I have not the address of the Goncourts. Will you put the enclosed
answer in the mail?
CIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, 17 January, 1869
The individual named George Sand is well: he is enjoying the
marvelous winter which reigns in Berry, gathering flowers, noting
interesting botanical anomalies, making dresses and mantles for his
daughter-in-law, costumes for the marionettes, cutting out scenery,
dressing dolls, reading music, but above all spending hours with the
little Aurore who is a marvelous child. There is not a more tranquil
or a happier individual in his domestic life than this old
troubadour retired from business, who sings from time to time his
little song to the moon, without caring much whether he sings well
or ill, provided he sings the motif that runs in his head, and who,
the rest of the time, idles deliciously. It has not always been as
nice as this. He had the folly to be young; but as he did no evil
nor knew evil passions, nor lived for vanity, he is happy enough to
be peaceful and to amuse himself with everything.
This pale character has the great pleasure of loving you with all
his heart, and of not passing a day without thinking of the other
old troubadour, confined in his solitude of a frenzied artist,
disdainful of all the pleasures of this world, enemy of the
magnifying glass and of its attractions. We are, I think, the two
most different workers that exist; but since we like each other that
way, it is all right. The reason each of us thinks of the other at
the same hour, is because each of us has a need of his opposite; we
complete ourselves, in identifying ourselves at times with what is
not ourselves.
I told you, I think, that I had written a play on returning from
Paris. They liked it; but I don't want them to play it in the
spring, and the end of the winter is filled up, unless the play they
are rehearsing fails. As I do not know how to WISH my colleagues ill
luck, I am in no hurry and my manuscript is on the shelf. I have the
time. I am writing my little annual novel, when I have one or two
hours a day to get to work on it; I am not sorry to be prevented
from thinking of it. That develops it. Always before going to sleep,
I have an agreeable quarter of an hour to continue it in my head;
there you have it.
I know nothing, nothing at all of the Sainte-Beuve incident. I get a
dozen newspapers, whose wrappers I respect to such an extent that
without Lina, who tells me the chief news from time to time, I would
not know if Isidore were still among us.
Sainte-Beuve is very high tempered, and, as regards opinions, so
perfectly skeptical, that I should never be astonished at anything
he did, in one sense or the other. He was not always like that, at
least not so much so. I have known him to be more credulous and more
republican than I was then. He was thin and pale, and gentle; how
people change! His talent, his knowledge, his mind have increased
enormously, but I used to like his character better. Just the same,
there is still much good in him. There is still love and reverence
for letters--and he will be the last of the critics. Criticism
rightly so-called, will disappear. Perhaps there is no longer any
reason for its existence. What do you think about it?
It appears that you are studying the boor (pignouf). As for me, I
avoid him. I know him too well. I love the Berrichon peasant who is
not, who never is, a boor, even when he is of no great account; the
word pignouf has its depths; it was created exclusively for the
bourgeois, wasn't it? Ninety out of a hundred provincial middle-
class women are boorish (pignouf lardes) to a high degree, even with
pretty faces that ought to give evidence of delicate instincts. One
is surprised to find a basis of gross self-sufficiency in these
false ladies. Where is the woman now? She is becoming a freak in
society.
Good night, my troubadour: I love you, and I embrace you warmly;
Maurice also.