_Mon Dieu!_ yes, the advice you give is impossible to follow. With the certainty of risk, I risk myself. There are no thanks worthy of the kindness you show in speaking to me so frankly of what I do; and you will not know, except in course of years, how grateful I am for this frankness. Do not be afraid; go on, blaming boldly.
You tell me to go to Gérard's; have I the time? Time melts in my fingers. To bring to an end my crushing liabilities I have undertaken a tragedy, in prose, called, "Don Philippe et Don Carlos." It is the old subject of Don Carlos already treated by Schiller. All must march abreast; the little literature of copper coins, the puerilities, the studies of manners and morals, and the great thoughts that are not understood,--"Louis Lambert," "Séraphita," "César Birotteau," etc.
My life is always the same. I rise to work, I sleep little. Sometimes I let myself go to gentle reveries. Since I last wrote to you, I have had but one recreation; I heard Beethoven's symphony in C minor at the Conservatoire. Ah! how I regretted you. I was alone in a stall--I alone! It was suffering without expression. There exists in me a need of expansion which toil beguiles, but which the first emotion brings to the surface like a gush of tears. Yes, I am alone, deplorably alone. To find happiness I need the evening hour, silence, not work, but solitude and my inmost thoughts.
Write me quickly where I shall send you "Les Chouans," which will appear on the 15th, five days hence. Florence will certainly see me; you have been happy there. I shall go and pick up your thoughts in seeing those beautiful places, those noble works. I am only jealous of the illustrious dead: Beethoven, Michel Angelo, Raffaelle, Poussin, Milton,--all that was ever grand, noble, and solitary stirs me.
All is not said about me yet; I am only at the little details of a great work. When a man has undertaken what I have to do,--ah! madame, permit me to confide this to your heart,--it is impossible to fall into the petty and base intrigues of this world; sentiments ought to be as great as the works desire to be great. My ambition is even stronger on the side of sentiments than it is for a fame which, after all, shines only upon graves! So, I live alone, more alone than ever; nothing drags me from my contemplations: to love and to think, to act and to meditate. To develop all one's strength on two great things,--work and the richest emotions of the soul,--what can one ask more than that? A drop of friendship, a little sunshine; to press a hand by which we can support ourselves.