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

and I will love you till my eyes close in death, as the Marquis de

Pescaire loved his wife, as Romeo loved Juliet, and faithfully.

Our life will be, for me at least, that “felicity untroubled”

which Dante made the very element of his Paradiso, — a poem far

superior to his Inferno. Strange, it is not myself that I doubt in

the long reverie through which, like you, I follow the windings of

a dreamed existence; it is you. Yes, dear, I feel within me the

power to love, and to love endlessly, — to march to the grave with

gentle slowness and a smiling eye, with my beloved on my arm, and

with never a cloud upon the sunshine of our souls. Yes, I dare to

face our mutual old age, to see ourselves with whitening heads,

like the venerable historian of Italy, inspired always with the

same affection but transformed in soul by our life’s seasons. Hear

me, I can no longer be your friend only. Though Chrysale, Geronte,

and Argante re-live, you say, in me, I am not yet old enough to

drink from the cup held to my lips by the sweet hands of a veiled

woman without a passionate desire to tear off the domino and the

mask and see the face. Either write me no more, or give me hope.

Let me see you, or let me go. Must I bid you adieu? Will you

permit me to sign myself,

Your Friend?

To Monsieur de Canalis, — What flattery! with what rapidity is the

grave Anselme transformed into a handsome Leander! To what must I

attribute such a change? to this black which I put upon this

white? to these ideas which are to the flowers of my soul what a

rose drawn in charcoal is to the roses in the garden? Or is it to

a recollection of the young girl whom you took for me, and who is

personally as like me as a waiting-woman is like her mistress?

Have we changed roles? Have I the sense? have you the fancy? But a

truce with jesting.

Your letter has made me know the elating pleasures of the soul;

the first that I have known outside of my family affections. What,

says a poet, are the ties of blood which are so strong in ordinary

minds, compared to those divinely forged within us by mysterious

sympathies? Let me thank you — no, we must not thank each other for

such things — but God bless you for the happiness you have given

me; be happy in the joy you have shed into my soul. You explain to

me some of the apparent injustices in social life. There is

something, I know not what, so dazzling, so virile in glory, that

it belongs only to man; God forbids us women to wear its halo, but

he makes love our portion, giving us the tenderness which soothes

the brow scorched by his lightnings. I have felt my mission, and

you have now confirmed it.

Sometimes, my friend, I rise in the morning in a state of

inexpressible sweetness; a sort of peace, tender and divine, gives

me an idea of heaven. My first thought is then like a benediction.

I call these mornings my little German wakings, in opposition to

my Southern sunsets, full of heroic deeds, battles, Roman fetes

and ardent poems. Well, after reading your letter, so full of

feverish impatience, I felt in my heart all the freshness of my

celestial wakings, when I love the air about me and all nature,

and fancy that I am destined to die for one I love. One of your

poems, “The Maiden’s Song,” paints these delicious moments, when

gaiety is tender, when aspiration is a need; it is one of my

favorites. Do you want me to put all my flatteries into one? — well

then, I think you worthy to be me !

Your letter, though short, enables me to read within you. Yes, I

have guessed your tumultuous struggles, your piqued curiosity,

your projects; but I do not yet know you well enough to satisfy

your wishes. Hear me, dear; the mystery in which I am shrouded

allows me to use that word, which lets you see to the bottom of my

heart. Hear me: if we once meet, adieu to our mutual

comprehension! Will you make a compact with me? Was the first

disadvantageous to you? But remember it won you my esteem, and it

is a great deal, my friend, to gain an admiration lined throughout

with esteem. Here is the compact: write me your life in a few

words; then tell me what you do in Paris, day by day, with no

reservations, and as if you were talking to some old friend. Well,

having done that, I will take a step myself — I will see you, I

promise you that. And it is a great deal.

This, dear, is no intrigue, no adventure; no gallantry, as you men

say, can come of it, I warn you frankly. It involves my life, and

more than that, — something that causes me remorse for the many

thoughts that fly to you in flocks — it involves my father’s and my

mother’s life. I adore them, and my choice must please them; they

must find a son in you.

Tell me, to what extent can the superb spirits of your kind, to

whom God has given the wings of his angels, without always adding

their amiability, — how far can they bend under a family yoke, and

put up with its little miseries? That is a text I have meditated

upon. Ah! though I said to my heart before I came to you, Forward!

Onward! it did not tremble and palpitate any the less on the way;

and I did not conceal from myself the stoniness of the path nor

the Alpine difficulties I had to encounter. I thought of all in my

long, long meditations. Do I not know that eminent men like you

have known the love they have inspired quite as well as that which

they themselves have felt; that they have had many romances in

their lives, — you particularly, who send forth those airy visions

of your soul that women rush to buy? Yet still I cried to myself,

“Onward!” because I have studied, more than you give me credit

for, the geography of the great summits of humanity, which you

tell me are so cold. Did you not say that Goethe and Byron were

the colossi of egoism and poetry? Ah, my friend, there you shared

a mistake into which superficial minds are apt to fall; but in you

perhaps it came from generosity, false modesty, or the desire to

escape from me. Vulgar minds may mistake the effect of toil for

the development of personal character, but you must not. Neither

Lord Byron, nor Goethe, nor Walter Scott, nor Cuvier, nor any

inventor, belongs to himself, he is the slave of his idea. And

this mysterious power is more jealous than a woman; it sucks their

blood, it makes them live, it makes them die for its sake. The

visible developments of their hidden existence do seem, in their

results, like egotism; but who shall dare to say that the man who

has abnegated self to give pleasure, instruction, or grandeur to

his epoch, is an egoist? Is a mother selfish when she immolates

all things to her child? Well, the detractors of genius do not

perceive its fecund maternity, that is all. The life of a poet is

so perpetual a sacrifice that he needs a gigantic organization to

bear even the ordinary pleasures of life. Therefore, into what

sorrows may he not fall when, like Moliere, he wishes to live the

life of feeling in its most poignant crises; to me, remembering

his personal life, Moliere’s comedy is horrible.

The generosity of genius seems to me half divine; and I place you

in this noble family of alleged egoists. Ah! if I had found

self-interest, ambition, a seared nature where I now can see my

best loved flowers of the soul, you know not what long anguish I

should have had to bear. I met with disappointment before I was