Honoré de Balzac: Premium Collection. Honore de Balzac
The Vicomtesse De L'Estorade to the Baronne De Macumer
XXXVII. The Baronne De Macumer to the Vicomtesse De L'Estorade Genoa
XXXVIII. The Vicomtesse De L'Estorade to the Baronne De Macumer
XXXIX. The Baronne De Macumer to the Vicomtesse De L'Estorade
XL. The Comtesse De L'Estorade to the Baronne De Macumer January 1827
XLI. The Baronne De Macumer to the Vicomtesse De L'Estorade Paris
XLIII. Mme. De Macumer to the Comtesse De L'Estorade
XLIV. The Same to the Same Paris, 1829
XLVI. Mme. De Macumer to the Comtesse De L'Estorade 1829
XLVIII. The Baronne De Macumer to the Comtesse De L'Estorade October 15, 1833
XLIX. Marie Gaston to Daniel D'Arthez October 1833
L. Mme. De L'Estorade to Mme. De Macumer
LI. The Comtesse De L'Estorade to Mme. Marie Gaston 1835
LII. Mme. Gaston to Mme. De L'Estorade the Chalet
LIII. Mme. De L'Estorade to Mme. Gaston
LIV. Mme. Gaston to the Comtesse De L'Estorade May 20th
LV. The Comtesse De L'Estorade to Mme. Gaston July 16th
LVI. Mme. Gaston to the Comtesse De L'Estorade
LVII. The Comtesse De L'Estorade to the Comte De L'Estorade the Chalet,
To George Sand
Your name, dear George, while casting a reflected radiance on my
book, can gain no new glory from this page. And yet it is neither
self-interest nor diffidence which has led me to place it there,
but only the wish that it should bear witness to the solid
friendship between us, which has survived our wanderings and
separations, and triumphed over the busy malice of the world. This
feeling is hardly likely now to change. The goodly company of
friendly names, which will remain attached to my works, forms an
element of pleasure in the midst of the vexation caused by their
increasing number. Each fresh book, in fact, gives rise to fresh
annoyance, were it only in the reproaches aimed at my too prolific
pen, as though it could rival in fertility the world from which I
draw my models! Would it not be a fine thing, George, if the
future antiquarian of dead literatures were to find in this
company none but great names and generous hearts, friends bound by
pure and holy ties, the illustrious figures of the century? May I
not justly pride myself on this assured possession, rather than on
a popularity necessarily unstable? For him who knows you well, it
is happiness to be able to sign himself, as I do here,
Your friend,
DE BALZAC.
PARIS, June 1840.
FIRST PART
I. LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE MAUCOMBE. PARIS, SEPTEMBER
Sweetheart, I too am free! And I am the first too, unless you have written to Blois, at our sweet tryst of letter-writing.
Raise those great black eyes of yours, fixed on my opening sentence, and keep this excitement for the letter which shall tell you of my first love. By the way, why always "first?" Is there, I wonder, a second love?
Don't go running on like this, you will say, but tell me rather how you made your escape from the convent where you were to take your vows. Well, dear, I don't know about the Carmelites, but the miracle of my own deliverance was, I can assure you, most humdrum. The cries of an alarmed conscience triumphed over the dictates of a stern policy—there's the whole mystery. The sombre melancholy which seized me after you left hastened the happy climax, my aunt did not want to see me die of a decline, and my mother, whose one unfailing cure for my malady was a novitiate, gave way before her.
So I am in Paris, thanks to you, my love! Dear Renee, could you have seen me the day I found myself parted from you, well might you have gloried in the deep impression you had made on so youthful a bosom. We had lived so constantly together, sharing our dreams and letting our fancy roam together, that I verily believe our souls had become welded together, like those two Hungarian girls, whose death we heard about from M. Beauvisage—poor misnamed being! Never surely was man better cut out by nature for the post of convent physician!
Tell me, did you not droop and sicken with your darling?
In my gloomy depression, I could do nothing but count over the ties which bind us. But it seemed as though distance had loosened them; I wearied of life, like a turtle-dove widowed of her mate. Death smiled sweetly on me, and I was proceeding quietly to die. To be at Blois, at the Carmelites, consumed by dread of having to take my vows there, a Mlle. de la Valliere, but without her prelude, and without my Renee! How could I not be sick—sick unto death?
How different it used to be! That monotonous existence, where every hour brings its duty, its prayer, its task, with such desperate regularity that you can tell what a Carmelite sister is doing in any place, at any hour of the night or day; that