[III.]
LETTERS DURING 1835.
Paris, January 4, 1835.
I have had the happiness to receive two letters from you within a few days of each other, while you have doubtless received both mine. I return to mes moutons by asserting that you can write to me regularly, and that it is not permissible in you to deprive me of my sun.
Bah! I have not seen either K... or T... again. Why do you scold me? Don't take my magic-lantern views for realities.
All is much changed since my last letter. Alas! I had the ambition to be near you on the 20th of January, and I began to work eighteen hours a day. I stood it for fifteen days, from my last letter till December 31; then I risked an insomnia; and I am now waking from a sleep of seventeen hours, taken at intervals, which has saved me. What has the public gained? "Le Père Goriot," on which these stupid Parisians dote. "Père Goriot" is put above everything else.
I wait till I have finished "Séraphita" to send it at the same time as the manuscript of "Séraphita," in its binding of cloth and silk as you wished, simple and mysterious as the book itself; also the manuscript of "Le Père Goriot" with the printed book, the first Part of the "Études Philosophiques," and the fourth of the "Études de Mœurs."
My works are beginning to be better paid. "Père Goriot" has brought me seven thousand francs, and as it will go into the "Études de Mœurs" in a few months, I may say that it will bring me a thousand ducats. Oh! I am very deeply humiliated to be so cruelly fastened to the glebe of my debts, to be able to do nothing, never to have the free disposal of myself. These are bitter tears, shed day and night in silence; they are sorrows inexpressible, for the power of my desires must be known, to comprehend that of my regrets.