G. Sand



CXCVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
14 September, 1871, Nohant
[Footnote: Appeared in le Temps, 3 October, 1871, under the title,
Reponse a un ami, and published in Impressions et Souvenirs, p. 53.]

And what, you want me to stop loving? You want me to say that I have
been mistaken all my life, that humanity is contemptible, hateful,
that it has always been and always will be so? And you chide my
anguish as a weakness, and puerile regret for a lost illusion? You
assert that the people has always been ferocious, the priest always
hypocritical, the bourgeois always cowardly, the soldier always
brigand, the peasant always stupid? You say that you have known all
that ever since your youth and you rejoice that you never have
doubted it, because maturity has not brought you any disappointment;
have you not been young then? Ah! We are entirely different, for I
have never ceased to be young, if being young is always loving.

What, then, do you want me to do, so as to isolate myself from my
kind, from my compatriots, from my race, from the great family in
whose bosom my own family is only one ear of corn in the terrestrial
field? And if only this ear could ripen in a sure place, if only one
could, as you say, live for certain privileged persons and withdraw
from all the others!

But it is impossible, and your steady reason puts up with the most
unrealizable of Utopias. In what Eden, in what fantastic Eldorado
will you hide your family, your little group of friends, your
intimate happiness, so that the lacerations of the social state and
the disasters of the country shall not reach them? If you want to be
happy through certain people--those certain people, the favorites of
your heart, must be happy in themselves. Can they be? Can you assure
them the least security?

Will you find me a refuge in my old age which is drawing near to
death? And what difference now does death or life make to me for
myself? Let us suppose that we die absolutely, or that love does not
follow into the other life, are we not up to our last breath
tormented by the desire, by the imperious need of assuring those
whom we leave behind all the happiness possible? Can we go
peacefully to sleep when we feel the shaken earth ready to swallow
up all those for whom we have lived? A continuous happy life with
one's family in spite of all, is without doubt relatively a great
good, the only consolation that one could and that one would enjoy.
But even supposing external evil does not penetrate into our house,
which is impossible, you know very well, I could not approve of
acquiescing in indifference to what causes public unhappiness.

All that was foreseen. ... Yes, certainly, I had foreseen it as well
as anyone! I saw the storm rising. I was aware, like all those who
do not live without thinking, of the evident approach of the
cataclysm. When one sees the patient writhing in agony is there any
consolation in understanding his illness thoroughly? When lightning
strikes, are we calm because we have heard the thunder rumble a long
time before?

No, no, people do not isolate themselves, the ties of blood are not
broken, people do not curse or scorn their kind. Humanity is not a
vain word. Our life is composed of love, and not to love is to cease
to live.

The people, you say! The people is yourself and myself. It would be
useless to deny it. There are not two races, the distinction of
classes only establishes relative and for the most part illusory
inequalities. I do not know if your ancestors were high up in the
bourgeoisie; for my part, on my mother's side my roots spring
directly from the people, and I feel them continually alive in the
depth of my being. We all have them, even if the origin is more or
less effaced; the first men were hunters and shepherds, then farmers
and soldiers. Brigandage
crowned with success gave birth to the first social distinctions.
There is perhaps not a title that was not acquired through the blood
of men. We certainly have to endure our ancestors when we have any,
but these first trophies of hatred and of violence, are they a glory
in which a mind ever so little inclined to be philosophical, finds
grounds for pride? THE PEOPLE ALWAYS FEROCIOUS, you say? As for me,
I say, the nobility always savage!

And certainly, together with the peasants, the nobility is the class
most hostile to progress, the least civilized in consequence.
Thinkers should congratulate themselves on not being of it, but if
we are bourgeois, if we have come from the serf, and from the class
liable to forced labor, can we bend with love and respect before the
sons of the oppressors of our fathers? Whoever denies the people
cheapens himself, and gives to the world the shameful spectacle of
apostasy. Bourgeoisie, if we want to raise ourselves again and
become once more a class, we have only one thing to do, and that is
to proclaim ourselves the people, and to fight to the death against
those who claim to be our superiors by divine right. On account of
having failed in the dignity of our revolutionary mandate, of having
aped the nobility, of having usurped its insignia, of having taken
possession of its playthings, of having been shamefully ridiculous
and cowardly, we count for nothing; we are nothing any more: the
people, which ought to unite with us, denies us, abandons us and
seeks to oppress us.

The people ferocious? No, it is not imbecile either, its real
trouble is in being ignorant and foolish. It is not the people of
Paris that has massacred the prisoners, destroyed the monuments, and
tried to burn the town. The people of Paris is all who stayed in
Paris after the siege, since whoever had any means hastened to
breathe the air of the provinces and to embrace their absent
families after the physical and moral sufferings of the siege. Those
who stayed in Paris were the merchant and the workman, those two
agents of labor and of exchange, without whom Paris would exist no
longer. Those are what constitutes positively the people of Paris;
it is one and the same family, whose political blunders cannot
restore their relationship and solidarity. It is now recognized that
the oppressors of that torment were in the minority. Then the people
of Paris was not disposed to fury, since the majority gave evidence
only of weakness and fear. The movement was organized by men already
enrolled in the ranks of the bourgeoisie, who belong no longer to
the habits and needs of the proletariat. These men were moved by
hatred, disappointed ambition, mistaken patriotism, fanaticism
without an ideal, sentimental folly or natural maliciousness--there
was all that in them--and even certain doctrinaire points of honor,
unwilling to withdraw in the face of danger. They certainly did not
lean on the middle class, which trembled, fled or hid itself. They
were forced to put in action the real proletariat which had nothing
to lose. Well, the proletariat even escaped them to a great degree,
divided as it was by various shades of opinion, some wanting
disorder to profit by it, others dreading the consequences of being
drawn in, the most of them not reasoning at all, because the evil
had become extreme and the lack of work forced them to go to war at
thirty sous a day.

Why should you maintain that this proletariat which was shut up in
Paris, and was at most eighty thousand soldiers of hunger and
despair, represented the people of France? They do not even
represent the people of Paris, unless you desire to maintain the
distinction between the producer and the trader, which I reject.

But I want to follow you up and ask on what this distinction rests.
Is it on more or less education? The limit is incomprehensible if
you see at the top of the bourgeoisie, cultivated and learned
people, if you see at the bottom of the proletariat, savages and
brutes, you have none the less the crowd of intermediaries which
will show to you, here intelligent and wise proletarians, there
bourgeois who are neither wise nor intelligent. The great number of
civilized citizens dates from yesterday and many of those who know
how to read and write, have parents still living who can hardly sign
their names.

Would it then be only more or less wealth that would classify men
into two distinct parties? The question then is where the people
begins and where it ends, for each day competencies shift, ruin
lowers one, and fortune raises another; roles change, he who was a
bourgeois this morning is going to become again a proletarian this
evening, and the proletarian of just now, may turn into a bourgeois
in a day, if he finds a purse, or inherits from an uncle.

You can well see that these denominations have become idle and that
the work of classifying, whatever method one desired to use, would
be impracticable.

Men are only over or under one another because of more or less
reason or morality. Instruction which develops only egoistic
sensuality is not as good as the ignorance of the proletarian,
honest by instinct or by custom. This compulsory education which we
all desire through respect for human rights, is not, however, a
panacea whose miracles need to be exaggerated. Evil natures will
find there only more ingenious and more hidden means to do evil. It
will be as in all the things that man uses and abuses, both the
poison and the antidote. It is an illusion that one can find an
infallible remedy for our woes. We have to seek from day to day, all
the means immediately possible, we must think of nothing else in
practical life except the amelioration of habits and the
reconciliation of interests. France is agonizing, that is certain;
we are all sick, all corrupt, all ignorant, all discouraged: to say
that it was WRITTEN, that it had to be so, that it has always been
and will always be, is to begin again the fable of the pedagogue and
the child who is drowning. You might as well say at once.

It is all the same to me; but if you add: That does not concern me,
you are wrong. The deluge comes and death captures us. In vain you
are prudent and withdraw, your refuge will be invaded in its turn,
and in perishing with human civilization you will be no greater a
philosopher for not having loved, than those who threw themselves
into the flood to save some debris of humanity. The debris is not
worth the effort, very good! They will perish none the less, that is
possible. We shall perish with them, that is certain, but we shall
die while in the fulness of life. I prefer that to a hibernation in
the ice, to an anticipated death. And anyway, I could not do
otherwise. Love does not reason. If I asked why you have the passion
for study, you would not explain it to me any better than those who
have a passion for idleness can explain their indolence.

Then you think me upset, since you preach detachment to me? You tell
me that you have read in the papers some extracts from my articles
which indicate a change of ideas, and these papers which quote me
with good will, endeavor to believe that I am illuminated with a new
light, while others which do not quote me believe that perhaps I am
deserting the cause of the future. Let the politicians think and say
what they want to. Let us leave them to their critical
appreciations. I do not have to protest, I do not have to answer,
the public has other interests to discuss than those of my
personality. I wield a pen, I have an honorable position of free
discussion in a great paper; if I have been wrongly interpreted, it
is for me to explain myself better when the occasion presents
itself. I am reluctant to seize this opportunity of talking of
myself as an isolated individual; but if you judge me converted to
false notions, I must say to you and to others who are interested in
me: read me as a whole, and do not judge me by detached fragments; a
spirit which is independent of party exactions, sees necessarily the
pros and cons, and the sincere writer tells both without busying
himself about the blame or the approbation of partizan readers. But
every being who is not mad maintains a certain consistency, and I do
not think that I have departed from mine. Reason and sentiment are
always in accord in me to make me repulse whatever attempts to make
me revert to childhood in politics, in religion, in philosophy, in
art. My sentiment and my reason combat more than ever the idea of
factitious distinctions, the inequality of conditions imposed as a
right acquired by some, as a loss deserved by others. More than ever
I feel the need of raising what is low, and of lifting again what
has fallen. Until my heart is worn out it will be open to pity, it
will take the part of the weak, it will rehabilitate the slandered.
If today it is the people that is under foot, I shall hold out my
hand to the people--if it is the oppressor and executioner, I shall
tell it that it is cowardly and odious. What do I care for this or
that group of men, these names which have become standards, these
personalities which have become catchwords? I know only wise and
foolish, innocent and guilty. I do not have to ask myself where are
my friends or my enemies. They are where torment has thrown them.
Those who have deserved my love, and who do not see through my eyes,
are none the less dear to me. The thoughtless blame of those who
leave me does not make me consider them as enemies. All friendship
unjustly withdrawn remains intact in the heart that has not merited
the outrage. That heart is above self-love, it knows how to wait for
the awakening of justice and affection.

Such is the correct and easy role of a conscience that is not
engaged in the party interests through any personal interest. Those
who can not say that of themselves will certainly have success in
their environment, if they have the talent to avoid all that can
displease them, and the more they have of this talent, the more they
will find the means to satisfy their passions. But do not summon
them in history to witness the absolute truth. From the moment that
they make a business of their opinion, their opinion has no value.

I know sweet, generous and timorous souls, who in this terrible
moment of our history, reproach themselves for having loved and
served the cause of the weak. They see only one point in space, they
believe that the people whom they have loved and served exist no
longer, because in their place a horde of bandits followed by a
little army of bewildered men has occupied momentarily the theatre
of the struggle.

These good souls have to make an effort to say to themselves that
what good there was in the poor and what interest there was in the
disinherited still exists, only it is no longer in evidence and the
political disturbance has sidetracked it from the stage. When such
dramas take place, those who rush in light-heartedly are the vain or
the greedy members of the family, those who allow themselves to be
pulled in are the idiots.

There is no doubt that there are greedy souls, idiots, and vain
persons by the thousands in France; but there are as many and
perhaps more in the other states. Let an opportunity present itself
similar to too frequent opportunities which put our evil passions in
play, and you will see whether other nations are any better than we
are. Wait till the Germanic race gets to work, the race whose
disciplinary aptitudes we admire, the race whose armies have just
shown us brutal appetites in all their barbarous simplicity, and you
will see what will be its license! The people of Paris will seem
sober and virtuous by comparison.

That ought not to be what is called a crumb of comfort, we shall
have to pity the German nation for its victories as much as
ourselves for our defeats, because this is the first act of its
moral dissolution. The drama of its degradation has begun, and as
this is being worked out by its own hands it will move very quickly.
All these great material organizations in which right, justice, and
the respect for humanity are not recognized, are colossi of clay, as
we have found to our cost. Well! the  moral abasement of Germany is
not the future safety of France, and if we are called upon to return
to her the evil that has been done us, her collapse will not give us
back our  life. It is not in blood that races are re-invigorated and
rejuvenated. Vital exhalations can issue still from the corpse of
France, that of Germany will be the focus of the pestilence of
Europe. A nation that has lost its ideals does not survive itself.
Its death fertilizes nothing and those who breathe its fetid
emanations are struck by the ill that killed it. Poor Germany! the
cup of the wrath of the Eternal is poured out on you quite as much
as on us, and while you rejoice and become intoxicated, the
philosophic spirit is weeping over you and prepares your  epitaph.
This pale and bleeding, wounded thing that is called France, holds
still in its tense hands, a fold of the starry mantle of the future,
and you drape yourself in a soiled flag, which will be your winding
sheet. Past grandeurs have no longer a place to take in the history
of men. It is all over with kings who exploit the peoples; it is all
over with exploited   peoples who have consented to their own
abasement.

That is why we are so sick and why my heart is broken.

But it is not in scorn of our misery that I regard the extent of it.
I do not want to believe that this holy country, that this cherished
race, all of whose chords I feel vibrate in me, both harmonious and
discordant,--whose qualities and whose defects I love in spite of
everything, all of whose good or bad responsibilities I consent to
accept rather than to detach  myself from them through disdain; no,
I do not want to believe that my country and my race are struck to
death, I feel it in my suffering, in my mourning, in my hours of
pure dejection even, I love, therefore I live; let us love and live.

Frenchmen, let us love one another, my God! my God! 1et us love one
another or we are lost. Let us destroy, let us deny, let us
annihilate politics, since it divides us and arms us against one
another; let us ask from no one what he was and what he wanted
yesterday. Yesterday all the world was mistaken, let us know what we
want today. If it is not liberty for all and fraternity towards all,
do not let us attempt to solve the problem of humanity, we are not
worthy of defining it, we are not capable of comprehending it.
Equality is a thing that does not impose itself, it is a free plant
that grows only on fertile lands, in salubrious air. It does not
take root on barricades, we know that now! It is immediately trodden
under the foot of the conqueror, whoever he may be. Let us desire to
establish it in our customs, let us be eager to consecrate it in our
ideas. Let us give it for a starting point, patriotic charity, love!
It is the part of a madman to think that one issues from a battle
with respect for human rights. All civil war has brought forth and
will bring forth great crime....

Unfortunate International, is it true that you believe in the lie
that strength is superior to right? If you are as numerous, as
powerful as one fancies, is it possible that you profess destruction
and hatred as a duty? No, your power is a phantom of death. A great
number of men of every nationality would not, could not, deliberate
and act in favor of an iniquitous principle. If you are the
ferocious party of the European people, something like the
Anabaptists of Munster, like them you will destroy yourself with
your own hands. If, on the contrary, you are a great and legitimate
fraternal association, your duty is to enlighten your adherents and
to deny those who cheapen and compromise your principles. I hope
still that you include in your bosom, humane and hard-working men in
great numbers, and that they suffer and blush at seeing bandits take
shelter under your name. In this case your silence is inept and
cowardly. Have you not a single member capable of protesting against
ignoble attacks, against idiotic principles, against furious
madness? Your chosen chiefs, your governors, your inspirers, are
they all brigands and idiots? No, it is impossible; there are no
groups, there is no club, there are no crossroads where a voice of
truth could not make itself heard. Speak then, justify yourself,
proclaim your gospel. Dissolve yourself in order to make yourself
over if the discord is in your own midst. Make an appeal to the
future if you are not an ancient invasion of Barbarians. Tell those
who still love the people what they ought to do for them, and if you
have nothing to say, if you cannot speak a word of life, if the
iniquities of your mysteries are sealed by fear, renounce noble
sympathies, live on the scorn of honest folk, and struggle between
the jailer and the police.

All France has heard the word of your destiny which might have been
the word of hers. She has waited for it in vain. I too, simple, I
waited. While blaming the means I did not want to prejudice the end.
There has always been one in revolutions, and the revolutions that
fail are not always those with the weakest basis. A patriotic
fanaticism seems to have been the first sentiment of this struggle.
These lost children of the democratic army were going perhaps to
subscribe to an inevitable peace that they judged shameful: Paris
had sworn to bury herself under her ruins.

The democratic people were going to force the bourgeois to keep
their word. They took possession of the cannon, they were going to
turn them on the Prussians, it was mad, but it was grand.... Not at
all. The first act of the Commune is to consent to the peace, and in
all the course of its management, it does not have an insult, not a
threat for the enemy, it conceives and commits the remarkable
cowardice of overturning under the eyes of the enemy the column that
recalls his defeats and our victories. It is angry against the
powers emanating from universal suffrage, and yet it invokes this
suffrage in Paris to constitute itself. It is true that this was not
favorable to it; it dispenses with the appearance of legality that
it intended to give itself and functions by brute force, without
invoking any other right than that of hate and scorn for all that is
not itself. It proclaims POSITIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE of which it calls
itself the sole depository, but about which it does not let a word
escape in its deliberations and in its decrees.  It declares that it
is going to free man from his shackles and his prejudices, and at
that very instant, it exercises a power without control and
threatens with death whoever is not convinced of its infallibility.
At the same time it pretends to take up the tradition of the
Jacobins, it usurps the papal social authority and assumes the
dictatorship. What sort of a republic is that? I see nothing vital
in it, nothing rational, nothing constituted, nothing constitutable.
It is an orgy of false reformers who have not one idea, not one
principle, not the least serious organization, not the least
solidarity with the nation, not the least outlook towards the
future. Ignorance, cynicism and brutality, that is all that emanates
from this false social revolution. Liberation of the lowest
instincts, impotence of bold ambitions, scandal of shameless
usurpations. That is the spectacle which we have just seen.
Moreover, this Commune has inspired the most deadly disgust in the
most ardent political men, men most devoted to the democracy. After
useless essays, they have understood that there was no
reconciliation possible where there were no principles; they
withdrew from it with consternation, with sorrow, and, the next day,
the Commune declared them traitors, and decreed their arrest. They
would have been shot if they had remained in its hands.

And you, friend, you want me to see these things with a stoic
indifference? You want me to say: man is made thus, crime is his
expression, infamy is his nature?

No, a hundred times no. Humanity is outraged in me and with me. We
must not dissimulate nor try to forget this indignation which is one
of the most passionate forms of love. We must make great efforts in
behalf of brotherhood to repair the ravages of hate. We must put an
end to the scourge, wipe out infamy with scorn, and inaugurate by
faith the resurrection of the country.

G. Sand



CXCVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 16 September, 1871

Dear old friend,

I answered you day before yesterday, and my letter took such
proportions that I sent it as an article to le Temps for my next
fortnightly contribution; for I have promised to give them two
articles a month. The letter a un ami does not indicate you by even
an initial, for I do not want to argue against you in public. I tell
you again in it my reasons for suffering and for hoping still. I
shall send it to you and that will be talking with you again. You
will see that my chagrin is a part of me, and that believing
progress to be a dream does not depend on me. Without this hope no
one is good for anything. The mandarins do not need knowledge and
even the education of a limited number of people has no longer
reason for existing unless there is hope of influence on the masses;
philosophers have only to keep silent and those great minds on whom
the need of your soul leans, Shakespeare, Moliere, Voltaire, etc.
have no reason for existing and for expressing themselves.

Come, let me suffer! That is worth more than viewing INJUSTICE WITH
A SERENE COUNTENANCE, as Shakespeare says. When I have drained my
cup of bitterness, I shall feel better. I am a woman, I have
affections, sympathies, and wrath. I shall never be a sage, nor a
scholar.

I received a kind little note from the Princess Mathilde. Is she
then again settled in Paris? Has she anything to live on from the
effects of M. Demidoff, her late and I think unworthy husband? On
the whole it is brave and good of her to return near to her friends,
at the risk of new upsets.

I am glad that these little faces of children pleased you. I embrace
you very much, you are so kind, I was sure of it. Although you are a
mandarin, I do not think that you are like a Chinaman at all, and I
love you with a full heart.

I am working like a convict.

G. Sand



CXCIX. TO GEORGE SAND

Dear master, I received your article yesterday, and I should answer
it at length if I were not in the midst of preparations for my
departure for Paris. I am going to try to finish up with Aisse.

The middle of your letter made me SHED A TEAR, without converting
me, of course. I was moved, that was all, without being persuaded.

I look vainly in your article for one word: "justice," and all our
ill comes from forgetting absolutely that first notion of morality,
which to my way of thinking composes all morality. Humanitarianism,
sentiment, the ideal, have played us sufficiently mean tricks for us
to try righteousness and science.

If France does not pass in a short time to the crisis, I believe
that she will be irrevocably lost. Free compulsory education will do
nothing but augment the number of imbeciles. Renan has said that
very well in the preface to his Questions contemporaines. What we
need most of all, is a natural, that is to say, a legitimate
aristocracy. No one can do anything without a head, and universal
suffrage as it exists is more stupid than divine right. You will see
remarkable things if they let it keep on! The masses, the numbers,
are always idiotic. I have few convictions, but I have that one
strongly. But the masses must be respected, however inept they may
be, because they contain the germs of an incalculable fecundity.
Give it liberty but not power.

I believe no more than you do in class distinction. Castes belong to
archeology. But I believe that the poor hate the rich, and that the
rich are afraid of the poor. It will be so forever. It is as useless
to preach love to the one as to the other. The most important thing
is to instruct the rich, who, on the whole, are the strongest.
Enlighten the bourgeois first, for he knows nothing, absolutely
nothing. The whole dream of democracy is to elevate the proletarian
to the level of the imbecility of the bourgeois. The dream is partly
accomplished. He reads the same papers and has the same passions.

The three degrees of education have shown within the last year what
they can accomplish: (1) higher education made Prussia win; (2)
secondary education, bourgeois, produced the men of the 4th of
September; (3) primary education gave us the Commune. Its minister
of public instruction was the great Valles, who boasted that he
scorned Homer!

In three years every Frenchman can know how to read. Do you think
that we shall be the better off? Imagine on the other hand that in
each commune, there was ONE bourgeois, only one, who had read
Bastiat, and that this bourgeois was respected, things would change.

However I am not discouraged as you are, and the present government
pleases me, because it has no principle, no metaphysics, no humbug.
I express myself very badly. Moreover you deserve a different
response, but I am much hurried.

I hear today that the mass of the Parisians regrets Badinguet. A
plebiscite would declare for him, I do not doubt it, universal
suffrage is such a fine thing.



CC. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 10 October, 1871

I am answering your post scriptum, if I had answered Flaubert I
should not have ... ANSWERED, knowing well that your heart does not
always agree with your mind, a discordance into which we all
moreover are continually compelled to fall. I answered a part of a
letter of some friend whom no one knows, no one can recognize, since
I address myself to a part of your reasoning that is not you
entirely.

You are a troubadour all the same, and if I had to write to you
PUBLICLY the character would be what it ought to be. But our real
discussions ought to remain between ourselves, like caresses between
lovers, and even sweeter, since friendship also has its mysteries
without the storms of personality.

That letter that you wrote me in haste, is full of well expressed
truths against which I do not protest. But the connection and
agreement between your truths of reason and my truths of sentiment
must be found. France, alas! is neither on your side nor my side;
she is on the side of blindness, ignorance and folly. Oh! that I do
not deny, it is exactly that over which I despair.

Is this a time to put on Aisse? You told me it was a thing of
distinction, delicate like all that HE did, and I hear that the
public of the theatres is more THICKHEADED than ever. You would do
well to see two or three plays, no matter which, in order to
appreciate the literary condition of the Parisian. The provinces
will contribute less than in the past. The little fortunes are too
much cut down to permit frequent trips to Paris.

If Paris offered, as in my youth, an intelligent and influential
nucleus, a good play would perhaps not have a hundred performances,
but a bad play would not have three hundred. But this nucleus has
become imperceptible and its influence is swamped. Who then will
fill the theatres? The shopkeepers of Paris, without a guide, and
without good criticism? Well, you are not the master in the matter
of Aisse. There is an heir who is impatient, probably.--They write
me that Chilly is very; seriously ill, and that Pierre Berton is
reengaged.

You must be very busy; I will not write a long letter to you.

I embrace you affectionately, my children love you and ask to be
remembered to you.

G. Sand



CCI. TO GEORGE SAND

Never, dear good master, have you given such a proof of your
inconceivable candor! Now, seriously, you think that you have
offended me! The first page is almost like excuses! It made me laugh
heartily! Besides, you can always say everything to me, to me!
everything! Your blows will be caresses to me.

Now let us talk again! I continually repeat my insistence on
justice! Do you see how they are denying it everywhere? Has not
modern criticism abandoned art for history? The intrinsic value of a
book is nothing in the school of Sainte-Beuve and Taine. They take
everything into consideration there except talent. Thence, in the
petty journals, the abuse of personality, the biographies, the
diatribes. Conclusion: lack of respect on the part of the public.

In the theatre, the same thing. They don't bother about the play,
but the lesson to be preached. Our friend Dumas dreams the glory of
Lacordaire, or rather of Ravignan! To prevent the tucking up of
petticoats has become with him obsession. We can not have progressed
very far since all morality consists for women, in not committing
adultery, and for men in abstaining from theft! In short, the first
injustice is practised by literature; it has no interest in
esthetics, which is only a higher justice. The romantics will have a
fine account to render with their immoral sentimentality. Do you
recall a bit of Victor Hugo in la Legende des siecles, where a
sultan is saved because he had pity on a pig? it is always the story
of the penitent thief blessed because he has repented! To repent is
good, but not to do evil is better. The school of rehabilitations
has led us to see no difference between a rascal and an honest man.
I became enraged once before witnesses, against Sainte-Beuve, while
begging him to have as much indulgence for Balzac as he had for
Jules Lecomte. He answered me, calling me a dolt! That is where
BREADTH OF VIEW leads you.

They have so lost all sense of proportion, that the war council at
Versailles treats Pipe-en-Bois more harshly than M. Courbet,
Maroteau is condemned to death like Rossel! It is madness! These
gentlemen, however, interest me very little. I think that they
should have condemned to the galleys all the Commune, and have
forced these bloody imbeciles to clear up the ruins of Paris, with a
chain on their necks, like ordinary convicts. But that would have
wounded HUMANITY. They are kind to the mad dogs, and not at all to
the people whom the dogs have bitten.

That will not change so long as universal suffrage is what it is.
Every man (as I think), no matter how low he is, has a right to ONE
voice, his own, but he is not the equal of his neighbor, who may be
worth a hundred times more. In an industrial enterprise (Societe
anonyme), each holder votes according to the value of his
contribution. It ought to be so in the government of a nation. I am
worth fully twenty electors of Croisset. Money, mind, and even race
ought to be reckoned, in short every resource. But up to the present
I only see one! numbers! Ah! dear master, you who have so authority,
you ought to take the lead. Your articles in le Temps, which have
had a great success, are widely read and who knows? You would
perhaps do France a great service?

Aisse keeps me very busy, or rather provokes me. I have not seen
Chilly, I have had to do with Duquesnel. They are depriving me
definitely of the senior Berton and proposing his son. He is very
nice, but he is not at all the type conceived by the author. The
Theatre Francais perhaps would ask nothing better than to take
Aisse! I am very perplexed, and it is going to be necessary for me
to decide. As for waiting till a literary wind arises, as it will
never arise in my lifetime, it is better to risk the thing at once.

These theatrical affairs disturb me greatly, for I was in great
form. For the last month I was even in an exaltation bordering on
madness!

I have met the unavoidable Harrisse, a man who knows everyone, and
who is a judge of everything, theatre, novels, finances, politics,
etc. What a race is that of enlightened men!!! I have seen Plessy,
charming and always beautiful. She asked me to send you a thousand
friendly messages.

For my part, I send you a hundred thousand affectionate greetings.

Your old friend



CCII. TO GEORGE SAND
14 November, 1871

Ouf! I have just finished MY GODS, that is to say the mythological
part of my Saint-Antoine, on which I have been working since the
beginning of June. How I want to read it to you, dear master of the
good God!

Why did you resist your good impulse? Why didn't you come this
autumn? You should not stay so long without seeing Paris. I shall be
there day after tomorrow, and I shall have no amusement there at all
this winter, what with Aisse, a volume of verse to be printed (I
should like to show you the preface), and Heaven knows what else. A
lot of things that are not at all diverting.

I did not receive the second article that was announced. Your old
troubadour has an aching head. My longest nights these three months
have not exceeded five hours. I have been grubbing in a frantic
manner. Furthermore, I think I have brought my book to a pretty
degree of insanity. The idea of the foolish things that it will make
the bourgeois utter sustains me, or rather I don't need to be
sustained, as such a situation pleases me naturally.

The good bourgeois is becoming more and more stupid! He does not
even go to vote! The brute beasts surpass him in their instinct for
self-preservation. Poor France! Poor us!

What do you think I am reading now to distract myself? Bichat and
Cabanis, who amuse me enormously. They knew how to write books then.
Ah! how far our doctors of today are from those men!

We suffer from one thing only: Absurdity. But it is formidable and
universal. When they talk of the brutishness of the plebe, they are
saying an unjust, incomplete thing. Conclusion: the enlightened
classes must be enlightened. Begin by the head, which is the
sickest, the rest will follow.

You are not like me! You are full of compassion. There are days when
I choke with wrath, I would like to drown my contemporaries in
latrines, or at least deluge their cockscombs with torrents of
abuse, cataracts of invectives. Why? I wonder myself.

What sort of archeology is Maurice busy with? Embrace your little
girls warmly for me.

Your old friend



CCIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 23 November, 1871

I hear from Plauchut that you won't let yourself be abducted for our
Christmas Eve REVELS. You say you have too much to do. That is so
much the worse for us, who would have had such pleasure in seeing
you.--You were at Ch. Edmond's successful play, you are well, you
have a great deal to do, you still detest the silly bourgeois; and
with all that, is Saint-Antoine finished and shall we read it soon?

I am giving you an easy commission to do, this is it: I have had to
aid a respectable and interesting person [Footnote:  Mademoiselle de
Flaugergues.] to whom the Prussians have left for a bed and chair,
only an old garden bench. I sent her 300 francs, she needed 600. I
begged from kind souls. They sent me what was necessary, all except
the Princess Mathilde, from whom I asked 200 francs. She answered me
the 19th of this month: HOW SHALL I SEND THIS TO YOU?

I replied the same day; simply by mail. But I have received nothing.
I do not insist, but I fear that the money may have been stolen or
lost, and I am asking you to clear up the affair as quickly as
possible.

With this, I embrace you, and Lolo, AURORE EMBRACES YOU TOO and all
the family which loves you.

G. Sand

[The words 'Aurore embraces you too' were written by the little girl
herself.]



CCIV. TO GEORGE SAND
1 December

Your letter which I have just found again, makes me remorseful, for
I have not yet done your errand to the princess. I was several days
without knowing where the princess was. She was to have come to get
settled in Paris, and send me word of her arrival. Today at last I
learn that she is at Saint-Gratien where I shall go on Sunday
evening probably. Anyway your commission shall be done next week.

You must forgive me, for I have not had for the last two weeks ten
minutes of freedom. The revival of Ruy Blas which was going to be
put ahead of Aisse had to be PUT OFF (it was a hard job). Well, the
rehearsals are to begin on Monday next. I read the play to the
actors today, and the roles are to be verified tomorrow. I think it
will go well. I have had Bouilhet's volume of verse printed, the
preface of which I re-wrote. In short I am worn out! and sad! sad
enough to croak. When I have to get into action I throw myself into
it head first. But my heart is breaking in disgust. That is the
truth.

I have seen none of our friends except Tourgueneff, whom I have
found more charming than ever. Give a good kiss to Aurore for her
sweet message, and let her kiss you for me.

Your old friend



CCV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 7 December, 1871

The money was stolen, I did not receive it, and it can not be
claimed, for the sender would be liable to a suit. Thank the
princess just the same for me, and for poor Mademoiselle de
Flaugergues whom by the way, the minister is aiding with 200 francs.
Her pension is 800.

You are in the midst of rehearsals, I pity you, and yet I imagine
that in working for a friend one puts more heart in it, more
confidence and much more patience. Patience, there is everything in
that, and that is acquired.

I love you and I embrace you, how I would like to have you at
Christmas! You can not, so much the worse for us. We shall drink you
a toast and many speaches [sic].

G. Sand



CCVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 4 January, 1872

I want to embrace you at the first of the year and tell you that I
love my old troubadour now and always, but I don't want you to
answer me, you are in the thick of theatrical things, and you have
not the time and the calmness to write. Here we called you at the
stroke of midnight on Christmas, we called your name three times,
did you hear it at all?

We are all getting on well, our little girls are growing, we speak
of you often; my children embrace you also. May our affection bring
you good luck!

G. Sand



CCVII. TO GEORGE SAND
Sunday, January, 1872

At last I have a moment of quiet and I can write to you. But I have
so many things to chat with you about, that I hardly know where to
begin: (1) Your little letter of the 4th of January, which came the
very morning of the premiere of Aisse, moved me to tears, dear well-
beloved master. You are the only one who shows such delicacies of
feeling.

The premiere was splendid, and then, that is all. The next night the
theatre was almost empty. The press, in general, was stupid and
base. They accused me of having wanted to advertise by INSERTING an
incendiary tirade! I pass for a Red (sic). You see where we are!

The management of the Odeon has done nothing for the play! On the
contrary. The day of the premiere it was I who brought with my own
hands the properties for the first act! And on the third performance
I led the supernumeraries.

Throughout the rehearsals they advertised in the papers the revival
of Ruy Blas, etc., etc. They made me strangle la Baronne quite as
Ruy Blas will strangle Aisse. In short, Bouilhet's heir will get
very little money. Honor is saved, that is all.

I have had Dernieres Chansons printed. You will receive this volume
at the same time as Aisse and a letter of mine to the Conseil
municipal de Rouen. This little production seemed too violent to le
Nouvelliste de Rouen, which did not dare to print it; but it will
appear on Wednesday in le Temps, then at Rouen, as a pamphlet.

What a foolish life I have been leading for two and a half months!
How is it that I have not croaked with it? My longest nights have
not been over five hours. What running about! What letters! and what
anger!--repressed--unfortunately! At last, for three days I have
slept all I wanted to, and I am stupefied by it.

I was present with Dumas at the premiere of Roi Carotte. You can not
imagine such rot! It is sillier and emptier than the worst of the
fairy plays of Clairville. The public agreed with me absolutely.

The good Offenbach has had another failure at the Opera-Comique with
Fantasio. Shall one ever get to hating piffle? That would be a fine
step on the right path.

Tourgueneff has been in Paris since the first of December. Every
week we have an engagement to read Saint-Antoine and to dine
together. But something always prevents and we never meet. I am
harassed more than ever by life and am disgusted with everything,
which does not prevent me from being in better health than ever.
Explain that to me.



CCVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 18 January, 1872

You must not be sick, you must not be a grumbler, my dear old
troubadour. You must cough, blow your nose, get well, say that
France is mad, humanity silly, and that we are crude animals; and
you must love yourself, your kind, and your friends above all. I
have some very sad hours. I look at MY FLOWERS, these two little
ones who are always smiling, their charming mother and my wise
hardworking son whom the end of the world will find hunting,
cataloguing, doing his daily task, and gay withal AS PUNCH, in the
RARE moments when he is resting.

He said to me this morning: "Tell Flaubert to come, I will take a
vacation at once. I will play the marionettes for him, I will make
him laugh."

Life in a crowd forbids reflection. You are too much alone. Come
quickly to our house and let us love you.

G. Sand



CCIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Friday, 19 January, 1872

I did not know about all that affair at Rouen and I now understand
your anger. But you are too angry, that is to say too good, and too
good for them. With a BITTER and vindictive man these louts would be
less spiteful and less bold. You have always called them brutes, you
and Bouilhet, now they are avenging themselves on the dead and on
the living. Ah! well, it is indeed that and nothing else.

Yesterday I was preaching the calmness of disdain to you. I see that
this is not the moment, but you are not wicked, strong men are not
cruel! With a bad mob at their heels, these fine men of Rouen would
not have dared what they have dared!

I have the Chansons, tomorrow I shall read your preface, from
beginning to end.

I embrace you.



CCX. TO GEORGE SAND

You will receive very soon: Dernieres Chansons, Aisse and my Lettre
au Conseil municipal de Rouen, which is to appear tomorrow in le
Temps before appearing as a pamphlet.

I have forgotten to tell you something, dear master. I have used
your name. I have COMPROMISED you in citing you among the
illustrious people who have subscribed to the monument for Bouilhet.
I found that it looked well in the sentence. An effect of style
being a sacred thing with me, don't disavow it.

Today I am starting again my metaphysical readings for Saint-
Antoine. Next Saturday, I shall read a hundred and thirty pages of
it, all that is finished, to Tourgueneff. Why won't you be there!

I embrace you.

Your old friend



CCXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 25 January, 1872

You were quite right to put me down and I want to CONTRIBUTE too.
Put me down for the sum you would like and tell me so that I may
have it sent to you.

I have read your preface in le Temps: the end of it is very
beautiful and touching. But I see that this poor friend was, like
you, one who DID NOT GET OVER HIS ANGER, and at your age I should
like to see you less irritated, less worried with the folly of
others. For me, it is lost time, like complaining about being bored
with the rain and the flies. The public which is accused often of
being silly, gets angry and only becomes sillier; for angry or
irritated, one becomes sublime if one is intelligent, idiotic if one
is silly.

After all, perhaps this chronic indignation is a need of your
constitution; it would kill me. I have a great need to be calm so as
to reflect and to think things over. At this moment I am doing THE
USEFUL at the risk of your anathemas. I am trying to simplify a
child's approach to culture, being persuaded that the first study
makes its impression on all the others and that pedagogy teaches us
to look for knots in bulrushes. In short, I am working over A
PRIMER, do not EAT ME ALIVE.

I have ONLY ONE regret about Paris: it is not to be a third with
Tourgueneff when you read your Saint-Antoine. For all the rest,
Paris does not call me at all; my heart has affections there that I
do not wish to hurt, by disagreement with their ideas. It is
impossible not to be tired of this spirit of party or of sect which
makes people no longer French, nor men, nor themselves. They have no
country, they belong to a church. They do what they disapprove of,
so as not to disobey the discipline of the school. I prefer to keep
silent. They would find me cold or stupid; one might as well stay at
home.

You don't tell me of your mother; is she in Paris with her
grandchild? I hope that your silence means that they are well.
Everything has gone wonderfully here this winter; the children are
excellent and give us nothing but joy. After the dismal winter of
'70 to '71, one ought to complain of nothing.

Can one live peaceably, you say, when the human race is so absurd? I
submit, while saying to myself that perhaps I am as absurd as every
one else and that it is time to turn my mind to correcting myself.

I embrace you for myself and for all mine.

G. Sand



CCXII. TO GEORGE SAND

No! dear master! it is not true. Bouilhet never injured the
bourgeois of Rouen; no one was gentler to them, I add even more
cowardly, to tell the truth. As for me, I kept apart from them, that
is all my crime.

I find by chance just today in Nadar's Memoirs du Geant, a paragraph
on me and the people of Rouen which is absolutely exact. Since you
own this book, look at page 100.

If I had kept silent they would have accused me of being a coward. I
protested naively, that is to say brutally. And I did well.

I think that one ought never begin the attack; but when one answers,
one must try to kill cleanly one's enemy. Such is my system.
Frankness is part of loyalty; why should it be less perfect in blame
than in praise?

We are perishing from indulgence, from clemency, from COWISHNESS and
(I return to my eternal refrain) from lack of JUSTICE!

Besides, I have never insulted any one, I have kept to
generalities,--as for M. Decorde, my intentions are for open
warfare;--but enough of that! I spent yesterday, a fine day, with
Tourgueneff to whom I read the hundred and fifteen pages of Saint-
Antoine that are finished. After which, I read to him almost half of
the Dernieres Chansons. What a listener! What a critic! He dazzled
me by the depth and the clearness of his judgment. Ah! if all those
who attempt to judge books had been able to hear, what a lesson!
Nothing escapes him. At the end of a passage of a hundred lines, he
remembers a weak epithet! he gave me two or three suggestions of
exquisite detail for Saint-Antoine.