Letters to Madame Hanska, born Countess Rzewuska, afterwards Madame Honoré de Balzac, 1833-1846. Honore de Balzac
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.
[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