Not knowing that I should be detained in quarantine, and thinking to be absent only one month, I ordered my letters to be kept for me; so that I am without news of you since the last of February. Do you know, this seemed so hard to me that I inquired at Genoa if there was a vessel going to Odessa; they told me it took a month to go from Genoa to Odessa. Then I gazed into the sky at the point where the Ukraine must be, and I sent it a sorrowful farewell. At that moment I was capable, had it taken but twelve days to go to Odessa, of going to see you and not returning to Paris without my play. But then my debts, my obligations came back to my memory. What a life! Fame, when I have it, and if I have it, can never be a compensation for all my privations and all my sufferings!
I saw yesterday at La Pergola, a Princess Radziwill and a Princess Galitzin (who is not Sophie). There seem to be a good many Princesses Radziwill and Galitzin! There was also a Countess Orloff, who used to be an actress in Paris under the name of Wentzell. I hoped to enjoy my dear incognito; but, as at Milan and at Venice, I was recognized by strangers. Also I met the husband of a cousin of Madame de Castries, and Alexandre de Périgord, son of the Duc de Dino. Happily, I came to Florence en polisson, as they used to say for the trips to Marly. I have neither clothes nor linen nor anything suitable to go into society, and so I preserve my dear independence.
April 13.
I have seen the gallery of the Medici, but in a hurry. I must come back here if I want to study art. A letter from the consul at Livorno, just received, tells me there will be no steamer till the 20th, and I must be in Paris from the 20th to 25th. So there is nothing for me to do but to take the mail-cart, and I leave in a few hours. I close my letter, which I would like to make longer, but will write again at Milan, through which I pass and where I shall stop two days, for I go by Como and the Saint-Gothard.
Adieu, cara contessina. I hope that all is well and that I shall find good news of you in Paris. At this moment of writing, you ought to have received my little souvenirs, if Frankowski is a faithful man. In a few months I shall have the happiness of seeing you, and that hope will render life and time the easier to bear. Do not forget to remember me to all, and permit your moujik to send you the expression—not new, but ever increasing in strength—of his devoted sentiments and tenderest thoughts.
Paris, May 10, 1837.
Here I am, back in Paris. My health is perfect, and my brain so much refreshed that it seems as though I had never written anything. I found three long letters from you which are delightful to me. I fished them out of the two hundred which awaited me and read them in the bath I took to unlimber me after my fatiguing journey; and certainty, I count that hour as the most delightful of all my trip. Before beginning my work, I am going to give myself the festival of a long talk with you.
In the first place, cara carina, put into that beautiful forehead, which shines with such sublime intelligence, that I have blind confidence in your literary judgment, and that I make you, in that respect, the heiress of the angel I have lost, and that what you write to me becomes the subject of long meditations. I now await your criticisms on "La Vieille Fille;" such as the dear conscience I once had, whose voice will ever echo in my ears, knew how to make them; that is to say, read the work over and point out to me, page by page, in the most exact manner, the images and the ideas that displease you; telling me whether I should take them out wholly and replace them, or modify them. Show neither pity nor indulgence; go boldly at it. Cara, should I not be most unworthy of the friendship you deign to feel for me if in our intimate correspondence I allowed the petty vanity of an author to affect me? So I entreat you, once for all, to suppress long eulogies. Tell me on three tones: that is good, that is fine, that is magnificent; you will then have a positive, comparative, and superlative, which are so grandiose in their line that I blush to offer them for your incense-pot. But they are still so far below the gracious praise you sometimes offer me that they are modest—though they might seem singular to a third person. I beg you therefore to be concise in praise and prolix in criticism; wait for reflection; do not write to me after the first reading. If you knew how much critical genius there is in what you said to me about my play you would be proud of yourself. But you leave that sentiment to your friends. Yes, Planche himself would not have been wiser; you have made me reflect so much that I am now employed in remodelling my ideas about it. Remember, carina, that I am sincere in all things, and especially in art; that I have none of that paternal silliness which ties so cruel a bandage round the eyes of many authors, and that if "La Vieille Fille" is bad, I shall have the courage to cut it out of my work.
I laughed much at what you write of the three heiresses of Warsaw, and at the tale you tell me, which was also told and invented in Milan. There they maintained mordicus that I had just married an immensely rich heiress, the daughter of a dealer in silks. There is no absurd story of which I am not made the hero, and I will amuse you heartily by telling them all to you when I see you.