I — Letters During 1833 — Letters to Madame Hanska by Honoré de Balzac

I Letters During 1833

To Madame Hanska.

Paris, January, 1833.

Madame,—I entreat you to completely separate the author from the man, and to believe in the sincerity of the sentiments which I have vaguely expressed in the correspondence you have obliged me to hold with you. In spite of the perpetual caution which some friends give me against certain letters like those which I have had the honour to receive from you, I have been keenly touched by a tone that levity cannot counterfeit. If you will deign to excuse the folly of a young heart and a wholly virgin imagination, I will own that you have been to me the object of the sweetest dreams; in spite of my hard work I have found myself more than once galloping through space to hover above the unknown country where you, also unknown, live alone of your race. I have taken pleasure in comprehending you among the remains almost always unfortunate of a dispersed people, a people scattered thinly over the earth, exiled perhaps from heaven, but of whom each being has language and sentiments to him peculiar and unlike those of other men,—delicacy, choiceness of soul, chasteness of feeling, tenderness of heart, purer, sweeter, gentler than in the best of other created beings. There is something saintly in even their enthusiasms, and calm in their ardour. These poor exiles have all, in their voices, their words, their ideas, something, I know not what, which distinguishes them from others, which serves to bind them to one another in spite of distance, lands, and language; a word, a phrase, the very sentiment exhaled in a look are like a rallying call which they obey; and, compatriots of a hidden land whose charms are reproduced in their memories, they recognize and love one another in the name of that country toward which they stretch their arms. Poesy, music, and religion are their three divinities, their favourite loves; and all these passions awake in their hearts sensations that are equally powerful.

I have clothed you with all these ideas. I have held out to you my hand, fraternally, from afar, without conceit, without affectation, but with a confidence that is almost domestic, with sincerity; and could you have seen my glance you would have recognized within it both the gratitude of a lover and the religions of the heart,—the pure tenderness that binds the son to a mother, the brother to a sister, the respect of a young man for woman, and the delightful hopes of a long and fervent friendship.

’T was an episode wholly romantic; but who will dare to blame the romantic? It is only frigid souls who cannot conceive all there is of vast in the emotions to which the unknown gives full scope. The less we are restrained by reality, the higher is the flight of the soul. I have therefore let myself gently float upon my reveries, and they are ravishing. So, if a star darts from your candle, if your ear should catch a distant murmur, if you see figures in the fire, if something sparkles or speaks beside you, near you, believe that my spirit is wandering among your panels.

Amid the battle I am fighting, amid my heavy toil, my endless studies, in this agitated Paris, where politics and literature absorb some sixteen or eighteen hours of the twenty-four, to me, an unfortunate man, widely different from the author that people imagine, come charming hours which I owe to you. So, in order to thank you, I dedicated to you the fourth volume of the “Scènes de la Vie privée,” putting your seal at the head of the last “Scene,” which I was writing at the moment when I received your first letter. But a person who is a mother for me, and whose caprices and even jealousy I am bound to respect, exacted that this silent testimony of secret sentiments should be suppressed. I have the sincerity to avow to you both the dedication and its destruction, because I believe you have a soul sufficiently lofty not to desire a homage which would cause grief to a person as noble and grand as she whose child I am, for she preserved me in the midst of griefs and shipwreck where in my youth I nearly perished. I live by the heart only, and she made me live! I have saved the only copy of that dedication for which I was blamed as if it were a horrible coquetry; keep it, madame, as a souvenir and by way of thanks. When you read the book say to yourself that in concluding it and revising it I thought of you and of the compositions which you have preferred to all the others. Perhaps what I am doing is wrong; but the purity of my intentions must absolve me.1

Lay the things that shock you in my works, madame, to the account of that necessity which forces us to strike powerfully a blasé public. Having undertaken, rashly no doubt, to represent the whole of literature by the whole of my works; wishing to erect a monument more durable from the mass and the amassing of materials than from the beauty of the edifice, I am obliged to represent everything, that I may not be accused of want of power. But if you knew me personally, if my solitary life, my days of study, privation, and toil were told to you, you would lay aside some of your accusations and perceive more than one antithesis between the man and his writings. Certainly there are some works in which I like to be myself; but you can guess them; they are those in which the heart speaks out. My fate is to paint the happiness that others feel; to desire it in perfection, but never to meet it. None but those who suffer can paint joy, because we express better that which we conceive than that we have experienced.

See to what this confidence has drawn me! But, thinking of all the countries that lie between us, I dare not be brief. Besides, events are so gloomy around my friends and myself! Civilization is threatened; arts, sciences, and progress are threatened. I myself, the organ of a vanquished party representing all noble and religious ideas, I am already the object of lively hatred. The more that is hoped from my voice, the more it is feared. And under these circumstances, when a man is thirty years old and has not worn out his life or his heart, with what passion he grasps a friendly word, a tender speech!...

Perhaps you will never receive anything from me again, and the friendship you have created may be like a flower perishing unknown in the depths of a wood by a stroke of lightning. Know, at least, that it was true, and sincere; you are, in a young and stainless heart, what every woman must desire to be—respected and adored. Have you not shed a perfume on my hours? Do I not owe to you one of those encouragements which make us accept hard toil, the drop of water in the desert?

If events respect me, and in spite of excursions to which my life as poet and artist condemn me, you can, madame, address your letters “Rue Cassini, No. 1, near the Observatory”—unless indeed I have had the misfortune to displease you by this candid expression of the feelings I have for you.

Accept, madame, my respectful homage.

Paris, end of January, 1833.

Pardon me the delay of my answer. I returned to Paris only in December last, and I found your letter in Paris awaiting me. But once here, I was sharply seized by crushing toil and violent sorrows.1 I must be silent as to the sorrows and the toil. None but God and myself will ever know the dreadful energy a heart requires to be full of tears repressed, and yet suffice for literary labours. To spend one’s soul in melancholy, and yet to occupy it ever with fictitious joys and sorrows! To write cold dramas, and keep within us a drama that burns both heart and brain! But let us leave all this. I am alone; I am now shut up at home for a long time, possibly a year. I have already endured these voluntary incarcerations in the name of science and of poverty; to-day, troubles are my jailers.

I have more than once turned my thought to you. But I must still be silent; these are follies. I have one regret; it is to have boasted to you of “Louis Lambert,” the saddest of all abortions. I have just employed nearly three months in remaking that book, and it is now appearing in a little 18mo volume, of which there is a special copy for you; it will await your orders and shall be given, with the Chénier, to the person who calls for them; or they shall be sent wherever you write to me to forward them.

This work is still incomplete, though it bears this time the pompous title of “Histoire Intellectuelle de Louis Lambert.” When this edition is exhausted, I will publish another “Louis Lambert” more complete.

I tell you naïvely all that you want to know about me. I am still waiting for you to speak to me with equal confidence. You are afraid of ridicule? And of whose? That of a poor child, victim yesterday and victim to-morrow of his feminine bashfulness, his shyness, his beliefs. You have asked me with distrust to give an explanation of my two handwritings; but I have as many handwritings as there are days in the year, without being on that account the least in the world versatile. This mobility comes from an imagination which can conceive all and yet remain virgin, like glass which is soiled by none of its reflections. The glass is in my brain. But my heart, my heart is known but to one woman in the world as yet,—the et nunc et semper dilectæ dicatum of the dedication of “Louis Lambert.” Ties eternal and ties broken! Do not blame me. You ask me how we can love, live, and lose each other while still loving. That is a mystery of life of which you know nothing as yet, and I hope you never may know it. In that sad destiny no blame can be attached except to fate; there are two unfortunates, but they are two irreproachable unfortunates. There is no fault to absolve because there is no cause to blame. I cannot add another word.

I am very curious to know if “La Femme abandonnée,” “La Grenadière,” the “Lettre à Nodier” (in which there are enormous typographical errors), the “Voyage à Java,” and “Les Maranas” have pleased you?...

Some days after receiving this letter you will read “Une Fille d’Ève,” who will be the type of the “La Femme abandonnée,” taken between fifteen and twenty years of age.

At this moment I am finishing a work that is quite evangelical, and which seems to me the “Imitation of Jesus Christ” poetized. It bears an epigraph which will tell the disposition of mind I was in when writing the book: To wounded hearts, silence and shade. One must have suffered to understand that line to its full extent; and one must also have suffered as much as I have done to give birth to it in a day of mourning.

I have flung myself into work, as Empedocles into the crater, to stay there. “La Bataille” will come after “Le Médecin de campagne” (the book I have just told you of); and is there not something to shudder at when I tell you that “La Bataille” is an impossible book? In it I undertake to initiate the reader into all the horrors and all the beauties of a battle-field; my battle is Essling, Essling with all its consequences. This book requires that a man, in cold blood, seated in his chair, shall see the country, the lay of the land, the masses of men, the strategic events, the Danube, the bridges; shall behold the details and the whole of the struggle, hear the artillery, pay attention to all the movements on the chess-board; see all, and feel, in each articulation of the great body, Napoleon—whom I shall not show, or shall only allow to be seen, in the evening, crossing the Danube in a boat! Not a woman’s head; cannon, horses, two armies, uniforms. On the first page the cannon roars, and never ceases until the last. You read through smoke, and, the book closed, you have seen it all intuitively; you remember the battle as if you had been present at it.

It is now three months that I have been measuring swords with that work, that ode in two volumes, which persons on all sides tell me is impossible!

I work eighteen hours a day. I have perceived the faults of style which disfigure “La Peau de Chagrin.” I corrected them to make it irreproachable; but after two months’ labour, the volume being reprinted, I discover another hundred faults. Such are the sorrows of a poet.

It is the same thing with “Les Chouans.” I have rewritten that book entirely; but the second edition, which is coming out, has still many spots upon it.

On all sides they shout to me that I do not know how to write; and that is cruel when I have already told myself so, and have consecrated my days to new works, using my nights to perfect the old ones. Like the bears, I am now licking the “Scènes de la Vie privée” and the “Physiologie du Mariage;” after which I shall revise the “Études Philosophiques.”

As all my passions, all my beliefs are defeated, as my dreams are dispersed, I am forced to create myself passions, and I choose that of art. I live in my studies. I wish to do better. I weigh my phrases and my words as a miser weighs his bits of gold. What love I thus waste! What happiness is flung to the winds! My laborious youth, my long studies will not have the sole reward I desired for them. Ever since I have breathed and known what a pure breath coming from pure lips was, I have desired the love of a young and pretty woman; yet all has fled me! A few years more and youth will be a memory! I am eligible to the Chamber under the new law which allows us to be men at thirty years of age, and certainly in a few years the recollections of youth will bring me no joys. And then, what hope that I could obtain at forty that which I have missed at twenty? She who is averse to me, being young, will she be less reluctant then? But you cannot understand these moans,—you, young, solitary, living a country life, far from our Parisian world which excites the passions so violently, and where all is so great and so petty. I ought still to keep these lamentations in the depths of my heart....

You have asked my friendship for a youth; I thought of you yesterday in fulfilling a promise of the same kind and devoting myself to a young man whom I hope to embark upon a fine and noble life. You are right; there is a moment in the life of young men when a friendly heart can be very precious. In the park of Versailles is a statue of “Achilles between Vice and Virtue,” which seems to me a great work, and I have always thought, when looking at it, of that critical moment in human life. Yes, a young man needs a courageous voice to draw him to the life of manhood while allowing him to gather the flowers of passion that bloom along the wayside.

You will not laugh at me, you, who have written to me so noble a page and lines so melancholy, in which I have believed. You are one of those ideal figures to whom I give the right to come at times and nebulously pose amid my flowers, who smile to me between two camellias, waving aside a rosy heather, and to whom I speak.

You fear the dissipations of the winter for me? Alas! all that I know of the impressions I can produce, comes to me in a few letters from kind souls which set me glowing. I never leave my study, filled with books; I am alone, and I listen and wish to listen to no one. I have such pain in uprooting from my heart my hopes! They must be torn out, one by one, root by root, like flax. To renounce Woman!—my sole terrestrial religion!

You wish to know if I ever met Fedora; if she is true. A woman of cold Russia, the Princess Bagration, is supposed in Paris to be the model of her. I have reached the seventieth woman who has the coolness to recognize herself in that character. They are all of ripe age. Even Madame Récamier is willing to fedorize herself. Not a word of all that is true. I made Fedora out of two women whom I have known without ever being intimate with them. Observation sufficed me, and a few confidences.

There are also some kind souls who will have it that I have courted the handsomest of Parisian courtesans and have hid, like Raphael, behind her curtains. These are calumnies. I have met a Fedora; but that one I shall not paint; besides, the “La Peau de chagrin” was published before I knew her.

I must bid you adieu, and what an adieu! This letter may be a month on its way; you will hold it in your hands, but I may never see you,—you whom I caress as an illusion, who are in my dreams like a hope, and who have so graciously embodied my reveries. You do not know what it is to people the solitude of a poet with a gentle figure, the form of which attracts by the very vagueness which the indefinite lends it. A solitary, ardent heart takes eagerly to a chimera when it is real! How many times I have travelled the road that separates us! what delightful romances! and what postal charges do I not spend at my fireside!

Adieu, then; I have given you a whole night, a night which belonged to my legitimate wife, the “Revue de Paris,” that crabbed spouse. Consequently the “Théorie de la Démarche,” which I owed to her must be postponed till the month of March, and no one will know why; you and I alone are in the secret. The article was there before me—a science to elucidate; it was arduous, I was afraid of it. Your letter slipped into my memory, and suddenly I put my feet to the embers, forgot myself in my arm-chair,—and adieu “La Démarche;” behold me galloping towards Poland, and re-reading your letters (I have but three)—and now I answer them. I defy you to read two months hence the “Théorie de la Démarche” without smiling at every sentence; because beneath those senseless foolish phrases there are a thousand thoughts of you.

Adieu. I have so little time that you must absolve me. There are but three persons whose letters I answer. This sounds a little like French conceit, and yet it is really most delicate in the way of modesty. More than that, I meant to tell you that you are almost alone in my heart, grandparents excepted.

Adieu. If my rose-tree were not out of bloom I would send you a petal. If you were less fairy-like, less capricious, less mysterious, I would say “write to me often.”

P. S. The black seal was an accident. I was not at home, and the friend with whom I was staying at Angoulême was in mourning.

Paris, February 24, 1833.

Certainly there is some good genius between us; I dare not say otherwise, for how else can one explain that you should have sent me the “Imitation of Jesus Christ” just when I was working night and day at a book in which I have tried to dramatize the spirit of that work by conforming it to the desires of the civilization of our epoch. How is it that you had the thought to send it to me when I had that of putting its meditative poesy into action, so that across wide space the saintly volume, accompanied by an escort of gentle thoughts, should have come to me as I was casting myself into the delightful fields of a religious idea; coming too, at a moment when, weary and discouraged, I despaired of being able to accomplish this magnificent work of charity; beautiful in its results—if only my efforts should not prove in vain. Oh! give me the right to send you in a month or two my “Médecin de campagne” with the Chénier and the new “Louis Lambert,” in which I will write the last corrections. My book will not appear till the first of March. I do not choose to send you that ignoble edition. A few weeks after its appearance I shall have still another ready, and I can then offer you something more worthy of you. The same line of thought presented itself to me in all of them,—poesy, religion, intellect, those three great principles will be united in these three books, and their pilgrimage toward you will be fulfilled; all my thoughts are assembled in them, and if you will draw from that source there will be for you, in me, something inexhaustible.

Now I know that my book will please you. You send me the Christ upon the cross, and I, I have made him bearing his cross. There lies the idea of the book: resignation and love; faith in the future and the shedding of the fragrance of benefits around us. What joy for a man to have at last been able to do a work in which he can be himself, in which he may pour out his soul without fear of ridicule, because in serving the passions of the mob he has conquered the right, dearly bought, of being heard in a day of grave thought. Have you read “Juana”? Tell me if she pleases you.

You have awakened many diverse curiosities in me; you are capable of a delightful coquetry which it is impossible to blame. But you do not know how dangerous it is to a lively imagination and a heart misunderstood, a heart full of rejected tenderness, to behold thus nebulously a young and beautiful woman. In spite of these dangers, I yield myself willingly to hopes of the heart. My grief is to be able to speak to you of yourself as only a hope, a dream of heaven and of all that is beautiful. I can therefore tell you only of myself; but I abandon myself with you to my most secret thoughts, to my despairs, to my hopes. You are a second conscience; less reproachful perhaps and more kindly than that which rises so imperiously within me at evil moments.

Well, then! I will speak of myself, since it must be so. I have met with one of those immense sorrows which only artists know. After three months’ labour I re-made “Louis Lambert.” Yesterday, a friend, one of those friends who never deceive, who tell you the truth, came, scalpel in hand, and we studied my work together. He is a logical man, of severe taste, incapable of doing anything himself, but a most profound grammarian, a stern professor, and he showed me a thousand faults. That evening, alone, I wept with despair in that species of rage which seizes the heart when we recognize our faults after toiling so long. Well, I shall set to work again, and in a month or two I will bring forth a corrected “Louis Lambert.” Wait for that. Let me send you, when it is ready, a new and fine edition of the four volumes of the Philosophical tales. I am preparing it. “La Peau de chagrin,” already corrected, is to be again corrected. If all is not then made perfect, at least it will be less ugly.

Always labour! My life is passed in a monk’s cell—but a pretty cell, at any rate. I seldom go out; I have many personal annoyances, like all men who live by the altar instead of being able to worship it. How many things I do which I would fain renounce! But the time of my deliverance is not far off; and then I shall be able to slowly accomplish my work.

How impatient I am to finish “Le Médecin de campagne,” that I may know what you think of it—for you will read it no doubt before you receive your own copy. It is the history of a man faithful to a despised love, to a woman who did not love him, who broke his heart by coquetry; but that story is only an episode. Instead of killing himself, the man casts off his life like a garment, takes another existence, and in place of making himself a monk, he becomes the sister of mercy of a poor canton, which he civilizes. At this moment I am in the paroxysm of composition, and I can only speak well of it. When it is finished you will receive the despairs of a man who sees only its faults.

If you knew with what force a solitary soul whom no one wants springs toward a true affection! I love you, unknown woman, and this fantastic thing is only the natural effect of a life that is empty and unhappy, which I have filled with ideas only, diminishing its misfortunes by chimerical pleasures. If this present adventure ought to happen to any one it should to me. I am like a prisoner who, in the depths of his dungeon, hears the sweet voice of a woman. He puts all his soul into a faint yet powerful perception of that voice, and after his long hours of revery, of hopes, after voyages of imagination, the woman, beautiful and young, kills him—so complete would be the happiness. You will think this folly; it is the truth, and far below the truth, because the heart, the imagination, the romance of the passions of which my works give an idea are very far below the heart, the imagination, the romance of the man. And I can say this without conceit, because all those qualities are to me misfortunes. After all, no one attaches himself with greater love to the poesy of this sentiment at once so chimerical and so true. It is a sort of religion, higher than earth, less high than heaven. I like to often turn my eyes toward these unknown skies, in an unknown land, and gather some new strength by thinking that there may be sure rewards for me, when I do well.

Remember, therefore, that there is here, between a Carmelite convent and the Place where the executions take place, a poor being whose joy you are,—an innocent joy according to social laws, but a very criminal one if measured by the weight of affection. I take too much, I assure you, and you would not ratify my dreamy conquests if it were possible to tell you my dreams, dreams which I know to be impossible, but which please me so much. To go where no one in the world knows where I am,—to go into your country, to pass before you unknown, to see you, and return here to write and tell you, “You are thus and so!” How many times have I enjoyed this delightful fancy—I, attached by a myriad lilliputian bonds to Paris, I, whose independence is forever being postponed, I, who cannot travel except in thought! It is yours, that thought; but, in mercy and in the name of that affection which I will not characterize because it makes me too happy, tell me that you write to no one in France but me. This is not distrust nor jealousy; although both sentiments prove love, I think that the suspicions they imply are always dishonouring. No, the motive is a sentiment of celestial perfection which ought to be in you and which I inwardly feel there. I know it, but I would fain be sure.

Adieu; pitiless editors, newspapers, etc., are here; time fails me for all I have to do; there is but a single thing for which I can always find time. Will you be kind, charitable, gracious, excellent? You surely know some person who can make a sepia sketch. Send me a faithful copy of the room where you write, where you think, where you are you—for, you know well, there are moments when we are more ourselves, when the mask is no longer on us. I am very bold, very indiscreet; but this desire will tell you many things, and, after all, I swear it is very innocent.

In the month of May two young Frenchmen who are going to Russia can leave with the person you may indicate, in any town you indicate, the parcel containing André Chénier, my poor “Louis Lambert” and your copy of “Le Médecin de campagne.” Write me promptly on this subject. They are two young men who are not inquiring; they will do it as a matter of business. Objects of art are not exposed to the brutalities of the custom-house and you will permit a poor artist to send you a few specimens of art. They are only precious from the species of perfection that artists who love each other give to their work for a brother’s sake. At any rate, allow Paris the right to be proud of her worship of art. You will enjoy the gift because none but you and I in the world will know that this book, this copy is the solitary one of its kind. The seal I had engraved upon it is lost. It came to me defaced by rubbing against other letters. You will be very generous to send me an impression inside of your reply.

All this shows that I am occupied with you, and you will not refuse to increase my pleasures; they are so rare!

Paris, end of March; 1833.

I have told you something of my life; I have not told you all; but you will have seen enough to understand that I have no time to do evil, no leisure to let myself go to happiness. Gifted with excessive sensibility, having lived much in solitude, the constant ill-fortune of my life has been the element of what is called so improperly talent. I am provided with a great power of observation, because I have been cast among all sorts of professions, involuntarily. Then, when I went into the upper regions of society, I suffered at all points of my soul which suffering can touch; there are none but souls that are misunderstood, and the poor, who can really observe, because everything bruises them, and observation results from suffering. Memory only registers thoroughly that which is pain. In this sense it recalls great joy, for pleasure comes very near to being pain. Thus society in all its phases from top to bottom, legislations, religions, histories, the present times, all have been observed and analyzed by me. My one passion, always disappointed, at least in the development I gave to it, has made me observe women, study them, know them, and cherish them, without other recompense than that of being understood at a distance by great and noble hearts. I have written my desires, my dreams. But the farther I go, the more I rebel against my fate. At thirty-four years of age, after having constantly worked fourteen and fifteen hours a day, I have already white hairs without ever being loved by a young and pretty woman; that is sad. My imagination, virile as it is, having never been prostituted or jaded, is an enemy for me; it is always in keeping with a young and pure heart, violent with repressed desires, so that the slightest sentiment cast into my solitude makes ravages. I love you already too much without ever having seen you. There are certain phrases in your letters which make my heart beat. If you knew with what ardour I spring toward that which I have so long desired! of what devotion I feel myself capable! what happiness it would be to me to subordinate my life for a single day! to remain without seeing a living soul for a year, for a single hour! All that woman can dream of that is most delicate, most romantic, finds in my heart, not an echo but, an incredible simultaneousness of thought. Forgive me this pride of misery, this naïveté of suffering.

You have asked me the baptismal name of the dilecta [Mme. de Berny]. In spite of my complete and blind faith, in spite of my sentiment for you, I cannot tell it to you; I have never told it. Would you have faith in me if I told it? No.

You ask me to send you a plan of the place I live in. Listen: in one of the forthcoming numbers of Regnier’s “Album” (I will go and see him on the subject) he shall put in my house for you, oh! solely for you! It is a sacrifice; it is distasteful to me to be put en évidence. How little those who accuse me of vanity know me! I have never desired to see a journalist, for I should blush to solicit an article. For the last eight months I have resisted the entreaties of Schnetz and Scheffer, author of “Faust” who wish extremely to make my portrait.

Yesterday I said in jest to Gérard, who spoke to me of the same thing, that I was not a sufficiently fine fish to be put in oils. You will receive herewith a little sketch made by an artist of my study. But I am rather disturbed in sending it to you because I dare not believe in all that your request offers me of joy and happiness. To live in a heart is so glorious a life! To be able to name you secretly to myself in evil hours, when I suffer, when I am betrayed, misunderstood, calumniated! To be able to retire to you!... This is a hope that goes too far beyond me; it is the adoration of God by monks, the Ave Maria written in the cell of a Chartreux,—an inscription which once made me stand at the Grande-Chartreuse, beneath a vault, for ten minutes. Oh! love me! All that you desire of what is noble, true, pure, will be in a heart that has borne many a blow, but is not blasted!

That gentleman was very unjust. I drink nothing but coffee. I have never known what drunkenness was, except from a cigar which Eugène Sue made me smoke against my will, and it was that which enabled me to paint the drunkenness for which you blame me, in the “Voyage à Java.” Eugène Sue is a kind and amiable young man, a braggart of vices, in despair at being named Sue, living in luxury to make himself a great seigneur, but for all that, though a little worn-out, worth more than his works, I dare not speak to you of Nodier, lest I should destroy your illusions. His artistic caprices stain that purity of honour which is the chastity of men. But when one knows him, one forgives him his disorderly life, his vices, his lack of conscience for his home. He is a true child of nature after the fashion of La Fontaine. I have just returned from Madame de Girardin’s (Delphine Gay). She has the small-pox. Her celebrated beauty is now in danger. This distresses me for Émile, her husband, and for her. She had been vaccinated; present science declares that one ought to be vaccinated every twenty years.

I have returned home to write to you under the empire of a violent annoyance. Out of low envy the editor of the “Revue de Paris” postpones for a week my third number of the “Histoire des Treize.” Fifteen days’ interval will kill the interest in it, and I had worked day and night to avoid any delay. For this last affair, which is the drop of water in too full a cup, I shall probably cease all collaboration in the “Revue de Paris.” I am so disgusted by the tricky enmity which broods there for me that I shall retire from it; and if I retire, it will be forever. To a certain degree my will is cast in bronze, and nothing can make me change it. In reading the “Histoire” in the March number, you will never suspect the base and unworthy annoyances which have been instigated against me in the inner courts of that review. They bargain for me as if I were a fancy article; sometimes they play me monkey tricks [malices de nègre]; sometimes insults upon me are anonymously put into the Album of the Revue; at other times they fall at my feet, basely. When “Juana” appeared, they inserted a notice that made me pass for a madman.

But why should I tell you these miserable things? The joke is that they represent me as being unpunctual; promising, and not keeping my promises. Two years ago, Sue quarrelled with a bad courtesan, celebrated for her beauty (she is the original of Vernet’s Judith). I lowered myself to reconcile them, and the consequence is the woman is given to me. M. de Fitz-James, the Duc de Duras, and the old court, all went to her house to talk, as on neutral ground, much as people walk in the alley of the Tuileries to meet one another; and I am expected to be more strait-laced than those gentlemen! In short, by some fatal chance I can’t take a step that is not interpreted as evil. What a punishment is celebrity! But, indeed, to publish one’s thoughts, is it not prostituting them? If I had been rich and happy they should all have been kept for my love.

Two years ago, among a few friends, I used to tell stories in the evening, after midnight. I have given that up. There was danger of my passing for an amuser; and I should have lost consideration. At every step there is a pitfall. So now I have retired into silence and solitude. I needed the great deception with which all Paris is now busy to fling myself into this other extremity. There is still a Metternich in this adventure; but this time it is the son, who died in Florence. I have already told you of this cruel affair, and I had no right to tell you. Though separated from that person out of delicacy, all is not over yet. I suffer through her; but I do not judge her. Only, I think that if you loved some one, and if you had daily drawn that person towards you into heaven, and you became free, you would not leave him alone at the bottom of an icy abyss after having warmed him with the fire of your soul. But forget all that; I have spoken to you as to my own consciousness. Do not betray a soul that takes refuge in yours.

You have much courage! you have a great and lofty soul; do not tremble before any one, or you will be unhappy; you will meet in life with circumstances that will make you grieve that you did not know how to obtain all the power which you ought to have had and might have had. What I tell you now is the fruit of the experience of a woman advanced in years and purely religious. But, above all, no useless imprudence. Do not pronounce my name; let me be torn in pieces; I do not care for such criticism, provided I can live in two or three hearts which I value more than the whole world beside. I prefer one of your letters to the fame of Lord Byron bestowed by universal approbation. My vocation on this earth is to love, even without hope; provided, nevertheless, I am a little loved also.

Jules Sandeau is a young man. George Sand is a woman. I was interested in both, because I thought it sublime in a woman to leave everything to follow a poor young man whom she loved. This woman, whose name is Mme. Dudevant, proves to have a great talent. It was necessary to save Sandeau from the conscription; they wrote a book between them; the book is good. I liked these two lovers, lodging at the top of a house on the quai Saint-Michel, proud and happy. Madame Dudevant had her children with her. Note that point. Fame arrived, and cast trouble into the dove-cote. Madame Dudevant asserted that she ought to leave it on account of her children. They separated; and this separation is, as I believe, founded on a new affection which George Sand, or Madame Dudevant, has taken for the most malignant of our contemporaries, H. de L. [Henri de Latouche], one of my former friends, a most seductive man, but odiously bad. If I had no other proof than Madame Dudevant’s estrangement from me, who received her fraternally with Jules Sandeau, it would be enough. She now fires epigrams against her former host, so that yesterday I found Sandeau in despair. This is how it is with the author of “Valentine” and “Indiana,” about whom you ask me.

There is no one, artist or literary person, whom I do not know in Paris, and for the last ten years I have known many things, and things so sad to know that disgust of these people has seized my heart. They have made me understand Rousseau, they cannot pardon me for knowing them; they pardon neither my avoidance of them nor my frankness. But there are some impartial persons who are beginning to speak truth. My name is Honoré, and I wish to be faithful to my name.

What mud all this is! and, as you write me, man is a perverse animal. I do not complain, for heaven has given me three hearts: la dilecta [Madame de Berny], the lady of Angoulême [Mme. Carraud] and a friend [Auguste Borget] who is at this moment making a sketch of my study for you, without knowing for whom it is; and these three hearts, besides my sister and you,—you who can now do so much for my life, my soul, my heart, my mind, you who can save the future from a past given over to suffering,—are my only riches. You will have the right to say that Balzac is diffuse, not quoting from Voltaire, but of your own knowledge.

At this moment of writing, you must have read “Juana,” and have, perhaps, given her a tear. In the last chapter there are sentences in which we can well understand each other: “melancholies not understood even by those who have caused them,” etc., etc.

Do you not think that I have said too much good of myself and too much evil of others? Do not suppose, however, that all are gangrened. If H..., married for love and having beautiful children, is in the arms of an infamous courtesan, there is in Paris Monsieur Monteil, the author of a fine work [“L’Histoire des Français des divers états aux cinq derniers siècles”], who is living on bread and milk, refusing a pension which he thinks ought not to be given to him. There are fine and noble characters; rare, but there are some. Scribe is a man of honour and courage. I should have to make you a whole history of literary men; it would not be too beautiful.

I entreat you to tell me, with that kittenish, pretty style of yours, how you pass your life, hour by hour; let me share it all. Describe to me the places you live in, even to the colours of the furniture. You ought to keep a journal and send it to me regularly. In spite of my occupations I will write you a line every day. It is so sweet to confide all to a kind and beautiful soul, as one does to God.

To put a stop to some of your illusions, I shall have a sketch made of the “Médecin de campagne” and you will find in it the features, perhaps a little caricatured, of the author. This is to be a secret between you and me. I have been thinking how to send you this copy when it is ready. I think I have found the most natural way, and I will tell it to you, unless you invent a better.

Grant my requests for the details of your life; so that when my thought turns towards you it may meet you, see that work-frame, the flower begun, and follow you through all your hours. If you knew how often wearied thought needs a repose that is partly active, how beneficent to me is the gentle revery that begins: “She is there! now she is looking at such or such a thing.” And I—I can give to thought the faculty to spring through space with force enough to abolish it. These are my only pleasures amid continual work.

I have not room to explain to you here what I have undertaken to accomplish this year. In January next you can judge if I have been able to leave my study much. And yet I would like to find two months in which to travel for rest. You ask me for information about Saché. Saché is the remains of a castle on the Indre, in one of the most delicious valleys of Touraine. The proprietor, a man of fifty-five, used to dandle me on his knee. He has a pious and intolerant wife, rather deformed and not clever. I go there for him; and besides, I am free there. They accept me throughout the region as a child; I have no value whatever, and I am happy to be there, like a monk in a monastery. I walk about meditating serious works. The sky is so pure, the oaks so fine, the calm so vast! A league away is the beautiful château d’Azay, built by Samblançay, one of the finest architectural things that we possess. Farther on is Ussé, so famous from the novel of “Petit Jehan de Saintré.” Saché is six leagues from Tours. But not a woman! not a conversation possible! It is your Ukraine without your music and your literature. But the more a soul full of love is restricted physically, the more it rises toward the heavens. That is one of the secrets of cell and solitude.

Be generous; tell me much of yourself, just as I tell you much of myself. It is a means of exchanging lives. But let there be no deceptions. I have trembled in writing to you, and have said to myself: “Will this be a fresh bitterness? Will the heavens open to me once more only to drive me out?”

Well, adieu, you who are one of my secret consolations, you, towards whom my soul, my thoughts are flying. Do you know that you address a spirit wholly feminine, and that what you forbid me tempts me immensely? You forbid me to see you? What a sweet folly it would be to do so! It is a crime which I would make you pardon by the gift of my life; I would like to spend it in deserving that pardon. But fear nothing; necessity cuts my wings. I am fastened to my glebe as your serfs to the soil. But I have committed the crime a hundred times in thought! You owe me compensation.

Adieu! I have confided to you the secrets of my life; it is as if I told you that you have my soul.

Paris, May 29-June 1, 1833.

I have to-day, May 29, received your last letter-journal, and I have made arrangements to answer it as you wish. In the first place I have finally discovered a paper thin enough to send you a journal the weight of which shall not excite the distrust of all the governments through which it passes. Next, I resign myself, from attachment to your sovereign orders, to assume this fatiguing little handwriting, intended for you specially. Have I understood you, my dear star? for there are fearful distances between us, and you shine, pure and bright, upon my life, like the fantastic star attributed to every human being by the astrologers of the middle ages.

Where are you going? You tell me nothing about it. To have all the requirements of a sentiment so grand, so vast, and not to have its confidence, is not that very wrong? You owe me all your thoughts. I am jealous of them.

If I have been long without writing to you it is because I have awaited your answer to my letters, being ignorant as to whether you received them. Even now I do not know where to address the letter I am beginning. Then, this is what has happened to me: from March to April I paid off my agreement with the “Revue de Paris” with a composition entitled, “Histoire des Treize,” which kept me working day and night; to this were joined vexations; I felt fatigued, and I went to spend some time in the South, at Angoulême; there I remained, stretched on a sofa, much petted by a friend of my sister, of whom I think I have already told you; and I became sufficiently rested to resume my work.

I found in my new dizain and in the “Médecin de campagne” untold difficulties. These two works (still in press) absorb my nights and days; the time passes with frightful rapidity. My doctor [Dr. Nacquart], alarmed at my fatigue, ordered me to remain a month without doing anything,—neither reading, writing letters, nor writing of any kind; to be, as he expressed it, like Nebuchadnezzar in the form of a beast. This I did. During this inaction vainglory has had its way. Madame [the Duchesse de Berry] has caused to be written to me the most touching things from the depths of her prison at Blaye. I have been her consolation; and “l’Histoire des Treize” had so interested her that she was on the point of writing to me to be told the end in advance, so much did it agitate her! And an odd thing! M. de Fitz-James writes me that old Prince Metternich never laid the story down, and that he devours my works. But enough of all that. You will read Madame Jules, and when you reach her you will regret having told me to burn your letters. The “Histoire des Treize” [this refers only to one part, “Ferragus”] has had an extraordinary success in this careless and busy Paris.

Forgive my scribbling; my heart and head are always too fast for the rest, and when I correspond with a person I love I often become illegible.

I have just read and re-read your long and delightful letter. How glad I am that you are making the journal I asked of you. Now that this is agreed upon between us I will confide to you all my thoughts and the events of my life, as you will yours to me. Your letter has done me great good. My poor artist [Auguste Borget] is one of my friends. At this moment he is roaming the shores of the Mediterranean, or you would have had by this time a sketch of my chamber or my little salon. I cannot yet tell you his name; but he will perhaps put it on a landscape he is to make in the copy of the “Médecin de campagne” which is destined for you, but cannot be ready before next autumn. He is a great artist, still more a noble heart, a young man full of determination and pure as a young girl. He was not willing to exhibit this year some magnificent studies. He wants to study two years longer before appearing, and I praise the resolution. He will be great at one stroke.

Regnier, who is making the collection of the dwellings of celebrated persons, was here yesterday; my house will be (for you) in the next number, and, to finish up the quarter, he will put in the Observatoire, on the side where M. Arago lives. That is the side I look upon; it is opposite to me.

I hope “Le Médecin de campagne” will appear within the next fortnight. This is the work that I prefer. My two counsellors cannot hear fragments of it without shedding tears. As for me, what care bestowed upon it!—but what annoyances! The publisher wanted to summons me to deliver the manuscript more rapidly! I have only worked at it eight months; yet to all the world this delay—put it in comparison with the work—will seem diabolical. You shall have an ordinary copy, in which I want you to read the composition. Do not buy it; wait, I entreat you, for the handy volume I intend for you, besides the grand copy. You know how much I care that you shall read me in a copy that I have chosen. It is a gospel; it is a book to be read at all moments. I desire that the volume in itself shall not be indifferent to you; there will be a thought, a caress for you on every page.

Before I can hear from you where to address my letters, much time must elapse. I can therefore talk to you at length. To-morrow I will speak of your last letter, which I have near me, very near me, so that it perfumes me. Oh! how a secret sentiment brightens life! how proud it renders it! If you knew what part you have in my thoughts! how many times during this month of idleness, under that beautiful blue sky of Angoulême, I have delightfully journeyed toward you, occupying my mind with you, uneasy about you, knowing you ill, receiving no answers, and giving myself up to a thousand fancies. I live much through you, perhaps too much: betrayed already by a person who had only curiosity, my hopes in you are not devoid of a sort of terror, a fear. Oh! I am more of a child than you suppose.

Yesterday I went to see Madame Récamier, whom I found ill, but wonderfully bright and kind. I had heard she did much good, and very nobly, in being silent and making no complaint of the ungrateful beings she has met. No doubt she saw upon my face a reflection of what I thought of her, and, without explaining to herself this little sympathy, she was charming to me.

In the evening I went to see (for I have been only six days in Paris) Madame Émile de Girardin, Delphine Gay, whom I found almost well of her small-pox. She will have no marks. There were bores there, so I came away,—one of them that enemy to all laughter, the bibliophile X..., about whom you ask me for news. Alas! I can tell you all in a word. He has married an actress, a low and obscure woman of bad morals, who, the week before marrying him, had sent to one of my classmates, S..., the editor of the “National,” a bill of her debts, by way of flinging him the handkerchief. The bibliophile had said much harm of this actress; he did not then know her. He went behind the scenes of the Odéon, fell in love with her, and she, in revenge, married him. The vengeance is complete; she is the most dreadful tyrant I ever knew. She has resumed her actress allurements, and rules him. There is no talent possible to him under such circumstances. He calls himself a bibliophile and does not know what bibliography is; Nodier and the amateurs laugh at him. He needs much money, and he stays in literature for want of funds to be a banker or a merchant of fashions. Hence his books,—“Divorce,” “Vertu et Tempérament,” and all that he does. He is the culminating point of mediocrity. By one of those chances that seem occult, I knew of his behaving horribly to a poor woman whose seduction he had undertaken as if it were a matter of business. I have seen that woman weeping bitter tears at having belonged to a man whom she did not esteem and who had no talent.

Sandeau has just gone to Italy; he is in despair; I thought him crazy....

As for Janin, another alas!... Janin is a fat little man who bites everybody. The preface to “Barnave” is not by him, but by Béquet, on the staff of the “Journal des Débats,” a witty man, ill-conducted, who was hiding with Janin to escape his creditors. Béquet was a school-mate of mine; he came to me, already an old man from his excesses, to weep over his trouble. Janin had taken from him a poor singer who was all Béquet’s joy. The “Chanson de Barnave” is by de Musset; the infamous chapter about the daughters of Sejanus is by a young man named Félix Pyat.

For mercy’s sake, leave me free to be silent about these things when they are too revolting. They run from ear to ear in the salons, and one must needs hear them. I have already told you about H...; well! married for love, having wife and children, he fell in love with an actress named J..., who, among other proofs of tenderness, sent him a bill of seven thousand francs to her laundress, and H... was forced to sign notes of hand to pay the love-letter. Fancy a great poet, for he is a poet, working to pay the washerwoman of Mademoiselle J...! Latouche is envious, spiteful, and malicious; he is a fount of venom; but he is faithful to his political creed, honest, and conceals his private life. Scribe is very ill; he has worn himself out in writing.

General rule: there are few artists or great men who have not had their frailties. It is difficult to have a power and not to abuse it. But then, some are calumniated. Here, except about the washerwoman’s bill, a thing I have only heard said, all that I have told you are facts that I know personally.

Adieu for to-day, my dear star; in future I will only tell you of things that are good or beautiful in our country, for you seem to me rather ill-disposed towards it. Do not see our warts; see the poor and luckless friends of Sandeau subscribing to give him the needful money to go to Italy; see the two Johannots, so united, so hard-working, living like the two Corneilles. There are good hearts still.

Adieu; I shall re-read your pages to-night before I sleep, and to-morrow I will write you my day. This day I have corrected the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of the “Médecin de campagne” and signed an agreement for the publication of the “Scènes de la Vie Parisienne.” I wish I knew what you were doing at the moments when my mind is occupied with you.

During my absence a horse I was fond of died, and three beautiful unknown ladies came to see me. They must have thought me disdainful. I opened their letters on arriving. There was no address; all was mysterious as a bonne fortune. But I am exclusive; I write to none but you, and chance has sent my answer to those inquisitive women.

Paris, July 19-August 8, 1833.

You have not been either forgotten or less loved; but you yourself have been a little forgetful. You have not written to me how long a time you were to stay in Vienna, so that I might know if my reply would reach you there. Then you have written the name of your correspondent so illegibly that I copy it with fear that there may be some mistake.

That said, I have written you several letters which I have burned for fear of displeasing you, and I will now sum up for you in very few words my recent life.

An odious lawsuit was instituted against me by a publisher, à propos of “Le Médecin de campagne.” The work was finished to-day, July 19, and will be sold by a publisher appointed by the court. As for that book, I have buried therein since I last wrote to you more than sixty nights. You will read it, you, my distant angel, and you will see how much of heart and life has been spent in that work, with which I am not yet very content.

My work has so absorbed me that I could not give you my thoughts; I am so weary, and for me life is such a desert! The only sentiment apparently true that dawns in my real life is a thousand leagues away from me. Does it not need all the power of a poet’s heart to find consolation there; to say to itself amid such toil: “She will quiver with joy in seeing that her name has occupied me, that she herself was present to my thought, and that what I dwelt on as loveliest and noblest in that young girl I have named for her”? You will see in reading the book that you were in my soul as a light.

I have nothing to tell you about myself, because I have been working night and day without seeing any one. Nevertheless, a few unknown ladies have rapped at my door and have written to me. But I have not a vulgar soul, and, as la dilecta says, “If I were young and pretty I should come, and not write this.” So I drop all that into the void. There is something of you in this feminine reserve. A crown of the nature of that to which I aspire is given in its entirety; it cannot be divided.

Well, still some days, some months of labour, and I shall have ended one of my tasks. I shall then take a brief repose and refresh my brain by a journey; friends have already proposed to me Germany, Austria, Moravia, Russia. Non so. I do not yet know what I shall do. You are so despotic in your orders that I am afraid to go your way; there would be a double danger there for me.

Your letters delight me; they make me love you more and more; but this life, which turns incessantly toward you, is consumed in efforts and returns to me no richer. To love one another without personal knowledge is torture.

August 1, 1833.

Twelve days’ interval without being able to resume my letter! Judge my life by that. It is a perpetual combat, without relaxing. The wretches! they don’t know what they destroy of poesy.

My lawsuit will be decided to-morrow. “L’Europe Littéraire” has quoted the “Story of the Emperor” told by a soldier of the Imperial Guard to peasants in a barn (one of the chief things in the “Médecin de campagne”). Bah! And here are speculators who for the last week have stolen me, printed me without my permission, and have sold over twenty thousand copies of that fragment! I could use the law with rigour, but that’s unworthy of me. They neither give my name, nor that of the work; they murder me and say nothing; they rob me of my fame and my pittance,—me, a poor man! You will some day read that gigantic fragment, which has made the most unfeeling weep, and which a hundred newspapers have reproduced. Friends tell me that from end to end of France there has risen a cry of admiration. What will it be for the whole work!

I send herewith a scrap of a former letter which I had not entirely burned.

Since the 19th of last month I have had nothing but troubles, anxieties, and toil. To finish this little letter, I have to take part of a night, and I think it a gentle recreation.

I leave in a week for the country so as to finish in peace the third dizain of the “Contes Drolatiques” and a great historical novel called “Privilège.” Always work! You can, I think, without blushing, allow yourself to read the third dizain. It is almost pure.

I await, assuredly with anxiety, your letter relating to “Le Médecin de campagne.” Write me quickly what you think of it; tell me your emotions.

Mon Dieu! I would fain recount to you a thousand thoughts; but there is a pitiless somebody who hurries and commands me. Be generous, write to me, do not scold me too much for a seeming silence; my heart speaks to you. If a spark flames up in your candle at night, consider the little gleam as a message of the thoughts of your friend. If your fire crackles, think of me who think often of you. Yes, dream true in saying to yourself that your words not only echo, but they remain in my memory; that in the most obscure corner of Paris there is a being who puts you into all his dreams, who counts you for much in his sentiments, whom you animate at times, but who, at other times is sad and calls to you, as we hope for a chance that is well-nigh impossible.

Paris, August 8, 1833.

I have received your letter from Switzerland, from Neufchâtel.

Will you not be much dissatisfied with yourself when you know that you have given me great pain at a moment when I already had much? After all that I have said to you, was not my silence significant of misfortunes? I now inclose to you the letters begun before I received this letter from Switzerland in which you give me your exact address.

I will not explain to you the troubles that overwhelm me; they are such that I thought yesterday of quitting France. Besides, the lawsuit which troubles me so much is very difficult to explain even to the judges; you will feel therefore that I cannot tell you anything about it in a letter. Mon Dieu! if you have never thought that I might have untold troubles, your heart should have told you that I did not enter your soul to leave it as you suppose me to have done, and that I did not forget you. You do not know with what strength a man who has met with nothing but toil without reward, sorrows without joy, fastens to a heart in which for the first time he finds the consolations that he needs. The fragments of letters which I now send you have been under my hand for the last three months, but for three months past I have not had a day, an hour, to write to the persons I love best. But you are far away; you know nothing of my life of toil and anguish. At any rate, I pardon you the badnesses which reveal such force in your heart for him whom you love a little.

Later, I will write you in detail; but to-day I can only send you these beginnings of letters, assuring you of my constant faith. I intend to plead my case myself, and I must study it.

Nothing can better picture to you the agitated life which I lead than these fragments of letters. I have not the power or the faculty to give myself up for an hour to any connected subject outside of my writings and my business matters. When will this end? I do not know. But I am very weary of this perpetual struggle between men and things and me.

I must bid you adieu. Write to me always, and have faith in me. During the hours of release that come to me I shall turn to you and tell you all there is of good and tender sentiments in me for you. Adieu; some day you will know how unhappy I was in writing you these few lines, and you will be surprised that I was able to write them.

Adieu; love him who loves you.

Paris, August 19, 1833.

What would I not pardon after reading your letter, my cherished angel? But you are too beloved ever to be guilty of a fault; you are a spoilt child; to you belong my most precious hours. See, I answer you alone. Mon Dieu! do not be jealous of any one. I have not been to see Madame Récamier or any one else. I do not love Madame de Girardin; and every time I go there, which is rare, I bring away with me an antipathy.1... It is ten months since I have seen Eugène Sue, and really I have no male friends in the true acceptation of the word.

Do not read the “Écho de la Jeune France.” The second part of “Histoire des Treize” ought to be in it, but those men have acted so badly towards me that I have ceased to do what, out of extreme good-will to a college friend interested in the enterprise, I began by doing. You will find a grand and beautiful story just begun; the first chapter good, the second bad. They had the impertinence to print my notes, without waiting for the work I always undertake as it goes through the press, and I shall now not complete the history till I put it in the “Scènes de la Vie Parisienne” which will appear this winter.

I have only a moment in which to answer you; I live by chance, and by fits and starts. Perdonatemi.

Since I last wrote to you in such a hurry I have had more troubles than I ever had before in my life.

My lawyers, my solicitors, everybody, implore me not to spend eight months of my life in the law-courts, and yesterday I signed a compromise allowing all questions in litigation to be sovereignly decided by two arbitrators. That is how I now stand. The affair will be decided by the end of the week, and I shall then know the extent of my losses and my obligations.

Of the three copies I have had made of “Le Médecin de campagne” nothing exists that I can send you, unless it be the first volume. But here is what I shall do: I shall have duplicate proofs made of the second volume, and you shall read them ten days hence, before the rest of the world. I have already found many blemishes, therefore it is a copy of the second edition only that I wish to give you; which will prove to you my tenderness, for I don’t know for whom else I would take the trouble to write myself the title for printing [le titre en regard de l’impression].

The extreme disorder which this lawsuit and the time taken in making this book has brought into my affairs, obliges me to take service once more in the newspapers. For the last week I have been very actively working on “L’Europe littéraire” in which I own a share. Thursday next the “Théorie de la Démarche” will be finished. It is a long and very tiresome treatise. But by the end of the month there will be a “Scène de la Vie de province,” in the style of “Les Célibataires,” called “Eugénie Grandet,” which will be better. Take “L’Europe littéraire” for three months.

You have not told me whether you have read “Juana” in the “Revue de Paris,” nor whether you have found the end of “Ferragus.” I would like to know if I ought to send you those two things. As for the dizains of the “Contes Drolatiques,” do not read them. The third you might read. The first two belong, like those which follow the third, to a special literature. I know women of exquisite taste and lofty devotion who do read them; but in truth I never reckoned on such rare suffrages. It is a work that cannot be judged until completed, and ten years hence. It is a literary monument built for a few connoisseurs. If you do not like La Fontaine’s Tales, nor those of Boccaccio, and if you are not an adorer of Ariosto, let the “Contes Drolatiques” alone; although they will be my finest meed of fame in the future. I tell you this once for all, not to return to it.

I send to you, to the address of Henriette Borel,2 by to-morrow’s carrier, a unique “Louis Lambert” on Chinese paper, which I have had printed for you, believing my work perfect. But I have the grief to tell you that there is now a new manuscript for the future edition of the “Études Philosophiques.” You will also find in the package the first volume of “Le Médecin de campagne,” and I will send you the second as soon as there is a copy. I hope to make you wait not more than eight or ten days for it. Evelina is in the second volume. If you receive these volumes safely I will send you the Chénier I have here for you.

Now that what I regard as business is ended, let us speak of ourselves—Ourselves! Who told you about the little Metternich? As to the services I have rendered Eugène Sue, I do not understand. But, I entreat, do not listen to either calumny or gossip; I am the butt of evil tongues. Yesterday one of my friends heard a fool relating that I had two talismans in my house, in which I believed; two drinking-glasses; on one of which depended my life, on the other my talent. You cannot imagine what nonsense is told about me, calumnies, crazy incriminations! There is but one thing true—my solitary life, increasing toil, and sorrows.

No, you do not know how cruel and bitter it is to a loving man to ever desire happiness and never meet it. Woman has been my dream; yet I have stretched my arms to none but illusions. I have conceived of the greatest sacrifices. I have even dreamed of one sole day of perfect happiness in a year; of a woman who would have been as a fairy to me. With that I could have been content and faithful. And here I am, advancing in life, thirty-four years old, withering myself with toil that is more and more exacting, having lost already my finest years and gained nothing real.

You, you, my dear star, you fear—you, young and beautiful—to see me; you overwhelm me with unjust suspicions. Those who suffer never betray; they are the betrayed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paris, end of August, 1833.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paris, September 9, 1833.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adieu; à bientôt.

Paris, September 13, 1833.

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

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

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

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

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

À bientôt.

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

Paris, September 18, 1833.

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

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

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

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

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

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

À bientôt.

Neufchâtel, Thursday, September 26, 1833.

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

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

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

À bientôt.

Paris, October 6, 1833.1

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

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

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

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

My dear wife of love, let Anna [her daughter] wear the little cross I shall have made of her pebbles; I shall engrave on the back, Adoremus in eternum. That is a delicious woman’s motto, and you will never see the cross without thinking of him who says to you ceaselessly those divine words from the young girl’s little talisman.

My darling Eva, here then is a new life delightfully begun for me. I have seen you, I have spoken to you; our persons have made alliance like our souls, and I have found in you all the perfections that I love. Every one has his, and you have realized all mine.

Bad one! did you not see in my eyes all that I desired. Be tranquil! all the desires that a woman who loves is jealous of inspiring, I have felt them; and if I did not tell you with what ardour I wished that you might come some morning it was because I was so stupidly lodged. But in Geneva, oh! my adored angel, I shall have more wits for our love than it takes for ten men to be witty.

I have found here everything bad beyond my expectations. Those who owed me money and gave me their word to pay it have not done so. But my mother, whom I know to be embarrassed, has shown me sublime devotion. But, my dear flower of love, I must repair the folly of my journey, a folly I would renew to-morrow if you wrote me that you had twenty-four hours’ liberty. So now I must work day and night. Fifteen days of happiness at Geneva to earn; those are the words that I find engraved inside my forehead, and they give me the proudest courage I have ever had. I think there will come more blood to my heart, more ideas to my brain, more strength to my being from that thought. Therefore I do not doubt that I shall do finer things inspired by that desire.

During the next month, therefore, excessive toil,—all to see you. You are in all my thoughts, in all the lines I write, in all the moments of my life, in all my being, in my hair that is growing for you.

After to-morrow, Monday, you will receive my letters only once a week; I shall post them punctually on Sundays; they will contain the lines I write to you every evening; for every evening before I go to bed, to sleep in your heart, I shall say to you my little prayer of love and tell you what I have been doing during the day. I rob you to enrich you. Henceforth there is nothing but you and work, work and you; sleep in peace, my jealous one. Besides, you will soon know that I am as exclusive as a woman, that I love as a woman, and that I dream all delicacies.

Yes, my adored flower, I have all the fears of jealousy about you; and behold, I have come to know that guardian of the heart, jealousy, of which I was ignorant because I was loved in a manner that gave no fears. La dilecta lived in her chamber, and you, everybody can see you. I shall only be happy when you are in Paris or at Wierzchownia.

My celestial love, find an impenetrable place for my letters. Oh! I entreat you, let no harm come to you. Let Henriette be their faithful guardian, and make her take all the precautions that the genius of woman dictates in such a case.

I begin to-morrow, without delay, on “Privilège,” for I must work. I am frightened about it. I do not wish to start for Geneva until I have returned Nodier’s dinner, and I cannot help making it splendid. Thus I have to work as much for the necessary superfluities of luxury as for the superfluous necessity of my existence.

To-morrow, Monday, I begin a journal of my life, which will only stop during the happy days when my fortunate star permits me to see you. The gaps will show my happiness. May there be many of them! Mon Dieu! how proud I am to be still of an age to appreciate all the treasures that there are in you, so that I can love you as a young man full of beliefs, a man who has a hand upon the future. Oh, my mysterious love! let it be forever like a flower buried beneath the snow, a flower unseen. Eva, dear and only woman whom the world contains for me, and who fills the world, forgive me all the little wiles [ruses] I shall employ to hide the secret of our hearts.

Mon Dieu, how beautiful I thought you, Sunday, in your pretty violet gown. Oh! how you touched me in all my fancies! Why do you ask me so often to tell you what I would fain express only in my looks? All such thoughts lose much in words. I would communicate them, soul to soul, by the flame of a glance only.

Now, my wife, my adored one, remember that whatever I write you, pressed by time, happy or unhappy, there is in my soul an immense love; that you fill my heart and my life, and that although I may not always express this love well, nothing can alter it; that it will ever flower, more beautiful, fresher, more graceful, because it is a true love, and a true love must ever increase. It is a beautiful flower, of many years, planted in the heart, which spreads its branches and its palms, doubling each season its clusters and its perfume; and you, my dear life, tell me, repeat to me, that nothing shall gall its bark or bruise its tender foliage, that it shall grow in our two hearts, beloved, free, treasured as a life within our lives—a single life! Oh! I love you! and what balm that love sheds all about me; I feel no sorrows more. You are my strength; you see it.

Well adieu, my cherished Eva, I must bid you adieu—no, not adieu, au revoir, and soon,—at Geneva on the 5th of November. If you are coming to Paris tell me so quickly.

After all, I have told you nothing of what I wished to say: how true and loving I thought you; how you answered to all the fibres of my heart, and even to my caprices. Mon Dieu! often I was so absorbed, in spite of the general chatter I had to make, that I forgot to answer when you asked me if they did not bind books well in Saint-Petersburg.

Well, à bientôt. Work will make the time that separates us short. What beauteous days were those at Neufchâtel! We will make pilgrimages there some day. Oh, angel! now that I have seen you I can re-see you in thought.

Well, a thousand kisses full of my soul. Would I could enclose them. The sweetest of all, I dream of it still.

Paris, October 13, 1833.

My dearest love, it is now nearly three days since I have written to you, and this would be bad indeed if you were not my beloved wife. But work has been so enthralling, the difficulties are so great! Poor angel, I prefer to tell you the sweetness of which my soul is full for you than to recount to you my tribulations. As for my life it is unshakably fixed, as I have told you already, I believe. Going to bed at six after my dinner, rising at midnight, here I am, bending over the table that you know of, seated in this arm-chair that you can see, beside the fireplace which has warmed me for six years, and so working until midday. Then come rendezvous for business, the details of existence which must be attended to; often at four o’clock, a bath; five o’clock, dinner. And then I begin over again intrepidly, swimming in work, living in that white dressing-gown with the silk sash that you must know about. There are some authors who filch my time, taking from me an hour or two; but more often obligations and anxieties are fixtures; returns uncertain.

I am now in the midst of concluding an agreement which will echo through our world of envy, jealousy, and silliness; it will jaundice the yellow bile of those who have the audacity to want to walk in my shadow. A firm of rather respectable publishers buy the edition of the “Études de Mœurs au XIXe Siècle” for twenty-seven thousand francs; twelve volumes 8vo, including the third edition of the “Scènes de la Vie privée,” the first of the “Scènes de la Vie de province,” and the first of the “Scènes de la Vie Parisienne.” Besides which, the printer, who owes me a thousand écus, pays them in the operation. This will give me ten thousand écus. That’s enough to make all idlers, barkers, and the gens de lettres roar! Here I am, barring what I owe to my mother, free of debt, and free in seven months to go where I please! If our great affair succeeds I shall be rich; I can do what I wish for my mother, and have a pillow, a bit of bread, and a white handkerchief for my old days.

Alas! my beloved, to secure that treaty I have had to assume engagements, trot about, go out in the morning at nine o’clock after working all night. Nevertheless, I shall not be without anxiety as to the payments, for one always has to grant credit to publishers. My vigils, my work, all that there is most sacred in the world may be compromised. This publisher is a woman, a widow [Madame Charles Bêchet]. I have never seen her, and don’t know her. I shall not send off this letter until the signatures are appended on both sides, so that my missive may carry you good news about my interests; but there are two other negotiations pending which are not less important, too long to explain to you, so that I shall only tell you results.

The “Aventures d’une idée heureuse” are one-quarter done, and I am well in the mood to finish them; “Eugénie Grandet,” one of my most finished works, is half done. I am very content with it. “Eugénie Grandet” is like nothing that I ever did before. To invent “Eugénie Grandet” after Madame Jules—without vanity, that shows talent.

Did I tell you that our paper cannot be made at Angoulême? I received this answer yesterday from my friend in Angoulême. I am going there in a few days. I am obliged to rush to Saintes, the capital of Saintonge, to study the faubourg where Bernard de Palissy lived; he is the hero of the “Souffrances d’un Inventeur” [“David Séchard”], which I shall write very quickly at Angoulême, on my return from Saintes. Saintes is twelve leagues from Angoulême, farther on among the hills. I will bring you your cotignac [quince marmalade] from Orléans myself. I have already got your peaches from Tours. I am waiting till my jeweller allows me to write to you openly, but Fossin is a king, a power, and when one wants things properly done one must kiss that devil’s spur that men call patience.

I don’t say that I received with great pleasure the letter in which you are no longer grieved, and in which you tell me the story of that monster of an Englishman. That’s what husbands are; a lover would have wrung his neck. A duel? May the avenging God make him meet some inn servant girl who will render him diseased and cause him a thousand ills! Considering the nature of the gentleman, my wish will, I hope, be accomplished.

At least there is love in your letter, my dear love. The other was so gloomy. Mon Dieu! how can you give way for a moment to doubt, or have a fear? À propos, friends have been here to tell me that the rumour is all about that I have been to Switzerland in search of a woman who positively came from Odessa. But happily other people say that I followed Madame de Castries, and others again that I have been to Besançon on a commercial enterprise. The author of the invention of the rendezvous is, I think, Gosselin, the publisher, who sent me a letter from Russia five months ago. And finally, others say that I never left Paris at all, but was put in Sainte Pélagie [prison], where they saw me. That is Paris.

My dear, idolized one, adieu! Nevertheless, I ought to tell you the thoughts on which I gallop for the last three days, the good little quarters of an hour which I give myself when I have done a certain number of pages. I rebehold the Val de Travers, I recommence my five days, and they fill the fifteen minutes with all their joys; the least little incidents come back to me. Sometimes a view of that fine forehead, then a word, or, better still, a flame lighted by Sev.... Oh! darling, you are adorably loving, but how stupid you are to have fears. No, no, my cherished Eva, I am not one of those who punish a woman for her love. Oh! I would I could remain half a day at your knees, my head on your knees, telling you my thoughts lazily, with delight, saying nothing sometimes, but kissing your gown. Mon Dieu! how sweet would be the day when I could play at liberty with you, as a child with its mother. O my beloved Eva, day of my days, light of my nights, my hope, my adored, my all-beloved, my sole darling, when can I see you? Is it an illusion? Have I seen you? Have I seen you enough to say that I have seen you?

Mon Dieu! how I love your rather broad accent, your mouth of kindness, of voluptuousness—permit me to say it to you, my angel of love!

I work night and day to go and see you for a fortnight in December. I shall cross the Jura covered with snow, but I shall think of the snowy shoulders of my love, my well-beloved. Ah! to breathe your hair, to hold your hand, to strain you in my arms! that’s where my courage comes from. I have friends here who are stupefied at the fierce will I am displaying at this moment. Ah! they don’t know my darling [ma mie], my soft darling, her, whose mere sight robs pain of its stings! Yes, Parisina and her lover must have died without feeling the axe, as they thought of one another!

A kiss, my angel of earth, a kiss tasted slowly. Adieu. The nightingale has sung too long; I am allured to write to you, and Eugénie Grandet scolds.

Saturday, 12, midday.

The protocols are exchanged, our reflections made, to-morrow the signature. But to-morrow all may be changed. I have scarcely done anything to “Eugénie Grandet” and the “Aventures d’une idée.” There are moments when the imagination jolts and will not go on. And then, “L’Europe littéraire” has not come. I am too proud to set foot there because they have behaved so ill to me. So, since my return I am without money. I wait. They ought to have come yesterday to explain matters; they did not. They ought to come to-day. At this moment the price of “Eugénie Grandet” is a great sum for me. So here I am, rebeginning my trade of anguish. Never shall I cease to resemble Raphael in his garret; I still have a year before me to enjoy my last poverty, to have noble, hidden prides.

I am a little fatigued; but the pain in my side has yielded to quiet sitting in my arm-chair, to that constant tranquillity of the body which makes a monk of me.

For the time being, my fancies are calmed; when there is famine in the house I don’t think of my desires. My silver chafing-dishes are melted up. I don’t mind that. No more dinners in October. But I enjoy so much in thought the things I have not, and these desires make them so precious when I do possess them. It is now two years that, month by month, I counted on a balance for my dishes, but they vanish. I have a crowd of little pleasures in that way. They make me love the little nest where I live; it is what makes me love you—a perpetual desire. Those who call me ill-natured, satirical, deceptive, don’t know the innocence of my life, my life of a bird, gathering its nest twig by twig and playing with a straw before it uses it.

O dear confidant of my most secret thoughts, dear, precious conscience, will you some day know, you, the companion of love, how you are loved,—you, who, coming on faithful wing toward your mate, did not reject him after seeing him. How I feared that I might not please you! Tell me again that you liked the man, after liking his mind and heart—since the mind and heart have pleased you, I could not doubt it. My idol, my Eva, welcomed, beloved, if you only knew how all that you said and did laid hold upon me, oh! no, you would have no doubts, no dishonouring fears. Do not speak to me as you did, saying, “You will not love a woman who comes to you, who, who, who—” you know what I mean.

Angel, the angels are often forced to come down from heaven; we cannot go up to them. Besides, it is they who lift us on their white wings to their sphere, where we love and where pleasures are thoughts.

Adieu, you, my treasure, my happiness, you, to whom all my desires fly, you, who make me adore solitude because it is full of you.

Adieu, till to-morrow. At midday my people are coming for the agreement. This letter will wait to carry you good or bad news, but it will carry you so much love that you will be joyous.

Sunday, 13, nine o’clock.

My cherished love, my Eva, the business is completed! They will all burst with envy. My “Études de Mœurs au XIXe Siècle” has been bought for twenty-seven thousand francs. The publisher will make that ring. Since Chateaubriand’s twenty-five volumes were bought for two hundred thousand francs for ten years there has not been such a sale. They take a year to sell....

Ah! here comes your letter. I read it.

My divine love, how stupid you are! Madame de S...!—I have quarrelled with her, have I, so that I never say a word to her; I will not even bow to her daughter? Alas! I have met her, Madame de S..., at Madame d’Abrantès’ this winter. She came up to me and said: “She is not here” (meaning Madame de Castries); “have you been so severe as you were at Aix?” I said, pointing to her lover, former lover of Mme. d’A., a Portuguese count, “But he is here.” The duchess burst out laughing.

Oh! my celestial angel, Madame de S...—if you could see her you would know how atrocious the calumny is.... Your Polish women saw too much of Madame de C... to pay attention to Madame de S... who was paying court to her. But I was at Aix with Madame de C... and we were dining together. As for the marquise, faith, the portrait you draw of her makes me die of laughing. There is something in it, but changed now. Fresh, yes; without heart, yes, at least I think so. She will always be sacred to me; but in the chatter of your Polish women there was just enough truth to make the slander pass.

My idolized love, no more doubts; never, do you understand? I love but you and can love none but you. Eva is your symbolic name. Better than that; I have never loved in the past as I feel that I love you. To you, all my life of love may belong.

Adieu, my breath. I would I could communicate to these pages the virtue of talismans, that you might feel my soul enveloping you. Adieu, my beloved. I kiss this page; I add a leaf of my last rose, a petal of my last jasmine. You are in my thought as the very base of intellect, the substance of all things.

“Eugénie Grandet” is enchanting. You shall soon have it in Geneva.

Well, adieu, you whom I would fain see, feel, press, adieu. Can I not find a way to press you? What impotent wishes imagination has! My dear light, I kiss you with an ardour, an embrace of life, an effusion of the soul, without example in my life.

My angel, I don’t answer about the cry I gave apropos of Madame de C... and the son M... dying for his mother-in-law. To-morrow for all that. You must have laughed at my pretended savagery.

Do not put poste restante any longer.

Paris, Sunday, October 20, 1833.

What! my love; fears, torments? You have received, I hope, the first two letters that I wrote you after my return. What shall I do not to give you the slightest trouble, to make you clear skies? What! could you not have reckoned on a day’s delay, an hour of weariness. Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! what shall I do?

I write to you every day; if you want to receive a letter every third day instead of every eighth day, say so, speak, order. I will do all not to let a single evil thought come into your heart.

If you knew the harm your letter has done me. You do not know me yet. All that is bad. But I pardon the little grief your letter has caused me, because it is one way of telling me you love me.

I have good news to tell you. I think that the “Études de Mœurs” will be a settled business by Tuesday next, and that I shall have as debtor one of the most solid firms of publishers in the market. That is something.

Forgive me, my Eva of love, if I talk to you of my mercantile affairs; but it is my tranquillity; it will no doubt enable me to go to Geneva. Alas! I may not go till December, because I cannot leave till I have finished the first part of these “Études.”

Adieu; I must return to “Eugénie Grandet,” who is going on well. I have still all Monday and a part of Tuesday.

Adieu, my angel of light; adieu, dear treasure; do not ill-treat me. I have a heart as sensitive as that of a woman can be, and I love you better or worse, for I rest without fear on your dear heart, and kiss your two eyes—all!

Adieu; à demain.

Paris, Wednesday, October 23, 1833.

To you, my love, to you a thousand tendernesses. Yesterday I was running about all day and was so tired that I permitted myself to sleep the night through, so that I made my idol only a mental prayer. I went to sleep in thy dear thought just as, if married, I should have fallen asleep in the arms of my beloved.

Mon Dieu! I am frightened to see how my life belongs to you; with what rapidity it turns to your heart. Your arteries beat as much for me as for yourself. Adored darling, what good your letters do me! I believe in you, don’t you see, as I believe in my respiration. I am like a child in this happiness, like a savant, like a fool who takes care of tulips. I weep with rage at not being near you. I assemble all my ideas to develop this love, and I am here, watching ceaselessly that it shall grow without harm. Does not that partake of the child, the savant, and the botanist? Thus, my angel, commit no follies. No, don’t quit your tether, poor little goat. Your lover will come when you cry. But you make me shudder. Don’t deceive yourself, my dear Eve; they do not return to Mademoiselle Henriette Borel a letter so carefully folded and sealed without looking at it. There are clever dissimulations. Now, I entreat you, take a carriage that you may never get wet in going to the post. Besides, it is always cold in the rue du Rhône. Go every Wednesday, because the letters posted here on Sunday arrive on Wednesday. I will never, whatever may be the urgency, post letters for you on any day but Sunday. Burn the envelopes. Let Henriette scold the post-office man who delivered her letter, which was poste restante; but scold him laughing, for officials are rancorous. They would be capable of saying some Wednesday there were no letters, and then delivering them in a way to cause trouble. O my angel, misfortunes only come through letters. I beg you, on my knees, find a place, a lair, a mine to hide the treasures of our love. Do it, so that you can have no uneasiness.

Now, the Countess Potoçka, is she not that beautiful Greek, beloved by P..., married to a doctor, married to General de W..., and then to Count L... P...? If she is, don’t confide to her a single thing about your love, my poor lamb without mistrust. If she has proofs, then own to her; but such an avowal must not be made until you cannot do otherwise, and then, make a merit of a forced confession. You must judge of the opportunity; but when I am in Geneva, you understand that people who run two ideas and who suppose evil when it does not exist, will know well how to divine when true.

Now, when I read your letters I am in Geneva, I see all. Mon Dieu, what grace and prettiness in your letters! Eh! my angel of love, I shall be in Geneva precisely when you choose. But calculate that it takes your letter four days to reach me, and four days for me to arrive; that makes eight days.

My cherished angel, do not share my troubles more than you must in knowing them; heaven has given me all the courage necessary to support them. I would not have a single one of my thoughts hidden from you, and I tell you all. But do not give yourself a fever about them. Yes, the sending of the newspapers was an indignity. Tell me who was capable of such a joke. There will be a duel between him and me. Whoever wounds you is my head enemy; but an enemy Arab fashion, with an oath of vengeance.

My dear happiness, there is not a voice here in my favour; all are hostile. I must resign myself. They treat me, it is true, like a man of genius; and that gives pride. I must redouble cares and courage to mount this last step. I am preparing fine subjects of hatred for them. I work with unexampled obstinacy.

I can only write the ostensible letter to you next week, for I wish the package to be full. So much the better if I am blamed; the recollection will be all the more precious.

My darling, you can very well say that you saw me at Neufchâtel, for that can no more be concealed than the nose upon one’s face. It will be known; it should therefore be told, soul of my soul.1

You see I answer all you write to me, but hap-hazard. I am in haste to finish what I call the business of our love, to talk to you of love.

What! you have read the “Contes Drolatiques” without the permission of your husband of love? Inquisitive one! O my angel, it needs a heart as pure as yours to read and enjoy “Le Péché véniel.” That’s a diamond of naïveté. But, dearest, you have been very audacious. I am afraid you will love me less. One must know our national literature so well, the grand, majestic literature of the seventeenth century, so sparkling with genius, so free in deportment, so lively in words which, in those days, were not yet dishonoured, that I am afraid for myself. I repeat to you, if there is something of me that will live, it is those Contes. The man who writes a hundred of them can never die. Re-read the epilogue of the second dizain and judge. Above all, regard these books as careless arabesques traced with love. What do you think of the “Succube”? My dear beloved, that tale cost me six months of torture. I was ill of it. I think your criticisms without foundation. The trial of the supposed poisoners of the Dauphin was held at Moulin’s, by Chancellor Paget, before the captivity of François I.; I have not the time to verify it. Catherine de’ Medici was Dauphine in 1536, I think. Yes, the battle of Pavia was in 1525; you are right. I think you are right as to the Connétable; it was Duc François de Montmorency who married the Duchesse de Farnese. But all that is contested. I will verify it very carefully, and will correct it in the second edition. Thank you, my love; enlighten me, and for all the faults you find, as many tender thanks. Nevertheless, in these Contes there must be incorrectnesses; that’s the usage; but there must not be lies.

Enough said, my beloved love, my darling Eva. Here is nearly half a night employed on you, in writing to you. Mon Dieu, return it to me in caresses! I must, angel, resume my collar of misery; but it shall not be until I have put here for you all the flowers of my heart, a thousand tendernesses, a thousand caresses, all the prayers of a poor solitary who lives between his thoughts and his love.

Adieu, my cherished beauty; one kiss upon those beautiful red lips, so fresh, so kind, a kiss which goes far, which clasps you. I will not say adieu. Oh! when shall I have your dear portrait? If, by chance you have it mounted, let it be between two plaques of enamel so that the whole may not be thicker than a five-franc piece, for I want to have it always on my heart. It will be my talisman; I shall feel it there; I shall draw strength and courage from it. From it will dart the rays of that glory I wish so great, so broad, so radiant to wrap you in its light.

Come, I must leave you; always with regret. But once at liberty and without annoyances, what sweet pilgrimages! But my thought goes faster, and every night it glides about your heart, your head, it covers you.

Adieu, then. À demain. To-morrow I must go to the Duchesse d’Abrantès; I will tell you why when I get back.

Thursday, 24.

This morning, my cherished love, I have failed in an attempt which might have been fortunate. I went to offer to a capitalist, who receives the indemnities agreed upon between us for the works promised and not written, a certain number of copies of the “Études de Mœurs.” I proposed to him five thousand francs à terme for three thousand échus. He refused everything, even my signature and a note, saying that my fortune was in my talent and I might die. The scene was one of the basest I ever knew. Gobseck was nothing to him; I endured, all red, the contact with an iron soul. Some day, I will describe it. I went to the duchess that she might undertake a negotiation of the same kind with the man who had the lawsuit with me, her publisher, who cut my throat. Will she succeed? I am in the agonies of expectation, and yet I must have the serenity, the calmness, that are necessary for my enormous work.

My angel, I cannot go to Geneva until the first part of the “Études de Mœurs” appears published, and the second is well under way. That done, I shall have fifteen days to myself, twenty perhaps; all will depend on the more or less money that I shall have, for I have an important payment to make the end of December. I am satisfied with my publisher; he is active, does not play the gentleman, takes up my enterprise as a fortune, and considers it eminently profitable. We must have a success, a great success. “Eugénie Grandet” is a fine work. I have nearly all my ideas for the parts that remain to do in these twelve volumes. My life is now well regulated: rise at midnight after going to bed at six o’clock; a bath every third day, fourteen hours of work, two for walking. I bury myself in my ideas and from time to time your dear head appears like a beam of sunlight. Oh, my dear Eva, I have but you in this world; my life is concentrated in your dear heart. All the ties of human sentiment bind me to it. I think, breathe, work by you, for you. What a noble life: love and thought! But what a misfortune to be in the embarrassments of poverty to the last moment! How dearly nature sells us happiness! I must go through another six months of toil, privation, struggle, to be completely happy. But how many things may happen in six months! My beautiful hidden life consoles me for all. You would shudder if I told you all my agonies, which, like Napoleon on a battlefield, I forget. On sitting down at my little table, well, I laugh, I am tranquil. That little table, it belongs to my darling, my Eve, my wife. I have had it these ten years; it has seen all my miseries, wiped away all my tears, known all my projects, heard all my thoughts; my arm has nearly worn it out by dint of rubbing it as I write.

Mon Dieu! my jeweller is in the country; I have confidence in him only. Anna’s cross will be delayed. That annoys me more than my own troubles at the end of the month. Your quince marmalade is on its way to Paris.

My dear treasure, I have no news to give you; I go nowhere, and see no one. You will find nothing but yourself in my letters, an inexhaustible love. Be prudent, my dear diamond. Oh! tell me that you will love me always, because, don’t you see, Eva, I love you for all my life. I am happy in having the consciousness of my love, in being in a thing immense, in living in the limited eternity that we can give to a feeling, but which is an eternity to us. Oh! let me take you in thought in my arms, clasp you, hold your head upon my heart and kiss your forehead innocently. My cherished one, here, from afar, I can express to you my love. I feel that I can love you always, find myself each day in the heart of a love stronger than that of the day before, and say to you daily words more sweet. You please me daily more and more; daily you lodge better in my heart; never betray a love so great. I have but you in the world; you will know in Geneva only all that there is in those words. For the moment I will tell you that Madame de C[astries] writes me that we are not to see each other again; she had taken offence at a letter, and I at many other things. Be assured that there is no love in all this. Mon Dieu! how everything withdraws itself from me? How deep my solitude is becoming! Persecution is beginning for me in literature! The last obligations to pay off keep me at home in continual gigantic toil. Ah! how my soul springs from this person to join your soul, my dear country of love.

I paused here to think of you; I abandoned myself to revery; tears came into my eyes, tears of happiness. I cannot express to you my thoughts. I send you a kiss full of love. Divine my soul!

Saturday, 26.

Yesterday, my beloved treasure, I ran about on business, pressing business; at night I had to correct the volumes which go to press Monday. No answer from the duchess. Oh! she will not succeed. I am too happy in the noble regions of the soul and thought to be also happy in the petty interests of life. I have many letters to write; my work carries me away, and I get behindhand. How powerful is the dominion of thought! I sleep in peace on a rotten plank. That alone expresses my situation. So much money to pay, and to do it the pen with which I write to you—. Oh! no, I have two, my love; yours is for your letters only; it lasts, usually, six months.

I have corrected “La Femme Abandonnée,” “Le Message,” and “Les Célibataires.” That has taken me twenty-six hours since Thursday. One has to attend to the newspapers. To manage the French public is not a slight affair. To make it favorable to a work in twelve volumes is an enterprise, a campaign. What contempt one pours on men in making them move and seeing them squabble. Some are bought. My publisher tells me there is a tariff of consciences among the feuilletonists. Shall I receive in my house a single one of these fellows? I’d rather die unknown!

To-morrow I resume my manuscript work. I want to finish either “Eugénie Grandet” or “Les Aventures d’une idée heureuse.” It is five o’clock; I am going to dinner, my only meal, then to bed and to sleep. I fall asleep always in thoughts of you, seeking a sweet moment of Neufchâtel, carrying myself back to it, and so, quitting the visible world, bearing away one of your smiles or listening to your words.

Did I tell you that persons from Berlin, Vienna, and Hamburg had complimented me on my successes in Germany, where, said these gracious people, nothing was talked of but your Honoré? This was at Gérard’s. But I must have told you this. I wish the whole earth would speak of me with admiration, so that in laying it on your knees you might have the whole world for yourself.

Adieu, for to-day, my angel. To-morrow my caresses, my words all full of love and desires. I will write after receiving the letter which will, no doubt, come to-morrow. Dear, celestial day! Would I could invent words and caresses for you alone. I put a kiss here.

Sunday, 27.

What! my dear love, no letters? Such grief not to know what you think! Oh! send me two letters a week; let me receive one on Wednesdays and the other on Sundays. I have waited for the last courier, and can only write a few words. Do not make me suffer; be as punctual as possible. My life is in your hands:

I have no answer to my negotiations.

Adieu, my dear breath. This last page will bring you a thousand caresses, my heart, and some anxieties. My cherished one, you speak of a cold, of your health. Oh, to be so far away! Mon Dieu! all that is anguish in my life pales before the thought that you are ill.

To-morrow, angel. To-morrow I shall get another letter. My head swims now. Adieu, my good genius, my dear wife; a thousand flowers of love are here for you.

Paris, Monday, October 28, 1833.

I have your letter, my love. How much agony in one day’s delay. À demain; I will tell you then why I cannot answer to-day.

Tuesday, 29.

My cherished Eva, on Thursday I have four or five thousand francs to pay, and, speaking literally, I have not a sou. These are little battles to which I am accustomed. Since childhood I have never yet possessed two sous that I could regard as my own property. I have always triumphed until to-day. So now I must rush about the world of money to make up my sum. I lose my time; I hang about town. One man is in the country; another hesitates; my securities seem doubtful to him. I have ten thousand francs in notes out, however; but by to-morrow night, last limit, I shall no doubt have found some. The two days I am losing are a horrible discount.

I only tell you these things to let you know what my life is. It is a fight for money, a battle against the envious, perpetual struggles with my subjects, physical struggles, moral struggles, and if I failed to triumph a single time I should be exactly dead.

Beloved angel, be a thousand times blessed for your drop of water, for your offer; it is all for me and yet it is nothing. You see what a thousand francs would be when ten thousand a month are needed. If I could find nine I could find twelve. But I should have liked in reading that delicious letter of yours to have plunged my hand in the sea and drawn out all its pearls to strew them on your beautiful black hair. Angel of devotion and love, all your dear, adored soul is in that letter. But what are all the pearls of the sea! I have shed two tears of joy, of gratitude, of voluptuous tenderness, which for you, for me, are worth more than all the riches of the whole world; is it not so, my Eva, my idol? In reading this feel yourself pressed by an arm that is drunk with love and take the kiss I send you ideally. You will find a thousand on the rose-leaf which will be in this letter.

Let us drop this sad money; I will tell you, however, that the two most important negotiations on which I counted for my liberation have failed. You have made me too happy; my luck of soul and heart is too immense for matters of mere interest to succeed. I expiate my happiness.

Celestial powers! whom do you expect me to be writing to, I who have no time for anything? My love, be tranquil; my heart can bloom only in the depths of your heart. Write to others! to others the perfume of my secret thoughts! Can you think it? No, no, to you, my life, my dearest moments. My noble and dear wife of the heart, be easy. You ask me for new assurances about your letters; ask me for no more. All precautions are taken that what you write me shall be like vows of love confided from heart to heart between two caresses. No trace! the cedar box is closed; no power can open it; and the person ordered to burn it if I die is a Jacquet, the original of Jacquet, who is named Jacquet, one of my friends, a poor clerk whose honesty is iron tempered like a blade of Orient. You see, my love, that I do not trust either the dilecta or my sister. Do not speak to me of that any more. I understand the importance of your wish; I love you the more for it if possible, and as you are all my religion, an idolized God, your desires shall be accomplished with fanaticism. What are orders? Oh! no, don’t go to Fribourg. I adore you as religious, but no confession, no Jesuits. Stay in Geneva.

My jeweller does not return; it vexes me a little. My package is delayed: but it is true that the “Caricature” is not yet bound and I wish you to receive all that I promised to send.

Mon Dieu! your letter has refreshed my soul! You are very ravishing, my frolic angel, darling flower. Oh! tell me all. I would like more time to myself to tell you my life. But here I am, caught by twelve volumes to publish, like a galley-slave in his handcuffs.

I have been to see Madame Delphine de Girardin this morning. I had to implore her to find a place for a poor man recommended to me by the lady of Angoulême, who terrified me by her silent missive. The sorrows of others kills me! Mine, I know how to bear. Madame Delphine promised me to do all she could with Émile de Girardin when he returns.

Apropos, my love, “L’Europe littéraire” is insolvent; there is a meeting to-morrow of all the shareholders to devise means. I shall go at seven o’clock, and as it is only a step from Madame Delphine’s I dine with her, and I shall finish the evening at Gérard’s. So, I am all upset for two days. Moreover, in the mornings I run about for money. Already the hundred louis of Mademoiselle Eugénie Grandet have gone off in smoke. I must bear it all patiently, as Monsieur Hanski’s sheep let themselves be sheared.

My rich love, what can I tell you to soothe your heart? That my tenderness, the certainty of your affection, the beautiful secret life you make me dwarfs everything and I laugh at my troubles—there are no longer any troubles for me. Oh! I love you, my Eva! love you as you wish to be loved, without limit. I like to say that to myself; imagine therefore the happiness with which I repeat it.

I have to say to you that I don’t like your reflected portrait, made from a copy. No, no. I have in my heart a dear portrait that delights me. I will wait till you have had a portrait made that is a better likeness after nature. Poor treasure, oh! your shawl. I am proud to think that I alone in the world can comprehend the pleasure you had in giving it, and that I have that of reading what you have written to me,—I who do these things so great and so little, so magnificent and so nothing, which make a museum for the heart out of a straw!

My beloved, my thoughts develop all the tissues of love, and I would like to display them to you, and make you a rich mantle of them. I would like you to walk upon my soul, and in my heart, so as to feel none of the mud of life.

Adieu, for to-day, my saintly and beautiful creature, you the principle of my life and courage. You who love, who are beautiful, who have everything and have given yourself to a poor youth. Ah! my heart will be always young, fresh, and tender for you. In the immensity of days I see no storm possible that can come to us. I shall always come to you with a soul full of love, a smile upon my lips, and a soft word ready to caress you in the ear. My Eva, I love you.

Thursday morning, 31.

No more anxieties, all is arranged! Here are six thousand francs found, five thousand five hundred paid! There remains to the poor poet five hundred francs in a noble bank-bill. Joy is in the house. I ask if Paris is for sale. My love, you’ll end by knowing a bachelor’s life!

Yesterday, all was doubtful. In two hours of time all was settled. I started to find my doctor, an old friend of my family, seeing that I had nothing to hope from bankers. Ah! in the course of the way I met R... who took me by the hand and led me to his wife. They were getting into a carriage. Caresses, offers of service, why did they never see me? why...? A thousand questions, and Madame R... began to make eyes at me as she did at Aix, where she tried to seize my portrait on the sly.

Can’t you see me, my love, in conference with a prince of money,—me, who couldn’t find four sous! Was anything ever more fantastic? A single word to say, and my twelve thousand francs of notes of hand went into the gulf. I said nothing about it, and certainly he would not have taken a sou of discount. I laughed like one of the blest, as I left him, at the situation.

I resume; seeing that I had nothing to hope from bankers, I reflected that I owed three hundred francs to my doctor; I went and paid them with one of my commercial notes, and he returned me seven hundred francs, less the discount. From there I went to my landlord, an old wheat-dealer in the Halle; I paid him my rent, and he returned me on my note, which he accepted, seven hundred more francs, less the discount. From there I went to my tailor, who at once took one of my thousand-franc notes and put it in his memorandum of discount [bordereau d’escompte—cash account?] and returned me a thousand francs!

Finding myself in the humour, I got into a cabriolet and went to see a friend, a double millionnaire, a friend of twenty years’ standing. He had just returned from Berlin. I found him; he turned to his desk and gave me two thousand francs, and took two of my notes from Madame Bêchet without looking at them. Oh! oh! I came home, I sent for my wood merchant and my grocer to come and settle our accounts, and to each I paid, in bank-bills, five hundred francs! At four o’clock I was free, my payments for to-day prepared. Here I am, tranquil for a month. I resume my seat on my fragile seasaw and my imagination rocks me. Ecco, signora!

My dear, faithful wife, did I not owe you this faithful picture of your Paris household? Yes, but there are five thousand francs of the twenty-seven thousand eaten up, and I have, before I can go to Geneva, ten thousand francs to pay: three thousand to my mother, one thousand to my sister, and six thousand in indemnities. “Yah! monsieur, where will you get all that?” In my inkbottle, dearly beloved Eva.

I am dressed like a lord, I have dined with Madame Delphine, and, after being present at the death agony of “L’Europe littéraire,” I went joyously to Gérard’s, where I complimented Grisi, whom I had heard the night before in “La Gazza ladra” with Rossini, who, having met me Tuesday on the Boulevard, forced me to go to his opera-box to talk un poco; and as on that Tuesday your poor Honoré had dined with Madame d’A[brantès] who had to render him an account of the great negotiation (which missed fire) with Mame, he had, your poor youth, to drown his sorrows in harmony. What a life, ma minette! What strange discordances, what contrasts!

At Gérard’s I heard the admirable Vigano. She refused to sing, snubbed everybody; I arrived, I asked her for an air; she sat down at the piano, sang, and delighted us. Thiers asked who I was; being told, he said, “It is all plain, now.” And the whole assembly of artists marvelled.

The secret of it is that I was, last winter, full of admiration for Madame Vigano; I idolize her singing; she knows that, and I am a Kreizler to her. I went to bed at two o’clock after returning on foot through the deserted, silent streets of the Luxembourg quarter, admiring the blue sky and the effects of moon and vapour on the Luxembourg, the Pantheon, Saint-Sulpice, the Val-de-Grâce, the Observatoire, and the boulevards, drowned in torrents of thought and carrying two thousand francs upon me—though I had forgotten them; my valet found them. That night of love had plunged me in ecstasy; you were in the heavens! they spoke of love; I walked, listening whether from those stars your cherished voice would fall, sweet and harmonious, to my ears, and vibrate in my heart; and, my idol, my flower, my life, I embroidered a few arabesques on the evil stuff of my days of anguish and toil.

To-day, Thursday, here I am back again in my study, correcting proofs, recovering from my trips into the material world, resuming my chimeras, my love; and in forty-eight hours the charms of midnight rising, going to bed at six in the evening, frugality, and bodily inaction will be resumed.

We have had, for the last week, an actual summer; the finest weather ever created. Paris is superb. Love of my life, a thousand kisses are committed to the airs for you; a thousand thoughts of happiness are shed during my rushing about, and I know not what disdain in seeing men. They have not, as I have, an immense love in their hearts, a throne before which I prostrate myself without servility, the figure of a madonna, a beautiful brow of love which I kiss at all hours, an Eve who gilds all my dreams, who lights my life.

Adieu, my constant thought, à demain. I may not be so talkative; to-morrow comes toil.

Friday.

I have worked all day at two proofs which have taken me twenty hours; then I must, I think, find something to complete my second volume of “Scènes de la Vie de province” because to make a fine book the printers so compress my manuscript that another Scene is wanted of forty or fifty pages. Nothing to-day, therefore, to her who has all my heart; nothing but a thousand kisses, and my dear evening thoughts when I go to sleep thinking of you.

To-morrow, pretty Eve.

Saturday.

Certainly, my love, you will not act comedy. I have not spoken to you of that. I have just re-read your last letter. It is a prostitution to exhibit one’s self in that way; to speak words of love. Oh! be sacredly mine! If I should tell you to what a point my delicacy goes, you would think me worthy of an angel like yourself. I love you in me. I wish to live far away from you, like the flower in the seed, and to let my sentiments blossom for you alone.

To-day I have laboriously invented the “Cabinet des Antiques;” you will read that some day. I wrote seventeen of the feuillets at once. I am very tired. I am going to dress to dine with my publisher, where I shall meet Béranger. I shall get home late; I have still some business to settle.

My cherished love, as soon as the first part appears and the second is printed I shall fly to Geneva and stay there a good three weeks. I shall go to the Hôtel de la Couronne, in the gloomy chamber I occupied [in 1832]. I quiver twenty times a day at the idea of seeing you. I meant to speak to you of Madame de C[astries], but I have not the time. Twenty-five days hence I will tell you by word of mouth. In two words, your Honoré, my Eva, grew angered by the coldness which simulated friendship. I said what I thought; the reply was that I ought not to see again a woman to whom I could say such cruel things. I asked a thousand pardons for the “great liberty,” and we continue on a very cold footing.

I have read Hoffmann through; he is beneath his reputation; there is something of it, but not much. He writes well of music; he does not understand love, or woman; he does not cause fear; it is impossible to cause it with physical things.

One kiss and I go.

Sunday.

Up at eight o’clock; I came in last night at eleven. Here are my hours upset for four days. Frightful loss! I awaited the old gentleman on whose behalf I implored Delphine. He did not come. It is eleven o’clock,—no letter from Geneva. What anxiety! O my love, I entreat you, try to send me letters on regular days; spare the sensibility of a child’s heart. You know how virgin my love is. Strong as my love is, it is delicate, oh! my darling. I love you as you wish to be loved, solely. In my solitude a mere nothing troubles me. My blood is stirred by a syllable.

I have just come from my garden; I have gathered one of the last violets in bloom there; as I walked I addressed to you a hymn of love; take it, on this violet; take the kisses placed upon the rose-leaf. The rose is kisses, the violet is thoughts. My work and you, that is the world to me. Beyond that, nothing. I avoid all that is not my Eva, my thoughts. Dear flower of heaven, my fairy, you have touched all here with your wand; here, through you, all is beautiful. However embarrassed life may be, it is smooth, it is even. Above my head I see fine skies.

Well, to-morrow, I shall have a letter. Adieu, my cherished soul! Thank you a thousand times for your kind letters; do not spare them. I would like to be always writing to you; but, poor unfortunate, I am obliged to think sometimes of the gold I draw from my inkstand. You are my heart; what can I give you?

Paris, Wednesday, November 6, 1833.

The agonies you have gone through, my Eve, I have very cruelly felt, for your letter arrived only to-day. I cannot describe all the horrible chimeras which tortured me from time to time; for the delay of one of your letters puts everything in doubt between you and me; the delay of one of mine does not imply so many evils to fear.

As to the last page of your letter, endeavour to forget it. I pardon it, and I suffer at your distress. To be unjust and ill-natured! You remind me of the man who thought his dog mad and killed him, and then perceived that he was warning him not to lose his forgotten treasure.

You speak of death. There is something more dreadful, and that is pain; and I have just endured one of which I will not speak to you. As to my relations with the person you speak of, I never had any that were very tender; I have none now. I answered a very unimportant letter, and, apropos of a sentence, I explained myself; that was all. There are relations of politeness due to women of a certain rank whom one has known; but a visit to Madame Récamier is not, I suppose, relations, when one goes to see her once in three months.

Mon Dieu! the man who seems to be justifying himself has just been stabbed to the heart. He smiles to you, my Eve, and this man does not sleep—he, rather a sleepy man—more than five hours and a half. He works seventeen hours, to be able to stay a week in your sight; I sell years of my life to go and see you. This is not a reproach. But you may say to me, you, that perhaps I love the pages I write from necessity better than my love. But with you I am not proud, I am not humble. I am, I try to be, you. You have suffered; I suffer,—you wished to make me suffer. You will regret it. Try that it may not happen again; you will break the heart that loves you, as a child breaks a toy to look inside of it. Poor Eva! So we do not know each other? Oh, yes, we do, don’t we?

Mon Dieu! to punish me for my confidence! for the joy that I feel more and more in solitude! I don’t know where my mother is; it is two months that no one has any news of her. No letters from my brother. My sister is in the country, guarded by duennas fastened on her by her husband, and he is travelling. So I have no one to tell you about. The dilecta is with her son at Chaumont, with the devil. I am myself in a torrent of proofs, corrections, copies, works. And it is at the moment when I expected to plunge into all my joys that, after your first pages, I find the pompous praise of..., mon Dieu! and my accusation and condemnation, which will bleed long in a heart like mine.

I am sad and melancholy, wounded, weeping, and awaiting the serenity that never comes full and complete. If you wished that, if you wished to pour upon my life as much pain as I have toil (impossible now), Eva, you have succeeded. As to anger, no; reproaches? what good are they? Either you are in despair at having pained me, or you are content to have done so. I do not doubt you. I would like to console you; but you have cruelly abused the distance that separates us, the poverty that prevents my taking a post-chaise, the engagements of honour which forbid me to leave Paris before the 25th or 26th of this month. You have been a woman; I thought you an angel. I may love you the better for it; you bring yourself nearer to me. I will smile to you without ceasing. Ever since I knew the Indian maxim, “Never strike, even with a flower, a woman with a hundred faults,” I have made that the rule of my conduct. But it does not prevent me from feeling to the heart, more violently than those who kill their mistresses feel, insults, and suspicions of evil. I, so exclusive, tainted with commonness! made petty enough to be lowered to vengeance! What! that love so pure, you stain it with suspicion, with blame, with doubt! God himself cannot efface what has been; he may oppose the future, but not the past!

I cannot write more; I rave; my ideas are confused. After twelve hours of toil I wanted a little rest, and to-day I must rest in suffering. Oh! my only love, what grief to look on what I write to you, to weigh my words, and not say all that is without evasion, because I am without reproach. Oh! I suffer. I have not a passing passion, but a one sole love!

November, 10, 1833.

I posted a letter last night, not expecting to be able to write again; I suffered too much. My neuralgia attacked me. That is a secret between me and my doctor; he made me take some pills, and I am better this morning. But, can I help it? your letter burns my heart. I will go to Geneva, I will pass my winter there. At least you shall not have the right to emit suspicions. You shall see my life of toil, and you will perceive the barbarity there is in arming yourself with my confidence in opening my heart to you. I, who want to think in you! I, who detach myself from everything to be more wholly yours!

Deceive you! But, as you say yourself, that would be too easy. Besides, is that my character? Love is to me all confidence. I believe in you as in myself. What you say of that compatriot [Madame de Castries is meant] makes me surfer, but I do not doubt it. I shall not speak to you of the cause of your imprecation, “Go to the feet of your marquise” [Va aux pieds de ta marquise], except verbally.1

I have five important affairs to terminate, but I shall sacrifice all to be on the 25th in Geneva, at that inn of the Pré-l’Évêque. But we shall see each other very little. I must go to bed at six in the evening, to rise at midnight. But from midday till four o’clock every day I can be with you. For that I must do things here that seem impossible; I shall attempt them. If they cause me a thousand troubles I shall go to Geneva, and forget everything there to see but one thing, the one heart, the one woman by whom I live.

I would give my life that that horrible page had not been written. To reproach me for my very devotion! Do you believe that I would not leave all, and go with you to the depths of some retreat? You arm yourself with the phrase in which I sacrifice (the word meant nothing, there is no sacrifice) to you all!

Why have you flung suffering into what was so sweet? You have made me give to grief the time that belonged to the toil which facilitates my means of going to you sooner.

I await, with an impatience beyond words, a letter, a line; you have completely upset me. No, you do not know the childlike heart, the poet’s heart, that you have bruised. I am a man to suffer, then!

Adieu. Did I tell you the story of that man who wrote drinking-songs in order to bury an adored mistress? To work with a heart in mourning is my fate till your next letter comes. You owe me your life for this fatal week. Oh! my angel, mine belongs to you. Break, strike, but love me still. I adore you as ever; but have mercy on the innocent. I do not know if you have formed an idea of what I have to do. I must finish with the printing of four volumes before I can start, I must compound with five difficulties, pay eight thousand francs; and the four volumes make one hundred feuilles, or one hundred times sixteen pages, to be revised each three or four times, without counting the manuscripts.

Well, I will lose sleep, I will risk all, but you will see me near you on the 20th at latest.

To-morrow I shall write openly to Madame Hanska to announce my parcel.

May I put here a kiss full of tears? Will it be taken with love? Make no more storms without cause in what is so pure.

It is midday. That you may get this in time, I send it to the general post-office.

Paris, Thursday, November 12, 1833.

It is six o’clock; I am going to bed, much fatigued by certain errands [courses] made for pressing affairs; for I have hope, at the cost of three thousand francs in money, of compromising on the litigious affair which causes me the most anxiety. On returning home I found your letter sent Friday, with that kind page which effaces all my pain.

O my adored angel, as long as you do not fully know the bloom of sensitiveness which constant toil and almost perpetual seclusion have left in my heart, you will not understand the ravages that a word, a doubt, a suspicion can cause. In walking this morning through Paris I said to myself that commercially the most simple contract could not be broken without attainting probity; but have you not broken, without hearing me, a promise that bound us forever?

This is the last time that I shall speak to you of that letter except when, in Geneva, I shall explain to you what gave rise to it. Fear nothing; I have finished all my visits, and shall not go again to Gérard’s. I refuse all invitations, I hibernate completely, and the woman most ambitious of love could find nothing to blame in me.

But alas! all that I have been able to do has been to take one more hour from sleep. I must sleep five hours. My doctor, whom I saw this morning, and who knows me since I was ten years old (a friend of the house), is always fearful on seeing how I work. He threatens me with an inflammation of the integuments of my cerebral nerves:—

“Yes, doctor,” I told him, “if I committed excess upon excess; but for three years I have been as chaste as a young girl, I never drink either wine or liquors, my food is weighed, and the return of my neuralgia comes less from work than from grief.”

He shrugged his shoulders and said, looking at me:—

“Your talent costs dear! It is true; a man doesn’t have a flaming look like yours if he addicts himself to women.”

There, my love, is a very authentic certificate of my sobriety. The doctor is alarmed at my work. “Eugénie Grandet” makes a thick volume. I keep the manuscript for you. There are pages written, in the midst of anguish. They belong to you, as all of me does.

My dear love, listen; you must content yourself with having only a few sentences, a line perhaps, per day, if you wish to see me in November at Geneva. Apropos, write me openly in reply to my open letter, to come to the inn on the Pré-l’Évêque, and give me its name. I shall come for a month, and write “Privilège” there. I shall have to bring a whole library.

My love, à bientôt. Nevertheless, I have a thousand obstructions. The printers, and there are three printing-offices busy with these four volumes, well, they do not get on. I, from midnight to midday, I compose; that is to say, I am twelve hours in my arm-chair writing, improvising, in the full meaning of that term. Then, from midday to four o’clock I correct my proofs. At five I dine, at half-past five I am in bed, and am wakened at midnight.

Thank you for your kind page; you have removed my suffering; oh! my good, my treasure, never doubt me. Never a thought or a word in contradiction of what I have said to you with intoxication can trouble the words and thoughts that are for you. Oh! make humble reparations to Madame P... Bulwer, the novelist, is not in Parliament; he has a brother who is in Parliament, and the name has led even our journalists into error. I made the same mistake that you did, but I have verified the matter carefully. Bulwer is now in Paris,—the novelist, I mean. He came yesterday to the Observatoire, but I have not seen him yet.

You make me like Grosclaude [an artist]. What I want is the picture he makes for you, and a copy equal to the original. I shall put it before me in my study, and when I am in search of words, corrections, I shall see what you are looking at.

There is a sublime scene (to my mind, and I am rewarded for having it) in “Eugénie Grandet,” who offers her fortune to her cousin. The cousin makes an answer; what I said to you on that subject was more graceful. But to mingle a single word that I have said to my Eve in what others will read!—ah! I would rather fling “Eugénie Grandet,” into the fire. Oh, my love! I cannot find veils enough to veil it from everyone. Oh! you will only know in ten years that I love you, and how well I love you.

My dear gentille, when I take this paper and speak to you I let myself flow into pleasure; I could write to you all night. I am obliged to mark a certain hour at my waking; when it rings I ought to stop, and it rang long ago.

Till to-morrow.

Wednesday.

After the 22nd, including the 22nd, do not post any more letters; I shall not receive them. Oh! I would like to intoxicate myself so as not to think during the journey. Three days to be saying to myself, “I am going to see her!” Ah! you know what that is, don’t you? It is dying of impatience, of pleasure! I have just sent you the licensed letter, and I am now going to do up the parcel and arrange the box. I have returned the remainder of the pebbles; I had not the right to lose what Anna picked up; and I would not compromise Mademoiselle Hanska by keeping them.

Oh! let me laugh after weeping. I shall soon see you. I bring you the most sublime masterpiece of poesy, an epistle of Madame Desbordes-Valmore, the original of which I have; I reserve it for you. To-morrow, Thursday, I hope to be delivered of “Eugénie Grandet.” The manuscript will be finished. I must immediately finish “Ne touchez pas à la hache.”

I do not know how it is that you can go and put yourself so often into the midst of that atmosphere of Genevese pedantry. But also I know there is nothing so agreeable as to be in the midst of society with a great thought, oh! my beautiful angel, my Eva, my treasures, of which the world is ignorant.

Nothing could be more false than what that traveller told you about Madame C... You understand, my love, that the ambitious manner in which I now present myself in society must engender a thousand calumnies, a thousand absurd versions. To give you an example: I have a glass I value, a saucer, out of which my aunt, an angel of grace and goodness who died in the flower of her age, drank for the last time; and my grandmother, who loved me, kept it on her fireplace for ten years. Well, my lawyer heard some man in a literary reading-room say that my life was attached to a talisman, a glass, a saucer; and my talent also. There are things of love and pride and nobleness in certain lives which others would rather calumniate than comprehend.

Latouche has said a frightful thing of hatred to one of my friends. He met him on the quay; they spoke of me,—Latouche with immense praises (in spite of our separation). “What pleases me about him,” he said, “is that I begin to believe he will bury them all.”

Mon Dieu! how I love your dear letters; not those in which you scold, but those in which you tell me minutely what happens to you. Oh! tell me all; let me read in your soul as I would like to make you read in mine. Tell me the praises that your adorable beauty receives, and if any one looks at your hair, your pretty throat, your little hands, tell me his name. You are my most precious fame. We have, they say, stars in heaven; you, you are my star come down,—the light in which I live, the light toward which I go.

How is it that you speak to me of what I write. It is what I think and do not say that is beautiful, it is my love for you, its cortège of ideas, it is all that I fain would say to you, in your ear, with no more atmosphere between us.

I do not like “Marie Tudor;” from the analyses in the newspapers, it seems to me nasty. I have no time to go and see the play. I have no time to live. I shall live only in Geneva. And what work I must do even there! There, as here, I shall have to go to bed at six o’clock and get up at midnight. But from midday to five o’clock, O love! what strength I shall get from your glances. What pleasure to read to you, chapter by chapter, the “Privilège” or other tales, my cherished love!

Do not think that there is the least pride, the least false delicacy in my refusal of what you know of, the golden drop you have put angelically aside. Who knows if some day it might not stanch the blood of a wound? and from you alone in the world I could accept it. I know you would receive all from me. But no; reserve all for things that I might perhaps accept from you, in order to surround myself with you, and think of you in all things. My love is greater than my thought.

Find here a thousand kisses and caresses of flame. I would like to clasp you in my soul.

Paris, Wednesday, November 13, 1833.

Madame,—I think that the house of Hanski will not refuse the slight souvenirs which the house of Balzac preserves of a gracious and most joyous hospitality. I have the honour to address you, bureau restant at Geneva, a little case forwarded by the Messageries of the rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. You have no doubt been accusing the frivolity and carelessness of the “Frenchman” (forgetting that I am a Gaul, nothing but a Gaul), and have never thought of all the difficulties of Parisian life, which have, however, procured me the pleasure of busying myself long for you and Anna. The delay comes from the fact that I wanted to keep all my promises. Permit me to have some vanity in my persistence.

Before the sublime Fossin deigned to leave the diadems and crowns of princes to set the pebbles picked up by your daughter, I had to entreat him, and be very humble, and often leave my retreat, where I am busy in setting poor phrases. Before I could get the best cotignac [quince marmalade] from Orléans, inasmuch as you want to be a child again and taste it, there was need of correspondence. And foreseeing that you would find the marmalade below its reputation, I wanted to add some of the clingstone peaches of Touraine, that you might feel, gastronomically, the air of my native region. Forgive me that Tourainean vanity. And finally, in order to send you a “La Caricature” complete, I had to wait till its year was ended and then submit to the delays of the binder,—that high power that oppresses my library.

For your beautiful hair nothing was more easy, and you will find what you deigned to ask me for. I shall have the honour to bring you myself the recipe for the wonderful preservative pomade, which you can make yourself in the depths of the Ukraine, and so not lose one of your beauteous black hairs.

Rossini has lately written me a note; I send it to you as an offering to Monsieur Hanski, his passionate admirer. You see, madame, that I have not forgotten you, and that if my work allows I shall soon be in Geneva to tell you myself what sweet memories I preserve of our happy meeting.

You admire Chénier; there is a new edition just published, more complete than the preceding ones. Do not buy it; arrange that I may read to you, myself, these various poems, and perhaps you will then attach more value to the volumes I shall select for you here. That sentence is not vain or impertinent; it is the expression of a hope with wholly youthful frankness.

I hope to be in Geneva on the 25th; but, alas! for that I have to finish four volumes, and though I work eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, and have given up the music of the opera and all the joys of Paris to stay in my cell, I am afraid that the coalition of workmen of which we are now victims will make my efforts come to nought. I wish, as I have to make this journey, that I might find a little tranquillity in it, and remain away from that furnace called Paris for a fortnight, to be employed in some far niente. But I shall probably have to work more than I wish to.

Give the most gracious expression of my sentiments and remembrances to Monsieur Hanski, kiss Mademoiselle Anna in my name, and accept for yourself my respectful homage. Will you believe me, and not laugh at me if I tell you that, often, I see again your beautiful head in that landscape of the Île Sainte-Pierre, when, in the middle of my nights, weary with toil, I gaze into my fire without seeing it, and turn my mind to the most agreeable memories of my life? There are so few pure moments, free of all arrière-pensées, naïve as our own childhood, in this life. Here, I see nothing but enmities about me. Who could doubt that I revert to scenes where nothing but good-will surrounded me? I do not forget either Mademoiselle Séverine or Mademoiselle Borel.

Adieu, madame; I place all my obeisances at your feet.

Paris, Sunday, November 17, 1833.

Thursday, Friday, and yesterday it was impossible for me to write to you. The case does not start till to-morrow, Monday, so that you will hardly get it before Thursday or Friday. Tell me what you think of Anna’s cross. We have been governed by the pebbles, which prevent anything pretty being made of them. The cotignac made everybody send me to the deuce. They wrote me from Orléans that I must wait till the fresh was made, which was better than the old, and that I should have it in four or five days. So, not wishing it to fail you as announced, I rushed to all the dealers in eatables, who one and all told me they never sold two boxes of that marmalade a year, and so had given up keeping it. But at Corcelet’s I found a last box; he told me there was no one but him in Paris who kept that article, and that he would have some fresh cotignac soon. I took the box; and you will not have the fresh till my arrival, cara.

As for Rossini, I want him to write me a nice letter, and he has just invited me to dine with his mistress, who happens to be that beautiful Judith, the former mistress of Horace Vernet and of Eugène Sue, you know. He has promised me a note about music, etc. He is very obliging; we have chased each other for two days. No one has an idea with what tenacity one must will a thing in Paris to have it. The smaller a thing is, the less one obtains it.

I have now obtained an excellent concession from Gosselin. I shall not do the “Privilège” at Geneva. I shall do two volumes of the “Contes Philosophiques” there, which will not oblige me to make researches; and this leaves me free to go and come without the dreadful paraphernalia of a library. I am afraid I cannot leave here before the 20th, my poor angel. Money is a terrible thing! I must pay four thousand francs indemnities to get peace; and here I am forced to begin all over again to raise money on publishers’ notes, and I have ten thousand francs to pay the last of December, besides three thousand to my mother. It is enough to make one lose one’s head. And when I think that to compose, to work, one needs great calmness, to forget all!

If I have started on the 25th I shall be lucky. Of one hundred feuilles wanted to-day, Sunday, I have only eight of one volume and four of another printed, eleven set up of one and five of the other. I am expecting the fabricators this morning to inform them of my ultimatum. Why! in sixteen hours of work—and what work?—I do in one hour what the cleverest workmen in a printing-office cannot do in a day. I shall never succeed!

In the judgment of all men of good sense, “Marie Tudor” is an infamy, and the worst thing there is as a play.

Mon Dieu! I re-read your letters with incredible pleasure. Aside from love, for which there is no expression, we are, in them, heart to heart; you have the most refined of minds, the most original, and, dearest, how you speak to all my natures! Soon I can tell you more in a look than in all my letters, which tell nothing.

I put in a leaf of sweet-scented camellia; it is a rarity; I have cast many a look at it. For a week past, as I work I look at it; I seek the words I want, I think of you, who have the whiteness of that flower.

O my love, I would I could hold you in my arms, at this moment when love gushes up in my heart, when I have a thousand desires, a thousand fancies, when I see you with the eyes of the soul only, but in which you are truly mine. This warmth of soul, of heart, of thought, will it wrap you round as you read these lines? I think of you when I hear music. Adoremus in æternum, my Eva,—that is our motto, is it not?

Adieu; à bientôt. What pleasure I shall have in explaining to you the caricatures you cannot understand.

Do you want anything from Paris? Tell me. You can still write the day after you receive this letter. The camellia-leaf bears you my soul; I have held it between my lips in writing this page, that I might fill it with tenderness.

Paris, November 20, 1833, five in the morning.

My dear wife of love, fatigue has come at last; I have gathered the fruit of these constant night-watches and my continual anxieties. I have many griefs. In re-reading “Les Célibataires” which I had re-corrected again and again, I find deplorable faults after printing. Then, my lawsuits have not ended. I await to-day the result of a transaction which will end everything between Mame and me. I send him four thousand francs, my last resources. Here I am, once more as poor as Job, and yet this week I must find twelve hundred francs to settle another litigious affair. Oh! how dearly is fame bought! how difficult men make it to acquire her! No, there is no such thing as a cheap great man.

I could not write to you yesterday, or Monday; I was hurrying about. Hardly could I re-read my proofs attentively. In the midst of all this worry I made the words of a song for Rossini.

I was Sunday with Bra, the sculptor; there I saw the most beautiful masterpiece that exists; and I do not except either the Olympian Jupiter, or the Moses, or the Venus, or the Apollo. It is Mary, holding the infant Christ, adored by two angels. If I were rich I would have that executed in marble.

There I conceived a most noble book; a little volume to which “Louis Lambert” should be the preface; a work entitled “Séraphita.” Séraphita will be two natures in one single being—like “Fragoletta,” with this difference, that I suppose this creature an angel arrived at the last transformation, and breaking through the enveloping bonds to rise to heaven. This angel is loved by a man and by a woman, to whom he says, as he goes upward through the skies, that they have each loved the love that linked them, seeing it in him, an angel all purity; and he reveals to them their passion, he leaves them love, as he escapes our terrestrial miseries. If I can, I will write this noble work at Geneva, near to you.

But the conception of this multi-toned Séraphita has wearied me; it has lashed me for two days.

Yesterday I sent Rossini’s autograph, extremely rare, to Monsieur Hanski, but the song for you. I am afraid I cannot leave here before 27th; seventeen hours of toil do not suffice. In a few hours you will receive my last letter, which will calm your fears and your sweet repentance. I would now like to be tortured—if it did not make me suffer so much. Oh! your adorable letters! And you believe that I will not burn those sacred effusions of your heart! Oh! never speak of that again.

To-day, 20th, I have still one hundred pages of “Eugénie Grandet” to write, “Ne touchez pas à la hache” to finish, and “La Femme aux yeux rouges” to do, and I need at least ten days for all that. I shall arrive dead. But I can stay in Geneva as long as you do. This is how: if I am rich enough I will lose five hundred francs on each volume to have it put in type and corrected in Geneva; and I will send to Paris a single corrected proof, and they will reprint it under the eyes of a friend who will read the sheets. It is such a piece of folly that I shall do it. What do you say to it?

Yesterday my arm-chair, the companion of my vigils, broke. It is the second I have had killed under me since the beginning of the battle that I fight.

When people ask me where I am going, and why I leave Paris, I tell them I am going to Rome.

Coffee has no longer any effect upon me. I must leave it off for some time that it may recover its virtues.

My dearest Eva, I should like to find in that inn you speak of, a very quiet room where no noise could penetrate, for I have truly much work to do. I shall work only my twelve hours, from midnight to midday, but those I must have.

I cannot tell you how these delays of the printer annoy me; I am ill of them. All the day of Monday was occupied by an old man of sixty-five, a man belonging to the first families of Franche-Comté, fallen into poverty, for whom I was entreated by the lady in Angoulême to find a situation. My heart is still wrung at the sight of him. I took him to Émile de Girardin, who gave him a place at a hundred francs a month. A man with white hair who lives on bread only, he and his family, while I, I live luxuriously, my God! I did what I could. People call these good actions; God thinks of those who compassionate the miseries of others. Just now God is crushing me a good deal. But it is true that you love me, and I worship you, and that enables me to bear all. I had to dine with Émile and his wife, and lose a day and a night; what a sacrifice! Ten years hence to give away a hundred thousand francs would be less.

Adieu for to-day. I have rested myself for a moment on your heart, oh, my dear joy, my gentle haven, my sole thought, my flower of heaven! Adieu, then.

Saturday, 23rd.

From Thursday until to-day I have often thought of you, but to write has been impossible. I have a weight of a hundred thousand pounds on my shoulders. Yes, my angel, I am quit of that publisher at the cost of four thousand francs. My lawyer, my notary, and a procureur du Roi have examined the receipt. All is ended between us; agreements destroyed; I owe him neither sou nor line. I have deposited the document, precious to me, with my notary.

The next day I completed, also at a cost of three thousand francs (making seven thousand in a week), my other transaction. But as I had not enough money I drew a note for five days, and by Wednesday, 27th, I must have twelve hundred francs! I have, besides, a little procillon to compound for, but that is only for money not yet due. I have still two other matters concerning my literary property to bring to an end before I can start. I am absolutely without a sou; but, at least, I am tranquil in mind. I shall always have to work immensely.

Now in relation to the Mind manufactory, this is where I am: I have still twenty-five feuilles to do to finish “Eugénie Grandet;” I have the proofs to revise. Then “Ne touchez pas à la hache” to finish, with the “Femme aux yeux rouges” to do; also the proofs of two volumes to read. It is impossible for me to start till all that is done. I calculate ten days; this is now the 24th, for it is two o’clock in the morning. I cannot get off till the 4th, arrive the 7th, and stay till January 7th. Moreover, in order that I may stay, the “Médecin de campagne” must be sold, I must write a “Scène de la Vie de campagne” at Geneva, and the other “Scènes de la Vie de campagne” must be published, during my absence, in Paris. However, I want to start on the 4th at latest. Therefore, you can write to me till the 30th. After the 30th of this month do not write again.

Mon Dieu! What time such business consumes!—when I think of what I do, my manuscripts, my proofs, my corrections, my business affairs! I sleep tranquil, thinking that I have to pay two thousand four hundred francs of acceptances for six days, for which I have not a sou! I have lived like this for thirty-four years, and never has Providence forgotten me. And so, I have an incredible confidence. What has to be done is always done; and you can well believe that to pay seven thousand francs with 0 obliges one to sign notes.

There’s my situation, financial, scriptural, moral, of author, of corrections, of all in short that is not love, on Sunday, the 24th, at half-past one o’clock in the morning. I write you this just as I get to the eleventh feuillet of the fifth chapter of “Eugénie Grandet,” entitled, “Family Griefs;” and between a proof of the eleventh sheet of the book, that is to say, at its 176th page. When you have the manuscript of “Eugénie Grandet,” you will know its history better than any one.

For the last two days I have had some return of my cerebral neuralgia; but it was not much, and considering my toil and my worries, I ought to think myself lucky to have only that.

Now, do not let us talk any more of the material things of life, which, nevertheless, weigh so heavily upon us. How you make me again desire riches!

My cherished love, have you tasted your marmalade? do you like the peaches? has Anna her cross? have you laughed at the caricatures? I have received your open letter, and it has all the effect upon me of seeing you in full dress, in a grand salon, among five hundred persons.

Oh! my pretty Eve! Mon Dieu! how I love you! À bientôt. More than ten days, and I shall have done all I ought to do. I shall have printed four volumes 8vo in a month. Oh! it is only love that can do such things. My love, oh, suffer from the delay, but do not scold me. How could I know, when I promised you to return, that I should sell the “Études de Mœurs” for thirty-six thousand francs, and that I should have to negotiate payments for nine thousand francs of suits? I put myself at your darling knees, I kiss them, I caress them; oh, I do in thought all the follies of earth; I kiss you with intoxication, I hold you, I clasp you, I am happy as the angels in the bosom of God.

How nature made me for love! Is it for that that I am condemned to toil? There are times when you are here for me, when I caress you and strew upon your dear person all the poesy of caresses. Oh! there is nobody but me, I believe, who finds at the tips of my fingers and on my lips such voluptuousness.

My beloved, my dear love, my pearl, when shall I have you wholly mine without fear? If that trip to Fribourg of which you speak to me had taken place,—oh! say,—I think I should have drowned myself on the return.

How careful I am of your Chénier; for, this time, I will read you Chénier. You shall know what love is in voice, in looks, in verses, in pages, in ideas. Oh! he is the man for lovers, women, angels. Write “Séraphita” beside you; you wish it. You will annihilate her after having read it.

I am very tired; my pen will hardly hold in my fingers; but as soon as it concerns you and our love I find strength.

I have satisfied a little fancy this week; I gave myself, for my bedroom, the prettiest little chimney-piece sconces that I ever saw; and for my banquets, two candelabra. Mon Dieu! a folly is sweet to do! But I meditate a greater, which will, at any rate, be useful. It is too long to write about.

Angel of love, do you perfume your hair? Oh, my beauty, my darling, my adored one, my dear, dear Eve, I am as impatient as a goat tethered to her stake—though you don’t like that phrase. I would I were near you; you have become tyrannical, you are the idea of every moment. I think that every line written brings me nearer to you, like the turn of a wheel, and from that hope I gather infernal courage.... So the 10th, at latest, I shall see you. The 10th! I know that the immense amount of work I have to do will shorten the time a little.

Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, God in whom I believe, he owes me some soft emotions at the sight of Geneva, for I left it disconsolate, cursing everything, abhorring womankind. With what joy I shall return to it, my celestial love, my Eva! Take me with you to your Ukraine; let us go first to Italy. All that will be possible, when the “Études de Mœurs” are once published.

Sunday, 23rd, midday.

So, then, at l’Auberge de l’Arc! I shall be there December 7th or 8th without fail. You see I have received your little note.

After writing to you last night I was obliged to go to bed without working. I was ill. It is five days now since I have been out of my apartments; I am not very well just now, but I think it is only a nervous movement caused by overwork.

From our windows we shall see each other!—that is very dangerous.

Well, à bientôt. I put in for you a kissed rose-leaf; it carries my soul and the most celestial hope a man can have here below. Oh! my love, you do not know yourself how wholly you are mine. I am very greedy.

Adieu, my beautiful life; there are only a few days more. I imagine we can travel to Italy and stay three or six months together.

Adieu, angel, whom I shall soon see face to face.

Paris, December 4th, four in the morning.

My adored angel, during these eight days I have made the efforts of a lion; but, in spite of sitting up all night, I do not see that my two volumes can be finished before the 5th, and the two others I must leave to appear during my absence. But on the 10th I get into a carriage, for, finished or not, neither my body nor my head, however powerful my monk’s life makes them, can sustain this steam-engine labour.

So, the 13th, I think, I shall be in Geneva. Nothing can now change that date. I shall have the manuscript of “Eugénie Grandet” bound, and send it ostensibly to you.

I have great need of rest, to be near you,—you, the angel; you, the thought of whom never fatigues; you, who are the repose, the happiness, the beautiful secret life of my life! It is now forty-eight hours that I have not been in bed. I have at this moment the keenest anxieties about money. I stripped myself of everything to win tranquillity, of which I have such need, and to be near you for a little while. But, relying on my publisher, yesterday, for my payments at the month’s end, he betrays me in the midst of my torrent of work.

Oh! decidedly, I will make myself a resource, I will have a sum in silver-ware which my poetic fancies will never touch, but which I can proudly carry to the pawn-shop in case of misfortune. In that way one can live tranquil, and not have to endure the cold, pale look of one’s childhood’s friends, who arm themselves with their friendship to refuse us. On the 10th I start; I do not know at what hour one arrives, but, whatever be my fatigue, I shall go to see you immediately.

I have worked steadily eighteen hours a day this week, and I could only sustain myself by baths, which relaxed the general irritation.

What vexations, what goings to and fro! I had to give a great dinner this week, Friday, 29th. I discovered I had neither knives nor glasses. I don’t like to have inelegant things about me. So I had to run in debt a little more; I tried to do a stroke of business with my silversmith. No. However, I will economize in Geneva by working and keeping quiet.

How I paw, like a poor, impatient horse! The desire to see you makes me find things that, ordinarily, would not occur to me. I correct quicker. You not only give me courage to support the difficulties of life, but you give me talent, or at least, facility. One must love, my Eve, my dear one, to write the love of “Eugénie Grandet,” a pure, immense, proud love. Oh! dear, dearest, my good, my divine Eve, what grief not to have been able to write you every evening what I have done, said, and thought!

Soon, soon, in ten minutes, I can tell you more than in a thousand pages, in one look more than in a hundred years, because I shall give you all my heart in that first look, O my delicate, beauteous forehead! I looked at that of Madame de Mirbel, the other day; it is something like yours. She is a Pole, I think.

Paris, Sunday, December 1, 1833, eleven o’clock.

My angel, I have just read your letter. Oh! I long to fall at your knees, my Eve, my dear wife! Never have a second of melancholy thought. Oh! you do not know me! As long as I live I will be your darling, I will respect in myself the heart you have chosen; I no longer belong to myself. There are no follies, no sacrifices; no, no, never! Oh! do not be thus, never talk to me of laudanum. I flung aside the proofs of “Eugénie Grandet” and sprang up as if to go to you. The end of your letter has made me pass over the pain of its beginning.

My love, my dear love, I shall be near you in a few days; when you hold this paper full of love for you, to which I would like to communicate the beatings of my heart, there will be but a few days; I shall redouble my cares, my work, I shall rest down there.

Besides, I shall arrange to stay a long time. O my love! make your skies serene, for there is nothing in my being but affection, love, tenderness, and caresses for you.

You ought to curse that Gaudissart. The printer took a type which compressed the matter, and to make out the volume I had to improvise all that in one night, darling, and make eighty pages of it, if you please.

My pretty love, you will receive a fine letter, very polite, submissive, respectful, with the manuscript of “Eugénie Grandet,” and you will find in pencil on the back of the first page of manuscript the precise day for which I have engaged my place in the diligence.

Yes, I live in you, as you live in me. Never will God separate what he has put together so strongly. My life is your life. Do not frighten me thus again. Your sadness saddens me, your joy makes me joyous. I am in your heart; I listen to your voice at times. In short, I have the eternal, imperishable, angelic love that I desired. You are the beginning and the end, my Eve,—do you understand?—the Eve! I am as exclusive as you can be. In short, Adoremus in æternum is my motto; do you hear me, darling?

Well, it is getting late. I must send this to the general post-office, that you may get it Wednesday.

My love, why make for yourself useless bitterness? What I said to you, I will repeat: “It would be too odd if that were she,” was my thought when I saw you first on leaving the Hôtel du Faucon [at Neufchâtel].

Adieu; I have no flowers this time; but I send you an end of a cedar match I have been chewing while I write; I have given it a thousand kisses.

Mon Dieu! I don’t know how I shall get over the time on the journey, in view of the palpitations of my heart in writing to you. You will receive only one more letter, that of Sunday next; after that I shall be on the way. O my darling, to be near you, without anxieties; to have my time to myself, to be free to work well and read to you by day what I do at night! My angel, to have my kiss,—the greatest reward for me under heaven! Your kiss!

No, you will only know how I love you ten years from now, when you fully know my heart, that heart so great, that you fill. I can only say now, à bientôt.

Well, adieu, dear. Thanks for the talisman. I like it. I like to have a seal you have used. My love, do not laugh at my fancies. Ah? if you could see Bra’s “Two Angels,” and “Mary with the child Jesus.” I have in my heart for you all the adoration he found in his sublime genius to express angels. You are God to me, my dear idol. Adieu!

Paris, Sunday, December 8.

My dearest, no, not a line for you in eight days! But tears, effusions of the soul sent with fury across the hundred and fifty leagues that part us.

If I get off Thursday next, 12th, I shall regard myself as a giant. No, I will not soil this paper full of love which you will hold, by pouring money troubles on it, however nobly confided they be. The printers would not work; I am their slave. The calculations of the publisher, of the master-printers, and my own have been so cruelly frustrated by the workmen that my books announced as published yesterday will not appear till Thursday next. I am in a state of curious destitution, without friends from whom I can ask an obole, yet I must borrow the money for my journey on Tuesday or Wednesday, but I do not know where. I will tell you all about it.

I have no time to write. I have been forty-eight hours this week without sleeping. Old Dubois told me yesterday I was marching to old age and death. But how can I help it? I have considered nothing but my pleasure, our pleasure, and I have sacrificed all—even you and myself—to that object.

Alas, my dearest, I have not the time to finish this letter. The publisher of “Séraphita” is here. He wants it by new year’s day. Nevertheless, I shall be on Sunday near you.

Adieu, my love; à bientôt, but that bientôt will not be till Sunday, 15th, for I have inquired, and the diligence starts only every other day, and takes three days and a half to get there. I have a world of things to tell you, but I can only send you my love, the sweetest and most violent of loves, the most constant, the most persistent, across space. O my beloved angel, do you speak to me again of our promise? Say nothing more to me about it. It is saintly and sacred like our mutual life.

Adieu, my angel. I cannot say to you “Calm yourself,”—I, who am so unhappy at these delays. You must suffer, for I suffer.

Geneva, December 25th, 1833.

I shall tell you all in a moment, my beloved, my idolatry. I fell in getting into the carriage, and then my valet fell ill. But we will not talk of that. In an instant I shall tell you more in a look than in a thousand pages. Do I love you! Why, I am near you! I would it had been a thousand times more difficult and that I should have suffered more. But here is one good month, perhaps two, won.

Not one, but millions of caresses. I am so happy I can write no more. À bientôt.

Yes, my room is very good, and the ring is like you, my love, delicious and exquisite.1

Notes

1 This publication of the “Scènes de la Vie privée” took place in May, 1832, nine months before Mme. Hanska’s first letter reached Balzac. The above passage must therefore have been forged and interpolated here; probably to bring this letter into line with a tale in “Roman d’Amour” (pp. 55-59), which the same dates prove to be false.—TR.

1 This letter is inconsistent with the preceding one, also dated January, 1833. A system of arbitrary dating is thus shown.—TR.

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

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

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

1 This was one of his amusing visions of making a fortune.—TR.

1 Here the tone of the letters changes, as told in the preface to this translation; and, as if to show its connection with the tale of the “Roman d’Amour,” parts of the garbled letter in that book are given here in a foot-note in the French volume. From this time until March 11 all the letters (except twelve little notes written in Geneva) use the tutoiement. As it is impossible to put that form into readable English, the extreme familiarity of the tone of these letters is not given in the translation.—TR.

1 This sentence alone would show the falseness of these letters. On pp. 182, 183, vol. xxiv., Éd. Déf., are two letters of Balzac written from Neufchâtel; one to Charles de Bernard, the other to Mme. Carraud. In the latter he says: “I have just accompanied the great Borget to the frontier of the sovereign states of this town.... I conclude here (Paris) this letter, begun at Neufchâtel. Just think that, at the moment when I had ensconced myself by my fire to answer you at length and reply to your last good letter, they came for me to go and see views [sites]; and that lasted till my departure.” A man who goes about sight-seeing with a family party would not have written the sentence in the text.
The writer of it himself makes a slip, and forgets that he has said in the “Roman d’ Amour” letter that on one of these excursions (to the Lake of Bienne) the husband was sent to order breakfast while they gave themselves a first kiss. Murder will out in small ways.—TR.

1 This whole presentation of Madame Hanska justifies, and even demands, a few words here. Judging her by the genuine letters in this volume,—which are, so far as I know, our only means of judging her at all at this distance of time,—she was a woman of principle, dignity, intelligence, and good-breeding; with a strong sense of duty, and a certain deliberateness of nature, shown in the fact that it was eight years after M. Hanski’s death before she consented to marry Balzac. Her love for him was plainly much less than his for her; but she was proud of his devotion, and always unwilling to lose it. That a woman of her position and character ever wrote to Balzac those words, “Va aux pieds de ta marquise,” is an impossibility. There are certain things that a woman of breeding cannot do or say; though some who do not know what such women are do not perceive this.
Writing a few weeks later than the above letter (from Geneva in January, 1834) to his intimate friend, Madame Carraud, Balzac bears the following little testimony to Madame Hanska’s feeling to his friend: “I hope you know what the security of friendship is, and that you will not say to me again, ‘Bear me in memory,’ when some one here [Madame Hanska] says to me, ‘I am happy in knowing that you inspire such friendships; that justifies mine for you.’” (Éd. Déf. vol. xxiv, p. 192). This is the woman whose memory a few men are now endeavouring to smirch.—TR.

1 At the end of this year, as this vitiated portion of the correspondence draws to a close, I shall venture to make a few comments on it.
Very early in life Balzac formed for himself a theory of woman and of love. See Memoir, p. 261. When I wrote that Memoir I was not aware of the character of these letters. I now see from certain of them (those from the time he received Mme. Hanska’s first letter till he met her at Neufchâtel) that he kept that ideal before him up to his 34th year, making, apparently, various attempts to realize it, which failed (if we except one lifelong affection) until he met with Mme. Hanska. No one, I think, can read those letters, without recognizing that they are the expression of an ideal hope, in a soul striving to escape from the awful (it was nothing less than awful) struggle between its genius and its circumstances into the calmer heaven for which all his life he had longed. They are imaginative, rash to folly, but they are in keeping with his nature, his headlong need of expansion, and the elsewhere recorded desires of his spirit. That mind must be a worldly one, I think, that cannot see the truth about this man, clinging, through the turmoil of his life and of his nature, to his “star,” and dying of exhaustion at the last. But what shall we think of the men who have not only shut their eyes to the purity of this story, the strongest testimony to which is in this very volume, but have used it to cast upon this man and this woman the glamour of “voluptuousness”?
Enough has been told in the Preface to prove: (1) deception; (2) the forgery of one passage; (3) the falsification of dates. Coupling those facts with the literary impossibility that Balzac ever wrote a portion of the letters just given, we are justified in believing that a certain number of the letters that here follow are forgeries.
I class them as follows:—
During Balzac’s stay in Geneva (from Dec. 25 to Feb. 8) nineteen letters are given; all dated indiscriminately “Geneva, January, 1834.” Eleven of these are friendly little notes, such as would naturally pass between friends in daily intercourse. The remaining eight contain matters so disloyal that I place in an Appendix a letter from Balzac to his friend Madame Carraud, written at the same time, and leave the reader to form his own judgment.
Next follow twelve letters (from Feb. 15 to March 11, 1834) which I characterize as infamous forgeries. But their refutation is not far to seek; it is here, in this volume,—in letters from Balzac that bare his soul in the tragic struggle of his life; letters that show the deep respect of his heart and of his mind for the woman whom he held to be his star and the guide of his spirit.—TR.
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