On my return home, I found I had missed Captier, Claret's friend. This is a pity; I should have liked to talk with him about a purchase I have in view. There is a chance of buying a bit of ground in the rue Jean-Goujon in the best condition. It is only a stone's throw from the Place de la Concorde.
Yesterday I found some distraction of my nostalgic misery in the Conciergerie, and the court of assizes, and to-day I plunge into work vehemently.
Ah! I must have my house between two gardens, without disagreeable neighbourhood. And I will have a little greenhouse at the back of it—But I must leave you, I must work. You do not know that I am silently collecting very splendid art furniture by dint of researches and tramps about Paris, economy, and privations. I don't wish to speak to you of this; I shall not unmask my batteries until my dream takes, more and more, the semblance of reality.
December 15.
I am now launched into work. This night I have done six pages of the six folios I have to do; and I assure you—I, who know myself—that that is a great deal. I shall try this week to finish La Comédie Humaine.
Yesterday, after finishing my work, I went to see my sister, on a letter she had written me saying that her eldest daughter was dying. Sophie had really nothing more than a slight congestion of the head, which cooling drinks relieved. I heard from Laure that a M. Bleuart was on the point of ruin from having bought up the quartier Beaujon, and that several of the houses were for sale. I hurried there. There are, indeed, houses and vacant ground; but of all those houses there is but one that is anything like finished, and that one is immense; nine windows on the front. I am going there on Wednesday with a friend of Claret and a young man who is in the secret of M. Bleuart's affairs. You see I bestir myself to find a really good thing, and repair in some degree the disaster of Les Jardies; but the important thing of all is to work. I met my old landlord of the rue des Batailles, and he told me that ground in the rue Jean-Goujon was selling for nothing, and I ought to make haste to buy at present prices.
On returning from Beaujon yesterday, I went to pay a visit of half an hour to Madame de Girardin. Returning at six o'clock, I dined and was asleep by seven. In examining my resources, I think I can do without what you know of (the Dresden affair); it is, I have reflected, so difficult to write, receive, and send papers of that kind that I shall try to wait, and place the matter as a last result in its time and place. I am so in the habit when I write to you of thinking aloud, calculating, and recalculating, that you see and know all my hesitations, my backings-down, my additions, etc. You are always and in all things my sole thought; it is you, and you know it well, who are the foundation of everything. If I had the strength this night to apply myself to six folios it was because I want to go from Naples to Rome with you, and for that I shall try to leave here January 11. I want to install you in Rome, as I installed you in Naples. Madame de Girardin calls me il vetturino per amore.
Adieu for to-day. How are you? Do you amuse yourself sometimes? Does Georges take good care of both of you? If anything happens to you under his auspices I will crush his box of insects on the boat. I bless you every day of my life, and I thank God for your good affection. You are my happiness, as you are my fame and my future. Do you sometimes remember that morning at Valence on the bank of the Rhône, when our gentle talk triumphed over your neuralgia as we walked for two hours in the dawn, both ill, yet without perceiving the cold or our own sufferings? Believe me, such memories, which are wholly of the soul, are as powerful as the material recollections of others; for in you the soul is more beautiful than the corporeal beauties for which the sons of Adam destroy themselves.
Adieu till to-morrow, gentle and spiritual power, who hold subjected to your laws your poor and fervent servitor.
December 16.