German railway trains are a pretext for eating and drinking; they stop at every moment; the passengers get out and drink and eat, and get in only to do it all over again; so that the mail-cart in France goes faster than the trains in Germany.
It is eleven at night; I am in a hotel where every one is asleep. Dresden is quiet as a sick-room; I feel no desire to sleep. Have I grown old that the Gallery has given me so few emotions? or has the source of my emotions changed? Ah! surely, I recognize the infinite of my attachment and its depth in the immense void there now is in my soul. To love, for me, is to live; and to-day more than ever I feel it, I see it, all things prove it to me, and I recognize that there will never be for me any other taste, any other absorption, any other passion than that you know, which fills not only my heart but my entire brain.
October 20.
Absolutely nothing to tell you but what you already know. I have just returned from the theatre, which is certainly one of the most charming I ever saw. Despléchin, Séchan, and Diéterle, the three decorators who did our French Opera house, came here to arrange it. Nothing could be prettier. If you choose Dresden for a residence Anna will have the loveliest hall she ever dreamed of. They sang a German version of "Fra Diavolo" which seemed to me an excellent preparation for sleep. I had seen the collections of porcelains and antiquities in the morning. I feel tired. Fatigue is a power; and I am now going to bed at eleven o'clock. You know of whom I shall dream as I sleep.
October 21.
I leave to-morrow; my place is booked, and I will finish my letter, because I wish to put it in the post myself. I have a head like an empty pumpkin, and I am in a state which makes me more uneasy than I can tell you. If I continue thus in Paris I must return. I have no feeling for anything, no desire to live, not the slightest energy, nor do I feel any will. You will never know until I explain it to you verbally, the courage I display in writing to you. This morning I stayed till eleven o'clock in bed, unable to get up. It is horrible suffering which has its seat nowhere; which cannot be described; which attacks both heart and brain. I feel stupid, and the farther I go, the worse the malady becomes. I will write you from Mayence if I feel better. But as for the present, I can only describe my condition as Fontenelle, a centenarian, explained his,—"a difficulty of being." I have not smiled since I left you; it is spleen of the heart; and that is very serious, for it is a double spleen.
Adieu, dear star thrice blessed! there may come a moment when I can express to you the thoughts that oppress me; to-day I can only tell you that I love you too well for my peace; for, after this August and this September, I feel that I can only live beside you and that your absence is death. Oh! how happy I should be were I walking and conversing with you in the little garden overhanging the bridge of Troïsk, where there is nothing yet but broomsticks to mark where they mean to plant the trees. To me, there was no garden in Europe more lovely—when you were in it, I mean. There are moments when I see clearly the least little objects that surround you; I look at the cushion with a pattern of black lace worked upon it on which you leaned, and I count the stitches! Never was my memory so fresh; my inward sight, on which are mirrored the houses that I build, the landscapes I create, is now all given to the service of the most completely happy memories of my life. You could never imagine the treasures of revery which glorify certain hours; there are some which fill my eyes with tears. My inward eyes behold those angular bronzes against which I struck my knees as I wound my way through your blue salon, and the little chair in which you reposed your dreamy thoughts! What power and happiness there is in these returns to a past which thus we see again. Such moments are more than life; for the whole of life is in this one hour withdrawn from real existence to the profit of these memories which flood my soul in torrents. What sweetness and what strength lies in the simple thought of certain material objects, which attracted but little notice in the happy days that are past; and how happy I feel myself to feel thus!
Adieu; I am going to carry my letter to the post. All tenderness to your child a thousand times blessed; my regards to Lirette, and to you all that there is in my heart, my soul, my brain.
Passy, February 5, 1844.
Yesterday I did errands; for I must think about getting "Les Petits Bourgeois" set up by a printer at the cost of a new publisher. I went to see the successor of M. Gavault, and there I found a summons from that dreadful Locquin-coquin. No one more audacious than a swindler! he cries, "Murder! thieves!" to hang his victim. All this stirred my bile, and as I had been up since three in the morning I felt very weary, and went to bed at six to rise at four. While I slept the dear journal came; I put it aside for my waking and have just read it. All these opposing emotions, some exasperating, others gentle, not to say divine, have done me harm; I feel exhausted, which seldom happens to me. I must be at M. Gavault's at nine o clock for consultation with him and his successor, M. Picard, on the Locquin affair; now, to get there at nine o'clock supposes breakfasting at seven; and I who have still five feuillets to write for Hetzel, promised to him for this morning! I had kept them back in order to have a calm night to search them out; they needed mind, and my mind was all upset!