I wrote to you to Paris according to your instructions the 8th.
Weren't you there then? Probably so: in the midst of all this
confusion, to publish Bouilhet, a poet! this is not the moment. As
for me, my courage is weak. There is always a woman under the skin
of the old troubadour. This human butchery tears my poor heart to
pieces. I tremble too for all my children and friends, who perhaps
are to be hacked to pieces.

And YET, in the midst of all that, my soul exults and has ecstasies
of faith; these terrific lessons which are necessary for us to
understand our imbecility, must be of use to us. We are perhaps
making our last return to the ways of the old world. There are sharp
and clear principles for everyone today that ought to extricate them
from this torment. Nothing is useless in the material order of the
universe. The moral order cannot escape the law. Bad engenders good.
I tell you that we are in the HALF AS MUCH of Pascal, so as to get
TO THE MORE THAN EVER! That is all the mathematics that I
understand.

I have finished a novel in the midst of this torment, hurrying up so
as not to be worn out before the end. I am as tired as if I had
fought with our poor soldiers.

I embrace you. Tell me where you are, what you are thinking.

We all love you.

What a fine St. Napoleon we have!

G. Sand



CLXXVI. TO GEORGE SAND.
Saturday, 1870

Dear master,

Here we are in the depths of the abyss! A shameful peace will
perhaps not be accepted! The Prussians intend to destroy Paris! That
is their dream.

I don't think the siege of Paris is very imminent. But in order to
force Paris to yield, they are going to (1) terrify her by the sight
of cannon, and (2) ravage the surrounding country.

We expect the visit of these gentlemen at Rouen, and as I have been
(since Sunday) lieutenant of my company, I drill my men and I am
going to Rouen to take lessons in military tactics.

The most deplorable thing is that opinions are divided, some for
defence to the utmost, and others for peace at any price.

I AM DYING OF HUMILIATION. What a house mine is! Fourteen persons
who sigh and unnerve me! I curse women! It is because of them that
we perish.

I expect that Paris will have the fate of Warsaw, and you distress
me, you with your enthusiasm for the Republic. At the moment when we
are overcome by the plainest positivism, how can you still believe
in phantoms? Whatever happens, the people who are now in power will
be sacrificed, and the Republic will follow their fate. Observe that
I defend that poor Republic; but I do not believe in it.

That is all that I have to say to you. Now I should have many more
things to say, but my head is not clear. It is as if cataracts,
floods, oceans of sadness, were breaking over me. It is not possible
to suffer more. Sometimes I am afraid of going mad. The face of my
mother, when I turn my eyes toward her, takes away all my strength.

This is where our passion for not wanting to see the truth has taken
us! Love of pretence and of flap-doodle. We are going to become a
Poland, then a Spain. Then it will be the turn of Prussia who will
be devoured by Russia.

As for me, I consider myself a man whose career is ended. My brain
is not going to recover. One can write no longer when one does not
think well of oneself. I demand only one thing, that is to die, so
to be at rest.



CLXXVII. TO GEORGE SAND
Sunday evening

I am still alive, dear master, but I am hardly any better, for I am
so sad! I didn't write you any sooner, for I was waiting, for news
from you. I didn't know where you were.

Here it is six weeks that we have been expecting the coming of the
Prussians from day to day. We strain our ears, thinking we can hear
the sound of the cannon from a distance. They are surrounding Seine-
Inferieure in a radius of from fourteen to twenty leagues. They are
even nearer, since they are occupying Vexin, which they have
completely destroyed. What horrors! It makes one blush for being a
man!

If we have had a success on the Loire, their appearance will be
delayed. But shall we have it? When the hope comes to me, I try to
repel it, and yet, in the very depths of myself, in spite of all, I
cannot keep myself from hoping a little, a very little bit.

I don't think that there is in all France a sadder man than I am!
(It all depends on the sensitiveness of people.) I am dying of
grief. That is the truth, and consolations irritate me. What
distresses me is: (1) the ferocity of men; (2) the conviction that
we are going to enter upon a stupid era. People will be utilitarian,
military, American and Catholic! Very Catholic! You will see! The
Prussian War ends the French Revolution and destroys it.

But supposing we were conquerors? you will say to me. That
hypothesis is contrary to all historical precedents. Where did you
ever see the south conquer the north, and the Catholics dominate the
Protestants? The Latin race is agonizing. France is going to follow
Spain and Italy, and boorishness (pignouflism) begins!

What a cataclysm! What a collapse! What misery! What abominations!
Can one believe in progress and in civilization in the face of all
that is going on? What use, pray, is science, since this people
abounding in scholars commits abominations worthy of the Huns and
worse than theirs, because they are systematic, cold-blooded,
voluntary, and have for an excuse, neither passion nor hunger?

Why do they abhor us so fiercely? Don't you feel overwhelmed by the
hatred of forty millions of men? This immense infernal chasm makes
me giddy.

Ready-made phrases are not wanting: France will rise again! One must
not despair! It is a salutary punishment! We were really too
immoral! etc. Oh! eternal poppycock! No! one does not recover from
such a blow! As for me, I feel myself struck to my very marrow!

If I were twenty years younger, I should perhaps not think all that,
and if I were twenty years older I should be resigned.

Poor Paris! I think it is heroic. But if we do find it again, it
will not be our Paris any more! All the friends that I had there are
dead or have disappeared. I have no longer any center. Literature
seems to me to be a vain and useless thing! Shall I ever be in a
condition to write again?

Oh! if I could flee into a country where one does not see uniforms,
where one does not hear the drum, where one does not talk of
massacres, where one is not obliged to be a citizen! But the earth
is no longer habitable for the poor mandarins.



CLXXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND
Wednesday

I am sad no longer. I took up my Saint-Antoine yesterday. So much
the worse, one has to get accustomed to it! One must accustom
oneself to what is the natural condition of man, that is to say, to
evil.

The Greeks at the time of Pericles made art without knowing if they
should have anything to eat the next day. Let us be Greeks. I shall
confess to you, however, dear master, that I feel rather a savage.
The blood of my ancesters, the Natchez or the Hurons, boils in my
educated veins, and I seriously, like a beast, like an animal, want
to fight!

Explain that to me! The idea of making peace now exasperates me, and
I would rather that Paris were burned (like Moscow), than see the
Prussians enter it. But we have not gotten to that; I think the wind
is turning.

I have read some soldiers' letters, which are models. One can't
swallow up a country where people write like that. France is a
resourceful jade, and will be up again.

Whatever happens, another world is going to begin, and I feel that I
am very old to adapt myself to new customs.

Oh! how I miss you, how I want to see you!

We have decided here to all march on Paris if the compatriots of
Hegel lay siege to it. Try to get your Berrichons to buck up. Call
to them: "Come to help me prevent the enemy from drinking and eating
in a country which is foreign to them!"

The war (I hope) will make a home thrust at the "authorities."

The individual, disowned, overwhelmed by the modern world, will he
regain his importance? Let us hope so!



CLXXIX. TO GEORGE SAND.
Tuesday, 11 October, 1870

Dear master,

Are you still living? Where are you, Maurice, and the others?

I don't know how it is that I am not dead, I have suffered so
atrociously for six weeks.

My mother has fled to Rouen. My niece is in London. My brother is
busy with town affairs, and, as for me, I am alone here, eaten up
with impatience and chagrin! I assure you that I have wanted to do
right; what misery! I have had at my door today two hundred and
seventy-one poor people, and they were all given something. What
will this winter be?

The Prussians are now twelve hours from Rouen, and we have no
commands, no orders, no discipline, nothing, nothing! They hold out
false hopes to us continually with the army of the Loire. Where is
it? Do you know anything about it? What are they doing in the middle
of France? Paris will end by being starved, and no one is taking her
any aid!

The imbecilities of the Republic surpass those of the Empire. Are
they playing under all this some abominable comedy? Why such
inaction?

Ah! how sad I am. I feel that the world is going by.



CLXXX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset.
Le Chatre, 14 October, 1870

We are living at Le Chatre. Nohant is ravaged by smallpox with
complications, horrible. We had to take our little ones into the
Creuse, to friends who came to get us, and we spent three weeks
there, looking in vain for quarters where a family could stay for
three months. We were asked to go south and were offered
hospitality; but we did not want to leave the country where, from
one day to another, one can be useful, although one hardly knows yet
in what way to go at it.

So we have come back to the friends who lived the nearest to our
abandoned hearth; and we are awaiting events. To speak of all the
peril and trouble there is in establishing the Republic in the
interior of our provinces would be quite useless. There can be no
illusion: everything is at stake, and the end will perhaps be
ORLEANISM. But we are pushed into the unforeseen to such an extent
that it seems to me puerile to have anticipations; the thing to do
is to escape the next catastrophe.

Don't let's say that it is impossible; don't let's think it. Don't
let's despair about France. She is going through expiation for her
madness, she will be reborn no matter what happens. We shall perhaps
be carried away, the rest of us. To die of pneumonia or of a bullet
is dying just the same. Let's die without cursing our race!

We still love you, and we all embrace you.

G. Sand



CLXXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset.
Nohant, 4 February, 1871.

Don't you receive my letters, then? Write to me I beg you, one word
only: I AM WELL. We are so worried!

They are all well in Paris.

We embrace you.

G. Sand



CLXXXII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT.
Nohant, 22 February, 1871

I received your letter of the 15th this morning; what a cruel thorn
it takes from my heart! One gets frantic with anxiety now when one
does not receive answers. Let us hope that we can talk soon and tell
all about our ABSENCE from each other. I too have had the good
fortune not to lose any of my friends, young or old. That is all the
good one can say. I do not regret this Republic, it has been the
greatest failure of all! the most unfortunate for Paris, the most
unsuitable in the provinces. Besides, if I had loved it, I should
not regret anything; if only this odious war might end! We love you
and we embrace you affectionately. I shall not hurry to go to Paris.
It will be pestilential for some time to come.

Yours.



CLXXXIII. TO GEORGE SAND.
Dieppe, 11 March, 1871

When shall we meet? Paris does not seem amusing to me. Ah! into what
sort of a world are we going to enter! Paganism, Christianity,
idiotism, there are the three great evolutions of humanity! It is
sad to find ourselves at the beginning of the third.

I shall not tell you all I have suffered since September. Why didn't
I die from it? That is what surprises me! No one was more desperate
than I was. Why? I have had bad moments in my life, I have gone
through great losses. I have wept a great deal. I have undergone
much anguish. Well! all these pangs accumulated together, are
nothing in comparison to that. And I cannot get over them! I am not
consoled! I have no hope!

Yet I did not see myself as a progressivist and a humanitarian. That
doesn't matter. I had some illusions! What barbarity! What a slump!
I am wrathful at my contemporaries for having given me the feelings
of a brute of the twelfth century! I'M STIFLING IN GALL! These
officers who break mirrors with white gloves on, who know Sanskrit
and who fling themselves on the champagne, who steal your watch and
then send you their visiting card, this war for money, these
civilized savages give me more horror than cannibals. And all the
world is going to imitate them, is going to be a soldier! Russia has
now four millions of them. All Europe will wear a uniform. If we
take our revenge, it will be ultra-ferocious, and observe that one
is going to think only of that, of avenging oneself on Germany! The
government, whatever it is, can support itself only by speculating
on that passion. Wholesale murder is going to be the end of all our
efforts, the ideal of France!

I cherish the following dream: of going to live in the sun in a
tranquil country!

Let us look for new hypocrisies: declamations on virtue, diatribes
on corruption, austerity of habits, etc. Last degree of pedantry!

I have now at Croisset twelve Prussians. As soon as my poor dwelling
(of which I have a horror now) is emptied and cleaned, I shall
return there; then I shall go doubtless to Paris, despite its
unhealthfulness! But I don't care a hang for that.



CLXXXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset.
Nohant, 17 March, 1871

I received your letter of the 11th yesterday.

We have all suffered in spirit more than at any other time of our
lives, and we shall always suffer from that wound. It is evident
that the savage instinct tends to take the upper hand; but I fear
something worse; it is the egoistic and cowardly instinct; it is the
ignoble corruption of false patriots, of ultra-republicans who cry
out for vengeance, and who hide themselves; a good pretext for the
bourgeois who want a STRONG reaction. I fear lest we shall not even
be vindictive,--all that bragging, coupled with poltroonery, will so
disgust us and so impel us to live from day to day as under the
Restoration, submitting to everything and only asking to be let
alone.

There will be an awakening later. I shall not be here then, and you,
you will be old! Go to live in the sun in a tranquil country! Where?
What country is going to be tranquil in this struggle of barbarity
against civilization, a struggle which is going to be universal? Is
not the sun itself a myth? Either he hides himself or he burns you
up, and it is thus with everything on this unhappy planet. Let us
love it just the same, and accustom ourselves to suffering on it.

I have written day by day my impressions and my reflections during
the crisis. The Revue des Deux Mondes is publishing this diary. If
you read it, you will see that everywhere life has been torn from
its very foundations, even in the country where the war has not
penetrated.

You will see too, that I have not swallowed, although very greedy,
party humbugs. But I don't know if you are of my opinion, that full
and entire liberty would save us from these disasters and restore us
to the path of possible progress again. The abuses of liberty give
me no anxiety of themselves; but those whom they frighten always
incline towards the abuse of power. Just now M. Thiers seems to
understand it; but can he and will he know how to preserve the
principle by which he has become the arbiter of this great problem?

Whatever happens, let us love each other, and do not keep me in
ignorance of what concerns you. My heart is full to bursting and the
remembrance of you eases it a little from its perpetual disquiet. I
am afraid lest these barbarous guests devastate Croisset; for they
continue in spite of peace to make themselves odious and disgusting
everywhere. Ah! how I should like to have five billions in order to
chase them away! I should not ask to get them back again.

Now, do come to us, we are so quiet here; materially, we have been
so always. We force ourselves to take up our work again, we resign
ourselves; what is there better to do? You are beloved here, we live
here in a continual state of loving one another; we are holding on
to our Lamberts, whom we shall keep as long as possible. All our
children have come out of the war safe and sound. You would live
here in peace and be able to work; for that must be, whether one is
in the mood or not! The season is going to be lovely. Paris will
calm itself during that time. You are looking for a peaceful spot.
It is under your nose, with hearts which love you!

I embrace you a thousand times for myself and for all my brood. The
little girls are splendid. The Lamberts' little boy is charming.



CLXXXV. TO GEORGE SAND.
Neuville near Dieppe, Friday, 31 March, 1871

Dear master,

Tomorrow, at last, I resign myself to re-enter Croisset! It is hard!
But I must! I am going to try to make up again my poor Saint-Antoine
and to forget France.

My mother stays here with her grandchild, till one knows where to go
without fear of the Prussians or of a riot.

Some days ago I went from here with Dumas to Brussels from where I
thought to go direct to Paris. But "the new Athens" seems to me to
surpass Dahomey in ferocity and imbecility. Has the end come to the
HUMBUGS? Will they have finished with hollow metaphysics and
conventional ideas? All the evil comes from our gigantic ignorance.
What ought to be studied is believed without discussion. Instead of
investigating, people make assertions.

The French Revolution must cease to be a dogma, and it must become
once more a part of science, like the rest of human things. If
people had known more, they would not have believed that a mystical
formula is capable of making armies, and that the word "Republic" is
enough to conquer a million of well disciplined men. They would have
left Badinguet on the throne EXPRESSLY to make peace, ready to put
him in the galleys afterward. If they had known more, they would
have known what the volunteers of '92 were and the retreat of
Brunswick gained by bribery through Danton and Westermann. But no!
always the same old story! always poppycock! There is now the
Commune of Paris which is returning to the real Middle Ages! That's
flat! The question of leases especially, is splendid! The government
interferes in natural rights now, it intervenes in contracts between
individuals. The Commune asserts that we do not owe what we owe, and
that one service is not paid for by another. It is an enormity of
absurdity and injustice.

Many conservatives who, from love of order, wanted to preserve the
Republic, are going to regret Badinguet and in their hearts recall
the Prussians. The people of the Hotel de Ville have changed the
object of our hatred. That is why I am angry with them. It seems to
me that we have never been lower.

We oscillate between the society of Saint-Vincent de Paul and the
International. But this latter commits too many imbecilities to have
a long life. I admit that it may overcome the troops at Versailles
and overturn the government, the Prussians will enter Paris, and
"order will reign" at Warsaw. If, on the contrary, it is conquered,
the reaction will be furious and all liberty will be strangled.

What can one say of the socialists who imitate the proceedings of
Badinguet and of William: requisitions, suppressions of newspapers,
executions without trial, etc.? Ah! what an immoral beast is the
crowd! and how humiliating it is to be a man!

I embrace you!



CLXXXVI. TO GEORGE SAND.
Croisset, Monday evening, two o'clock.

Dear master,

Why no letters? Haven't you received mine sent from Dieppe? Are you
ill? Are you still alive? What does it mean? I hope very much that
neither you (nor any of yours) are in Paris, capital of arts,
cornerstone of civilization, center of fine manners and of urbanity?

Do you know the worst of all that? IT IS THAT WE GET ACCUSTOMED TO
IT. Yes! one does. One becomes accustomed to getting along without
Paris, to worrying about it no longer, and almost to thinking that
it exists no longer.

As for me, I am not like the bourgeois; I consider that after the
invasion there are no more misfortunes. The war with Prussia gave me
the effect of a great upheaval of nature, one of those cataclysms
that happen every six thousand years; while the insurrection in
Paris is, to my eyes, a very clear and almost simple thing.

What retrogressions! What savages! How they resemble the people of
the League and the men in armor! Poor France, who will never free
herself from the Middle Ages! who labors along in the Gothic idea of
the Commune, which is nothing else than the Roman municipality. Oh!
I assure you that my heart is heavy over it!

And the little reaction that we are going to have after that? How
the good ecclesiastics are going to flourish again!

I have started at Saint-Antoine once more, and I am working
tremendously.



CLXXXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset.
Nohant, 28 April, 1871

No, certainly I do not forget you! I am sad, sad, that is to say,
that I am stunned, that I watch the spring, that I am busy, that I
talk as if there were nothing; but I have not been able to be alone
an instant since that horrible occurrence without falling into a
bitter despair. I make great efforts to prevent it; I do not want to
be discouraged; I do not want to deny the past and dread the future;
but it is my will, it is my reason that struggles against a profound
impression unsurmountable up to the present moment.

That is why I did not want to write to you before feeling better,
not that I am ashamed to have crises of depression, but because I
did not want to increase your sadness already so profound, by adding
the weight of mine to it. For me, the ignoble experiment that Paris
is attempting or is undergoing, proves nothing against the laws of
the eternal progression of men and things, and, if I have gained any
principles in my mind, good or bad, they are neither shattered nor
changed by it. For a long time I have accepted patience as one
accepts the sort of weather there is, the length of winter, old age,
lack of success in all its forms. But I think that partisans
(sincere) ought to change their formulas or find out perhaps the
emptiness of every a priori formula.

It is not that which makes me sad. When a tree is dead, one should
plant two others. My unhappiness comes from pure weakness of heart
that I don't know how to overcome. I cannot sleep over the suffering
and even over the ignominy of others. I pity those who do the evil!
while I recognize that they are not at all interesting, their moral
state distresses me. One pities a little bird that has fallen from
its nest; why not pity a heap of consciences fallen in the mud? One
suffered less during the Prussian siege. One loved Paris unhappy in
spite of itself, one pities it so much the more now that one can no
longer love it. Those who never loved get satisfaction by mortally
hating it. What shall we answer? Perhaps we should not answer at
all. The scorn of France is perhaps the necessary punishment of the
remarkable cowardice with which the Parisians have submitted to the
riot and its adventurers. It is a consequence of the acceptance of
the adventurers of the Empire; other felons but the same cowardice.

But I did not want to talk to you of that, you ROAR about it enough
as it is! one ought to be distracted; for if one thinks too much
about it, one becomes separated from one's own limbs and lets
oneself undergo amputation with too much stoicism.

You don't tell me in what state you found your charming nest at
Croisset. The Prussians occupied it; did they ruin it, dirty it, rob
it? Your books, your bibelots, did you find them all? Did they
respect your name, your workshop? If you can work again there, peace
will come to your spirit. As for me, I am waiting till mine gets
well, and I know that I shall have to help myself to my own cure by
a certain faith often shaken, but of which I make a duty.

Tell me whether the tulip tree froze this winter, and if the poppies
are pretty.

I often take the journey in spirit; I see again your garden and its
surroundings. How far away that is! How many things have happened
since! One hardly knows whether one is a hundred years old or not!

My little girls bring me back to the notion of time; they are
growing, they are amusing and affectionate; it is through them and
the two beings who gave them to me that I feel myself still of the
world; it is through you too, dear friend, whose kind and loving
heart I always feel to be good and alive. How I should like to see
you! But I have no longer a way of going and coming.

We embrace you, all of us, and we love you.

G. Sand



CLXXXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND

I am answering at once your questions that concern me personally.
No! the Prussians did not loot my house. They HOOKED some little
things of no importance, a dressing case, a bandbox, some pipes; but
on the whole they did no harm. As for my study, it was respected. I
had buried a large box full of letters and hidden my voluminous
notes on Saint-Antoine. I found all that intact.

The worst of the invasion for me is that it has aged my poor, dear,
old mother by ten years! What a change! She can no longer walk
alone, and is distressingly weak! How sad it is to see those whom
one loves deteriorate little by little!

In order to think no longer on the public miseries or on my own, I
have plunged again with fury into Saint-Antoine, and if nothing
disturbs me and I continue at this pace, I shall have finished it
next winter. I am very eager to read to you the sixty pages which
are done. When we can circulate about again on the railroad, do come
to see me for a little while. Your old troubadour has waited for you
for such a long time! Your letter of this morning has saddened me.
What a proud fellow you are and what immense courage you have!

I am not like a lot of people whom I hear bemoaning the war of
Paris. For my part, I find it more tolerable than the invasion,
there is no more despair possible, and that is what proves once more
our abasement. "Ah! God be thanked, the Prussians are there!" is the
universal cry of the bourgeois. I put messieurs the workmen into the
same pack, and would have them all thrust together into the river!
Moreover they are on the way there, and then calm will return. We
are going to become a great, flat industrial country like Belgium.
The disappearance of Paris (as center of the government) will render
France colorless and dull. She will no longer have a heart, a
center, nor, I think, a spirit.

As for the Commune, which is about to die out, it is the last
manifestation of the Middle Ages. The very last, let us hope!

I hate democracy (at least the kind that is understood in France),
that is to say, the exaltation of mercy to the detriment of justice,
the negation of right, in a word, antisociability.

The Commune rehabilitates murderers, quite as Jesus pardoned
thieves, and they pillage the residences of the rich, because they
have been taught to curse Lazarus, who was not a bad rich man, but
simply a rich man. "The Republic is above every criticism" is
equivalent to that belief: "The pope is infallible!" Always
formulas! Always gods!

The god before the last, which was universal suffrage, has just
shown his adherents a terrible farce by nominating "the murderers of
Versailles." What shall we believe in, then? In nothing! That is the
beginning of wisdom. It was time to have done with "principles" and
to take up science, and investigation. The only reasonable thing (I
always come back to that) is a government by mandarins, provided the
mandarins know something and even that they know many things. The
people is an eternal infant, and it will be (in the hierarchy of
social elements) always in the last row, since it is number, mass,
the unlimited. It is of little matter whether many peasants know how
to read and listen no longer to their cure, but it is of great
matter that many men like Renan or Littre should be able to live and
be listened to! Our safety is now only in a LEGITIMATE ARISTOCRACY,
I mean by that, a majority that is composed of more than mere
numbers.

If they had been more enlightened, if there had been in Paris more
people acquainted with history, we should not have had to endure
Gambetta, nor Prussia, nor the Commune. What did the Catholics do to
meet a great danger? They crossed themselves while consigning
themselves to God and to the saints. We, however, who are advanced,
we are going to cry out, "Long live the Republic!" while recalling
what happened in '92; and there was no doubt of its success, observe
that. The Prussian existed no longer, they embraced one another with
joy and restrained themselves from running to the defiles of the
Argonne where there are defiles no longer; never mind, that is
according to tradition. I have a friend in Rouen who proposed to a
club the manufacture of lances to fight against the breech-loaders!

Ah! it would have been more practical to keep Badinguet, in order to
send him to the galleys once peace was made! Austria did not have a
revolution after Sadowa, nor Italy after Novara, nor Russia after
Sebastopol! But the good French hasten to demolish their house as
soon as the chimney has caught fire.

Well, I must tell you an atrocious idea; I am AFRAID that the
destruction of the Vendome column is sowing the seeds of a third
Empire! Who knows if in twenty or in forty years, a grandson of
Jerome will not be our master?

For the moment Paris is completely epileptic. A result of the
congestion caused by the siege. France, on the whole, has lived for
several years in an extraordinary mental state. The success of la
Lanterne and Troppman have been very evident symptoms of it. That
folly is the result of too great imbecility, and that imbecility
comes from too much bluffing, for because of lying they had become
idiotic. They had lost all notion of right and wrong, of beautiful
and ugly. Recall the criticism of recent years. What difference did
it make between the sublime and the ridiculous? What lack of
respect; what ignorance! what a mess! "Boiled or roasted, same
thing!" and at the same time, what servility for the opinion of the
day, the dish of the fashion!

All was false! False realism, false army, false credit, and even
false harlots. They were called "marquises," while the great ladies
called themselves familiarly "cochonnettes." Those girls who were of
the tradition of Sophie Arnould, like Lagier, roused horror. You
have not seen the reverence of Saint-Victor for la Paiva. And this
falseness (which is perhaps a consequence of romanticism,
predominance of passion over form, and of inspiration over rule) was
applied especially in the manner of judging. They extolled an
actress not as an actress, but as a good mother of a family! They
asked art to be moral, philosophy to be clear, vice to be decent,
and science to be within the range of the people.

But this is a very long letter. When I start abusing my
contemporaries, I never get through with it.



CLXXXIX. TO GEORGE SAND
Croisset, Sunday evening, 10 June, 1871

Dear master,

I never had a greater desire or a greater need to see you than now.
I have just come from Paris and I don't know to whom to talk. I am
choking. I am overcome, or rather, absolutely disheartened.

The odor of corpses disgusts me less than the miasmas of egotism
that exhale from every mouth. The sight of the ruins is as nothing
in comparison with the great Parisian inanity. With a very few
exceptions it seemed to me that everybody ought to be tied up.

Half the population wants to strangle the other half, and VICE
VERSA. This is clearly to be seen in the eyes of the passers-by.

And the Prussians exist no longer! People excuse them and admire
them. The "reasonable people" want to be naturalized Germans. I
assure you it is enough to make one despair of the human race.

I was in Versailles on Thursday. The excesses of the Right inspire
fear. The vote about the Orleans is a concession made to it, so as
not to irritate it, and so as to have the time to prepare against
it.

I except from the general folly, Renan who, on the contrary, seemed
to me very philosophical, and the good Soulie who charged me to give
you a thousand affectionate messages.

I have collected a mass of horrible and unpublished details which I
spare you.

My little trip to Paris has troubled me extremely, and I am going to
have a hard time in getting down to work again.  What do you think
of my friend Maury, who kept the tricolor over the Archives all
during the Commune? I think few men are capable of such pluck.

When history clears up the burning of Paris, it will find several
elements among which are, without any doubt: (1) the Prussians, and
(2) the people of Badinguet; they have NO LONGER ANY written proof
against the Empire, and Haussman is going to present himself boldly
to the elections of Paris.

Have you read, among the documents found in the Tuileries last
September, a plot of a novel by Isidore? What a scenario!



CXC. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Paris
[FOOTNOTE: Evidently an answer to a lost letter.] Nohant, 23 July,
1871

No, I am not ill, my dear old troubadour, in spite of the sorrow
which is the daily bread of France; I have an iron constitution and
an exceptional old age, abnormal even, for my strength increases at
the age when it ought to diminish. The day that I resolutely buried
my youth, I grew twenty years younger. You will tell me that the
bark undergoes none the less the ravages of time. I don't care for
that, the heart of the tree is very good and the sap still runs as
in the old apple trees in my garden, which bear fruit all the better
the more gnarly they are. Thank you for having worried over the
illness which the papers have bestowed upon me. Maurice thanks you
also and embraces you. He is still mingling with his scientific,
literary, and agricultural studies, beautiful marionette shows. He
thinks of you every time and says that he would like to have you
here to note his progress, for he continually improves.

In what condition are we, according to your opinion?

In Rouen, you no longer have any Prussians at your back, that's
something, and one would say that the bourgeois Republic wants to
impose itself. It will be foolish. You foretold that, and I don't
doubt it; but after the inevitable rule of the Philistines, life
will extend and spread on all sides. The filth of the Commune shows
us dangers which were not sufficiently foreseen and which enforce a
new political life on everybody, carrying on one's affairs oneself
and forcing the charming proletariat created by the Empire to know
what is possible and what is not. Education does not teach honesty
and disinterestedness overnight. The vote is immediate education.
They have appointed Raoul Rigault and company. They know how much
people like that cost now by the yard; let them go on and they will
die of hunger. There is no other way to make them understand in a
short time.

Are you working? Is Saint-Antoine going well? Tell me what you are
doing in Paris, what you are seeing, what you are thinking. I have
not the courage to go there. Do come to see me before you return to
Croisset. I am blue from not seeing you, it is a sort of death.

G. Sand



CXCI. TO GEORGE SAND
25 July, 1871

I find Paris a little less mad than in June, at least on the
surface. They are beginning to hate Prussia in a natural manner,
that is to say, they are getting back into French tradition. They no
longer make phrases in praise of her civilizations. As for the
Commune, they expect to see it rise again later, and the
"established order" does absolutely nothing to prevent its return.
They are applying old remedies to new woes, remedies that have never
cured (nor prevented) the least ill. The reestablishment of credit
seems to me colossally absurd. One of my friends made a good speech
against it; the godson of your friend Michel de Bourges, Bardoux,
mayor of Clermont-Ferrand.

I think, like you, that the bourgeois republic can be established.
Its lack of elevation is perhaps a guarantee of stability. It will
be the first time that we have lived under a government without
principles. The era of positivism in politics is about to begin.

The immense disgust which my contemporaries give me throws me back
on the past, and I am working on my good Saint-Antoine with all my
might. I came to Paris only for it, for it is impossible for me to
get in Rouen the books that I need
now; I am lost in the religions of Persia. I am trying to get a
clear idea of the God Horn, and it isn't easy. I spent all the month
of June in studying Buddhism, on which I already had many notes. But
I wanted to get to the bottom of the subject as soon as possible.
And I also did a little Buddha that I consider charming. Don't I
want to read you that book (mine)!

I am not going to Nohant, for I don't care to go further I away from
my mother now. Her society afflicts me and unnerves me, my niece
Caroline takes turns with me in carrying on the dear and painful
burden.

In a fortnight I shall be back in Croisset. Between the 15th and the
20th of August I am expecting the good Tourgueneff there. It would
be very kind of you to come after him, dear master. I say come
after, for we have only one decent room since the visit of the
Prussians. Come, make a good effort. Come in September.

Have you any news of the Odeon? I can't get any response whatsoever
from de Chilly. I have been to his house several times and I have
written three letters to him: not a word! Those gay blades behave
towards one like great lords, which is charming.  I don't know if he
is still director, or if the management has been given to the
Berton, Laurent, Bernard company, do you?

Berton wrote to me to recommend him (and them) to d'Osmoy, deputy
and president of the dramatic commission, but since then I have not
heard anything mentioned.



CXCII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, August, 1871

You want to see me, and you need me, and you don't come see me! That
is not nice; for I too, and all of us here, sigh for you. We parted
so gaily eighteen months ago, and so many atrocious things have
happened in the meantime! Seeing each other would be the consolation
DUE us. For my part, I cannot stir, I have not a penny, and I have
to work like a negro. And then I have not seen a single Prussian,
and I would like to keep my eyes pure from that stain. Ah! my
friend, what years we are going through! We cannot go back again,
for hope departs with the rest.

What will be the reaction from the infamous Commune? Isidore or
Henry V. or the kingdom of incendiaries restored by anarchy? I who
have had so much patience with my species and who have so long
looked on the bright side, now see nothing but darkness. I judge
others by myself. I had improved my real character, I had
extinguished useless and dangerous enthusiasms, I had sowed grass
and flowers that grew well on my volcanoes, and I imagined that all
the world could become enlightened, could correct itself, or
restrain itself; that the years passed over me and over my
contemporaries could not be lost to reason and experience: and now I
awaken from a dream to find a generation divided between idiocy and
delirium tremens! Everything is possible at present.

However, it is bad to despair. I shall make a great effort, and
perhaps I shall become just and patient again; but today I cannot. I
am as troubled as you, and I don't dare to talk, nor to think, nor
to write, I have such a fear of touching the wounds open in every
soul.

I have indeed received your other letter, and I was waiting for
courage to answer it; I would like to do only good to those I love,
especially to you, who feel so keenly. I am no good at this moment.
I am filled with a devouring indignation and a disgust which is
killing me.

I love you, that is all I know. My children say the same. Embrace
your good little mother for me.

G. Sand



CXCIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 6 September, 1871

Where are you, my dear old troubadour?

I don't write to you, I am quite troubled in the depths of my soul.
But that will pass, I hope; but I am ill with the illness of my
nation and my race. I cannot isolate myself in my reason and in my
own IRREPROACHABILITY. I feel the great bonds loosened and, as it
were, broken. It seems to me that we are all going off, I don't know
where. Have you more courage than I have? Give me some of it?

I am sending you the pretty faces of our little girls. They remember
you, and tell me I must send you their pictures. Alas! they are
girls, we raise them with love like precious plants. What men will
they meet to protect them and continue our work? It seems to me that
in twenty years there will be only hypocrites and blackguards!

Give me news of yourself, tell me of your poor mother, your family,
of Croisset. Love us still, as we love you.

G. Sand



CXCIV. TO GEORGE SAND
Croisset, Wednesday, 6 September

Well, dear master, it seems to me that you are forgetting your
troubadour, aren't you? Are you then quite overwhelmed with work!
How long a time it is since I saw your good firm writing! How long
it is since we have talked together! What a pity that we should live
so far from each other! I need you very much.

I don't dare to leave my poor mother! When I am obliged to be away,
Caroline comes to take my place. If it were not for that, I should
go to Nohant. Shall you stay there indefinitely? Must we wait till
the middle of the winter to embrace each other?

I should like very much to read you Saint-Antoine, which is half
done, then to stretch myself and to roar at your side.

Some one who knows that I love you and who admires you brought me a
copy of le Gaulois in which there were parts of an article by you on
the workmen, published in le Temps. How true it is! How just and
well said! Sad! Sad! Poor France! And they accuse me of being
skeptical.

But what do you think of Mademoiselle Papevoine, the incendiary,
who, in the midst of a barricade, submitted to the assaults  of
eighteen citizens! That surpasses the end of l'Education
sentimentale where they limit themselves to offering flowers.

But what goes beyond everything now, is the conservative party,
which is not even going to vote, and which is still in a panic! You
cannot imagine the alarm of the Parisians. "In six months, sir, the
Commune will be established everywhere" is the answer or rather the
universal groan.

I do not look forward to an imminent cataclysm because nothing that
is foreseen happens. The International will perhaps triumph in the
end, but not as it hopes, not as they dread. Ah! how tired I am of
the ignoble workmen, the incompetent bourgeois, the stupid peasant
and the odious ecclesiastic!

That is why I lose myself as much as I can in antiquity. Just now I
am making all the gods talk in a state of agony. The subtitle of my
book could be The Height of Insanity. And the printing of it
withdraws further and further into my mind. Why publish? Who pray is
bothering about art nowadays? I make literature for myself as a
bourgeois turns napkin rings in his garret. You will tell me that I
had better be useful. But how? How can I make people listen to me?

Tourgueneff has written me that he is going to stay in Paris all
winter beginning with October. That will be some one to talk to. For
I can't talk of anything whatever with anyone whatever.

I have been looking after the grave of my poor Bouilhet today; so
tonight I have a twofold bitterness.



CXCV. TO GEORGE SAND
Croisset, 8 September, 1871

Ah! how sweet they are! What darlings! What fine little heads so
serious and sweet! My mother was quite touched by it, and so was I.
That is what I call a delicate attention, dear master, and I thank
you very much for it. I envy Maurice, his existence is not arid as
mine is.  Our two letters crossed again. That proves beyond a doubt
that we feel the same things at the same time in the same degree.

Why are you so said?  Humanity offers nothing new.  Its irremediable
misery has filled me with sadness ever since my youth.  And in
addition I now have no disillusions.  I believe that the crowd, the
common herd will always be hateful.  The  only important thing is a
little group of minds--always the same--which passed the torch from
one to another.

As long as we do not bow to mandarins, as long as the Academy of
Sciences does not replace the pope, politics as a whole and society,
down to its very roots, will be nothing but collection of
disheartening humbugs. We are floundering in the after-birth of the
Revolution, which was an abortion, a failure,  a misfire, "whatever
they say." And the reason is that it proceeded from the Middle Ages
and Christianity. The idea of equality (which is all the modern
democracy) is an essentially Christian idea and opposed to that of
justice. Observe how mercy predominates now. Sentiment is
everything, justice is nothing. People are now not even indignant
against murderers, and the people who set fire to Paris are less
punished than the calumniator of M. Favre.

In order for France to rise again, she must pass from inspiration to
science, she must abandon all metaphysics, she must enter into
criticism, that is to say into the examination of things.

I am persuaded that we shall seem extremely imbecile to posterity.
The words republic and monarchy will make them laugh, as we on our
part, laughed, at realism and nominalism. For I defy anyone to show
me an essential difference between those two terms. A modern
republic and a constitutional monarchy are identical. Never mind!
They are squabbling about that, they are shouting, they are
fighting!

As for the good people, "free and compulsory" education will do it.
When every one is able to read le Petit Journal and le Figaro, they
won't read anything else, because the bourgeois and the rich man
read only these. The press is a school of demoralization, because it
dispenses with thinking. Say that, you will be brave, and if you
prevail, you will have rendered a fine service.

The first remedy will be to finish up with universal suffrage, the
shame of the human mind. As it is constituted, one single element
prevails to the detriment of all the others: numbers dominate over
mind, education, race and even money, which is worth more than
numbers.

But society (which always needs a good God, a Saviour), isn't it
perhaps capable of taking care of itself? The conservative party has
not even the instinct of the brute (for the brute at least knows how
to fight for its lair and its living). It will be divided by the
Internationals, the Jesuits of the future. But those of the past,
who had neither country nor justice, have not succeeded and the
International will founder because it is in the wrong. No ideas,
nothing but greed!

Ah! dear, good master, if you only could hate! That is what you
lack, hate. In spite of your great Sphinx eyes, you have seen the
world through a golden color. That comes from the sun in your heart;
but so many shadows have arisen that now you are not recognizing
things any more. Come now! Cry out! Thunder! Take your great lyre
and touch the brazen string: the monsters will flee. Bedew us with
the drops of the blood of wounded Themis.

Why do you feel "the great bonds broken?" What is broken? Your bonds
are indestructible, your sympathy can attach itself only to the
Eternal.

Our ignorance of history makes us slander our own times. Man has
always been like that. Several years of quiet deceived us. That is
all. I too, I used to believe in the amelioration of manners. One
must wipe out that mistake and think of oneself no more highly than
they did in the time of Pericles or of Shakespeare, atrocious epochs
in which fine things were done. Tell me that you are lifting your
head and that you are thinking of your old troubadour, who cherishes
you.



CXCVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset
Nohant, 8 September, 1871

As usual our letters have crossed; you should receive today the
portraits of my little grandchildren, not pretty at this period of
their growth, but with such beautiful eyes that they can never be
ugly.

You see that I am as disheartened as you are and indignant, alas!
without being able to hate either the human race or our poor, dear
country. But one feels too much one's helplessness to pluck up one's
heart and spirit. One works all the same, even if only turning
napkin rings, as you say: and, as for me, while serving the public,
I think about it as little as possible. Le Temps has done me the
service of making me rummage in my waste basket. I find there the
prophecies that the conscience of each of us has inspired in him,
and these little returns to the past ought to give us courage; but
it is not at all so. The lessons of experience are of no use until
too late.

I think that without subvention, the Odeon will be in no condition
to put on well a literary play such as Aisse, and that you should
not let them murder it. You had better wait and see what happens. As
for the Berton company, I have no news of it; it is touring the
provinces, and those who compose it will not be reengaged by Chilly,
who is furious with them.

The Odeon has let Reynard go, an artist of the first rank, whom
Montigny had the wit to engage. There really is no one left at the
Odeon, as far as I know. Why don't you consider the Theatre
Francais?

Where is the Princess Mathilde? At Enghien, or in Paris, or in
England? I am sending you a note which you must enclose in the first
letter that you have occasion to write to her.

I cannot go to see you, dear old man, and yet I had earned one of
those happy vacations; but I cannot leave the HOME, for all sorts of
reasons too long to tell and of no interest, but inflexible. I do
not know even if I shall go to Paris this winter. Here am I so old!
I imagine that I can only bore others and that people cannot endure
me anywhere except at home. You absolutely must come to see me with
Tourgueneff, since you are planning to go away this winter; prepare
him for this abduction. I embrace you, as I love, and my world does
too.