Mon Dieu! I love you well; know that. Tell me where you will be in October. In October I shall have a fortnight to myself. Choose a beautiful place; let it be all of heaven to me.
Adieu, you who despotically fill my heart; adieu. I will write to you once every week at least. You, whose letters do me so much good, be charitable; cast, in profusion, the balm of your words into a heart that is athirst for them. Be sure, dear, that my thought goes out to you daily; that my courage comes from you; that one hard word is a wound, a mourning. Be good and great; you will never find (and here I would fain be on my knees before you that you might see my soul in a look) a heart more delicately faithful, nor more vast, more exclusive.
Adieu, then, since it must be. I have written to you while my solicitor has been reading to me his conclusions, for the case is to be judged the day after to-morrow, and I must spend the night in writing a summary of my affair.
Adieu; in five or six days you will have a volume that has cost much labour and many nights. Be indulgent to the faults that remain in spite of my care; and, my adored angel, forget not to cast a few flowers of your soul to him who guards them as his noblest wealth; write to me often. As soon as the judgment is rendered I will write to you; it will be on Thursday.
Well, adieu. Take all the tender regards that I place here. I would fain envelop you in my soul.
[1] This is not true. The antipathy, if any, was to Émile de Girardin, and it put an end for a time to Balzac's visits to the house. See Éd. Déf., vol. xxiv., p. 198.—TR.
[2] Mlle. Henriette Borel was governess in the Hanski family. She was a native of Neufchâtel, and M. Hanski employed her to select and engage a furnished house there for himself and family, to which they went in May, 1833. She was the "Lirette" who took the veil in Paris (December, 1845); of which ceremony Balzac gives a vivid account in one of the following letters.—TR.
[3] If Balzac ever wrote this paragraph (which I believe to be an interpolation made to fit the theory in "Roman d'Amour") he fell ludicrously short of his design; for he wrote letters to friends about this journey, two from Neufchâtel during the five days he stayed there (pp. 181-183, vol. xxiv., Éd. Déf.); he stopped half way to see manufacturers and transact business with them in his own name; he took with him to Neufchâtel his artist-friend, Auguste Borget; and he made the acquaintance, not of Madame Hanska only, but of Monsieur Hanski, who remained his friend through life and his occasional correspondent.—TR.
Paris, end of August, 1833.
My dear, pure love, in a few days I shall be at Neufchâtel. I had already decided to go there in September; but here comes a most delightful pretext. I must go on the 20th or 25th of August to Besançon, perhaps earlier, and then, you understand, I can be in the twinkling of an eye at Neufchâtel. I will inform you of my departure by a simple little line.