The individual, disowned, overwhelmed by the modern world, will he
regain his importance? Let us hope so!
CLXXIX. TO GEORGE SAND.
Tuesday, 11 October, 1870
Dear master,
Are you still living? Where are you, Maurice, and the others?
I don't know how it is that I am not dead, I have suffered so
atrociously for six weeks.
My mother has fled to Rouen. My niece is in London. My brother is
busy with town affairs, and, as for me, I am alone here, eaten up
with impatience and chagrin! I assure you that I have wanted to do
right; what misery! I have had at my door today two hundred and
seventy-one poor people, and they were all given something. What
will this winter be?
The Prussians are now twelve hours from Rouen, and we have no
commands, no orders, no discipline, nothing, nothing! They hold out
false hopes to us continually with the army of the Loire. Where is
it? Do you know anything about it? What are they doing in the middle
of France? Paris will end by being starved, and no one is taking her
any aid!
The imbecilities of the Republic surpass those of the Empire. Are
they playing under all this some abominable comedy? Why such
inaction?
Ah! how sad I am. I feel that the world is going by.
CLXXX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset.
Le Chatre, 14 October, 1870
We are living at Le Chatre. Nohant is ravaged by smallpox with
complications, horrible. We had to take our little ones into the
Creuse, to friends who came to get us, and we spent three weeks
there, looking in vain for quarters where a family could stay for
three months. We were asked to go south and were offered
hospitality; but we did not want to leave the country where, from
one day to another, one can be useful, although one hardly knows yet
in what way to go at it.
So we have come back to the friends who lived the nearest to our
abandoned hearth; and we are awaiting events. To speak of all the
peril and trouble there is in establishing the Republic in the
interior of our provinces would be quite useless. There can be no
illusion: everything is at stake, and the end will perhaps be
ORLEANISM. But we are pushed into the unforeseen to such an extent
that it seems to me puerile to have anticipations; the thing to do
is to escape the next catastrophe.
Don't let's say that it is impossible; don't let's think it. Don't
let's despair about France. She is going through expiation for her
madness, she will be reborn no matter what happens. We shall perhaps
be carried away, the rest of us. To die of pneumonia or of a bullet
is dying just the same. Let's die without cursing our race!
We still love you, and we all embrace you.