Have you any sun today? Here it is stifling. The country is lovely.
When will you come here?
XIX. TO GEORGE SAND
Croisset, Saturday evening, ... 1866
Good, I have it, that beautiful, dear and famous face! I am going to
have a large frame made and hang it on my wall, being able to say,
as did M. de Talleyrand to Louis Philippe: "It is the greatest honor
that my house has received"; a poor phrase, for we two are worth
more than those two amiable men.
Of the two portraits, I like that of Couture's the better. As for
Marchal's he saw in you only "the good woman," but I who am an old
Romantic, find in the other, "the head of the author" who made me
dream so much in my youth.
XX. TO GEORGE SAND
Croisset, Saturday evening, 1866
Your sending the package of the two portraits made me think that you
were in Paris, dear master, and I wrote you a letter which is
waiting for you at rue des Feuillantines.
I have not found my article on the dolmens. But I have my manuscript
(entire) of my trip in Brittany among my "unpublished works." We
shall have to gabble when you are here. Have courage.
I don't experience, as you do, this feeling of a life which is
beginning, the stupefaction of a newly commenced existence. It seems
to me, on the contrary, that I have always lived! And I possess
memories which go back to the Pharaohs. I see myself very clearly at
different ages of history, practising different professions and in
many sorts of fortune. My present personality is the result of my
lost personalities. I have been a boatman on the Nile, a leno in
Rome at the time of the Punic wars, then a Greek rhetorician in
Subura where I was devoured by insects. I died during the Crusade
from having eaten too many grapes on the Syrian shores, I have been
a pirate, monk, mountebank and coachman. Perhaps also even emperor
of the East?
Many things would be explained if we could know our real genealogy.
For, since the elements which make a man are limited, should not the
same combinations reproduce themselves? Thus heredity is a just
principle which has been badly applied.
There is something in that word as in many others. Each one takes it
by one end and no one understands the other. The science of
psychology will remain where it lies, that is to say in shadows and
folly, as long as it has no exact nomenclature, so long as it is
allowed to use the same expression to signify the most diverse
ideas. When they confuse categories, adieu, morale!
Don't you really think that since '89 they wander from the point?
Instead of continuing along the highroad which was broad and
beautiful, like a triumphal way, they stray off by little sidepaths
and flounder in mud holes. Perhaps it would be wise for a little
while to return to Holbach. Before admiring Proudhon, supposing one
knew Turgot? But le Chic, that modern religion, what would become of
it!
Opinions chic (or chiques): namely being pro-Catholicism (without
believing a word of it) being pro-Slavery, being pro-the House of
Austria, wearing mourning for Queen Amelie, admiring Orphee aux
Enfers, being occupied with Agricultural Fairs, talking Sport,
acting indifferent, being a fool up to the point of regretting the
treaties of 1815. That is all that is the very newest.
Oh! You think that because I pass my life trying to make harmonious
phrases, in avoiding assonances, that I too have not my little
judgments on the things of this world? Alas! Yes! and moreover I
shall burst, enraged at not expressing them.
But a truce to joking, I should finally bore you.
The Bouilhet play will open the first part of November. Then in a
month we shall see each other.