You cannot have the bound "Séraphita" until New Year's day. I would like to know if I may send Anna a little souvenir without fear of the inquisitive nose and hands of the German custom-house.
Adieu; I have given you my hours of sleep so as not to rob Werdet, or Madame Bêchet; a thousand respectful affections, and deign to accept my profound obedience.
Sunday, 19th, three in the morning.
I have not slept; I had not read all my letters. My last two difficulties are arrangeable. Two thorns less in my foot.
I have read over my scribblings. I am afraid you cannot read them; what shall I do? Have I told you all? Oh! no. There are many things that are never told.
My mother is very proud of the "Absolu;" my sister writes that she wept with joy in reading it and in saying to herself that I was her brother. Madame de Berny finds some spots upon it. She does not like that Claës should turn out his daughter; she thinks that forced. Madame de Castries writes me that she wept over it. I am sorry for the distance between Paris and Vienna. I would have liked to have your opinion first.
Ah! I may go to England for a few days (in all, ten, to go and return). My brother-in-law has just invented something wonderful, he says, relating to railroads, which might be sold for a good little million to the English. I shall try.
Did I speak to you of Prince Puckler-Muskau, and of my dinner with him at the house of a species of German monster who calls herself the widow of Benjamin Constant, but has all the air of being a good woman? Well, if I did not speak of it it will be the subject of a conversation when I am on the estates of your Beauteousness.
On my way to England I shall stop one week at Ham. The illustrious Peyronnet has expected me there for six months, and the trip has always been delayed. The Duc de Fitz-James writes to invite me to Normandy; refused.
Mon Dieu! forty letters read; it is a sort of drunkenness. Among them are two unknown ladies. One modestly asks me to make her portrait and write her life. She has green eyes and she is a widow—that's the physical and the moral of her. The other sends me execrable verses. At last I understand the cachets of Voltaire. They were not vanity; they were simply to avoid any but the letters of friends. This is what it is to have—I, a poor devil—neither Ferney, nor two hundred thousand francs income, nor one hundred francs for postage.