style="font-size:15px;"> I await, assuredly with anxiety, your letter relating to "Le Médecin de campagne." Write me quickly what you think of it; tell me your emotions.
Mon Dieu! I would fain recount to you a thousand thoughts; but there is a pitiless somebody who hurries and commands me. Be generous, write to me, do not scold me too much for a seeming silence; my heart speaks to you. If a spark flames up in your candle at night, consider the little gleam as a message of the thoughts of your friend. If your fire crackles, think of me who think often of you. Yes, dream true in saying to yourself that your words not only echo, but they remain in my memory; that in the most obscure corner of Paris there is a being who puts you into all his dreams, who counts you for much in his sentiments, whom you animate at times, but who, at other times is sad and calls to you, as we hope for a chance that is well-nigh impossible.
Paris, August 8, 1833.
I have received your letter from Switzerland, from Neufchâtel.
Will you not be much dissatisfied with yourself when you know that you have given me great pain at a moment when I already had much? After all that I have said to you, was not my silence significant of misfortunes? I now inclose to you the letters begun before I received this letter from Switzerland in which you give me your exact address.
I will not explain to you the troubles that overwhelm me; they are such that I thought yesterday of quitting France. Besides, the lawsuit which troubles me so much is very difficult to explain even to the judges; you will feel therefore that I cannot tell you anything about it in a letter. Mon Dieu! if you have never thought that I might have untold troubles, your heart should have told you that I did not enter your soul to leave it as you suppose me to have done, and that I did not forget you. You do not know with what strength a man who has met with nothing but toil without reward, sorrows without joy, fastens to a heart in which for the first time he finds the consolations that he needs. The fragments of letters which I now send you have been under my hand for the last three months, but for three months past I have not had a day, an hour, to write to the persons I love best. But you are far away; you know nothing of my life of toil and anguish. At any rate, I pardon you the badnesses which reveal such force in your heart for him whom you love a little.
Later, I will write you in detail; but to-day I can only send you these beginnings of letters, assuring you of my constant faith. I intend to plead my case myself, and I must study it.
Nothing can better picture to you the agitated life which I lead than these fragments of letters. I have not the power or the faculty to give myself up for an hour to any connected subject outside of my writings and my business matters. When will this end? I do not know. But I am very weary of this perpetual struggle between men and things and me.
I must bid you adieu. Write to me always, and have faith in me. During the hours of release that come to me I shall turn to you and tell you all there is of good and tender sentiments in me for you. Adieu; some day you will know how unhappy I was in writing you these few lines, and you will be surprised that I was able to write them.
Adieu; love him who loves you.
Paris, August 19, 1833.
What would I not pardon after reading your letter, my cherished angel? But you are too beloved ever to be guilty of a fault; you are a spoilt child; to you belong my most precious hours. See, I answer you alone. Mon Dieu! do not be jealous of any one. I have not been to see Madame Récamier or any one else. I do not love Madame de Girardin; and every time I go there, which is rare, I bring away with me an antipathy.[1] … It is ten months since I have seen Eugène Sue, and really I have no male friends in the true acceptation of the word.
Do not read the "Écho de la Jeune France." The second part of "Histoire des Treize" ought to be in it, but those men have acted so badly towards me that I have ceased to do what, out of extreme good-will to a college friend interested in the enterprise, I began by doing. You will find a grand and beautiful story just begun; the first chapter good, the second bad. They had the impertinence to print my notes, without waiting for the work I always undertake as it goes through the press, and I shall now not complete the history till I put it in the "Scènes de la Vie Parisienne" which will appear this winter.
I have only a moment in which to answer you; I live by chance, and by fits and starts. Perdonatemi.
Since I last wrote to you in such a hurry I have had more troubles than I ever had before in my life.
My lawyers, my solicitors, everybody, implore me not to spend eight months of my life in the law-courts, and yesterday I signed a compromise allowing all questions in litigation to be sovereignly decided by two arbitrators. That is how I now stand. The affair will be decided by the end of the week, and I shall then know the extent of my losses and my obligations.
Of the three copies I have had made of "Le Médecin de campagne" nothing exists that I can send you, unless it be the first volume. But here is what I shall do: I shall have duplicate proofs made of the second volume, and you shall read them ten days hence, before the rest of the world. I have already found many blemishes, therefore it is a copy of the second edition only that I wish to give you; which will prove to you my tenderness, for I don't know for whom else I would take the trouble to write myself the title for printing [le titre en regard de l'impression].
The extreme disorder which this lawsuit and the time taken in making this book has brought into my affairs, obliges me to take service once more in the newspapers. For the last week I have been very actively working on "L'Europe littéraire" in which I own a share. Thursday next the "Théorie de la Démarche" will be finished. It is a long and very tiresome treatise. But by the end of the month there will be a "Scène de la Vie de province," in the style of "Les Célibataires," called "Eugénie Grandet," which will be better. Take "L'Europe littéraire" for three months.
You have not told me whether you have read "Juana" in the "Revue de Paris," nor whether you have found the end of "Ferragus." I would like to know if I ought to send you those two things. As for the dizains of the "Contes Drolatiques," do not read them. The third you might read. The first two belong, like those which follow the third, to a special literature. I know women of exquisite taste and lofty devotion who do read them; but in truth I never reckoned on such rare suffrages. It is a work that cannot be judged until completed, and ten years hence. It is a literary monument built for a few connoisseurs. If you do not like La Fontaine's Tales, nor those of Boccaccio, and if you are not an adorer of Ariosto, let the "Contes Drolatiques" alone; although they will be my finest meed of fame in the future. I tell you this once for all, not to return to it.
I send to you, to the address of Henriette Borel,[2] by to-morrow's carrier, a unique "Louis Lambert" on Chinese paper, which I have had printed for you, believing my work perfect. But I have the grief to tell you that there is now a new manuscript for the future edition of the "Études Philosophiques." You will also find in the package the first volume of "Le Médecin de campagne," and I will send you the second as soon as there is a copy. I hope to make you wait not more than eight or ten days for it. Evelina is in the second volume. If you receive these volumes safely I will send you the Chénier I have here for you.
Now that what I regard as business is ended, let us speak of ourselves—Ourselves! Who told you about the little Metternich? As to the services I have rendered Eugène Sue, I do not understand. But, I entreat, do not listen to either calumny or gossip; I am the butt of evil tongues. Yesterday one of my friends heard a fool relating that I had two talismans in my house, in which I believed; two drinking-glasses; on one of which depended my life, on the other my talent. You cannot imagine what nonsense is told about me, calumnies, crazy incriminations! There is but one thing
