October 17.
I leave you afresh this morning, for it is like a fresh leaving not to write to you in the evening what I have done during the day. I go to Leipzig, where I shall book my place in the Schnell-post for Frankfort. I shall sleep at Leipzig; the next day go to Dresden, and return, on the 20th, to take the Prussian conveyance.
The loneliness that takes the place of intimacy has all the ways of remorse—I feel a violent need of changing from place to place, stirring, going, coming; as if at the end of this physical agitation and all these useless movements I should find you. I look with tenderness at this paper which I shall carry in a moment to Viardot, thinking how your pretty fingers will hold it in that salon where the hours fled so sweetly and so rapidly. Viardot will faithfully deliver to you this packet, in which I may say that my life will be one long anguish till I see you again. From Mayence you shall have a letter which will tell you of my acts and deeds after leaving Berlin. I shall reach Passy about November 10; therefore write me on the 3rd, of your style.
Adieu; if I have failed in our agreement, if anything displeases you in this letter, be, as ever, kind and forgive me. Think of my grief, my loneliness, my sorrow, and you will be full of pity and indulgence for the poor exile.
Dresden, October 19, 1843.
I left Berlin with ennui, dear, but I have found nostalgia here. Nothing that I eat nourishes me, nothing that I see distracts me. I have seen the famous Gallery, and Raffaelle's Virgin, also Holbein's, and I said to myself, "I love my love too well!" In going through the famous treasury, I would have given all for one half-hour on the Neva. To add to my troubles I am here for two days longer than I wished to be; and this is why. From Berlin I went to Leipzig and passed the night. I had counted without the fair at Leipzig; all the seats were taken in the Schnell-post. I then asked the landlord to book my seat and keep my luggage, instead of my dragging it to Dresden and back, for they demand an infinite number of thalers for overweight of luggage. The landlord said it was doubtful if he could get me a seat for the 20th, the day I wished to start, and I have just received a letter from him saying I can have no place till the 22nd.
Yesterday, on arriving, having missed the hour for the Gallery, I walked about Dresden in all directions, and it is, I assure you, a charming city; very preferable as a residence to that mean and melancholy Berlin. It has the look of a capital; partly a Swiss, partly a German town; the environs are picturesque and all is charming. I can conceive of living in Dresden; there is a mixture of gardens and dwellings that delights the eye. As for the palace begun by Augustus the Strong, it is really a most curious masterpiece of rococo architecture. As a fantasy it is almost as fine as gothic, and as art it is exquisite. What a misfortune that so enchanting a conception is unfinished, and is left in a deplorable state. It would take, of course, millions to repair, complete, arrange, and furnish this delightful gem. There is nothing in Petersburg, still less in Prussia, nor in the whole North to compare to it. What a man was that Augustus, calling himself Elector in Poland, and King in Saxony!
I saw so many Titians in Florence and Venice that those in the Dresden gallery had less value in my eyes. Correggio's "Night" seemed to me over-praised; but his Magdalen, two Virgins of his, the two Madonnas of Raffaelle, and the Dutch and Flemish pictures are well worth the journey. The treasury is nonsense; its two or three millions in diamonds could not dazzle eyes that had just seen those of the Winter Palace. Besides, the diamond says nothing to me; a dew-drop, sparkling in a ray of the rising sun, is to me more beautiful than the finest diamond in the world—just as a certain smile is more beautiful to me than the finest picture. So I must return to Dresden with you in order that the pictures may speak to me. Rubens moved me somewhat, but the Rubens of the Louvre are more complete. The true masterpiece of the Gallery is Holbein's Madonna, which extinguishes all the rest. How I regretted that I could not hold your hand in mine while I admired it with that inward delight and plenitude of happiness which the contemplative enjoyment of the beautiful bestows! The Madonna of Raffaelle, one expects it; but Holbein's Madonna is the unexpected, and it grasps one.
Dear countess, you will never form to yourself a complete idea of my dreadful loneliness. Not speaking the language and not knowing a person to speak to, I have not uttered a hundred sentences since I left Riga and that French merchant. I am always in front of myself, and the scenery being a desert and a plain, I have nothing to interest the eye; the heart has passed from excess of riches to the most absolute pauperism. The recapitulation mentally of those hours that flew by, alas! so rapidly, the dreamy thoughts that followed them gave such bitter sadness to a nature naturally gay and laughing that my two sculptors said to me—that is, the one who thought he spoke French—"What is it? what is the matter?" Another fortnight like this and I shall gently, gently die, without apparent illness.
I see that I must renounce the Rhine and Belgium and return to strong occupation in the affairs and toils of Paris. This air does me harm; I am inwardly debilitated; nothing restores my tone, nothing cheers my courage, I thirst for nothing. I have two nostalgias: one for the banks of the Neva which I leave, the other for the France to which I go.