Well, a few days more, and I shall have the pleasure of seeing you.
I have just returned from Nemours. Alas! Madame de Berny is no better. The malady makes frightful progress, and I cannot express to you how that soul of my life was grand, and noble, and touching in those days measured by illness, and with what fervour she desires that another should be to me what she has been. She knows the inward spring and nobility that the habit of carrying all things to an idol gives me. My God is on earth. I have judged myself hourly by her. I say to myself in everything, "What would she think of this?" and this reflection corroborates my conscience, and prevents me from doing anything petty.
However violent attacks and calumnies may be, I march higher up. I answer nothing. Oh! madame, there was a memory, and a sense of horrible pain which rent me during the ten days I rested after "Père Goriot." I will tell you that that work was done in forty days; in those forty days I did not sleep eighty hours. But I must triumph.
I am going once more to risk, as the doctor says, my "intelligential life" in order to finish the second delivery to Werdet, the fourth to Madame Bêchet, and "Séraphita." As soon as that is done, I shall buy La Grenadière, and, the deeds signed, I shall fly to Vienna, see the battle-field of Essling, and from there, something of the Landstrasse, where you are. I shall come in search of a little praise—if you think that my year of toil deserves any; and you know that the words that escape you are put where I put those of la dilecta. Though she is ill, her children will stay with her during my absence, and she could not have me then, so I make this journey without remorse. Besides, she knows it is necessary, as diversion, for the weariness of my head.
So, unless I am ill between now and the 20th of March, which is not probable, I shall work with the sweet interest of going, my work accomplished, toward that Vienna where all my troubles will be forgotten. The atmosphere of Paris kills me; I smell toil, debt, enemies! I need an oasis. On the other hand, "Le Père Goriot" has created an excitement; there never was such eagerness to read a book; the booksellers advertise it in advance. It is true that it is grandiose. But you will judge.
As for the "Lettre aux Écrivains," alas! I cannot look at it without pain, for la dilecta thought it so fine, so majestic, so varied, that she had palpitations of the heart which injured her, and I don't like those pages any more.
You know that one of the qualities of the bengali is illimitable fidelity. Poor bird of Asia, without his rose, without his peri, mute, sad, but very loving, the desire seizes me to write his story. I have begun it in the "Voyage à Java."
Adieu; this scrap of a letter is scribbled on a pile of proofs that would frighten even a proof-reader. A thousand homages, and kindly present my obeisances to M. Hanski. I return to my work with fury, and I wish you the realization of all the wishes you make. Find here the expression of the most sincere and most respectful of attachments.
Paris, March 1, 1835.