Those are the main features of the play. I do not speak of the details, though they are, I think, as original as the characters, which have not been, to my knowledge, in any other play. There is a scene of the family judgment on the young girl; there is the scene of the separation, etc.
I hope to finish it by March 1 and to see it played early in May. On its success my journey will largely depend; for the day when I owe nothing I shall have that liberty of going and coming for which I have sighed so long.
I await with keen impatience for another letter to tell me how you are, you and M. Hanski. As soon as I have ended my work and my deplorable affairs you shall know it; I will tell you if I am satisfied with my play and with my last compositions, which are now to be done, and will take my nights and days for two months, for I must immediately do for the "Figaro" "César Birotteau" and for the "Presse" "La Haute Banque,"—two books that are quite important.
Addio, cara. Be always confident in your ideas; walk with courage in your own way. It seems to me that all trials have their object and their reward; otherwise, human life would have no meaning. As for me, the last pleasure I told you of—the coming of that friend so unexpectedly—proved to me that the sufferings through which I have passed were the price of that great pleasure. In all lives there must be such things.
Adieu; I send you this time a precious autograph, Lamartine; you will see that the verses are so chosen that they will not be ridiculous in a collection.
Florence, April 10, 1837.
In one month I have travelled very rapidly through part of France, one side of Switzerland, to Milan, Venice, Genoa, and after being detained by inadvertence in quarantine, here I am for the last two days in Florence, where, before seeing anything whatever, I rushed to Bartolini to see your bust. This was chiefly the object of this last stage of my journey, for I must be in Paris ten days hence. The desire to see Venice, and my quarantine made me spend more time than I could allow on that trip, and also made me regret not having gone to you. But the season [the condition of the roads] did not permit it, nor my finances.
The moment the publication of the last part of the "Études de Mœurs" was over, my strength suddenly collapsed. I had to distract my mind; and I foresee it will be so every fourth or fifth month. My health is detestable, disquieting; but I tell this only to you. My mind feels the effect of it. I am afraid of not being able to finish my work. Everywhere the want of happiness pursues me, and takes from me the enjoyment of the finest things. Venice and Switzerland are the two creations, one human, the other divine, which seem to me, until now, to be without any comparison, and to stand outside of all ordinary data. Italy itself seems to me a land like any other.
I have travelled so fast that nowhere had I time to write to you. My thoughts belonged to you wholly, but I felt a horror of an inkstand and my pen. The loss I have met with is immense. The void it leaves might be filled by a present friendship, but afar, in spite of your letters, grief assails me at all hours, especially when at work. That other soul which counselled me, which saw all, which was always the point of departure of so many things, is lacking to me. I begin to despair of any happy future. Between that soul, absent for evermore, and the hopes to which I cling in some sweet hours, there is, believe me, an abyss above which I bend incessantly, and often the vertigo of misfortune mounts to my head. Every day bears away with it some shred of that gaiety which enabled me to surmount so many difficulties. This journey is a sad trial. I am alone, without strength.
You will probably receive my statue in Carrara marble (half-nature, that is, about three feet high, and marvellously like me) before the portrait of that rascal Boulanger, who, after the Exhibition, still wants three months to make the copy. I am vexed. He has five good paying portraits and an order for Versailles of one hundred and twenty feet of painting, which absorb him, and, as a friend, he makes me wait. So it may be that I shall bring the portrait to you myself; for, as I see it is impossible for me to work more than four months together, I shall start for the Ukraine in August, through Tyrol and Hungary, returning by Dresden.