And, finally, it is not _to her_ who wants her daily ration of love, and who, though voluptuous as a thousand cats, is neither graceful nor womanly. It is to you, my good sister, the former companion of my miseries and tears, that I wish to tell my joy, that it may die in the depths of your memory. Alas, I can't play the fop with any one, unless [apropos of] Madame de Castries, whom celebrity does not frighten. I do not wish to cause the slightest harm by my indiscretions. Therefore, burn my letter.
As it will be long before I see you,--for I shall go, no doubt, to Normandy and Angoulême, and return to _see her_ at Geneva,--I had to write you this line to tell you I am happy at last. I am [joyous] as a child.
_Mon Dieu!_ how beautiful the Val de Travers is, how ravishing the lake of Bienne! It was there, as you may imagine, that we sent the husband to attend to the breakfast; but we were in sight, and then, in the shadow of a tall oak, the first furtive kiss of love was given. Then, as our husband is approaching the sixties, I swore to wait, and _she_ to keep her hand, her heart for me.
Isn't it a pretty thing to have torn a husband--who looks to me like a tower--from the Ukraine, to come eighteen hundred miles to meet a lover who has come only four hundred, the monster![1]
I'm joking; but knowing my affairs and my occupation here, my four hundred count as much as the eighteen hundred of my _fiancée_. She is really very well. She intends to be seriously ill at Geneva, which require [will require the care of] M. Dupuytren to soften the Russian ambassador and obtain a permit to come to Paris, for which she longs; where there is, for a woman, liberty on the mountain. However, I've enchanted the husband; and I shall try next year to get three months to myself. I shall go and see the Ukraine, and we have promised ourselves a magnificent and splendid journey in the Crimea; which is, you know, a land where tourists do not go, a thousand times more beautiful than Switzerland or Italy. It is the Italy of Asia.
But what labor between now and then! Pay our debts! Increase our reputation!
Yesterday I went to Gérard's. Three German families--one Prussian, one from Frankfort, one from Vienna--were officially presented to me. They came faithfully to Gérard's for a month past to see me and tell me that nothing was talked of but me in their country [_chez eux_]; that amazing fame began for me on the frontier of France, and that I had only to persevere for a year or two to be at the head of literary Europe, and replace Byron, Walter Scott, Goethe, Hoffmann!