At this time last year I was without my chain, far from my worries, near you. What a looking back to the past! Then I did not think about being able to release myself, I was thoughtless about my debts. To-day I believe in my liberation; I have nearly reached it. Six months more of sacrifices and I am saved, I become myself, I am free! I shall go and eat with you the first bit of bread that belongs to me, that will not be steeped in tears and ink and toil.
I do not want to sadden you, I only want to tell you that if I am oppressed I feel as keenly the happiness there is in being able to tell of it. But you neglect me as if you were nothing to me; you write me seldom. Why will you not give me, to me alone, one day in the week for a letter. Suppose I were in Vienna and went to see you every Sunday, I, poor workman, you would give me that day. Well, I declare to you that if I am not in Vienna in the body I can be there in thought. Write me therefore on that day. I shall then have a letter every week when this rolling of letters is once established. I will answer you. You have not written me a single letter to which I have not instantly replied.
I offer you no special New Year's wishes. Those wishes I make daily for you and yours.
I shall send by diligence to-day the first Part of the "Études Philosophiques" so that you may not wait but may always keep the run of my work. You will easily guess that the Introduction has cost me as much as it has M. Félix Davin, whom I had to teach and recorrect until he had suitably expressed my thought.
I do not know if the "Revue de Paris" reaches Vienna. You will have seen in it a "Letter" of mine to the French authors of our century, in which I expose our ills. If you have not seen it, tell me, and I will send you a copy.
The end of "Séraphita" is a work of great difficulty. The Germans have sent translators to Paris to get it hot.
Adieu; do not leave me again without letters, or I shall think myself abandoned for society, which returns you nothing. To whom do you think I should repeat your judgment on M. Anatole de Th...? You always think that I go and come and belong in the world of idlers. That is an opinion rooted in your mind; and because you are going and coming yourself you want me to be your accomplice in that grand conspiracy of ennui.