G. Sand

I am sending you two novels for your collection of my writings: you
are not OBLIGED to read them immediately, if you are deep in serious
things.



CCXLI. TO GEORGE SAND
Monday evening, eleven o'clock, 25 November, 1872

The postman just now, at five o'clock, has brought your two volumes
to me. I am going to begin Nanon at once, for I am very curious
about it.

Don't worry any more about your old troubadour (who is becoming a
silly animal, frankly), but I hope to recover. I have gone through,
several times, melancholy periods, and I have come out all right.
Everything wears out, boredom with the rest.

I expressed myself badly: I did not mean that I scorned "the
feminine sentiment." But that woman, materially speaking, had never
been one of my habits, which is quite different. I have LOVED more
than anyone, a presumptuous phrase which means "quite like others,"
and perhaps even more than average person. Every affection is known
to me, "the storms of the heart" have "poured out their rain" on me.
And then chance, force of circumstances, causes solitude to increase
little by little around me, and now I am alone, absolutely alone.

I have not sufficient income to take unto myself a wife, nor even to
live in Paris for six months of the year: so it is impossible for me
to change my way of living.

Do you mean to say that I did not tell you that Saint-Antoine had
been finished since last June? What I am dreaming of just now, is
something of greater scope, which will aim to be comic. It would
take too long to explain to you with a pen. We shall talk of it when
we meet.

Adieu, dear good, adorable master, yours with his best affection,

Your old friend.

Always as indignant as Saint Polycarp.

Do you know, in all history, including that of the Botocudos,
anything more imbecile than the Right of the National Assembly?
These gentlemen who do not want the simple and frivolous word
Republic, who find Thiers too advanced!!! O profoundness! problem,
revery!



CCXLII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 27 November, 1872

Maurice is quite happy and very proud of the letter you wrote him;
there is no one who could give him as much pleasure and whose
encouragement counts more with him. I thank you too, for my part;
for I agree with him.

What! you have finished Saint-Antoine? Well, should I find a
publisher, since you are not doing so? You cannot keep it in your
portfolio. You don't like Levy, but there are others; say the word,
and I will act as if it were for myself.

You promise me to get well later, but in the mean time you don't
want to do anything to jolt yourself. Come, then, to read Saint-
Antoine to me, and we will talk of publishing it. What is coming
here from Croisset, for a man? If you won't come when we are gay and
having a holiday, come while it is quiet an I am alone.  All the
family embraces you.

Your old troubadour

G. Sand



CCXLIII. TO GEORGE SAND

Dear master,

Here it is a night and a day that I have spent with you. I had
finished Nanon at four o'clock in the morning, and Francia at three
o'clock in the afternoon. All of it is still dancing around in my
head. I am going to try to gather my ideas together to talk about
these excellent books to you. They have done me good. So thank you,
dear, good master. Yes, they were like a great whiff of air, and,
after having been moved, I feel refreshed.

In Nanon, in the first place I was charmed with the style, with a
thousand simple and strong things which are included in the web of
the work, and which make it what it is; for instance: "as the burden
seemed to me enormous, the beast seemed to me beautiful." But I did
not pay any attention to any thing, I was carried away, like the
commonest reader. (I don't think that the common reader could admire
it as much as I do.) The life of the monks, the first relations
between Emilien and Nanon, the fear caused by the brigands and the
imprisonment of Pere Fructueux which could be commonplace and which
it is not at all. What a fine page is 113! and how difficult it was
to stay within bounds! "Beginning with this day, I felt happiness in
everything, and, as it were, a joy to be in the world."

La Roche aux Fades is an exquisite idyll. One would like to share
the life of those three fine people.

I think that the interest slackens a little when Nanon gets the idea
of becoming rich. She becomes too strongminded, too intelligent! I
don't like the episode of the robbers either. The reappearance of
Emilien with his arm cut off, stirred me again, and I shed a tear at
the last page over the portrait of the Marquise de Francqueville in
her old age.

I submit to you the following queries: Emilien seems to me very much
up in political philosophy; at that period did people see as far
ahead as he? The same objection applies to the prior, whom I think
otherwise charming, in the middle of the book especially. But how
well all that is brought in, how well sustained, how fascinating,
how charming! What a creature you are! What power you have!

I give you on your two cheeks, two little nurse's kisses, and I pass
to Francia! Quite another style, but none the less good. And in the
first place I admire enormously your Dodore. This is the first time
that anyone has made a Paris gamin real; he is not too generous, nor
too intemperate, nor too much of a vaudevillist. The dialogue with
his sister, when he consents to her becoming a kept woman, is a
feat. Your Madame de Thievre, with her shawl which she slips up and
down over her fat shoulders, isn't she decidedly of the Restoration!
And the uncle who wants to confiscate his nephew's grisette! And
Antoine, the good fat tinsmith so polite at the theatre! The Russian
is a simple-minded, natural man, a character that is not easy to do.

When I saw Francia plunge the poignard into his heart, I frowned
first, fearing that it might be a classic vengeance that would spoil
the charming character of that good girl. But not at all! I was
mistaken, that unconscious murder completed your heroine.

What strikes me the most in the book is that it is very intelligent
and exact. One is completely in the period.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this twofold reading. It
has relaxed me. Everything then is not dead. There is still
something beautiful and good in the world.



CCXLIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 29 November, 1872

You spoil me! I did not dare to send you the novels, which were
wrapped up addressed to you for a week. I was afraid of interrupting
your train of thought and of boring you. You stopped everything to
read Maurice first, and then me. We should be remorseful if we were
not egoists, very happy to have a reader who is worth ten thousand
others! That helps a great deal; for Maurice and I work in a desert,
never knowing, except from each other, if a thing is a success or a
mess, exchanging our criticisms, and never having relations with
accredited JUDGES.

Michel never tells us until after a year or two if a book has SOLD.
As for Buloz, if it is with him we have to do, he tells us
invariably that the thing is bad or poor. It is only Charles Edmond
who encourages us by asking us for copy. We write without
consideration for the public; that is perhaps not a bad idea, but we
carry it too far. And praise from you gives us the courage which
does not depart from us, but which is often a sad courage, while you
make it sparkling and gay, and healthful for us to breathe.

I was right then in not throwing Nanon into the fire, as I was ready
to do, when Charles Edmond came to tell me that it was very well
done, and that he wanted it for his paper. I thank you then, and I
send you back your good kisses, for Francia especially, which Buloz
only put in with a sour face and for lack of something better: you
see that I am not spoiled, but I never get angry at all that and I
don't talk about it. That is how it is, and it is very simple. As
soon as literature is a merchandise, the salesman who exploits it,
appreciates only the client who buys it, and if the client
depreciates the object, the salesman declares to the author that his
merchandise is not pleasing. The republic of letters is only a
market in which one sells books. Not making concession to the
publisher is our only virtue; let us keep that and let us live in
peace, even with him when he is peevish, and let us recognize, too,
that he is not the guilty one. He would have taste if the public had
it.

Now I've emptied my bag, and don't let us talk of it again except to
advise about Saint-Antoine, meanwhile telling ourselves that the
editors will be brutes. Levy, however, is not, but you are angry
with him. I should like to talk of all that with you; will you come?
or wait until my trip to Paris? But when shall I go? I don't know.

I am a little afraid of bronchitis in the winter, and I do not leave
home unless I absolutely have to for business reasons.

I don't think that they will play Mademoiselle La Quintinie. The
censors have declared that it is a MASTERPIECE OF THE MOST ELEVATED
AND HEALTHIEST MORALITY, but that they could not TAKE UPON
THEMSELVES to authorize the performance. IT WILL HAVE TO BE TAKEN TO
HIGHER AUTHORITIES, that is to say, to the minister who will send it
to General Ladmirault; it is enough to make you die laughing. But I
don't agree to all that, and I prefer to keep quiet till the new
administration. If the NEW administration is the clerical monarchy,
we shall see strange things. As for me, I don't care if they stand
in my way, but how about the future of our generation?...



CCXLV. TO GEORGE SAND
Wednesday, 4th December, 1872

Dear master,

I notice a phrase in your last letter: "The publisher would have
taste if the public had it...or if the public forced him to have
it." But that is asking the impossible. They have LITERARY IDEAS,
rest assured, and so have messieurs the managers of the theatre.
Both insist that they are JUDGES IN THAT RESPECT, and their
estheticism mingling with their commercialism makes a pretty result.

According to the publishers, one's last book is always inferior to
the preceding one. May I be hung if that is not true. Why does Levy
admire Ponsard and Octave Feuillet more than father Dumas and you?
Levy is academic. I have made more money for him than Cuvillier-
Fleury has, haven't I? Well, draw a parallel between us two, and you
will see how you will be received. You know that he did not want to
sell more than 1200 copies of the Dernieres Chansons, and the 800
which were left over, are in my niece's garret, rue de Clichy! That
is very narrow of me, I agree to that; but I confess that the
proceeding has simply enraged me. It seems to me that my prose might
have been more respected by a man for whom I have turned a penny or
two.

Why publish, in these abominable times? Is it to get money? What
mockery! As if money were the recompense for work, or could be! That
will be when one has destroyed speculation, till then, no! And then
how measure work, how estimate the effort? The commercial value of
the work remains. For that one would be obliged to suppress all
intermediaries between the producer and the purchaser, and even
then, that question in itself permits of no solution. For I write (I
speak of an author who respects himself) not for the reader of
today, but for all the readers who can present themselves as long as
the language lives. My merchandise, therefore, cannot be consumed,
for it is not made exclusively for my contemporaries. My service
remains therefore indefinite, and in consequence, unpayable.

Why publish then? Is it to be understood, applauded? But yourself,
YOU, great George Sand, you confess your solitude. Is there at this
time, I don't say, admiration or sympathy, but the appearance of a
little attention to works of art? Who is the critic who reads the
book that he has to criticise? In ten years they won't know,
perhaps, how to make a pair of shoes, they are becoming so
frightfully stupid! All that is to tell you that, until better times
(in which I do not believe), I shall keep Saint-Antoine in the
bottom of a closet.

If I publish it, I would rather that it should be at the same time
as another entirely different book. I am working now on one which
will go with it. Conclusion: the wisest thing is to keep calm.

Why does not Duquesnel go to find General Ladmirault, Jules Simon,
Thiers? I think that the proceeding concerns him. What a fine thing
the censorship is! Let us be reassured, it will always exist, for it
always has! Our friend Alexandre Dumas fils, to make an agreeable
paradox, has boasted of its advantages in the preface to the Dame
aux Camelias, hasn't he?

And you want me not to be sad! I think that we shall soon see
abominable things, thanks to the inept stubbornness of the Right.
The good Normans, who are the most conservative people in the world,
incline towards the Left very strongly.

If they consulted the bourgeoisie now, it would make father Thiers
king of France. If Thiers were taken away, it would throw itself in
the arms of Gambetta, and I am afraid it will do that soon! I
console myself by thinking that Thursday next I shall be fifty-one
years old.

If you are not to come to Paris in February, I shall go to see you
at the end of January, before going back to the Pan Monceau; I
promise.

The princess has written me to ask if you were at Nohant. She wants
to write to you.

My niece Caroline, to whom I have just given Nanon to read, is
enchanted with it. What struck her was the "youth" of the book. The
criticism seems true to me. It is a real BOOK while Francia,
although more simple, is perhaps more finished; more irreproachable
as a work.

I read last week the Illustre Docteur Matheus, by Erckmann-Chatrian.
How very boorish! There are two nuts, who have very plebeian souls.

Adieu, dear good master. Your old troubadour embraces you,

I am always thinking of Theo. I am not consoled for his loss.



CCXLVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, 8 December, 1872

Oh! well, then, if you are in the realm of the ideal about this, if
you have a future book in your mind, if you are accomplishing a task
of confidence and conviction, no more anger and no more sadness, let
us be logical.

I myself arrived at a philosophical state of very satisfactory
serenity, and I did not OVERSTATE the matter when I said to you that
all the ill any one can do me, or all the indifference that any one
can show me, does not affect me really any more and does not prevent
me, not only from being happy outside of literature, but also from
being literary with pleasure, and from working with joy.

You were pleased with my two novels? I am repaid, I think that they
are SATISFACTORY, and the silence which has invaded my life (it must
be said that I have sought it) is full of a good voice that talks to
me and is sufficient to me. I have not mounted as high as you in my
ambition. You want to write for the ages. As for me, I think that in
fifty years, I shall be absolutely forgotten and perhaps unkindly
ignored. Such is the law of things that are not of first rank, and I
have never thought myself in the first rank. My idea has been rather
to act upon my contemporaries, even if only on a few, and to share
with them my ideal of sweetness and poetry. I have attained this end
up to a certain point; I have at least done my best towards it, I do
still, and my reward is to approach it continually a little nearer.

That is enough for myself, but, as for you, your aim is greater, I
see that clearly, and success is further off. Then you ought to put
yourself more in accord with yourself, by being still calmer and
more content than I am. Your momentary angers are good. They are the
result of a generous temperament, and, as they are neither malicious
nor hateful, I like them, but your sadness, your weeks of spleen, I
do not understand them, and I reproach you for them. I have
believed, I do still, that there is such a thing as too great
isolation, too great detachment from the bonds of life. You have
powerful reasons to answer me with, so powerful that they ought to
give you the victory.

Search your heart, think it over, and answer me, even if only to
dispel the fears that I have often on your account; I don't want you
to exhaust yourself. You are fifty years old, my son is the same or
nearly. He is in the prime of his strength, in his best development,
you are too, if you don't heat the oven of your ideas too hot. Why
do you say often that you wish you were dead? Don't you believe then
in your own work? Do let yourself be influenced then by this or that
temporary thing? It is possible, we are not gods, and something in
us, something weak and unimportant sometimes, disturbs our theodicy.
But the victory every day becomes easier, when one is sure of loving
logic and truth. It gets to the point even of forestalling, of
overcoming in advance, the subject of ill humor, of contempt or of
discouragement.

All that seems easy to me, when it is a question of self control:
the subjects of great sadness are elsewhere, in the spectacle of the
history that is unrolling around us; that eternal struggle of
barbarity against civilization is a great bitterness for those who
have cast off the element of barbarity and find themselves in
advance of their epoch. But, in that great sorrow, in these secret
angers, there is a great stimulant which rightly raises us up, by
inspiring in us the need of reaction. Without that, I confess, for
my part, that I would abandon everything.

I have had a good many compliments in my life, in the time when
people were interested in literature. I have always dreaded them
when they came to me from unknown people; they made me doubt myself
too much. I have made enough money to be rich. If I am not, it is
because I did not care to be; I have enough with what Levy makes for
me. What I should prefer, would be to abandon myself entirely to
botany, it would be for me a Paradise on earth. But it must not be,
that would be useful only to myself, and, if chagrin is good for
anything it is for keeping us from egoism, one must not curse nor
scorn life. One must not use it up voluntarily; you are enamoured of
JUSTICE, begin by being just to yourself, you owe it to yourself to
conserve and to develop yourself.

Listen to me; I love you tenderly, I think of you every day and on
every occasion: when working I think of you. I have gained certain
intellectual benefits which you deserve more than I do, and of which
you ought to make a longer use. Consider too, that my spirit is
often near to yours, and that it wishes you a long life and a
fertile inspiration in true joys.

You promise to come; that is a joy and a feast day for my heart, and
in my family.

Your old troubadour



CCXLVII. TO GEORGE SAND
12 December 1872

Dear good master,

Don't take seriously the exaggerations about my IRE. Don't believe
that I am counting "on posterity, to avenge me for the indifference
of my contemporaries." I meant to say only this: if one does not
address the crowd, it is right that the crowd should not pay one. It
is political economy. But, I maintain that a work of art (worthy of
that name and conscientiously done) is beyond appraisal, has no
commercial value, cannot be paid for. Conclusion: if the artist has
no income, he must starve! They think that the writer, because he no
longer receives a pension from the great, is very much freer, and
nobler. All his social nobility now consists in being the equal of a
grocer. What progress! As for me, you say to me "Let us be logical";
but that's just the difficulty.

I am not sure at all of writing good things, nor that the book of
which I am dreaming now can be well done, which does not prevent me
from undertaking it. I think that the idea of it is original,
nothing more. And then, as I hope to spit into it the gall that is
choking me, that is to say, to emit some truths, I hope by this
means to PURGE MYSELF, and to be henceforward more Olympian, a
quality that I lack entirely. Ah! how I should like to admire
myself!

Mourning once more: I headed the procession at the burial of father
Pouchet last Monday. That gentle fellow's life was very beautiful,
and I mourned him.

I enter today upon my fifty-second year, and I insist on embracing
you today: I do it affectionately, since you love me so well.



CCXLVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 8 January, 1873

Yes, yes, my old friend, you must come to see me. I am not thinking
of going to Paris before the end of the winter, and it is so hard to
see people in Paris. Bring me Saint-Antoine.  I want to hear it, I
want to live in it with you. I want to embrace you with all my soul,
and Maurice does too.

Lina loves you too, and our little ones have not forgotten you. I
want you to see how interesting and lovely my Aurore has become. I
shall not tell you anything new about myself. I live so little in
myself. This will be a good reason for you to talk about what
interests me more, that is to say, about yourself. Tell me ahead so
that I can spare you that horrid coach from Chateauroux to Nohant.
If you could bring Tourgueneff, we should be happy, and you would
have the most perfect travelling companion. Have you read Peres et
Enfants? How good it is!

Now, I hope for you really this time, and I think that our air will
do you good. It is so lovely here!

Your old comrade who loves you,

G. SAND

I embrace you six times for the New Year.



CCXLIX. TO GEORGE SAND
Monday evening, 3 February, 1873

Dear master,

Do I seem to have forgotten you and not to want to make the journey
to Nohant? Not at all! But, for the last month, every time I go out,
I am seized anew with the grippe which gets worse each time. I cough
abominably, and I ruin innumerable pocket-handkerchiefs! When will
it be over?

I have sworn not to step beyond my doorsill till I am completely
well again, and I am still awaiting the good will of the members of
the commission for the Bouilhet fountain! For nearly two months, I
have not been able to get together in Rouen six citizens of Rouen!
That is the way friends are! Everything is difficult, the least
undertaking demands great efforts.

I am reading chemistry now (which I don't understand a bit), and the
Raspail theory of medicine, not to mention the Potager moderne of
Gressent and the Agriculture of Gasparin. In this connection,
Maurice would be very kind, to compile his agronomical
recollections, so that I may know what mistakes he made and why he
made them.

What sorts of information don't I need, for the book that I am
undertaking? I have come to Paris this winter with the idea of
collecting some; but if my horrible cold continues, my stay here
will be useless! Am I going to become like the canon of Poitiers, of
whom Montaigne speaks, who for thirty years did not leave his room
"because of his melancholic infirmity," but who, however, was very
well "except for a cold which had settled on his stomach." This is
to tell you that I am seeing very few people. Moreover whom could I
see? The war has opened many abysses. I have not been able to get
your article on Badinguet. I am planning to read it at your house.

As regards reading, I have just swallowed ALL the odious Joseph de
Maistre. They have saddled us enough with this gentleman! And the
modern socialists who have praised him beginning with the saint-
simonians and ending with A. Comte. France is drunk with authority,
no matter what they say. Here is a beautiful idea that I find in
Raspail, THE PHYSICIANS OUGHT to be MAGISTRATES, so they could
force, etc.

Your romantic and liberal old dunce embraces you tenderly.



CCL. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 5 February, 1873

I wrote to you yesterday to Croisset, Lina thinking that you had
returned there. I asked you the little favor which you have already
rendered me, namely, to ask your brother to give his patronage to my
friend Despruneaux in his suit which is going to be appealed. My
letter will probably be forwarded to you in Paris, and reach you as
quickly as this one. It is only a question of writing a line to your
brother, if that does not bother you.

Pray, what is this obstinate cough? There is only one remedy, a
minimum dose, a half-centigram of acetate of morphine taken every
evening after digesting your dinner, for a week at least. I do
nothing else and I always get over it, I cure all my family the same
way, it is so easy to do and so quickly done! At the end of two or
three days one feels the good effect. I am awaiting your cure with
impatience, for your sake first, and second for myself, because you
will come and because I am hungry and thirsty to see you.

Maurice is at a loss to know how to answer your question. He has not
made any mistake in his experiments, and knows indeed those that
others make or could make; but he says that they vary infinitely and
that each mistake is a special one for the conditions in which one
works. When you are here and he understands really what you want, he
can answer you for everything that concerns the center of France,
and the general geology of the planet, if there is any opportunity
to generalize. His reasoning has been this: not to make innovations,
but to push to its greatest development what exists, in making use
always of the method established by experience. Experience can never
deceive, it may be incomplete, but never mendacious. With this I
embrace you, I summon you, I await you, I hope for you, but will not
however torment you.

But we love you, that is certain; and we would like to infuse in you
a little of our Berrichon patience about the things in this world
which are not amusing, we know that very well! But why are we in
this world if it is not to learn patience.

Your obstinate troubadour who loves you.

G. Sand



CCLI. TO GEORGE SAND
Tuesday, March 12, 1873

Dear master,

If I am not at your house, it is the fault of the big Tourgueneff. I
was getting ready to go to Nohant, when he said to me: "Wait, I'll
go with you the first of April." That is two weeks off. I shall see
him tomorrow at Madame Viardot's and I shall beg him to go earlier,
as I am beginning to be impatient. I am feeling the NEED of seeing
you, of embracing you, and of talking with you. That is the truth.

I am beginning to regain my equilibrium again. What is it that I
have had for the past four months? What trouble was going on in the
depths of my being? I don't know. What is certain, is, that I was
very ill in an indefinable way. But now I am better. Since the end
of January, Madame Bovary and Salammbo have belonged to me and I can
sell them. I am doing nothing about it, preferring to do without the
money other than to exasperate my nerves. Such is your old
troubadour.

I am reading all sorts of books and I am taking notes for my big
book which will take five or six years to write, and I am thinking
of two or three others. There will be dreams for a long time, which
is the principal thing.

Art continues to be "in the marasmus," as M. Prudhomme says, and
there is no longer any place in this world for people with taste.
One must, like the rhinoceros, retire into solitude and await one's
death.



CCLII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris
Nohant, 15 March, 1873

Well, my old troubadour, we can hope for you very soon. I was
worried about you. I am always worried about you. To tell the truth,
I am not happy over your ill tempers, and your PREJUDICES. They last
too long, and in effect they are like an illness, you recognize it
yourself. Now, forget; don't you know how to forget? You live too
much in yourself and get to consider everything in relation to
yourself. If you were an egoist, and a conceited person, I would say
that it was your normal condition; but with you who are so good and
so generous, it is an anomaly, an evil that must be combated. Rest
assured that life is badly arranged, painful, irritating for
everyone, but do not neglect the immense compensations which it is
ungrateful to forget.

That you get angry with this or that person, is of little importance
if it is a comfort to you; but that you remain furious, indignant
for weeks, months, almost years, is unjust and cruel to those who
love you, and who would like to spare you all anxiety and all
deception.

You see that I am scolding you; but while embracing you, I shall
think only of the joy and the hope of seeing you flourishing again.
We are waiting for you with impatience, and we are counting on
Tourgueneff whom we adore also.

I have been suffering a good deal lately with a series of very
painful hemorrhages; but they have not prevented me from amusing
myself writing tales and from playing with my LITTLE CHILDREN. They
are so dear, and my big children are so good to me, that I shall
die, I believe, smiling at them. What difference does it make
whether one has a hundred thousand enemies if one is loved by two or
three good souls? Don't you love me too, and wouldn't you reproach
me for thinking that of no account? When I lost Rollinat, didn't you
write to me to love the more those who were left? Come, so that I
may OVERWHELM you with reproaches; for you are not doing what you
told me to do.

We are expecting you, we are preparing a mid-Lent fantasy; try to
take part. Laughter is a splendid medicine. We shall give you a
costume; they tell me that you were very good as a pastry cook at
Pauline's! If you are better, be certain it is because you have
gotten out of your rut and have distracted yourself a little. Paris
is good for you, you are too much alone yonder in your lovely house.
Come and work, at our house; how perfectly easy to send on a box of
books!

Send word when you are coming so that I can have a carriage at the
station at Chateauroux.



CCLIII. TO GEORGE SAND
Thursday, 20 March, 1873

Dear master,

The gigantic Tourgueneff is at this moment leaving here and we have
just sworn a solemn oath. You will have us at dinner the 12th of
April, Easter Eve.

It has not been a small job to get to that point, it is so difficult
to succeed in anything, no matter what.

For my part nothing would prevent me from going tomorrow But our
friend seems to me to enjoy very little liberty and I myself have
engagements the first week in April.

I am going this evening to two costume balls! Tell me after that
that I am not young.

A thousand affectionate greetings from your old troubadour who
embraces you.

Read as an example of modern fetidness, in the last number of the
Vie Parisienne, the article on Marion Delorme. It ought to be
framed, if, however, anything fetid can be framed. But nowadays
people don't look so closely.



CCLIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 23 March, 1873

No, that giant does not do as he likes, I have noticed that. But he
is one of the class that finds its happiness in being ruled and I
can understand it, on the whole. Provided one is in good hands,--and
he is.

Well, we are hoping still, but we are not absolutely counting on
anyone but you. You can not give me a greater pleasure than by
telling me that you are going out among people, that you are getting
out of a rut and distracting yourself, absolutely necessary, in
these muddled days.

On the day when a little intoxication is no longer necessary for
self-preservation, the world will be getting on very well. We
haven't come to that yet.

That FETID thing is not worth the trouble of reading, I didn't
finish it, one turns away from such things, one does not spoil one's
sense of smell by breathing them. But I do not think that the man to
whom one offers that in a censer would be satisfied with it.

Do come with the swallows and bring Saint-Antoine. It is Maurice who
is going to be interested in that! He is more of a scholar than I
am, I who will appreciate, thanks to my ignorance about many things,
only the poetic and great side of it. I am sure of it, I know
already that it is there.

Keep on going about, you must, and above all continue to love us as
we love you.

Your old troubadour,

G. Sand



CCLV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 7th April, 1873

I am writing to my friend General Ferri Pisani, whom you know, who
HAS CHARGE at Chateauroux, to reserve you a carriage  which will be
waiting for you on the 12th, at the station, at twenty minutes past
three. You must leave Paris at ten minutes past nine o'clock by the
EXPRESS. Otherwise the trip is too long and stupid. I hope that the
general will come with you, if there is any decision contrary to
your promise send him a telegram to Chateauroux so that he shall not
wait for you. He usually comes on horseback.

We are looking forward IMPATIENTLY to seeing you.

Your old troubadour

G. Sand


CCLVI. TO GEORGE SAND
23 April, 1873

It is only five days since we parted, and I am missing you like the
devil. I miss Aurore and all the household down to Fadette. Yes,
that is the way it is, one is so happy at your house! you are so
good and so interesting.

Why can't we live together, why is life always so badly arranged?
Maurice seems to me to be the type of human happiness. What does he
lack? Certainly, he is no more envied by anyone than by me.

Your two friends, Tourgueneff and Cruchard philosophized about that
from Nohant to Chateauroux, very comfortably borne along in your
carriage at a smart pace by two horses. Hurrah for the postillions
of La Chatre! But the rest of the trip was horrid because of the
company we had in our car. I was consoled for it by strong drink, as
the Muscovite had a flask full of excellent brandy with him. We both
felt a little heavy hearted. We did not talk, we did not sleep.

We found here the barodetien folly in full flower again.  On the
heels of this affair has developed during the last three days,
Stoppfel! another bitter narcotic! Oh! Heavens! Heavens! what a bore
to live in such times! How wise you are live so far from Paris!

I have begun my readings again, and, in a week I shall begin my
excursions hereabouts to discover a countryside that may serve for
my two good men. After which, about the 12th or the 15th, I shall
return to my house at the water-side. I want very much, this summer,
to go to Saint Gervais, to bleach my nose and to strengthen my
nerves. For ten years I have been finding a pretext for doing
without it. But it is high time to beautify myself, not that I have
any pretensions at pleasing and seducing by my physical graces, but
I hate myself too much when I look in my mirror. The older one
grows, the more care one should take of oneself.

I shall see Madame Viardot this evening, I shall go early and we
will talk of you.

When shall we meet again, now? How far Nohant is from Croisset!

Yours, dear good master, all my affection.

Gustave Flaubert

otherwise called the R. P. Cruchard of the Barnabites, director of
the Ladies of Disillusion.



CCLVII. TO GEORGE SAND

Dear master,

Cruchard should have thanked you sooner for sending him your last
book; but his reverence is working like ten thousand negroes, that
is his excuse. But it did not hinder him from reading "Impressions
et Souvenirs." I already knew some of it, from having read it in le
Temps (a pun). [Footnote: "Dans de temps" means also, "some time
ago."]

This is what was new to me and what struck me: (1) the first
fragment; (2) the second in which there is a charming and just page
on the Empress. How true is what you say of the proletariat! Let us
hope that its reign will pass like that of the bourgeois, and for
the same causes, as a punishment for the same folly and a similar
egoism.

The "Reponse a un ami" I knew, as it was addressed to me.

The "Dialogue avec Delacroix" is instructive; two curious pages on
what he thought of father Ingres.

I am not entirely of your opinion as regards the punctuation. That
is to say that I would shock you by my exaggeration in that respect;
but I do not lack, naturally, good reasons to defend my point of
view.

"J'allume le fagot," etc., all of this long article charmed me.

In the "Idees d'un maitre d'ecole," I admire your pedagogic spirit,
dear master, there are many pretty a b c phrases.

Thank you for what you say of my poor Bouilhet!

I adore your "Pierre Bonin." I have known people like him, and as
these pages are dedicated to Tourgueneff it is the moment to ask you
if you have read "I'Abandonnee"? For my part, I find it simply
sublime. This Scythian is an immense old fellow.

I am not at such high-toned literature now. Far from it! I am
hacking and re-hacking "le Sexe faible." I wrote the first act in a
week. It is true that my days are long. I spent, last week, one of
eighteen hours, and Cruchard is as fresh as a young girl, not tired,
no headache. In short, I think that I shall be through that work in
three weeks. After that, God knows what!

It would be funny if Carvalho's fantasticality was crowned with
success!

I am afraid that Maurice has lost his wager, for I want to replace
the three theological virtues by the face of Christ appearing in the
sun. What do you think about it? When the correction is made and I
have strengthened the massacre at Alexandria and clarified the
symbolism of the fantastic beasts, "Saint-Antoine" will be finished
forever, and I shall start at my two good fellows who were set aside
for the comedy.

What a horrid way of writing is required for the stage! The
ellipses, the delays, the questions and the repetitions have to be
lavish, if movement is desired, and all that in itself is very ugly.

I am perhaps blinding myself, but I think that I am now writing
something very quick and easy to play. We shall see.

Adieu, dear master, embrace all yours for me.

Your old good-for-nothing Cruchard, friend of Chalumeau. Note that
name. It is a gigantic story, but it requires one to toe the mark to
tell it suitably.



CCLVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 4 July, 1873

I don't know where you are at present, Cruchard of my heart. I am
addressing this to Paris whence I suppose it will be forwarded to
you. I have been ill, your reverence, nothing except a stupid
anemia, no legs, no appetite, continual sweat on the forehead and my
heart as jumpy as a pregnant woman; it is unfair, that condition,
when one gets to the seventies, I begin my seventieth spring
tomorrow, cured after a half score of river baths. But I find it so
comfortable to rest that I have not yet done an iota of work since I
returned from Paris, and until I opened my ink-well again to write
to you today. We reread your letter this morning in which you said
that Maurice had lost his wager. He insists that he has won it as
you are taking out the vertus theologales.

As for me, bet or no bet, I want you to keep the new version which
is quite in the atmosphere, while the theological virtues are not.--
Have you any news of Tourgueneff? I am worried about him. Madame
Viardot wrote me, several days ago, that he had fallen and hurt his
leg.--Yes, I have read l'Abandonnee, it is very beautiful as is all
that he does. I hope that his injury is not serious! such a thing is
always serious with gout.

So you are still working frantically? Unhappy one! you don't know
the ineffable pleasure of doing nothing! And how good work will seem
to me after it! I shall delay it however as long as possible. I am
getting more and more of the opinion that nothing is worth the
trouble of being said!

Don't believe a word of that, do write lovely things, and love your
old troubadour who always cherishes you.

G. Sand

Love from all Nohant.



CCLIX. TO GEORGE SAND
Thursday

Why do you leave me so long without any news of yourself, dear good
master? I am cross with you, there!

I am all through with the dramatic art. Carvalho came here last
Saturday to hear the reading of le Sexe faible, and seemed to me to
be satisfied with it. He thinks it will be a success. But I put so
little confidence in the intelligence of all those rascals, that for
my part, I doubt it.

I am exhausted, and I am now sleeping ten hours a night, not to
mention two hours a day. That is resting my poor brain.

I am going to resume my readings for my wretched book, which I shall
not begin for a full year.

Do you know where the great Tourgueneff is now?

A thousand affectionate greetings to all and to you the best of
everything from your old friend.



CCLX. TO GEORGE SAND
Sunday ...

I am not like M. de Vigny, I do not like the "sound of the horn in
the depth of the woods." For the last two hours now an imbecile
stationed on the island in front of me has been murdering me with
his instrument. That wretched creature spoils my sunlight and
deprives me of the pleasure of enjoying the summer. For it is lovely
weather, but I am bursting with anger. I should like, however, to
talk a bit with you, dear master.

In the first place, congratulations on your seventieth year, which
seems more robust to me than the twentieth of a good many others!
What a Herculean constitution you have! Bathing in an icy stream is
a proof of strength that bewilders me, and is a mark of a "reserve
force" that is reassuring to your friends. May you live long. Take
care of yourself for your dear grandchildren, for the good Maurice,
for me too, for all the world, and I should add: for literature, if
I were not afraid of your superb disdain.

Ha! good! again the hunting horn! The man is mad. I want to go and
find the rural guard.

As for me, I do not share your disdain, and I am absolutely ignorant
of, as you say, "the pleasure of doing nothing." As soon as I no
longer hold a book, or am not dreaming of writing one, A LAMENTABLE
boredom seizes upon me. Life, in short seems tolerable to me only by
legerdemain. Or else one must give oneself up to disordered pleasure
... and even then!

Well, I have finished with le Sexe faible, which will be played, at
least so Carvalho promises, in January, if Sardou's l'Oncle Sam is
permitted by the censorship; if otherwise, it will be in November.

As I have been accustomed during the last six weeks to seeing things
from a theatrical point of view, to thinking in dialogue, here I am
starting to build the plot of another play! It will be called le
Candidat. My written plot is twenty pages long. But I haven't anyone
to show it to. Alas! I shall therefore leave it in a drawer and
start at my old book. I am reading l'Histoire de la Medecine by
Daremberg, which amuses me a great deal, and I have finished l'Essai
sur les facultes de l'entendement by Gamier, which I think very
silly. There you have my occupations. THINGS seem to be getting
quieter. I breathe again.

I don't know whether they talk as much of the Shah in Nohant as they
do around here. The enthusiasm has been immense. A little more and
they would have proclaimed him Emperor. His sojourn in Paris has
had, on the commercial shop-keeping and artisan class, a monarchical
effect which you would not have suspected, and the clerical
gentlemen are doing very well, very well indeed!

On the other side of the horizon, what horrors they are committing
in Spain! So that the generality of humanity continues to be
charming.



CCLXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, 30 August, 1873

Where are you to be found now? where are you nestled? As for me, I
have just come from Auvergne with my whole household, Plauchut
included. Auvergne is beautiful, above all it is pretty. The flora
is always rich and interesting, the walking rough, the living
accommodations poor. I got through it all very well, except for the
elevation of two thousand meters at Sancy, which combining an icy
wind with a burning sun, laid me flat for four days with a fever.
After that I got into the running again, and I am returning here to
resume my river baths till the frost.

There was no more question of any work, of any literature at all,
than if none of us had ever learned to read. The LOCAL POETS pursued
me with books and bouquets. I pretended to be dead and was left in
peace. I am square with them now that I am home, by sending a copy
of something of mine, it doesn't matter what, in exchange. Ah! what
lovely places I have seen and what strange volcanic combinations,
where we ought to have heard your Saint-Antoine in a SETTING worthy
of the subject! Of what use are these pleasures of vision, and how
are these impressions transformed later? One does not know ahead,
and, with time and the easy ways of life, everything is met with
again and preserved.

What news of your play? Have you begun your book? Have you chosen a
place to study? Do tell me what is becoming of my Cruchard, the
Cruchard of my heart. Write to me even if only a word! Tell me that
you still love us as I love you and as all of us here love you.

G. Sand



CCLXII. TO GEORGE SAND
Croisset, Friday, 5th September, 1873

On arriving here yesterday, I found your letter, dear good master.
All is well with you then, God be praised!

I spent the month of August in wandering about, for I was in Dieppe,
in Paris, in Saint-Gratien, in Brie, and in Beauce, hunting for a
certain country that I had in mind, and I think that I have found it
at last in the neighborhood of Houdan. But, before starting at my
terrifying book, I shall make a last search on the road that goes
from Loupe to Laigle. After that, good night.

The Vaudeville begins well. Carvalho up to now has been charming.
His enthusiasm is so strong even that I am not without anxieties.
One must remember the good Frenchmen who cried "On to Berlin," and
then received such a fine drubbing.

Not only is the aforesaid Carvalho content with the le Sexe faible,
but he wants me to write at once another comedy, the scenario of
which I have shown him, and which he would like to produce a year
from now. I don't think the thing is quite ready to be put into
words. But on the other hand, I should like to be through with it
before undertaking the story of my good men. Meanwhile, I am keeping
on with my reading and note-taking.

You are not aware, doubtless, that they have forbidden Coetlogon's
play formally, BECAUSE IT CRITICISED THE EMPIRE. That is the
censorship's answer. As I have in the le Sexe faible a rather
ridiculous general, I am not without forebodings. What a fine thing
is Censorship! Axiom: All governments curse literature, power does
not like another power.

When they forbade the playing of Mademoiselle La Quintinie, you were
too stoical, dear master, or too indifferent. You should always
protest against injustice and folly, you should bawl, froth at the
mouth, and smash when you can. If I had been in your place with your
authority, I should have made a grand row. I think too that Father
Hugo was wrong in keeping quiet about le Roi s'amuse. He often
asserts his personality on less legitimate occasions.

At Rouen they are having processions, but the effect is completely
spoiled, and the result of it is deplorable for fusion! What a
misfortune! Among the imbecilities of our times, that (fusion) is
perhaps the greatest. I should not be surprised if we should see
little Father Thiers again! On the other hand many Reds, from fear
of the clerical reaction, have gone over to Bonapartism. One needs a
fine dose of simplicity to keep any political faith.

Have you read the Antichrist? I find that indeed a beautiful book,
aside from some faults of taste, some modern expressions applied to
ancient things. Renan seems to me on the whole to have progressed. I
passed all one evening recently with him and I thought him adorable.



CCLXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, 3d October, 1873

The existence of Cruchard is a beautiful poem, so much in keeping,
that I don't know if it is a fictitious biography or the copy for a
real article done in good faith. I had to laugh a bit after the
departure of all the Viardots (except Viardot) and the big
Muscovite, who was charming although very much indisposed from time
to time. He left very well and very gay, but regretting not to have
been to see you. The truth is that he was ill just then. He has had
a disordered stomach, like me, for some time. I get well by being
moderate, and he does not! I excuse him; after these crises one is
famished, and if it is because of an empty stomach that one has to
fill up, he must be terribly famished. What a kind, excellent and
worthy man! And what modest talent! Everyone adores him here and I
give them the example. We adore you too, Cruchard of my heart. But
you love your work better than your friends, and in that you are
inferior to the real Cruchard, who at least adored our holy
religion.

By the way, I think that we shall have Henry V. They tell me that I
am seeing the dark side of things; I don't see anything, but I
perceive the odor of sacristies that increases. If that should not
last a long time, I should like our clerical bourgeois to undergo
the scorn of those whose lands they have bought and whose titles
they have taken. It would be a good thing.

What lovely weather in our country! I still go every day to dip into
the cold rush of my little river and I feel better. I hope to resume
tomorrow my work that has been absolutely abandoned for six months.
Ordinarily, I take shorter holidays; but the flowering of the meadow
saffron always warns me that it is time to begin grubbing again.
Here it is, let us grub. Love me as I love you.

My Aurore, whom I have not neglected, and who is world: well, sends
you a big kiss. Lina, Maurice send affection.

G. Sand



CCLXIV. TO GEORGE SAND
Croisset, Thursday

Whatever happens, Catholicism will receive a terrible blow, and if I
were a devotee, I should spend my time before a crucifix saying:
"Maintain the Republic for us, O my God!"

But THEY ARE AFRAID of the monarchy. Because of itself and because
of the reaction which would follow. Public opinion is absolutely
against it. The reports of messieurs the prefects are disquieting;
the army is divided into Bonapartists and Republicans; the body of
big business in Paris has pronounced against Henry V. Those are the
bits of information that I bring back from Paris, where I have spent
ten days. In a word, dear master, I think now that THEY will be
swamped! Amen!

I advise you to read the pamphlet by Cathelineau and the one by
Segur also. It is curious! The basis is clearly to be seen. Those
people think they are in the XIIth century.