Listen: to settle this point, reflect on this: Walter Scott wrote two novels a year, and was thought to have luck in his labour; he astonished England. This year I shall have produced: (1) "Le Père Goriot;" (2) "Le Lys dans la Vallée;" (3) "Les Mémoires d'une jeune Mariée;" (4) "César Birotteau." I have done three Parts of the "Études de Mœurs" for Madame Bêchet; and three Parts of the "Études Philosophiques" for Werdet. And, finally, I shall have finished the third dizain, and "Séraphita." But then, shall I be living, or in my sound mind in 1836? I doubt it. Sometimes I think that my brain is inflaming. I shall die on the breach of intellect.
These efforts have not yet saved me from my financial crisis. This fearful production of books, involving as it does such masses of proofs, has not sufficed to liquidate me. I must come to the stage; the returns of which are enormous compared to those we get from books. The intellectual battle-fields are more fatiguing to work than the fields where men die or the fields where they sow their corn; know this. France drinks brains, as once she cut off noble heads.
Yes, I can only write you a few pages, and soon I may only send you despairing ones; for courage is beginning to desert me. I am weary of this struggle without rest, of this constant production without productive success. A fine thing truly to excite moral sympathies when a mother and a brother are needing bread! A fine thing to hear silly compliments on works that are written with one's blood and do not sell, while M. Paul de Kock sells three thousand copies of his, and the "Magasin Pittoresque" sixty thousand! We shall see each other again if I triumph, but I doubt success!
Monday, 24.
Forgive me for having uttered that cry of pain, and do not be too much alarmed by it. But if I perish, carried off by excess of toil, it must not surprise you. The end of "Séraphita" cannot appear in the "Revue de Paris" before September. The corrections, the efforts are crushing. Already there have been one hundred and sixty hours' work on the first proof; and I don't know what the others will cost.
If you are kind you will write me oftener. It seems as though the air were fresher about me, my brain cooler, as if I were in an oasis, when I have read your letters. They make me think I am at some wayside haven. Fifteen days had passed without one when I received the last from Ischl. I am well advanced in corrections of the "Lys dans la Vallée." It will appear in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" while you are travelling. I think I have not done a finer work as painting of an interior. I have rewritten and finished "Gobseck." In "La Fleur des Pois" I have swung round upon myself. Hitherto, I have painted the misfortunes of wives; it is time to show also the sorrows of husbands.
Here is something singular: it is that I was composing this work while you were thinking of its leading idea, and during the time it took your letter in which you spoke of the sufferings that fall upon men to reach me! Is it not enough to make one believe that space does not exist and that we had talked together?
Adieu, I have no more time to write. But, as I told you, I have time to think, and I think of you in all my hours of recreation. I must earn money to go to the Ukraine, for in order to travel tranquilly I cannot owe anything here.
Adieu; remember me to all about you.