At last, France is beginning to bestir itself about my books. Fame will come too late; I prefer happiness. I want to be something great to increase the enjoyments of the person loved. I can only say that to you. You understand me and you will not be jealous of that thought.
Madame de Castries is dying; the paralysis has attacked the other leg. Her beauty is no more; she is blighted. Oh! I pity her. She suffers horribly and inspires pity only. She is the only person I go to see, and then for one hour every week. It is more than I really can do, but that hour is compelled by the sight of that slow death. She lives with a cataplasm of Burgundy pitch from the nape of the neck to the loins. I give you these details because you ask for them.
So, constant labour, sundry griefs, the condition of Madame de Berny, who, on her side, droops her head like a flower when its calyx is heavy with rain. She cannot bear up under her last sorrows. Never did a woman have more to endure. Will she come safely out of these crises? I weep tears of blood in thinking that she is necessarily in the country, while I am necessarily in Paris. Great sorrows are preparing for me. That gentle spirit, that dear creature who put me in her heart, like the child she most loved, is perishing, while our affection (that of her eldest son, and mine) can do nothing to allay her wounds? Oh! madame, if death takes this light from my life, be good and generous, receive me. I could think only of going to weep near you. You are the only person (Borget and Madame Carraud excepted) in whom I have found the true and sanctifying friendship. In case she dies, France would be horrible to me. Borget is away; Madame Carraud has not, in herself, the feminine softness that one needs. Hers is an antique rectitude, a reasoning friendship which has its angles. You feel, you!
Yes, I am overwhelmed by this sorrow which approaches; and that divine soul prepares me for it, so to speak, in the few lines she is able to write to me. Yes, I have only your heart into which I can shed the tears that are in my eyes while writing this in Paris.[1] I am horribly alone; no one knows the secrets of my heart. I suffer, and before others I smile. Neither my sister nor my mother comprehend me.
These are sad pages. I have some hope. Mme. de Berny has such a rich constitution; but her age makes me tremble; a heart so young in a body that is nearly sixty, that is, indeed, a violent contrast. She has dreadful inflammations between the heart and lungs. My hand, when I magnetize her, increases the inflammation. We were obliged, therefore, to renounce that means of cure; for, as I wrote you, I was able to spend ten days with her the last of July. Oh! be well yourself! you and yours! Let me not tremble for the only beings who are dear to me, for all, at once!
I needed your letter this morning, for this morning I received a letter from a mutual friend of Madame Bêchet and me, telling me of her commercial distresses. If my book is not ready to appear she wants compensation for the delay; the "Absolu" ought to have been finished in two months! That irritated me. I was weeping with rage—for he does weep, this tiger; he cries out, this eagle!—when your letter came. It fell into my heart like dew. I blessed you. I clasped you like a friend. You serened me, you refreshed my soul. Be happy. Shall I ever cause you a like joy? No, I shall always be your debtor in this way.
I have had other griefs. My Boileau [M. Charles Lemesle], my hypercritic, my friend, who judges and corrects me without appeal, has found a good many blunders in the first two 12mo volumes of the "Médecin de campagne." That makes me desperate. However, we will take them out. The work shall, some day, be perfect. I was ill for two days after he showed me those blunders. They are real. We are washing up between us "La Peau de Chagrin." There must be no faults left on that edition. Add to all this money anxieties, which will not leave me tranquil till January, 1835, and there you have all the secrets of my life. There is one about which I do not speak to you. That one is the very spring of my life; it is my azure heaven, my hope, my courage, my strength, my star; it is all that one cannot tell, but it is that which you will divine. It is the oleander, the rose-bay tree, a lovely form adored beneath it, the twilight hour, a revery!
Adieu; I return to my furrow, my plough, my goad, and I shout to my oxen, "Hue!" I am just now writing the death of Madame Claës. I write to you between that scene of sorrow entitled the Death of a Mother, and the chapter entitled, Devotions of Youth. Remember this. Remember that between these two chapters your greeting, your letter, full of friendship, came to give me back a little courage and drive away a thousand gloomy phantoms. There you were, shining like a star.