Ah! dear, you don't know what it is, after writing fifteen volumes in fifteen months, to do sixteen acts of plays—"Vautrin," "Pamela Giraud," "Mercadet"—uselessly; for there is no longer any hope of opening the Porte-Saint-Martin. Lawsuits, battling over a coffin, prevent that, The Français is closed three months for repairs. The Renaissance is dead. There is no theatre where Frédérick can play. I tried the Vaudeville in its new building, but the manager has no money.
You ask me for details about Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo is an extremely brilliant man; he has as much wit as poesy. He is most fascinating in conversation, a little like Humboldt, but superior, and admitting more dialogue. He is full of bourgeois ideas. He execrates Racine, and considers him a secondary man. He is crazy in that direction. There is more of good than of evil in him. Though the good is an outcome of vanity, and though all things are deeply calculated in him, he is, in the main, a charming man, besides being the great poet that he is. He has lost much of his quality, his force, and his value by the life he leads.
August, 1840.
I have attempted a last effort; I am doing, by myself alone, the "Revue Parisienne," just as Karr does "Les Guêpes."[1] The first number has appeared. I postpone the execution of my project on Brazil. One loves France so well! I will bear up. I am going to undertake the "Scènes de la Vie militaire." I shall begin with Montenotte, and shall, no doubt, go, in September or October, to the region about Nice, Albenga, and Savona, and examine the ground where those fine manœuvres took place.
This letter has been lying two months on my table. It has been hindered by so many matters! But at last it goes, bearing to you the testimony of an affection always on the morrow of our meeting on the Crêt, and eight years old.
A thousand tender regards and a thousand more. I am writing politics, and posing as the friend of Russia. May God bless you! The Russian alliance is much in my mind. I hate the English.
"Pierrette" is about to appear. You can let Anna read it, for all you say. There is nothing "improper" in it.
[1] Three numbers alone appeared: July 25, August 25, September 25. Some of his best criticism, that on Cooper and Stendhal, was in it; also the tale of "Z. Marcas," etc. The first number begins thus: "We have always thought that nothing was more interesting, comic, and dramatic than the comedy of government." See Édition Définitive, vol. xxiii., pp. 567-785.—TR.
Sèvres, October 1, 1840.