Array The griffin classics - The Collected Works of Honore de Balzac

which is both educated and chaste, is one of those celestial

flowers whose color and fragrance console for every grief, for

every wound, for every betrayal which makes up the life of a

literary man; and I thank you with an impulse equal to your own.

But after this poetical exchange of my griefs for the pearls of

your charity, what next? what do you expect? I have neither the

genius nor the splendid position of Lord Byron; above all, I have

not the halo of his fictitious damnation and his false social

woes. But what could you have hoped from him in like

circumstances? His friendship? Well, he who ought to have felt

only pride was eaten up by vanity of every kind, — sickly,

irritable vanity which discouraged friendship. I, a thousand-fold

more insignificant than he, may I not have discordances of

character, and make friendship a burden heavy indeed to bear? In

exchange for your reveries, what will you gain? The

dissatisfaction of a life which will not be wholly yours. The

compact is madness. Let me tell you why. In the first place, your

projected poem is a plagiarism. A young German girl, who was not,

like you, semi-German, but altogether so, adored Goethe with the

rash intoxication of girlhood. She made him her friend, her

religion, her god, knowing at the same time that he was married.

Madame Goethe, a worthy German woman, lent herself to this worship

with a sly good-nature which did not cure Bettina. But what was

the end of it all? The young ecstatic married a man who was

younger and handsomer than Goethe. Now, between ourselves, let us

admit that a young girl who should make herself the handmaid of a

man of genius, his equal through comprehension, and should piously

worship him till death, like one of those divine figures sketched

by the masters on the shutters of their mystic shrines, and who,

when Germany lost him, should have retired to some solitude away

from men, like the friend of Lord Bolingbroke, — let us admit, I

say, that the young girl would have lived forever, inlaid in the

glory of the poet as Mary Magdalene in the cross and triumph of

our Lord. If that is sublime, what say you to the reverse of the

picture? As I am neither Goethe nor Lord Byron, the colossi of

poetry and egotism, but simply the author of a few esteemed

verses, I cannot expect the honors of a cult. Neither am I

disposed to be a martyr. I have ambition, and I have a heart; I am

still young and I have my career to make. See me for what I am.

The bounty of the king and the protection of his ministers give me

sufficient means of living. I have the outward bearing of a very

ordinary man. I go to the soirees in Paris like any other

empty-headed fop; and if I drive, the wheels of my carriage do not

roll on the solid ground, absolutely indispensable in these days,

of property invested in the funds. But if I am not rich, neither do

I have the reliefs and consolations of life in a garret, the toil

uncomprehended, the fame in penury, which belong to men who are

worth far more than I, — D’Arthez, for instance.

Ah! what prosaic conclusions will your young enthusiasm find to

these enchanting visions. Let us stop here. If I have had the

happiness of seeming to you a terrestrial paragon, you have been

to me a thing of light and a beacon, like those stars that shine

for a moment and disappear. May nothing ever tarnish this episode

of our lives. Were we to continue it I might love you; I might

conceive one of those mad passions which rend all obstacles, which

light fires in the heart whose violence is greater than their

duration. And suppose I succeeded in pleasing you? we should end

our tale in the common vulgar way, — marriage, a household,

children, Belise and Henriette Chrysale together! — could it be?

Therefore, adieu.

CHAPTER X. THE MARRIAGE OF SOULS

To Monsieur de Canalis:

My Friend, — Your letter gives me as much pain as pleasure. But

perhaps some day we shall find nothing but pleasure in writing to

each other. Understand me thoroughly. The soul speaks to God and

asks him for many things; he is mute. I seek to obtain in you the

answers that God does not make to me. Cannot the friendship of

Mademoiselle de Gournay and Montaigne be revived in us? Do you not

remember the household of Sismonde de Sismondi in Geneva? The most

lovely home ever known, as I have been told; something like that

of the Marquis de Pescaire and his wife, — happy to old age. Ah!

friend, is it impossible that two hearts, two harps, should exist

as in a symphony, answering each other from a distance, vibrating

with delicious melody in unison? Man alone of all creation is in

himself the harp, the musician, and the listener. Do you think to

find me uneasy and jealous like ordinary women? I know that you go

into the world and meet the handsomest and the wittiest women in

Paris. May I not suppose that some one of those mermaids has

deigned to clasp you in her cold and scaly arms, and that she has

inspired the answer whose prosaic opinions sadden me? There is

something in life more beautiful than the garlands of Parisian

coquetry; there grows a flower far up those Alpine peaks called

men of genius, the glory of humanity, which they fertilize with

the dews their lofty heads draw from the skies. I seek to

cultivate that flower and make it bloom; for its wild yet gentle

fragrance can never fail, — it is eternal.

Do me the honor to believe that there is nothing low or

commonplace in me. Were I Bettina, for I know to whom you allude,

I should never have become Madame von Arnim; and had I been one of

Lord Byron’s many loves, I should be at this moment in a cloister.

You have touched me to the quick. You do not know me, but you

shall know me. I feel within me something that is sublime, of

which I dare speak without vanity. God has put into my soul the

roots of that Alpine flower born on the summits of which I speak,

and I cannot plant it in an earthen pot upon my window-sill and

see it die. No, that glorious flower-cup, single in its beauty,

intoxicating in its fragrance, shall not be dragged through the

vulgarities of life! it is yours — yours, before any eye has

blighted it, yours forever! Yes, my poet, to you belong my

thoughts, — all, those that are secret, those that are gayest; my

heart is yours without reserve and with its infinite affection. If

you should personally not please me, I shall never marry. I can

live in the life of the heart, I can exist on your mind, your

sentiments; they please me, and I will always be what I am, your

friend. Yours is a noble moral nature; I have recognized it, I

have appreciated it, and that suffices me. In that is all my

future. Do not laugh at a young and pretty handmaiden who shrinks

not from the thought of being some day the old companion of a

poet, — a sort of mother perhaps, or a housekeeper; the guide of

his judgment and a source of his wealth. This handmaiden — so

devoted, so precious to the lives of such as you — is Friendship,

pure, disinterested friendship, to whom you will tell all, who

listens and sometimes shakes her head; who knits by the light of

the lamp and waits to be present when the poet returns home soaked

with rain, or vexed in mind. Such shall be my destiny if I do not

find that of a happy wife attached forever to her husband; I smile