Among the autographs sent, have I included one from Bra, who is one of our present sculptors? He is a curious man in this, that he was led to mysticism by the death of his wife, and for two months he went to evoke her from her grave. He told me that he saw her every evening. He has now remarried. Here is a saying of Stendhal: "We feel ourselves the intimate friend of a woman when we look at her portrait in miniature; we are so near to her! But oil-painting casts us off to a great distance." What shall we say of sculpture?
Paris, January 26, 1835.
To-day I have finished "Le Père Goriot."
I leave to-morrow for a week, to work beside my dear invalid. She is better, she says, but I shall not really know anything until I have been with her a week.
On my return, I hope that "Père Goriot" will be reprinted. "Séraphita" will come to you later. But perhaps I shall bring you these things myself, accompanying the pomade, Anna's ring-case, and all the other things with which you have deigned to commission me. I have accepted too much of the sweets of hospitality that you should hesitate to use me as you please.
Yes, I have the possibility of resting for a month from March 2 to April 2. I must; and besides, my money affairs are becoming less hard. I shall have won this month of freedom by five months' exorbitant labour. But, if I have been sad, troubled, without heart-pleasure, at least my efforts have all succeeded. "Le Père Goriot" is a bewildering success; the most bitter enemies have bent the knee; I have triumphed over all, friends as well as enemies. When "Séraphita" has spread her glorious wings, when the "Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée" has shown the last lineaments of the human heart, when "Les Vendéens" has snatched a palm from Walter Scott, then, then I shall be content in being near you; you will not then have a friend without some value. As to the man himself, you will never find him anything but good, and a child.
I will not speak to you of the sadness mingled with joy that took possession of me this morning. To be at once so far off and so near! What is a year? This one has been long, agonizing within the soul, short through work. If gleams of a promised land did not shine as through a twilight, I think that my courage would abandon me at the last effort. It needs my sober, patient, equable, monkish life to resist it all. A woman is much in our life when she is Beatrice and Laura, and better still. If I had not had a star to see when I closed my eyes, I should have succumbed.
I have been, out of curiosity, to the Opera masked ball for the first time in my life. I was with my sister, who had committed the imprudence of going there against her husband's wishes. Knowing this, I went to fetch her and bring her home without giving her time to go round the hall. As I was leaving, and waiting for the carriage, a very elegant gentleman with a mask on his arm stopped me, and putting himself between me and the door whispered that the masked lady he had on his arm wished to speak to me. I rebuffed the mask; I think a woman has little dignity to come down to such trickery, and I said to the gentleman:—
"You know the laws of a masquerade; I obey the mask you see here, I am bound to do so."
The masked woman then said, in French mangled by an English tongue:—