You could not believe how much I thought of you in crossing La Beauce and Berry, for they are your Ukraine on a small scale, and every time I cross them my thought is fixed on Wierzchownia. They are two very high plateaus, for at Issoudun we are six hundred feet above sea-level, and there is nothing on them but wheatfields, vineyards, and woods. In Beauce, however, the land is so precious that not a single tree is planted. You will see that melancholy landscape some day, when you come to France, and perhaps, like me, you will not share the feeling it inspires in ordinary travellers.
I do not know if they told me truly, or if the person who told me was told truly, but my publishers are boasting that they have sold five thousand of the Illustrated Balzac, which leads one to suppose that, time and friendship aiding, we may sell ten thousand. Then all my financial misfortunes will cease in 1839. God grant it!
Do not play the coquette about your thirty-third anniversary; you know well what I think about the age of women, and if you want me to give you new editions of it, I shall think you very greedy of compliments. There are women who will always be young, and you are one of them; youth comes from the soul. Never lose that innocent gaiety which is one of your greatest charms; it makes you able to think aloud to every one, and that will keep you young a long time. In spite of what you say, there are, I think, few clouds above the lake of your thoughts, but always the infinite of blue skies.
If you have a frame made for my portrait, and it requires one, have it made in black velvet. That is economical and beautiful, and very favourable to Boulanger's colour and tones.
Remember that nothing leads to the malady of Lady L... so surely as the mystical ecstasies of which you tell me in Séverine's sister; believe me, for it was in this way that the pure and sublime young daughter of Madame de Berny became insane. The mother died of that, as well as of the death of her son. What did she not say to me on the absurdity of our moralities, in the paroxysm of her sorrow! And what appalling mother-cries!
I beg you never to say to me in a letter, "If I die." I have causes enough for melancholy, and dread, and gloomy black dragons, without the added waves of bitterness that my blood rushes to my heart under the sudden faintness that those words cause me.
Gracious greetings to tutti quanti, and to you, all tenderness. I re-read at this moment the silly verses in which I fold my letter, and I send you, laughing, the homage of a poor collegian—for the ruled paper reveals the age of seventeen and its illusions.
Frapesle, March 2, 1838.
Cara contessina; I am here, without having done a single thing that is worth anything. I am a little better, that is all. I have been ill of a malady that love abhors, caused by the quality of the drinking water, which contained calcareous deposits. Hence, complete dissolution of my brain forces. Poor human beings! See on what fame depends, and the creations of thought! Madame Carraud thinks I have escaped an illness; it is very sure that I have escaped making a comedy or a bad novel.
I heard that George Sand was at her country-place at Nohant, a few leagues from Frapesle, so I went to pay her a visit. You will therefore have your wished-for autographs: one of George Sand, which I send you to-day; the other, signed Aurore Dudevant, you shall receive in my next letter. Thus you will have the curious animal under both aspects. But there is still another; the nickname, given by her friends, of "le docteur Piffoël." When that reaches me I will send it. As you are a curious eminentissime or an eminentissime curious person, I will relate to you my visit.