Never did I find myself in such a tempest as now, and never did hope show herself so serene or so beautiful; she is lustrous in her turquoise, she smiles to me, and I let myself go to that smile which helps me to bear my misfortunes. Without these celestial apparitions what would become of poets and of artists when unhappy?
Adieu, dear. I must not tire you too long with the echoes of the storm—unless, indeed, they make Wierzchownia the sweeter to you, and the long expanse of the Ukraine more placid to your eye.
I do not understand bow it is that I am not, in the middle of August, installed in some corner of your mansion, duly framed and mounted, with all the monastic dignity that painter gave me.
You cannot imagine how beautiful Paris is becoming. We needed the reign of a trowel to arrive at such grand results. This magnificence, which advances daily and on all sides, will make us worthy of being the capital of the world. The boulevards paved with asphalt, lighted by bronze candelabra with gas, the increasing splendour of the shops, of that fair, two leagues long, perpetually going on and varied by ever new handiworks, compose a spectacle that is unequalled. In ten years we shall be clean; "Paris mud" will be out of the dictionaries; we shall become so magnificent that Paris will be really a great lady, the first of queens, crowned with battlements.
I renounce Touraine and remain a citizen of the intellectual metropolis. But I shall exempt myself from the draconian tyranny of the National Guard by putting three leagues of distance between me and this terrible queen. Respect is good taste towards royalties. An obscure village will receive my miseries and my grandeurs. Your moujik will have a very humble cottage, whence he will now and then depart at half-past six to reach the Italian Opera at eight, for music is a distraction, the only one that remains to him. Those beneficent voices refresh both soul and mind.
Adieu, dear. You share in sorrows; it is right that I should send you rays of gentle hope when she makes an azure rift athwart the dais of gray cloud. God grant that star may not fall like others, but lead me to some treasure-trove.
I please myself in thinking that you are happy; that your life has taken, after the departure of your guests, its accustomed way, that Paulowska brings you in her golden fleeces, that no one steals your books, that no wicked page of mine has furrowed that brow so full of dazzling majesty; in short, that you have all the crumbs of little happiness, for that is much. Materialities, which are the half of life, are not lacking to you; and if they bring monotony, at least the energy that may spend itself in sacred regions—where you bear it to the detriment of this poor passionate earth—is not exhausted. You know, this long time, what wishes I make that life be light upon you. I hope that Anna, and your tall young ladies, and the master, and the Swiss maid, in short, all your household, are well, and that you have no grief that makes you lift your eyes to heaven.
After that phrase I pick up my spade, I mean my pen, and dig in the field "Birotteau," which still needs delving and rolling and raking and watering; and when you read the letter of François to César, remember that it was there that my thought made a pause to turn to you and send you this letter across your steppe, like a flower of friendship asking asylum in your soil, which, in spite of wintry snows, will be always coloured and perfumed by a sincere affection.
Sèvres, October 10, 1837.
Much time has gone by without my writing to you; I have lived so tempestuously that I am not sure whether on my return from Touraine and after my convalescence I thought to tell you that my chest was quite well and had nothing the matter with it.