No, dear master! I am not ill, but I have been busy with moving from
Paris and with getting settled in Croisset. Then my mother has been
very much indisposed. She is well now; then I have had to set in
order the rest of my poor Bouilhet's papers, on whom I have begun
the article. I wrote this week nearly six pages, which was very good
for me; this work is very painful in every way. The difficulty is in
knowing what not to say. I shall console myself a little in blurting
out two or three dogmatic opinions on the art of writing. It will be
an opportunity to express what I think; a sweet thing and one I am
always deprived of.
You say very lovely and also good things to me to restore my
courage. I have hardly any, but I am acting as if I had, which
perhaps comes to the same thing.
I feel no longer the need of writing, for I used to write especially
for one person alone, who is no more. That is the truth! And yet I
shall continue to write. But I have no more liking for it; the
fascination is gone. There are so few people who like what I like,
who are anxious about what I am interested in! Do you know in this
Paris, which is so large, one SINGLE house where they talk about
literature? And when it happens to be touched on incidentally, it is
always on its subordinate and external sides, such as the question
of success, of morality, of utility, of its timeliness, etc. It
seems to me that I am becoming a fossil, a being unrelated to the
surrounding world.
I would not ask anything better than to cast myself on some new
affection. But how? Almost all my old friends are married officials,
thinking of their little business the entire year, of the hunt
during vacation and of whist after dinner. I don't know one of them
who would be capable of passing an afternoon with me reading a poet.
They have their business; I, I have none. Observe that I am in the
same social position that I was at eighteen. My niece whom I love as
my daughter, does not live with me, and my poor good simple mother
has become so old that all conversation with her (except about her
health) is impossible. All that makes an existence which is not
diverting.
As for the ladies, "my little locality" furnishes none of them, and
then,--even so! I have nevver been able to put Venus an Apollo in
the same coop. It is one or the other, being a man of excess, a
gentleman entirely given over to what he does.
I repeat to myself the phrase of Goethe: "Go forward beyond the
tombs," and I hope to get used to the emptiness, but nothing more.
The more I know you, yourself, the more I admire you; how strong you
are!
Aside from a little Spinoza and Plutarch, I have read nothing since
my return, as I am quite occupied by my present work. It is a task
that will take me up to the end of July. I am in a hurry to be
through with it, so as to abandon myself to the extravagances of the
good Saint-Antoine, but I am afraid of not being SUFFICIENTLY IN THE
MOOD.
That is a charming story, Mademoiselle Hauterive, isn't it? This
suicide of lovers to escape misery ought to inspire fine moral
phrases from Prudhomme. As for me, I understand it. What they did is
not American, but how Latin and antique it is! They were not strong,
but perhaps very sensitive.
CLXVI. TO GEORGE SAND
Sunday, 26 June, 1870
You forget your troubadour who has just buried another friend! From
the seven that we used to be at the beginning of the dinners at
Magny's, we are only three now! I am gorged with coffins like an old
cemetery! I am having enough of them, frankly.
And in the midst of all that I keep on working! I finished
yesterday, such as it is, the article on my poor Bouilhet. I am
going to see if there is not some way of reviving one of his
comedies in prose. After that I shall set to work on Saint-Antoine.
And you, dear master, what is happening to you and all your family?
My niece is in the Pyrenees, and I am living alone with my mother,
who is becoming deafer and deafer, so that my existence lacks
diversion absolutely. I should like to go to sleep on a warm beach.
But for that I lack time and money. So I must push on my scratches
and grub as hard as possible.
I shall go to Paris at the beginning of August. Then I shall spend
all the month of October there for the rehearsals of Aisse. My
vacation will be confined to a week spent in Dieppe towards the end
of August. There are my plans.
It was distressing, the funeral of Jules Goncourt. Theo wept buckets
full.
CLXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 27 June, 1870
Another grief for you, my poor old friend. I too have a great one, I
mourn for Barbes, one of my religions, one of those beings who make
one reconciled with humanity. As for you, you miss poor Jules
[Footnote: De Goncourt.] and you pity the unhappy Edmond. You are
perhaps in Paris, so as to try to console him. I have just written
him, and I feel that you are struck again in your affections. What
an age! Every one is dying, everything is dying, and the earth is
dying also, eaten up by the sun and the wind. I don't know where I
get the courage to keep on living in the midst of these ruins. Let
us love each other to the end. You write me very little, I am
worried about you.