I presume your long silence comes from your journey to Ischl. Nevertheless, I had news of you yesterday. It was not good. From the 27th to the 28th you were ill, harassed. You saw Madame de Lucchesi-Palli [Duchesse de Berry]. A somnambulist whom I had put to sleep told me that. She must have told the truth, for she spoke of certain annoyances which you feel, and of which she could know nothing except from you. The last experiments that I have made here in Paris since my return decide me to always have somnambulists at hand. This one told me that you wrote to Paris (or intended to write to Paris) for information about me. But she saw this so confusedly that it proved nothing clearly. She thought your heart was larger than it ought to be, and advised me earnestly to tell you to avoid painful emotions and live calmly; but she said there was no danger. Your heart is, like your forehead, an organ largely developed. I was much moved when she said to me with that solemn expression of somnambulists: "These are persons very much attached to you, who love you very truly."
What an imposing and awful power! To know what is passing in the soul of others at a great distance! To know what they do! I will try to give you a proof of this. Tell M. Hanski to write me a letter, calculate the day I shall receive it, and then remember all he says, and does, and thinks on that day, so that he may know whether I, in Paris, have seen Ischl. It will be the finest of our experiments. A month hence I shall have several somnambulists. It is one means not to be cheated by anyone. I have nothing of Anna's, so I cannot know anything about her. If you are curious to consult, send me a little piece of linen or cotton, which you must put on her stomach during the night, and which she must put herself (without any one touching it) into a paper which she must put inside your letter.
I have to-day resumed my great labours. Madame de Castries seems satisfied with what I did for her; but I did well to put my relations with her on the footing of social politeness. If you have read, or if you should read "Léone Léoni," you must know that Madame Dudevant has been far beneath d'U..., the husband of the Wallachian. I have heard strange things about that household, but I cannot write them; they go beyond the limits of a letter. I will keep them for an evening at Wierzchownia. Good God! what a life!
Yesterday the most horrible thing happened to me. You know, or you don't know, that waiting in expectation is dreadful torture to me. Sandeau went to the rue Cassini, and there heard that a package had come by post from Vienna, and, the postage being thirty-six francs, Rose had refused to take it in, not having the money. My head gave way. I felt that no one but you could be sending to me from Vienna. I sent Auguste off in a cabriolet, told him where to get the money, and to bring me the package, living or dead. Auguste was gone four hours. I was four hours in hell, inventing dramas. What do you suppose he brought? That copy of "Père Goriot," which I asked you to give to any one who might like it, and it was returned to me from Vienna!—by the post! They may refuse me entrance to paradise, "Philippe le Discret" may be a failure—such would be mere misfortunes, but this! I did as the possessor of slippers did in the Arabian Nights,—I burned that copy lest it might cause me some other misfortune.
I have had another grief. A little Savoyard, whom T call Anchises [Grain-de-mil], who was zeal, discretion, honesty, intelligence personified,—my little groom, to whom I was singularly attached,—died at the Hôtel-Dieu on the twenty-first day after an operation performed by M. Roux, Dupuytren's successor, and done with great success,—the removal of a large tumour on the knee. The-putrid reaction of so large a wound set in violently. I am grieved. He decided on the operation, which became necessary in my absence, in order that I might find him cured and relieved of an infirmity which would in the end have carried him off. Poor child! all those who knew him regret him; he pleased every one.
After a few more words to you I must go and put myself to finishing "l'Enfant Maudit." I am in a suitable frame of mind to do that work of melancholy. Now that I have returned to my life of eighteen hours' daily toil I shall write you a species of journal every day, and send you the whole weekly. This is written Sunday, June 28, twenty-four days after leaving you, and fifteen days since I last wrote to you. But these fifteen days have been fatally full of griefs, occupations, and difficulties of all sorts; such things cannot be told. It would need volumes to explain what is done and thought in an hour. You have it in bulk. Werdet has been to London to see about our counterfeits and translations.
Monday, 29.
It was midnight when I finished. I said adieu to you in my heart and went to bed. I should like to change something in my way of life. I should like to get up at four in the morning, and go to bed at nine in the evening. I would then sleep seven hours and work fifteen. It is difficult to change, for my hours are so inverted.
Here Auguste comes in and tells me that all the arrangements I had made for my payments to-morrow, 30th, are overturned by a discounter who sends me back, not accepting it, a note of Spachmann's for one thousand francs. So I must dress and rush out. Conceive of such a life! I was about to begin, in peace, a work of melancholy, and here's a bombshell fallen into my study! But it is not a despatch I have to write, and I can't say, like Charles XII., "What has a bombshell to do with L'Enfant Maudit?" Adieu, for to-day.
Tuesday, 30.