It is some time since I have felt like writing to you. My nights are passed writing prose for posterity to read. This is because I have been dissatisfied both with you and with myself, which is most extraordinary. I find myself to-day in a more indulgent frame of mind. This evening I heard Madame Persiani, which has reconciled me with human nature. If I were King Saul I should put her in the place of David.
I am told that M. de Pongerville, the Academician, is going to die. This grieves me, because I shall not take his place, and I should prefer that he wait until my time were come. This Pongerville made a metrical translation of a Latin poet named Lucretius, who died at the age of forty-three from the effect of a love-potion which he took to make himself beloved or lovable. But previous to this he had composed a long poem on The Nature of Things, a poem atheistic, impious, abominable, and so forth.
M. de Pongerville’s health troubles me more than it should, and, besides, I shall be obliged to start out at ten o’clock day after to-morrow for the vexatious fatigues of New Year’s Day. Why is it a matter of course that everybody on this day should either go visiting or else feel it necessary to raise Cain? I have still other grievances, which would make you laugh, so I shall not tell them to you.
Do you know that if we continue to write to each other in this tone of friendly confidence, keeping to ourselves our secret thoughts, we have only one resource: that is, to be more careful of our style, then to publish some day our correspondence, as has been done for Voltaire and Balzac? You have a remarkable habit of considering as non-existent things of which you do not wish to speak, which certainly does great credit to your diplomacy. It seems to me that you grow more beautiful. This I thought impossible, for the boundless sea is not increased by the addition of a few drops of water. This proves that what you lose in one direction you gain in another. One improves in beauty when one is in health; one is in health when one has a wicked heart and a good digestion. Do you still eat little cakes?
Good-bye. I wish you a happy ending of the old year, and a happy opening of the new year. Your friends will wear away your cheeks on that day. When I have finished the writing which I mentioned a while ago I shall go to London for a two weeks’ holiday. This will be towards Easter.
XXXV
December, 1842.
You must know that I have been very ill since we met. I have had all the cats in the world in my throat, all the fires of hell in my chest, and I have spent several days in bed, meditating on the things of this world. I seemed to be on the slope of a mountain, whose summit I had barely crossed, with infinite fatigue and little pleasure. This declivity was very steep, and tiresome to descend, and it would have been convenient to come to an opening before reaching the base. The only source of consolation that I have been able to discover along this descent is a little sunshine afar off, a few months spent in Italy, in Spain, or in Greece, in oblivion of the entire world, the present, and, above all, the future.
All this was not enlivening, but some one had brought me four volumes of Dr. Strauss’ Life of Jesus. In Germany this is called an exegesis; it is a Greek word which they have discovered, and it signifies discussion or interpretation carried to an extremely fine point; but it is highly amusing. I have noticed that a subject proves entertaining in proportion as it is devoid of a profitable conclusion. Do you not agree with me, Señora caprichosa?