Yesterday I met one of your guests at Geneva, that relater of anecdotes, who spoke of the Z... He is to come and see me this morning; and I would like much to know, by return mail, whether, in case he returns to la cara patria, I can give him some of the manuscripts that belong to you; for I think they will have to be sent in detachments.
My brain must be fatigued by the proofs of "Les Contes Drolatiques" and of "Massimilla Doni," for complete impotence in respect to what I have to do reigns there. I have often had these checks, but they have never before lasted so long.
I must bid you farewell and send this letter, which, by the blessed invention of the "bon roy Loys le unzième," will be in your hands within twenty days. Winter is about to begin, so all chance of going to see you is postponed till spring,—though snow-drifts do not terrify me any more than wolves; those who are very unhappy need fear no accidents. They are the anointed of sorrows. Death respects them.
I will own to you that when I found myself so ill at Saché I had a sort of sensuous tranquillity in feeling my dull pains, for I live from duty only.
I am now to make two grand essays for fortune: the tontine affair and my comedy. After that, I shall let myself go with the current and see what comes of it. Believe that after a struggle of eighteen years, and a bitter fight of seven, if "a campaign of France" should end them, I must, willing or unwilling, find my Saint Helena. Between now and the month of April all will be decided. The tontine will have failed, "Mademoiselle Prudhomme" will have been hissed, and I shall have flung myself into a diligence from Lubeck to Berlin in search of a rest most needful. You will see a literary soldier covered with wounds to nurse. But he will not be hard to amuse, "quoi qu'on die."
Well, adieu. Write to me oftener, and do not forget to remember me to your colony. Tell M. Hanski that I think I have found a means to naturalize madder in Russia. That will wake him up. Many caressing things to your Anna. Tell me confidentially of something that would please her from Paris, and find here the homage of my attachment, and the flowers of a heart that can never be withered of them.
Chaillot, November 7, 1837.
I have decidedly begun my comedy; but, after defining its principal lines, I perceived the difficulties, and that gives me a profound admiration for the great geniuses who have left their works on the stage.
Yesterday I went to hear Beethoven's symphony in C minor. Beethoven is the only man who makes me know jealousy. I would rather be Beethoven than Rossini or Mozart. There is a divine power in that man. In that finale, it seems as though some enchanter raised you into a land of marvels, amid the noblest palaces filled with the treasures of all arts; and there, at his command, gates, like those of the Baptistry, turn on their hinges, letting you see beauties of an unknown kind—the fairy land of fantasy. There, flutter beings with the beauties of woman and the rainbow-tinted wings of the angel; you are bathed in an upper air, that air which, according to Swedenborg, sings and sheds fragrance, has colour and feeling, which flows to you, and beatifies you!
No, the mind of the writer can never give such joys, because what we paint is finite, fixed, and what Beethoven flings to you is infinite! You understand that I only know the symphony in C minor, and that fragment of the Pastoral symphony which we heard rattled off at Geneva on a second floor—of which I heard little, because two steps away from you stood a young man, who asked me, with straining eyes and a petrified air, if I knew who that beautiful lady was; the which was you, and I was proud as though I were a woman, young, beautiful, and vain.