Chapter I: Letters During 1833 (3)

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.

[Footnote 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.]

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.

[Footnote 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.]

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.