What vexations, what goings to and fro! I had to give a great dinner this week, Friday, 29th. I discovered I had neither knives nor glasses. I don't like to have inelegant things about me. So I had to run in debt a little more; I tried to do a stroke of business with my silversmith. No. However, I will economize in Geneva by working and keeping quiet.
How I paw, like a poor, impatient horse! The desire to see you makes me find things that, ordinarily, would not occur to me. I correct quicker. You not only give me courage to support the difficulties of life, but you give me talent, or at least, facility. One must love, my Eve, my dear one, to write the love of "Eugénie Grandet," a pure, immense, proud love. Oh! dear, dearest, my good, my divine Eve, what grief not to have been able to write you every evening what I have done, said, and thought!
Soon, soon, in ten minutes, I can tell you more than in a thousand pages, in one look more than in a hundred years, because I shall give you all my heart in that first look, O my delicate, beauteous forehead! I looked at that of Madame de Mirbel, the other day; it is something like yours. She is a Pole, I think.
Paris, Sunday, December 1, 1833, eleven o'clock.
My angel, I have just read your letter. Oh! I long to fall at your knees, my Eve, my dear wife! Never have a second of melancholy thought. Oh! you do not know me! As long as I live I will be your darling, I will respect in myself the heart you have chosen; I no longer belong to myself. There are no follies, no sacrifices; no, no, never! Oh! do not be thus, never talk to me of laudanum. I flung aside the proofs of "Eugénie Grandet" and sprang up as if to go to you. The end of your letter has made me pass over the pain of its beginning.
My love, my dear love, I shall be near you in a few days; when you hold this paper full of love for you, to which I would like to communicate the beatings of my heart, there will be but a few days; I shall redouble my cares, my work, I shall rest down there.
Besides, I shall arrange to stay a long time. O my love! make your skies serene, for there is nothing in my being but affection, love, tenderness, and caresses for you.
You ought to curse that Gaudissart. The printer took a type which compressed the matter, and to make out the volume I had to improvise all that in one night, darling, and make eighty pages of it, if you please.
My pretty love, you will receive a fine letter, very polite, submissive, respectful, with the manuscript of "Eugénie Grandet," and you will find in pencil on the back of the first page of manuscript the precise day for which I have engaged my place in the diligence.
Yes, I live in you, as you live in me. Never will God separate what he has put together so strongly. My life is your life. Do not frighten me thus again. Your sadness saddens me, your joy makes me joyous. I am in your heart; I listen to your voice at times. In short, I have the eternal, imperishable, angelic love that I desired. You are the beginning and the end, my Eve,—do you understand?—the Eve! I am as exclusive as you can be. In short, Adoremus in æternum is my motto; do you hear me, darling?