Letters to Madame Hanska, born Countess Rzewuska, afterwards Madame Honoré de Balzac, 1833-1846

by Honoré de Balzac

I send herewith a scrap of a former letter which I had not entirely burned.

Since the 19th of last month I have had nothing but troubles, anxieties, and toil. To finish this little letter, I have to take part of a night, and I think it a gentle recreation.

I leave in a week for the country so as to finish in peace the third dizain of the "Contes Drolatiques" and a great historical novel called "Privilège." Always work! You can, I think, without blushing, allow yourself to read the third dizain. It is almost pure.

I await, assuredly with anxiety, your letter relating to "Le Médecin de campagne." Write me quickly what you think of it; tell me your emotions.

Mon Dieu! I would fain recount to you a thousand thoughts; but there is a pitiless somebody who hurries and commands me. Be generous, write to me, do not scold me too much for a seeming silence; my heart speaks to you. If a spark flames up in your candle at night, consider the little gleam as a message of the thoughts of your friend. If your fire crackles, think of me who think often of you. Yes, dream true in saying to yourself that your words not only echo, but they remain in my memory; that in the most obscure corner of Paris there is a being who puts you into all his dreams, who counts you for much in his sentiments, whom you animate at times, but who, at other times is sad and calls to you, as we hope for a chance that is well-nigh impossible.

Paris, August 8, 1833.

I have received your letter from Switzerland, from Neufchâtel.

Will you not be much dissatisfied with yourself when you know that you have given me great pain at a moment when I already had much? After all that I have said to you, was not my silence significant of misfortunes? I now inclose to you the letters begun before I received this letter from Switzerland in which you give me your exact address.

I will not explain to you the troubles that overwhelm me; they are such that I thought yesterday of quitting France. Besides, the lawsuit which troubles me so much is very difficult to explain even to the judges; you will feel therefore that I cannot tell you anything about it in a letter. Mon Dieu! if you have never thought that I might have untold troubles, your heart should have told you that I did not enter your soul to leave it as you suppose me to have done, and that I did not forget you. You do not know with what strength a man who has met with nothing but toil without reward, sorrows without joy, fastens to a heart in which for the first time he finds the consolations that he needs. The fragments of letters which I now send you have been under my hand for the last three months, but for three months past I have not had a day, an hour, to write to the persons I love best. But you are far away; you know nothing of my life of toil and anguish. At any rate, I pardon you the badnesses which reveal such force in your heart for him whom you love a little.

Later, I will write you in detail; but to-day I can only send you these beginnings of letters, assuring you of my constant faith. I intend to plead my case myself, and I must study it.