Truly, I am writing with a gay pen, and I am sad; but my sadness is so great that I am afraid to send you the expression of it. I would sell my fame and all my literary baggage (if I had no debts) for the pebbles on the road to Ferney. If you would buy my books in bulk I would write them for you little by little, or tell them to you in the chimney-corner. Make M. Hanski buy a principality, for I should not like to be jester to any but a prince; self-loves should be conciliated. You could give me such pretty caps and bells! As for salary, I would take it in the laughs that would come from your lips. But you would be expected to give me eulogies and lodgings, cakes and bells. No Barkschy; I make conditions. But a fool would have to hide his heart. Well, well, you would not want me. Mon Dieu! how often in my life I have envied Prince Lutin! [Puck.]

I wish you all enjoyments of your journey. I must now go and finish a "Conte Drolatique" while you are getting into the carriage and saying, perhaps: "I did not think that this Frenchman whom I accused of levity on our way to the lake of Bienne was so sincere when he told me he was capable of attachment." Ah! madame, poor men have only a heart, and they give it; I am a poor man, a manual labourer who works in phrases as others carry a hod.

If I were free, I should bathe to-night in the Adriatic, and then go and tell you some joyous tale, review the ducal houses in the "Almanach de Gotha," or play patience. You made me adore patience—and I live by patience. But I drudge, I suffer much.

Paris, July 15, 1834.

I wish you to find this letter on your arrival in Vienna. Day before yesterday I posted a letter to you in Trieste, and ten minutes later your good long letter from Trieste came. Ah! that, indeed, is writing! That is making some one happy! Boor Alphonse Royer, who wrote "Venezia la bella," did not tell me in two volumes what you have told me about Venice in two pages. I said to a friend who came in just as I was putting your letter into the pretty box I have had made to hold them,—for to me your letters are beings, fairies which bring me a thousand delights; I am dainty for my fairy-letters,—-I said to him: "We are ninnies, we who think we can write. We ought to kiss the slippers of certain women, the side where the slippers touch the ground, for within, none but the angels are worthy of that!"

Thanks for your letter; how many things I want to answer and must put off to another day, not wishing to speak now, except of things I have much at heart.

You have not understood me about "Séraphita." I declare to you that I have more jealousy of heart than you accuse me of; for if, after promising me a testimonial of friendship, you were to forget it, I should suffer in all that is most sensitive in heart and soul and body. Therefore, I wanted to avoid the same suffering to you by explaining that the envoi would be in the last article, to make my happiness the more transcendant. That last chapter, the "Transfiguration," is to me what, in its own degree, the picture was to Raffaelle. Leave me the right to put your name upon my picture at the moment when the almost gigantic conception of that work is about to be comprehended. But, after reading your letter, I think there was conceit in my thinking you would suffer. Basta! I will say no more about it.

The second number of "Séraphita" has been, for three weeks, in the printing-office, and I have worked ten hours a day upon it. I will send you the whole of it to Vienna, addressed to M. Sina. It will all be out by the end of September.

Another quarrel. I would rather be happy in a corner than be Washington in France, seeing that we have dozens of Washingtons in every street. That means that I would rather be at Wierzchownia in January than sputtering politics in the tribune of the Palais-Bourbon. This is by way of answer to your sublime retrocessa, when you wish to efface yourself behind France. As for me, I efface France beneath your sublime forehead. France, madame, is never short of great orators, great ministers, and great men in everything.

Well, the Gosselin affair is signed; I am quit to-day of that nightmare of foolishness. The illustrious Werdet (who slightly resembles the illustrious Gaudissart) buys from me the first edition of the "Études Philosophiques,"—twenty-five 12mo volumes,—in five Parts, each of five volumes, to appear, month by month, August, September, October, November. You see that to carry this through, and do three Parts of the "Études de Mœurs," still due to Madame Bêchet, requires Vesuvius in the brain, a torso of iron, good pens, quantities of ink, not the slightest blue devil, and a constant desire to see, in January, Strasburg, Cologne, Vienna, Brody, etc., and to fight with snow-drifts. I do not mention that bagatelle called health, nor that other bagatelle called talent.