Do you think me very silly since you believe I am going to blame you
for your primer? I have enough philosophic spirit to know that such
a thing is very serious work.

Method is the highest thing in criticism, since it gives the means
of creating.



CCXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 28 January, 1872

Your preface is splendid and the book [Footnote: Dernieres Chansons,
by Louis Bouilhet.] is divine! Mercy! I have made a line of poetry
without realizing it, God forgive me. Yes, you are right, he was not
second rank, and ranks are not given by decree, above all in an age
when criticism undoes everything and does nothing. All your heart is
in this simple and discreet tale of his life. I see very well now,
why he died so young; he died from having lived too extensively in
the mind. I beg of you not to absorb yourself so much in literature
and learning. Change your home, move about, have mistresses or
wives, whichever you like, and during these phases, must change the
end that one lights.  At my advanced age I throw myself into
torrents of far niente; the most infantile amusements, the silliest,
are enough for me and I return more lucid from my attacks of
imbecility.

It was a great loss to art, that premature death. In ten years there
will not be one single poet. Your preface is beautiful and well
done. Some pages are models, and it is very true that the bourgeois
will read that and find nothing remarkable in it. Ah! if one did not
have the little sanctuary, the interior little shrine, where,
without saying anything to anyone, one takes refuge to contemplate
and to dream the beautiful and the true, one would have to say:
"What is the use?"

I embrace you warmly.

Your old troubadour.



CCXIV. TO GEORGE SAND

Dear good master,

Can you, for le Temps, write on Dernieres Chansons? It would oblige
me greatly. Now you have it.

I was ill all last week. My throat was in a frightful state. But I
have slept a great deal and I am again afloat. I have begun anew my
reading for Saint-Antoine.

It seems to me that Dernieres Chansons could lend itself to a
beautiful article, to a funeral oration on poetry. Poetry will not
perish, but its eclipse will be long and we are entering into the
shades.

Consider if you have a mind for it and answer by a line.



CCXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris
Nohant, 17 February

My troubadour, I am thinking of what you asked me to do and I will
do it; but this week I must rest. I played the fool too much at the
carnival with my grandchildren and my great-nephews.

I embrace you for myself and for all my brood.

G. Sand



CCXVI. TO GEORGE SAND

What a long time it is since I have written to you, dear master. I
have so many things to say to you that I don't know where to begin.
Oh! how horrid it is to live so separated when we love each other.

Have you given Paris an eternal adieu? Am I never to see you again
there? Are you coming to Croisset this summer to hear Saint-Antoine?

As for me, I can not go to Nohant, because my time, considering my
straitened purse, is all counted; but I have still I a full month of
readings and researches in Paris. After that I am going away with my
mother: we are in search of a companion for her. It is not easy to
find one. Then, towards Easter I shall be back at Croisset, and
shall start to work again at the manuscript. I am beginning to want
to write.

Just now, I am reading in the evening, Kant's Critique de la raison
pure, translated by Barni, and I am freshening up my Spinoza. During
the day I amuse myself by looking over bestiaries of the middle
ages; looking up in the "authorities" all the most baroque animals.
I am in the midst of fantastic monsters.

When I have almost exhausted the material I shall go to the Museum
to muse before real monsters, and then the researches for the good
Saint-Antoine will be finished.

In your letter before the last one you showed anxiety about my
health; reassure yourself! I have never been more convinced that it
was robust. The life that I have led this winter was enough to kill
three rhinoceroses, but nevertheless I am well. The scabbard must be
solid, for the blade is well sharpened; but everything is converted
into sadness! Any action whatever disgusts me with life! I have
followed your counsels, I have sought distractions! But that amuses
me very little. Decidedly nothing but sacrosanct literature
interests me.

My preface to the Dernieres Chansons has aroused in Madame Colet a
pindaric fury. I have received an anonymous letter from her, in
verse, in which she represents me as a charlatan who beats the drum
on the tomb of his friend, a vulgar wretch who debases himself
before criticism, after having "flattered Caesar"! "Sad example of
the passions," as Prudhomme would say.

A propos of Caesar, I can not believe, no matter what they say, in
his near return. In spite of my pessimism, we have not come to that!
However, if one consulted the God called Universal Suffrage, who
knows?...Ah! we are very low, very low!

I saw Ruy Blas badly played except for Sarah. Melingue is a sleep-
walking drain-man, and the others are as tiresome. As Victor Hugo
had complained in a friendly way that I had not paid him a call, I
thought I ought to do so and I found him ...charming! I repeat the
word, not at all "the great man," not at all a pontiff! This
discovery greatly surprised me and did me worlds of good. For I have
the bump of veneration and I like to love what I admire. That is a
personal allusion to you, dear, kind master.

I have met Madame Viardot whom I found a very curious temperament.
It was Tourgueneff who took me to her house.



CCXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, from the 28 to the 29 February 1872. Night of Wednesday to
Thursday, three o'clock in the morning.

Ah! my dear old friend, what a dreadful twelve days I have spent!
Maurice has been very ill. Continually these terrible sore throats,
which in the beginning seem nothing, but which are complicated with
abscesses and tend to become membranous. He has not been in danger,
but always IN DANGER OF DANGER, and he has had cruel suffering, loss
of voice, he could not swallow; every anguish attached to the
violent sore throat that you know well, since you have just had one.
With him, this trouble continually tends to get worse, and his
mucous membrane has been so often the seat of the same illness that
it lacks energy to react. With that, little or no fever, almost
always on his feet, and the moral depression of a man used to
continual exercise of body and mind, whom the mind and body forbids
to exercise. We have looked after him so well that he is now, I
think, out of the woods, although, this morning, I was afraid again
and sent for Doctor Favre, our USUAL savior.

Throughout the day I have been talking to him, to distract him,
about your researches on monsters; he had his papers brought so as
to hunt among them for what might be useful you; but he has found
only the pure fantasies of his own invention. I found them so
original and so funny that I have encouraged him to send them to
you. They will be of no use to you except to make you burst out
laughing in your hours recreation.

I hope that we are going to come to life again without new relapses.
He is the soul and the life of the house. When he is depressed we
are dead; mother, wife, and children. Aurore says that she would
like to be very ill in her father's place We love each other
passionately, we five, and the SACROSANCT LITERATURE as you call it,
is only secondary in my life. I have always loved some one more than
it and my family more than that some one.

Pray why is your poor little mother so irritable and desperate, in
the very midst of an old age that when I last saw her was still so
green and so gracious? Is her deafness sudden? Did she entirely lack
philosophy and patience before these infirmities? I suffer with you
because I understand what you are suffering.

Another old age which is worse, since it is becoming malicious, is
that of Madame Colet. I used to think that all her hatred was
directed against me, and that seemed to me a bit of madness; for I
had never done or said anything against her, even after that vile
book in which she poured out all her fury WITHOUT cause. What has
she against you now that passion has become ancient history?
Strange! strange! And, a propos of Bouilhet, she hated him then, him
too this poor poet? She is mad.

You may well think that I was not able to write an iota for these
twelve days. I am going, I hope, to start at work as soon as I have
finished my novel which has remained with one foot in the air at the
last pages. It is on the point of being published but has not yet
been finished. I am up every night till dawn; but I have not had a
sufficiently tranquil mind to be distracted from my patient.

Good night, dear good friend of my heart.

Heavens! don't work nor sit up too much, as you also have sore
throats. They are terrible and treacherous illnesses. We all love
you, and we embrace you. Aurore is charming; she learns all that we
want her to, we don't know how, without seeming to notice it.

What kind of a woman do you want as a companion for your mother?
Perhaps I know of such a one. Must she converse and read aloud? It
seems to me that the deafness is a barrier to that. Isn't it a
question of material care and continual diligence? What are the
stipulations and what is the compensation?

Tell me how and why father Hugo did not have one single visit after
Ruy Blas? Did Gautier, Saint-Victor, his faithful ones, neglect him?
Have they quarreled about politics?



CCXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND
March, 1872

Dear master,

I have received the fantastic drawings, which have diverted me. Is
there perhaps profound symbolism hidden in Maurice's work? But I did
not find it. ... Revery!

There are two very pretty monsters: (1) an embryo in the form of a
balloon on four feet; (2) a death's head emanating from an
intestinal worm.

We have not found a companion yet. It seems difficult to me, we must
have someone who can read aloud and who is very gentle; we should
also give her some charge of the household. She would not have much
bodily care to give, as my mother would keep her maid.

We must have someone who is kind above all, and perfectly honest.
Religious principles are not objected to! The rest is left to your
perspicacity, dear master! That is all.

I am uneasy about Theo. I think that he is getting strangely old. He
must be very ill, doubtless with heart trouble, don't you think so?
Still another who is preparing to leave me.

No! literature is not what I love most in the world, I explained
myself badly (in my last letter). I spoke to you of distractions and
of nothing more. I am not such a pedant as to prefer phrases to
living beings. The further I go the more my sensibility is
exasperated. But the basis is solid and the thing goes on. And then,
after the Prussian war there is no further great annoyance possible.

And the Critique de la raison pure of the previously mentioned Kant,
translated by Barni, is heavier reading than the Vie Parisienne of
Marcelin; never mind! I shall end by understanding it.

I have almost finished the scenario of the last part of Saint
Antoine. I am in a hurry to start writing. It is too long since I
have written. I am bored with style!

And tell me more about you, dear master! Give me at once news of
Maurice, and tell me if you think that the lady you know would suit
us.

And thereupon I embrace you with both arms.

Your old troubadour always agitated, always as wrathful as Saint
Polycarp.



CCXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
17 March, 1872

No, dear friend, Maurice is almost well again but I have been tired,
worn out with URGENT work: finishing my novel, and correcting a mass
of proof from the beginning. And then unanswered letters, business,
no time to breathe! That is why I have not been able to write the
article on Bouilhet, and as Nanon has begun, as they are publishing
five numbers a week in le Temps, I don't see where I shall publish
that article very soon.

In the Revue des Deux Mondes, they don't want me to write criticism;
whoever is not, or was not of their circle, has no talent, and they
do not give me the right to say the contrary.

There is, to be sure, a new review wide open to me, which is
published by very fine people, but it is more widely read in other
countries than in France, and you will find perhaps that an article
in that would not excite comment. It is the Revue universelle
directed by Amedee Marteau. Discuss that with Charles Edmond. Ask
him if, in spite of the fact that Nanon is being published, he could
find me a little corner in the body of the paper.

As for the companion, you may rest assured that I am looking for
her. The one whom I had in view is not suitable, for she could not
read aloud, and I am not sure enough of the others to propose them.
I thought that your poor mother was too deaf to listen to reading,
and to converse, and that it would be enough for her to have some
one very gentle, and charming, to care for her, and to stay with
her.

That is all, my dear old friend, it is not my fault, I embrace you
with all my heart. For the moment that is the only thing that is
functioning. My brain is too stupefied.

G. Sand



CCXX. TO GEORGE SAND
Croisset

Here I am, back again here, dear master, and not very happy; my
mother worries me. Her decline increases from day to day, and almost
from hour to hour. She wanted me to come home although the painters
have not finished their work, and we are very inconveniently housed.
At the end of next week, she will have a companion who will relieve
me in this foolish business of housekeeping.

As for me, I have quite decided not to make the presses groan for
many years, solely not to have "business" to look after, to avoid
all connection with publishers, editors and papers, and above all
not to hear of money.

My incapacity, in that direction, has developed to frightful
proportions. Why should the sight of a bill put me in a rage? It
verges on madness. Aisse has not made money. Dernieres Chansons has
almost gotten me into a lawsuit. The story of la Fontaine is not
ended. I am tired, profoundly tired, of everything.

If only I do not make a failure also of Saint-Antoine. I am going to
start working on it again in a week, when I have finished with Kant
and Hegel. These two great men are helping to stupefy me, and when I
leave them I fall with eagerness upon my old and thrice great
Spinoza. What genius, how fine a work the Ethics is!



CCXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
9 April, 1872

I am with you all day and all night, and at every instant, my poor
dear friend. I am thinking of all the sorrow that you are in the
midst of. I would like to be near you. The misfortune of being tied
here distresses me. I would like a word so as to know if you have
the courage that you need. The end of that noble and dear life has
been sad and long; for from the day that she became feeble, she
declined and you could not distract her and console her. Now, alas!
the incessant and cruel task is ended, as the things of this world
end, anguish after struggle! What a bitter achievement of rest! and
you are going to miss this anxiety, I am sure of that. I know the
sort of dismay that follows the combat with death.

In short, my poor child, I can only open a maternal heart to you
which will replace nothing, but which is suffering with yours, and
very keenly in each one of your troubles.

G. Sand



CCXXII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 14 April, 1872

My daughter-in-law has been staying several days with our friends,
at Nimes, to stop a bad case of WHOOPING-COUGH that Gabrielle was
suffering with, to separate her from Aurore, from fear of contagion,
and to recuperate, for she has not been well for some time. As for
me, I am well again. That little illness and this departure suddenly
resolved upon and accomplished, have upset my plans somewhat. I had
to look after Aurore so that she might be reconciled to it, and I
have not had a moment to answer you. I am wondering too if you don't
like it better to be left to yourself these first few days. But I
beguile the need I feel of being near you at this sad time, by
telling you over and over again, my poor, dear friend, how much I
love you. Perhaps, too, your family has taken you to Rouen or to
Dieppe, so as not to let you go back at once into that sad house. I
don't know anything about your plans, in case those which you made
to absorb yourself in work are changed. If you have any inclination
to travel, and the sinews of war are lacking, I have ready for you a
few sous that I have just earned, and I put them at your disposal.
Don't feel constrained with me any more than I would with you, dear
child. They are going to pay me for my novel in five or six days at
the office of le Temps; you need only to write me a line and I shall
see that you get it in Paris. A word when you can, I embrace you,
and so does Maurice, very tenderly.



CCXXIII. TO GEORGE SAND
Tuesday, 16 April, 1872

Dear good master,

I should have answered at once your first, very kind letter.  But I
was too sad. I lacked physical strength.

At last, today, I am beginning to hear the birds singing and to see
the leaves growing green. The sun irritates me no longer, which is a
good sign. If I could feel like working again I should be all right.

Your second letter (that of yesterday) moved me to tears! You are so
good! What a splendid creature you are! I do not need money now,
thank you. But if I did need any, I should certainly ask you for it.

My mother has left Croisset to Caroline with the condition that I
should keep my apartments there. So, until the estate is completely
settled, I stay here. Before deciding on the future, I must know
what I have to live on, after that we shall see.

Shall I have the strength to live absolutely alone in solitude?  I
doubt it, I am growing old. Caroline cannot live here now. She has
two dwellings already, and the house at Croisset is expensive. I
think I shall give up my Paris lodging. Nothing calls me to Paris
any longer. All my friends are dead, and the last one, poor Theo, is
not for long, I fear. Ah! it is hard to grow a new skin at fifty
years of age!

I realized, during the last two weeks, that my poor dear, good
mother was the being that I have loved the most! It is as if someone
had torn out a part of my vitals.



CCXXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 28 April, 1872

I hold my poor Aurore, who has a terrible case of whooping-cough,
day and night in my arms. I have an important piece of work that I
must finish, and which I shall finish in spite of everything. If I
have not already done the article on Bouilhet, rest assured it is
because it is IMPOSSIBLE. I shall do it at the same time as that on
l'Annee terrible. I shall go to Paris between the 20th and 25th of
May, at the latest. Perhaps sooner, if Maurice takes Aurore to Nimes
where Lina and the littlest one are. I shall write to you, you must
come to see me in Paris, or I will go to see you.

I thirst too to embrace you, to console you--no, but to tell you
that your sorrows are mine. Good-bye till then, a line to tell me if
your affairs are getting settled, and if you are coming out on top.

Your old G. Sand



CCXXV. TO GEORGE SAND

What good news, dear master! In a month and even before a month, I
shall see you at last!

Try not to be too hurried in Paris, so that we may have the time to
talk. What would be very nice, would be, if you came back here with
me to spend several days. We should be quieter than there; "my poor
old mother" loved you very much, would be sweet to see you in her
house, when she has been gone only such a short time.

I have started work again, for existence is only tolerable when one
forgets one's miserable self.

It will be a long time before I know what I have to live on. For all
the fortune that is left to us is in meadowland, and in order to
divide it, we have to sell it all.

Whatever happens, I shall keep my apartments at Croisset. That will
be my refuge, and perhaps even my only habitation. Paris hardly
attracts me any longer. In a little while I shall have no more
friends there. The human being (the eternal feminine included)
amuses me less and less.

Do you know that my poor Theo is very ill? He is dying from boredom
and misery. No one speaks his language anymore! We are like fossils
who subsist astray in a new world.



CCXXVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 18 May, 1872

Dear friend of my heart, your inability does not disturb me at all,
on the contrary. I have the grippe and the prostration that follows
it. I cannot go to Paris for a week yet, and shall be there during
the first part of June. My little ones are both in the sheepfold. I
have taken good care of and cured the eldest, who is strong. The
other is very tired, and the trip did not prevent the whooping-
cough. For my part, I have worked very hard in caring for my dear
one, and as soon as my task was over, as soon as I saw my dear world
reunited and well again, I collapsed. It will be nothing, but I have
not the strength to write. I embrace you, and I count on seeing you
soon.

G. Sand



CCXXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Paris, Monday, 3 June, 1872, Rue Gay Lussac, 5

I am in Paris, and for all this week, in the horror of personal
business. But next week will you come? I should like to go to see
you in Croisset, but I do not know if I can. I have taken Aurore's
whooping-cough, and, at my age, it is severe. I am, however, better,
but hardly able to go about. Write me a line, so I can reserve the
hours that you can give me. I embrace you, as I love you, with a
full heart.

G. Sand



CCXXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND
1872

The hours that I could give you, dear Master! Why, all the hours,
now, by and by, and forever.

I am planning to go to Paris at the end of next week, the 14th or
the 16th. Shall you be there still? If not, I shall go earlier.

But I should like it much better if you came here. We should be
quieter, without callers or intruders! More than ever, I should like
to have you now in my poor Croisset.

It seems to me that we have enough to talk about without stopping
for twenty-four hours. Then I would read you Saint-Antoine, which
lacks only about fifteen pages of being finished. However, don't
come if your cough continues. I should be afraid that the dampness
would hurt you.

The mayor of Vendome has asked me "to honor with my presence" the
dedication of the statue of Ronsard, which occurs the 23rd of this
month: I shall go. And I should even like to deliver an address
there which would be a protest against the universal modern flap-
doodle. The occasion is good. But for the production of a really
appropriate little gem, I lack the snap and vivacity.

Hoping to see you soon, dear master, your old troubadour who
embraces you.



CCXXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
7 June, 1872

Dear friend,

Your old troubadour has such a bad cough that a little bit more
would be the last straw. On the other hand, they cannot get on
without me at our house, and I cannot stay longer than next week,
that is to say, the 15th or the 16th. If you could come next
Thursday, the 13th, I should reserve the 13th, the 14th, even the
15th, to be with you at my house for the day for dinner, for the
evening, in short, just as if we were in the country, where we could
read and converse. I would be supposed to have gone away.

A word at once, I embrace you as I love you.

G. Sand



CCXXX. TO GEORGE SAND

Dear master,

Have you promised your support to the candidacy of Duquesnel? if
not, I should like to beg you to use to the utmost your influence to
support my friend, Raymond Deslandes, as if he were

Your old troubadour,

G. Flaubert

Thursday, three o'clock, 13 June, 1872.

Answer me categorically, so that we may know what you will do.



CCXXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
..Nohant, 5 July, 1872

I must write to you today. Sixty-eight years old. Perfect health in
spite of the cough, which lets me sleep now that I am plunging daily
in a furious little torrent, cold as ice. It boils around the
stones, the flowers, the great grasses in a delicious shade. It is
an ideal place to bathe.

We have had some terrible storms: lightning struck in our garden;
and our stream, the Indre, has become like a torrent in the
Pyrenees. It is not unpleasant. What a fine summer! The grain is
seven feet high, the wheat fields are sheets of flowers. The peasant
thinks that there are too many; but I let him talk, it is so lovely!
I go on foot to the stream, I jump, all boiling hot, into the icy
water. The doctor says that is madness. I let him talk, too; I am
curing myself while his patients look after themselves and croak. I
am like the grass of the fields: water and sun, that is all I need.

Are you off for the Pyrenees? Ah! I envy you, I love them so! I have
taken frantic trips there; but I don't know Luchon. Is it lovely,
too? You won't go there without seeing the Cirque of Gavarnie, and
the road that leads there, will you? And Cauterets and the lake of
Gaube? And the route of Saint-Sauveur? Heavens! How lucky one is to
travel and to see the mountains, the flowers, the cliffs! Does all
that bore you?

Do you remember the editors, the theatrical managers, the readers
and the public when you are running about the country! As for me, I
forget everything as I do when Pauline Viardot is singing.

The other day we discovered, about three leagues from here, a
wilderness, an absolute wilderness of woods in a great expanse of
country, where not one hut could be seen, not a human being, not a
sheep, not a fowl, nothing but flowers, butterflies and birds all
day. But where will my letter find you? I shall wait to send it to
you till you give me an address!



CCXXXII. TO GEORGE SAND
Bagneres de Luchon, 12th July, 1872

I have been here since Sunday evening, dear master, and no happier
than at Croisset, even a little less so, for I am very idle. They
make so much noise in the house where we are that it is impossible
to work. Moreover, the sight of the  bourgeois who surround us is
unendurable. I am not made for travelling. The least inconvenience
disturbs me. Your old troubadour is very old, decidedly! Doctor
Lambron, the  physician of this place, attributes my nervous
tendencies to the excessive use of tobacco. To be agreeable I am
going to smoke less; but I doubt very much if my virtue will cure
me!

I have just read Dickens's Pickwick. Do you know that? There are
superb passages in it; but what defective composition!  All English
writers are the same; Walter Scott excepted, all lack a plot. That
is unendurable for us Latins.

Mister ***** is certainly nominated, as it seems. All the people who
have had to do with the Odeon, beginning with you, dear master, will
repent of the support that they have given him. As for me, who,
thank Heaven, have no more connection with that establishment, I
don't give a whoop.

As I am going to begin a book which will exact much reading,  and
since I don't want to ruin myself in books, do you know of any
dealer in Paris who would rent me all the books that I designated?

What are you doing now? We saw each other so little and so
inconveniently the last time.

This letter is stupid. But they are making such a noise over my head
that it is not clear (my head).

In the midst of my bewilderment, I embrace you and yours also. Your
old blockhead who loves you.



CCXXXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 19 July, 1872

Dear old troubadour,

We too are going away, but without knowing yet where we are going;
it doesn't make any difference to me. I wanted to take my brood to
Switzerland; they would rather go in the opposite direction, to the
Ocean; the Ocean will do! If only we travel and bathe, I shall be
out of my mind with joy.  Decidedly our two old troubadourships are
two opposites. What bores you, amuses me; I love movement and noise,
and even the tiresome things about travelling find favor in my eyes,
provided they are a part of travelling. I am much more sensible to
what disturbs the calm of sedentary life, than to that which is a
normal and necessary disturbance in the life of motion.

I am absolutely like my grandchildren, who are intoxicated
beforehand without knowing why. But it is curious to see how
children, while loving the change, want to take with them their
surroundings, their accustomed playthings, when they go out into the
world. Aurore is packing her dolls' trunk, and Gabrielle, who likes
animals better, intends to take her rabbits, her little dog, and a
little pig that she is taking care of until she eats it. SUCH IS
LIFE [sic].

I believe that, in spite of your bad temper, this trip will do you
good. It will make you rest your brain, and if you have to smoke
less, so much the better! Health above all. I hope that your niece
will make you move around a bit; she is your child; she ought to
have some authority over you, or the world would be turned upside
down.

I cannot refer you to the bookshop that you need for borrowing
books. I send for such things to Mario Proth, and I don't know where
he finds them. When you get back to Paris, tell him from me to
inform you. He is a devoted fellow, as obliging as possible. He
lives at 2 rue Visconti. It occurs to me that Charles Edmond, too,
might give you very good information; Troubat, [Footnote: Sainte-
Beuve's secretary.] also.

You are surprised that spoken words are not contracts; you are very
simple; in business nothing holds except written documents. We are
Don Quixotes, my old troubadour; we must resign ourselves to being
trimmed by the innkeepers. Life is like that, and he who does not
want to be deceived must go to live in a desert. It is not living to
keep away from all the evil of this nether-world. One must swallow
the bitter with the sweet.

As to your Saint-Antoine, if you let me, I shall see about finding
you a publisher or a review on my next trip to Paris, but we ought
to talk about it together and you ought to read it to me. Why
shouldn't you come to us in September? I shall be at home until
winter.

You ask me what I am doing now: I have done, since I left Paris, an
article on Mademoiselle de Flaugergues, which will appear in
l'Opinion nationale with a work by her; an article for le Temps on
Victor Hugo, Bouilhet, Leconte de Lisle and Pauline Viardot. I hope
that you will be pleased with what I said about your friend; I have
done a second fantastic tale for the Revue des Deux Mondes, a tale
for children. I have written about a hundred letters, for the most
part to make up for the folly or to soften the misery of imbeciles
of my acquaintance. Idleness is the plague of this age, and life is
passed in working for those who do not work. I do not complain. I am
well! every day I plunge into the Indre and into its icy cascades,
my sixty-eight years and my whooping-cough. When I am no longer
useful nor agreeable to others, I want to go away quietly without
saying OUF! or at least, not saying anything except that against
poor mankind, which is not worth much, but of which I am part, not
being worth perhaps very much myself.

I love you and I embrace you. My family does too, Plauchut included.
He is going to travel with us.

When we are SOMEWHERE FOR SEVERAL DAYS I shall write to you for
news.

G. Sand



CCXXXIV. TO GEORGE SAND
Croisset, Thursday

Dear master,

In the letter I received from you at Luchon a month ago, you told me
that you were packing up, and then that was all. No more news! I
have permitted myself to assume, as the good Brantome would say,
that you were at Cabourg! When do you return? Where do you go then?
To Paris or to Nohant? A question.

As for me, I am not leaving Croisset. From the 1st to the 20th or
25th of September I shall have to go about a bit on business. I
shall go to Paris. Write then to rue Murillo.

I should like very much to see you: (1) to see you; (2) to read you
Saint-Antoine, then to talk to you about another more important
book, etc., and to talk about a hundred other things privately.



CCXXXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 31 August, 1872

My old troubadour,

Here we are back again at home, after a month passed, just as you
said, at Cabourg, where chance more than intention placed us. We all
took wonderful sea baths, Plauchut, too. We often talked of you with
Madame Pasca who was our neighbor at table, and had the room next
us. We have returned in splendid health, and we are glad to see our
old Nohant again, after having been glad to leave it for a little
change of air.

I have resumed my usual work, and I continue my river baths, but no
one will accompany me, it is too cold. As for me, I found fault with
the sea for being too warm. Who would think that, with my appearance
and my tranquil old age, I would still love EXCESS? My dominant
passion on the whole is my Aurore. My life depends on hers. She was
so lovely on the trip, so gay, so appreciative of the amusements
that we gave her, so attentive to what she saw, and curious about
everything with so much intelligence, that she is real and
sympathetic company at every hour. Ah! how UNLITERARY I am! Scorn me
but still love me.

I don't know if I shall find you in Paris when I go there for my
play. I have not arranged with the Odeon for the date of its
performance. I am waiting for Duquesnel for the final reading.--And
then I expect Pauline Viardot about the 20th of September, and I
hope Tourgueneff too, won't you come also? it would be so nice and
so complete!

In this hope which I will not give up, I love you and I embrace you
with all my soul, and my children join me in loving you and
summoning you.

G. Sand



CCXXXVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Paris
Nohant, 25 October, 1872

Your letters fall on me like a rain that refreshes, and develops at
once all that is germinating in the soil; they make me want to
answer your reasons, because your reasons are powerful and inspire a
reply.

I do not assume that my replies will be strong too; they are
sincere, they issue from the roots of my being, like the plants
aforesaid. That is why I have just written a paper on the subject
that you raise, addressing myself this time TO A WOMAN FRIEND, who
has written me also in your vein, but less well than you, of course,
and a little from an aristocratically intellectual point of view, to
which she has not ALL THE RIGHTS SHE DESIRES.

My roots, one can't extirpate them, and I am astonished that you ask
me to make tulips come from them when they can answer you by
producing only potatoes. Since the beginning of my intellectual
blooming, when, studying quite alone at the bedside of my paralyzed
grandmother, or in the fields at the times when I entrusted her to
Deschartres, I asked myself the most elementary questions about
society; I was no more advanced at seventeen than a child of six,
not as much! thanks to Deschartres, my father's teacher, who was a
contradiction from his head to his feet, much learning and little
sense; thanks to the convent, into which they stuck me, God knows
why, as they believed in nothing; thanks also to a purely
Restoration surrounding in which my grandmother, a philosopher, but
dying, breathed her last without resisting further the monarchical
current.

Then I read Chateaubriand, and Rousseau; I passed from the Gospels
to the Contrat social. I read the history of the Revolution written
by the pious, the history of France, written by philosophers; and,
one fine day, I made all that agree like light proceeding from two
lamps, and I had PRINCIPLES. Don't laugh, very candid, childish
principles which have remained with me through all, through Lelia
and the romantic epoch, through love and doubt, enthusiasm and
disenchantments. To love, to make sacrifices, only to reconsider
when the sacrifice is harmful to those who are the object of it, and
to sacrifice oneself again in the hope of serving a real cause,
love.

I am not speaking here of personal passion, but of love of race, of
the widening sentiment of self-love, of the horror of THE ISOLATED
MOI. And that ideal of JUSTICE of which you speak, I have never seen
it apart from love, since the first law on which the existence of a
natural society depends, is that we shall serve each other mutually,
like the bees and the ants. This concurrence of all to the same end,
we have agreed to call instinct among beasts, and it does not
matter, but among men, the instinct is love; he who withdraws
himself from love, withdraws himself from truth, from justice.

I have experienced revolutions, and I have seen the principal actors
near to; I have seen the depth of their souls, I should say the
bottom of their bag: NO PRINCIPLES! and no real intelligence, no
force, nor endurance. Nothing but means and a personal end. Only one
had principles, not all of them good, but in comparison with their
integrity, he counted his personality for nothing: Barbes.

Among artists and literary men, I have found no depth. You are the
only one with whom I have been able to exchange other ideas than
those of the profession. I don't know if you were at Magny's one day
when I said to them that they were all GENTLEMEN. They said that one
should not write for ignoramuses. They spurned me because I wanted
to write only for them, as they are the only ones who need anything.
The masters are provided for, are rich, satisfied. Imbeciles lack
everything, I am sorry for them. Loving and pitying are not to be
separated. And there you have the uncomplicated mechanism of my
thought.

I have the passion for goodness and not at all for prejudiced
sentimentality. I spit with all my might upon him who pretends to
hold my principles and acts contrary to them. I do not pity the
incendiary and the assassin who fall under the hand of the law; I do
pity profoundly the class which a brutal, degenerate life without
upward trend and without aid, brings to the point of producing such
monsters. I pity humanity, I wish it were good, because I cannot
separate myself from it; because it is myself; because the evil it
does strikes me to the heart; because its shame makes me blush;
because its crimes gnaw at my vitals, because I cannot understand
paradise in heaven nor on earth for myself alone.

You ought to understand me, you who are goodness from head to foot.

Are you still in Paris? It has been such fine weather that I have
been tempted to go there to embrace you, but I don't dare to spend
the money, however little it may be, when there is so much poverty.
I am miserly because I know that I am extravagant when I forget, and
I continually forget. And then I have so much to do!...I don't know
anything and I don't learn anything, for I am always forced to learn
it over again. I do very much need, however, to see you again, for a
little bit; it is a part of myself which I miss.

My Aurore keeps me very busy. She understands too quickly and we
have to take her at a hard gallop. To understand fascinates her, to
know repels her. She is as lazy as monsieur, her father, was. He has
gotten over it so well that I am not impatient. She promises me to
write you a letter soon. You see that she does not forget you.
Titite's Punch has lost his head, literally, because he has been so
embraced and caressed. He is loved as much without his head; what an
example of fidelity in misfortune! His stomach has become a
receptacle where playthings are put.

Maurice is deep in his archeological studies, Lina is always
adorable, and all goes well except that the maids are not clean.
What a road the creatures have still to travel who do not keep
themselves clean!

I embrace you. Tell me how you are getting on with Aisse, the Odeon
and all that stuff you are busy about. I love you; that is the end
of all my discourses.

G. Sand



CCXXXVII. TO GEORGE SAND

Dear master,

In your last letter, among the nice things that you say to me, you
praise me for not being "haughty"; one is not haughty with what is
high. Therefore, in this aspect, you cannot know me. I object.

Although I consider myself a good man, I am not always an agreeable
gentleman, witness what happened to me Thursday last. After having
lunched with a lady whom I had called "imbecile," I went to call on
another whom I had said was "ninny"; such is my ancient French
gallantry. The first one had bored me to death with her
spiritualistic discourses and her pretensions to ideality; the
second outraged me by telling me that Renan was a rascal. Observe
that she confessed to me that she had not read his books. There are
some subjects about which I lose patience, and, when a friend is
slandered before my very face, the savage in my blood returns, I see
red. Nothing more foolish! for it serves no purpose and hurts me
frightfully.

This vice, by the way, BETRAYING ONE'S FRIENDS IN PUBLIC, seems to
me to be taking gigantic proportions!



CCXXXVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 26 October, 1872

Dear friend,

Here is another chagrin for you; a sorrow foreseen, but none the
less distressing. Poor Theo! I pity him deeply, not because he is
dead, but because he has not been really living for twenty years;
and if he had consented to live, to exist, to act, to forget a bit
his intellectual personality so as to conserve his material
personality, he could have lived a long time yet, and have renewed
his resources which he was too much inclined to make a sterile
treasure. They say that he suffered greatly from hardship during the
siege. I understand it, but afterward? why and how?

I am worried at not having had news from you for a long time. Are
you at Croisset? You must have been in Paris for the funeral of this
poor friend. What cruel and repeated separations! I am angry with
you for becoming savage and discontented with life. It seems to me
that you regard happiness too much as a possible thing, and that the
absence of happiness which is our chronic state, angers you and
astonishes you too much. You shun friends, you plunge into work, and
reckon ass lost the time you might employ in loving or in being
loved. Why didn't you come to us with Madame Viardot and
Tourgueneff? You like them, you admire them, you know that you are
adored here, and you run away to be alone. Well, how about getting
married? Being alone is odious, it is deadly, and it is cruel also
for those who love you. All your letters are unhappy and grip my
heart. Haven't you any woman whom you love or by whom you would be
loved with pleasure? Take her to live with you. Isn't there anywhere
a little urchin whose father you can believe you are? Bring him up.
Make yourself his slave, forget yourself in him.

What do I know? To live in oneself is bad. There is intellectual
pleasure only in the possibility of returning to it when one has
been out for a long time; but to live always in this Moi which is
the most tyrannical, the most exacting, the most fantastic of
companions, no, one must not.--I beg you, listen to me! You are
shutting up an exuberant nature in a jail, you are making out of a
tender and indulgent heart, a deliberate misanthrope,--and you will
not make a success of it. In short, I am worried about you, and I am
saying perhaps some foolishness to you; but we live in cruel times
and we must not undergo them with curses. We must rise above them
with pity. That's it! I love you, write to me.

I shall not go to Paris until after a month's time to put on
Mademoiselle La Quintinie. Where shall you be?



CCXXXIX. TO GEORGE SAND
Monday night, 28 October, 1872

You have guessed rightly, dear master, that I had an increase of
sorrow, and you have written me a very tender, good letter, thanks;
I embrace you even more warmly than usual.

Although expected, the death of poor Theo has distressed me. He is
the last of my intimates to go. He closes the list. Whom shall I see
now when I go to Paris? With whom shall I talk of what interests me?
I know some thinkers (at least people who are called so), but an
artist, where is there any? For my part, I tell you he died from the
"putrescence of modern times." That is his word, and he repeated it
to me this winter several times: "I am dying of the Commune," etc.

The 4th of September has inaugurated an order of things in which
people like him have nothing more in the world to do. One must not
demand apples of orange trees. Artisans in luxury are useless in a
society dominated by plebeians. How I regret him! He and Bouilhet
have left an absolute void in me, and nothing can take their place.
Besides he was always so good, and no matter what they say, so
simple. People will recognize later (if they ever return seriously
to literature), that he was a great poet. Meanwhile he is an
absolutely unknown author. So indeed is Pierre Corneille.

He hated two things: the hate of the Philistines in his youth, that
gave him his talent; the hate of the blackguards in his riper years,
this last killed him. He died of suppressed fury, of wrath at not
being able to say what he thought. He was OPPRESSED by Girardin, by
Fould, by Dalloz, and by the first Republic. I tell you that,
because _I_ HAVE SEEN abominable things and I am the only man
perhaps to whom he made absolute confidences. He lacked what was the
most important thing in life for him and for others: CHARACTER. That
he failed of the Academy was to him a dreadful chagrin. What
weakness! and how little he must have esteemed himself! To seek an
honor no matter what, seems to me, besides, an act of
incomprehensible modesty.

I was not at his funeral owing to the mistake of Catulle Mendes, who
sent me a telegram too late. There was a crowd. A lot of scoundrels
and buffoons came to advertise themselves as usual, and today,
Monday, the day of the theatrical paper, there must be bits in the
bulletins, THAT WILL MAKE COPY. To resume, I do not pity him, I ENVY
HIM. For, frankly, life is not amusing.

No, I don't think that HAPPINESS IS POSSIBLE, but certainly
tranquillity. That is why I get away from what irritates me. A trip
to Paris is for me now, a great business. As soon as I shake the
vessel, the dregs mount and permeate all. The least conversation
with anyone at all exasperates me because I find everyone idiotic.
My feeling of justice is continually revolted. They talk ONLY of
politics and in what a fashion! Where is there a sign of an idea?
What can one get hold of? What shall one get excited about?

I don't think, however, that I am a monster of egoism. My Moi
scatters itself in books so that I pass whole days without noticing
it. I have bad moments, it is true, but I pull myself together by
this reflection: "No one at least bothers me." After that, I regain
my balance. So I think that I am going on in my natural path; am I
right?

As for living with a woman, marrying as you advise me to do that is
a prospect that I find fantastic. Why? I don't know. But it is so.
Explain the riddle. The feminine being has never been included in my
life; and then, I am not rich enough, and then, and then--...I am
too old, and too decent to inflict forever my person on another.
There is in me an element of the ecclesiastical that people don't
know. We shall talk about that better than we can write of it.

I shall see you in Paris in December, but in Paris one is disturbed
by others. I wish you three hundred performances for Mademoiselle La
Quintinie. But you will have a lot of bother with the Odeon. It is
an institution where I suffered horribly last winter. Every time
that I attempted to do anything they dished me. So, enough! enough!
"Hide thy life," maxim of Epictetus. My whole ambition now is to
flee from bother, and I am sure by that means never to cause any to
others, that is much.

I am working like a madman, I am reading medicine, metaphysics,
politics, everything. For I have undertaken a work of great scope,
which will require a lot of time, a prospect that pleases me.

Ever since a month ago, I have been expecting Tourgueneff from week
to week. The gout is delaying him still.



CCXL. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, 22 November, 1872

I don't think that I shall go to Paris before February. My play is
postponed on account of the difficulty of finding the chief actor. I
am content about it, for the idea of leaving Nohant, my occupations,
and the walks that are so lovely in this weather, didn't look good
to me at all; what a warm autumn and how good for old people! Two
hours distant from here, we have a real wilderness, where, the next
day after a rain, it is as dry as in a room, and where there are
still flowers for me, and insects for Maurice. The little children
run like rabbits in the heather which is higher than they are.
Heavens! how good it is to be alive when all one loves is living and
scurrying around one. You are the only BLACK SPOT in my heart-life,
because you are sad and don't want to look at the sun. As for those
about whom I don't care, I don't care either about the evils or the
follies they can commit against me or against themselves. They will
pass as the rain passes. The eternal thing is the feeling of beauty
in a good heart. You have both, confound it! you have no right not
to be happy.--Perhaps you ought to have had in your life the
INCLUSION OF THE FEMININE SENTIMENT which you say you have defied.--
I know that the feminine is worth nothing; but, perhaps, in order to
be happy, one must have been unhappy.

I have been, and I know enough about it; but I forget so well. Well,
sad or gay, I love you and I am still waiting for you, although you
never speak of coming to see us, and you cast aside the opportunity
emphatically; we love you here just the same, we are not literary
enough for you here, I know that, but we love, and that gives life
occupation.

Is Saint-Antoine finished, that you are talking of a work of great
scope? or is it Saint-Antoine that is going to spread its wings over
the entire universe? It could, the subject is immense.  I embrace
you, shall I say again, my old troubadour, since you have resolved
to turn into an old Benedictine? I shall remain a troubadour,
naturally.