I regretted you much. I should have liked to see you in Paris this winter. The Exhibition, and the Italian opera have offered an unheard-of combination: Lablache, Tamburini, Rubini. Then Beethoven, executed at the Conservatoire as he is nowhere else. Besides which, Paris is being cleaned and completed, thanks to Louis-Philippe's trowel. But there's a hundred years' work still to do at the Louvre. When I pass along the quay of the Tuileries, my artist-heart bleeds to see the stones placed by Catherine de' Medici, corroded by the sun before being carved--and this for three hundred years.
Adieu! it is two in the morning. Here is an hour and a half stolen from "Séraphita." She groans, she calls; I must finish her, for the "Revue de Paris" groans too; it has advanced me nineteen hundred francs, and "Séraphita" must settle the account.
Adieu! imagine how I think of you in finishing the work that is yours. It is time it appeared. Literature here has decided that I shall never finish that work; they say it is impossible.
Graceful things to Anna, my respects to Mademoiselle Séverine, my regards to M. Hanski; and to you nothing, for all is yours. It would be giving you a bit of your own property to send you anything, and I have, in this low world, too few friendships to diminish the truest of them all.
MADAME,--I greeted M. le Prince de Schonberg as I never did any one, for he came from you. "Séraphita" exacts more work. I had hoped to send you the manuscript by the prince, but it cannot be finished before my fête-day, May 16, and the prince starts to-day or to-morrow. I cannot even profit by his journey to write you in detail about my life and occupations. I have perhaps presumed too far upon my strength in supposing I could do so many things in so little time. I shall be lucky indeed if I can get off and divert myself in September. But nothing shall hinder me when my obligations have been met.
When I have finished with Madame Bêchet and Werdet, yes, then I shall have six months before me. On that day I shall owe nothing to any one, for the approaching reissue of the "Études de Mœurs" enlarged by what will be added to them, will release me of all, even my debt to my mother. Wealth will come both for her and for me, in 1837, when my works will be issued as the "Études Sociales." There is my future sketched out. There is my hope and my toil.