November 12
Reparation to the poor miss. She drinks nothing but water; it was my unexpected visit that intoxicated her. I retract all I wrote to you, and leave it for my punishment; but you will not think me the worse or the better for it.
I am about to start for Marseille, to go to Corsica and from there to Sardinia. I shall try to be back the first week in December. It is an affair of fortune of the highest importance that takes me there, and I can only tell you about it if it fails; for if it succeeds I must whisper it into the tube of your ear. It is now three weeks since I began to think of this journey; but the money for it lacks and I do not know where to find it. I need about twelve hundred francs to go and get a "yes" or a "no" about a fortune, a rapid fortune, to be made in a few months.[1]
Addio, cara. Here are three letters that I have written you against your one. I have never seen Provence or Marseille, and I promise myself a little diversion on this trip. I shall go by the mail-cart to the sea; the rest of the way by steamboat; so that I hope to have finished my errand in fifteen days, for no one must perceive my absence. My publishers would grumble.
The tontine is withdrawn; my works will appear purely and simply in parts, with steel engravings inserted in the text. So we fall back once more into the rut of publications such as have been made for the last hundred years in France.
[1] For the amusing history of this chimera, see his sister's account of it; "Memoir of Balzac," pp. 103-107.—TR.
November 13.
My comedy has begotten a preliminary. It is impossible to make "Prudhomme parvenu" without first showing "Prudhomme se mariant;" all the more because "Le Mariage de Prudhomme" is excellent comedy and full of comic situations. So here I am, with eight acts on my hands instead of five.
November 14.