Addio, cara; I must finish "Massimilla Doni," do the opening part of "Le Curé de Village" (in that book you will adore me in the quality of Brother of the Church; it will be pure Fénelon), correct "Qui Terre a, Guerre a," and, finally, deliver within ten days the manuscript of "Un Grand homme de Province à Paris," which is the conclusion of "Illusions Perdues." So you see that my idleness is a busy one.
Find here all treasures of affection, and prayers for the happiness of you and yours in the present and in the future. If God heard or paid attention to what I ask of him, you would have no anxieties, and you would be the happiest woman upon earth.
I have busied myself about your Parisian pearls, and I shall have an opportunity to send them. God grant they may get to you in time for the New Year. Did you receive the autographs of Scribe, Hugo, and Byron? I sent them all.
[1] In the midst of this constant calculation of the money to be gained by his work, it is well to remind ourselves now and then that never did he sacrifice that work, the fruit of his genius, to gain, terrible as his need of money was. His difficulty in his art was with form; and his laborious nights were spent in unflinching efforts to remedy that defect in his mechanism.—TR.
[VII.]
LETTERS DURING 1839, 1840, 1841.
Aux Jardies, February 12, 1839.