The newspapers have told you of the deplorable end of the poor Duchesse d'Abrantès. She has ended like the Empire. Some day I will explain her to you,—some good evening at Wierzchownia.
I can now reply to your bucolics on your beautiful flowers and turf by idyls on my own; but alas! there's a difference in quantity. You have a thousand acres, and I have a thousand square feet!
All affectionate and good things. Do not neglect to tell me about your health, your beauty, your incidents in the depths of the Ukraine; you will do so if you form the least idea of the value I attach to the most minute particular.
Aux Jardies, September 17, 1838.
Since I last wrote I have done nothing but work desperately; for one must conquer during the last years, or bury one's self under a barren success.
I have just written for the "Presse" the beginning of "La Torpille," and the "Presse" would not have it. I have written the beginning of "Le Curé de Village," the religious pendant of the philosophical book you know as "Le Médecin de campagne." I have written the preface to two volumes about to be published, containing "La Femme Supérieure," "La Maison Nucingen," and "La Torpille." I have written two volumes in 8vo, entitled, "Qui Terre a, Guerre a;" and finally, I have written for the "Constitutionnel" the end of "Le Cabinet des Antiques," under the title of "Les Rivalités de Province."
You will understand from that, cara, that I have been unable to write you even two lines in the midst of this avalanche of ideas and labour.
Nothing of all that gives me a sou. I had prepared, to save me, certain dramas, and they are all begun; but I wish to go to the grand, and I am discontented; so much so that, seeing how ill I do things while I see such fine things to do, I have abandoned my attempts. And yet, my salvation is in the theatre. A success there would give me a hundred thousand francs. Two successes would clear me, and two successes are only matters of intelligence and toil,—nothing else.
At the moment of present writing I have begun a drama in three acts, entitled, "La Gina." It is Othello the other way. La Gina will be a female Othello. The scene is in Venice. I must essay the stage. Proposals are not lacking to me. I am offered in one direction twenty thousand francs first payment for fifteen acts; and I have the fifteen acts in my head, but not on paper.
Well, all the manuscripts are at the printing-office; proofs are rolling; the printers will not beat me in rapidity, for it is not the mechanical invention with its thousand arms that gets on fastest, it is the brain of your poor friend!