CLXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset
Nohant, 20 May, 1870
It is a very long time since I have had news of my old troubadour.
You must be in Croisset. If it is as warm there as it is here, you
must be suffering; here it is 34 degrees in the shade, and in the
night, 24. Maurice has had a bad relapse of sore throat, without
membranes this time, and without danger. But the inflammation was so
bad that for three days he could hardly swallow even a little water
and wine. Bouillon did not go down. At last this excessive heat has
cured him, it suits us all here, for Lina went to Paris this morning
vigorous and strong. Maurice gardens all day. The children are gay
and get prettier while you look at them. As for me, I am not
accomplishing anything; I have too much to do taking care of and
watching my boy, and now that the little mother is away, the little
children absorb me. I work, however, planning and dreaming. That
will be so much done when I can scribble.
I am still ON MY FEET, as Doctor Favre says. No old age yet, or
rather normal old age, the calmness ... OF VIRTUE, that thing that
people ridicule, and that I mention in mockery, but that corresponds
by an emphatic and silly word, to a condition of forced
inoffensiveness, without merit in consequence, but agreeable and
good to experience. It is a question of rendering it useful to art
when one believes in that, to the family and to friendship when one
cares for that; I don't dare to say how very simple and primitive I
am in this respect. It is the fashion to ridicule it, but let them.
I do not want to change.
There is my SPRING examination of my conscience, so as not to think
all summer about anything except what is not myself.
Come, you, your health first? And this sadness, this discontent that
Paris has left with you, is it forgotten? Are there no longer any
painful external circumstances? You have been too much shaken also.
Two of your dearest friends gone one after the other. There are
periods in life when destiny is ferocious to us. You are too young
to concentrate on the idea of REGAINING your affections in a better
world, or in this world made better. So you must, at your age (and
at mine I still try to), become more attached to what remains. You
wrote that to me when I lost Rollinat, my double in this life, the
veritable friend whose feeling for the differences between the sexes
had never hurt our pure affection, even when we were young. He was
my Bouilhet and more than that; for to my heart's intimacy was
joined a religious reverence for a real type of moral courage, which
had undergone all trials with a sublime SWEETNESS. I have OWED him
everything that is good in me, I am trying to keep it for love of
him. Is there not a heritage that our beloved dead leave us?
The despair that would make us abandon ourselves would be a treason
to them and an ingratitude. Tell me that you are calm and soothed,
that you are not working too much and that you are working well. I
am not without some anxiety because I have not had a letter from you
for a long time. I did not want to ask for one till I could tell you
that Maurice was quite well again; he embraces you, and the children
do not forget you. As for me, I love you.