XCIX. TO GEORGE SAND
Tuesday
Dear master,
You cannot imagine the sorrow you give me! In spite of the longing
I have, I answer "no." Yet I am distracted with my desire to say
"yes." It makes me seem like a gentleman who cannot be disturbed,
which is very silly. But I know myself: if I go to your house at
Nohant, I shall have a month of dreaming about my trip. Real
pictures will replace in my brain the fictitious pictures which I
compose with great difficulty. All my house of cards will topple
over.
Three weeks ago because I was foolish enough to accept an invitation
to dinner at a country place nearby, I lost four days (sic). What
would it be on leaving Nohant? You do not understand that, you
strong Being! I think that you will be a little vexed with your old
troubadour for not coming to the baptism of the two darlings of his
friend Maurice? The dear master must write to me if I am wrong, and
to give me the news!
Here is mine! I work immoderately and am absolutely ENCHANTED by the
prospect of the end which begins to be visible.
So that it may arrive more quickly, I have made the resolution to
live here all winter, probably until the end of March. Even
admitting that everything goes perfectly, I shall not have finished
all before the end of May. I don't know anything that goes on and I
read nothing, except a little of the French Revolution, after my
meals, to aid digestion. I have lost my former good habit of reading
every day in Latin. Therefore I don't know a word of it any more! I
shall polish it up again when I am freed from my odious bourgeois,
and I am nowhere near it.
My only excitement consists in going to dine on Sundays at Rouen
with my mother. I leave at six o'clock, and I am home at ten. Such
is my life.
Did I tell you that I had a visit from Tourgueneff? How you would
love him!
Sainte-Beuve gets along. Anyway, I shall see him next week when I am
in Paris for two days, to get necessary information What is the
information about? The national guard!!!
Listen to this: le Figaro not knowing with what to fill its columns,
has had the idea of saying that my novel tells the life of
Chancellor Pasquier. Thereupon, fear of the aforesaid family, which
wrote to another part of the same family living in Rouen, which
latter has been to find a lawyer from whom my brother received a
visit, so that ... in short, I was very stupid not to "get some
benefit from the opportunity." Isn't it a fine piece of idiocy, eh?
C. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, AT CEOISSET
Nohant, 21 December, 1868
Certainly, I am cross with you and angry with you, not from
unreasonableness nor from selfishness, but on the contrary, because
we were joyous and HILARIOUS and you would not distract yourself and
amuse yourself with us. If it was to amuse yourself elsewhere, you
would be pardoned in advance; but it was to shut yourself up, to get
all heated up, and besides for a work which you curse, and which--
wishing to do and being obliged to do anyhow,--you ought to be able
to do at your ease and without becoming too absorbed in it.
You tell me that you are like that. There is nothing more to say;
but one may well be distressed at having an adored friend, a captive
in chains far away, whom one may not free. It is perhaps a little
coquettish on your part, so as to make yourself pitied and loved the
more. I, who have not buried myself alive in literature, have
laughed and lived a great deal during these holidays, but always
thinking of you and talking of you with our friend of the Palais
Royal, [Footnote: Jerome Napoleon.] who would have been happy to
see you and who loves you and appreciates you a great deal.
Tourgueneff has been more fortunate than we, since he was able to
snatch you from your ink-well. I know him personally very little,
but I know his work by heart. What talent! and how original and
polished! I think that the foreigners do better than we do. They do
not pose, while we either put on airs or grovel: the Frenchman has
no longer a social milieu, he has no longer an intellectual milieu.
I except you, you who live a life of exception, and I except myself,
because of the foundation of careless unconventionally which was
bestowed upon me; but I, I do not know how to be "careful" and to
polish, and I love life too much, and I am amused too much by the
mustard and all that is not the real "dinner," to ever be a
litterateur. I have had flashes of it, but they have not lasted.
Existence where one ignores completely one's "moi" is so good, and
life where one does not play a role is such a pretty performance to
watch and to listen to! When I have to give of myself, I live with
courage and resolution, but I am no longer amused.
You, oh! fanatical troubadour, I suspect you of amusing yourself at
your profession more than at anything in the world. In spite of what
you say about it, art could well be your sole passion, and your
shutting yourself up, at which I mourn like the silly that I am,
your state of pleasure. If it is like that then, so much the better,
but acknowledge it to console me.
I am going to leave you in order to dress the marionettes, for the
plays and the laughter have been resumed with the bad weather, and
that will keep us busy for a part of the winter, I fancy. Behold!
here I am, the imbecile that you love, and that you call MASTER. A
fine master who likes to amuse himself better than to work!
Scorn me profoundly, but love me still. Lina tells me to tell you
that you are not much, and Maurice is furious too; but we love you
in spite of ourselves and embrace you just the same. Our friend
Plauchut wants to be remembered to you; he adores you too.
Yours, you huge ingrate,