I wish that all my cases were unpacked, and all my beautiful things visible; for the anxiety to know in what state they are reacts upon me too vehemently, especially in the state of irritation I am in from a continued fever of inspiration and insomnia. I hope to have finished "Le Vieux Musicien" on Monday, by rising daily at half-past one in the morning, as I did to-day, being quite re-established in my working hours. I will tell you to-morrow how many pages I have done to-day; it must be twelve to satisfy me.
July 20, 1846.
I received your letter yesterday at half-past six o'clock and I could not answer then, for I had to dine, and after dinner Cailleux (to whom I had written about the furniture, the Salomon de Caux, etc., and about the portraits of the king and Madame Adélaïde, which are at Geneva) chose the hour between eight and nine to come and see my collection. I had scarcely time to read your letter in the street, and none in which to answer it.
"Le Vieux Musicien," that novel of fifty sheets, will be finished Tuesday. Wednesday I take up the other part of "Les Parents pauvres." This morning I treat with Méry and an editor of "Le Messager." In spite of the intolerable heat (30 degrees at nine in the morning!) my activity has never been more violent or my work more desperate; I am determined to pay integrally the sum total of my debts and win my independence and peace.
I am very well satisfied with "Le Vieux Musicien;" but "La Cousine Bette" is only a formless sketch; it is not yet a question of perfecting it; much has still to be invented.
Well, I must go and do the amount of "copy" I ought to do every morning. I send you my letters very regularly twice a week, but your answers are, alas! short and rare. Oh! I entreat you, on my knees, be less miserly of letters and details; scold me, tell me disagreeable things, but write me! the sight of your pretty little writing softens the bitterness of your wrath, which is never very terrible; for no matter how much you are displeased or even wounded, the angel of peace and mildness, who pardons and does not punish, is always in you.
Ballard, an editor of the "Messager," and Méry came to breakfast with me this morning. I need the "Messager;" for thirty thousand francs are not drawn too easily out of the well of the Parisian press. It is needful to have the support in the "Débats" of Bertin, in the "Constitutionnel" of Véron, in the "Presse" of de Girardin, in the "Messager" of the Minister of the Interior, in the "Musée des Familles" of Picquée. I have also some other newspapers without any leading personal influence. Now these articles are more difficult than you think; they are all invention, labour, drama; the payment is the object. As for the publishing of books, that is dying out, they say. The Public is going to sleep; it is necessary to wake up that bored despot by things that interest and amuse him. Just now, I am very well content with my "Vieux Musicien." When you read this letter it will be finished, for I have now reached the thirty-fourth sheet, and there are but forty-eight. Next week I shall work at "La Cousine Bette" for the "Constitutionnel;" and as soon as those two manuscripts are delivered to the compositors I shall finish "Les Paysans." In April I shall do "Les Méfaits d'un procureur-du-roi;" and this coming winter "Les Petits Bourgeois" and "L'Éducation du Prince." Will not this have been a well-employed year, specially when one considers a moving like mine? I am now searching in the faubourg Saint-Germain, or the rue Royale, for a house.
And now let me beg of you to drive away all useless and unwholesome reflections; do not be sad, do not even be pensive; be what you always are, the providence and joy of your home; be its mind, its heart, its blessing at all moments; a line of sadness, a word of anxiety in your letters gives me such pain. I want you happy; that is my special ambition; and my will is so strong in all which concerns you that I do not doubt its success in this. There is not a day or a moment in my life when I would not fling myself into a gulf to save you from care. That is not a form of speech, it is a sentiment of the heart, deep and true, and you have always seen it manifested in acts when occasion offered; what has been done in the past will not fail you in the future.
Write me often and gaily, and do not tell me you are "obsessed" as an excuse; I am obsessed, too, by business, work, tramping; compare the obsession of the world with yours; yet I write to you every day as one makes one's prayer on rising; but this is because you are my whole life, you are my very soul, and the slightest, vaguest of your depressions casts its shadow upon me. Continue to relate to me your life and all its impressions; hide nothing from me; tell me all,—the good, the bad, and even the involuntary thoughts.