December, 1842.

It is some time since I have felt like writing to you. My nights are passed writing prose for posterity to read. This is because I have been dissatisfied both with you and with myself, which is most extraordinary. I find myself to-day in a more indulgent frame of mind. This evening I heard Madame Persiani, which has reconciled me with human nature. If I were King Saul I should put her in the place of David.

I am told that M. de Pongerville, the Academician, is going to die. This grieves me, because I shall not take his place, and I should prefer that he wait until my time were come. This Pongerville made a metrical translation of a Latin poet named Lucretius, who died at the age of forty-three from the effect of a love-potion which he took to make himself beloved or lovable. But previous to this he had composed a long poem on The Nature of Things, a poem atheistic, impious, abominable, and so forth.

M. de Pongerville’s health troubles me more than it should, and, besides, I shall be obliged to start out at ten o’clock day after to-morrow for the vexatious fatigues of New Year’s Day. Why is it a matter of course that everybody on this day should either go visiting or else feel it necessary to raise Cain? I have still other grievances, which would make you laugh, so I shall not tell them to you.

Do you know that if we continue to write to each other in this tone of friendly confidence, keeping to ourselves our secret thoughts, we have only one resource: that is, to be more careful of our style, then to publish some day our correspondence, as has been done for Voltaire and Balzac? You have a remarkable habit of considering as non-existent things of which you do not wish to speak, which certainly does great credit to your diplomacy. It seems to me that you grow more beautiful. This I thought impossible, for the boundless sea is not increased by the addition of a few drops of water. This proves that what you lose in one direction you gain in another. One improves in beauty when one is in health; one is in health when one has a wicked heart and a good digestion. Do you still eat little cakes?

Good-bye. I wish you a happy ending of the old year, and a happy opening of the new year. Your friends will wear away your cheeks on that day. When I have finished the writing which I mentioned a while ago I shall go to London for a two weeks’ holiday. This will be towards Easter.