As for Cruchard, Carvalho asked him for some changes which he
refused. (You know that sometimes Cruchard is not easy.) The
aforesaid Carvalho finally realized that it was impossible to change
anything in le Sexe faible without distorting the real idea of the
play. But he is asking to play le Candidat first, it is not finished
but it delights him--naturally. Then when the thing is finished,
reviewed and corrected, perhaps he won't want it. In short, if after
l'Oncle Sam, le Candidat is finished, it will be played. If not, it
will be le Sexe faible.

However, I don't care, I am so eager to start my novel which will
take me several years. And moreover, the theatrical style is
beginning to exasperate me. Those little curt phrases, this
continual scintillation irritates like seltzer water, which is
pleasing at first but shortly seems like nasty water. Between now
and January I am going to compose dialogues in the best manner
possible, after that I am coming back to serious things.

I am glad to have diverted you a little with the biography of
Cruchard. But I find it is hybrid and the character of Cruchard is
not consistent! A man with such an executive ability does not have
so many literary preoccupations. The archeology is superfluous. It
belongs to another kind of ecclesiastics. Perhaps there is a
transition that is lacking. Such is my humble criticism.

They had said in a theatrical bulletin that you were in Paris; I had
a mistaken joy about it, dear good master whom I adore and whom I
embrace.



CCLXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Your poor old troubadour, just getting well from a cruel attack of
rheumatism, during which he could not lie down, nor eat, nor dress
without aid, is at last up again. He suffered liver trouble,
jaundice, rash, fever, in short he was fit to be thrown out on a
pile of rubbish.

Here he is up again, very feeble, but able to write a few lines and
to say with you AMEN to the buried catholic dictatorships; it is not
even Catholics that they should be  called, those people are not.
They are only clericals.

I note today in the papers that they have played l'Oncle Sam. I hear
that it is bad, but it may very well be a success all the same. I
think that your play is surely postponed and Carvalho seems as
capricious too, to me, as hard to put your finger on as other
theatrical managers.

All Nohant embraces you and I embrace you even more, but I cannot
write any more.

G. Sand Monday

Hard work? When indeed can I start at it? I am NO GOOD.



CCLXVI. TO GEORGE SAND
January, 1874

As I have a quiet moment, I am going to profit by it by talking a
little with you, dear good master! And first of all, embrace for me
all your family and accept all my wishes for a Happy New Year!

This is what is happening now to your Father Cruchard.

Cruchard is very busy, but serene and very calm, which surprises
everybody. Yes, that's the way it is. No indignations, no boiling
over. The rehearsals of le Candidat have begun, and the thing will
be on the boards the first of February. Carvalho seems to me very
satisfied with it! Nevertheless he has insisted on my combining two
acts in one, which makes the first act inordinately long.

I did this work in two days, and Cruchard has been splendid! He
slept seven hours in all, from Thursday morning (Christmas Day) to
Saturday, and he is only the better for it.

Do you know what I am going to do to complete my ecclesiastical
character? I am going to be a godfather. Madame Charpentier in her
enthusiasm for Saint-Antoine came to beg me to give the name Antoine
to the child that she is expecting! I refused to inflict on this
young Christian the name of such an agitated man, but I had to
accept the honor that was done me. Can you see my old top-knot by
the baptismal font, beside the chubby-cheeked baby, the nurse and
the relatives? O civilization, such are your blows! Good manners,
such are your exactions!

I went on Sunday to the civic funeral of Francois-Victor Hugo. What
a crowd! and not a cry, not the least bit of disorder! Days like
that are bad for Catholicism. Poor father Hugo (whom I could not
help embracing) was very broken, but stoical.

What do you think of le Figaro, which reproached him for wearing at
his son's funeral, "a soft hat"?

As for politics, a dead calm. The Bazaine trial is ancient history.
Nothing shows better the contemporary demoralization than the pardon
granted to this wretched creature! Besides, the right of pardon if
one departs from theology is a denial of justice. By what right can
a man prevent the accomplishment of the law?

The Bonapartists should have let this alone; but not at all: they
defended him bitterly, out of hatred for the 4th of September. Why
do all the parties regard themselves as having joint interests with
the rascals who exploit them? It is because all parties are
execrable, imbecile, unjust, blind! An example: the history of Azor
(what a name!). He robbed the ecclesiastics. Never mind! the
clericals consider themselves attacked.

As regards the church. I have read in full (which I never did
before) Lamennais' Essai sur l'indifference. I know now, and
thoroughly, all the great buffoons who had a disastrous influence on
the XIXth century. To establish common sense or the prevailing mode
and custom as the criterion of certitude, that is preparing the way
for universal suffrage, which is, to my way of thinking, the shame
of human kind.

I have just read also, la Chretienne by the Abbe Bautain. A curious
book for a novelist. It smacks of its period of modern Paris. I
gulped a volume by Garcin de Tassy on Hindustani literature, to get
clean. One can breathe, at least, in that.

You see that your Father Cruchard is not entirely stupefied by the
theatre. However, I haven't anything to complain of in the
Vaudeville. Everyone there is polite and exact! How different from
the Odeon!

Our friend Chennevieres is now our superior, since the theatres are
in his division. The theatrical people are enchanted.

I see the Muscovite every Sunday. He is very well and like him
better and better.

Saint-Antoine will be in galley proof at the end of January.

Adieu, dear master! When shall we meet? Nohant is very far away! and
I am going to be, all this winter, very busy.



CCLXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
January, 1874

I am seized with a headache, but, although perfectly imbecile, I
want to embrace you and thank you for having written to me on New
Year's day. All Nohant loves you and smacks you, as they say in the
country.

We wish you a magnificent success and we are glad that it is not to
be at the cost of annoyances. However, that is hardly the way of the
actors whom I have known, and at the Vaudeville I have found only
those who were good natured. Have you a part for my friend Parade?
And for Saint-Germain, who seemed to you idiotic one day when
perhaps he had lunched too well, but who nevertheless is a fine
addlepate, full of sympathy and spirit. And with real talent!

I am not reading all these horrid things that you feed on so as to
sense better apparently the good things with which you sandwich
them. I have stopped laughing at human folly, I flee it and try to
forget it. As for admiration, I am always ready, it is the
healthiest regime by far, and too, I am glad to know that I shall
soon read Saint-Antoine again.

Keep in touch with your play and don't get ill this hateful winter.

Your old troubadour who loves you.

G. Sand



CCLXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND
Saturday evening, 7th February, 1874

I have at last a moment to myself, dear master; now let us talk a
little.

I knew through Tourgueneff that you were doing very well. That is
the main thing. Now I am going lo give you some news about that
excellent Father Cruchard.

Yesterday I signed the final proof for Saint-Antoine. ...But the
aforesaid old book will not be published until the first of April
(like an April fool trick?) because of the translations. It is
finished, I am not thinking any more about it! Saint-Antoine is
relegated, as far as I am concerned, to the condition of a memory!
However I do not conceal from you that I had a moment of great
sadness when I looked at the first proof. It is hard to separate
oneself from an old companion!

As for le Candidat, it will be played, I think, between the 2oth and
the 25th of this month. As that play gave me very little trouble and
as I do not attach great importance to it, I am rather calm about
the results of it.

Carvalho's leaving irritated and disturbed me for several days. But
his successor Cormon is full of zeal. Up to now I have nothing but
praise for him, as for all the others in fact. The people at the
Vaudeville are charming. Your old troubadour, whom you picture
agitated and always angry, is gentle as a lamb and even good
natured! First I made all the changes that THEY wanted, and then
THEY put back the original text. But of my own accord I have cut out
what seemed to me too long, and it goes well, very well. Delannoy
and Saint-Germain have excellent wigs and play like angels. I think
it will be all right.

One thing vexes me. The censorship has ruined the role of a little
legitimist ragamuffin, so that the play, conceived in the spirit of
strict unpartisanship, has now to flatter the reactionaries: a
result that distresses me. For I don't want to please the political
passions of anyone, no matter who it may be, having, as you know, an
essential hatred of all dogmatism, of all parties.

Well, the good Alexander Dumas has made the plunge! Here he is an
Academician! I think him very modest. He must be to think himself
honored by honors.



CCLXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 15 February, 1874

Everything is going well, and you are satisfied, my troubadour. Then
we are happy here over your satisfaction and we are praying for
success, and we are waiting impatiently Saint-Antoine so as to read
it again. Maurice has had a cold which attacks him every other day.
Lina and I are well, little girls superlatively so. Aurore learns
everything with admirable facility and docility; that child is my
life and ideal. I no longer enjoy anything except her progress. All
my past, all that I have been able to acquire or to produce, has no
value in my eyes unless it can profit her. If a certain portion of
intelligence and goodness was granted to me, it is so that she may
have a greater share. You have no children, be therefore a
litterateur, an artist, a master; that is logical, that is your
compensation, your happiness, and your strength. And do tell us that
you are getting on, that seems to us the main thing in life.--And
keep well, I think that these rehearsals which make you go to and
fro are good for you.

We all embrace you fondly.

G. Sand



CCLXX. TO GEORGE SAND
Saturday evening, 28 February, 1874

Dear master,

The first performance of le Candidat is set for next Friday, unless
it is Saturday, or perhaps Monday the 9th? It has been postponed by
Delannoy's illness and by l'Oncle Sam, for we had to wait until the
said Sam had come down to under fifteen hundred francs.

I think that my play will be very well given, that is all. For I
have no idea about the rest of it, and I am very calm about the
result, a state of indifference that surprises me greatly. If I were
not harassed by people who ask me for seats, I should forget
absolutely that I am soon to appear on the boards, and to expose
myself, in spite of my great age, to the derision of the populace.
Is it stoicism or fatigue?

I have been having and still have the grippe, the result of it for
your Cruchard, is a general lassitude accompanied by a violent (or
rather a profound) melancholy. While spitting and coughing beside my
fire, I muse over my youth. I dream of all my dead friends, I wallow
in blackness! Is it the result of a too great activity for the past
eight months, or the radical absence of the feminine element in my
life? But I have never felt more abandoned, more empty, more
bruised. What you said to me (in your last letter) about your dear
little girls moved me to the depths of my soul! Why haven't I that?
I was born with all the affections, however! But one does not make
one's destiny, one submits to it. I was cowardly in my youth, I had
a fear of life! One pays for everything.

Let us speak of other things, it will be gayer.

H. M. the Emperor of all the Russias does not like the Muses. The
censorship of the "autocrat of the north" had formally forbidden the
transportation of Saint-Antoine, and the proofs were returned me
from Saint Petersburg, last Sunday; the French edition even will be
prohibited. That is quite a serious money loss to me. It would have
taken very little for the French censorship to forbid my play. Our
friend Chennevieres gave me a good boost. Except for him I should
not be played. Cruchard does not please the temporal powers. Isn't
it funny, this simple hatred of authority, of all government
whatever, for art!

I am reading now books on hygiene. Oh! but they are comic! What
assurance physicians have! what effrontery! what asses for the most
part! I have just finished the Gaule poetique of Marchangy (the
enemy of Beranger). This book gave me hysterics.

So as to retemper myself in something stronger, I reread the great,
the most holy, the incomparable Aristophanes. There is a man, that
fellow! What a world in which such work were produced!



CCLXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, March, 1874

Our two little girls cruelly ill with the grippe have taken up all
my time, but I am following, in the papers, the course of your play.
I would go to applaud it, my cherished Cruchard, if I could leave
these dear little invalids. So it is on Wednesday that they are
going to judge it. The jury may be good or stupid, one never knows!

I have started grubbing again after having rested from the long and
successful novel published by the Revue. I shall send it to you when
it is published in book form.

Don't you delay to give me the news on Thursday, I don't need to
tell you that success and the lack of it prove nothing, and that it
is a ticket in a lottery. It is agreeable to succeed; to a
philosophical spirit it ought not to be very distressing to fail. As
for me, without knowing the play, I predict a success on the first
day. As for its continuance, that is always unknown and unforeseen
from day to day.

We all embrace you very affectionately.

G. Sand



CCLXXII. TO GEORGE SAND
Thursday, one o'clock, 12 March, 1874

Speaking of FROSTS, this is one! People who want to flatter me
insist that the play will do better before the real public, but I
don't think so! I know the defects of my play better than anyone. If
Carvalho had not, for a month, bored me to death with corrections
that I have cut out, I would have made  re-touches or perhaps
changes which would perhaps have modified the final issue. But I was
so disgusted with it that I would not have changed a line for a
million francs. In a word, I am dished.

It must be said too that the hall was detestable, all fops and
students who did not understand the material sense of the words.
They made jokes of the poetical things. A poet says: "I am of 1830,
I learned to read in Hernani, and I wanted to be Lara." Thereupon a
burst of ironical laughter, etc.

And moreover I have fooled the public in regard to the title. They
expected another Rabagas! The conservatives have been vexed because
I did not attack the republicans. Similarly the communists would
have liked some insults against the legitimists.

My actors played superbly, Saint-Germain among others; Delannoy who
carries all the play, is distressed, and I don't know what to do to
soften his grief. As for Cruchard, he is calm, very calm! He had
dined very well before the performance, and after it he supped even
better. Menu: two dozen oysters from Ostend, a bottle of champagne
frappe, three slices of roast beef, a truffle salad, coffee and a
chaser. Religion and the stomach sustain Cruchard.

I confess that I should have liked to make some money, but as my
fall involves neither art nor sentiment I am profoundly unconcerned.

I tell myself: "well, it's over!" and I experience a feeling of
freedom. The worst of it all is the scandal about the tickets.
Observe that I had twelve orchestra seats and a box! (Le Figaro had
eighteen orchestra seats and three boxes.) I did not even see the
chief of the claque. One would say that the management of the
Vaudeville had arranged for me to fail. Its dream is fulfilled.

I did not give away a quarter of the seats that I needed and I
bought a great many for people who slandered me eloquently in the
lobbies. The "bravos" of a devoted few were drowned at once by the
"hushes." When they mentioned my name at the end, there was applause
(for the man but not for the work) accompanied by two beautiful cat-
calls from the gallery gods. That is the truth.

La Petite Presse of this morning is polite. I can ask no more of it.
Farewell, dear good master, do not pity me, for I don't feel
pitiable.

P. S.--A nice bit from my servant when he handed me your letter this
morning. Knowing your handwriting, he said sighing: "Ah! the best
one was not there last evening!" That is just what I think.



CCLXXIII TO GEORGE SAND
Wednesday, April, 1874

Thank you for your long letter about le Candidat. Now here are the
criticisms that I add to yours: we ought to have: (1) lowered the
curtain after the electoral meeting and put the entire half of the
third act into the beginning of the fourth; (2) cut out the
anonymous letter, which is unnecessary, since Arabelle informs
Rousselin that his wife has a lover; (3) inverted the order of the
scenes in the fourth act, that is to say, beginning with the
announcement of the tryst between Madame Rousselin and Julien and,
making Rousselin a little more jealous. The anxieties of his
election turn him aside from his desire to go to entrap his wife.
Not enough is made of the exploiters. There should be ten instead of
three. Then, he gives his daughter. The end was there, and at the
instant that he notices the blackguardism, he is elected. Then his
dream is accomplished, but he feels no joy over it. In that manner
there would have been moral progress.

I think, whatever you say about it, that the subject was good, but
that I have spoiled it. Not one of the critics has shown me in what.
But I know, and that consoles me. What do you think of La Rounat,
who in his page implores me, "in the name of our old friendship,"
not to have my play printed, he thinks it so "silly and badly
written"! A parallel between me and Gondinet follows.

The theatrical mystery is one of the funniest things of this age.
One would say that the art of the theatre goes beyond the limits of
human intelligence, and that it is a secret reserved for those who
write like cab drivers. The QUESTION OF IMMEDIATE SUCCESS leads all
others. It is the school of demoralization. If my play had been
sustained by the management, it could have made money like another.
Would it have been the better for that?

The Tentation is not doing badly. The first edition of two thousand
copies is exhausted. Tomorrow the second will be published. I have
been torn in pieces by the petty journals and praised highly by two
or three persons. On the whole nothing serious has appeared yet, nor
will appear, I think. Renan does not write any more (he says) in the
Debats, and Taine is busy getting settled at Annecy.

I have been EXECRATED by the Messrs. Villemessant and Buloz, who
will do all they can to be disagreeable to me. Villemessant
reproaches me for not "having been killed by the Prussians." All
that is nauseous!

And you beg me not to notice human folly, and to deprive myself of
the pleasure of depicting it! But the comic is the only consolation
of virtue. There is, moreover, a manner of taking it which is
elevated; that is what I am aiming at with two good people. Don't
fear that they are too realistic! I am afraid, on the contrary, that
it may seem beyond the bounds of possibility, for I shall push the
idea to the limit.  This little work that I shall start in six weeks
will keep me busy for four or five years!



CCLXXIV. TO GEORGE SAND
April, 1874

As it would have necessitated a STRUGGLE, and as Cruchard has
lawsuits in horror, I have withdrawn my play on the payment of five
thousand francs, so much the worse! I will not have my actors
hissed! The night of the second performance when I saw Delannoy come
back into the wings with his eyes wet, I felt myself a criminal and
said to myself: "Enough." (Three persons affect me: Delannoy,
Tourgueneff and my servant!) In short, it is over. I am printing my
play, you will get it towards the end of the week.

I am jumped on on all sides! le Figaro and le Rappel; it is
complete! Those people to whom I lent money or for whom I did favors
call me an idiot. I have never had less nerves. My stoicism (or
pride) surprises myself even, and when I look for the causes, I ask
myself, dear master, if you are not one of them.

I recall the first night of Villemer, which was a triumph, and the
first night of Don Juan de Village, which was a failure. You do not
know how much I admired you on those two occasions! The dignity of
your character (a thing rarer still than genius) edified me! and I
formulated within myself this prayer: "Oh! how I wish I could be
like her, on a similar occasion." Who knows, perhaps your example
has sustained me? Forgive the comparison! Well, I don't bat an eye-
lid. That is the truth.

But I confess to regretting the THOUSANDS OF FRANCS which I should
have made. My little milk-jug is broken. I should have liked to
renew the furniture at Croisset, fooled again!

My dress rehearsal was deadly! Every reporter in Paris! They made
fun of it all. I shall underline in your copy, all the passages that
they seized on. Yesterday and the day before they did not seize on
them any more. Oh! well, so much the worse! It is too late. Perhaps
the PRIDE of Cruchard has killed it.

And they have written articles on MY dwellings, my SLIPPERS, my DOG.
The chroniclers have described my apartment where they saw "on the
walls, pictures and bronzes." But there is nothing at all on the
walls! I know that one critic was enraged because I did not go to
see him; and a third person came to tell me so this morning, adding:
"What do you want me to tell him?...But Messieurs Dumas, Sardou and
even Victor Hugo are not like you.--Oh! I know it!--Then you are not
surprised, etc."

Farewell, dear good adored master, friendly regards to yours. Kisses
to the dear little girls, and all my love to you.

P.S. Could you give me a copy or the original of Cruchard's
biography; I have no draft of it and I want to reread it to freshen
up MY IDEAL.



CCLXXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, 10 April, 1874

Those who say that I do not think Saint-Antoine beautiful! and
excellent, lie about it, I do not need to tell you. Let me ask you
how I could have confided in the Levy clerks whom I do not know! I
remember, as for Levy himself, saying to him last summer, that I
found the thing superb and first class.

I would have done an article for you if I had not already refused
Maurice recently, to do one about Hugo's  Quatre-vingt-treize. I
said that I was ill. The fact is, that I do not know how to DO
ARTICLES, and I have done so many of them for Hugo that I have
exhausted my subject. I wonder why he has never done any for me;
for, really, I am no more of a journalist than he is, and I need his
support much more than he needs mine.

On the whole, articles are not of any use, now, no more than are
friends at the theatre. I have told you that it is the struggle of
one against all, and the mystery, if there is one, is to turn on an
electric current. The subject then is very important in the theatre.
In a novel, one has time to win the reader over. What a difference!
I do not say as you do that there is nothing mysterious in that.
Yes, indeed, there is something very mysterious in one respect:
namely that one can not judge of one's effect beforehand, and that
the shrewdest are mistaken ten times out of fifteen. You say
yourself that you have been mistaken. I am at work now on a play; it
is not possible to know if I am mistaken or not. And when shall I
know? The day after the first performance, if I have it performed,
which is not certain. There is no fun in anything except work that
has not been read to any one. All the rest is drudgery and
PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS, a horrible thing. So make fun of all this
GOSSIP; the guiltiest ones are those who report it to you. I think
it is very odd that they say so much against you to your friends. No
one indeed ever says anything to me: they know that I would not
allow it. Be valiant and CONTENT since Saint-Antoine is doing well
and selling better. What difference does it make if they cut you up
in this or that paper? In former times it meant something; in these
days, nothing. The public is not the public of other days, and
journalism has not the least literary influence. Every one is a
critic and forms his own opinions. They never write articles about
my novels. That doesn't make any difference to me.

I embrace you and we love you.

Your old troubadour.



CCLXXVI. TO GEORGE SAND
Friday evening, 1st May, 1874

Things are progressing, dear master, insults are accumulating! It is
a concerto, a symphony in which each one is intent on his own
instrument. I have been cut up beginning le Figaro up to la Revue
des Deux Mondes, including la Gazette de France and le
Constitutionnel. And THEY have not finished yet! Barbey d'Aurevilly
has insulted me personally, and the good Saint-Rene Taillandier, who
declares me "unreadable," attributes ridiculous words to me. So much
for printing. As for speech, it is in accord. Saint-Victor (is it
servility towards Michel Levy) rends me at the Brabant dinner, as
does that excellent Charles Edmond, etc. On the other hand I am
admired by the professors of the Faculty of Theology at Strasbourg,
by Renan, and by the cashier at my butcher's! not to mention some
others. There is the truth.

What surprises me, is that under several of these criticisms there
is a HATRED against me, against me personally, a deliberate
slandering, the cause of which I am seeking. I do not feel hurt, but
this avalanche of foolishness saddens me. One prefers inspiring good
feelings to bad ones. As for the rest, I am not thinking any more
about Saint-Antoine. That is over with!

I shall start, this summer, another book of about the same calibre;
after that I shall return to the novel pure and simple. I have in my
head two or three to write before I die. Just now I am spending my
days at the Library, where I am accumulating notes. In a fortnight,
I shall return to my house in the fields. In July I shall go to get
rid of my congestion on the top of a Swiss mountain, obeying the
advice of Doctor Hardy, the man who called me "a hysterical woman,"
a saying that I consider profound.

The good Tourgueneff is leaving next week for Russia, his trip will
forcibly interrupt his frenzy for pictures, for our friend never
leaves the auction rooms now! He is a man with a passion, so much
the better for him!

I missed you very much at Madame Viardot's a fortnight ago. She sang
Iphigenie en Aulide. I can not tell you how beautiful it was, how
transporting, in short how sublime. What an artist that woman is!
What an artist! Such emotions console one for life.

Well! and you, dear good master, that play that they talk about, is
it finished? You are going to fall back into the theatre! I pity
you! After having put dogs on the boards at the Odeon, perhaps they
are going to ask you to put on horses! That is where we are now!

And all the household, from Maurice to Fadet, how is it?

Kiss the dear little girls for me and let them return it to you from
me.

Your old friend.



CCLXXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 4th May, 1874

Let them say what they like, Saint-Antoine is a masterpiece, a
magnificent book. Ridicule the critics, they are blockheads. The
present century does not like lyricism. Let us wait for the
reaction, it will come for you, and a splendid one. Rejoice in your
insults, they are great promises for the future.

I am working still on my play, I don't at all know if it is worth
anything and don't worry about it. I shall be told that when it is
finished, and if it does not seem interesting I shall lock it up. It
will have amused me for six weeks, that is the most certain thing
for us about our profession.

Plauchut is the joy of the salons! happy old man! always content
with himself and with others; that makes him as good as an angel, I
forgive him all his graces.

You were happy at hearing the Diva Paulita, we had her, with
Iphigenie, for two weeks in Nohant last autumn. Ah! yes, there is
beauty and grandeur! Try to come to see us before going to Croisset,
you would make us happy.

We all love you and all my dear world embraces you with a GREAT GOOD
HEART.

Your old troubadour always,

G. Sand



CCLXXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND
Croisset, Tuesday, 26th March, 1874

Dear good master,

Here I am back again in my solitude! But I shall not remain in it
long, for, in a short month, I shall go to spend three weeks on the
Righi, so as to breathe a bit, to relax myself, to deneurasthenize
myself! It is a long time since I took the air, I am tired. I need a
little rest. After that I shall start at my big book which will take
at least four years. It will have that good quality!

Le Sexe faible which was accepted at the Vaudeville Carvalho, was
returned to me by the said Vaudeville and returned also by Perrin,
who thinks the play off-color and unconventional. "Putting a cradle
and a nurse on the French stage!" Think of it! Then, I took the
thing to Duquesnel who has not yet (naturally) given me any answer.
How far the demoralization which the theatres bring about extends!
The bourgeois of Rouen, my brother included, have been talking to me
of the failure of le Candidat in hushed voices (sic) and with a
contrite air, as if I had been taken to the assizes under an
accusation of forgery. NOT TO SUCCEED IS A CRIME and success is the
criterion of well doing. I think that is grotesque in a supreme
degree.

Now explain to me why they put mattresses under certain falls and
thorns under others? Ah! the world is funny, and it seems chimerical
to me to want to regulate oneself according to its opinion.

The good Tourgueneff must be now in Saint Petersburg; he sent me a
favorable article on Saint-Antoine from Berlin. It is not the
article, but he, that has given me pleasure. I saw him a great deal
this winter, and I love him more and more. I saw a good deal of
father Hugo who is (when the political gallery is absent) a
charming, good fellow.

Was not the fall of the Broglie ministry pleasing to you? Very much
so to me! but the next! I am still young enough to hope that the
next Chamber will bring us a change for the better. However?

Ah, confound it! how I want to see you and talk a long time with
you! Everything is poorly arranged in this world. Why not live with
those one loves? The Abbey of Theleme  [Footnote: Cf. Rabelais'
Gargantua.] is a fine dream, but nothing but a dream. Embrace warmly
the dear little girls for me, and entirely yours.

R. P. Cruchard

More Cruchard than ever. I feel like a good-for-nothing, a cow,
damned, antique, deliquescent, in short calm and moderate, which is
the last term in decadence.



CCLXXIX. TO GEORGE SAND
Kalt-Bad. Righi. Friday, 3d July, 1874

Is it true, dear master, that last week you came to Paris? I went
through it to go to Switzerland, and I read "in a sheet" that you
had been to see les Deux Orphelines, had taken a walk in the Bois de
Boulogne, had dined at Magny's, etc.; all of which goes to prove
that, thanks to the freedom of the Press, one is not master of one's
own actions. Whence it results that Father Cruchard is wrathful with
you for not having advised him of your presence in the "new Athens."
It seems to me that people are sillier and flatter there than usual.
The state of politics has become drivel! They have tickled my ears
with the return of the Empire. I don't believe in it! However...We
should have to expatriate ourselves then. But how and where?

Is it for a play that you came? I pity you for having anything to do
with Duquesnel! He had the manuscript of le Sexe faible returned to
me by an agent of the theatrical management, without a word of
explanation, and in the ministerial envelope was a letter from an
underclerk, which is a gem! I will show it to you. It is a
masterpiece of impertinence! People do not write in that way to a
Carpentras urchin, offering a skit to the Beaumarchais theatre.

It is that very play le Sexe faible that, last year, Carvalho was so
enthusiastic about! Now no one wants it any more for Perrin thinks
it unconventional to put on the boards of the Theatre Francais, a
nurse and a cradle. Not knowing what to do with it, I have taken it
to the Cluny Theatre.

Ah! my poor Bouilhet did well to die! But I think that the Odeon
could show more respect for his posthumous work.

Without believing in an Holbachic conspiracy, I think that they have
been knocking me a bit too much of late; and they are so indulgent
towards certain others.

The American Harrisse maintained to me the other day that Saint-
Simon wrote badly. At that I burst out and talked to him in such a
way that he will never more before me belch his idiocy. It was at
dinner at the Princess's; my violence cast a chill.

You see that your Cruchard continues not to listen to jokes on
religion! He does not become calm! quite the contrary!

I have just read la Creation naturelle by Haeckel, a pretty book,
pretty book! Darwinism seems to me to be better expounded there than
in the books of Darwin himself.

The good Tourgueneff has sent me news from the depths of Scythia. He
has found the information he wanted for a book that he is going to
do. The tone of his letter is frivolous, from which I conclude that
he is well. He will return to Paris in a month.

A fortnight ago I made a little trip to Lower Normandy, where I have
found at last a neighborhood suitable to place my two good men. It
will be between the valley of the Orne and the valley of the Auge. I
shall have to return there several times.

Beginning with September, then, I shall start that hard task! it
makes me afraid, and I am overwhelmed by it in advance.

As you know Switzerland, it is useless for me to talk to you of it,
and you would scorn me if I were to tell you that I am bored to
extinction here. I came here obediently because they ordered me to,
for the purpose of bleaching my face and calming my nerves! I don't
think that the remedy will be efficacious; anyhow it has been deadly
boring to me. I am not a man of nature, and I do not understand
anything in a country where there is no history. I would give all
these glaciers for the Vatican Museum. One can dream there. Well, in
three weeks I shall be glued to my green table! in a humble refuge,
where it seems to me you never want to come!



CCLXXX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 6th July, 1874 (Yesterday, seventy years.)

I was in Paris from the 30th of May to the 10th of June, you were
not there. Since my return here, I have been ill with the grippe,
rheumatic, and often absolutely deprived of the use of my right arm.
I have not the courage to stay in bed: I spend the evening with my
children and I forget my little miseries which will pass; everything
passes. That is why I was not able to write to you, even to thank
you for the good letter which you wrote to me about my novel. In
Paris I was overwhelmed by fatigue. That is the way I am growing
old, and now I am beginning to feel it; I am not more often ill,
now, illness PROSTRATES me more. That is nothing, I have not the
right to complain, being well loved and well cared for in my nest. I
urge Maurice to go about without me, since my strength is not equal
to going with him. He leaves tomorrow for Cantal with a servant, a
tent, a lamp, and a quantity of utensils to examine the MICROS of
his entomological DIVISION I am telling him that you are bored on
the Righi. He cannot understand it.

The 7th

I am taking up my letter again, begun yesterday; I still find it
very hard to move my pen, and even at this moment, I have a pain in
my side, and I cannot...

Till tomorrow.

The 8th

At last, I shall be able perhaps today: for I am furious to think
that perhaps you are accusing me of forgetting you, when I am
prevented by weakness that is entirely physical,  in which my
affections count for nothing. You tell me that they KNOCK you too
much. I read only le Temps and it is a good deal for me even to open
a paper to see about what it is talking. You ought to do as I do and
IGNORE criticism when it is not serious, and even when it is. I have
never been able to see what good it is to the author criticised.
Criticism always starts from a personal point of view, the authority
of which the artist does not recognize. It is because of that
usurpation of powers in the intellectual order of things, that
people get to discussing the Sun and the Moon; but that does
not prevent them in the least from showing us their good tranquil
faces.

You do not want to be a man of nature, so much the worse for you!
therefore you attach too much importance to the details of human
things, and you do not tell yourself that there is in you a NATURAL
force that defies the IFS and the BUTS of human prattle. We are of
nature, in nature, by nature, and for nature. Talent, will, genius,
are natural phenomena like the lake, the volcano, the mountain, the
wind, the star, the cloud. What man dabbles in is pretty or ugly,
ingenious or stupid; what he gets from nature is good or bad; but it
is, it exists and subsists. One should not ask from the jumble of
appreciation called CRITICISM, what one has done and what one wants
to do. Criticism does not know anything about it; its business is to
gossip.

Nature alone knows how to speak to the intelligence in a language
that is imperishable, always the same, because it does not depart
from the eternally true, the absolutely beautiful. The hard thing,
when one travels, is to find nature, because man has arranged it
everywhere and has almost spoiled it everywhere; probably it is
because of that that you are bored, it is because it is disguised
and travestied everywhere. However, the glaciers are still intact, I
presume.

But I cannot write further, I must tell you quickly that I love you,
that I embrace you affectionately. Give me news of yourself. I hope
to be on my feet in a few days. Maurice is waiting until I am robust
before he goes: I am hurrying as much as I can! My little girls
embrace you, they are superb. Aurore is devoted to mythology (George
Cox, Baudry translation). You know that? An adorable work for
children and parents. Enough, I can no more. I love you; don't have
black ideas, and resign yourself to being bored if the air is good
there.



CCLXXXI. TO GEORGE SAND
Righi, 14 July, 1874;

What? ill? poor, dear master! If it is rheumatism, do as my brother
does, who in his character of physician, scarcely believes in
medicine. Last year he went to the baths at Aix in Savoy, and in two
weeks he was cured of the pains that had tormented him for six
years. But to do that you would have to move, to resign your habits,
Nohant and the dear little girls. You will remain at home and YOU
WILL BE WRONG. You ought to take care of yourself ... for those who
love you.

And as regard this, you send me, in your last letter, a horrid
thing. Could I, for my part, suspect you of forgetting Cruchard!
Come now, I have, first of all, too much vanity and next, too much
faith in you.

You don't tell me how your play is getting on at the Odeon.

Speaking of plays, I am going again to expose myself to insults of
the populace and the penny-a-liners. The manager of the Cluny
Theatre, to whom I took le Sexe faible, has written me an admiring
letter and is disposed to put on that play in October. He is
reckoning on a great money success. Well, so be it! But I am
recalling the enthusiasm of Carvalho, followed by an absolute chill!
and all that increases my scorn for the so-called shrewd people who
pretend to know all about things. For, in short, there is a dramatic
work, declared by the managers of the Vaudeville and the Cluny
"perfect," by the Theatre Francais "unplayable," and by the manager
of the Odeon "in need of rewriting from one end to the other." Draw
a conclusion now! and listen to their advice! Never mind, as these
four gentlemen are the masters of your destinies because they have
the money, and as they have more mind than you, never having written
a line, you must believe them and submit to them.

It is a strange thing how much pleasure imbeciles find in
floundering about in the work of another! in cutting it,  correcting
it, playing the pedagogue! Did I tell you that I was, because of
that, very much at odds with a certain *****. He wanted to make
over, sometime ago, a novel that I had recommended to him, which was
not very good, but of which he is incapable of turning the least
phrase. And I did not hide from him my opinion about him; inde irae.
However, it is impossible for me to be so modest as to think that
that good Pole is better than I am in French prose. And you want me
to remain calm! dear master! I have not your temperament! I am not
like you, always soaring above the miseries of this world. Your
Cruchard is as sensitive as if he were divested of skin. And
imbecility, self-sufficiency, injustice exasperate him more and
more. Thus the ugliness of the Germans who surround me shuts off the
view of the Righi!!! Zounds! What mugs!

God be thanked, "of my horrible sight I purge their States."



CCLXXXII. TO GEORGE SAND
Saturday, 26 September, 1874

Then, after having been bored like an ass on the top of the Righi, I
returned home the first of August and started my book. The beginning
was not easy, it was even "direful," and "methought" I should die of
despair; but now things are going, I am all right, come what may!
But one needs to be absolutely mad to undertake such a book. I fear
that, by its very conception, it is radically impossible. We shall
see, Ah! supposing I should carry it out well ... what a dream.

You doubtless know that once more I am exposing myself to the storms
of the footlights (pretty metaphor) and that "braving the publicity
of the theatre" I shall appear upon the boards of Cluny, probably,
towards the end of December. The manager of that "little theatre" is
enchanted with le Sexe faible. But so was Carvalho, which did not
prevent him ... You know the rest.

Of course every one blames me for letting my play be given in such a
joint. But since the others do not want that play and since I insist
that it shall be presented to make a few sous for the Bouilhet
heirs, I am forced to pass that over. I am keeping two or three
pretty anecdotes about this to tell you when we meet. Why is the
theatre such a general cause of delirium? Once one is on that
ground, ordinary conditions are changed. If one has had the
misfortune (slight) not to succeed, friends turn from one. They are
very inconsiderate of one. They never salute one! I swear to you on
my word of honor that that happened to me on account of le Candida.
I do not believe in Holbachic conspiracies, but all that they have
done to me since March amazes me. But, I decidedly don't bat an
optic, and the fate of le Sexe faible disturbs me less than the
least of the phrases of my novel.

Public intelligence seems to me to get lower and lower! To what
depth of imbecility shall we descend? Belot's last book sold eight
thousand copies in two weeks. Zola's Conquete de Plassans, seventeen
hundred in six months, and there was an article about it. All the
Monday-morning idiots have just been swooning away about M. Scribe's
Une Chaine. France is ill, very ill, whatever they say; and my
thoughts are more and more the color of ebony.

However, there are some pretty comic elements: (1) the Bazaine
escape with the episode of the sentinel; (2) l'Histoire d'un Diamant
by Paul de Musset (see the Revue des Deux Mondes for September); (3)
the vestibule of the former  establishment of Nadar near Old England
[sic], where one can contemplate a life-size photograph of Alexander
Dumas.

I am sure that you are finding me grouchy and that you are going to
answer me: "What difference does all that make?" But everything
makes a difference, and we are dying of humbug, of ignorance, of
self-confidence, of scorn of grandeur, of love of banality, and
imbecile babble.

"Europe which hates us, looks at us and laughs," said Ruy Blas. My
Heavens, she has a right to laugh.



CCLXXXIII TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 5th November, 1874

What, my Cruchard, you have been ill? That is what I feared, I who
live in the woes of indigestion and yet hardly work at all, I am
disquieted at your kind of life, the excess of intellectual
expenditure and the seclusion. In spite of the charm that I have
proved and appreciated at Croisset, I fear for you that solitude
where you have no longer anyone to remind you that you must eat,
drink and sleep, and above all walk. Your rainy climate makes you
keep to the house. Here, where it does not rain enough, we are at
least hustled out of doors by the beautiful warm sun and that
Phoebus invigorates us, while our Phoebus-Apollo murders us.

But I am always talking to you as to a Cruchard philosophic and
detached from his personality, to a Cruchard fanatical about
literature and drunk with production. When, then, shall you be able
to say to yourself: Lo! this is the time for rest, let us taste the
innocent pleasure of living for life's sake, of watching with
amazement the agitations of others and of not giving to them
anything except the excess of our overflow. It does one good to
ruminate over what one has assimilated in life, sometimes without
attention and without discrimination.

Old friendships sustain us and all at once they distress us. I have
just lost my poor blind Duvernet, whom you have seen at our house.
He expired very quietly without suspecting it and without suffering.
There is another great void about us and my nephew, the substitute,
has been nominated for Chateauroux. His mother has followed him.

So we are all alone. Happily we love one another so much that we can
live like that, but not without regret for the absent ones. Plauchut
left us yesterday to return at  Christmas. Maurice is already at
work preparing a splendid performance of marionettes for us. And
you, if you are in Paris, won't you come to keep the Christmas Eve
revels with us? You will have finished your rehearsals, you will
have had a success, perhaps you will be in the mood to return to
material life, eating truffles?

Tell us about yourself, do not be ill, always love your old
troubadour and his people who love you too.

G. Sand



CCLXXXIV. TO GEORGE SAND
Wednesday, 2nd December, 1874

I am having remorse about you. It is a crime to let so long a time
elapse without answering such a letter as your last. I was waiting
to write to you until I had something definite to tell you about le
Sexe faible. What is definite is that I took it away from the Cluny
a week ago. The cast that Weinschenk proposed to me was odiously
stupid and he did not keep the promises that he made. But, God be
thanked, I withdrew in time. At present my play has been offered to
the Gymnase. No news up to now from Montigny.

I am worrying like five hundred devils about my book, asking myself
sometimes if I am not mad to have undertaken it. But, like Thomas
Diafoirus, I am stiffening myself against the difficulties of
execution which are frightful. I need to learn a heap of things
about which I am ignorant. In a month I hope to finish with the
agriculture and the gardening, and I shall only then be at the
second third of my first chapter.

Speaking of books, do read Fromont et Risler, by my friend Daudet,
and les Diaboliques, by my enemy Barbey d'Aurevilly. You will writhe
with laughter. It is perhaps owing to the perversity of my mind,
which likes unhealthy things, but the latter work seemed to me
extremely amusing; it is the last word in the involuntary grotesque.
In other respects, dead calm, France is sinking gently like a rotten
hulk, and the hope of salvage, even for the staunchest, seems
chimerical. You need to be here, in Paris, to have an idea of the
universal depression, of the stupidity, of the decrepitude in which
we are floundering.

The sentiment of that agony penetrates me and I am sad enough to
die. When I am not torturing myself about my work, I am groaning
about myself. That is the truth. In my leisure moments, all I do is
to think of the dead, and I am going to say a very pretentious thing
to you. No one understands me; I belong to another world. The men of
my profession are so little of my profession! There is hardly anyone
except Victor Hugo with whom I can talk of what interests me. Day
before yesterday he recited by heart to me from Boileau and from
Tacitus. That was like a gift to me, the thing is so rare. Moreover,
the days when there are not politicians at his house, he is an
adorable man.


CCLXXXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, 8th December, 1874

Poor dear friend,

I love you all the more because you are growing more unhappy. How
you torment yourself, and how you disturb yourself about life! for
all of which you complain, is life; it has never been better for
anyone or in any time. One feels it more or less, one understands it
more or less, one suffers with it more or less, and the more one is
in advance of the age one lives in, the more one suffers. We pass
like shadows on a background of clouds which the sun seldom pierces,
and we cry ceaselessly for the sun which can do no more for us. It
is for us to clear away our clouds.

You love literature too much; it will destroy you and you will not
destroy the imbecility of the human race. Poor dear! imbecility,
that, for my part, I do not hate, that I regard with maternal eyes:
for it is a childhood and all childhood is sacred. What hatred you
have devoted to it! what warfare you wage on it!