Letters to Madame Hanska, born Countess Rzewuska, afterwards Madame Honoré de Balzac, 1833-1846

by Honoré de Balzac

Paris, February 15, 1834, eleven o'clock.

My darling Eva, to you belongs this part of my night. Since Wednesday morning of this week I have been like a balloon; but as I went and came, and bustled through this Paris, I walked along, exciting myself with one fixed idea,—the idea of being forever near to you.

My dear idol, I have never had so much courage in my life; or rather, I have a new life. I read your name in me, I see you; everything seems easy to me to attain to seeing you again. I am afraid of nothing. My tears, my regrets, my sadness of love,—all that falls upon my heart at the moment when I get into bed. Then, alone with myself, I am all grief not to be at the "Arc," not to have seen my darling, and I go over in memory the smallest details of those days when, for all grief, I had that of being waked three hours too soon, hours that separated my rising from the moment when I set out to go to you.

The next day I work with an ardour of enthusiasm. What shall I tell you of these four days? I had to see two editors (they came) and the printer, to finish my proofs, to nurse Mme. de Berny, who is better,—but what a change! she is still a little feeble, incapable of correcting my proofs. Everything will suffer for that, but what does it matter? I want to see that life out of danger.

I felt there how I loved you. A horrible sensation told me that I could not bear any danger to you. All that recalled my terror at the time of your nervous attack. Oh, mon Dieu! to see you seriously ill, you, who sum up and hold all my affections in your heart, my life in your life,—why! I should die, not of your death, but of your sufferings. No, you do not know what you are to me. Near you, I feel too much to tell you egotistical thoughts; here I talk to you all day long. You are woven into my thought. I find no word but that to express my situation. As soon as I found myself in Paris I thought of the means of going to see you for a single day in Geneva.

Here I find violent family troubles. To-day I have had my brother-in-law and my mother to dinner. That tells you that from five o'clock to half-past ten I have been given up to them. Yesterday I had to dine with my sister, my mother, and my brother-in-law; then I was forced to give them from four to eleven o'clock. Those poor heads are distracted. I must have courage, ideas, energy, economy for all of them.

The morning of this Friday I set myself to learn all that has happened here. I had to go out early, to see the doctor, negotiate a payment for to-day, 15th, and consult him. So you see the employment of to-day and yesterday. Thursday was taken up by the publishers, a little sleep and a bath, also by Madame de Berny, to whom I wished at any rate to read "Ne touchez pas à la hache." Wednesday, the day after my arrival, I wrote you in the evening, I ran about all the morning, set my affairs in order, attended to a thousand little things,—which I don't particularize, as they are all mere necessary nothings,—made up my accounts, wrote, etc. After this avalanche of small things here I am, not much rested, rather less anxious about the dilecta, before a pile of proofs and enormous debts for the end of the month. Madame D... has urgent need of half her money by the end of February. It is now the 15th, the month is a short one, I must finish my two volumes; I must finish "Ne touchez pas" and write "La Femme aux yeux rouges."

My adored, my darling minette, I tell you things that are terrifying, but do not be alarmed. Vienna is traced out before me; all will be well. Your desire to see me, your love, all you hovers above me. I believe in you only; I want new successes, new fame, new courage; I will in short, that you shall be a thousand times prouder of your husband of love than of your lover. Yes, dear celestial Eva, I am melancholy because I am here and you are down there, but I have no more discouragements, no more depressions. When I raise my eyes I see something better than God, I see a sure happiness, a tried happiness. Oh! you do not know, my treasure, my dear life, what such sweet certainty is to my soul. You don't know what you did with your infernal jesting, you remember? You tried upon a most loving heart a weapon you did not know was loaded. A moment more, and I was lost. My eternal love could be placed on you alone; I see it, I know it now, for now I desire you more than ever. My dearest soul, I have for myself all the efforts that I make to meet you again; I materialize my hope. But, my beautiful myself, you, what are you doing? Ah! my beautiful, saintly creature, I know it is not on him of Paris that the burden is heaviest; it is our Geneva love, it is you who, bearing all our happiness, feel most our pains, our sorrows. Neither do I ever look at us two without a smile full of hope, but also slightly tainted with sadness. Oh! my idolized angel, you in whom all my future resides, all my happiness, and for whom I desire all the fine glories that make a happy woman, you whom I love with all the ardour of a young sentiment, of a first and a last love in one, yes, know it well, no sufferings, ideas, joys, which can agitate your soul fail to come and agitate mine.[1]

At this moment when I write to you, having left all to plunge into your heart, to come nearer to you, no, I feel space no longer; we are near one to the other; I see you, and one of my senses is intoxicated by the memory of one of those little voluptuous moments which made me so happy! I am very proud of you. I cry out to myself that I love you! You see, a poet's love has a little madness in it. None but artists are worthy of women, because they are somewhat women too. Oh! what need I have always to hear myself told that I am loved, to hear you repeat it! You, you are all. You will know only when you hear my voice how ardently I tell you that you are the only well-beloved, the only wife. Now I shall rush there more amorously than the two preceding times. You know why, my dear, naïve wife? Because I know you better, because I know all there is of divine and girlish in your dear, celestial character, because—. No, I never dreamed so ambitiously the perfections that are agreeable to me because I know that I can love ever. Going to Neufchâtel I wanted to love you; returning from Geneva it is impossible not to love you!

Who will ever know what the road to Ferney is at the spot where, having to leave on the morrow, I stood still at the sight of your dear, saddened face. Mon Dieu! if I tried to tell you all the thoughts there are in my soul, the voluptuous pleasures which my heart contains and desires, I should never cease writing, and, unfortunately, the word "Vienna" is there. I am cruel to both of us in the name of a continued happiness; yes, one year passed together will prove to you that you can be better loved each day, and I aspire to September...