Letters to Madame Carraud, written at the same time as the letters from Geneva. (Édition Définitive, pp. 191, 178.)
Geneva, January 30, 1834.
"Do not accuse me of ingratitude, my dearest flower of friendship! I have thought of you much. I have even talked of you with pride, congratulating myself in having a second conscience in you.
"Go to Frapesle? of course I will. Mon Dieu! you are angelically good to have thought of her whom all my friends (I mean my sister and Borget) call my good angel. [Madame Carraud had invited Madame de Berny, who was ill, to stay at her house with Balzac.] If I have not written to you, or to our Borget, it is because I am so little my own master here. Keep this secret at the bottom of your heart; but I think my future is fixed, and that, according to Borget's earnest wish, I shall never share my crown, if crown there be.
"After April, yes, I can go to Frapesle.... Some day, cara, you will know, when reading the 'Études de Mœurs' and the 'Études Philosophiques' in your chimney-corner at Frapesle, why I write to you now so disconnectedly. I am congested with ideas that crowd upon me, I hunger for repose; and besides, I am weary of my position as bird upon a branch.... It is written above that I shall never have complete happiness, freedom, liberty, all, except in prospect. But, dear, I can at least say this, with all the tenderest effusions of my heart, that in my long and painful way four noble beings have constantly held out their hands to me, encouraged, loved, and pitied me; that you are one of those hearts that have in mine the unalterable privilege of priority over all my affections....
"If Frapesle were only on my way back to Paris! but neither Frapesle nor Angoulême now for me! I return, three days hence, to Paris, through that wearisome Bourgogne, to resume my yoke of misery, after refusing from hands of love money that would have freed me in a moment; but I will owe my gold to no one but myself, my liberty to none but me....
"Yes, be sure of it, I will go to Frapesle, and I think I shall obtain the company of Madame de Berny.... That life is so much to mine! Oh! no one can form a true idea of that deep affection which sustains my efforts and soothes at every moment my wounds. You know something of it—you who know friendship so well, you so kind and affectionate...."
Now, is it possible that Balzac wrote those words with the same pen, the ink not dry upon it, that is supposed to have written the insinuation made on pages 112, 113? No, never!
A few months earlier, August, 1833, he had said to Madame Carraud: "You are right, dear noble soul, in loving Madame de Berny. In each of you are striking resemblances of thought; the same love of the right, the same enlightened liberality, the same love of progress, same desires for the good of the masses, same elevation of soul and thought, same delicacy in your natures. And for that I love you much."
II.
Page [476]: relating to the letters Madame Hanska, then Madame de Balzac, gave to MM. Lévy in 1876 for their Édition Définitive of the Works.
In various foot-notes to "Lettres à l'Étrangère," and also in "Un Roman d'Amour," an effort is made to represent Madame de Balzac as having suppressed parts of these letters for some purpose not legitimate. "These letters," it is said, "copied by the hand of Madame de Balzac, were given to M. Michel Lévy to be placed, in 1876, in Balzac's general 'Correspondance.' But she who was then no more than the widow of a man of genius did not, it must be owned, deliver the authentic and integral text of those letters."
Ten of the letters that Madame de Balzac gave to M. Michel Lévy appear also in "Lettres à l'Étrangère." I have carefully compared these, and I find certain differences, but nothing that does not come within the legitimate province of an editor. These differences are mainly as follows: 1. Unpleasant comments on persons then living are omitted; also certain painful details about his family and hers which ought never to have seen the light. 2. Some affectionate expressions to herself are omitted, and some, apparently from other letters, are added. 3. Additions, also apparently from other letters, and one at least from Balzac's other writings, are made. Possibly the passage about Louis XIV. (page 476) is one of these; it may have been added by Madame de Balzac as being more just to his real opinion. 4. Passages have been transposed; probably through some confusion of the sheets in copying or in printing. But there is nothing omitted, changed, or added that gives the least colour to the idea conveyed of suppression or insincerity.
The letters can be compared by every one. Their dates, and the pages on which they appeared in the Édition Définitive are as follows:—
(1) August 11, 1835, p. 217. (2) October, 1836, p. 239. (3) January 20, 1838, p. 273. (4) March 26, 1838, p. 284. (5) April 8, 1838, p. 290. (6) April 17, 1838, p. 290. (7) April 22, 1838, p. 291. (8) May 20, 1838, p. 294. (9) June 15, 1838, p. 303. (10) July, 1838, p. 309.