Part 55

Yesterday, after finishing my work, I went to see my sister, on a letter she had written me saying that her eldest daughter was dying. Sophie had really nothing more than a slight congestion of the head, which cooling drinks relieved. I heard from Laure that a M. Bleuart was on the point of ruin from having bought up the _quartier_ Beaujon, and that several of the houses were for sale. I hurried there. There are, indeed, houses and vacant ground; but of all those houses there is but one that is anything like finished, and that one is immense; nine windows on the front. I am going there on Wednesday with a friend of Claret and a young man who is in the secret of M. Bleuart's affairs. You see I bestir myself to find a really good thing, and repair in some degree the disaster of Les Jardies; but the important thing of all is to work. I met my old landlord of the rue des Batailles, and he told me that ground in the rue Jean-Goujon was selling for nothing, and I ought to make haste to buy at present prices.

On returning from Beaujon yesterday, I went to pay a visit of half an hour to Madame de Girardin. Returning at six o'clock, I dined and was asleep by seven. In examining my resources, I think I can do without what you know of (the Dresden affair); it is, I have reflected, so difficult to write, receive, and send papers of that kind that I shall try to wait, and place the matter as a last result in its time and place. I am so in the habit when I write to you of thinking aloud, calculating, and recalculating, that you see and know all my hesitations, my backings-down, my additions, etc. You are always and in all things my sole thought; it is you, and you know it well, who are the foundation of everything. If I had the strength this night to apply myself to six folios it was because I want to go from Naples to Rome with you, and for that I shall try to leave here January 11. I want to install you in Rome, as I installed you in Naples. Madame de Girardin calls me _il vetturino per amore_.

Adieu for to-day. How are you? Do you amuse yourself sometimes? Does Georges take good care of both of you? If anything happens to you under his auspices I will crush his box of insects on the boat. I bless you every day of my life, and I thank God for your good affection. You are my happiness, as you are my fame and my future. Do you sometimes remember that morning at Valence on the bank of the Rhône, when our gentle talk triumphed over your neuralgia as we walked for two hours in the dawn, both ill, yet without perceiving the cold or our own sufferings? Believe me, such memories, which are wholly of the soul, are as powerful as the material recollections of others; for in you the soul is more beautiful than the corporeal beauties for which the sons of Adam destroy themselves.

Adieu till to-morrow, gentle and spiritual power, who hold subjected to your laws your poor and fervent servitor.

December 16.

I received yesterday at four o'clock your number 4. I see that you are still uneasy; but you have not thought of one thing, which is that you began to write to me while I was travelling, and it requires time to establish our regular correspondence. Thus to-day, December 16, I have received four letters from you; well, you, between now and December 30, will have received four letters from me. What is the difference?--fourteen days. But those fourteen days were five at sea, three at Marseille, three in a mail-cart, and the first week in Paris, during which I wrote to you from here. I calculate that you have to-day received my packet by the "Tancrède." That was my number 2; on the 24th you will get my number 3, sent by Anselme de Rothschild; and this will reach you on the 30th, because it will leave here on the 21st. So, dear countess, in spite of the uneasiness which this early failure of the superior force has caused you, you see I am not in fault; I have written to you every day,--too much, in fact, for I have done nothing but think of you, and I have written too little for _posterity_; and not to write retards my liberation.

_Mon Dieu_, how your letters make me live! I have an idolatry for those dear papers; I am like a child about them; your punctuality delights me. Never think that I mistake the value of such goodness on your part. I entreat you, take care of yourself; those pains in your stomach worry me. Mine have disappeared, or at least I seldom suffer from them. What is deplorable is that work fatigues me, the symptoms that happiness and the journeys of this year drove away are returning. My eyes throb, the temples also, and I feel weary. I have had to buy a candelabrum for five candles; three were no longer enough, my eyes pained me. So that ugly little candlestick of tarnished gilt, which you must have noticed in my study, is now replaced by a ministerial candelabrum of unheard-of magnificence in bronze, chased and gilt; but it burns one franc fifty centimes' worth of wax-candles every night; do you hear that, madame? Now, two francs for fire, and fifty centimes of coffee besides, make four francs a night. The Arabian Nights cost dear.

Dear countess, I can give Lirette her capital without any difficulty. Tell me how much you intend for her, and I will pay it to her at once. I will go to the convent and settle it with her. I shall be quite content to receive it back in May. Why give yourself the trouble of sending money here. Let me be, for once at least, your business agent.

I have not yet obtained your fantastic set of jewels; but I shall have them soon. Froment-Meurice desires to distinguish himself on Georges' cane, and I don't know whether it will be done by New Year's day. He is a great artist. I assure you it is quite alarming to see how much talent and genius there are in Paris.

I am so cautious about all that concerns you that I shall not risk sending this letter on the 17th; for the boat leaves on the 21st, and at this season the mail-cart might be delayed; therefore I prefer to put my letter in the post to-day, 16th. So I cannot tell you anything about the Bleuart houses; but you shall know all by the letter leaving January 1; you will know also whether I can take the steamboat that starts on the 11th. Do not insist, I entreat you, on forbidding it. In the first place I warn you that, not only you will not be listened to, but I shall be very happy in disobeying you. That means nothing, however, for the greatest happiness must always consist, for me, in the most complete submission to your sovereign will, ever and everywhere. But, I repeat, you alone will be responsible if you persist.

I still have no news of my purchases at Amsterdam; those are furniture griefs. I have just heard of a great misfortune; the beautiful Madame Delaroche, daughter of Horace Vernet, is dead.

Well, _à bientôt_. Consent with a good grace, because you will gain nothing by refusing. Do you not think it may be the food at the Hotel Vittoria which gives you those pains in your stomach?

PASSY, December 17, 1845.[1]

[Footnote 1: To Madame Hanska, at Naples.]

Dear countess; my ability to work only lasted two days. I am again seized by _spleen_, complicated with nostalgia, or, if you like, by an ennui I never felt before. Yes, this is _true ennui_; nothing amuses me, nothing distracts me, nothing enlivens me; it is a death of the soul, a death of the will, the collapse of the whole being. I feel that I cannot take up my work until I see my life decided, fixed, settled. LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE--I no longer care for it; I will let Chlendowski sue me for the folios that are lacking; I cannot think for the six that are to finish the sixteen volumes. More than that, to-morrow I was to go and see a house of which they tell me marvels; and that scarcely interests me. I am exhausted. I have waited too long; I have hoped too much; I have been too happy this last year; and I can wish no longer. To have been, after so many years of toil and misfortune, free as a bird of the air, a thoughtless traveller, superhumanly happy, and then to come back to a dungeon! Is that possible? I dream, I dream by day, by night; and my heart's thought, returning upon itself, prevents all action of the brain thought--it is fearful! I have sent for "Les Mystères de Londres," which you told me had amused you; I will read it to escape myself.

December 18.

Yesterday I read "Les Mystères de Londres" from two o'clock in the afternoon till midnight; I read the book through. It is a little better than Sue or Dumas; but not good; it made me feverish.

This morning Captier came for me; and I have returned with a bad cold from the Beaujon _quartier_. It was raining in torrents; we stood with our feet in the mud and our shoulders wet for three hours, and I was seized with a sore throat which has almost extinguished my voice. The house we went to see is held at two hundred thousand francs and we offered eighty thousand. It is large and handsome; with nine windows front, two storeys, a magnificent ground-floor, and ill-arranged first floor which would have to be entirely remodelled. There would be twenty thousand francs, at least, to spend upon it. Besides which, it has an insolent air; it looks like a great restaurant, and the sacrifices made to the outside are immense inconveniences; for instance, you enter it from a portico which would require a vast awning over it. Another thing: the land in the rue Jean-Goujon is impossible; they ask twenty-five thousand francs for it. There is no ground in Paris for a hundred francs the metre; and there are nearly four metres in a fathom. You can judge if the Monceau land is a good bargain. I shall keep where I am, and not hasten anything; I think that is wisest.

December 20.

A terrible misfortune has happened. The Doubs has overflowed: the water is higher than in any former flood; the bridge my brother-in-law was building has been swept away. I am now going to see my sister.--

I found at Laure's a very concise letter from the doctor of the "Leonidas" telling me he had seen you in Naples. The letter only reached me to-day and he says that he leaves on the 21st. He asks for an answer, which I have sent in four words, but I do not know whether he will receive it. My depression still continues. I am reading "Les Trois Mousquetaires," and I suffer from my cold.

I found desolation at my sister's home; her daughter is ill; I stayed there all day trying to brighten them up. Can you conceive that my brother-in-law, having two bridges to build this year, should have gone to Spain with M. de P..., a man who, as I suppose, is looking for fortune on the hope of building a railroad in Spain. My sister owned that it was she who induced her husband to make this journey; and the luckless man writes to her that Spain has cost him dear, for if he had himself superintended the building of the Doubs bridge it would have been finished and delivered; in which case the disaster from natural forces would have fallen on the government.

The contracts for the Chemin de fer du Nord are given out to-day; if Rothschild awards them, the shares of that railway will certainly rise.

Adieu for to-day. I re-plunge into "Les Trois Mousquetaires," for life without work is intolerable, and I continue to think of you with a persistence that alarms me. I remain, stupid, in one place; and I don't know what would happen to me if I flung myself into work desperately. I have not a thought that is not for you; I have no will other than to go where you are; I am, as it were, driven by that desire; and, nailed to this spot by necessity, I remain motionless with grief. It is impossible for me to forget; I pass whole hours with my eyes fixed on that table-cloth embroidered by your dear little white-mouse paws; in gazing at its squares, red, green, and its striped lines, thinking of you, and recalling the infinitely trifling details of that journey--No, instead of scolding me, have pity on me, for I am truly too unhappy. I implore work, and it refuses me inspiration. I hope, nevertheless, that this may not last always, and that one of these days will see me seriously at my table for the service, if not the profit, of his Majesty the Public.

December 21.

I have read "Les Trois Mousquetaires" and that was all I did yesterday. I went to bed at seven o'clock, and I have now got up at four in the morning. I am better in mind; I have a real desire to work; and that desire seems to me of good augury. Besides, it _must_ be done; all things urge me to it,--the money to earn, the obligations to fulfil, liberty, and the possibility of seeing you the sooner. Can you imagine, dear star of my life, that money says nothing to me now? No, truly, it does not stir me. There is no longer in my soul any vestige of ambition, any desire for fortune; porcelains, pictures, all those things of luxury that I have loved, I am now indifferent to. Oh! what a tyrant is a sentiment like mine! how all things disappear before it!

I can understand, dear countess, why you were shocked at "Les Mousquetaires," you so well-informed, knowing, above all, the history of France, not only from the historical point of view, but even to the smallest details of the cabinet of the kings and the private dinners of the queens. One is certainly sorry to have read this book, if only from disgust with one's self for having wasted one's time,--the precious stuff of which life is made. It is not so that we reach the last page of a novel of Walter Scott; this is not the sentiment with which we leave him; we re-read Scott, but I do not think we shall re-read Dumas. He is a charming narrator; but he ought to renounce history, or else study it, and know it better.

On opening my window on the street side this morning I had a giddiness, and I still have the blood in my head. I shall take a foot bath and it will pass away. Besides, if I work, the equilibrium will be re-established, and I am going to work. Oh! if you only knew what respect I feel for myself, knowing that a being so perfect, a woman so accomplished takes interest in my existence. For a year past I have no memory except for her; for two weeks now I think of nothing but of how to return to her. I arrange the crumbs of my feast, I absorb myself in the recollection of nothings which turn into poems.

Did you know that Schwab was in Paris? He came to see me this morning, and--would you believe it?--I saw Schwab with delight, for Schwab is the Hague. Do you remember a certain walk we took to the Chinese bazaar, behind the children? No, never did two souls give themselves to each other with more poesy, more charm! These recollections are to me so many suns, shining on the Spitzberg; they make me live; I live by them alone. There are things in the past (the past that is yours) that give me the effect of a gigantic flower--which shall I say?--a magnolia, moving, walking, one of those dreams of youth, too poetic, too beautiful to be ever realized--

Forgive me! I have been sitting here stupefied; I have wept like a child,--I am so unhappy to be at Passy when you are at Naples! I have let myself go, I have let myself write to you in this letter that which I dream at all hours, and in thought it is less dangerous than formulated. In thought it is the gossamer thread athwart the azure; here, upon this paper, it is an iron cable which wrings and presses me till the blood gushes out in tears of despair.

Adieu for to-day; if I listened to myself I should write you till to-morrow. I am beside myself with regret and pain; I implore my work to keep me sane.

December 22.

I dined yesterday with Madame de Girardin, and heard excellent music from Mademoiselle Delarue. She is the daughter of a worthy old man whom you knew in Vienna. Gautier, who was there, made me promise to go and take haschisch with him to-night at the Hôtel Pimodan. I must now go out on all sorts of tiresome business.

December 23.

I resisted the haschisch; that is, I did not experience any of the phenomena they talked of. My brain is so solid that it needed, perhaps, a stronger dose. Nevertheless I did hear celestial voices and saw divine pictures; after which I descended Lauzun's staircase during twenty years. I saw gildings and paintings in a salon of fairy-like splendour. But this morning, since waking, I am half asleep, and without strength or will.[1]

[Footnote 1: Théophile Gautier has related this evening in his essay on Baudelaire, in the "Portraits et Souvenirs littéraires."]

December 25.

Yesterday I slept the whole day, and to-morrow I am going to Rouen to see some ebony panels which, I am told, can be had for nothing. This morning M. Captier is coming for me to see some land in the rue du Rocher. It is impossible to get that Dujarier legacy paid. I have lost a whole day rushing about on that business and attained nothing. I still cannot work.

December 27.

I started yesterday from Passy at six in the morning; at seven I was on the railroad and at eleven I was at Rouen. It is the route I took with you and Anna. Is not that telling you that I thought the whole way of you two? I transported myself back in thought to that day when we saw Rouen; it was a fête I gave myself. I was happy, oh! very happy! I saw the treacherous confectioner, and I recalled my atrocious sufferings when I thought myself poisoned between Rouen and Mantes. Ah! how kind you were! then, as always, my guardian angel and beneficent star.

I found at Rouen the relics of a regal piece of furniture which I bought for eighty francs. That is doing business! True, it will cost a good deal to repair and arrange it; that frightens me, but I shall give it to a cabinet-maker, and then my remorse will be complete.

Another result, not quite so satisfactory; as I had eaten nothing all day, I came back with a dreadful headache.

December 28.

I have just returned from the post-office; no letters from Naples. I begin to be very uneasy, for I ought to have one of the 18th, which is the day the steamboat sailed; allowing six days for navigation and three days from Marseille here, that is nine days. I have just seen an advertisement of a house in the rue du Montparnasse; they ask ninety thousand francs for it, with costs that would make it a hundred thousand. I will go and see it; it is in the Luxembourg quarter.

I must bid you adieu; each time I close a letter and take it to the post I seem to be going myself to meet you. Ah! _à propos_, do not let us calumniate any one. The Duc de S... died from other causes than those you think. It is a curious history, which I will tell you some day. He was going to be married, and when he saw that his bride would never be anything but his bride, less philosophical than Louis XVIII., he blew out his brains.

M. Captier has brought me the plan of a house; to cost from forty to fifty thousand francs; with land costing fifty thousand, that would be a hundred thousand; but I cling to the hope of finding a house all complete for that money. I shall wait.

My incapacity for work makes me very unhappy. On Wednesday, the last day of the year, I dine with Madame de Girardin, in order to take measures with Nestor Roqueplan for the Variétés. I shall then begin to work seriously at "Richard Cœur-d'Éponge." I tell you this that you may know what I am doing or expect to do. You will receive this letter on your first of January, which is our 6th, your anniversary. God grant that in this coming year of 1846 we may never be parted for a moment; that you will lay down the burden of your responsibilities, and will have no others. Those are my ostensible prayers; there is another that I keep for myself alone. I end this year loving you more than ever; blessing you for all the immense consolations that I owe to you, which even now are life to me. At moments I think myself ungrateful when I recall this year of 1845, and I say to myself that I have only to remember in order to be happy. What I have in my heart, that is my haschisch! I need only retire there to be in heaven.

Dear star, luminous, yet ever, alas! so distant, above all never be discouraged; hope, have faith in your fervent servitor; believe that when you read these lines I shall again be working, sending off my sheets of "copy," and that I shall soon be free to go to you; if, indeed, you do not forbid it too rigorously. But no, you could not have the courage, knowing me so unhappy, to refuse me the only consolation that enables me to bear my life.

IX.

LETTERS DURING 1846.[1]

[Footnote 1: Concerning the letters of this year, see Appendix.--TR.]

PASSY, January 1, 1846. One year more, dear, and I take it with pleasure; for these years, these thirteen years which will be consummated in February on the happy day, a thousand times blessed, when I received that adorable letter starred with happiness and hope, seem to me links indestructible, eternal. The fourteenth will begin in two months; and all the days of these years have added to my admiration, to my attachment, to my fidelity, like that of a dog.

I have a very Grandet mind, I assure you. A few days more, and if the King of Holland were to offer me sixty thousand francs for my Florentine furniture, he could not have it! It is still more so in matters of the heart. I shall have proved it to you fourteen years from now, when you have seen me forgetting nothing of all my happinesses, great or small.

January 4.

O dear countess, I received this morning, at half-past eight o'clock, the letter of your dear child with the portrait of Leonidas; decidedly, I shall have an "Album Gringalet." I do not understand why on the 22nd you had not received my letter of the 3rd, sent from Rothschild's counting-room. When this letter leaves it will be the seventh on its way to you. I have never failed to tell you day by day what happens to me; and you will see on your return that I have written the oftenest. I am going to see your dear Lirette; for I do not wish to forget that I am a substitute for both of you, mother and daughter, towards her; moreover, I want to know at what periods she wishes to receive the sum you have given me for her.

I dined, as I told you I should in my last letter, with Nestor Roqueplan, on the last day of the year, at the illustrious Delphine's. We laughed as much as I am capable of laughing without you and far away from you. Delphine is really a queen of conversation; "that evening she was particularly sublime, sparkling, ravishing. Gautier was there also; I came away after a long talk with him; he had been assured there was no hurry about "Richard Cœur-d'Éponge," the theatre having more than enough on hand. Gautier and I may make our play together later. Such was the result of this dinner, the history of which is your due. Returning home, I met two or three bores, who tired me much. You will not believe that, for you seem ignorant that I like to have no one but you, and to see none but you in the world. But, dear countess, the sad thing is, that I cannot write a line, and I groan--

January 5, midnight.

Here is a strange thing! I received this morning your long letter, one day later than that of your daughter; this is a mystery, for both came from Marseille.