LXXI. TO GEORGE SAND
1st November, 1867
Dear master,
I was as much ashamed as touched, last evening, when I received your
"very nice" letter. I am a wretch not to have answered the first
one. How did that happen? For I am usually prompt.
My work does not go very well. I hope that I shall finish my second
part in February. But in order to have it all finished in two years,
I must not budge from my arm-chair till then. That is why I am not
going to Nohant. A week of recreation means three months of revery
for me. I should do nothing but think of you, of yours in Berry, of
all that I saw. My unfortunate spirit would navigate in strange
waters. I have so little resistance.
I do not hide the pleasure that your little word about SALAMMBO
gives me. That old book needs to be relieved from a few inversions,
there are too many repetitions of ALORS, MAIS and ET. The labor is
too evident.
As for the one I am doing, I am afraid that the idea is defective,
an irremediable fault; will such weak characters be interesting?
Great effects are reached only through simple means, through
positive passions. But I don't see simplicity anywhere in the modern
world.
A sad world! How deplorable and how lamentably grotesque are affairs
in Italy! All these orders, counter-orders of counter-orders of the
counter-orders! The earth is a very inferior planet, decidedly.
You did not tell me if you were satisfied with the revivals at the
Odeon. When shall you go south? And where shall you go in the south?
A week from today, that is to say, from the 7th to the 10th of
November, I shall be in Paris, because I have to go sauntering in
Auteuil in order to discover certain little nooks. What would be
nice would be for us to come back to Croisset together. You know
very well that I am very angry at you for your two last trips in
Normandy.
Then, I shall see you soon? No joking? I embrace you as I love you,
dear master, that is to say, very tenderly.
Here is a bit that I send to your dear son, a lover of this sort of
fluff:
"One evening, expected by Hortense,
Having his eyes fixed on the clock,
And feeling his heart beat with eager throbs,
Young Alfred dried up with impatience."
(Memoires de l'Academie de Saint-Quentin.)
LXXII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 5 December, 1867
Your old troubadour is no good, I admit it. He has been working like
an ox to have the money to go away with this winter to the gulf of
Juan, and at the moment of leaving he would like to stay behind. He
is worried at leaving his children and the little Aurore, but he
suffers with the cold, he fears anemia, and he thinks he is doing
his duty in going to find a land which the snow does not render
impracticable, and a sky under which one can breathe without having
dagger-thrusts in one's lungs.
So you see.
He has thought of you, probably much more than you think of him; for
he has stupid and easy work, and his thoughts run elsewhere very far
from him, and from his task, when his hand is weary of writing. As
for you, you work for truth, and you become absorbed, and you have
not heard my spirit, which more than once has TAPPED at your study
door to say to you: "It is I." Or else you have said: "It is a
spirit tapping let him go to the devil!"
Aren't you coming to Paris? I am going there between the 15th and
the 20th. I shall stay there only a few days, and then flee to
Cannes. Will you be there? God grant it! On the whole I am pretty
well; I am furious with you for not wanting to come to Nohant; I
won't reproach you for I don't know how. I have scribbled a lot; my
children are always good and kind to me in every sense of the word.
Aurore is a love.
We have RAVED politically; now we try not to think of it any more
and to have patience. We often speak of you and we love you. Your
old troubadour especially who embraces you with all his heart, and
begs to be remembered to your good mother.