I am worried at not having news from you, dear master. What has
become of you? When shall I see you?
My trip to Nohant has fallen through. The reason is this: my mother
had a little stroke a week ago. There is nothing left of it, but it
might come on again. She is anxious for me, and I am going to hurry
back to Croisset. If she is doing well towards the month of August,
and I am not worried, it is not necessary to tell you that I shall
rush headlong towards your home.
As regards news, Sainte-Beuve seems to me very ill, and Bouilhet has
just been appointed librarian at Rouen.
Since the rumours of war have quieted down, people seem to me a
little less foolish. My nausea caused by the public cowardice is
decreasing.
I went twice to the Exposition; it is amazing. There are splendid
and extraordinary things there. But man is made to swallow the
infinite. One would have to know all sciences and all arts in order
to be interested in everything that one sees on the Champ de Mars.
Never mind; someone who had three entire months to himself, and went
every morning to take notes, would save himself in consequence much
reading and many journeys.
One feels oneself there very far from Paris, in a new and ugly
world, an enormous world which is perhaps the world of the future.
The first time that I lunched there, I thought all the time of
America, and I wanted to speak like a negro.
LVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset
Nohant, 9 May, 1867
Dear friend of my heart,
I am well, I am at work, I am finishing Cadio. It is warm, I am
alive, I am calm and sad, I hardly know why. In this existence so
even, so tranquil, and so gentle as I have here, I am in an element
that weakens me morally while strengthening me physically; and I
fall into melancholies of honey and roses which are none the less
melancholy. It seems to me that all those I love forget me, and that
it is justice, because I live a selfish life having nothing to do
for any one of them.
I have lived with tremendous attachments which overwhelmed me, which
exceeded my strength and which I often used to curse. And it happens
that having nothing more to carry them on with, I am bored by being
well. If the human race went on very well or very ill, one would
reattach oneself to a general interest, would live with an idea,
wise or foolish. But you see where we are now, you who storm so
fiercely against cowards. That disappears, you say? But only to
recommence! What kind of a society is it that becomes paralyzed in
the midst of its expansions, because tomorrow can bring a storm? The
thought of danger has never produced such demoralizations. Have we
declined to such an extent that it is necessary to beg us to eat,
telling us at the same time that nothing will happen to disturb our
digestion? Yes, it is silly, it is shameful. Is it the result of
prosperity, and does civilization involve this sickly and cowardly
selfishness?
My optimism has had a rude jolt of late. I worked up a joy, a
courage at the idea of seeing you here. It was like a cure that I
carefully contrived, but you are worried about your dear, old
mother, and certainly I can not protest.
Well, if, before your departure from Paris, I can finish Cadio, to
which I am bound under pain of having nothing wherewith to pay for
my tobacco and my shoes, I shall go with Maurice to embrace you. If
not, I shall hope for you about the middle of the summer. My
children, quite unhappy by this delay, beg to hope for you also, and
we hope it so much the more because it would be a good sign for the
dear mother.
Maurice has plunged again into Natural History; he wants to perfect
himself in the MICROS; I learn on the rebound. When I shall have
fixed in my head the name and the appearance of two or three
thousand imperceptible varieties, I shall be well advanced, don't
you think so? Well, these studies are veritable OCTOPUSES, which
entwine about you and which open to you I don't know what infinity.
You ask if it is the destiny of man to DRINK THE INFINITE; my
heavens, yes, don't doubt it, it is his destiny, since it is his
dream and his passion.
Inventing is absorbing also; but what fatigue afterwards! How empty
and worn out intellectually one feels, when one has scribbled for
weeks and months about that animal with two legs which has the only
right to be represented in novels! I see Maurice quite refreshed and
rejuvenated when he returns from his beasts and his pebbles, and if
I aspire to come out from my misery, it is to bury myself also in
studies, which in the speech of the Philistines, are not of any use.
Still it is worth more than to say mass and to ring the bell for the
adoration of the Creator.
Is it true what you tell me of G----? Is it possible? I can not
believe it. Is there in the atmosphere which the earth engenders
nowadays, a gas, laughing or otherwise, which suddenly seizes the
brain, and carries it on to commit extravagances, as there was under
the first revolution a maddening fluid which inspired one to commit
cruelties? We have fallen from the Hell of Dante into that of
Scarron.
Of what are you thinking, good head and good heart, in the midst of
this bacchanal? You are wrathful, oh very well, I like that better
than if you were laughing at it; but when you are calmer and when
you reflect?
Must one find some fashion of accepting the honor, the duty, and the
fatigue of living? As for me, I revert to the idea of an everlasting
journey through worlds more amusing, but it would be necessary to go
there quickly and change continually. The life that one fears so
much to lose is always too long for those who understand quickly
what they see. Everything repeats itself and goes over and over
again in it.
I assure you that there is only one pleasure: learning what one does
not know, and one happiness: loving the exceptions. Therefore I love
you and I embrace you tenderly.