I have persuaded my mother to go and live two years in Switzerland at Lausanne. The sight of my struggle and that of my brother kills her. She sees us always working without pecuniary result, and she suffers dreadfully without having the material conflict which calls up strength.
If you knew all I have done for Boulanger you would feel the bitterness that fills my soul at this betrayal; for if he had not trifled with me for nearly a year you would have had the portrait six months ago, and it has now become ridiculous.
May 28.
Here I am, as you have often desired to see me. I have broken away from every one, and I go, in a few weeks, to a hidden garret, having blocked all the roads about me. I have been making a recapitulation of my work, and I have enough to do for four years, without, even then, completing all the series of the "Études de Mœurs." My monk's gown must not be a lie. I have but two things which make me live: work, and the hope of finding all my secret desires realized at the close of this toil. To whoever can live by those two potent ideas, life is still grand; and if I do not find again in the solitude to which I return that noble Madame de Berny, whom my sister Laure now calls my Josephine, at least she is not replaced by a Marie-Louise, but by glorious hope, the sole companion of a poet in travail. This journey, in refreshing my brain, rejuvenated me, and gave me back my force; I need it to accomplish my last efforts.
I have just finished a work which is called "Massimilla Doni," the scene of which is in Venice. If I can realize all my ideas as they present themselves in my brain it will be, assuredly, a book as startling as "La Peau de Chagrin," better written, more poetic possibly. I will not tell you anything about it. "Massimilla Doni" and "Gambara" are, in the "Études Philosophiques," the apparition of Music, under the double form of execution and composition, subjected to the same trial as Thought in "Louis Lambert:" that is to say, the work and its execution are killed by the too great abundance of the creative principle,—that which dictated to me the "Chef-d'œuvre inconnu" in respect to painting; a study which I rewrote last winter. You will soon receive two Parts of the "Études Philosophiques" in which the work has been tremendous.
I have just finished a little study, entitled "Le Martyr calviniste," which with "Le Secret des Ruggieri" and "Les Deux Rêves" completes my study of the character of Catherine de' Medici. I have begun to write "La Femme Supérieure" for the "Presse," and in a few days I shall have finished "César Birotteau." All this in manuscript only; for, after composition, comes the battle of the proofs. You see that my ideas for the stage are again drowned in the flood of my obligations and my other work.
As soon as the above manuscripts are done I shall go into Berry, to Madame Carraud, and there finish the third dizain, begun alas! in Geneva and dated from Eaux-Vives and the dear Pré-l'Évêque!
It is now two years since I saw you. So, when my head refuses ideas, when the ink-pot of my brain is empty, and I must have rest, by that time I hope I shall have bought, through privations, the necessary sum for a journey to Poland and to see Wierzchownia this autumn. God grant that I then have a mind free of all care, and that I complete between now and then the books that are to liberate me! Happily, except for a few sums, it is only a question of blackening paper, and that, fortunately, is in my own power. I am anxious to finish the two other volumes which, under the title of "Un Grand homme de Province à Paris" is to complete "Illusions Perdues" of which the introduction alone has appeared. That is, certainly, with "César Birotteau," my greatest work in dimensions.
May 29.
From the way I have started I hope to finish "La Femme Supérieure" in four days. I am stirred by a species of fury to finish the works for which I have already received the money. I live before my table; I leave it only to sleep; I dine there. Never did poet stay thus in a moral world; but yesterday some one told me I was said to be in Germany. I hope that the ridiculous stories spread about me will cease in consequence of the absolute seclusion in which I am about to live. At any rate, the commercial proceedings instituted against me by Werdet's creditors will have this good effect, that, being driven to hide myself, no one can gossip about me. But they will make fantastic tales about my disappearance!