Not only is the finishing of "Les Paysans" an absolute necessity before which all must yield relatively to literature and the reputation which I have for loyalty to pen engagements, but it is an absolute necessity for my interests. This year is a climacteric in my affairs.
Within forty-live days the printing of La Comédie Humaine will be finished. The publishers have put the two largest printing-offices in Paris on it, and I am obliged to read twice the usual number of proofs. The result will be a sum of importance to me. But I cannot leave Passy till my present debts are paid. Therefore I must finish "Les Paysans" and La Comédie Humaine, and "Les Petits Bourgeois" and "Le Théâtre comme il est." But, dear countess, you have made me lose all the month of January and the fifteen first days of February by saying to me: "I start—to-morrow—next week," and by making me wait for letters; in short, by throwing me into rages which none but I know of. It has brought a frightful disorder into my affairs, for instead of getting my liberty February 15, I have before me a month of herculean labour, and on my brain I must inscribe (to be rejected by my heart) the words: "Think no longer of your star, nor of Dresden, nor of travel; stay at your chain and toil miserably."
Dear, what I call toil is something that must be seen, no prose can depict it; what I have done for a month past would lay any well-organized man on his back. I have corrected the thirteenth and fourteenth volumes of La Comédie Humaine, which contain "La Peau de Chagrin," "La Recherche de l'Absolu," "Melmoth réconcilié," "Le Chef d'œuvre inconnu," "Jésus-Christ en Flandres," "Les Chouans," "Le Médecin de campagne," and "Le Curé de village." I have finished "Béatrix;" I have written and corrected the articles for "Le Diable à Paris;" and I have settled some affairs. All that is nothing; that is not working. Working, dear countess, is getting up regularly at midnight, writing till eight o'clock, breakfasting in fifteen minutes, working till five o'clock, dinner, and going to bed; to begin again at midnight. From this travail there issue five volumes in forty-five days. It is what I shall begin as soon as this letter is written. I must do six volumes of "Les Paysans," and six folios of La Comédie Humaine, inasmuch as that is all that is needed to complete the edition, which is in seventeen volumes. I hope for another edition in 1846, and that will be in twenty-four volumes, and may give me two hundred thousand francs.
So this is my report on the affairs of your servitor and the journey of your Grace.
Now, let me come to that which is more serious than all,—I mean that tinge of sadness which I see on your Olympian brow. What! because a crazy woman cannot be happy, must she come and spoil your comfort and trouble your heart? And you listen to her, you! Take care, for that is a crime of lese-comradeship, lese-brotherhood. And you write me things mournful enough to kill the devil. In your last but one letter you propose to me gracefully, with those Russian forms you must have borrowed for the occasion, a little congress in which the two high powers should decide whether or not to continue their alliance offensive and defensive. That, my dear lady, is, believe me, a greater crime than those you joke me about; for I have never needed any such consultation.
Since 1833, you know very well that I love you, not only like one beside himself, but like a see-er, with eyes wide open; and ever since that period, I have always and ceaselessly had a heart full of you. The errors for which you blame me are fatal human necessities, very truly judged by your Excellency herself. But I have never doubted that I should be happy with you.
Dear countess, I decidedly advise you to leave Dresden at once. There are princesses in that town who infect and poison your heart; were it not for "Les Paysans" I should have started at once to prove to that venerable invalid of Cythera how men of my stamp love; men who have not received, like her prince, a Russian pumpkin in place of a French heart from the hands of a hyperborean Nature. In France, we are gay and witty and we love, gay and witty and we die, gay and witty and we create, gay and witty and withal constitutional, gay and witty and we do things sublime and profound! We hate ennui, but we have none the less heart; we tend to things gay and witty, curled and frizzed and smiling; that is why it is sung of us, to a splendid air, "Victory, singing, opens our career!" It makes others take us for a frivolous people—we, who at this moment are applauding the disquisitions of George Sand, Eugène Sue, Gustave de Beaumont, de Toqueville, Baron d'Eckstein, and M. Guizot. We a frivolous people! under the reign of money-bags and his Majesty Louis-Philippe! Tell your dear princess that France knows how to love. Tell her that I have known you since 1833, and that in 1845 I am ready to go from Paris to Dresden to see you for a day; and it is not impossible I may do so; for if Tuesday next I am lucky at cards at Comtesse Merlin's, I shall be on Sunday, 23d, at the Hôtel de Rome in Dresden, and leave on the 24th.
Dear star of the first magnitude, I see with pain by your letter that you commit the fault of defending me when I am blamed in your presence, and of taking fire on my account. But you don't reflect, dear, that that is a trap set for you by the infamous galley-slaves of society's galleys, to enjoy your embarrassment. When persons say ill of me before you, there is but one thing to do,—turn those who calumniate me into ridicule by outdoing what they say. Tell them: "If he escapes public indignation it is because he is so clever he blunts the sword of the law." That is what Dumas did to some one who told him his father was a negro: "My grandfather was a monkey," he replied.
No, when I think that I might leave here January 1, reach Dresden the 7th, and stay till February 7th, thus seeing you one whole month without detriment to my affairs, that I could then return to my desk happy, refreshed, full of ardour for work, a transport seizes me which eddies and whirls like steam as it hisses from its valve. I see that you are completely ignorant of what you are to me. That does honour to neither your judgment nor your penetration. To-day, that delightful escapade has become impossible to me. March 1, I must regulate the sale of Les Jardies; the legal formalities must be fulfilled in order to put that precious thirty thousand francs aside; La Comédie Humaine must be finished to obtain the fifteen thousand francs that are due to me for it; and finally, I must make up the sixty-three thousand for my acre, if I buy it, and to pay off twenty-five thousand of debt which would otherwise prevent my becoming a land-owner.