Apropos of the third dizain; I earnestly desire that you will not read it until M. Hanski has first passed judgment on it; for if it were likely to injure me in your mind I would rather that it should never go upon your bookshelves. It is specially a book for men; and I suffer when that easy and inoffensive pleasantry is ill-understood or ill-taken. Do me this favour; let it unwrinkle the boyard's brow when he has his blue devils; but hide the book away.
I believe you are right as to the route I had better take, and that from Havre to Lubeck and from Lubeck to Berlin would be best. But by Berlin, one must go through Warsaw; and I wanted to avoid Warsaw, because I hate those stupid occasions when one is recognized and receptions are made for one without heart or soul, purely from vanity. But it is the better route Perhaps also the least costly.
When you spoke to me in your number 33 of a happiness that I did not dream of in the rue de Lesdiguières, believing that I should see disappointment in a peaceful, obscure, secluded existence, happy in a home and confidence, you did not know how much ballast I have thrown into the sea, how many of my soap-bubbles have burst, how little I now cling to that which men call fame (which is here the privilege of being calumniated, vilified, disgraced). Reputation, political consistency, all is in the water. That which is not in the water, and on which I rely, is the youth of heart that will enable me to love for twenty years a woman who might then be forty-six—this counts the form for little, and the soul for all!
Why do you speak to me of a journal in which I am a shareholder? Journal yourself, as the school-boys say. You believe in advertisements! You think our names are respected! People take them for puffs of a spurious Macassar, a sham perfume; but whoever would attack this singular humbug would be well scoffed at. I shall never again concern myself in business or a newspaper; a scalded cat fears cold water.
I have a persecutor who wants to put me in prison (always that business of Werdet, who has got his certificate of bankruptcy and walks about Paris free of creditors). Jules Sandeau quarrelled with this man, whom he despised on his personal account. Well, he has now made up with him, and dines with him. I have been a father to Jules. I cry to myself, "Here's another man stricken from the list of the living for me!" Do you think that makes me love Paris?
Adieu for to-day. I will write you a few more lines before closing my letter. I must now apply myself to "La Maison Nucingen" and, like Sisyphus, roll my rock.
Monday, 23.
I don't know anything more wearying than to sit a whole night, from midnight till eight o'clock, beneath the light of shaded candles, before blank paper, unable to find thoughts, listening to the noise of the fire and that of carriages sounding beyond the window panes from the Barrière des Bons-Hommes and the quay. This is what your servant has done for five nights past, without meeting the moment when some inner voice, I know not what it is, says to him, "Go on!" Such useless fatigues count for nothing to every one.
Thursday, 26.
Three days during which I have not been able to do anything—except torture myself.