Letters to Madame Hanska, born Countess Rzewuska, afterwards Madame Honoré de Balzac, 1833-1846. Honore de Balzac
for all of them.
The morning of this Friday I set myself to learn all that has happened here. I had to go out early, to see the doctor, negotiate a payment for to-day, 15th, and consult him. So you see the employment of to-day and yesterday. Thursday was taken up by the publishers, a little sleep and a bath, also by Madame de Berny, to whom I wished at any rate to read "Ne touchez pas à la hache." Wednesday, the day after my arrival, I wrote you in the evening, I ran about all the morning, set my affairs in order, attended to a thousand little things—which I don't particularize, as they are all mere necessary nothings—made up my accounts, wrote, etc. After this avalanche of small things here I am, not much rested, rather less anxious about the dilecta, before a pile of proofs and enormous debts for the end of the month. Madame D … has urgent need of half her money by the end of February. It is now the 15th, the month is a short one, I must finish my two volumes; I must finish "Ne touchez pas" and write "La Femme aux yeux rouges."
My adored, my darling minette, I tell you things that are terrifying, but do not be alarmed. Vienna is traced out before me; all will be well. Your desire to see me, your love, all you hovers above me. I believe in you only; I want new successes, new fame, new courage; I will in short, that you shall be a thousand times prouder of your husband of love than of your lover. Yes, dear celestial Eva, I am melancholy because I am here and you are down there, but I have no more discouragements, no more depressions. When I raise my eyes I see something better than God, I see a sure happiness, a tried happiness. Oh! you do not know, my treasure, my dear life, what such sweet certainty is to my soul. You don't know what you did with your infernal jesting, you remember? You tried upon a most loving heart a weapon you did not know was loaded. A moment more, and I was lost. My eternal love could be placed on you alone; I see it, I know it now, for now I desire you more than ever. My dearest soul, I have for myself all the efforts that I make to meet you again; I materialize my hope. But, my beautiful myself, you, what are you doing? Ah! my beautiful, saintly creature, I know it is not on him of Paris that the burden is heaviest; it is our Geneva love, it is you who, bearing all our happiness, feel most our pains, our sorrows. Neither do I ever look at us two without a smile full of hope, but also slightly tainted with sadness. Oh! my idolized angel, you in whom all my future resides, all my happiness, and for whom I desire all the fine glories that make a happy woman, you whom I love with all the ardour of a young sentiment, of a first and a last love in one, yes, know it well, no sufferings, ideas, joys, which can agitate your soul fail to come and agitate mine.[1]
At this moment when I write to you, having left all to plunge into your heart, to come nearer to you, no, I feel space no longer; we are near one to the other; I see you, and one of my senses is intoxicated by the memory of one of those little voluptuous moments which made me so happy! I am very proud of you. I cry out to myself that I love you! You see, a poet's love has a little madness in it. None but artists are worthy of women, because they are somewhat women too. Oh! what need I have always to hear myself told that I am loved, to hear you repeat it! You, you are all. You will know only when you hear my voice how ardently I tell you that you are the only well-beloved, the only wife. Now I shall rush there more amorously than the two preceding times. You know why, my dear, naïve wife? Because I know you better, because I know all there is of divine and girlish in your dear, celestial character, because—. No, I never dreamed so ambitiously the perfections that are agreeable to me because I know that I can love ever. Going to Neufchâtel I wanted to love you; returning from Geneva it is impossible not to love you!
Who will ever know what the road to Ferney is at the spot where, having to leave on the morrow, I stood still at the sight of your dear, saddened face. Mon Dieu! if I tried to tell you all the thoughts there are in my soul, the voluptuous pleasures which my heart contains and desires, I should never cease writing, and, unfortunately, the word "Vienna" is there. I am cruel to both of us in the name of a continued happiness; yes, one year passed together will prove to you that you can be better loved each day, and I aspire to September …
My dearest, I have many griefs; this flaming happiness is surrounded by briars, thorns, stones. I cannot speak to you of family troubles; they are endless. You will know them from one word, you who feel through a sister what, in another order of things, I feel through my mother. My mother has committed, with good intentions, follies that bring a person into disrepute. Here am I, I, so busy, forced to undertake the education of my mother, hold her in check, make a child of her.[2] Dear angel, what a sad thing to think that if the world has accumulated obstacles in my life, my family have done worse in being of no use to me, and secretly hampering me. One day or other the world counts us as a victor to have beaten it. But family griefs are between us and God.
I told Borget that September would see me in Vienna, and a whole year in the Ukraine and the Crimea, and you know I wrote him that he could meet you in Italy. I send you a scrap of a letter from that excellent friend; it will please you; you will see in it that nobility of soul, that beauty of sentiment, that make us love him. What rush of love he has to those who love his friend! But do not go and love him too much, Madame. He will take to you your chain, the sketches of my apartment, and your seal, if it is done, without knowing what he hands to you. So tell me the day you will be in Venice; he will go there. He is my Thaddeus, you see. What he does for me, I should do for him. One is never jealous of fine sentiments. As much as death entered cold into your husband's heart when you spoke of a coquetry to Séverine, so much should I go joyously to accomplish in your name a service to your Thaddeus.
From to-day, Sunday, I shall write to you every day a word, on a little diary. Yes, the Würtemberg Coquebin shall alone touch the manuscript of "Séraphita," which will be coarsely bound in the gray cloth which slipped so easily on the floors. Am I not a little of a woman, hey, minette? Have I not found a pretty use for what you wanted destroyed, and a souvenir? Nothing can be more precious, or simpler. Book of celestial love, clothed in love and in joys terrestrial as complete as it is possible to have here below. Yes, angel, complete, full! Yes, my ambitious one, you fill all my life! Yes, we can be happy every day, feeling every day new joys.
Mon Dieu! Friday at dinner I saw in my sister's home one of those scenes which prove that inspired love, that jealous love, that nothing in Paris can resist continued poverty. Oh! dear angel, what a terrible reaction in my heart, thinking of the little home in the rue Cassini. How I swore to myself then, with that iron will, never to expose the flowers of my life to be in the brown pot in which were the pinks of Ida's mother—you know, in "Ferragus." No, no, I never could have that experience, for never shall I forget the 14th of February, 1834, any more than the 26th of January; there is a lesson in it for me. Yes, I want too much; there exists in my being an invincible need to love you always better, that I may never expose my love to any misunderstanding. Oh, my heart, my soul, my life, with what joy I recognize at every step that I love you as you dream of being loved. The most indifferent things enter into this circumference.
No, your young girl's chain shall remain pure. I would like to employ it. It is too pretty for a man. That is why I wanted your head by Grosclaude. What a delicious border I could have made of it, and what a delicious thought to surround you, you, my dear wife, with all the superstitions of your childhood which I adore. Your childhood was mine. We are brothers and sisters through the sorrows of childhood.
There is one of your smiles of happiness, a ravishing little contraction, a paleness that takes you at the moment of joy, which returns to stab me with intoxicating memories. Oh! you do not know with what depth you correspond to the caprices, the loves, the pleasures, the poesies, the sentiments of my nature!
Come, adieu. Think, my beloved, that at every instant of the day a thought of love surrounds you; that a light more brilliant and secret gilds your atmosphere; that my thought is all about you; that my interior eyes see you; that a constant desire caresses you; that I work in your name and for you. Take good care of yourself; and remember that the only serious order that is given to you by him who loves you and whom you have told me you wished to obey is to walk a great deal whatever the weather may be. You must. Ah! the doctor laughed at my fears. Nevertheless, there are baths to be taken, and some precautions, "fruits of my