Part 52

I am perfectly well again and have gone back to work. This is a piece of good news worth telling you at once. But oh! dearest, a year is a year, don't you see? The heart cannot deceive itself; it suffers its own pains in spite of the false remedies of hope--Hope! is it anything else than pain disguised? I look at that Colmann sketch of the salon, and every look is a stab; the thought of it enters my heart like a sharp blade. Between that sketch and the picture of Wierzchownia is the door of my study,--and that door represents to me infinite space, spreading away among the memories attached to that furniture, to those blue hangings. "We were there together; she is now there and I am here!" That is my cry, and each look, each stab redoubles it. Why did not Colmann paint the other side of the salon? Why not have done the stove and the little table before the stove, beside which you said to me things so compassionate, so sweet, so fraternally reasonable? Ah! I would give my blood to hear them once again.

Madame Bocarmé has returned. Bettina adores your serf, in all honour and propriety. She tells me that Colmann's fifty water-colours are masterpieces, and he is to Russia what Pinelli is to Rome.

I went out for the first time yesterday. I bought a clock of regal magnificence, and two vases of celadon not less magnificent. And all for nearly nothing. Great news! a rich amateur has a desire for my Florentine furniture. He is coming here to see it. I want forty thousand francs for it. Another piece of news! The Christ of Girardon, bought for two hundred francs, is estimated at five thousand, and at twenty thousand with Brustolone's frame. And yet you laugh, dear countess, at my proceedings in the Kingdom of Bricabracquia. Dr. Nacquart is violently opposed to my selling, even at a great price, these magnificent things. He says: "In a few months you will be out of your present position by this dogged work of yours; and then those magnificences will be your glory." "I like money better," I replied. So, you see, Harpagon played poet, and the poet Harpagon.

Dear, believe me, I cannot always suffer thus. Do you reflect upon it? Another delay! When "Les Paysans" is finished, and the articles for Chlendowski also, I claim a word from you permitting me to join you in your steppes, that is, if your difficulties in obtaining a passport still continue and are permanent.

I have found a most splendid pedestal for David's bust, which every one says is an amazing success. This beautiful thing cost me only three hundred francs, and the late Alibert, for whom it was made, paid fifteen or sixteen thousand francs for it.

Dear countess, I should like your advice on something I want to do. It is impossible for me to remain where I am. A few steps from my present lodging is a house which could be hired for a thousand to fifteen hundred francs, where one could live as well on fifteen hundred francs a year as on fifty thousand. I am inclined to hire it for a number of years and settle in it. I could very well economize and lay by enough to buy a small house in Paris, if I did not live in it for some years. One can come and go between Passy and Paris as one likes, with a carriage. But to settle myself in it would cost very nearly six thousand francs, and I would not make that outlay for the King of Prussia, when I have twenty thousand francs to pay between now and January 1. All could be made smooth by the sale of that Florentine furniture. The "Musée des Familles" does not publish the engravings of it and Gozlan's article till December, so that public attention will not be aroused till January. The bidding will be between the _dilettanti_ and capitalists as soon as they see and know what it is.

As to your plan, I would rather renounce tranquillity than obtain it at that price. When a man has troubled his country and intrigued in court and city, like Cardinal Retz, he may evade paying his debts at Commercy; but in our bourgeois epoch a man cannot leave his own place without paying all he owes; otherwise he would seem to be escaping his creditors. In these days we may be less grand, less dazzling, but we are certainly more orderly, perhaps more honourable than the great seigneurs of the great century. This comes, probably, from our altered understanding of what honour and duty mean; we have placed their meaning elsewhere, and the reason is simple enough. Those great seigneurs were the actors on a great stage, who played their parts to be admired; and they were paid for doing so. _We_ are now the paying public which acts only for itself and by itself. Do not, therefore, talk to me of Switzerland or Italy, or anything of that kind; my best, my only country is the space between the walls of the _octroi_ and the fortifications of Paris. If I leave it, it will only be to see you, as you well know. I should have done so already had you permitted it. Therefore, work with your little white-mouse paws to enlarge the hole of your jail, so that the hour of your liberation may come the sooner. Formerly I lived by that hope: now I die of it. I have feverish impatiences, doubts; I fear everything,--war, the death of Louis-Philippe, an illness, a revolution; in short, obstacles are ever springing up in my agonized imagination. I see how your personal affairs hamper and weary you; and your inexhaustible kindness wearies also.

Thinking sadly of all this, looking out into the void for your interests and those of your child, I have thought of an admirable affair in which one hundred thousand francs risked might make colossal returns. I mean the publication of an encyclopedia for primary instruction. If well planned, the fame of a Parmentier is in it; for such a book is like a potato of education, a necessity, a fabulous bargain. I have faith in such an affair, and I am at this moment considering the manuscript. Oh! if you were here, or at least in the same city, how well things would go! what new courage I should have! what fresh sources would gush up! But absence gives drouth and sterility to ideas as well as to existence.

I am glad that young Mniszech pleases you as well as the dear child. Keep me _au courant_ of matters so important for the future of both of you. In heaven's name, write me regularly three times a month. Think of my work and how you are everywhere in my study. When I look at your surroundings I cannot help taking a pen and scribbling a few words as full of affection as they are of murmurs. If I go to Dresden, I shall postpone the affair of the house.

Adieu; take care of your health, your child, your property, since they preoccupy you to the point of making you forget your most faithful friends.

PASSY, February 1, 1845.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska at Dresden.]

Could I write to you safely before receiving your counter-order, for your last letter told me not to write to you at Dresden? Since that letter I have only had a few lines written in haste, in which the _status quo_ was maintained and to which there was no way of answering.

I have even a certain uneasiness in observing that you do not speak of my last letters. One of them contained an article entitled "Les Boulevards," and I asked your advice about it. There is one observation that I wish to make, merely for the sake of clearing the matter up. I am sure that you send your letters to the post by some unfaithful hand, for the two last were not prepaid, and you had doubtless given the order to do so. Therefore, either prepay them yourself or do not prepay them at all. Let us begin, as we did at Petersburg, in each paying our own letter. Take, I entreat you, habits of order and economy. In travelling, you will have incessant need of your money; it is bad enough to be robbed by innkeepers, without letting others do so. For the twelve years that I have now known you I have posted all my letters to you with my own hand.

Poor dear countess! how many things I have to say to you! But first of all, let us talk business. Without your inexorable prohibition I should have been in Dresden a month ago, at the Stadt-Rom, opposite to the Hotel de Saxe, and if you have raised it let me know by return mail. As you are fully resolved, and your child also, to see Lirette again, there is but one means of doing so, and that is to come to Paris. And the only way to make that journey is as follows: Come to Frankfort and establish yourself there; then propose a trip on the Rhine; begin with Mayence, where you will find me with a passport for my sister and niece. From there you take the mail-cart and go to Paris, where you can stay from March 15 to May 15, without a word to any one. After which you can return to Frankfort, where I will join you later. As you will have seen no one during the few days you are first in Frankfort, you will attract no attention, and no one will notice you on your return. Only be sure you get from your ambassador a passport for Frankfort _and_ the banks of the Rhine.

I shall have found, meantime, for both of you, a small furnished apartment at Chaillot, not far from Passy. You can see the great city at your ease _incognito_. There are a dozen theatres for Anna, as she likes them so much, and you want to amuse her. That will give you plenty to do, without counting your visits to the convent, which would be more frequent than those to the theatre if you consulted your own tastes; but your tastes are so mingled with those of your daughter, and you spend your lives in each sacrificing to the other so much, that it is impossible to tell which of you wants a thing or does not want it. You need spend very little, if you are willing to travel like a bachelor, and keep a total silence on the escapade.[1] You will see the Exhibition, the theatres, and the public buildings, and I will have tickets for the concerts at the Conservatoire; in short, I shall arrange that you shall enjoy all that can be put into two months. There is my plan.

But in such things, boldness and secrecy, little luggage, only the simple necessaries, are required. You will find what you want here, of better quality and cheaper than elsewhere,--that is, comparatively to the prices I have seen you pay for your gowns and chiffons in Italy and Germany. At Chaillot you shall find a nice little apartment and servants--cook, maid, and valet--for two months. In the morning you can go about Paris on foot, or in a _fiacre_, to diminish distances. In the evening you would have a carriage of your own. If you follow this programme and do not go into society, there is no possibility of your meeting any one.

Nevertheless, my good angels, reflect well, and do not let your affection for your friend entice you too much. Weigh all the inconveniences and dangers of this journey; however immense would be to me the pleasure of showing Paris to both of you, explaining it to you, and initiating you into its life, I would rather renounce it all than expose you to anything that might cause regret. Examine, therefore, all I have foreseen, and if you think the risks too great, renounce our mirage. We must not give ourselves eternal regrets for two months of a pleasure that is only delayed,--that of seeing the face of a friend through the bars of a convent.

[Footnote 1: Secrecy was required, as Russians in those days were not allowed to travel in foreign countries without a special permit from their government, which was difficult to obtain.--TR.]

February 15, 1845.

Dear countess; the uncertainty of your arrival at Frankfort has weighed heavily upon me; for how could I work, expecting every hour a letter which might make me start at once? I have not written a line of the conclusion of "Les Paysans." This uncertainty has disorganized me completely. From the point of view of mere material interests it is fatal. In spite of your fine intelligence, you can never comprehend this, for you know nothing of Parisian economy, or the painful straits of a man who tries to live on six thousand francs a year. For this reason, I must quit Passy; but I dare do nothing, I can make no plans on account of your uncertainty. But the worst of all is the impossibility of occupying my mind. How can I throw myself into absorbing labour with the idea before me of soon starting, and starting to see you? It is impossible. To do so I need to have neither head nor heart. I have been tortured and agitated as I never was in my life before. It is a triple martyrdom, of the heart, of the head, of the interests, and, my imagination aiding, it has been so violent that I declare to you I am half dazed,--so dazed, that to escape madness I have taken to going out in the evening and playing lansquenet at Madame Merlin's and other places. I had to apply a blister to such disease. Luckily, I neither lost nor won. I have been to the Opera, and dined out twice, and tried to lead a gay life for the last fortnight. But now I shall try to work night and day, and finish "Les Paysans" and a bit of a book for Chlendowski.

I send you by the Messageries the eleventh volume of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, in which you will find "Splendeurs et Misères des courtisanes." The fourth volume contains _your_ "Modeste Mignon" and the end of "Béatrix," also "Le Diable à Paris." These books may perhaps amuse you; but in any case, tell me your opinion of them as you have always done,--namely, with the sincerity of a fraternal soul and the sagacity and sure judgment of a true critic. If the reduction of my bust by David is made in time, I will send you that also.

Not only is the finishing of "Les Paysans" an absolute necessity before which _all_ must yield relatively to literature and the reputation which I have for loyalty to pen engagements, but it is an absolute necessity for my interests. This year is a climacteric in my affairs.

Within forty-live days the printing of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE will be finished. The publishers have put the two largest printing-offices in Paris on it, and I am obliged to read twice the usual number of proofs. The result will be a sum of importance to me. But I cannot leave Passy till my present debts are paid. Therefore I must finish "Les Paysans" and LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, and "Les Petits Bourgeois" and "Le Théâtre comme il est." But, dear countess, you have made me lose all the month of January and the fifteen first days of February by saying to me: "I start--to-morrow--next week," and by making me wait for letters; in short, by throwing me into rages which none but I know of. It has brought a frightful disorder into my affairs, for instead of getting my liberty February 15, I have before me a month of herculean labour, and on my brain I must inscribe (to be rejected by my heart) the words: "Think no longer of your star, nor of Dresden, nor of travel; stay at your chain and toil miserably."

Dear, what I call toil is something that must be seen, no prose can depict it; what I have done for a month past would lay any well-organized man on his back. I have corrected the thirteenth and fourteenth volumes of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, which contain "La Peau de Chagrin," "La Recherche de l'Absolu," "Melmoth réconcilié," "Le Chef d'œuvre inconnu," "Jésus-Christ en Flandres," "Les Chouans," "Le Médecin de campagne," and "Le Curé de village." I have finished "Béatrix;" I have written and corrected the articles for "Le Diable à Paris;" and I have settled some affairs. All that is nothing; that is not working. Working, dear countess, is getting up regularly at midnight, writing till eight o'clock, breakfasting in fifteen minutes, working till five o'clock, dinner, and going to bed; to begin again at midnight. From this travail there issue five volumes in forty-five days. It is what I shall begin as soon as this letter is written. I must do six volumes of "Les Paysans," and six folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE, inasmuch as that is all that is needed to complete the edition, which is in seventeen volumes. I hope for another edition in 1846, and that will be in twenty-four volumes, and may give me two hundred thousand francs.

So this is my report on the affairs of your servitor and the journey of your Grace.

Now, let me come to that which is more serious than all,--I mean that tinge of sadness which I see on your Olympian brow. What! because a crazy woman cannot be happy, must she come and spoil your comfort and trouble your heart? And you listen to her, _you!_ Take care, for that is a crime of lese-comradeship, lese-brotherhood. And you write me things mournful enough to kill the devil. In your last but one letter you propose to me gracefully, with those Russian forms you must have borrowed for the occasion, a little congress in which the two high powers should decide whether or not to continue their alliance offensive and defensive. That, my dear lady, is, believe me, a greater crime than those you joke me about; for I have never needed any such consultation.

Since 1833, you know very well that I love you, not only like one beside himself, but like a see-er, with eyes wide open; and ever since that period, I have always and ceaselessly had a heart full of you. The errors for which you blame me are fatal human necessities, very truly judged by your Excellency herself. But I have never doubted that I should be happy with you.

Dear countess, I decidedly advise you to leave Dresden at once. There are princesses in that town who infect and poison your heart; were it not for "Les Paysans" I should have started at once to prove to that venerable invalid of Cythera how men of my stamp love; men who have not received, like her prince, a Russian pumpkin in place of a French heart from the hands of a hyperborean Nature. In France, we are gay and witty and we love, gay and witty and we die, gay and witty and we create, gay and witty and withal constitutional, gay and witty and we do things sublime and profound! We hate _ennui_, but we have none the less heart; we tend to things gay and witty, curled and frizzed and smiling; that is why it is sung of us, to a splendid air, "Victory, singing, opens our career!" It makes others take us for a frivolous people--we, who at this moment are applauding the disquisitions of George Sand, Eugène Sue, Gustave de Beaumont, de Toqueville, Baron d'Eckstein, and M. Guizot. We a frivolous people! under the reign of money-bags and his Majesty Louis-Philippe! Tell your dear princess that France knows how to love. Tell her that I have known you since 1833, and that in 1845 I am ready to go from Paris to Dresden to see you for a day; and it is not impossible I may do so; for if Tuesday next I am lucky at cards at Comtesse Merlin's, I shall be on Sunday, 23d, at the Hôtel de Rome in Dresden, and leave on the 24th.

Dear star of the first magnitude, I see with pain by your letter that you commit the fault of defending me when I am blamed in your presence, and of taking fire on my account. But you don't reflect, dear, that that is a trap set for you by the infamous galley-slaves of society's galleys, to enjoy your embarrassment. When persons say ill of me before you, there is but one thing to do,--turn those who calumniate me into ridicule by outdoing what they say. Tell them: "If he escapes public indignation it is because he is so clever he blunts the sword of the law." That is what Dumas did to some one who told him his father was a negro: "My grandfather was a monkey," he replied.

No, when I think that I might leave here January 1, reach Dresden the 7th, and stay till February 7th, thus seeing you one whole month without detriment to my affairs, that I could then return to my desk happy, refreshed, full of ardour for work, a transport seizes me which eddies and whirls like steam as it hisses from its valve. I see that you are completely ignorant of what you are to me. That does honour to neither your judgment nor your penetration. To-day, that delightful escapade has become impossible to me. March 1, I must regulate the sale of Les Jardies; the legal formalities must be fulfilled in order to put that precious thirty thousand francs aside; LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE must be finished to obtain the fifteen thousand francs that are due to me for it; and finally, I must make up the sixty-three thousand for my acre, if I buy it, and to pay off twenty-five thousand of debt which would otherwise prevent my becoming a land-owner.

Villemain is at Chaillot; he is no more crazy than you or I. [Minister of Public Instruction till 1844, and Secretary of the Academy.] He has had a few hallucinations which have affected his ideas, just as I had some that affected my use of words in 1832 at Saché; I have related that to you already; I uttered words involuntarily. But he is so thoroughly cured that he speaks of the matter with the wisdom and coolness of a physician. He had already declined very much in talent, and was no longer fit to negotiate with the clergy, and they profited by his resignation to get rid of him. We talked of it, he and I, for more than two hours. From what he told me, I judge that he is forever lost to public life.

Adieu; I perceive that I bid you adieu in my letters as I said good-night to you at Petersburg in the Hotel Koutaitsof, when we walked for ten minutes from the sofa to the door and from the door to the sofa, unable to say a final adieu. If I could do the second part of "Les Paysans" in eight days, I would be off, and see you in six days! Tell yourself that there never passes an hour that you are not in my thoughts; as for my heart, you are always and unceasingly there.

The winter has set in with great severity. You are right to stay in Dresden. Avoid, I entreat you, those sudden changes from heat to cold and cold to heat of which you tell me. It is right to think, as you do, incessantly of your child; but it would be wrong, and not loving to her, to always forget yourself for her. Of all the personages whom you mention to me none but Countess L... attracts me. That amiable old lady who welcomed you as the daughter of Count Rzewuski goes to my heart, she belongs to my world. As for Lara, do me the pleasure not to receive him in future.

Did I tell you that they named the _bœuf gras_ this year Père Goriot, and that many jokes and caricatures are made upon it at my expense? This is a scrap of news. I am vexed not to go to Dresden, for I had not the time when I was there solely to see the Gallery, to view the country about and go to Kulm, in order to write my "Bataille de Dresde." That will be one of the most important parts of the "Scènes de la Vie militaire."

_À bientôt_; take care of yourself, and tell your dear child all tenderly loving things from one of the most sincere and faithful friends she will ever have, not excepting her husband, for I love her as her father loved her.

PASSY, April 3, 1845.

I have just received your letter of March 27, and I know not what to think of all you say to me of mine. I, to give you pain, or the slightest grief! I, whose constant thought is to spare you pain! The epithet _meutrière_ applied to my language makes me bound. _Mon Dieu_, however good my intentions were, it seems that I have hurt you, and that is enough. When we see each other, you will comprehend, perhaps, how the uncertainty that hovers over me is fatal; fatal to my interests so seriously involved; fatal to my happiness because I see myself separated from you--for a month more at any rate, for I have not written a line and I could not now be at Frankfort before the first week in May. Under such irritating circumstances it was permissible to be impatient. Besides which, I write my letters very hastily, and never read them over. I say what is in my mind without any reflection; if I had re-read that letter I might have made of it (as I have of others _in which I raised my voice too high_) a sacrifice to Vulcan.