I entreat you, do not be worried about the Reviews; it would even be a pity were it otherwise. A man is lost in France the moment he makes himself a name, and is crowned in his lifetime. Insults, calumnies, rejection, all that suits me. Some day it will be known that if I lived by my pen there never entered two centimes into my purse that were not hardly and laboriously earned, that praise or blame were equally indifferent to me, that I have built up my work amid cries of hatred and literary musketry, and have done so with a firm and imperturbable hand. My revenge is to write, in the "Débats," "Les Petits Bourgeois;" which will make my enemies say with fury, "At the moment one might think his bag was empty he produces a masterpiece." That is what Madame Reybaud said on reading "David Séchard," "Honorine," etc. You will read the strange history of "Esther." I will send it to you thoroughly corrected; you will there see a Parisian world which is, and always will be, unknown to you, very different from the false world of "Les Mystères" and ever comic; in which the author, as George Sand said, applies a whip that strips off all the plasters put on to hide the wounds he uncovers. You write me: "What a volume is that which contains 'Nucingen,' 'Pierre Grassou,' and 'Les Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan'!" Perhaps you are right; I am proud of it (between ourselves).
You will see if the corruption of the Spanish abbé, which annoys you, was not necessary to develop the history of Lucien in Paris, ending in a frightful suicide. Lucien had already served as an easel on which to paint journalism; he serves again to paint the piteous and pitiable class of kept women; the corruption of the flesh, after the corruption of the mind. Next comes "Les Petits Bourgeois," and, for conclusion, "Les Frères de la Consolation." Nothing will then be lacking in my Paris but artists, the stage, and the savants. I shall then have painted the great modern monster under all its aspects.
To sum up: here is the stake I play for,—four men have had in this half-century an immense influence: Napoleon, Cuvier, O'Connell; and I desire to be the fourth. The first lived on the blood of Europe, he inoculated himself with armies; the second espoused the globe; the third has incarnated himself in a people; and I shall have carried a whole social world in my brain. Better live thus than call out every evening, "Spades, hearts, trumps!" or find out why Madame such a one has done such or such a thing. But there will always be in me something greater than the writer, happier than he, and that is, your serf. My sentiment is nobler, grander, more complete than all the satisfactions of vanity or fame. Without this plenitude of heart I could not have accomplished one tenth of my work; I should not have had this ferocious courage. Tell yourself often this truth in your moments of melancholy, and you will divine by the toil-effect the grandeur of its cause.
Your journal has done me good to read, and I shall re-read it again to-morrow, more than once. It is six o'clock; I must see about inventing and then writing the little trifles for Hetzel. I leave you, sending to you all flowers of the heart.
February 6.
Yesterday I went out, but I suffered much; that thief who sues me, your letter, all these violent and opposing emotions did me harm. If the colic, as Lord Byron says, puts love to flight it certainly knocks down imagination; not only have I suffered, but my brain has been as if veiled. Last night was dreadful, and the waking not pleasant. After breakfasting, I feel rather better; but I have to go out for current affairs, and I cannot think of it without repugnance, so weak and ill do I still feel. I have, nevertheless, corrected the article for Hetzel, and added la coda, the most difficult part to wrench out. I still have one horribly difficult chapter to do of three feuillets; after which I shall be delivered. But while breakfasting the idea of a pretty comedy in three acts came to me; I will tell it to you if I write it. This week I must finish "Le Programme," and then set seriously to work on "Mercadet."
I dine to-day with Girardin, and shall pay a visit to M. de Barante to thank him for his letter. I perceive, sadly, that my hard labour has aged me much; if I do not go to Germany by the grace of God and yourself, I shall make a trip on foot among the Alps.
Do not think that I ever tire of the Daffinger. I give it to myself as a reward when I have done my task, and at night it is there, beside me, on my table, and I search my ideas in it.
February 7.