Here is Susette. I can only say that this will make me renounce the pleasure of making you pick up on the shores of the lake the pebbles I intended to have made into an alarm-clock. I went, yesterday, to see if we could walk along the shore. I wanted to connect you with these souvenirs, to make you see that one can thus enlarge life and the world, and have the right to surround you with my thought through a thousand things, as I would like to surround myself with yours. Thus sentiment moulds material objects and gives them a soul and a voice.
What! bébête, did you not guess that the dedication was a surprise which I wished to give you? You are, for longer than you think, the thought of my thought.
Yes, I shall try to come to-night at nine.
Geneva, January 19, 1834.
My loved angel, I am almost mad for you, as one is mad. I cannot put two ideas together that you do not come between them. I can think of nothing but you. In spite of myself my imagination brings me back to you. I hold you, I press you, I kiss you, I caress you; and a thousand caresses, the most amorous, lay hold upon me.
As to my heart, you will always be there, willingly; I feel you there deliciously. But, mon Dieu! what will become of me if you have taken away my mind. Oh! it is a monomania that frightens me. I rise every moment, saying to myself, "Come, I'll go there!" Then I sit down again, recalled by a sense of my obligations. It is a dreadful struggle. It is not life. I have never been like this. You have consumed the whole of me. I feel stupefied and happy when I let myself go to thinking of you. I roll in a delicious revery, where I live a thousand years in a moment.
What a horrible situation. Crowned with love, feeling love in all my pores, living only for love, and to find oneself consumed by grief and caught in a thousand spider's-webs.
Oh! my dearest Eva, you don't know. I have picked up your card; it is there, before me, and I speak to it as if you were there. I saw you yesterday, beautiful, so admirably beautiful. Yesterday, all the evening, I said to myself, "She is mine!" Oh! the angels are not as happy in Paradise as I was yesterday.
Geneva, February, 1834.
Madame—Bautte [chief clock-maker in Geneva] is a great seigneur who is bored by small matters; and as you deign to attach some importance to the chain of your slave, I send you the worthy Liodet, who will understand better what is wanted, and will put more good-will into doing it. I have told him to put a link to join the two little chains.
Accept a thousand compliments, and the respectful homage of your moujik,
Honoré.
Geneva, February, 1834.
The Sire de Balzac is very well indeed, madame, and will be, in a few moments, at your fireside for a chat; he is too avaricious of the few moments that remain to him to spend in Geneva, and if he had not had some letters to answer, he would have gone there already this morning. A thousand affectionate compliments to M. Hanski, and to you a thousand homages full of friendship.
Paris, Wednesday, February 12, 1834.
I prefer saying nothing more than that. I love you with increasing intoxication, with a devotion that difficulties increase, to telling you imperfectly my history for the last three days. Sunday I will post a complete journal. I have not a minute to myself. Everything hurries me at once, and time presses. But, adored angel, you will divine me.
The dilecta [Madame de Berny] is better, but the future seems bad to me. I wait still before despairing.
Mon Dieu! may my thoughts of love echo in your ears and cradle you.
Paris, Thursday, February 13, 1834.
Madame—I arrived much fatigued, but I found troubles at home, of which you can conceive the keenness. Madame de Berny is ill, and seriously ill—more ill than she is aware of. I see in her face a fatal change. I hide my anxiety from her; it is boundless. Until my own doctor or a somnambulist reassure me, I shall not feel easy about that life which you know to be so precious.
I have delayed a day in writing to you, because on Wednesday morning I had to rush to the rue d'Enfer, and when I could write to you there was no longer time; the public offices closed earlier on account of Ash-Wednesday.
The sight of that face so gracious, aged in a month by twenty years, and horribly contracted, has greatly increased the grief I felt. Even if the health is restored, and I hope it, it will be always painful to me to see the sad change to old age. I can say this only to you. It seems as if nature had avenged herself suddenly, in a moment, for the long protestation made against her and time. I hope most ardently that the life may be saved; but I recognized symptoms that I saw with horror in my father before the irreparable loss. So, I have sorrow upon sorrow.[1] Now, after confiding to you these distresses, I can, madame, give you some consoling news. The publisher has understood my delay, and is not angry with me. I have, certainly, to work enormously, but, at least, I shall not have the annoyance of being blamed. As for M. Gosselin, that is only a loss of money. So, you who felt such affectionate fears lest the prolongation of my stay would prove a burden may be reassured. I shall have had complete joy, and no remorse; and now that there is no remorse, I should like a little. It is so sweet to bear something for those whose friendship is precious to us. I can tell you from afar, with less trembling in my voice and redness in my eyes, that the forty-four days I spent in Geneva have been one of the sweetest halts that I have made in my life of a literary foot-soldier. That rest was necessary for me, and you have made it into a joy. It was a sleep with the sweetest dreams—dreams which will be realities. True friendship, sweet, kind, noble and good sentiments are so rare in life that there must mingle a little gratitude in the return we owe, and I feel as much gratitude as friendship.
I shall forget nothing of our affectionate little agreements: neither the album, nor the coffee, nor anything. To-day I can only tell you that I arrived without any hindrance, except great fatigue. The cold was keen. Saturday morning I crossed the Jura on foot through the snow, and on reaching the stone where two years ago I sat down to look at the wonderful spectacle of France and Switzerland separated by a brook, which is the Lake of Geneva, and a ditch, which is the valley between the Mont Blanc and the Jura, I had a moment of joy mingled with sadness. Two years ago I wept over lost illusions [refers to his rupture with Mme. de Castries], and to-day I had to regret the sweetest things that have ever come to me, outside of family feelings—hours of friendship, the value of which a poor writer from necessity must feel more keenly than others, because there is in him a great poet for all that is emotion of the heart.
Yes, I am proud of my personal feelings, but it is a great grief to know the joys of friendship to their full extent, and lose them, even momentarily.
To-day I replunge into work, and it is crushing. I have promised that the second Part of the "Études de Mœurs" shall appear February 25th. That is only ten days for completing you know how much. My punctuality must excuse the delays. You see that in writing I am as indiscreet as when I went to see you.
Well, adieu, madame; believe that I am not "French" in the matter of memory, and that I know all that I leave of good and true beyond the Jura. In the hours when I am worn-out I shall think of our evenings; and the word patience, written in the depths of my life, will make me think of our games. You know all that I would say to the Grand Maréchal of the Ukraine, and I am certain that my words will be more graceful from your lips than from my pen. Tell Anna that her horse sends her his remembrances and kisses her forehead. A thousand affectionate compliments to Mademoiselle Séverine; inform Mademoiselle Borel that I have not
