Well, to-morrow, I shall have a letter. Adieu, my cherished soul! Thank you a thousand times for your kind letters; do not spare them. I would like to be always writing to you; but, poor unfortunate, I am obliged to think sometimes of the gold I draw from my inkstand. You are my heart; what can I give you?
Paris, Wednesday, November 6, 1833.
The agonies you have gone through, my Eve, I have very cruelly felt, for your letter arrived only to-day. I cannot describe all the horrible chimeras which tortured me from time to time; for the delay of one of your letters puts everything in doubt between you and me; the delay of one of mine does not imply so many evils to fear.
As to the last page of your letter, endeavour to forget it. I pardon it, and I suffer at your distress. To be unjust and ill-natured! You remind me of the man who thought his dog mad and killed him, and then perceived that he was warning him not to lose his forgotten treasure.
You speak of death. There is something more dreadful, and that is pain; and I have just endured one of which I will not speak to you. As to my relations with the person you speak of, I never had any that were very tender; I have none now. I answered a very unimportant letter, and, apropos of a sentence, I explained myself; that was all. There are relations of politeness due to women of a certain rank whom one has known; but a visit to Madame Récamier is not, I suppose, relations, when one goes to see her once in three months.
Mon Dieu! the man who seems to be justifying himself has just been stabbed to the heart. He smiles to you, my Eve, and this man does not sleep—he, rather a sleepy man—more than five hours and a half. He works seventeen hours, to be able to stay a week in your sight; I sell years of my life to go and see you. This is not a reproach. But you may say to me, you, that perhaps I love the pages I write from necessity better than my love. But with you I am not proud, I am not humble. I am, I try to be, you. You have suffered; I suffer,—you wished to make me suffer. You will regret it. Try that it may not happen again; you will break the heart that loves you, as a child breaks a toy to look inside of it. Poor Eva! So we do not know each other? Oh, yes, we do, don't we?
Mon Dieu! to punish me for my confidence! for the joy that I feel more and more in solitude! I don't know where my mother is; it is two months that no one has any news of her. No letters from my brother. My sister is in the country, guarded by duennas fastened on her by her husband, and he is travelling. So I have no one to tell you about. The dilecta is with her son at Chaumont, with the devil. I am myself in a torrent of proofs, corrections, copies, works. And it is at the moment when I expected to plunge into all my joys that, after your first pages, I find the pompous praise of ..., mon Dieu! and my accusation and condemnation, which will bleed long in a heart like mine.
I am sad and melancholy, wounded, weeping, and awaiting the serenity that never comes full and complete. If you wished that, if you wished to pour upon my life as much pain as I have toil (impossible now), Eva, you have succeeded. As to anger, no; reproaches? what good are they? Either you are in despair at having pained me, or you are content to have done so. I do not doubt you. I would like to console you; but you have cruelly abused the distance that separates us, the poverty that prevents my taking a post-chaise, the engagements of honour which forbid me to leave Paris before the 25th or 26th of this month. You have been a woman; I thought you an angel. I may love you the better for it; you bring yourself nearer to me. I will smile to you without ceasing. Ever since I knew the Indian maxim, "Never strike, even with a flower, a woman with a hundred faults," I have made that the rule of my conduct. But it does not prevent me from feeling to the heart, more violently than those who kill their mistresses feel, insults, and suspicions of evil. I, so exclusive, tainted with commonness! made petty enough to be lowered to vengeance! What! that love so pure, you stain it with suspicion, with blame, with doubt! God himself cannot efface what has been; he may oppose the future, but not the past!
I cannot write more; I rave; my ideas are confused. After twelve hours of toil I wanted a little rest, and to-day I must rest in suffering. Oh! my only love, what grief to look on what I write to you, to weigh my words, and not say all that is without evasion, because I am without reproach. Oh! I suffer. I have not a passing passion, but a one sole love!
November, 10, 1833.