Letters to Madame Hanska, born Countess Rzewuska, afterwards Madame Honoré de Balzac, 1833-1846. Honore de Balzac
which I will not characterize because it makes me too happy, tell me that you write to no one in France but me. This is not distrust nor jealousy; although both sentiments prove love, I think that the suspicions they imply are always dishonouring. No, the motive is a sentiment of celestial perfection which ought to be in you and which I inwardly feel there. I know it, but I would fain be sure.
Adieu; pitiless editors, newspapers, etc., are here; time fails me for all I have to do; there is but a single thing for which I can always find time. Will you be kind, charitable, gracious, excellent? You surely know some person who can make a sepia sketch. Send me a faithful copy of the room where you write, where you think, where you are you—for, you know well, there are moments when we are more ourselves, when the mask is no longer on us. I am very bold, very indiscreet; but this desire will tell you many things, and, after all, I swear it is very innocent.
In the month of May two young Frenchmen who are going to Russia can leave with the person you may indicate, in any town you indicate, the parcel containing André Chénier, my poor "Louis Lambert" and your copy of "Le Médecin de campagne." Write me promptly on this subject. They are two young men who are not inquiring; they will do it as a matter of business. Objects of art are not exposed to the brutalities of the custom-house and you will permit a poor artist to send you a few specimens of art. They are only precious from the species of perfection that artists who love each other give to their work for a brother's sake. At any rate, allow Paris the right to be proud of her worship of art. You will enjoy the gift because none but you and I in the world will know that this book, this copy is the solitary one of its kind. The seal I had engraved upon it is lost. It came to me defaced by rubbing against other letters. You will be very generous to send me an impression inside of your reply.
All this shows that I am occupied with you, and you will not refuse to increase my pleasures; they are so rare!
Paris, end of March; 1833.
I have told you something of my life; I have not told you all; but you will have seen enough to understand that I have no time to do evil, no leisure to let myself go to happiness. Gifted with excessive sensibility, having lived much in solitude, the constant ill-fortune of my life has been the element of what is called so improperly talent. I am provided with a great power of observation, because I have been cast among all sorts of professions, involuntarily. Then, when I went into the upper regions of society, I suffered at all points of my soul which suffering can touch; there are none but souls that are misunderstood, and the poor, who can really observe, because everything bruises them, and observation results from suffering. Memory only registers thoroughly that which is pain. In this sense it recalls great joy, for pleasure comes very near to being pain. Thus society in all its phases from top to bottom, legislations, religions, histories, the present times, all have been observed and analyzed by me. My one passion, always disappointed, at least in the development I gave to it, has made me observe women, study them, know them, and cherish them, without other recompense than that of being understood at a distance by great and noble hearts. I have written my desires, my dreams. But the farther I go, the more I rebel against my fate. At thirty-four years of age, after having constantly worked fourteen and fifteen hours a day, I have already white hairs without ever being loved by a young and pretty woman; that is sad. My imagination, virile as it is, having never been prostituted or jaded, is an enemy for me; it is always in keeping with a young and pure heart, violent with repressed desires, so that the slightest sentiment cast into my solitude makes ravages. I love you already too much without ever having seen you. There are certain phrases in your letters which make my heart beat. If you knew with what ardour I spring toward that which I have so long desired! of what devotion I feel myself capable! what happiness it would be to me to subordinate my life for a single day! to remain without seeing a living soul for a year, for a single hour! All that woman can dream of that is most delicate, most romantic, finds in my heart, not an echo but, an incredible simultaneousness of thought. Forgive me this pride of misery, this naïveté of suffering.
You have asked me the baptismal name of the dilecta [Mme. de Berny]. In spite of my complete and blind faith, in spite of my sentiment for you, I cannot tell it to you; I have never told it. Would you have faith in me if I told it? No.
You ask me to send you a plan of the place I live in. Listen: in one of the forthcoming numbers of Regnier's "Album" (I will go and see him on the subject) he shall put in my house for you, oh! solely for you! It is a sacrifice; it is distasteful to me to be put en évidence. How little those who accuse me of vanity know me! I have never desired to see a journalist, for I should blush to solicit an article. For the last eight months I have resisted the entreaties of Schnetz and Scheffer, author of "Faust" who wish extremely to make my portrait.
Yesterday I said in jest to Gérard, who spoke to me of the same thing, that I was not a sufficiently fine fish to be put in oils. You will receive herewith a little sketch made by an artist of my study. But I am rather disturbed in sending it to you because I dare not believe in all that your request offers me of joy and happiness. To live in a heart is so glorious a life! To be able to name you secretly to myself in evil hours, when I suffer, when I am betrayed, misunderstood, calumniated! To be able to retire to you! … This is a hope that goes too far beyond me; it is the adoration of God by monks, the Ave Maria written in the cell of a Chartreux—an inscription which once made me stand at the Grande-Chartreuse, beneath a vault, for ten minutes. Oh! love me! All that you desire of what is noble, true, pure, will be in a heart that has borne many a blow, but is not blasted!
That gentleman was very unjust. I drink nothing but coffee. I have never known what drunkenness was, except from a cigar which Eugène Sue made me smoke against my will, and it was that which enabled me to paint the drunkenness for which you blame me, in the "Voyage à Java." Eugène Sue is a kind and amiable young man, a braggart of vices, in despair at being named Sue, living in luxury to make himself a great seigneur, but for all that, though a little worn-out, worth more than his works, I dare not speak to you of Nodier, lest I should destroy your illusions. His artistic caprices stain that purity of honour which is the chastity of men. But when one knows him, one forgives him his disorderly life, his vices, his lack of conscience for his home. He is a true child of nature after the fashion of La Fontaine. I have just returned from Madame de Girardin's (Delphine Gay). She has the small-pox. Her celebrated beauty is now in danger. This distresses me for Émile, her husband, and for her. She had been vaccinated; present science declares that one ought to be vaccinated every twenty years.
I have returned home to write to you under the empire of a violent annoyance. Out of low envy the editor of the "Revue de Paris" postpones for a week my third number of the "Histoire des Treize." Fifteen days' interval will kill the interest in it, and I had worked day and night to avoid any delay. For this last affair, which is the drop of water in too full a cup, I shall probably cease all collaboration in the "Revue de Paris." I am so disgusted by the tricky enmity which broods there for me that I shall retire from it; and if I retire, it will be forever. To a certain degree my will is cast in bronze, and nothing can make me change it. In reading the "Histoire" in the March number, you will never suspect the base and unworthy annoyances which have been instigated against me in the inner courts of that review. They bargain for me as if I were a fancy article; sometimes they play me monkey tricks [malices de nègre]; sometimes insults upon me are anonymously put into the Album of the Revue; at other times they fall at my feet, basely. When "Juana" appeared, they inserted a notice that made me pass for a madman.
But why should I tell you these miserable things? The joke is that they represent me as being unpunctual; promising, and not keeping my promises. Two years ago, Sue quarrelled with a bad courtesan, celebrated for her beauty (she is the original of Vernet's Judith). I lowered myself to reconcile them, and the consequence is the woman is given to me. M. de Fitz-James, the Duc de Duras, and the old court, all went to her house to talk, as on neutral ground, much as people walk in the alley of the Tuileries to meet one another; and I am expected to be more strait-laced than those gentlemen! In short, by some fatal chance I can't take a step that is not interpreted as evil. What a punishment is celebrity! But, indeed, to publish one's thoughts, is it not prostituting them? If I had been rich and happy they should all have been kept for my love.
Two years ago, among a few friends, I used to tell stories in the evening, after midnight. I have given that up.