Part 54

At Civita Vecchia I landed, in memory of you, and went to see that antiquity-shop, where you sat down. I there learned that Madame Bocarmé had been telling tales about my journey; of no importance, however, for who cares about the gossip of that intriguing old lady! You were very right; I repent having written your name for Anna, as I always repent when I have had the misfortune not to obey you in matters you have thoroughly divined. Such is the exact tale of my journey. As for sentiments, I shall have to invent new words, so weary must you be with my elegies. I looked at the Hôtel des Victoires as long as I could. Not a woman appeared on deck; they were only manifested by dreadful vomitings, which rattled the panels of the ship as much as the fury of the seas.

Here comes my breakfast to interrupt me.

Midnight.

Méry has just left me. I offered him tea and whist at ten sous a fish; not ruinous, as you see. Here is the history of my day. After breakfast I went to bed, for I was tired. Méry, to whom I had written a line, came while I was asleep, and found me in such a magnificent attitude of repose that he respected it. But he returned while I was dressing, and we went to the shop of a dealer in antiquities, where I found some very beautiful things. I chose a few trifles which seemed to me true bargains to snatch; you know I never buy in any other way. After leaving these shops we went to dinner,[1] and then returned here for tea. I have lost five francs and won the collaboration of Méry for several plays that I have in view. He is going to have the affair of the two _savants_ copied, and we will have it printed for you. A curious autograph of Méry's and some verses he has charged me to send you are herewith inclosed. That will give you pleasure, will it not?

I leave to-morrow at eleven o'clock; so that I shall have stayed only-forty-eight hours at Marseille, where I have been much occupied by bric-à-brac, and somewhat by Méry. I must close this letter and send it, for the mail goes to-morrow to Italy.

[Footnote 1: See Memoir, p. 272--TR.]

November 13, nine in the morning.

Adieu again, dear countess; I shall not write you more until I reach Passy. You know well what is in my heart and soul and memory for you and your two children--for Georges is like a first-born to you. I am still stupid from the sea-voyage, even in writing to you; the roll of the vessel is in my head; you will excuse me, will you not? I wrote you with my feet still wet with sea-water. To-morrow I take the mail-cart for Paris. I have spent a great deal, apart from my purchases. In the first place, on the ship the water was not drinkable; I had to have champagne, and I could not drink it alone beside the captain and the purser, who had been admirably attentive to me. All that was much extra. Then I had to ask some gentlemen to breakfast this morning at the Hôtel de l'Orient; politeness required it; besides, that is part of my make-up as author of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE. Don't cry out at the extravagance; and say nothing about it to Georges, who would take me for a Lucullus and laugh at me.

Affectionate homage, and all tenderness of heart to your adorable child, and to the excellent Georges. I am going to work to rejoin you. Perhaps you will see Méry in Florence; he has arranged to make the journey with me. Take good care of yourself, and tell yourself sometimes that there is a poor being at Passy very far from his sun. I am like Méry,--very chilly when in Paris. You are my Provence. Méry talked much of you to me; you are very sympathetic to him. He took full notice of your Olympian brow, which has something of a Pagan god and the Christian angel and a little of the demon (I mean the demon of knowledge). Those who know you as I do can aspire to but one thing beside you; and that is to comprehend, enjoy, and love your soul more and more, if only to become better by intercourse with you and your etherealized spirit. That is my prayer, the desire of my human religion, and my last yearning thought towards you.

PARIS, November 18, 1845.

Dear countess, I arrived here so fatigued that I was forced to go to bed, and have only just risen for dinner, and shall return to bed directly after it. I have a severe lumbago and fever; I feel all kneaded and broken. I went beyond my strength. At Marseille I was perpetually in company, and that added greatly to the effects of the voyage. You saw the life I led in Naples,--always going, rushing, looking, examining, observing, and talking! So that these last three nights in the mail-cart, without sleep, added to twelve days on shipboard and rushing about Naples, have vanquished my health, vigorous as it is. I went out this morning to the custom-house and to see Émile de Girardin, and this evening to see M. F... I am not yet recovered; I still have lumbago and fever, but a good night's sleep will cure me.

November 19.

Georges' commissions will be handed to him about December 15 by the captain of the "Tancrède." His cane is ordered and will soon be finished. My affairs are doing well; but I shall not finish everything by the end of the year; and as long as I have a single creditor, it would be imprudent to raise the mask by becoming a property-owner.

Chlendowski gives me the greatest uneasiness. He threatens to go into bankruptcy if he is not aided. I never knew a man lie like him. What you did for love of France with Laurent-Jan, I have done for Poland with Chlendowski. Fate tells us, dear countess, to take care of none but ourselves. Honest folk, believe me, have enough to do in that way without undertaking the care of others. If Chlendowski fails, I shall lose ten thousand francs; the thought makes me shudder.

I have given orders to search Paris for a house all built and ready; for it is impossible, in view of the scarcity of money, that a fine house could not be had for a hundred and fifty thousand francs.

November 21.

I rose at nine o'clock, a lump of lead! I am making up my arrears of sleep. Alas! my good genius will hear with pain that I am forced to set myself an Herculean task. I must put my papers in order, and it is now ten years since I have touched them. What labour! I have to make a bundle for each creditor, with bill and receipt in perfect order, under pain of paying twice for what was never due. It will give me a fever till it is all done. But I am in such haste to return to Italy and to my dear troupe, never to leave them again, that I find courage to drive all my affairs abreast,--manuscripts, completions of everything, publishers, debts, even the purchase of a property worthy of the author of LA G-R-R-R-ANDE COMÉDIE HUMAINE.

I must bid you abruptly adieu, and hurry out on business, so as to be able to-morrow to return to regular hours of rising and working. I intend to rise at four every day. Adieu, then, dear, distant star, which scintillates forever, ceaselessly, as memory and as consolation.

November 25.

Yesterday I rushed the whole day; twenty-five francs carriage hire! I went to see my sister; then to Girardin at the "Presse," where my account is settled. Girardin takes "Les Petites Misères," and I must now finish them. Then I went to Plon's printing-office. I saw A. de B... about the renewal of Chlendowski's notes; and I am now expecting the said Chlendowski to explain his position to me. After which, I must go out again and see M. Gavault to regulate his account, and know what he has paid. All that is not proof of activity; it is simply becoming the wheel of a machine.

Chlendowski came. I spoke to him sternly and with dignity. I told him that in order to help a man who had summoned me, I must have guarantees; I must have a deed legally drawn, and a deposit of the wood-cuts which are to illustrate "Les Petites Misères;" and on that condition I was willing to renew his notes for three thousand eight hundred francs. The man took my arm, in the Polish fashion, and kissed it humbly. In this way I shall be secured if he fails, and A. de B... consents to keep the wood-cuts. See what difficulties and worries! We have an appointment for to-morrow, and I must now go to M. Gavault and consult on this deed of guaranty. I dine with Émile de Girardin, who wants to know if "Les Petites Misères" is _publishable_.

November 27.

I have no news of my purchases at Amsterdam. But, on the other hand, I found on my return a letter from a ship-owner in Havre, asking for an interview. I wrote to M. Periollas, asking him to inquire about my cases, and also about the ship-owner. I have just received his answer; he says he knows nothing about the cases, but that the ship-owner is building a ship which he wants to call "Le Balzac;" and Periollas asks me to write a pretty letter to the ship-owner because he adores me. So, dear countess, your servitor will be carved on the prow of a vessel and show his fat face to all the nations; what do you say to that?

I have just heard strange, sad news,--Harel is mad, and Karr also. I prefer not to believe it.

November 28.

I have received a letter from Lirette inviting me to the ceremony of her taking the vows and veil. This letter has prevented me from sending my packet to you by the boat of December 1, for I want you to know of this at once; but it really hurts me to think what anxiety the delay may cause you.

I assure you that my life here is no longer endurable. I live in a whirlwind of errands, business, consultations, legal notices, corrections, which deprive me of all reflection, pressed as I am on all sides, with not a soul to help me, doing all myself. Yesterday I worked seven hours on "Les Petites Misères" ... Is it written above that, until the end, I shall be harried and driven like a college drudge?

PASSY, December 3, 1845.

I could not write to you yesterday; I had very pressing proofs for the "Presse" (which wants the whole of "Les Petites Misères" at once), and also for LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE. So that having risen at half-past two in the morning, I worked till midday. I had scarcely time to breakfast and reach the convent at one o'clock.

These good sisters really think that the world turns for them alone. I asked the portress how long the ceremony would last; she replied, "An hour." So I thought to myself: I can see Lirette after it and get back in time for my business at the printing-office. Well, it lasted till four o'clock! Then I had, in decency, to see the poor girl; and I did not get away till half-past five. But I don't blame Lirette; it was right that her dear countess and her Anna should be represented at the burial of their friend; so I went through it bravely. I had a fine place beside the officiating priest. The sermon lasted nearly an hour; it was well-written and well-delivered; not strong, but full of faith. The officiating priest went to sleep (he was an old man). Lirette never stirred. She was on her knees between two postulants. The little girls were ranged on one side of the choir, the Chapter on the other, behind the grating, which was made transparent for the occasion. Lirette, together with the postulants, listened to the exhortation-sermon on her knees and did not raise her eyes. Her face was white, pure, and stamped with the enthusiasm of a saint. As I had never seen the ceremony of taking the veil, I watched, observed, and studied everything with a deep attention which made them take me, I have no doubt, for a very pious man. On arriving, I prayed for you and for your children fervently; for each time that I see an altar I take my flight to God and humbly and ardently dare to ask his goodness for me and mine--who are you and yours. The chapel, with its white and gold altar, was a very pretty one; it belongs to the Order of the Visitation of Gresset. The ceremony was imposing and very dramatic. I felt deeply moved when the three new sisters threw themselves on the ground, and were buried beneath a mortuary pall while prayers for the dead were recited over those living creatures, and when, after that, we saw them rise and appear as brides, crowned with white roses, to make their vows of espousal to Jesus Christ.

An incident occurred. The youngest of the sisters, pretty as a dream of love, was so agitated that when it came to pronouncing the vows she was forced to stop short, precisely at the vow of chastity. It lasted thirty seconds at most; but it was awful; there seemed to be uncertainty. For my part, I admit that I was shaken to the depths of my soul; the emotion I felt was too great for an unknown cause. The poor little thing soon came to herself, and the ceremony went on without further hindrance.

When one has seen the taking of the veil in France, one feels a pity for writers who talk of forced vows. Nothing can be more free. If a young girl were constrained what prevents her from stopping everything? The world is there as spectator, and the officiating priest asks twice if she has fully reflected on the vows she desires to take. I saw Lirette after the ceremony; she was gay as a lark. "You are now Madame," I said, laughing. She replied she was so happy she asked God continually to make us all priests and nuns! We ended by talking seriously of you and your dear child.

Dear countess, I hope you will find here a proof of my affection, for I was overwhelmed with work and business. But Lirette had written, "I am sure that nothing will prevent you from being present." I knew too well the meaning she attached to that not to determine it should be fulfilled. I was happy there, for I thought exclusively of you, after I had made my prayers. To think of you who are my religion and my life, is to think of God. I feel but too well that if your glorious friendship failed me I should lose consciousness of myself, I should become insane, or die.

December 4, 1845.

To-morrow I am going to see, in the rue des Petits-Hôtels, Place Lafayette (you know), a little house that is there for sale. It is close beside that church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, the Byzantine church we went to see, and where a funeral was going on. You said, looking at the vacant ground near the church which I pointed out to you: "I should not be unwilling to live here; we should be near God, and far from the world." From what I am told I think I could buy the house and might even do so without consulting you; it would be firing on the fly at a pheasant. My next letter will tell you if it is done. The rue des Petits-Hôtels joins the rue d'Hauteville (which goes down to the boulevard near the Gymnase), and, by the rue Montholon, it intersects the rue Saint-Lazare and the rue de la Pépinière. It is in the centre of that part of Paris which is called the right bank, and will always be the region of the boulevards and theatres. It is also the upper banking quarter.

My letter must go to-morrow if I want the "Tancrède" to take it. "Les Petites Misères de la Vie conjugale" is finished. To-morrow I begin the last folio (sixteen pages) that remains to do on LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE; then all will have been delivered to Chlendowski. I expect to finish the novel for Souverain by the 20th or 25th of December. Then I need three months for the seven volumes of "Les Paysans;" that will bring me to March 15. My mother's affairs will take some time, as well as the clearing up of my liquidation accounts. I do wish, you see, not to leave any business behind me in quitting Paris for perhaps eighteen months; and when I return it must be to my own home. I have promised you that, and I will no longer deceive myself by thinking that I can do the impossible.

T see with grief that I shall, apparently, have to sacrifice Florence and Rome to the work and the business that will secure, as you say, the repose and safely of my future. To spend immense sums in going to see you for only eight days, and returning to find suits and worries of all kinds is senseless! I must have, as you say, the courage to spare myself these mistaken calculations and these bootless sorrows. I shall try to go to Rome for Holy Week, for I shall then be so weary I shall need some distraction; but if by sacrificing that happiness I should obtain your _satisfecit_ and what you call a "position worthy of me," I should not hesitate. Will you, at last, approve of me a little? Tell me so, then, for I have great need of being sustained by you in my hard and cruel resolutions. Don't you see, nothing is ever done in the time I assign for things. If LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE is not finished by December 25, I cannot have the money for it before January 15, 1846, and if I do not get it till then, my payments are delayed that time. So with "Les Paysans;" I shall not be paid till March. Money rules me absolutely when it is a question of paying creditors. Well, between now and a month hence all will be done. But if you only knew the steps, the tramps! Creditors for three hundred francs cost as much search and verification as those for thirty thousand--it is a labyrinth, a hydra!

Adieu, dear distant star, yet always present; soft and celestial light, without which all would be darkness within me and without me. Oh! I entreat you, take care of yourself. I am not too anxious about your little illness; it is only an effect of the climate; they told me that on the ship, and strong constitutions are often the most tried. But I tell you and I repeat it to you: take care of yourself. Remember that you are the glory and honour and sole treasure of a poor being who loves you exclusively, who thinks of you only, whose acts, as well as his thoughts and dreams, are emanations from that moral sun of affection which is his whole soul in its relation to you. Bless you a thousand times for your punctuality in writing! Tell me everything; all that happens to you, with every possible detail; nothing is insignificant to me if it concerns you. Do as I do. Among all the great worries of my life, as troubled as yours is calm and serene, I do not a pass a day without writing you a line, as a merchant makes up his day book. Well, a few more efforts, and a little patience, and I hope to have conquered the right to never leave you again.

PASSY, December 13, 1845.

Dear countess; I am overcome by the same nostalgia which I felt before I went to Chalon. It is excessively difficult for me to write; my thought is not free; it no longer belongs to me. I believe that I cannot recover my faculties under eighteen months, perhaps. You must resign yourself to endure me beside you. Since Dresden I have done no great thing. The beginning of "Les Paysans" and the end of "Béatrix" were my last efforts; since then, nothing has been possible to me. Yesterday, during the whole day, I felt a sombre and dreadful gloom within me.

Yet I must finish the six folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE. Furne has come. He has excellent intentions. On my side, I _must_ complete this undertaking, which is all my future. But the heart is as absolute as the brain, it is indifferent to whatever is not itself; millions to win, a fortune of fame and self-love satisfied is nothing to the heart.

Your letter describes to me a similar state with much truth and eloquence. That letter, in which pain is more contagious than the plague, and over which I wept your tears, shuddering to find there what I felt myself, that letter has filled the measure of my inward and hidden malady. Nothing but my interests can drag me out of the deep despondency that has now laid hold upon me. Paris is a dreadful desert; nothing gives me pleasure, nothing contents me; I am under the empire of some passionate invading force without analogy in my life. I compare the twenty-four towns we saw together with one another; I try to recall your observations, your ideas, your advice; motion fatigues me, rest depresses me. I get up, I walk, but my body is absent, I see it, I feel it; at times, as I tell you, this is madness. It is very probable that if my six folios of LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE were finished I could go to Naples; and that thought is the only means of making me do them. What could I not obtain from myself under the hope of that immense joy, were it only for one week? I tell myself there are a thousand reasons why I ought to see you, consult you; that I can do nothing without you. In short my mind is the accomplice of my heart and will.

Meantime, awaiting the result, I make no complaint, I am dull and gloomy; I am like a Breton conscript, regretting his dear scones and his Bretagne. All that is not you was once without interest to me, now it is odious.

December 14.

Yesterday, dear countess, I went to see, in detail, the Conciergerie, and I saw the queen's dungeon and that of Madame Elisabeth. It is all dreadful. I saw everything thoroughly; it took the whole morning, and I had no time to go to the rue Dauphine to do Georges' commissions. When I went back towards the court of assizes I heard that the trial then going on was that of Madame Colomès, niece of Maréchal Sebastiani, a woman forty-five years of age whom I wished to see. And I found, seated on the prisoner's bench of the court of assizes, the living image of Madame de Berny! It was awful. She was madly in love with a young man, and to give him money, which he spent on actresses of the Porte-Saint-Martin, she forged indorsements in negotiating the notes of imaginary persons. She took everything on herself (he has taken to flight), and would not allow her lawyer to charge the blame to him.

I had never heard a case pleaded in court and I stayed to hear Crémieux, who spoke well, _ma foi_! The unhappy creature, in order to get money to give the young man, had abandoned herself to usurers, to old men! Crémieux told me that she said to her lover: "I only ask you to deceive me enough to let me fancy I am loved." She is the daughter of a brother of the maréchal, and the wife of the engineer-in-chief of Bridges and Highways, and a deputy. I was so deeply interested in finding a novel seated on that bench, that I stayed till half-past four o'clock beside the poor creature, who has been very handsome and who wept like a Magdalen; every now and then I heard her sigh out, "Aie! aie! aie!" in three heart-rending tones.

M. Lebel, governor of the Conciergerie, who has locked the door on every sort of crime for the last fifteen years, is, they tell me, the grandson of the Lebel who opened the doors of Louis XV. to the beauties of the Parc-aux-cerfs. These vicissitudes, these striking analogies, occur in obscure families as in the most august. The heir of the original Lebel, the successor of him of royal pomps, had nothing to leave on going to his death but a worn-out cravat and an old prayer-book. When you come to Paris I must certainly show you the Palais; it is curious and thrilling and completely unknown. Now I can do my work ["La Dernière Incarnation de Vautrin"].

On my return home, I found I had missed Captier, Claret's friend. This is a pity; I should have liked to talk with him about a purchase I have in view. There is a chance of buying a bit of ground in the rue Jean-Goujon in the best condition. It is only a stone's throw from the Place de la Concorde.

Yesterday I found some distraction of my nostalgic misery in the Conciergerie, and the court of assizes, and to-day I plunge into work vehemently.

Ah! I must have my house between two gardens, without disagreeable neighbourhood. And I will have a little greenhouse at the back of it--But I must leave you, I must work. You do not know that I am silently collecting very splendid art furniture by dint of researches and tramps about Paris, economy, and privations. I don't wish to speak to you of this; I shall not unmask my batteries until my dream takes, more and more, the semblance of reality.

December 15.

I am now launched into work. This night I have done six pages of the six folios I have to do; and I assure you--I, who know myself--that that is a great deal. I shall try this week to finish LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE.