While waiting for the joy of seeing you, I clasp your hands with true affection.
TO ERNEST FEYDEAU.
Croisset, Sunday, July 20, 1860.
I reply immediately to your pretty letter, received this morning, to congratulate you, my dear sir, on the life you lead! Accept the homage of my envy.
Since you ask me about Salammbô, this is how it stands. I have just finished the ninth chapter, and am preparing the material for the tenth and eleventh, which I intend to write this winter, living here all alone, like a bear.
I am occupied now with a quantity of reading, which I get through with great rapidity. For the last three days I have done nothing but swallow Latin, following, at the same time, my studies of the early Christians. As to the Carthaginians, I really believe I have exhausted all texts on the subject. After my romance is finished, it would be easy for me to write a large volume of criticisms of these books, with strong citations. For instance, no longer ago than to-day, a passage in Cicero led me to discover a form of Tanith of which I had had no previous knowledge.
I become wise—and sad! Yes, I now lead a holy existence—I, who was born with so many appetites! But sacred literature has become a part of my very being.
I pass my time in putting stones on the pit of my stomach, to prevent the feeling of hunger! This makes me fairly stupid at times.
As to my “copy” (since that is the term), frankly, I do not know what to think. I fear I may fall into the way of making continual repetitions, of eternally rehashing the same things. Sometimes my phrases seem to be all cut after the same fashion, and likely to bore anyone to death. My will does not weaken, but I find it very difficult to please myself. I feel like eating my own words.
You may judge of my agitation just now, when I tell you that I am actually preparing a grand coup, the finest effect in the book. It must be at once brutal and chaste, mystical yet realistic,—a kind of effect that never has been produced before, yet absolutely real and convincing.