CLIV. TO GEORGE SAND
17 March, 1870
Dear master,
I received a telegram yesterday evening from Madame Cornu containing
these words: "Come to me, urgent business." I therefore hurried to
her today, and here is the story.
The Empress maintains that you made some very unkind allusions to
her in the last number of the Revue! "What about me, whom all the
world is attacking now! I should not have believed that! and I
wanted to have her nominated for the Academy! But what have I done
to her? etc., etc." In short, she is distressed, and the Emperor
too! He is not indignant but prostrated (sic). [Footnote: Malgre
tout, Calmann-Levy, 1870.]
Madame Cornu explained to her that she was mistaken and that you had
not intended to make any allusion to her.
Hereupon a theory of the manner in which novels are written.
--Oh well, then, let her write in the papers that she did not intend
to wound me.
--But she will not do that, I answered.
--Write to her to tell you so.
--I will not allow myself to take that step.
--But I would like to know the truth, however! Do you know someone
who...then Madame Cornu mentioned me.
--Oh, don't say that I spoke to you of it!
Such is the dialogue that Madame Cornu reported to me.
She wants you to write me a letter in which you tell me that the
Empress was not used by you as a model. I shall send that letter to
Madame Cornu who will have it given to the Empress.
I think that story stupid and those people are very sensitive! Much
worse things than that are told to us.
Now dear master of the good God, you must do exactly what you
please.
The Empress has always been very kind to me and I should not be
sorry to do her a favor. I have read the famous passage. I see
nothing in it to hurt her. But women's brains are so queer!
I am very tired in mine (my brain) or rather it is very low for the
moment! However hard I work, it doesn't go! Everything irritates me
and hurts me; and since I restrain myself before people, I give way
from time to time to floods of tears when it seems to me as if I
should burst. At last I am experiencing an entirely new sensation:
the approach of old age. The shadow invades me, as Victor Hugo would
say.
Madame Cornu has spoken to me enthusiastically of a letter you wrote
her on a method of teaching.
CLV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, 17 March, 1870
I won't have it, you are not getting old. Not in the crabbed and
MISANTHROPIC sense. On the contrary, when one is good, one becomes
better, and, as you are already better than most others, you ought
to become exquisite.
You are boasting, moreover, when you undertake to be angry against
everyone and everything. You could not. You are weak before sorrow,
like all affectionate people. The strong are those who do not love.
You will never be strong, and that is so much the better. You must
not live alone any more; when strength returns you must really live
and not shut it up for yourself alone.
For my part, I am hoping that you will be reborn with the
springtime. Today we have rain which relaxes, tomorrow we shall have
the animating sun. We are all just getting over illnesses, our
children had very bad colds, Maurice quite upset by lameness with a
cold, I taken again by chills and anemia: I am very patient and I
prevent the others as much as I can from being impatient, there is
everything in that; impatience with evil always doubles the evil.
When shall we be WISE as the ancients understood it? That, in
substance, meant being PATIENT, nothing else. Come, dear troubadour,
you must be a little patient, to begin with, and then you can get
accustomed to it; if we do not work on ourselves, how can we hope to
be always in shape to work on others?
Well, in the midst of all that, don't forget that we love you and
that the hurt you give yourself hurts us too.
I shall go to see you and to shake you as soon as I have regained my
feet and my will, which are both backward; I am waiting, I know
that they will return.
Affectionate greetings from all our invalids. Punch has lost only
his fiddle and he is still smiling and well gilded. Lolo's baby has
had misfortunes, but its clothes dress other dolls. As for me, I
can flap only one wing, but I kiss you and I love you.