gentle revery that begins: "She is there! now she is looking at such or such a thing." And I—I can give to thought the faculty to spring through space with force enough to abolish it. These are my only pleasures amid continual work.
I have not room to explain to you here what I have undertaken to accomplish this year. In January next you can judge if I have been able to leave my study much. And yet I would like to find two months in which to travel for rest. You ask me for information about Saché. Saché is the remains of a castle on the Indre, in one of the most delicious valleys of Touraine. The proprietor, a man of fifty-five, used to dandle me on his knee. He has a pious and intolerant wife, rather deformed and not clever. I go there for him; and besides, I am free there. They accept me throughout the region as a child; I have no value whatever, and I am happy to be there, like a monk in a monastery. I walk about meditating serious works. The sky is so pure, the oaks so fine, the calm so vast! A league away is the beautiful château d'Azay, built by Samblançay, one of the finest architectural things that we possess. Farther on is Ussé, so famous from the novel of "Petit Jehan de Saintré." Saché is six leagues from Tours. But not a woman! not a conversation possible! It is your Ukraine without your music and your literature. But the more a soul full of love is restricted physically, the more it rises toward the heavens. That is one of the secrets of cell and solitude.
Be generous; tell me much of yourself, just as I tell you much of myself. It is a means of exchanging lives. But let there be no deceptions. I have trembled in writing to you, and have said to myself: "Will this be a fresh bitterness? Will the heavens open to me once more only to drive me out?"
Well, adieu, you who are one of my secret consolations, you, towards whom my soul, my thoughts are flying. Do you know that you address a spirit wholly feminine, and that what you forbid me tempts me immensely? You forbid me to see you? What a sweet folly it would be to do so! It is a crime which I would make you pardon by the gift of my life; I would like to spend it in deserving that pardon. But fear nothing; necessity cuts my wings. I am fastened to my glebe as your serfs to the soil. But I have committed the crime a hundred times in thought! You owe me compensation.
Adieu! I have confided to you the secrets of my life; it is as if I told you that you have my soul.
Paris, May 29-June 1, 1833.
I have to-day, May 29, received your last letter-journal, and I have made arrangements to answer it as you wish. In the first place I have finally discovered a paper thin enough to send you a journal the weight of which shall not excite the distrust of all the governments through which it passes. Next, I resign myself, from attachment to your sovereign orders, to assume this fatiguing little handwriting, intended for you specially. Have I understood you, my dear star? for there are fearful distances between us, and you shine, pure and bright, upon my life, like the fantastic star attributed to every human being by the astrologers of the middle ages.
Where are you going? You tell me nothing about it. To have all the requirements of a sentiment so grand, so vast, and not to have its confidence, is not that very wrong? You owe me all your thoughts. I am jealous of them.
If I have been long without writing to you it is because I have awaited your answer to my letters, being ignorant as to whether you received them. Even now I do not know where to address the letter I am beginning. Then, this is what has happened to me: from March to April I paid off my agreement with the "Revue de Paris" with a composition entitled, "Histoire des Treize," which kept me working day and night; to this were joined vexations; I felt fatigued, and I went to spend some time in the South, at Angoulême; there I remained, stretched on a sofa, much petted by a friend of my sister, of whom I think I have already told you; and I became sufficiently rested to resume my work.
I found in my new dizain and in the "Médecin de campagne" untold difficulties. These two works (still in press) absorb my nights and days; the time passes with frightful rapidity. My doctor [Dr. Nacquart], alarmed at my fatigue, ordered me to remain a month without doing anything—neither reading, writing letters, nor writing of any kind; to be, as he expressed it, like Nebuchadnezzar in the form of a beast. This I did. During this inaction vainglory has had its way. Madame [the Duchesse de Berry] has caused to be written to me the most touching things from the depths of her prison at Blaye. I have been her consolation; and "l'Histoire des Treize" had so interested her that she was on the point of writing to me to be told the end in advance, so much did it agitate her! And an odd thing! M. de Fitz-James writes me that old Prince Metternich never laid the story down, and that he devours my works. But enough of all that. You will read Madame Jules, and when you reach her you will regret having told me to burn your letters. The "Histoire des Treize" [this refers only to one part, "Ferragus"] has had an extraordinary success in this careless and busy Paris.
Forgive my scribbling; my heart and head are always too fast for the rest, and when I correspond with a person I love I often become illegible.
I have just read and re-read your long and delightful letter. How glad I am that you are making the journal I asked of you. Now that this is agreed upon between us I will confide to you all my thoughts and the events of my life, as you will yours to me. Your letter has done me great good. My poor artist [Auguste Borget] is one of my friends. At this moment he is roaming the shores of the Mediterranean, or you would have had by this time a sketch of my chamber or my little salon. I cannot yet tell you his name; but he will perhaps put it on a landscape he is to make in the copy of the "Médecin de campagne" which is destined for you, but cannot be ready before next autumn. He is a great artist, still more a noble heart, a young man full of determination and pure as a young girl. He was not willing to exhibit this year some magnificent studies. He wants to study two years longer before appearing, and I praise the resolution. He will be great at one stroke.
Regnier, who is making the collection of the dwellings of celebrated persons, was here yesterday; my house will be (for you) in the next number, and, to finish up the quarter, he will put in the Observatoire, on the side where M. Arago lives. That is the side I look upon; it is opposite to me.
I hope "Le Médecin de campagne" will appear within the next fortnight. This is the work that I prefer. My two counsellors cannot hear fragments of it without shedding tears. As for me, what care bestowed upon it!—but what annoyances! The publisher wanted to summons me to deliver the manuscript more rapidly! I have only worked at it eight months; yet to all the world this delay—put it in comparison with the work—will seem diabolical. You shall have an ordinary copy, in which I want you to read the composition. Do not buy it; wait, I entreat you, for the handy volume I intend for you, besides the grand copy. You know how much I care that you shall read me in a copy that I have chosen. It is a gospel; it is a book to be read at all moments. I desire that the volume in itself shall not be indifferent to you; there will be a thought, a caress for you on every page.
Before I can hear from you where to address my letters, much time must elapse. I can therefore talk to you at length. To-morrow I will speak of your last letter, which I have near me, very near me, so that it perfumes me. Oh! how a secret sentiment brightens life! how proud it renders it! If you knew what part you have in my thoughts! how many times during this month of idleness, under that beautiful blue sky of Angoulême, I have delightfully journeyed toward you, occupying my mind with you, uneasy about you, knowing you ill, receiving no answers, and giving myself up to a thousand fancies. I live much through you, perhaps too much: betrayed already by a person who had only curiosity, my hopes in you are not devoid of a sort of terror, a fear. Oh! I am more of a child than you suppose.
Yesterday I went to see Madame Récamier, whom I found ill, but wonderfully bright and kind. I had heard she did much good, and very nobly, in being silent and making no complaint of the ungrateful beings she has met. No doubt she saw upon my face a reflection of what I thought of her, and, without explaining to herself this little sympathy, she was charming to me.
In the evening I went to see (for I have been only six days in Paris) Madame Émile de Girardin, Delphine Gay, whom
