and keep, I entreat you, madame, at your feet, my most sincere and most affectionate homage; your noble beauty assures you of sincerity, and as to the affection, I wish I could prove it to you in some way that would not involve misfortune.
"Do not forget to-morrow," was one of your recommendations when I told you that I did not believe in morrows; but now I do believe in them, for, by chance, I have a future, and my publisher has proved it to me. He is jubilant at the sale of "Eugénie Grandet," and said to me solemnly, "It sells like bread." I tell this to you who think you see cakes in it, while most people expect to see me faire brioches of it [fiasco]. Excuse this studio jest, you who like artists.
Devotion and friendship.
[1] Madame de Berny was the friend of his parents, and twenty-four years older than himself. When the family lived at Villeparisis the de Bernys lived near them in a hired house, their own estate being at Saint-Firmin. Madame de Berny recognized Balzac's genius in his early youth, when parents and friends denied it. For a time, while at Villeparisis, he taught her son with his own brother Henry. When Balzac's father opposed his literary career, it was she who, with Mme. Surville and her husband, induced the old man to advance him part of his inheritance for the printing-office, and later another portion to avoid bankruptcy. When the crisis came, in 1828, and his father would do no more for him, Madame de Berny lent him money from time to time to meet his load of business debts. The total amount lent by her, at five per cent interest, was 45,000 francs, the last 6,000 of which he paid in full in 1836. Madame de Berny had cruel trials of her own. Two of her children were insane, one idolized son and two daughters died before her in the prime of their youth. The illness here mentioned was one form of heart disease, from which she rallied for a time, but died in July, 1836, in the sixty-first year of her age. Of Balzac's grief at this event his sister says: "My brother was then (1836) overwhelmed by a great heart-sorrow … the death of a person very dear to him. … I have never read anything so eloquent as his expression of that grief."
Writing, himself, to a friend at that time, he says: "She whom I have lost was more than a mother, more than a friend, more than any creature can be to another creature. I can explain her only by divinity. She sustained me during great storms by words, by actions, by devotion. If I live, it was through her. She was all to me; and though for the last two years illness and lapse of time had separated us, yet we were visible to each other from a distance. She re-acted upon me. She was, as it were, my moral sun. Madame de Mortsauf in the Lys is a pale expression of her noble qualities; it is but a distant reflection of her, for I have a horror of prostituting my own emotions."—TR.
Paris, February 15, 1834, eleven o'clock.
My darling Eva, to you belongs this part of my night. Since Wednesday morning of this week I have been like a balloon; but as I went and came, and bustled through this Paris, I walked along, exciting myself with one fixed idea—the idea of being forever near to you.
My dear idol, I have never had so much courage in my life; or rather, I have a new life. I read your name in me, I see you; everything seems easy to me to attain to seeing you again. I am afraid of nothing. My tears, my regrets, my sadness of love—all that falls upon my heart at the moment when I get into bed. Then, alone with myself, I am all grief not to be at the "Arc," not to have seen my darling, and I go over in memory the smallest details of those days when, for all grief, I had that of being waked three hours too soon, hours that separated my rising from the moment when I set out to go to you.
The next day I work with an ardour of enthusiasm. What shall I tell you of these four days? I had to see two editors (they came) and the printer, to finish my proofs, to nurse Mme. de Berny, who is better—but what a change! she is still a little feeble, incapable of correcting my proofs. Everything will suffer for that, but what does it matter? I want to see that life out of danger.
I felt there how I loved you. A horrible sensation told me that I could not bear any danger to you. All that recalled my terror at the time of your nervous attack. Oh, mon Dieu! to see you seriously ill, you, who sum up and hold all my affections in your heart, my life in your life—why! I should die, not of your death, but of your sufferings. No, you do not know what you are to me. Near you, I feel too much to tell you egotistical thoughts; here I talk to you all day long. You are woven into my thought. I find no word but that to express my situation. As soon as I found myself in Paris I thought of the means of going to see you for a single day in Geneva.
Here I find violent family troubles. To-day I have had my brother-in-law and my mother to dinner. That tells you that from five o'clock to half-past ten I have been given up to them. Yesterday I had to dine with my sister, my mother, and my brother-in-law; then I was forced to give them from four to eleven o'clock. Those poor heads are distracted. I must have courage, ideas, energy, economy 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
