"Vautrin" is being mounted, vigorously. I have a rehearsal daily. When you hold this letter in your hand, the great question will have been decided. It is almost certain that "Vautrin" will be represented the evening you hold this, for it will be between February 28 and March 5. A fortune in money and a fortune in literature are staked upon a single evening! Frédérick Lemaître answers for its success. Harel, the director, believes in it! As for me, I despaired of it ten days ago; I thought the play stupid, and I was right. I wrote it all over again, and I now think it passable. But it will always be a poor play. I have yielded to the desire to put a romantic figure on the scene, and I did wrong.
Yes, certainly, I want the view of Wierzchownia.
February 10.
T have surmounted many miseries, and if I have a success now they are all over. Imagine, therefore, what will be my agony during the evening when "Vautrin" is performed. In five hours of time it will be decided whether I pay or do not pay my debts. I have been crushed by that burden for fifteen years; it hampers the expansion of my life, it takes from my heart its natural action, it stifles my thought, it soils my existence, it embarrasses my movements, it stops my inspirations, it weighs upon my conscience, it hinders all, it has barred my career, it has broken my back, it has made me old. My God! have I paid dearly enough for my place in the sun? All that calm future, that tranquillity I need so much, all is about to be staked on a few hours, delivered over to Parisian caprices, as it is at this moment to the censor.
Oh! how I need repose! I am forty years old. Forty years of suffering; for the happiness I enjoyed beside an angel from 1823 to 1833 was the counterpoise of an equal misery, and it needed strength to bear a joy as infinite as pain. And then, how death put an end to that! and what a death!—I sigh for the promised land of a tender marriage, weary as I am of tramping this desert without water, scorching with sun and full of Bedouins. Ten years hence, and who, good God! will care for me!
To go to see you is my constant desire; but for that I cannot leave behind me either bills to pay or business, money anxieties or debts, which still amount to sixty thousand francs at least; but "Vautrin" may give them in four months!
Madame Visconti, of whom you speak to me, is one of the most amiable of women, of an infinite, exquisite kindness; a delicate and elegant beauty. She has helped me much to bear my life. She is gentle, but full of firmness, immovable and implacable in her ideas and her repugnances. She is a person to be depended on. She has not been fortunate, or rather, her fortune and that of the count are not in keeping with their splendid name; for the count is the representative of the elder branch of the legitimatized sons of the last duke, the famous Barnabo, who left none but natural children, some legitimatized, others not so. It is a friendship which consoles me under many griefs. But, unfortunately, I see her very seldom. Nothing is possible in a life so busy as mine, and when one goes to bed at six to get up at midnight. My system, my crushing obligations are all against my taking any comfort. No one can come to see a workman who is fifteen hours at his work, and I myself cannot fulfil any social duties. I see Madame Visconti once a fortnight only, which is truly a grief to me, for she and my sister are my only compassionating souls. My sister is in Paris, Madame Visconti at Versailles, and I scarcely see them. Can that be called living? You are in a desert at the farther end of Europe; I know no other women in the world; I have the honour to assure you that no one believes me overwhelmed by feminine hearts all at my orders, and that I am, as to women, miserably neglected. What a savage joke! Mon Dieu! how stupid people are! There is in it a bitter sarcasm on the hours when I sit gazing at the embers and thinking of my life with bent head and wounded heart, and tears in my eyes; for to no one more than to me would the daily happiness of nights and mornings be more fitted. I have in my soul and in my character an equable quality which would make a woman happy; I feel within me an infinite, inexhaustible tenderness,—alas! without employment. Always to dream, always to wait, to feel one's good days pass, to see youth torn out hair by hair, to fold nothing in one's arms, yet find one's self accused of being a Don Juan! A gross and empty Don Juan! There are moments when I envy my poor sister Laurence lying these fifteen years in a coffin watered by our tears.
February 14.
Adieu; I close this letter, placing in it for you as much affection as in all the others put together. If "Vautrin" succeeds, the year 1840 will see me in your manor.
At this moment I am overwhelmed by work. I have in press "Pierrette," to which I must add another story to make the required two 8vo volumes. I have a book to do for the "Presse," and also in the press a novel in letters, which I shall call I don't know what, for "Sœur Marie des Anges" is too long, and that is only one part of it. I must finish all this to get my liberty of coming and going, which I have never had since Geneva—no, I have never had but six weeks really to myself, and for those escapades I paid dearly enough.