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