CLXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND
Saturday evening, 2 July, 1870
Dear good master,
Barbes' death has saddened me because of you. We, both of us, have
our mourning. What a succession of deaths during a year! I am as
dazed by them as if I had been hit on the head with a stick. What
troubles me (for we refer everything to ourselves), is the terrible
solitude in which I live. I have no longer anyone, I mean anyone
with whom to converse, "who is interested today in eloquence and
style."
Aside from you and Tourgueneff, I don't know a living being to whom
to pour out my soul about those things which I have most at heart;
and you live far away from me, both of you!
However, I continue to write. I have resolved to start at my Saint-
Antoine tomorrow or the day after. But to begin a protracted effort
I need a certain lightness which I lack just now. I hope, however,
that this extravagant work is going to get hold of me. Oh! how I
would like not to think any more of my poor Moi, of my miserable
carcass! It is getting on very well, my carcass. I sleep
tremendously! "The coffer is good," as the bourgeois say.
I have read lately some amazing theological things, which I have
intermingled with a little of Plutarch and Spinoza. I have nothing
more to say to you.
Poor Edmond de Goncourt is in Champagne at his relatives'. He has
promised to come here the end of this month. I don't think that the
hope of seeing his brother again in a better world consoles him for
having lost him in this one.
One juggles with empty words on this question of immortality, for
the question is to know if the moi persists. The affirmative seems
to me a presumption of our pride, a protest of our weakness against
the eternal order. Has death perhaps no more secrets to reveal to us
than life has?
What a year of evil! I feel as if I were lost in the desert, and I
assure you, dear master, that I am brave, however, and that I am
making prodigious efforts to be stoical. But my poor brain is
enfeebled at moments. I need only one thing (and that is not given
me), it is to have some kind of enthusiasm!
Your last letter but one was very sad. You also, heroic being, you
feel worn out! What then will become of us!
I have just reread the conversations between Goethe and Eckermann.
There was a man, that Goethe! But then he had everything on his
side, that man.
CLXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, 29 June, 1870
Our letters are always crossing, and I have now the feeling that if
I write to you in the evening I shall receive a letter from you the
next morning; we could say to each other:
"You appeared to me in my sleep, looking a little sad."
What preoccupies me most about poor Jules' (de Goncourt) death, is
the survivor. I am sure that the dead are well off, that perhaps
they are resting before living again, and that in all cases they
fall back into the crucible so as to reappear with what good they
previously had and more besides. Barbes only suffered all his life.
There he is now, sleeping deeply. Soon he will awaken; but we, poor
beasts of survivors, we see them no longer. A little while before he
died, Duveyrier, who seemed to have recovered, said to me: "Which
one of us will go first?" We were exactly the same age. He
complained that those who went first could not let those who were
left know that they were happy, and that they remembered their
friends. I said, WHO KNOWS? Then we promised each other that the
first one to die should appear to the survivor, and should at least
try to speak to him.
He did not come, I have waited for him, he has said nothing to me.
He had one of the tenderest hearts, and a sincere good will. He was
not able to; it was not permitted, or perhaps, it was I; I did not
hear or understand.
It is, I say, this poor Edmond who is on my mind. That life lived
together, quite ended. I cannot think why the bond was broken,
unless he too believes that one does not really die.
I would indeed like to go to see you; apparently you have COOL
WEATHER in Croisset since you want to sleep ON A WARM BEACH. Come
here, you will not have a beach, but 36 degrees in the shade and a
stream cold as ice, is not to be despised. I go there to dabble in
it every day after my work; for I must work, Buloz advances me too
much money. Here I am DOING MY BUSINESS, as Aurore says, and not
being able to budge till autumn. I was too lazy after my fatigues as
sick-nurse. Little Buloz recently came to stir me up again. Now here
I am hard at it.
Since you are to be in Paris in August, you must come to spend
several days with us. You did laugh here anyhow; we will try to
distract you and to shake you up a bit. You will see the little
girls grown and prettier; the little one is beginning to talk.
Aurore chatters and argues. She calls Plauchut, OLD BACHELOR. And a
propos, accept the best regards of that fine and splendid boy along
with all the affectionate greetings of the family.
As for me, I embrace you tenderly and beg you to keep well.