STENDHAL (1783-1842). L.A., 3 v[endemiary] XIII (September 2 - Lot 503

STENDHAL (1783-1842). L.A., 3 v[endemiary] XIII (September 25, 1804), to his sister Pauline Beyle; 4pages in-4 in black morocco-backed cardboard folder. Beautiful, long, intimate letter to his beloved sister. He has "no greater pleasure than to read and re-read your letters"... After mentioning the health of Mme de N. [Nardon, an alias for his relative by marriage Mme Rebuffel, mother of their young cousin Adèle], who was thought to be lost and who may recover, Stendhal recounts his aborted plan to spend a month with his family in Grenoble "or, to put it better, in Claix. I'm delighted with my idea, I go home, I write to my dad, I write to you, I make a bundle of my 2 letters and I give it to the doorman, to take to the Post Office. I was so happy about the pleasure I would have to see you and the rest of the family, that I was still in Paris at 3 a.m., I take a cabriolet, I arrive in Auteuil at 6 a.m. for dinner, there was a big crowd, I can only tell A. [Adèle] my project at 7 a.m.. Then she goes to tell her mother: "You don't know? Mr Beyle leaves us and goes back to Gr. [Grenoble] At this point the mother cries out, I approach her, tell her the whole story in detail, she doesn't want to give in [...] She says I won't come back for the winter, that it's a done deal, that they'll never let me come back, that I'm too much of a pushover to have the courage to leave. Fortunately, the doorman still had them, and the "dear journey that would have been delicious for me" was cancelled. "That's how the lack of freedom paralyzes everything. I would have spent 6 delightful weeks in Claix; instead I'm running the fields here. These last few days I went to the Montmorency forest. This countryside is charming, but I would have liked our Claix better". He recommends that nothing be said about this aborted trip. He then worries about the silence of his father, who no longer writes to him, and from whom he will have to "ask for something to wear this winter", thus earning the reproach "that I only write to him as to a steward. But that's because I don't know what to say to someone with whom decency prevents me from joking and who says nothing to me. I'm really saddened by this state of affairs"... He fears "that it's these damned money matters that have put me in a bad position with him. But you have to live. [...] I'm riddled with debt. But to have debts and to be at loggerheads is too much by half, I've only made them through the boredom of asking him at every moment, and nothing seems more ridiculous to an inhabitant of Gr. than the expenses of a young man in Paris"... He would "like to become a Banker, I don't mention it because he would never give me funds, to distract myself a little I wanted to make you a banker", or at least marry her: "if I were you I would accept vitte. It's a sad thing to depend all your life". He urges Pauline to write to him, "and try to laugh a little, it's the only thing that relieves, you have to take your side, you have to be, in this world, Heraclitus, or Democritus, and, frankly, Democritus is better". He adds that he has been leading "for 1 month the most cheerful life in the world, we laugh at everything, try to do the same, if you can't, think about hom. That's the only good science, and you'll see how much it will serve you in the world"... He hopes that she will be able to read it, despite "a conspiracy between my quill, my penknife, my paper and my ink"... Correspondance générale, Champion, 1997, t. I, n°101.