"Gentlemen," said the clerk, "no offensive personalities, I beg." Then turning to the miserable culprit, he continued: "Can you tell me, sir, from what place you expect a letter?" "From Lavalette, monsieur, in the province of Var." "Very good; and you think that perhaps your Christian name only is on the address—Sidoine?"
"My cousin always calls me Sidoine."
"His cousin is right," said a sulky voice in the corner.
This, my dear Edgar, is a sample of the non-classified tortures that I suffer every morning in this den of expiation, before I, the last one of all, can reach the clerk's sanctuary; once there I assume a careless air and gay tone of voice as I negligently call out my name. No doubt you think this a very simple, easy thing to do, but first listen a moment: I felt the "Star" gradually sinking under me near the Malouine Islands, the sixty-eighth degree of latitude kept me a prisoner in its sea of ice at the South Pole; I passed two consecutive days and nights on board the Esmerelda, between fire and inundation; and if I were to extract the quintessence of the agonies experienced upon these three occasions it could never equal the intense torture I suffer at the Poste-Restante. Three seals broken, three letters opened, three overwhelming disappointments! Nothing! nothing! nothing! Oh miserable synonym of despair! Oh cruel type of death! Why do you appear before me each day as if to warn my foolish heart that all hope is dead! Then how dreary and empty to me is this cold, unfeeling world we move in! I feel oppressed by the weight of my sorrowful yearning that hourly grows more unbearable and more hopeless; my lungs seem filled with leaden air, and all the blood in my heart stands still. In thinking of the time that must be dragged through till this same hour to-morrow, I feel neither the strength nor courage to endure it with its intolerable succession of eternal minutes. How can I bridge over this gulf of twenty-four hours that divides to-day from to-morrow? How false are all the ancient and modern allegories, invented to afflict man with the knowledge that his days are rapidly passing away! How foolish is that wisdom that mourns over our fugitive years as being nothing but a few short minutes! I would give all my fortune to be able to write the Hora Fugit of the poet, and offer for the first time to man these two words as an axiom of immutable truth.
There is nothing absolutely true in all the writings of the sages. Figures even, in their inexorable and systematic order, have their errors just as often as do words and apothems. An hour of pain and an hour of pleasure have no resemblance to each other save on the dial. My hours are weary years.
You understand then, my dear Edgar, that I write you these long letters, not to please you, but to relieve my own mind. In writing to you I divert my attention from painful contemplation, and expatriate my ideas. A pen is the only instrument capable of killing time when time wishes to kill us. A pen is the faithless auxiliary of thought; unknown to us it sometimes penetrates the secret recesses of our hearts, where we flattered ourselves the horizon of our sorrows was hid from the world.
Thus, if you discover in my letter any symptoms of mournful gayety, you may know they are purely pen-fancies. I have no connection with them except that my fingers guide the pen.
Sometimes I determine to abandon Paris and bury myself in some rural retreat, where lonely meditation may fill my sorrowing heart with the balm of oblivion; but in charity to myself I wish to avoid the absurdity of this self-deception. Nothing is more hurtful than trying a useless remedy, for it destroys your confidence in all other remedies, and fills your soul with despair. Then, again, Paris is peculiarly fitted for curing these nameless maladies—'tis the modern Thebais, deserted because 'tis crowded—silent because 'tis noisy; there, every man can pitch his tent and nurse his favorite sorrows without being disturbed by intruders. Solitude is the worst of companions when you wish to drown the past in Lethe's soothing stream. However, 'tis useless for me to reason in this apparently absurd way in order to compel myself to remain in the heart of this great city, for I cannot and must not quit Paris at present; 'tis the central point of my operations; here I can act with the greatest efficacy in the combinations of my searches—to leave Paris is to break the threads of my labyrinth. Besides, my duties as a man of the world impose cruel tortures upon me; if fate continues to work against me and I am compelled to retire from the world, the consolation of having escaped these social tortures will be mine; so you see, after all, there is a silver lining to my dark cloud. When we cannot attain good we can mitigate the evil.
Last Thursday Countess L. opened the season with an unusual event—a betrothment ball. Her select friends were invited to a sort of rehearsal of the wedding party; her beautiful cousin is to be married to our young friend Didier, whom we named Scipio Africanus. Marshal Bugeaud has given him a six-months' leave, and healed his wounded shoulder with a commander's epaulette.
Now, I know you will agree with me that my presence was necessary at this ball. I nerved myself for this new agony, and arrived there in the middle of a quadrille. Never did a comedian, stepping on the stage, study his manner and assume a gay look with more care than I did as I entered the room. I glided through the figures of the dance, and reached the further end of the ball-room which was filled with gossiping dowagers. Now I began to play my rôle of a happy man.