I am anxious about Sainte-Beuve. What a loss that would be! I am
content if Bouilhet is content. Is it really a good position?
LVII. TO GEORGE SAND
Paris, Friday morning
I am returning to my mother next Monday, dear master. I have little
hope of seeing you before then!
But when you are in Paris, what is to prevent you from pushing on to
Croisset where everyone, including myself, adores you? Sainte-Beuve
has finally consented to see a specialist and to be seriously
treated. And he is better anyway. His morale is improving.
Bouilhet's position gives him four thousand francs a year and
lodging. He now need not think of earning his living, which is a
real luxury.
No one talks of the war any more, they don't talk of anything.
The Exposition alone is what "everybody is thinking about," and the
cabmen exasperate the bourgeois.
They were beautiful (the bourgeois) during the strike of the
tailors. One would have said that SOCIETY was going to pieces.
Axiom: Hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of virtue. But I
include in the word bourgeois, the bourgeois in blouses as well the
bourgeois in coats.
It is we and we alone, that is to say the literary men, who are the
people, or to say it better: the tradition of humanity.
Yes, I am susceptible to disinterested angers and I love you all the
more for loving me for that. Stupidity and injustice make me roar,--
and I HOWL in my corner against a lot of things "that do not concern
me."
How sad it is not to live together, dear master, I admired you
before I knew you. From the day I saw your lovely and kind face, I
loved you. There you are.--And I embrace you warmly.