in the course of our existence; each has had a thirst for rest in our heart and in our outward life. We have the same worship of the ideal, the same faith, the same devotion to each other. Well, if those elements do not produce happiness, as their contraries produce unhappiness, then we must deny that saltpetre, coal, etc., produce ashes. But beyond these good reasons, it must be said, dear, that there is another, a fact, a certainty, the inspiration of a feeling beyond all else--the inexplicable, intangible, invisible flame which God has given to certain of his creatures, and which impassions them; for I love you as we love that which is beyond our reach; I love you as we love God, as we love happiness.

If the hope of all my life were to fail me, if I lost you, I should not kill myself, I should not make myself a priest, for the thought of you would give me strength to endure my life; but I would go to some lonely corner of France, in the Pyrenees, or the Ariège, and slowly die, doing and knowing nothing more in this world; I should go at long intervals to see Anna and talk of you at my ease with her. I should write no more. Why should I? Are you not the whole world to me? Examining what I feel in merely waiting for a letter, and what I suffer from a day's delay, it seems proved to me that I should die of grief. Oh! take care of yourself! Think that there is more than one life bound to yours. Take care in everything! Each day my double egotism increases; each day hope adds to her treasury dreams, longings, expectations. Oh! remain what I saw you on the Neva!

If you ask me, Madame la comtesse, why I yield myself up to this verbiage, which, some day soon, will bring a frown to that Olympian brow, if you would know why I have launched with such a flow upon the letter-tide, I shall tell you that I have just re-read your letter, that this is Mardi-gras, and I am taking the sole pleasure that I seek from the carnival.

Now I must talk health; you will not pardon me if I forget it in writing to you. I am well, in spite of a slight grippe, and I think I shall be able to master the enormous work that I must do between now and March 20. Do not dwell too much upon my troubles and my toils; do not pity me too much; without this avalanche to sweep away I should die, consumed by an indefinable ill, called absence, fever, consumption, nerves, languor--what Chénier has described in his "Jeune Malade." Therefore I bless heaven for the obligations which misfortune has placed upon me. I do not count, as I think I told you, on a theatre success to pay my debts; I count only on the fifty folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE which I have to do, and which will give me about fifty thousand francs. It is true that I also expect to bring to a good conclusion the affair of illustrating "Eugénie Grandet" and the "Physiologie;" and those two things represent twenty thousand at least. So I shall fully have enough, and over, for my journey and stay in Dresden.

Adieu until to-morrow. To-morrow I continue my journal after putting this one into the post. If you knew what emotion seizes me when I throw these packets into the box! My soul flies to you with the papers; I tell them a thousand foolish things; like a fool, I fancy they are going to repeat them to you; it is impossible to me to comprehend that these papers impregnated with me should be in eleven days in your hands and yet that I stay here. Well, you will see that during the last fourteen days I have been much driven about; I have worked little, I have thought of you, I have been agitated by the expectation of work for Frédérick. "Les Mystères" which, thanks to him, have had a success, little durable however, have cast me on the deserted boards of the "Gymnase." I am chasing Henri Monnier; you can, on reading these pages, scribbled in haste, tell yourself that your poor servant is working desperately; every moment is precious; a scene must be written, a proof corrected, copy sent. You will therefore have but little from me as writing, but much as thought in the journal which will follow the present one.

Adieu. Yesterday I was sad; to-day, thanks to your adorable letter, I am gay, happy. You are my life, my strength, my consolation; I have learned through disappointments and bitterness that I have but you in this world.

Adieu, then; be sure that I live more at the feet of your chair than in my own.

PARIS, February 28, 1844.

Dear countess; I have decided to finish the seventh volume of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE with "Le Lys dans la Vallée" which can certainly go under the head of "Scènes de la Vie de province." This arrangement spares me the writing of three volumes which I should not have time to publish separately first; besides I wish not to have a single line to write between now and October 1.

In spite of what you tell me of your plans for Dresden, I hardly believe in them. You leave Petersburg about the middle of May; you will be at home, at Wierzchownia, by the end of June; how can you expect between July and October (four months) to be put in possession of your rights, to have received the accounts of administration and guardianship, and to have re-established the _status quo_ of your personal government? Oh! if you only knew with what sadness I count upon my fingers and add up all these difficulties: the time required for the journey, the accounts to examine and verify, the current affairs, and the unexpected hindrances! Such thoughts bring me dreadful, pitiless, implacable hours. You are my whole life; the infinitely little incidents as well as the gravest events of that life depend on you, and solely on you; the two months that I spent in Petersburg have, alas! sufficiently enlightened me as to that. No, you can never leave in October, for I know your anxious tenderness for your child; you would never let her travel in winter,--I have the certainty of conviction as to that. Do you understand what there is of despair in those words? Existence was endurable with the hope of Dresden; it overwhelms me, it annihilates me if I have to wait longer.

You ought to profit by your stay in Petersburg to obtain recovery of the administration from Anna's guardians, so that there be no one but you and her uncle to manage her affairs. You will do this, I am sure, unless you think it simpler and easier to manage at home, I mean in the chief town of your department, or I should say government, inasmuch as your provinces are divided into governments, not departments, as they are in France.

In any case, dear countess, when you return to Wierzchownia examine well the _ifs_ and _buts_, the _fors_ and the _yes and nos_, and decide whether I may go to you. If your high wisdom decides that I cannot, I shall ask of toil its absorption and its excitements in default of the resignation which I cannot promise you. _Mon Dieu_, one year lost! It is a lifetime for a being who finds a life in a day, when that day is passed with you.

I leave you to dine with M. de Margonne and to pay a little visit to the Princesse Belgiojoso, who lives next door to him.

February 29.

I had yesterday, after writing to you, a violent rush of blood to the head. From three in the morning till three in the afternoon I corrected without pausing six folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE ("Les Employés"), into which I inserted passages taken from the "Physiologie de l'Employé," a little book, written in haste, about which you know nothing. This work, which was equivalent to writing in twelve hours an 8vo volume, brought on the attack. My nose bled from yesterday until this morning. But I feel myself more relieved than weakened by this little natural bleeding,--beneficial, I make no doubt.

I have been to fetch the proofs of what I have so far done on "Les Petits Bourgeois." The printing-office is close to Saint-Germain-des-Prés; the idea came to me to enter the church, where they are painting the cupola, and I prayed for you and your dear child at the altar of the Virgin. Tears came into my eyes as I asked God to keep you both in life and health. My thought streamed even to the Neva. Perhaps, returning from those heights, I have brought back a gleam from that ideal throne before which we kneel. With what fervour, what ardour, what abandonment of myself, do I feel bound to you forever,--"for time and for eternity," as the devout people say.

On my way home I bought, for fifteen sous on the quay, the "Mémoires de Lauzun," which I had never read.[1] I looked them over in the omnibus, returning to Passy, where your serf, having reintegrated himself into his arm-chair, is writing this to you while awaiting dinner. What a strange thing that an honourable, courageous man, who seems to have had plenty of heart on all occasions when he needed it, could dishonour with such levity the women he professed to love! I think conceit, being the dominant feature of his character, smothered what was really good and generous within him. Does he not sub-suggest to us that he would not have Marie-Antoinette in the flower of her youth and the prestige of her grandeur? It was an odious calumny and a useless cruelty, when we think of the position of that poor queen at the period when these Memoirs were being written, In other respects this poor Lauzun makes one pity him; he never so much as suspects, while believing himself adored, that he was never loved, even feebly. A man so vain is not endured by the majority of women, who want an exclusive worship for themselves, and will not accept, unless for a moment, the presence of a rivalry as aggressive as it is insatiable--that of a lover of _himself_. So, we see how Princesse C... quickly quitted him; it is frightful.

After reading and closing that bad book, I cried out to myself, "How happy he is who loves but one woman!" I persist in that opinion; it is both a cry of the heart and the result of reasoning and observation; for I analyze you with the utmost coolness, and I recognize, with conviction and joy, that none can be compared to you. I do not know in this world a finer intellect, a nobler heart, a gentler or more charming temper, a nature more straightforward, a judgment more sure, based on reason and virtue. I will say no more, for fear of being scolded; and yet, _this_ is what explains and justifies an enthusiasm stronger to-day than it was in 1833; which sends the blood in waves to my heart at sight of that page of poor Töpfer, which will lie on my table all my life; which transports me as I look at the Daffinger. Ah! you do not know what passed within me when, in that courtyard,--every stone of which is engraved in my memory, with its planks, its coach-house, etc.,--I saw your sweet face at the window. I no longer felt my own body, and when I spoke to you I was stultified. That stultification, that arrested torrent, arrested in its course to bound with greater force, lasted two days. "What must she think of me?" was a madman's phrase that I said and resaid in terror. No, truly, and believe it absolutely, I am not yet accustomed to know you after all these years. Centuries would not suffice, and life is short! You saw the effect during those two months in Petersburg. I left you in the same ecstasy in which I was the day I saw you once more. Of all the faces you made me see and know in Petersburg none remain in my memory. All have fled, evaporated, leaving no trace. But I can tell with certainty the smallest little detail of everything about you, even to the number of steps to your staircase, and the flower-pots that are massed at its angles. Of my apartment at Madame Tardif's, nothing remains in my mind; nothing of Petersburg either, unless it be the bench on which we sat in the Summer Garden, and the steps of the Imperial Quay where I gave you my hand. Oh! if you knew how precious to me is that pin which rolled along the quay! I have fastened to my mantel-piece, on the red velvet which drapes the side of it, a leaf of your ivy, that lustrous ivy which frightened you! Well, that leaf casts me into endless reveries. My dinner is brought; I must stop until to-morrow.

[Footnote 1: Armand Louis de Gontant Biron, Duc de Lauzun; born 1747, executed 1793.--TR.]

March 1.