Forgive the want of order in my letter, but I will tell you the events that have happened to me as they come into my memory.
In the first place, I have said adieu to that mole-hill of Gay, Émile de Girardin and Company. I seized the first opportunity, and it was so favorable that I broke off, point-blank. A disagreeable affair came near following; but my susceptibility as man of the pen was calmed by a college friend, ex-captain in the ex-Royal Guard, who advised me. It all ended with a piquant speech replying to a jest.
Another thing I must tell you is that I have recently quarrelled also with the Fitz-James. And here I am, as much alone as the woman most ambitious of love could desire, if any woman could wish for a man whom excessive work is withering more and more. It is two months to-day that I have been working eighteen hours a day.
The "Médecin de campagne" will be completely sold off in a few days. I am in all the fuss and worries of getting out a new edition of that book, which I want to sell at thirty sous, in order to popularize it.
From March 30, the day on which I began to write to you, until this evening, I have been lying on my pallet unable to write, read, or work, or do anything at all. A prostration of all my forces made me very anxious; but to-day I am quite well, and I am going for a week to the Pavilion in the forest of Fontainebleau. I have ordered all my letters to be kept in Paris. I want change of air, and to work at one thing only; for I have just suffered very much, but, thank God, it is all over. I resume my letter.
I invited your cousin Bernard ... to dinner, with Zaluski, and Mickiewicz, your dearest poet, whose face pleased me much. Bernard is very handsome and was very witty.
I entreat you, madame, to send me word, by return of post, if you will still be in Florence May 10th, how much time you stay in Rome, when you arrive, and when you will leave; because when my third Part is done I shall have twenty days to myself. I want to use them in travelling and doing nothing, and I shall accompany Auguste Borget to Florence. We shall leave May 1st and it takes only eight days from Paris to Florence.
Do not blame me too much for the unpunctuality of my correspondence. In the extreme desire for LIBERTY which possesses me, I don't consult human forces, I work exorbitantly. I have at this moment in press: two volumes of my third Part of the "Études de Mœurs," two volumes of "Les Chouans," and the third _dizain_; then, in a week from now, two volumes for Gosselin. It is enough to terrify one. But there are two magic words which make me able to do all: _liberty_ on the 1st of September; _Vienna_ on that day; and I shall not regret my nights or my tortures, for pen-receipts will tally with expenses.