Do not think that what I have been writing is a round-about way of telling you that, whatever be your age and face, my affection for you would be the same. I should not take circuitous ways to tell you a thing it would give me pleasure to express if I did not think you had enough perspicacity to have felt it, divined it. No; I was examining myself in good faith without any intention of showing myself off. I wish to be so great by intellect and fame that you can feel proud of my true friendship. Each of my works, which I want to make more and more extended, better thought, better written, will be a flattery for you, a flower, a bouquet that I shall send you! Distance alone admits of flowers of rhetoric.
My brother-in-law has just discovered a process which, in his opinion, solves on railways the problem of inclined planes, and will save great costs in construction and traction. It is possible to sell this invention to the English; here he has taken out a patent, and the English purchaser can take out an export patent. My brother-in-law does not want to go to London, and I am going to attempt this affair in the interests of my sister. That is the history of my journey to London.
We are not satisfied with our brother in Normandy. His wife is pregnant. He has complicated, still further, the difficulties of his life, poor creature. My mother is not well; I wish I could see her in good health to enjoy what I am preparing for her. But, good God! she has had many trials. To-day she turns to me, and heartily; she seems to recognize, without admitting it, the great wrong of her slight affection for my sister and me; she is punished in the child of her choice in a dreadful way. Henry is nothing, and will be nothing. He has spoiled the future his brother-in-law or I might have made for him by his marriage. All this is horribly sad.
Yesterday I re-read your letters. As I was putting them away, pressing them together to arrange them better, they exhaled a fragrance, I know not what, of grandeur and distinction that could not be mistaken. Those who talk of your forehead are not in error. But what is surprising in your letters is a turn of phrase, all your own, which issues from your heart as your glance from your eyes; it is our language written as Fénelon wrote it. You must have read Fénelon a great deal, or else you have in your soul his harmonious thought. When these letters come I read them first like a man in a hurry to talk with you; I do not really taste them till the second reading, which happens capriciously. When some thought saddens me I have recourse to you. I bring out the little box in which is my elixir, and I live again in your Italian journey. I see Diodati; I stretch myself on that good sofa of the Maison Mirabaud I turn the leaves of the "Gotha," that pretty "Gotha;" and then, after an hour or two, all is serene. I find something cool within me. My soul has rested on a friendly soul. No one is in my secret. It is something like the prayer of the mystic, from which he rises radiant. Will you think me very poetic? But it is true.
My Sandeau has brought out a book which is already sold. It is "Madame de Sommerville." Read it, this first book of a young man. Hold out your hand to him; do not be severe. Keep your severities for me; they are my privilege. Madame de Berny pays me no more compliments. From her, criticisms. Criticisms are sweet when made by a friendly hand; we believe them; they sadden because they are, no doubt, true, but they do not rend.
Well, adieu. You ought to be reading my last letter at the moment I am writing this. If you wrote to me so that I should receive your letters on Sundays, I would answer on Mondays. We should gain by not crossing each other.
I shall send, without letter of advice, to Sina's address, the first part of the "Études Philosophiques." You know all that; but let me believe that you take an interest in these enormous corrections à la Buffon (he corrected immensely), which ought to make my work, when completed ("Études Sociales," about which I told you), a monument in our fine language.[2] I believe that in 1838 the three parts of this gigantic work will be, if not wholly finished, at least built up, so that a judgment can be formed of the mass.
The "Études de Mœurs" will represent all social effects, without a single situation in life, physiognomy, character of man or woman, manner of living, profession, social zone, French region, or anything whatever of childhood, maturity, old age, politics, justice, or war, having been forgotten.
That done, the history of the human heart traced thread by thread, the social history given in all its parts, there is the base. The facts will not be imaginary; they will be what is happening everywhere.
Then, the second structure is the "Études Philosophiques;" for after the effects will come the causes. I shall have painted in the "Études de Mœurs" sentiments and their action, life and its deportment. In the "Études Philosophiques" I shall tell why the sentiments, on what the life; what is the line, what are the conditions beyond which neither society nor man exist; and, after having surveyed society in order to describe it, I shall survey it again in order to judge it. So, in the "Études de Mœurs" individualities are typified; in the "Études Philosophiques" types are individualized. Thus I shall have given life everywhere: to the type by individualizing it, to the individual by typifying him. I shall have given thought to the fragment; I shall have given to thought the life of the individual.