XXXVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT,
at Paris December, 1866
"Not put one's heart into what one writes?" I don't understand at
all, oh! not at all! As for me, I think that one can not put
anything else into it. Can one separate one's mind from one's heart?
Is it something different? Can sensation itself limit itself? Can
existence divide itself? In short, not to give oneself entirely to
one's work, seems to me as impossible as to weep with something else
than one's eyes, and to think with something else than one's brain.
What was it you meant? You must tell me when you have the time.
XXXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Paris, 8 December, 1866
You ask me what I am doing? Your old troubadour is content this
evening. He has passed the night in re-doing a second act which did
not go properly and which has turned out well, so well that my
directors are delighted, and I have good hopes of making the end
effective--it does not please me yet, but one must pull it through.
In short, I have nothing to tell you about myself which is very
interesting. When one has the patience of an ox and the wrist broken
from crushing stones well or badly, one has scarcely any unexpected
events or emotions to recount. My poor Manceau called me the ROAD-
MENDER, and there is nothing less poetic than those beings.
And you, dear friend, are you experiencing the anguish and labors of
childbirth? That is splendid and youthful. Those who want them don't
always get them!
When my daughter-in-law brings into the world dear little children,
I abandon myself to such labor in holding her in my arms that it
reacts on me, and when the infant arrives, I am sicker than she is,
and even seriously so. I think that your pains now react on me, and
I have a headache on account of them. But alas! I cannot assist at
any birth and I almost regret the time when one believed it hastened
deliverances to burn candles before an image.
I see that that rascal Bouilhet has betrayed me; he promised me to
copy the Marengo letter in a feigned hand to see if you would be
taken in by it. People have written to me seriously things like
that. How good and kind your great friend is. He is adored at the
Odeon, and this evening they told me that his play was going better
and better. I went to hear it again two or three days ago and I was
even more delighted with it than the first time.
Well, well, let's keep up our heart, whatever happens, and when you
go to rest remember that someone loves you. Affectionate regards to
your mother, brother and niece.