Friday [12 December 1845]
For me, my dearest love, there are twenty three sacred towns. They are these: Neuchâtel, Geneva, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Dresden, Cannstadt, Karlsruhe, Strasbourg, Passy, Fontainebleau, Orléans, Bourges, Tours, Blois, Paris, Rotterdam, the Hague, Antwerp, Brussels, Baden, Lyon, Toulon, Naples. I do not know what they mean to you but for me, when one of these names enters my thoughts, it is as if a Chopin were touching a piano key; the hammer awakens sounds which reverberate through my soul, and a complete poem takes shape.Neuchâtel is like a white lily, pure, filled with pervasive scents; youth, freshness, excitement, hope, fleetingly perceived happiness. Geneva is the passion of dreams, the kind of dream where life is flashed before one, offered for… oh! my God, I would have died of ecstasy had I been able to kiss your hand! And what an evening! What youth! I cannot think how you could fail to have kept that sodden piece of silk as I have kept the cloth with which I brushed away the fluff from a certain place on the floor which will be before my eyes when I die!... Geneva is our zenith; our golden harvest! Vienna is mourning in the midst of joy. I came, certain of having nothing but sadness before me; Vienna, my purest act of devotion. And St. Petersburg? The blue salon of la Néva! the first initiation of my sweetheart, the first step in her education. What a union: it lasted for two months without a false note, unless one is to count that argument over the hat and the one about the expense of engaging a cook. The first moments of our unrestrained intercourse; the dawn of the marriage of our souls and the apprehensions of my precious pet fill these memories with delight, for I know that she sees how unfair to her poor Noré her misconceptions were. Dresden is hunger and thirst, misery in the midst of happiness, a poor man casting himself on the richest of all feasts. Karlsruhe, the alms given to a pauper. But Strasbourg, oh! we are sure of love by now, it has the splendour of Louis XIV; it holds the certain promise of mutual happiness. And Passy, Fontainebleau? Here is the genious of Beethoven; the sublime! Orléans, Bourges, Tours and Blois are concertos, well-loved symphonies, each of a more or less sunny character but tinged with sombre notes from my sweetheart’s suffering. Paris, Rotterdam, the Hague, Antwerp are the last blooms of autumn. But Brussels is worthy of Cannstadt and of us. It is the triumph of two uniquely loving spirits. I think of it often and I feel us to be exhaustible. Baden was the culmination; harmony for all eternity. There was there all the passion of Geneva, of that evening when I saw you again; and the combined desires of two mutually adoring hearts. But Lyon! oh! Lyon, showed me my love transcended by a charm, a tenderness, a perfect quality of caresses and a loving gentleness which makes Lyon for me one of those shibboleths special in a man’s life, and which, when spoken, are like the holy word whith which a man may open the path to heaven! Toulon is the daughter of Lyon, while all these riches were crowned by the delights of Naples, worthy of heaven, nature and these two sweethearts.
Such then are my flights of fancy when, weary of writing, I think of the rare perfection of her who was at birth so aptly named Eve, for she is unique on earth; there cannot be another so angelic, no other woman who could embody more gentleness, more ingenuity, more love, more inspiration in her caresses. Oh! all memories of Madame de B. are distant indeed! True love, the love of a young and beautiful woman, endowed with such charms, has nothing to fear. So, dearest heart, you are loved and you darling little treasure is kissed a hundred times a day in my thoughts. Guard it well. A thousand embraces to remind us of our twenty three towns.
Honoré de Balzac to Madame Hanska
uit: Love letters : an anthology - Antonia Fraser (red.)
____
