So it is all over about the Rhine! You could not believe what agitation was caused me by those two fatal lines, written perhaps unconsciously, in which you tell me that your journey is put off. It was so easy for me to go to the Rhine, even with all my business matters and the newspapers on my hands. The mail-carts go so rapidly now from Paris to the Rhine. Well, I must put this, too, with many a golden dream! The springtide will console you; nothing consoles me. I see by the date of your letter that you wrote on my fête-day, and you did not think of it! I still my complaints; for I should seem very ridiculous in both cases; but I remarked that you put fewer lines in your pages, and that you were, in point of fact, getting rid of me. Perhaps I deserve it for telling you, in one of my former letters, how little time I have to write to you, with an air as if I boasted of my fidelity. Alas! that was only a bit of childish candour, which you ought not to punish. Some day I will tell you the truth about that passage; you will be touched, and ashamed that you were ever angry with me.
Do not think that because there are four hundred leagues between us I do not know how to read the thoughts that lie beneath your sublime forehead. I can parade them before you, one by one. It suffices me to examine your letter with the attention of a Cuvier to know the exact frame of mind in which it was written; and you had, when writing this letter, something against me, no doubt. You will tell me later what it was.
My Jardies get on but slowly. The buildings are still of little importance; but all is heavy on those who have nothing. I am beginning to have trouble with my eyes, and that grieves me; I shall have to cease working at night.
Did I tell you that "Béatrix" is finished? You will see it, no doubt, in the "Revue de Saint Pétersbourg," but bad and emasculated. It will only be good in the 8vo edition now in press. Those puritans of liberalism who manage the "Siècle" in which "Béatrix" appeared assume to have morals, and demolish the archbishop's palace! This is the buffoonery of folly. They are afraid of the word "bosom," and trample morality under foot! they will not allow the word volupté to be printed, but they upset social order! The wife of the director-in-chief is as scraggy as a bag of nails, and they suppressed a joke of Camille Maupin on the bones of Béatrix! I will make you laugh heartily when I tell you all the negotiations required to get into that newspaper a joke on the bitch of M. de Halga. Unfortunately for me, you will read that book mangled and expurgated.
What a pretty nest Les Jardies will be when finished! How happy one might be here! What a beautiful valley, cool as a Swiss valley. The royal park a few steps off! Paris in a quarter of an hour, and Paris a hundred leagues away! What a beautiful life if—But I begin to think like the capucin monk: we are not placed here below to take our comfort.
The Exhibition of pictures has been very fine this year. There were seven or eight masterpieces, in several styles: a superb Decamps; a magnificent Cleopatra by Delacroix; a splendid portrait by Amaury Duval; a charming Venus Anadyomene by Chassériau, a pupil of Ingres. What a misfortune to be poor when one has the heart of an artist!
The first young girl work that I do I shall dedicate to your dear Anna; but I shall await a word about that in your next letter; for I must know if it be agreeable to you that I should do this.
It seems there is to be, next autumn, a dahlia-Balzac. If you would like a cutting tell me how to send it to you. It will be, they say, a magnificent flower; in case the attempt to vary the stock succeeds.
You wish me the tranquillity of soul that you enjoy. Alas! I have passions, or, to speak more correctly, passion, too living, too palpitating, to be able to extinguish my soul. You would never imagine in what agitations I live; for me, nothing is lost or forgotten; all that affects me is of yesterday. The tree, the water, the mountain, the dress, the look, the fear, the pleasure, the danger, the emotion, even the sand, the colour of a wall, the slightest incident, all things shine in my soul, as fresh, and more extended daily. I forget all that is not within the domain of the heart; or, at least, whatever is in the domain of imagination needs to be recalled and firmly meditated. But all that belongs to my love is my life; and when I yield myself to it, it seems to me that then, alone, I live. I count those hours of delightful abandonment only; those are my hours of sunshine and of joy. But you will never imagine that; it is the poesy of the heart, heightened by an incredible power of intuition. I never pride myself on what is called talent; nor yet on my will which is held to be kindred with that of Napoleon. But I do render thanks and take pride in my heart, in the constancy of my affections. There is my wealth; there are the treasures beyond the reach of the one who coined that gold; the workman who made those ducats is far away, but the miser holds them ever in his hand. "I know you have a great and noble soul; and I know where to touch you; I will make you blush for me." That speech is one of my ducats. For many a fool it would have been nothing; to me it rings sublime; and if I did not love like an imbecile, a collegian, a ninny, a madman, like anything you please that is most extravagant, I should have worshipped that woman as a divinity.
I don't know whether all this will not seem to you Swedenborgian; but it belongs to my history, and I will some day explain it to you. At any rate, I will say this. Those words were said to me by a rather extraordinary woman, whom I will not name, in a fit of mistaken jealousy. Well, I assure you that a month never passes that I do not remember the look of the sky at the moment they were said, and the colour of the cloud I saw there.