Oh! I do not like your want of confidence. You think that I have a great mind, but you will not admit that I have a great heart! After nearly eight years you do not know me! My God, forgive her, for she knows not what she does!
No, I was not happy in writing "Béatrix;" you ought to have known it. Yes, Sarah is Madame Visconti; yes, Mademoiselle des Touches is George Sand; yes, Béatrix is even too much Madame d'Agoult. George Sand is at the height of felicity; she takes a little vengeance on her friend. Except for a few variations, the story is true.
Ah! I entreat you, never make comparisons between yourself and Madame de Berny. She was a woman of infinite kindness and absolute devotion; she was what she was. You are complete in your own way as she was in hers. Two grand things should never be compared. They are what they are.
"Pierrette" has appeared in the "Siècle." The manuscript is bound for Anna. Friends and enemies proclaim the little book a masterpiece; I shall be glad if they are not mistaken. You will read it soon, as the book is being printed. People put it beside the "Recherche de l'Absolu." I am willing. I myself wish it put beside Anna.
Alas! yes; I am always writing; I blacken much paper, though I advance but little. I am ashamed of my forced fecundity.
Your letter was no longer expected; I had lost all hope. I did not know what to imagine; I believed you ill, and I went to inquire of Princess Constantine. I should have gone to you, were it not for poverty. Oh! you do not know what you are to me; but it is an unhappy passion. Faith is not given; yours is not an absolute sentiment, and mine is. I could believe you dead, I could not suppose you forgetting. Whereas, under the pretext that I am a man, living in Paris, you imagine monstrous things. Count my volumes on your fingers and reflect. I am more in a desert in Paris than you are at Wierzchownia. I do not like to have you write to any one in the world, still less to any one in Paris, but Custine's address is 6 rue de La Rochefoucauld. Write, Sévigné! I have obeyed as a moujik.
You have truly divined the affair of that poor Peytel; there are fatalities in life. Oh! the circumstances were more than extenuating, but impossible to prove. There are noblenesses in which men will never believe. However, it is all over. I will let you read some day what he wrote to me before going to the scaffold. I can take this matter to the feet of God and many sins will be forgiven me. He was a martyr to his honour. That which men applaud in Calderon, Shakespeare, and Lope de Vega, they guillotined at Bourg.
I, who wish to marry, who desire it, and who, perhaps, may never marry, for I wish to marry—in short, you know! But what you do not know is this: in the first place, I have the most absolute kindliness, and the will to let the being with whom I should have to walk through life be happy as she wishes to be, never to shock her, and never be stern except on one point, respect for social conventions. Love is a flower, the seed of which is brought by the wind, and flowers where it drops. It is as ridiculous to be angry with a woman because she does not love us, as to be angry with fate for not giving us black hair when we have red. In default of love, there is friendship; friendship is the secret of conjugal life. One can bear not being loved, but this must not be shown; it is losing half the fortune that remains to us, in despair at having lost the other half.
This woman squinted, she was uncouth, her nature was horrible, but the man was bent on having her; he lost his head a first time on seeing an inferior being preferred to him, and he lost it a second time for having lost it the first, in avenging himself. The woman was beneath vengeance. I would not blame a woman too much for loving a king. But if she loves Ruy Blas, it is vice that has put her there where she has lowered herself; she no longer exists, she is not worth a pistol-shot. That's enough said about it.