I am still not well, and I have even gone to bed during the day; but I feel a little better now and shall dine with my doctor. I have just done the article for Hetzel, which will be, like all things wrenched out in spite of Minerva, detestable. Yesterday I consulted M. Roux (Dupuytren's successor, alas!), and he strongly advised me that journey on foot as the only means of arresting the inclination of my cerebral organs to inflame.
I am now going to two printing-offices to negotiate affairs, and, among others, to arrange with a publisher for "Les Petits Bourgeois."
February 8.
When I do not suffer in my head I suffer in the intestines, and I have at all times a little fever; nevertheless, this morning, at the moment of writing to you, I am well, or rather, I feel better.
Yesterday I talked with a publisher named Kugelmann. He is a German, who seems to me full of good-will; we shall settle something to-day when I have done with the "Débats;" I go to Bertin at eleven o'clock. If the two affairs can be arranged I shall have nearly twenty thousand francs for "Les Petits Bourgeois." They want to illustrate either "Eugénie Grandet" or "La Physiologie du Mariage," and have made me proposals to that effect. If these proposals lead to any result you shall know it, of course. Yesterday I met Poirson, manager of the Gymnase, in an omnibus, and he proposed to me to give him the comedy of "Prudhomme," and have it played by Henri Monnier. That is one of my crutches for this year; I shall go and explain it to him next Monday; and if it suits him, I shall set to work upon it immediately, so as to have it played in March—or rather in May, for March has twice been fatal to me.
Adieu for to-day, celestial star, implored and followed with so much religion. Every day I say to myself, thinking of your dear household of three, "I hope they are happy! that nothing troubles them! that Lirette sanctifies herself more and more; that Anna goes sometimes to the theatre (for her health, as she says so prettily); and that madame will from time to time look down the Neva to where Paris lies." As for me, I think only of that rococo salon, and so thinking, I make a little mental prayer to a human divinity, especially about nine o'clock, when tea makes me think that you are taking yours in the lamplight at that white table, the yellow wavelets of which I see at moments, together with the samovar. What friends are things, when they surround beloved beings! There is even a stupid ivory elephant that returns to my memory at times. As for the causeuse, the little carpet, the Louis XIV. screen, and the chair on which you rested your noble, cherished head, they are objects of worship. Do you feel yourself loved even in the outward objects to which you have given more real life than living and moving beings have to me? Your sadnesses make me smile, and I say to myself, "She was not then sitting in her chair; she was not looking then at her chimney-corner." But it would have been a pity not to write those four pages; they are sublime; and were it not for the deep respect I have for you, I would put them proudly into one of my books, to give you the enjoyment of seeing how superior you are to scribblers like the rest of us. That letter is a true diamond as style and as thought; you have the inspiring influence, dear lady!—
See how I chatter with you! Can I help it? I make my letters one of those cat-like sensuous joys to which we grow used, and which wrap us so softly that we forget they are but the copy of their cause!—
Well, one more look at that dear rue Millionne, and a deep, deep sigh, alas! not to be there. Why should you not have a poet as others have a dog, a parrot, a monkey?—and all the more because I am a little of all three, and repeat to you ever the one phrase, "I am faithful!" (Here the countess throws up her head and casts a superb glance.)
Adieu till to-morrow; I have recovered a little gaiety the last two days; are some happy events happening to you? God owes them to you. Have you not suffered enough to expiate the fault of all who surround you?—for as to you, you have never understood or practised anything but the good and the beautiful.