I embrace you and I am still more angry than you at these attacks,
but I am not overcome, and if I had you here we should stimulate
each other so well that you would start off again at once on the
other leg to write a new novel.
I embrace you.
Your old troubadour,
G. Sand
CXLI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris
Nohant, 17 December, 1869
Plauchut writes us that YOU PROMISE to come the 24th. Do come the
23d in the evening, so as to be rested for the night of the 24th to
the 25th and join in our Christmas Eve revels. Otherwise you will
arrive from Paris tired and sleepy and our follies will not amuse
you. You are coming to the house of children, I warn you, and as you
are kind and affectionate, you love children. Did Plauchut tell you
to bring a wrapper and slippers, for we do not want to sentence you
to dressing up? I add that I am counting on your bringing some
manuscript. The FAIRY PLAY re-done, Saint-Antoine, whatever you
have finished. I hope indeed that you are in the mood for work.
Critics are a challenge that stimulates.
Poor Saint-Rene Taillandier is as asininely pedantic as the Revue.
Aren't they prudish in that set? I am in a pet with Girardin. I know
very well that I am not strong in letters; I am not sufficiently
cultivated for these gentlemen; but the good public reads me and
listens to me all the same.
If you did not come, we should be unhappy and you would be a big
ingrate. Do you want me to send a carriage for you to Chateauroux on
the 23d at four o'clock? I am afraid that you may be uncomfortable
in that stage-coach which makes the run, and it is so easy to spare
you two and a half hours of discomfort!
We embrace you full of hope. I am working like an ox so as to have
my novel finished and not to have to think of it a minute when you
are here.
G. Sand
CXLII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 19 December, 1869
So women are in it too? Come, forget that persecution here, at a
hundred thousand leagues from Parisian and literary life, or rather
come be glad of it, for these great slatings are the sure proof of
great worth. Tell yourself indeed that those who have not gone
through that are GOOD FOR THE ACADEMY.
Our letters crossed. I begged you and I beg you again not to come
Christmas Eve, but the night before so as to join in the revels the
next night, the Eve, that is to say, the 24th. This is the program:
we dine promptly at six o'clock, we have the Christmas tree and the
marionettes for the children, so, that they can go to bed at nine
o'clock. After that we chatter, and sup at midnight. But the
diligence gets here at the earliest at half past six, and we should
not dine till seven o'clock, which would make impossible the great
joy of our little ones who would be kept up too late. So you must
start Thursday 23d at nine o'clock in the morning, so that everyone
may be perfectly comfortable, so that everyone may have time to
embrace everyone else, and so that no one may be interrupted in the
joy of your arrival on account of the imperious and silly darlings.
You must stay with us a very long time, a very long time, we shall
have some more follies for New Year's day, and for Twelfth Night.
This is a crazy happy house and it is the time of holiday after
work. I am finishing tonight my year's task. Seeing you, dear old
well-beloved friend, would be my recompense: do not refuse me.
G. Sand
Plauchut is hunting today with the prince, and perhaps will not
return till Tuesday. I am writing him to wait for you till Thursday,
you will be less bored on the way. I have just written to Girardin
to complain.
CXLIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
31 December, 1869
We hoped to have a word from you this morning. This sudden cold is
so severe, I dreaded it for your trip. We know you got to
Chateauroux all right. But did you find a compartment, and didn't
you suffer on the way? Reassure us.
We were so happy to have you with us that we should be distressed if
you had to suffer for this WINTER escapade. All goes well here and
all of us adore one another. It is New Year's Eve. We send your
share of the kisses that we are giving one another.
G. Sand
CXLIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, 9 January, 1870
I have had so much proof to correct that I am stupefied with it. I
needed that to console me for your departure, troubadour of my
heart, and for another departure also, that of my drudge of a
Plauchmar--and still another departure, that of my grand-nephew
Edme, my favorite, the one who played the marionettes with Maurice.
He has passed his examinations for collector and goes to Pithiviers-
-unless by pull, we could get him as substitute at La Chatre.
Do you know M. Roy, the head of the management of the domains? If by
chance the princess knew him and would be willing to say a word to
him in favor of young Simonnet? I should be happy to owe her this
joy for his family and this economy for his mother who is poor. It
appears that it is very easy to obtain and that no rule opposes it.
But one must HAVE PULL; a word to the princess, a line from M. Roy
and our tears would change to joy.
That child is very dear to me. He is so loving and so good! They had
hard work to bring him up, he was always ill, always dandled on the
knees and always gentle and sweet. He has a great deal of
intelligence and he works well at La Chatre, where his chief the
collector adores him and mourns for him also. Well, do what you can,
if you can do anything at all.
They continue to damn your book. That doesn't prevent it from being
a fine and good book. Justice will come later, JUSTICE IS ALWAYS
DONE. Apparently it did not come at the right moment, or rather it
came too soon. It has demonstrated too well the disorder that reigns
in people's minds. It has rubbed the open wound, people recognize
themselves too well in it.
Everyone adores you here and our consciences are too pure to be
upset at the truth: we talk of you every day. Yesterday, Lina said
to me that she admired very much all you do, but that she preferred
Salammbo to your modern descriptions. If you had been in a corner,
this is what you would have heard from her, from me, and from THE
OTHERS:
"He is taller and larger than the average person. His mind is like
him, beyond ordinary proportions. In that he is like Victor Hugo, at
least as much as like Balzac, but he has the taste and discernment
that Hugo lacks, and he is an artist which Balzac was not.--Is he
then more than both? Chi lo sa?--He hasn't let himself out yet. The
enormous volume of his brain troubles him. He doesn't know if he is
a poet or a realist; and the fact that he is both, hinders him.--He
must get straightened out in his different lines of effort. He sees
everything and wants to grasp everything at once.--He is not the cut
of the public that wants to eat in little mouthfuls, whom large
pieces choke. But the public will go to him, just the same, when it
understands.--It will even go rather quickly if the author
CONDESCENDS to be willing to be quite understood.--For that, perhaps
there will have to be asked some concessions to the indolence of its
mind. One ought to reflect before daring to give this advice."
That sums up what we said. It is not useless to know the opinion of
good people and of young people. The youngest say that l'Education
sentimentale made them sad. They did not come across themselves in
it, they who have not yet lived; but they have illusions and they
say: "Why does this man, so good, so kind, so gay, so simple, so
sympathetic, wish to discourage us from living?" What they say is
poorly reasoned out, but as it is instinctive, perhaps it ought to
be taken into account.
Aurore talks of you and still cradles her baby in her lap; Gabrielle
calls Punch, HER LITTLE ONE, and will not eat her dinner unless he
is opposite her. They are our continual idols, these brats.
Yesterday, I received, after your letter of the day before, a letter
from Berton, who thinks that they will not play l'Affranchi longer
than the 18th or the 20th. Wait for me, since you can delay your
departure a little. It is too bad weather to go to Croisset; it is
always an effort for me to leave my dear nest to go to attend to my
miserable profession; but the effort is less when I hope to find you
in Paris.
I embrace you for myself and for all my brood.
G. Sand
CXLV. TO GEORGE SAND
Wednesday afternoon.
Dear master,
Your commission was done yesterday at one o'clock. The princess in
my presence took some notes on what you wanted, in order to look
after it at once. She seemed to me very glad to do you a service.
People talk of nothing but the death of Noir! The general sentiment
is fear, nothing else!
Into what miserable ways we are plunged! There is so much imbecility
in the air that one gets ferocious. I am less indignant than
disgusted! What do you think of these gentlemen who come to confer
armed with pistols and sword canes! And of this person, of this
prince, who lives in the midst of an arsenal and makes use of it?
Pretty! Pretty!
What a sweet letter you wrote me day before yesterday! But your
friendship blinds you, dear good master. I do not belong to the
tribe you mention. I am acquainted with myself, I know what I lack!
And I am enormously lacking.
In losing my poor Bouilhet, I lost my midwife, it was he who saw
into my thought more clearly than I did myself. His death has left a
void that I notice more each day. What is the use of making
concessions? Why force oneself? I am quite resolved, on the
contrary, to write in future for my personal satisfaction, and
without any constraint. Come what may!
CXLVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 15 January, 1870
L'Affranchi is for Tuesday. I am working hurriedly to finish my
corrections and I leave Tuesday morning. Come to dine with me at
Magny's at six o'clock. Can you? If not, am I to keep a seat for you
in my box? A word during the day of Tuesday, to my lodgings. You
won't be forced to swallow down the entire performance if it bores
you.
I love you and I embrace you for myself and for my brood. Thank you
for Edme.
G. Sand
CXLVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Paris, 19 January, 1870
Dear friend of my heart, I did not see you in the theatre. The play
applauded and hissed, more applauded than hissed. Barton very
beautiful, Sarah very pretty, but no interest in the characters and
too many second-rate actors, not good.--I do not think that it is a
success.
I am better. Yet I am not bold enough to go to your house Saturday
and to return from such a distance in this severe cold. I saw Theo
this evening, I told him to come to dine with us both on Saturday at
Magny's. Do say yes, it is I who invite you, and we shall have a
quiet private room. After that we will smoke at my place.
Plauchut would not be able to go to you. He was invited to the
prince's.
A word if it is NO. Nothing if it is yes. So I don't want you to
write to me. I saw Tourgueneff and I told him all that I think of
him. He was as surprised as a child. We spoke ill of you.
Wednesday evening.
CXLVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
The 5th or the 6th February, 1870
(On the back of a letter from Edme Simonnet)
I don't see you, you come to the Odeon and when they tell me that
you are there, I hurry and don't find you. Do set a day then when
you will come to eat a chop with me. Your old exhausted troubadour
who loves you.
CXLIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Paris, 15 February, 1870
My troubadour, we are two old rattle traps. As for me, I have had a
bad attack of bronchitis and I am just out of bed. Now I am
recovered but not yet out of my room. I hope to resume my work at
the Odeon in a couple of days.
Do get well, don't go out, at least unless the thaw is not very bad.
My play is for the 22d. [Footnote: This refers to L'Autre.] I hope
very much to see you on that day. And meanwhile, I kiss you and I
love you,
G. Sand
Tuesday evening
CL. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Sunday evening, 20th February, 1870
I went out today for the first time, I am better without being well.
I am anxious at not having news about that reading of the fairy
play. Are you satisfied? Did they understand? L'Autre will take
place on Thursday, or Friday at the latest.
Will your nephew and niece go to the gallery or the balcony seats?
Impossible to have a box. If yes, a word and I will send these seats
out of my allotment--which, as usual, will not be grand.
Your old troubadour.
CLI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Paris, February, 1870
It is for Friday. Then I am disposing of the two seats that I
intended for your niece.
If you have a moment free, and come to the Odeon that night, you
will find me in the manager's box, proscenium, ground floor. I am
heavy-hearted about all you tell me. Here you are again in gloom,
sorrow and chagrin. Poor dear friend! Let us continue to hope that
you will save your patient, but you are ill too, and I am very
anxious about you, I was quite overwhelmed by it this evening, when
I got your note, and I have no more heart for anything.
A word when you can, to give me news.
G. Sand
CLII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Paris, 2d March, 1870
Poor dear friend, your troubles distress me, you have too many blows
in quick succession, and I am going away Saturday morning leaving
you in the midst of all these sorrows! Do you want to come to Nohant
with me, for a change of air, even if only for two or three days? I
have a compartment, we should be alone and my carriage is waiting
for me at Chateauroux. You could be sad without constraint at our
house, we also have mourning in the family. A change of lodging, of
faces, of habits, sometimes does physical good. One does not forget
one's sorrow, but one forces one's body to endure it.
I embrace you with all my soul. A word and I expect you. Wednesday
evening.
CLIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 11 March, 1870
How are you, my poor child? I am glad to be here in the midst of my
darling family, but I am unhappy all the same at having left you
melancholy, ill and upset. Send me news, a word at least, and be
assured that we all are unhappy over your troubles and sufferings.
G. Sand
CLIV. TO GEORGE SAND
17 March, 1870
Dear master,
I received a telegram yesterday evening from Madame Cornu containing
these words: "Come to me, urgent business." I therefore hurried to
her today, and here is the story.
The Empress maintains that you made some very unkind allusions to
her in the last number of the Revue! "What about me, whom all the
world is attacking now! I should not have believed that! and I
wanted to have her nominated for the Academy! But what have I done
to her? etc., etc." In short, she is distressed, and the Emperor
too! He is not indignant but prostrated (sic). [Footnote: Malgre
tout, Calmann-Levy, 1870.]
Madame Cornu explained to her that she was mistaken and that you had
not intended to make any allusion to her.
Hereupon a theory of the manner in which novels are written.
--Oh well, then, let her write in the papers that she did not intend
to wound me.
--But she will not do that, I answered.
--Write to her to tell you so.
--I will not allow myself to take that step.
--But I would like to know the truth, however! Do you know someone
who...then Madame Cornu mentioned me.
--Oh, don't say that I spoke to you of it!
Such is the dialogue that Madame Cornu reported to me.
She wants you to write me a letter in which you tell me that the
Empress was not used by you as a model. I shall send that letter to
Madame Cornu who will have it given to the Empress.
I think that story stupid and those people are very sensitive! Much
worse things than that are told to us.
Now dear master of the good God, you must do exactly what you
please.
The Empress has always been very kind to me and I should not be
sorry to do her a favor. I have read the famous passage. I see
nothing in it to hurt her. But women's brains are so queer!
I am very tired in mine (my brain) or rather it is very low for the
moment! However hard I work, it doesn't go! Everything irritates me
and hurts me; and since I restrain myself before people, I give way
from time to time to floods of tears when it seems to me as if I
should burst. At last I am experiencing an entirely new sensation:
the approach of old age. The shadow invades me, as Victor Hugo would
say.
Madame Cornu has spoken to me enthusiastically of a letter you wrote
her on a method of teaching.
CLV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, 17 March, 1870
I won't have it, you are not getting old. Not in the crabbed and
MISANTHROPIC sense. On the contrary, when one is good, one becomes
better, and, as you are already better than most others, you ought
to become exquisite.
You are boasting, moreover, when you undertake to be angry against
everyone and everything. You could not. You are weak before sorrow,
like all affectionate people. The strong are those who do not love.
You will never be strong, and that is so much the better. You must
not live alone any more; when strength returns you must really live
and not shut it up for yourself alone.
For my part, I am hoping that you will be reborn with the
springtime. Today we have rain which relaxes, tomorrow we shall have
the animating sun. We are all just getting over illnesses, our
children had very bad colds, Maurice quite upset by lameness with a
cold, I taken again by chills and anemia: I am very patient and I
prevent the others as much as I can from being impatient, there is
everything in that; impatience with evil always doubles the evil.
When shall we be WISE as the ancients understood it? That, in
substance, meant being PATIENT, nothing else. Come, dear troubadour,
you must be a little patient, to begin with, and then you can get
accustomed to it; if we do not work on ourselves, how can we hope to
be always in shape to work on others?
Well, in the midst of all that, don't forget that we love you and
that the hurt you give yourself hurts us too.
I shall go to see you and to shake you as soon as I have regained my
feet and my will, which are both backward; I am waiting, I know
that they will return.
Affectionate greetings from all our invalids. Punch has lost only
his fiddle and he is still smiling and well gilded. Lolo's baby has
had misfortunes, but its clothes dress other dolls. As for me, I
can flap only one wing, but I kiss you and I love you.
G. Sand
CLVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris
Nohant, 19 March, 1870
I know, my friend, that you are very devoted to her. I know that she
[Footnote: Letter written about the rumour current, that George Sand
had meant to depict the Empress in one of the chief characters of
her novel, Malgre tout; the letter was sent by Flaubert to Madame
Cornu, god-child of Queen Hortense, and foster-sister of Napoleon
III.] is very kind to unfortunates who have been recommended to her;
that is all that I know of her private life. I have never had any
revelation nor document about her, NOT A WORD, NOT A DEED, which
would authorize me to depict her. So I have drawn only a figure of
fancy, I swear it, and those who pretended to recognize her in a
satire would be, in any case, bad servants and bad friends.
But I don't write satires: I am ignorant even of the meaning of the
word. I don't write PORTRAITS either; it is not my style. I invent.
The public, who does not know in what invention consists, thinks it
sees everywhere models. It is mistaken and it degrades art.
This is my SINCERE answer, I have only enough time to mail it.
G. Sand
CLVII. To MADAME HORTENSE CORNU
Your devotion was alarmed wrongly, dear madame, I was sure of it!
Here is the answer that came to me by return mail.
People in society, I reiterate, see allusions where there are none.
When I did Madame Bovary I was asked many times: "Is it Madame X.
whom you meant to depict?" and I received letters from perfectly
unknown people, among others one from a gentleman in Rheims who
congratulated me on HAVING AVENGED HIM! (against a faithless one).
Every pharmacist in Seine-Inferieure recognizing himself in Homais,
wanted to come to my house to box my ears. But the best (I
discovered it five years later) is that there was then in Africa the
wife of an army doctor named Madame Bovaries who was like Madame
Bovary, a name I had invented by altering that of Bouvaret.
The first sentence of our friend Maury in talking to me about
l'Education sentimentale was this: "Did you know X, an Italian, a
professor of mathematics? Your Senecal is his physical and moral
portrait! Everything is exact even to the cut of his hair!"
Others assert that I meant to depict in Arnoux, Bernard Latte (the
former editor), whom I have never seen, etc., etc.
All that is to tell you, dear madame, that the public is mistaken in
attributing to us intentions which we do not have.
I was very sure that Madame Sand had not intended to make any
portrait; (1) because of her loftiness of mind, her taste, her
reverence for art, and (2) because of her character, her feeling for
the conventions--and also FOR JUSTICE.
I even think, between ourselves, that this accusation has hurt her a
little. The papers roll us in the dirt every day without our ever
answering them, we whose business it is, however, to wield the pen,
and they think that in order to MAKE AN EFFECT, to be applauded, we
are going to attack such and such a one.
Oh! no! not so humble! our ambition is higher, and our courtesy
greater.--When one thinks highly of one's mind one does not choose
the necessary means to please the crowd. You understand me, don't
you?
But enough of this. I shall come to see you one of these days.
Looking forward to that with pleasure, dear madame, I kiss your
hands and am entirely yours,
Gustave Flaubert
Sunday evening.
CLVIII. TO GEORGE SAND
March, 1870
Dear master,
I have just sent your letter (for which I thank you) to Madame
Cornu, enclosing it in a letter from your troubadour, in which I
permitted myself to give bluntly my conception of things.
The two letters will be placed under the eyes of the LADY and will
teach her a little about aesthetics.
I saw l'Autre last evening, and I wept several times. It did me
good, really! How tender and exalting it is! What a charming work
and how they love the author! I missed you. I wanted to give you a
kiss like a little child. My oppressed heart is easier, thank you. I
think that it will get better! There were a lot of people there.
Berton and his son were recalled twice.
CLIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 3 April, 1870
Your old troubadour has passed through cruel anguish, Maurice has
been seriously, dangerously ill.[Footnote: With diptheria.] Favre,
MY OWN doctor, the only one in whom I have confidence, hastened to
us in time. After that Lolo had violent attacks of fever, other
terrors! At last our savior went off this morning leaving us almost
tranquil and our invalids went out to walk in the garden for the
first time.--But they still want a great deal of care and oversight,
and I shall not leave them for two or three weeks. If then you are
awaiting me in Paris, and the sun calls you elsewhere, have no
regret about it. I shall try to go to see you in Croisset from Paris
between the dawn and the dusk sometime.
At least tell me how you are, what you are doing, if you are on your
feet in every way.
My invalids and my well ones send you their affectionate regards,
and I kiss you as I love you; it is not little.
G. Sand
My friend Favre has quite a FANCY for you and wants to know you. He
is not a physician who seeks practice, he only practices for his
friends, and he is offended if they want to pay him. YOUR
PERSONALITY interests him, that is all, and I have promised to
present him to you, if you are willing. He is something more than a
physician, I don't know what exactly, A SEEKER--after what?--
EVERYTHING. He is amusing, original and interesting to the utmost
degree. You must tell me if you want to see him, otherwise I shall
manage for him not to think of it any more. Answer about this
matter.
CLX. TO GEORGE SAND
Monday morning, 11 o'clock
I felt that something unpleasant had happened to you, because I had
just written to you for news when your letter was brought to me this
morning. I fished mine back from the porter; here is a second one.
Poor dear master! How uneasy you must have been and Madame Maurice
also. You do not tell me what he had (Maurice). In a few days before
the end of the week, write to confirm to me that everything has
turned out well. The trouble lies, I think, with the abominable
winter from which we are emerging! One hears of nothing but
illnesses and funerals! My poor servant is still at the Dubois
hospital, and I am distressed when I go to see him. For two months
now he has been confined to his bed suffering horribly.
As for me, I am better. I have read prodigiously. I have overworked,
but now I am almost on my feet again. The mass of gloom that I have
in the depths of my heart is a little larger, that is all. But, in a
little while, I hope that it will not be noticed. I spend my days in
the library of the Institute. The Arsenal library lends me books
that I read in the evening, and I begin again the next day. I shall
return home to Croisset the first of May. But I shall see you before
then. Everything will get right again with the sun.
The lovely lady in question made to me, for you, the most proper
excuses, asserting to me that "she never had any intention of
insulting genius."
Certainly, I shall be glad to meet M. Favre; since he is a friend of
yours I shall like him.
CLXI. TO GEORGE SAND
Tuesday morning
Dear master,
It is not staying in Paris that wears me out, but the series of
misfortunes that I have had during the last eight months! I am not
working too much, for what would become of me without work?
However, it is very hard for me to be reasonable. I am overwhelmed
by a black melancholy, which returns a propos of everything and
nothing, many times a day. Then, it passes and it begins again.
Perhaps it is because it is too long since I have written anything.
Nervous reservoirs are exhausted. As soon as I am at Croisset, I
shall begin the article about my poor Bouilhet, a painful and sad
task which I am in a hurry to finish, so as to set to work at Saint-
Antoine. As that is an extravagant subject, I hope it will divert
me.
I have seen your physician, M. Favre, who seemed to me very strange
and a little mad, between ourselves. He ought to like me for I let
him talk all the time. There are high lights in his talk, things
which sparkle for a moment, then one sees not a ray.
CLXII. TO GEORGE SAND
Paris, Thursday
M. X.----sent me news of you on Saturday: so now I know that
everything is going well with you, and that you have no more
uneasiness, dear master. But you, personally, how are you? The two
weeks are almost up, and I do not see you coming.
My mood continues not to be sportive. I am still given up to
abominable readings, but it is time that I stopped for I am
beginning to be disgusted with my subject.
Are you reading Taine's powerful book? I have gobbled it down, the
first volume with infinite pleasure. In fifty years perhaps that
will be the philosophy that will be taught in the colleges.
And the preface to the Idees de M. Aubray?
How I long to see you and to jabber with you!
CLXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 16 April, 1870
What ought I to say to Levy so that he will take the first steps?
Tell me again how things are, for my memory is poor. You had sold
him one volume for ten thousand;--there are two, he himself told me
that that would be twenty thousand. What has he paid you up to now?
What words did you exchange at the time of this payment?
Answer, and I act.
Things are going better and better here, the little ones well again,
Maurice recovering nicely, I tired from having watched so much and
from watching yet, for he has to drink and wash out his mouth during
the night, and I am the only one in the house who has the faculty of
keeping awake. But I am not ill, and I work a little now and then
while loafing about. As soon as I can leave, I shall go to Paris. If
you are still there, it will be A PIECE OF GOOD LUCK, but I do not
dare to wish you to prolong your slavery there, for I can see that
you are still ill and that you are working too hard.
Croisset will cure you if you consent to take care of yourself.
I embrace you tenderly for myself and for all the family which
adores you.
G. Sand
CLXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset
Nohant, 20 May, 1870
It is a very long time since I have had news of my old troubadour.
You must be in Croisset. If it is as warm there as it is here, you
must be suffering; here it is 34 degrees in the shade, and in the
night, 24. Maurice has had a bad relapse of sore throat, without
membranes this time, and without danger. But the inflammation was so
bad that for three days he could hardly swallow even a little water
and wine. Bouillon did not go down. At last this excessive heat has
cured him, it suits us all here, for Lina went to Paris this morning
vigorous and strong. Maurice gardens all day. The children are gay
and get prettier while you look at them. As for me, I am not
accomplishing anything; I have too much to do taking care of and
watching my boy, and now that the little mother is away, the little
children absorb me. I work, however, planning and dreaming. That
will be so much done when I can scribble.
I am still ON MY FEET, as Doctor Favre says. No old age yet, or
rather normal old age, the calmness ... OF VIRTUE, that thing that
people ridicule, and that I mention in mockery, but that corresponds
by an emphatic and silly word, to a condition of forced
inoffensiveness, without merit in consequence, but agreeable and
good to experience. It is a question of rendering it useful to art
when one believes in that, to the family and to friendship when one
cares for that; I don't dare to say how very simple and primitive I
am in this respect. It is the fashion to ridicule it, but let them.
I do not want to change.
There is my SPRING examination of my conscience, so as not to think
all summer about anything except what is not myself.
Come, you, your health first? And this sadness, this discontent that
Paris has left with you, is it forgotten? Are there no longer any
painful external circumstances? You have been too much shaken also.
Two of your dearest friends gone one after the other. There are
periods in life when destiny is ferocious to us. You are too young
to concentrate on the idea of REGAINING your affections in a better
world, or in this world made better. So you must, at your age (and
at mine I still try to), become more attached to what remains. You
wrote that to me when I lost Rollinat, my double in this life, the
veritable friend whose feeling for the differences between the sexes
had never hurt our pure affection, even when we were young. He was
my Bouilhet and more than that; for to my heart's intimacy was
joined a religious reverence for a real type of moral courage, which
had undergone all trials with a sublime SWEETNESS. I have OWED him
everything that is good in me, I am trying to keep it for love of
him. Is there not a heritage that our beloved dead leave us?
The despair that would make us abandon ourselves would be a treason
to them and an ingratitude. Tell me that you are calm and soothed,
that you are not working too much and that you are working well. I
am not without some anxiety because I have not had a letter from you
for a long time. I did not want to ask for one till I could tell you
that Maurice was quite well again; he embraces you, and the children
do not forget you. As for me, I love you.
G. Sand
CLXV. TO GEORGE SAND
No, dear master! I am not ill, but I have been busy with moving from
Paris and with getting settled in Croisset. Then my mother has been
very much indisposed. She is well now; then I have had to set in
order the rest of my poor Bouilhet's papers, on whom I have begun
the article. I wrote this week nearly six pages, which was very good
for me; this work is very painful in every way. The difficulty is in
knowing what not to say. I shall console myself a little in blurting
out two or three dogmatic opinions on the art of writing. It will be
an opportunity to express what I think; a sweet thing and one I am
always deprived of.
You say very lovely and also good things to me to restore my
courage. I have hardly any, but I am acting as if I had, which
perhaps comes to the same thing.
I feel no longer the need of writing, for I used to write especially
for one person alone, who is no more. That is the truth! And yet I
shall continue to write. But I have no more liking for it; the
fascination is gone. There are so few people who like what I like,
who are anxious about what I am interested in! Do you know in this
Paris, which is so large, one SINGLE house where they talk about
literature? And when it happens to be touched on incidentally, it is
always on its subordinate and external sides, such as the question
of success, of morality, of utility, of its timeliness, etc. It
seems to me that I am becoming a fossil, a being unrelated to the
surrounding world.
I would not ask anything better than to cast myself on some new
affection. But how? Almost all my old friends are married officials,
thinking of their little business the entire year, of the hunt
during vacation and of whist after dinner. I don't know one of them
who would be capable of passing an afternoon with me reading a poet.
They have their business; I, I have none. Observe that I am in the
same social position that I was at eighteen. My niece whom I love as
my daughter, does not live with me, and my poor good simple mother
has become so old that all conversation with her (except about her
health) is impossible. All that makes an existence which is not
diverting.
As for the ladies, "my little locality" furnishes none of them, and
then,--even so! I have nevver been able to put Venus an Apollo in
the same coop. It is one or the other, being a man of excess, a
gentleman entirely given over to what he does.
I repeat to myself the phrase of Goethe: "Go forward beyond the
tombs," and I hope to get used to the emptiness, but nothing more.
The more I know you, yourself, the more I admire you; how strong you
are!
Aside from a little Spinoza and Plutarch, I have read nothing since
my return, as I am quite occupied by my present work. It is a task
that will take me up to the end of July. I am in a hurry to be
through with it, so as to abandon myself to the extravagances of the
good Saint-Antoine, but I am afraid of not being SUFFICIENTLY IN THE
MOOD.
That is a charming story, Mademoiselle Hauterive, isn't it? This
suicide of lovers to escape misery ought to inspire fine moral
phrases from Prudhomme. As for me, I understand it. What they did is
not American, but how Latin and antique it is! They were not strong,
but perhaps very sensitive.
CLXVI. TO GEORGE SAND
Sunday, 26 June, 1870
You forget your troubadour who has just buried another friend! From
the seven that we used to be at the beginning of the dinners at
Magny's, we are only three now! I am gorged with coffins like an old
cemetery! I am having enough of them, frankly.
And in the midst of all that I keep on working! I finished
yesterday, such as it is, the article on my poor Bouilhet. I am
going to see if there is not some way of reviving one of his
comedies in prose. After that I shall set to work on Saint-Antoine.
And you, dear master, what is happening to you and all your family?
My niece is in the Pyrenees, and I am living alone with my mother,
who is becoming deafer and deafer, so that my existence lacks
diversion absolutely. I should like to go to sleep on a warm beach.
But for that I lack time and money. So I must push on my scratches
and grub as hard as possible.
I shall go to Paris at the beginning of August. Then I shall spend
all the month of October there for the rehearsals of Aisse. My
vacation will be confined to a week spent in Dieppe towards the end
of August. There are my plans.
It was distressing, the funeral of Jules Goncourt. Theo wept buckets
full.
CLXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 27 June, 1870
Another grief for you, my poor old friend. I too have a great one, I
mourn for Barbes, one of my religions, one of those beings who make
one reconciled with humanity. As for you, you miss poor Jules
[Footnote: De Goncourt.] and you pity the unhappy Edmond. You are
perhaps in Paris, so as to try to console him. I have just written
him, and I feel that you are struck again in your affections. What
an age! Every one is dying, everything is dying, and the earth is
dying also, eaten up by the sun and the wind. I don't know where I
get the courage to keep on living in the midst of these ruins. Let
us love each other to the end. You write me very little, I am
worried about you.
G. Sand
CLXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND
Saturday evening, 2 July, 1870
Dear good master,
Barbes' death has saddened me because of you. We, both of us, have
our mourning. What a succession of deaths during a year! I am as
dazed by them as if I had been hit on the head with a stick. What
troubles me (for we refer everything to ourselves), is the terrible
solitude in which I live. I have no longer anyone, I mean anyone
with whom to converse, "who is interested today in eloquence and
style."
Aside from you and Tourgueneff, I don't know a living being to whom
to pour out my soul about those things which I have most at heart;
and you live far away from me, both of you!
However, I continue to write. I have resolved to start at my Saint-
Antoine tomorrow or the day after. But to begin a protracted effort
I need a certain lightness which I lack just now. I hope, however,
that this extravagant work is going to get hold of me. Oh! how I
would like not to think any more of my poor Moi, of my miserable
carcass! It is getting on very well, my carcass. I sleep
tremendously! "The coffer is good," as the bourgeois say.
I have read lately some amazing theological things, which I have
intermingled with a little of Plutarch and Spinoza. I have nothing
more to say to you.
Poor Edmond de Goncourt is in Champagne at his relatives'. He has
promised to come here the end of this month. I don't think that the
hope of seeing his brother again in a better world consoles him for
having lost him in this one.
One juggles with empty words on this question of immortality, for
the question is to know if the moi persists. The affirmative seems
to me a presumption of our pride, a protest of our weakness against
the eternal order. Has death perhaps no more secrets to reveal to us
than life has?
What a year of evil! I feel as if I were lost in the desert, and I
assure you, dear master, that I am brave, however, and that I am
making prodigious efforts to be stoical. But my poor brain is
enfeebled at moments. I need only one thing (and that is not given
me), it is to have some kind of enthusiasm!
Your last letter but one was very sad. You also, heroic being, you
feel worn out! What then will become of us!
I have just reread the conversations between Goethe and Eckermann.
There was a man, that Goethe! But then he had everything on his
side, that man.
CLXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, 29 June, 1870
Our letters are always crossing, and I have now the feeling that if
I write to you in the evening I shall receive a letter from you the
next morning; we could say to each other:
"You appeared to me in my sleep, looking a little sad."
What preoccupies me most about poor Jules' (de Goncourt) death, is
the survivor. I am sure that the dead are well off, that perhaps
they are resting before living again, and that in all cases they
fall back into the crucible so as to reappear with what good they
previously had and more besides. Barbes only suffered all his life.
There he is now, sleeping deeply. Soon he will awaken; but we, poor
beasts of survivors, we see them no longer. A little while before he
died, Duveyrier, who seemed to have recovered, said to me: "Which
one of us will go first?" We were exactly the same age. He
complained that those who went first could not let those who were
left know that they were happy, and that they remembered their
friends. I said, WHO KNOWS? Then we promised each other that the
first one to die should appear to the survivor, and should at least
try to speak to him.
He did not come, I have waited for him, he has said nothing to me.
He had one of the tenderest hearts, and a sincere good will. He was
not able to; it was not permitted, or perhaps, it was I; I did not
hear or understand.
It is, I say, this poor Edmond who is on my mind. That life lived
together, quite ended. I cannot think why the bond was broken,
unless he too believes that one does not really die.
I would indeed like to go to see you; apparently you have COOL
WEATHER in Croisset since you want to sleep ON A WARM BEACH. Come
here, you will not have a beach, but 36 degrees in the shade and a
stream cold as ice, is not to be despised. I go there to dabble in
it every day after my work; for I must work, Buloz advances me too
much money. Here I am DOING MY BUSINESS, as Aurore says, and not
being able to budge till autumn. I was too lazy after my fatigues as
sick-nurse. Little Buloz recently came to stir me up again. Now here
I am hard at it.
Since you are to be in Paris in August, you must come to spend
several days with us. You did laugh here anyhow; we will try to
distract you and to shake you up a bit. You will see the little
girls grown and prettier; the little one is beginning to talk.
Aurore chatters and argues. She calls Plauchut, OLD BACHELOR. And a
propos, accept the best regards of that fine and splendid boy along
with all the affectionate greetings of the family.
As for me, I embrace you tenderly and beg you to keep well.
G. Sand
CLXX. TO GEORGE SAND
Croisset, Wednesday evening...1870
What has become of you, dear master, of you and yours? As for me, I
am disheartened, distressed by the folly of my compatriots. The
hopeless barbarism of humanity fills me with a black melancholy.
That enthusiasm which has no intelligent motive makes me want to
die, so as not to see it any longer.
The good Frenchman wants to fight: (1) because he thinks he is
provoked to it by Prussia; (2) because the natural condition of man
is savagery; (3) because war in itself contains a mystic element
which enraptures crowds.
Have we returned to the wars of races? I fear so. The terrible
butchery which is being prepared has not even a pretext. It is the
desire to fight for the sake of fighting.
I bewail the destroyed bridges, the staved-in tunnels, all this
human labor lost, in short a negation so radical.
The Congress of Peace is wrong at present. Civilization seems to me
far off. Hobbes was right: Homo homini lupus.
I have begun Saint-Antoine, and it would go perhaps rather well, if
I did not think of the war. And you?
The bourgeois here cannot contain himself. He thinks Prussia was too
insolent and wants to "avenge himself." Did you see that a gentleman
has proposed in the Chamber the pillage of the duchy of Baden! Ah!
why can't I live among the Bedouins!
CLXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset
Nohant, 26 July, 1870
I think this war is infamous; that authorized Marseillaise, a
sacrilege. Men are ferocious and conceited brutes; we are in the
HALF AS MUCH of Pascal; when will come the MORE THAN EVER!
It is between 40 and 45 degrees IN THE SHADE here. They are burning
the forests; another barbarous stupidity! The wolves come and walk
into our court, and we chase them away at night, Maurice with a
revolver and I with a lantern. The trees are losing their leaves and
perhaps their lives. Water for drinking is becoming scarce; the
harvests are almost nothing; but we have war, what luck!
Farming is going to nought, famine threatens, poverty is lurking
about while waiting to transform itself into Jacquerie; but we shall
fight with the Prussians. Malbrough s'en va-t-en guerre!
You said rightly that in order to work, a certain lightness was
needed; where is it to be found in these accursed times?
Happily, we have no one ill at our house. When I see Maurice and
Lina acting, Aurore and Gabrielle playing, I do not dare to complain
for fear of losing all.
I love you, my dear old friend, we all love you.
Your troubadour,
G. Sand
CLXXII. TO GEORGE SAND
Croisset, Wednesday, 3 August, 1870
What! dear master, you too are demoralized, sad? What will become of
the weak souls?
As for me, my heart is oppressed in a way that astonishes me, and I
wallow in a bottomless melancholy, in spite of work, in spite of the
good Saint-Antoine who ought to distract me. Is it the consequence
of my repeated afflictions? Perhaps. But the war is a good deal
responsible for it. I think that we are getting into the dark.
Behold then, the NATURAL MAN. Make theories now! Boast the progress,
the enlightenment and the good sense of the masses, and the
gentleness of the French people! I assure you that anyone here who
ventured to preach peace would get himself murdered. Whatever
happens, we have been set back for a long time to come.
Are the wars between races perhaps going to begin again? One will
see, before a century passes, several millions of men kill one
another in one engagement. All the East against all Europe, the old
world against the new! Why not? Great united works like the Suez
Canal are, perhaps, under another form, outlines and preparations
for these monstrous conflicts of which we have no idea.
Is Prussia perhaps going to have a great drubbing which entered into
the schemes of Providence for reestablishing European equilibrium?
That country was tending to be hypertrophied like France under Louis
XIV and Napoleon. The other organs are inconvenienced by it. Thence
universal trouble. Would formidable bleedings be useful?
Ah! we intellectuals! Humanity is far from our ideal! and our
immense error, our fatal error, is to think it like us and to want
to treat it accordingly.
The reverence, the fetichism, that they have for universal suffrage
revolts me more than the infallibility of the pope (which has just
delightfully missed its point, by the way). Do you think that if
France, instead of being governed on the whole by the crowd, were in
the power of the mandarins, we should be where we are now? If,
instead of having wished to enlighten the lower classes, we had
busied ourselves with instructing the higher, we should not have
seen M. de Keratry proposing the pillage of the duchy of Baden, a
measure that the public finds very proper!
Are you studying Prudhomme now? He is gigantic! He admires Musset's
Rhin, and asks if Musset has done anything else. Here you have
Musset accepted as the national poet and ousting Beranger! What
immense buffoonery is...everything! But a not at all gay buffoonery.
Misery is very evident. Everyone is in want, beginning with myself!
But perhaps we were too accustomed to comfort and tranquillity. We
buried ourselves in material things. We must return to the great
tradition, hold no longer to life, to happiness, to money nor to
anything; be what our grandfathers were, light, effervescing people.
Once men passed their life in starving. The same prospect is on the
horizon. What you tell me about poor Nohant is terrible. The country
has suffered less here than with you.
CLXXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset.
Nohant, 8 August, 1870
Are you in Paris in the midst of all this torment? What a lesson the
people are getting who want absolute masters! France and Prussia are
cutting each other's throats for reasons that they don't understand!
Here we are in the midst of great disasters, and what tears at the
end of it all, even should we be the victors! One sees nothing but
poor peasants mourning for their children who are leaving.
The mobilization takes away those who were left with us and how they
are being treated to begin with! What disorder, what disarray in
that military administration, which absorbed everything and had to
swallow up everything! Is this horrible experience going to prove to
the world that warfare ought to be suppressed or that civilization
has to perish?
We have reached the point this evening of knowing that we are
beaten. Perhaps tomorrow we shall know that we have beaten, and what
will there be good or useful from one or the other?
It has rained here at last, a horrible storm which destroyed
everything.
The peasant is working and ploughing his fields; digging hard
always, sad or gay. He is imbecile, people say; no, he is a child in
prosperity, a man in disaster, more of a man than we who complain;
he says nothing, and while people are killing, he is sowing,
repairing continually on one side what they are destroying from the
other. We are going to try to do as he, and to hunt a bubbling
spring fifty or a hundred yards below ground. The engineer is here,
and Maurice is explaining to him the geology of the soil.
We are trying to dig into the bowels of the earth to forget all that
is going on above it. But we cannot distract ourselves from this
terror!
Write me where you are; I am sending this to you on the day agreed
upon to rue Murillo. We love you, and we all embrace you.
G. Sand
Nohant, Sunday evening.
CLXXIV. TO GEORGE SAND.
Croisset, Wednesday, 1870
I got to Paris on Monday, and I left it again on Wednesday. Now I
know the Parisian to the very bottom, and I have excused in my heart
those most ferocious politics of 1793. Now, I understand them! What
imbecility! what ignorance! what presumption! My compatriots make me
want to vomit. They are fit to be put in the same sack with Isidore!
This people deserves to be chastised, and I fear that it will be.
It is impossible for me to read anything whatever, still more so to
write anything. I spend my time like everyone else in waiting for
news. Ah! if I did not have my mother, I would already be gone!
CLXXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset.
Nohant, 15 August, 1870
