Chapter VI: Letters During 1838 (1)

CHAILLOT, January 20, 1838.

I am relieved of anxiety. I have your numbers 36 and 37. Number 35 has not reached me, remember that. Number 34 is dated October 6; number 36 December 10. So you did not leave me from October 6 to December 10 without a letter. Now, as I only receive at the end of January the 36 and 37, you can imagine how uneasy I have been, left _two_ months without a word!

These two letters are pricked in every direction, stigmata of the fears inspired by the plague, and perhaps it is to an earlier fumigation that I owe the loss of number 35. In any case, I ought to tell you of this loss, as it explains the doleful letter I wrote you last. To me it was a grief that consumed all others--your silence. I am the object of such atrocious calumnies that I ended by thinking that you had been told of them, and had believed those monstrous things: that I had eaten human flesh, that I had married an Ellsler, or a fishwoman, that I was in prison, that--that--etc. I have, perhaps, enemies in the Ukraine. Distrust all that you hear of me from any but myself, for you have almost a journal of my life.

Now, as to the affair that takes me to the Mediterranean, it is neither marriage nor anything adventurous or silly. It is a serious and scientific affair about which it is impossible to say a word because I am pledged to secrecy. Whether it turns out well or ill, I risk nothing but a journey, which will always be a pleasure or a diversion for me.

You ask me how it is that, knowing all, observing and penetrating all, I can be duped and deceived. Alas! would you like me if I were never duped, if I were so prudent, so observing that no misfortunes ever happened to me? But, leaving the question of the heart aside, I will tell you the secret of this apparent contradiction. When a man becomes such an accomplished whist-player that he knows at the fifth card played where all the others are, do you think he does not like to put science aside and watch how the game will go by the laws of chance? Just so, dear and pious Catholic, God knew in advance that Eve would succumb, and he let her do so! But, putting aside that way of explaining the thing, here is another which you will like better. When, night and day, my strength and my faculties are strained to the utmost to compose, write, render, paint, remember; when I take my flight slowly, painfully, often wounded, across the mental fields of literary creation, how can I be at the same moment on the plane of material things? When Napoleon was at Essling he was not in Spain. Not to be deceived in life, in friendships, in business, in relations of all kinds, dear countess secluded and solitary, one must do nothing else than be purely and simply a financier, a man of the world, a man of business. I do see plainly enough that persons deceive me, and are going to do so, that such a man is betraying me, or will betray me, and depart carrying with him a portion of my fleece. But at that moment when I feel it, foresee it, know it, I am forced to go and fight elsewhere. I see it when I am being carried away by some necessity of a work or event, by a sketch that would be lost if I did not complete it. Often I am building a cot in the light of my burning houses. I have neither friends nor servants; all desert me; I know not why--or rather, I do know it too well; because no one likes or serves a man who works night and day, who does nothing for their profit, who stays where he is and obliges them to go to him, and whose power, if power there be, will have no fruition for twenty years; it is because that man has the personality of his toil, and that all personality is odious if it is not accompanied by power. Now that is enough to convince you that one must be _an oyster_ (do you remember that?) or an angel to cling to such great human rocks. Oysters and angels are equally rare in humanity. Believe me, I see myself and things as they are; never did any man bear a more cruel burden than mine. Do not be surprised, therefore, to see me attach myself to those beings and those things that give me courage to live and go onward. Never blame me for taking the cordial that enables me to get one stage farther on my way.

It is twelve years that I have been saying of Walter Scott what you have now written to me. Beside him Lord Byron is nothing, or almost nothing. But you are mistaken as to the plot of "Kenilworth." To the minds of all makers of romance, and to mine, the plot of that work is the grandest, most complete, most extraordinary of all; the book is a masterpiece from this point of view, just as "St. Ronan's Well" is a masterpiece for detail and patience of finish, as the "Chronicles of the Canongate" are for sentiment, as "Ivanhoe" (the first volume, be it understood) is for history, "The Antiquary" for poesy, and "The Heart of Midlothian" for profound interest. All these works have each their especial merit, but genius shines throughout them all. You are right; Scott will be growing greater when Byron is forgotten, except for his form and his powerful inspiration. Byron's brain never had any other imprint than that of his own personality; whereas the whole world has posed before the creative genius of Scott, and has there, so to speak, beheld itself.

As for what is called "Balzac Illustrated," do not be anxious; it is the whole of my work, except the "Contes Drolatiques." It is the work called "Études Sociales."

M. Hanski is very kind to imagine that women fall in love with authors. I have, and shall have nothing to fear on that score. I am not only invulnerable, but secure from attack. Reassure him. The Englishwoman of the times of Crébillon the younger is not the Englishwoman of to-day.

I am now beginning to work at my plays and at the "Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée," or else at "Sœur Marie des Anges;" those, for the time being, are my chosen subjects. But from one moment to another all may change. The continuation of "Illusions Perdues" ("Un Grand homme de Province à Paris") tempts me much; that, with "La Torpille," could be finished this year. How many stones I bring and heap up!

The text of the illustrated edition is revised with so much care that it ought to be considered the only one existing; it differs much from all preceding editions. This typographic seriousness has reacted on the language, and I have discovered many additional faults and follies; so that I earnestly desire that the number of subscribers may enable the publication to be continued, which will give me the opportunity to succeed in doing my best for my work, so far as purity of language is concerned.

The arrival of the _cassolette_ gave me as much pleasure as it did you; it is as if I had sent you two different things. I now hope that by this time Boulanger's portrait has reached you. Brullon, the colour and canvas dealer whom all the great artists here employ, and who despatched the case, is in despair; we consult each other as to going to law about it; but as such a suit would bring M. Hanski's name before the public, and the newspapers would get hold of it and make their thousand and one calumnious comments,--for my name would whet their appetite,--we keep to the line of correspondence. Brullon has sent thousands of pictures to all parts of the world, and nothing of the kind ever happened before. It is true that the case was sent by waggon, because, as the canvas was not rolled, its size would not allow of its going by diligence. You could not believe what errands, steps, and tramps that luckless picture has necessitated; but I will not say more about them, lest I make the portrait disagreeable to you. I have written to-day to the MM. Halperine at Brody to know if, when my letter reaches them, they have the picture. If not, we may have to come to an arbitration here on the matter.

The great Tronchin cured the headaches of young girls which you mention, by making them eat a roll soaked in milk on waking; the thing is innocent enough to try.

Be very sure that you will know all I do at the moment of doing it, or as soon as I can manage it. I wrote you of my departure for Sion a year ago, at this time, or very near it. I did not leave Paris a month ago, after finishing "César Birotteau." As I had been twenty-five days without sleep, I have now been a month employed in sleeping sixteen hours a day and in doing nothing the other eight. I am renewing my brain to spend it again immediately. Financial crises are dreadful; they prevent me from amusing myself; for society is expensive, and I am not sure whether I may not, within a week or ten days, go to Sardinia. But I will not start without letting you know.

I never read the newspapers, so that I was ignorant of what you tell me about Jules Janin. Some persons had casually said to me that the papers, and Janin especially, had greatly praised me in connection with a little play taken from "La Recherche de l'Absolu" which failed. But I am, as you know, indifferent to both the blame and the eulogy of those who are not the elect of my heart; and especially so to the opinions of the press and the crowd; therefore I know nothing to tell you about the conversion of a man I neither like nor esteem, and one who will never obtain anything from me. As I do not know his friends or his enemies, I am ignorant of his motives for this praise, which, from what you tell me of it, seems treacherous.

Every time that you hear it said that I have failed on points of honour and personal self-respect, do not believe it.

You have misunderstood me; I like much that a woman should write and study; but she ought to have the courage, as you have, to burn her works. Sophie is the daughter of Prince Koslevski, whose marriage was never recognized; you must have heard of that very witty diplomatist, who is with Prince Paskevitch in Warsaw. The English lady is the Countess Guidoboni-Visconti, at whose house I met the bearer of the _cassolette_. Mrs. Somerville is the illustrious mathematician, daughter of Admiral Fairfax, who is now in the Russian service. I send you her autograph, for she is one of the great lights of modern science, and parliament has given her a national pension.

You will know from others that the Italian Operahouse was burned down at the same time as the Royal Exchange in London and the Imperial Palace at Saint-Petersburg. I will tell you nothing of all that. The winter is severe in Paris; we do not know how to protect ourselves from cold,--careless Frenchmen that we are.

Monday, January 22.

Four Parts of "La Peau de Chagrin" have appeared, this frosty winter. In spite of the cold I meet in the Champs Élysées _fiacres_ driven slowly along with their blinds down, which shows that people love each other in Paris in spite of everything; and those _fiacres_ seem to me as magnificently passionate as the two lovers whom Diderot surprised in a pouring rain, bidding each other good-night in the street beneath a gutter!

Do not end your letters gloomily, as, for instance, by thinking that I shall never visit Wierzchownia; I shall come soon, believe me; but I am not the master of circumstances, which are peculiarly hard upon me. It would take too long to explain to you how my new editors interpret the agreement which binds me to them, and this letter is already very long.

After idling a little for a month, going two or three times to the Opera, twice to La Belgiojoso, and often to La Visconti (speaking Italianly), I am now beginning, once more my twelve or fifteen hours' work a day. When my house is built, when I am well installed there, when I have earned a certain number of thousand francs, then I am pledged to myself as a reward to go and see you, not for one or two weeks, but for two or three months. You shall work at my comedies, and we, M. Hanski and I, will go to the Indies astride of those _smoking_ benches you tell me of.

I don't know what "César Birotteau" is. You will tell me before I am in a state to make myself into the public that reads it. I have the deepest disgust for it, and I am ready to curse it for the fatigues it has caused me. If my ink looks pale to you, it is because it freezes every night in my study.

You have heard about La Belgiojoso and Mignet. The princess is a woman much outside of other women, little attractive, twenty-nine years old, pale, black hair, Italian-white complexion, thin, and playing the vampire. She has the good fortune to displease me, though she is clever; but she tries for effect too much. I saw her first five years ago at Gérard's; she came from Switzerland, where she had taken refuge. Since then, she has recovered her fortune through influence of the Foreign Office, and now holds a salon, where people say good things. I went there one Saturday, but that will be all.

I have just read "Aymar," by Henri de Latouche; his is a poor mind, falling into childishness. "Lautreamont," by Sue, is a work _laché_, as the painters say; it is neither done, nor could it be done. To second-rate minds, to persons without education, or those, who, being ill-informed or informed by prejudice, have not the courage to correct for themselves the false bias given to them and are content to accept judgments ready-made without taking the trouble to discuss them, Louis XIV. is a petty mind and a bad king.[1] His faults and his errors are counted to him as crimes, whereas he exactly fulfilled the prediction of Mazarin: he was both a great king and an honest man. He may be blamed for his wars and his rigorous treatment of Protestants; but he always had in view the grandeur of France, and his wars were a means to secure it. They served, according to his ideas, to guarantee us against our two greatest enemies at that period, Spain and England. After having, through the possession of Flanders and Alsace, established solid frontiers against Germany, he preserved France from Spanish intrigues by the conquest of Franche-Comté. Having thus given security to his people, he gave them a splendour which dazzled the world, and a grandeur which subdued it. One must indeed be neither a Frenchman nor a man of sense to blame him stupidly for that affair of the Chevalier de Rohan, a presumptuous fool and a State criminal, who was negotiating with a foreign country, selling France, and striving to light civil war,--a man whom the king had the right to condemn and punish according to the laws of the kingdom he governed. But, as you say, Sue has a narrow and bourgeois mind, incapable of understanding the _ensemble_ of such grandeur; he sees only scraps of the vulgar and commonplace evil of our present pitiable society. He has felt himself crushed by the gigantic spectacle of the great century, and he has resented it by calumniating the finest and greatest epoch of our history, dominated by the powerful and fruitful influence of the greatest of our kings; pronounced Great by his contemporaries, and against whom even his enemies invented no other sarcasm than to call him _"le roi soleil_."

To-morrow, Tuesday, 23rd, I shall begin to finish "Massimilla Doni," which requires great study of music, and will oblige me to go and hear played and replayed to me Rossini's "Moïse," by a good old German musician.

You would hardly believe with what resignation I face the dull and malignant abuse which the publication of "Massimilla Doni" will bring down upon me. Seen on one side only, it is true that the subject is open to criticism; it will be said that I am obscene. But looking at the psychical subject, it is, as I think, a marvel. But I have long been used to such detraction. There are persons who still persist in considering "La Peau de Chagrin" as a novel. But then, serious people and the appreciators of that composition are daily gaining ground. Five years hence "Massimilla Doni" will be understood as a beautiful explanation of the inner process of art. To the eyes of ordinary readers it will be only what it is apparently, a lover who cannot possess the woman he adores because he desires her too much, and so is won by a miserable creature. Make them perceive from that the conception of works of art!

Adieu, _cara_. A thousand tender effusions of friendship, and remember me to all about you. This is a long chatter; I have been writing it during three days, and doing little else. But it is so good to think to you! Think of me as of one entirely devoted, grieved when he gets no letters, happy when he shares your lonely life, for he too is lonely amid this Parisian bustle.

[Footnote 1: This letter is among those which Mme. de Balzac gave to the Édition Définitive (vol. xxiv., pp. 273-282). The passage relating to Louis XIV. is so evidently false in "Lettres à l'Étrangère" that I give it here in Mme. de Balzac's version. In "Lettres à l'Étrangère" it begins thus: "To well-informed minds Louis XIV. is a petty mind, a man _nul_." This being totally out of keeping with Balzac's published opinion of Louis XIV. ("Six Rois de France," Éd. Déf., vol. xxiii., pp. 525-535, written in 1837), I think it more just to Balzac to follow his wife's version here. The following passages are from "Six Rois de France" and give his opinion briefly: "He had known adversity and even misfortune in his youth; it was, no doubt, to this circumstance that he owed the perspicacity, the knowledge of man that distinguished him almost constantly." "This prince, in his adversity, remained ever worthy of the title of Great, which history has preserved to him." See Appendix concerning Mme. Hanska's letters in the Édition Définitive.--TR.]

FRAPESLE, near ISSOUDUN, February 10, 1838.

I have just received your little number 38, and at the moment that I read it you must have in your hands the rather long letter in which I explained my fears and made the inquiry to which you now reply.

I am thankful to know myself in painting at Berditchef, for in my uneasiness about that wretched canvas I was about to sue the despatcher of it. I am curious to know what you will think of the work. It is now said that Boulanger has not given a delicacy that lurks under the roundness of the lines, that he has exaggerated the character of my rather tranquil strength, and bestowed upon me a hectoring and aggressive expression. That is what sculptors and painters said to me a few days before I left Paris, at a dinner at M. de Castellane's, who is having some plays acted in private at his house. The merit of Boulanger is in the fire of the eyes, the material truth of outline, and the rich colouring. In spite of these criticisms, which concern only the moral resemblance--so closely united, however, to physical resemblance--they all said it was one of the finest specimens of the school for the last ten years; so I reflected that, at least, you would not have a daub in your gallery. We shall see what you say to it.

I came here worn-out with fatigue. The body is relaxing. I have come to do, if I can, the preliminary play of which I spoke to you, and the second Part of "Illusions Perdues," the first Part of which pleased you so much. I shall stay in Berry till the middle of March.

They write me from Paris that "Cesar Birotteau," after two months' _incognito_, is obtaining a success of enthusiasm, and that in spite of the silence of some newspapers, and the cruel civilities of others, it is being borne to the clouds above "Eugénie Grandet," with which they crush down so many other things of mine. I tell you that idiocy of Parisians, because you look upon such things benignly as _events_.

Now that I see my inventions to give you little pleasures reach you, write me what Anna would like for her birthday. I have an opportunity to send to Riga. Riga is not far from you, and I will tell you where to send for your idol's gift. Do you want any of that Milanese silver filagree, or anything in the way of Parisian taste? And if at our coming Exhibition M. Hanski wants one or two good pictures, well chosen, to increase his collection, some of those things that become in time of great value, tell him to feel sure that I am at his orders, and at yours equally.

You could not believe how much I thought of you in crossing La Beauce and Berry, for they are your Ukraine on a small scale, and every time I cross them my thought is fixed on Wierzchownia. They are two very high plateaus, for at Issoudun we are six hundred feet above sea-level, and there is nothing on them but wheatfields, vineyards, and woods. In Beauce, however, the land is so precious that not a single tree is planted. You will see that melancholy landscape some day, when you come to France, and perhaps, like me, you will not share the feeling it inspires in ordinary travellers.

I do not know if they told me truly, or if the person who told me was told truly, but my publishers are boasting that they have sold five thousand of the Illustrated Balzac, which leads one to suppose that, time and friendship aiding, we may sell ten thousand. Then all my financial misfortunes will cease in 1839. God grant it!

Do not play the coquette about your thirty-third anniversary; you know well what I think about the age of women, and if you want me to give you new editions of it, I shall think you very greedy of compliments. There are women who will always be young, and you are one of them; youth comes from the soul. Never lose that innocent gaiety which is one of your greatest charms; it makes you able to think aloud to every one, and that will keep you young a long time. In spite of what you say, there are, I think, few clouds above the lake of your thoughts, but always the infinite of blue skies.

If you have a frame made for my portrait, and it requires one, have it made in black velvet. That is economical and beautiful, and very favourable to Boulanger's colour and tones.

Remember that nothing leads to the malady of Lady L... so surely as the mystical ecstasies of which you tell me in Séverine's sister; believe me, for it was in this way that the pure and sublime young daughter of Madame de Berny became insane. The mother died of that, as well as of the death of her son. What did she not say to me on the absurdity of our moralities, in the paroxysm of her sorrow! And what appalling mother-cries!

I beg you never to say to me in a letter, "If I die." I have causes enough for melancholy, and dread, and gloomy black dragons, without the added waves of bitterness that my blood rushes to my heart under the sudden faintness that those words cause me.

Gracious greetings to _tutti quanti_, and to you, all tenderness. I re-read at this moment the silly verses in which I fold my letter, and I send you, laughing, the homage of a poor collegian--for the ruled paper reveals the age of seventeen and its illusions.

FRAPESLE, March 2, 1838.

_Cara contessina_; I am here, without having done a single thing that is worth anything. I am a little better, that is all. I have been ill of a malady that love abhors, caused by the quality of the drinking water, which contained calcareous deposits. Hence, complete dissolution of my brain forces. Poor human beings! See on what fame depends, and the creations of thought! Madame Carraud thinks I have escaped an illness; it is very sure that I have escaped making a comedy or a bad novel.

I heard that George Sand was at her country-place at Nohant, a few leagues from Frapesle, so I went to pay her a visit. You will therefore have your wished-for autographs: one of George Sand, which I send you to-day; the other, signed Aurore Dudevant, you shall receive in my next letter. Thus you will have the curious animal under both aspects. But there is still another; the nickname, given by her friends, of "le docteur Piffoël." When that reaches me I will send it. As you are a curious eminentissime or an eminentissime curious person, I will relate to you my visit.

I arrived at the Château de Nohant on Shrove Saturday, about half-past seven in the evening, and I found comrade George Sand in her dressing-gown, smoking a cigar after dinner in the chimney-corner of an immense solitary chamber. She was wearing pretty yellow slippers trimmed with fringe, coquettish stockings, and red trousers. So much for the moral. Physically, she has doubled her chin like a monk. She has not a single white hair in spite of her dreadful troubles; her swarthy skin has not varied; her beautiful eyes are still dazzling; she has the same stupid look when she thinks, for, as I told her, after studying her, all her physiognomy is in her eye. She has been at Nohant a year, very sad, and working enormously. She leads about the same life as mine. She goes to bed at six in the morning and rises at midday; I go to bed at six in the evening and rise at midnight. But, naturally, I conformed to her habits; and for three days we talked from five o'clock, after dinner, till five next morning; so that I knew her better, and reciprocally, in those three talks, than during the four preceding years, when she came to my house at the time she loved Jules Sandeau, and was connected with Musset. She knew me only as I went to see her now and then.

It was useful for me to see her, for we made mutual confidences on the subject of Jules Sandeau. I, who am the last to blame her for that desertion, have nothing now but the deepest compassion for her, as you will have for me when you know with whom we had to do, she, in love; I, in friendship.

She was, however, even more unhappy with Musset; and she is now in deep retirement, condemning both marriage and love; because in both states she has met with nothing but deceptions.

Her male is rare, that is the whole of it. He is the more so because she is not lovable, and, consequently, will always be difficult to love. She is a lad, she is an artist, she is grand, generous, devoted, chaste; she has the great lineaments of a man: _ergo_, she is not a woman. I did not feel, any more than I formerly felt when beside her, attacked by that gallantry of the epidermis which one ought to employ in France and Poland towards every species of woman. I talked as with a comrade. She has lofty virtues, of the kind that society takes the wrong way. We discussed, with a gravity, good faith, candor, and conscience worthy of the great shepherds who lead herds of men, the grand questions of marriage and liberty: "For," as she said to me with immense pride (I should never have dared to think it for myself), "although by our writings we are preparing a revolution for future manners and morals, I am not less struck by the objections to the one than by those to the other."

We talked a whole night on this great problem. I am altogether for the liberty of the young girl and the slavery of the wife; that is to say, I wish that before marriage she should know what she binds herself to, that she should study it all, because, when she has signed the contract and experienced its chances she must be faithful to it. I gained a great deal in making Madame Dudevant recognize the necessity of marriage; but she will believe it, I am sure, and I think I have done good in proving it to her.

She is an excellent mother, adored by her children; but she dresses her daughter Solange as a boy, which is not right. _Morally,_ she is like a young man of twenty, for she is inwardly chaste and _prudish_; she is only an artist externally. She smokes immoderately; plays the princess a little too much, perhaps; and I am convinced that she has faithfully painted herself in the princess of her "Secrétaire intime." She knows, and said, of herself just what I think, without my saying it to her, namely: that she has neither force of conception, nor gift of constructing plots, nor faculty of reaching the true, nor the art of pathos, but--without knowing the French language--she has _style_; and that is true.

She takes her fame, as I do mine, in jest, and she has a profound contempt for the public, calling it _Jumento_.

I will relate to you the immense and secret devotion of this woman for those two men, and you will say to yourself that there is nothing in common between angels and devils. All the follies that she has committed are titles to fame in the eyes of great and noble souls. She was duped by Madame Dorval, Bocage, Lamennais, etc., etc. Through the same sentiment she is now the dupe of Listz and Madame d'Agoult; but she has just come to see it as to that pair as she did in the case of la Dorval; she has one of those minds that are powerful in the study, through intellect, and extremely easy to entrap on the domain of realities.

Apropos of Listz and Madame d'Agoult, she gave me the subject of "Les Galériens," or "Amours forcés," which I am going to write; for in her position she cannot do so. Keep that secret. In short, she is a man, and all the more a man because she wants to be one, because she has come out of womanhood, and is not a woman. Woman attracts, and she repels; and, as I am very much of a man, if she produces that effect on me she must produce it on all men who are like me; she will always be unhappy. Thus, she now loves a man who is inferior to her, and in that contract there can be only deception and disenchantment for a woman with a fine soul. A woman ought always to love a man superior to herself, or else be so well deceived that it will be as if it were so.

I did not stay at Nohant with impunity; I brought away a monstrous vice; she made me smoke a hookah and latakia; and they have suddenly become a necessity to me. This transition will help me to give up coffee and vary the stimulant I need for work; I thought of you. I want a fine, good hookah, with a lid or extra-bowl; and, if you are very amiable, you will get me one in Moscow; for it is there, or in Constantinople, that the best can be had. Be friendly enough to write at once to Moscow, so that the parcel may reach me with the least possible delay. But on condition only that you tell me what you want in Paris, so that I have my hookah only as barter. If you can also find true latakia in Moscow, send me five or six pounds, as opportunities are rare to get it from Constantinople. And dare I also ask you not to forget the _caravan tea_ you promised me?

I am much of a child, as you know. If it is possible that the decoration of the hookah should be in turquoise, that would please me, all the more because I want to attach to the end of the tube the knob of my cane, which I am prevented from carrying by the notoriety given to it. If you wish, I will send you a set of Parisian pearls, such as you liked; the mounting will be so artistic that, although the pearls are only Parisian, you will have a work of art. Say yes, if you love me. Yes, isn't it?

I will write you a line from Paris, for I must go to Sardinia. Pray to God that I may succeed, for if I do, my joy will carry me to Wierzchownia. I shall have liberty! no more cares, no more material worries; I shall be rich!

_Addio, cara contessina_, for the post has imperious and self-willed hours. Think that in fifteen days I shall be sailing on the Mediterranean. Ah! from there to Odessa, it is all sea--as they say in Paris, it is all pavement. From Odessa to Berditchef it is but a step.

I send you my tender regards, and friendly ones to M. Hanski, with all remembrances to your young companions. You ought to be, as I write, in full enjoyment of the Boulanger, and I await with impatience your _sacro sainct dict_ on the work of the painter.

Think that if I pray it is for you; if I ask God for anything with that cowl lowered it is for you, and that the fat monk now before you is ever the moujik of your lofty and powerful mind.

Have you read "Birotteau"? After that book I shall decidedly write "La Première Demoiselle;" then a love-book, very coquettish, "Les Amours forcés." It is for those who have the adorable sweetness to love according to the laws of their own heart, and to pity the galley-slaves of love.

AJACCIO, MARCH 26, 1838.

_Cara contessina_, I did not have a moment to myself in which to write to you from Paris on my return from Berry. The above date will show you that I am twenty hours from Sardinia, where I make my expedition. I am waiting for an opportunity to cross over to that island, and on arrival I shall have to do five days' quarantine,--for Italy will not give up that custom. They believe in contagion and cholera; it broke out in Marseille six months ago, and they still continue their useless precautions.

During the few days I remained in Paris I had endless difficulties to conquer in order to make my journey; money was laboriously obtained, for money is scarce with me. When you know that this enterprise is a desperate effort to put an end to the perpetual struggle between fortune and me, you will not be surprised by it. I risk only a month of my time and five hundred francs for a fairly fine fortune. M. Carraud decided me; I submitted my conjectures, which are scientific in their nature, to him, and as he is one of those great _savants_ who do nothing, publish nothing, and live in idleness, his opinion was given, without any restriction, in favour of my ideas,--ideas that I can only communicate to you by word of mouth if I succeed, or in my next letter if I fail. Successful or unsuccessful, M. Carraud says that he respects such an idea as much as a fine discovery, considering it an ingenious thing. M. Carraud was for twenty years director of our Military School of Saint-Cyr; he is the intimate friend of Biot, whom I have often heard deplore, in the interest of science, the inaction in which M. Carraud now lives.

In truth, there is no scientific problem that he cannot discuss admirably when questioned; but the trouble is that these vast mathematical minds judge life by what it is, and, not seeing a logical conclusion of it, they await death to be rid of their time. This vegetable existence is the despair of Madame Carraud, who is full of soul and fire. She was stupefied on hearing M. Carraud declare, when I submitted my conjectures to him, that he would go with me, he who never leaves the house even to look after his own estate. However, the natural man returned, and he gave up the project. His opinion ended by bringing my own incandescence to the highest point; and in spite of the terrible equinox in the Gulf of Lyon, in spite of five days and four nights to spend in a diligence, I started. I have suffered much, especially at sea. But here I am, in the native town of the Napoleons, giving myself to all the devils because I am obliged to wait for the solution of my problem within twenty hours' distance of that problem. One must not think of going through Corsica to the straits which separate it from Sardinia, for the land journey is long, dangerous, and costly, both in Corsica and Sardinia. Ajaccio is an intolerable place. I know no one, and there is no one to know. Civilization is what it is in Greenland; the Corsicans do not like strangers. I am wrecked, as it were, on a granite rock; I go and look at the sea and return to dinner, go to bed, and begin over again,--not daring to work, because at any moment I may start; this situation is the antipodes of my nature, which is all resolution, all activity.

I have been to see the house where Napoleon was born; it is now a poor hovel. I have rectified a few mistakes. His father was a rather rich land-owner, and not a clerk, as several lying biographies have said. Also, when Napoleon reached Ajaccio on his return from Egypt, instead of being received by acclamations, as historians declare, and obtaining a general triumph, he was shot at, and a price was put upon his head; they showed me the little beach where he landed. He owed his life to the courage and devotion of a peasant, who took him to the mountains and put him in an inaccessible retreat. It was the nephew of the mayor of Ajaccio who put the price upon his head, that told me these details. After Napoleon was First Consul the peasant went to see him. Napoleon asked him what he wanted. The peasant asked for one of his father's estates, called "Il Pantano," which was worth a million. Napoleon gave it to him. The son of that peasant is to-day one of the richest men in Corsica.

Napoleon had already given his father's estates to the Ramolini, his mother's family,--having no right to do so. The Bonapartes said nothing, for during his power they obtained everything from him. Since his death, and recently, they have brought suits to recover this property from the Ramolini.

Pozzo di Borgo triumphs in Corsica as he triumphed over his enemy Napoleon,--Metternich, Wellington, and Talleyrand aiding. His nephew, who is paymaster here, has an income of more than one hundred thousand francs. I am lodging in one of his houses.

I am going to Sassari, the second capital of Sardinia, and shall stay there a few days. What I have to do there is a small matter for the moment; the grand question, whether or not I am mistaken, will be decided in Paris; it suffices if I can procure a specimen of the thing. Do not crack your brains in trying to find out what it can be; you will never discover it.

I am so weary of the struggle about which I have so often told you, that now it must end, or I shall succumb. Here are ten years of toil without any fruit; the only certain results are calumnies, insults, and lawsuits. You tell me as to that the noblest things in the world; but I answer you that all men have but one quantum of strength, blood, courage, hope; and mine is exhausted. You are ignorant of the extent of my sufferings; I ought not, and I could not tell you all of them. I have renounced happiness, but in default of that I must, at least, have tranquillity. I have therefore formed two or three plans for fortune. This is the first; if it fails, I shall go to the second. After which, I shall resume my pen, which I shall not have entirely relinquished.

Yesterday I wanted to write to you, but I was overcome by gleams of an inspiration which dictated the plot of a comedy that you have already condemned: "La Première Demoiselle" [afterwards "L'École des Ménages"]. My sister thought it superb; George Sand, to whom I related it at Nohant, predicted the greatest success; it was this that made me take it in hand again, and the most difficult part is now done; namely, that which is called the _scenario_,--the arrangement of all the scenes, the entrances and exits, etc. I undertook the "Physiologie du Mariage" and the "Peau de Chagrin" against the advice of the angel whom I have lost. I am now, during this delay in my journey, undertaking this play against yours.

AJACCIO, March 27.

I don't know from where I can send you this letter, for I have so little money that I must consider a postage that costs five francs; but from Sassari I go to Genoa, and from Genoa to Milan. That is the least expensive way of returning, on account of not being forced to stay anywhere, because opportunities are frequent. In Milan I have a banker on whom I can count; in Genoa also. Therefore, you must not be surprised at the great delay of this letter. After leaving Corsica, I shall probably have neither time nor facilities for writing; but the letter is all ready, and I shall pay the postage when I can.

The Mediterranean has been very bad; there are merchants here who think their ships are lost. To risk as little as possible, I took the land route from Marseille to Toulon, and the steamboat that carries despatches from Toulon here. Nevertheless, I suffered terribly, and spent much money. I think, however, that the sea route to Odessa would be the safest, most direct, and least costly way of going to you. From Marseille to Odessa by sea it is only four hundred francs. From Odessa to Berditchef it ought not to cost much, especially if you came to Kiew to meet me. You see that wherever I go I think of your dear Wierzchownia.

Corsica is one of the most beautiful countries in the world; there are mountains as in Switzerland, but no lakes. France is not making the most of this fine country. It is as large as ten of our departments, but does not yield as much as one of them; it ought to have five million of inhabitants, but there are barely three hundred thousand. We are beginning to make roads and clear forests which will yield immense wealth, like the soil, which is now completely neglected. There may be the finest mines in the world of marble, coal, and metals, etc.; but no one has studied the country, on account of bandits and the savage state in which it is left.

In the midst of my maritime sufferings on the steamboat I bethought me of the indiscretion I committed in asking you to get me a hookah from Moscow, in my passionate ardour for the latakia which I smoked at George Sand's, and which Lamartine had brought her. I was so spasmodically unhappy about it that I laugh now as I remember my sickness. I am sorry I could not get a hookah in Paris; it would have wiled away my time here and dispelled the ennui which, for the first time in my life, has laid hold upon me; this is the first time that I have known what a desert with semi-savages upon it is.

This morning I have learned that there is a library here, and to-morrow, at ten o'clock, I can go there to read. What? That is an anxious question. There are in this place neither reading-rooms, nor women, nor popular theatres, nor society, nor newspapers, nor any of the impurities that proclaim civilization. The women do not like foreigners; the men walk about the whole day, smoking. The laziness is incredible. There are eight thousand souls, much poverty, and extreme ignorance of the simplest current events. I enjoy a complete incognito. No one knows what literature or social life is. The men wear velveteen jackets; there is so much simplicity in clothing that I, who have dressed myself to seem poor, look like a rich man. There is a French battalion here, and you should see the poor officers, idling in the streets from morning till night. There is nothing to do! I shall now begin to sketch scenes and lay out projects. I must work with fury. How people must love on this desert rock! and truly the place swarms with children, like gnats of a summer's evening.

Adieu for to-day. I was only eighteen hours at Marseille and ten at Toulon, and so could not write to you until to-day.

AJACCIO, April 1.

I leave to-morrow for Sardinia in a little row-boat. I have just re-read what I wrote to you, and I see I did not finish about the hookah. You understand that if it gives you the least trouble you are to drop my commission. As for the latakia, I have just discovered (laugh at me for a whole year) that Latakia is a village of the island of Cyprus, a stone's throw from here, where a superior tobacco is made, named from the place, and that I can get it here. So mark out that item.

I have just seen a poor French soldier who lost both hands by a cannon-ball, and has nothing but stumps; he earns his living by writing, beating a drum, playing the violin, playing at cards, and shaving in the streets. If I had not seen it I never should believe it.

The Ajaccio library has nothing. I have re-read "Clarissa Harlowe," and read for the first time "Pamela" and "Sir Charles Grandison," which I found horribly dull and stupid. What a fate for Cervantes and Richardson to have been able to do but one work! The same might be said of Sterne.

I have had the misfortune to be recognized by a cursed law-student of Paris, just returned to make himself a lawyer in his own land. He had seen me in Paris. Hence an article in a Corsican paper. And I, who wanted to keep my journey as secret as possible! Alas, alas! What a bore! Is there no way for me to do either good or evil without publicity? This is the eighth day of my placid life. But Ajaccio is like one household.

I have had a great escape. If I had not taken the route I did take, and had come direct from Marseille, I should have encountered a dreadful tempest which wrecked three ships on the coast.

AJACCIO, April 2.

This evening, at ten o'clock, a little boat will carry me away; then I have five days' quarantine at Alghiero, a little harbour you may see on the map of Sardinia. It is there, between Alghiero and Sassari, that the district of Argentara lies, and it is there that I am going to see mines, abandoned at the time of the discovery of America. I cannot tell you more than that.

When this letter is in your possession in that pretty room at beautiful Wierzchownia, I shall be either a fool or a man of wisdom; perhaps neither the one nor the other, simply an ambitious heart defeated in an ingenious hope.

_Addio, cara_; I hope that all goes well at Wierzchownia, that you have wept a little over "César Birotteau," that you have written me your feelings and impressions about that book, and that I shall thus be rewarded for it in this world. All caressing things to those you love. I have again put off writing to M. Hanski, because I shall do so at Milan after receiving certain news. But give him my regards, and keep for yourself the most attaching and coquettish, which are your due.

Off ALGHIERO, SARDINIA, April 8.

I am here, after five days of rather lucky navigation in a coral-boat on its way to Africa. But I now know the privations of sailors; we had nothing to eat but the fish we caught, which they boiled into execrable soup. I had to sleep on deck and be devoured by fleas, which abound, they say, in Sardinia. And finally, although here, we are condemned to remain five days in quarantine on this little boat, in view of port, and those savages will give us nothing. We have just gone through a frightful tempest; they would not let us fasten a cable to a ring on the quay; but, as we are Frenchmen, one sailor jumped into the water and fastened it himself by force. The governor came down and ordered the cable loosed as soon as the sea calmed down; which, under their system of contagion, was absurd; because we had already given the cholera or we had not given it. It was a pure notion of the governor, who wants things done as he says. Africa begins here; I see a ragged population, almost naked, brown as Ethiopians.

CAGLIARI, April 17.

I have just crossed the whole of Sardinia and seen things such as they relate of the Hurons and about Polynesia. A desert kingdom, real savages, no husbandry; long stretches of palm-trees and cactus; goats everywhere browsing on the undergrowth and keeping it down to the level of the waist. I have been seventeen and eighteen hours on horseback--I who have not mounted a horse these four years--without seeing a single dwelling. I came through a virgin forest, lying on the neck of my horse in fear of my life; for I had to ride down water-courses arched over with branches and climbing plants which threatened to put out my eyes, break my teeth or wrench off my head. Gigantic oaks, cork-trees, laurel, and heather thirty feet high,--nothing to eat.

No sooner did I reach the end of my expedition than I had to think of returning; so, without taking any rest, I started on horseback from Alghiero to Sassari, the second capital of the island, from which a diligence, lately established, was to bring me here, where there is, in port, a steamboat for Genoa. But, as the weather is bad here I must stay for two days.

From Sassari to Cagliari I came through the whole of Sardinia, through the middle of it. It is alike everywhere. There is one district where the inhabitants make a horrible bread by pounding acorns of the live-oak to flour and mixing it with clay, and this within sight of beautiful Italy! Men and women go naked with a strip of linen, a tattered rag, to cover their nudity. I saw masses of human beings trooped in the sun along the walls of their hovels, for Easter-day. No habitation has a chimney; they make their fires in the middle of the huts, which are draped with soot. The women spend their days in pounding the acorns and kneading the bread; the men tend the goats and the cattle; the soil is untilled in this, the most fertile spot on earth! In the midst of this utter and incurable misery there are villages which have costumes of amazing richness.

GENOA, April 22.

Now I can tell you the object of my journey. I have been both right and wrong. Last year, at this time, in Genoa, a merchant told me that the careless neglect of Sardinia was so great that there were, in a certain locality, disused silver mines with mountains of scoriæ containing refuse lead from which the silver had been taken. At once, I told him to send me specimens of these scoriæ to Paris, and that after assaying them I would return and get a permit in Turin to work those mines with him. A year passed, and the man sent me nothing.