In order to put myself outside of that atrocious law of the National Guard, I have removed from the rue Cassini and the rue des Batailles, and legally quitted Paris; that is to say, I have gone before three mayors and declared that I quitted the capital; after which I installed myself and live here at Sèvres. Therefore take note that after you receive this letter you must address your letters to "Monsieur Surville, rue de la Ville-d'Avray, Sèvres, Seine-et-Oise," for I must receive my letters under that name for some months to come, so that my address may not be known at the post-office, partly for secret reasons (which are Werdet's failure, and the pursuit which I must endure till I can earn the money to pay up my indorsements), and partly to escape the great quantity of letters with which unknown men and women overwhelm me.
I have bought here a bit of ground containing some forty rods, on which my brother-in-law is going to build me a tiny house, where I shall henceforth live until my fortune is made, or where I shall remain forever if I stay a beggar. When it is built, and I am in it, which will be in January next, I will let you know, and you can then write to me under my own name, and put the address of my poor hermitage, which is "Les Jardies," the name of the piece of ground on which I hang like a worm on a green leaf. Land about Paris is so parcelled out that I had to negotiate with three peasants to collect this lot of forty rods, and a rod contains only seventeen square feet. I am here at a distance which allows me to go and come from Paris in two hours. I can go to the theatre and sleep at home. I am in Paris without being there. There are neither heavy taxes nor tolls; living is cheaper, and the day when I can make sure of having a thousand francs a month for myself I can have a carriage. And finally, I escape that perpetual inquisition which publishes every step I take and every word I say. I shall neither see nor receive any one. Then instead of spending twenty thousand francs with other people where I may lodge, I shall spend them on my own home, and nothing shall ever get me out of that. You would never believe how I like fixedness. Constancy is one of the corner-stones of my nature.
You can easily understand that these turmoils have not left me a minute to myself. I have looked at a hundred houses around Paris, and been in negotiations for several. For a whole month I have roamed the environs to find what I wanted on the exact boundary of the department of the Seine and Seine-et-Oise. I came very near buying one house; but after convincing myself that I should have to spend twenty thousand francs in repairs and alterations to suit myself, I determined to buy a piece of ground and build; for a house would cost only twelve thousand francs, built as I wished it, and the land, with the peasant's house on it, came to not more than five thousand. Reckoning the interior at three thousand, the whole would be twenty thousand, and allowing five thousand for mistakes, that would make twenty-five thousand; that is, a rental of twelve hundred francs a year, and the comfort of having one's cabin to one's self without the annoyances of noise, for my land backs upon the park of Saint-Cloud. I have retained the apartment in the rue de Batailles for a few months to store my furniture until I install myself at Les Jardies.
I hasten to write to you, because to-morrow I begin "La Maison Nucingen" for the "Presse." That means fifty columns to hatch out before the end of the month, and then?—then my pen will be free, for my new editors have compromised with the defunct "Figaro," now about to rise from its ashes, and I have finished that third dizain. So, about November 1 my pen will owe nothing to any one, and I can begin the execution of my new treaty by the publication of "César Birotteau." But, as that work cannot appear before January 1, and as I have had an advance of two months, I shall receive no money till March. My distress must therefore go on for six months longer, and it is frightful.
This illness has made me lose six irreparable weeks. I think ever, if my embarrassments are too great, of going to take refuge with you for three months. I keep that project for a last resource, and I now repent that I have not already put it into execution; for when I am known to be travelling everybody waits, and nobody says anything. After that, returning with one or two plays in hand, all my money troubles could be pacified. But I cannot do that until I have paid my pen debts and given one work to my new editors; which throws me over to the month of February,—if, always, my house is finished and I am in it.
I cannot give you an idea of the turmoil in which I have been for the last six weeks, and the disconnectedness of my life, usually (in body) so peaceful. And all the while I had to read proofs and write. You are ignorant, in your Ukraine, of what Parisian removals are; nothing describes them but a provincial saying: "Three removals are equal to one conflagration."
In the midst of these worries and fatigues I have had two joys: they are your two letters, which I shall answer in a few days, for I have united them with their elders in a precious casket which I took to my sister, in order not to subject them to these removal agitations. I think there is something in them I ought to answer.
It is probable that I shall not go to the Opera, and this will be, I assure you, a great privation; because there is nothing that distracts my mind like music, and I do not know how else to relax my soul. Nothing will remain to me but the contemplation of the azure waves of hope, and I don't know whether this hovering with spread wings above that infinite, which recedes as we approach it, is not a pain—which pleases perhaps, but is none the less painful.
I have had many griefs since I wrote to you. In the passing crisis in which I am, every one has fled me like a leper. I am all alone. But I prefer this solitude within my solitude to the fawning hatred which is called, in Paris, friendship.