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

XII. MLLE. DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE L’ESTORADE February.

XIII. MME. DE L’ESTORADE TO MLLE. DE CHAULIEU LA CRAMPADE, February.

XIV. THE DUC DE SORIA TO THE BARON DE MACUMER MADRID.

XV. LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE L’ESTORADE March.

XVI. THE SAME TO THE SAME March.

XVII. THE SAME TO THE SAME April 2nd.

XVIII. MME. DE L’ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU April.

XIX. LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE L’ESTORADE

XX. RENEE DE L’ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU May.

XXI. LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE L’ESTORADE June.

XXII. LOUISE TO FELIPE

XXIII. FELIPE TO LOUISE

XXIV. LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE L’ESTORADE October.

XXV. RENEE DE L’ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU

XXVI. LOUISE DE MACUMER TO RENEE DE L’ESTORADE March.

XXVII. THE SAME TO THE SAME October.

XXVIII. RENEE DE L’ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE MACUMER December.

XXIX. M. DE L’ESTORADE TO THE BARONNE DE MACUMER December 1825.

XXX. LOUISE DE MACUMER TO RENEE DE L’ESTORADE January 1826.

XXXI. RENEE DE L’ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE MACUMER

XXXII. MME. DE MACUMER TO MME. DE L’ESTORADE March 1826.

XXXIII. MME. DE L’ESTORADE TO MME. DE MACUMER

XXXIV. MME. DE MACUMER TO THE VICOMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE April 1826.

XXXV. THE SAME TO THE SAME MARSEILLES, July.

XXXVI. THE VICOMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE TO THE BARONNE DE MACUMER

XXXVII. THE BARONNE DE MACUMER TO THE VICOMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE Genoa.

XXXVIII. THE VICOMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE TO THE BARONNE DE MACUMER

XXXIX. THE BARONNE DE MACUMER TO THE VICOMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE

XL. THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE TO THE BARONNE DE MACUMER January 1827.

XLI. THE BARONNE DE MACUMER TO THE VICOMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE Paris.

XLII. RENEE TO LOUISE

XLIII. MME. DE MACUMER TO THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE

XLIV. THE SAME TO THE SAME Paris, 1829.

XLV. RENEE TO LOUISE

XLVI. MME. DE MACUMER TO THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE 1829.

XLVII. RENEE TO LOUISE 1829.

SECOND PART

XLVIII. THE BARONNE DE MACUMER TO THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE October 15,

XLIX. MARIE GASTON TO DANIEL D’ARTHEZ October 1833.

L. MME. DE L’ESTORADE TO MME. DE MACUMER

LI. THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE TO MME. MARIE GASTON 1835.

LII. MME. GASTON TO MME. DE L’ESTORADE The Chalet.

LIII. MME. DE L’ESTORADE TO MME. GASTON

LIV. MME. GASTON TO THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE May 20th.

LV. THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE TO MME. GASTON July 16th.

LVI. MME. GASTON TO THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE

LVII. THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE TO THE COMTE DE L’ESTORADE THE CHALET

DEDICATION

To George Sand

Your name, dear George, while casting a reflected radiance on my book, can gain no new glory from this page. And yet it is neither self-interest nor diffidence which has led me to place it there, but only the wish that it should bear witness to the solid friendship between us, which has survived our wanderings and separations, and triumphed over the busy malice of the world. This feeling is hardly likely now to change. The goodly company of friendly names, which will remain attached to my works, forms an element of pleasure in the midst of the vexation caused by their increasing number. Each fresh book, in fact, gives rise to fresh annoyance, were it only in the reproaches aimed at my too prolific pen, as though it could rival in fertility the world from which I draw my models! Would it not be a fine thing, George, if the future antiquarian of dead literatures were to find in this company none but great names and generous hearts, friends bound by pure and holy ties, the illustrious figures of the century? May I not justly pride myself on this assured possession, rather than on a popularity necessarily unstable? For him who knows you well, it is happiness to be able to sign himself, as I do here,

Your friend,

DE BALZAC.

PARIS, June 1840.

FIRST PART

I. LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE MAUCOMBE. PARIS, September.

Sweetheart, I too am free! And I am the first too, unless you have written to Blois, at our sweet tryst of letter-writing.

Raise those great black eyes of yours, fixed on my opening sentence, and keep this excitement for the letter which shall tell you of my first love. By the way, why always “first?” Is there, I wonder, a second love?

Don’t go running on like this, you will say, but tell me rather how you made your escape from the convent where you were to take your vows. Well, dear, I don’t know about the Carmelites, but the miracle of my own deliverance was, I can assure you, most humdrum. The cries of an alarmed conscience triumphed over the dictates of a stern policy — there’s the whole mystery. The sombre melancholy which seized me after you left hastened the happy climax, my aunt did not want to see me die of a decline, and my mother, whose one unfailing cure for my malady was a novitiate, gave way before her.

So I am in Paris, thanks to you, my love! Dear Renee, could you have seen me the day I found myself parted from you, well might you have gloried in the deep impression you had made on so youthful a bosom. We had lived so constantly together, sharing our dreams and letting our fancy roam together, that I verily believe our souls had become welded together, like those two Hungarian girls, whose death we heard about from M. Beauvisage — poor misnamed being! Never surely was man better cut out by nature for the post of convent physician!

Tell me, did you not droop and sicken with your darling?

In my gloomy depression, I could do nothing but count over the ties which bind us. But it seemed as though distance had loosened them; I wearied of life, like a turtle-dove widowed of her mate. Death smiled sweetly on me, and I was proceeding quietly to die. To be at Blois, at the Carmelites, consumed by dread of having to take my vows there, a Mlle. de la Valliere, but without her prelude, and without my Renee! How could I not be sick — sick unto death?

How different it used to be! That monotonous existence, where every hour brings its duty, its prayer, its task, with such desperate regularity that you can tell what a Carmelite sister is doing in any place, at any hour of the night or day; that deadly dull routine, which crushes out all interest in one’s surroundings, had become for us two a world of life and movement. Imagination had thrown open her fairy realms, and in these our spirits ranged at will, each in turn serving as magic steed to the other, the more alert quickening the drowsy; the world from which our bodies were shut out became the playground of our fancy, which reveled there in frolicsome adventure. The very Lives of the Saints helped us to understand what was so carefully left unsaid! But the day when I was reft of your sweet company, I became a true Carmelite, such as they appeared to us, a modern Danaid, who, instead of trying to fill a bottomless barrel, draws every day, from Heaven knows what deep, an empty pitcher, thinking to find it full.

My aunt knew nothing of this inner life. How could she, who has made a paradise for herself within the two acres of her convent, understand my revolt against life? A religious life, if embraced by girls of our age, demands either an extreme simplicity of soul, such as we, sweetheart, do not possess, or else an ardor for self-sacrifice like that which makes my aunt so noble a character. But she sacrificed herself for a brother to whom she was devoted; to do the same for an unknown person or an idea is surely more than can be asked of mortals.

For the last fortnight I have been gulping down so many reckless words, burying so many reflections in my bosom, and accumulating such a store of things to tell, fit for your ear alone, that I should certainly have been suffocated but for the resource of letter-writing as a sorry substitute for our beloved talks. How hungry one’s heart gets! I am beginning my journal this morning, and I picture to myself that yours is already started, and that, in a few days, I shall be at home in your beautiful Gemenos valley, which I know only through your descriptions, just as you will live that Paris life, revealed to you hitherto only in our dreams.