If painters, poets, artists were sharers in all they represent, they would die at twenty-five. No, my duchess is not my Fornarina. When I have her—but I have a Fornarina—I shall never paint her. Her adorable spirit may animate my soul, her heart may be in my heart, her life in my life, but paint her, show her to the public!—I would sooner die of hunger, for I should die of shame.
I am very glad that you do not yet know me fully; because now you may, perhaps, love me better some day. Mon Dieu! what you tell me of your health and that of Monsieur Hanski made me bound in my chair. Madame, in the name of the sentiment, the sincere affection I bear you, I implore you when you or Monsieur Hanski or your Anna are ill, write to me. Don't laugh at what I am going to say to you. Recent facts at Issoudun proved to me that I possess a great magnetic power, and that either by a somnambulist, or by myself, I can cure those who are dear to me. Therefore, have recourse to me. I will leave everything to go to you. I will devote myself with the pious warmth of true devotion to the care that illness needs, and I can give you undeniable proofs of that singular power. Therefore, put me in the way of knowing how you are. Don't deceive me, and don't laugh at this.
Your romances afflict me. Why have such dark suppositions? Mon Dieu! as for me, when I dream, I dream of happiness only.
Yesterday, some one told me the secret of my journeys was discovered, and that I had been to join Queen Hortense. I laughed much at that.
You make me weep with rage when I read what you say of Florence. Shall I ever meet with all that again? Oh! make me very supplicating to M. Hanski for the eight days I can be in Rome. See! it is possible. Saint Peter's day is the 23rd of June. I can leave Paris on the 12th for Lyon, and reach Marseille the l5th, whence a steamboat takes you in forty-eight hours to Civita Vecchia. I could stay eight or ten days in Rome without doing any harm to my affairs; for all, doctors and somnambulists, are unanimous in beseeching me to balance a month's work by a month's amusement. Now there is nothing that takes me so out of my work as music and travel—in Paris no interest excites my soul; I live in a desert; I am, as it were, in a convent; the heart is moved by nothing. Rome would be a grand and beautiful distraction if I were there alone, but with you for cicerone what would it be! And this is not said from gallantry, à la "charming Frenchman." No, it is said from heart to heart, to the woman of the North, to the barbarian!
I have broken with everybody; I was tired of grimaces. I have but two unalterable friendships here which are true, and to which I at times confide. Then, I have work into which I fling myself daily.
This letter will still reach you in Florence. It will tell you feebly my regrets, which are boundless. This heavy material life, which I so largely escaped in Geneva, oppresses me here. I thirst for my liberty, for freedom, and if you knew what prodigies of will, what creating persistence is needed to secure no more than my twenty-four days in June and July, you would say, like one of my friends who has perceived a little of the intellectual working of my furnace (and you know more than a mere acquaintance), that Napoleon never showed as much will, or as much courage.
What you have written me about Montriveau [in the "Duchesse de Langeais">[ worries me, for you are a little epigrammatic, and it would be a great grief to me to be ill judged or misunderstood by you. You are the second person to whom I have shown my mind in its truth. I like to let no one penetrate it, because if they do, what is there to give to those we love? You did not mean to wound me, did you?
I like your judgments on Florence and works of art much; and I would greatly like, if you will be so good to your moujik, that you should study Rome, so that when I come I may not stop to look at bagatelles, but see in my eight days all that there is of really fine, and good, and masterly, which goes to the soul. Do not say "Montriveau" to me again. Remember that I have the life of the heart and the life of the brain; that I live more by sentiments than by the caprices of the mind; that I would rather feel than express ideas; and that neither way does wrong to the other. One needs a little intellect to love.