Are you amusing yourself? Do you employ your preservatives, impure man? What a wicked fellow is my friend Feydeau, and how I envy him! As for me, I worry myself immeasurably. I feel old, tired, withered. I am as sombre as a tomb and as crabbed as a hedgehog.
I have just read Cohan’s book from one end to the other. I know that it is very faithful, very good, very wise, but I prefer the old Vulgate, because of the Latin. How swelling it is, compared with this poor, puny, pulmonic little Frenchman! I will show you two or three mistranslations (or rather, embellishments) in the said Vulgate, which have more beauty than the real meaning.
Go on and amuse yourself, and pray to Apollo to inspire me, for I am sadly flattened out.
Thine ever.
TO ERNEST FEYDEAU.
Croisset, Sunday evening, 1858.
What has become of you? As for myself, I have passed nearly four days in sleeping, because of extreme fatigue; then I wrote my notes of travel, and my lord Bouilhet has come to visit me.
During the week that he has been here we have been digging ferociously. I must tell you that the story of Carthage is to be completely changed, or rather, to be written over again, as I have destroyed the whole of the original! It was absurd, impossible, false!
I believe now that I have struck the right note at last. I begin to comprehend my personages, and already feel a great interest in them. I do not know when I shall finish this colossal work. Perhaps not before two or three years. From now on, I shall beg everyone that meets me not to talk to me. I should like to send out notes announcing my death!