Nohant, Sunday evening.
CLXXIV. TO GEORGE SAND.
Croisset, Wednesday, 1870
I got to Paris on Monday, and I left it again on Wednesday. Now I
know the Parisian to the very bottom, and I have excused in my heart
those most ferocious politics of 1793. Now, I understand them! What
imbecility! what ignorance! what presumption! My compatriots make me
want to vomit. They are fit to be put in the same sack with Isidore!
This people deserves to be chastised, and I fear that it will be.
It is impossible for me to read anything whatever, still more so to
write anything. I spend my time like everyone else in waiting for
news. Ah! if I did not have my mother, I would already be gone!
CLXXV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset.
Nohant, 15 August, 1870
I wrote to you to Paris according to your instructions the 8th.
Weren't you there then? Probably so: in the midst of all this
confusion, to publish Bouilhet, a poet! this is not the moment. As
for me, my courage is weak. There is always a woman under the skin
of the old troubadour. This human butchery tears my poor heart to
pieces. I tremble too for all my children and friends, who perhaps
are to be hacked to pieces.
And YET, in the midst of all that, my soul exults and has ecstasies
of faith; these terrific lessons which are necessary for us to
understand our imbecility, must be of use to us. We are perhaps
making our last return to the ways of the old world. There are sharp
and clear principles for everyone today that ought to extricate them
from this torment. Nothing is useless in the material order of the
universe. The moral order cannot escape the law. Bad engenders good.
I tell you that we are in the HALF AS MUCH of Pascal, so as to get
TO THE MORE THAN EVER! That is all the mathematics that I
understand.
I have finished a novel in the midst of this torment, hurrying up so
as not to be worn out before the end. I am as tired as if I had
fought with our poor soldiers.