CLXXXVI. TO GEORGE SAND.
Croisset, Monday evening, two o'clock.
Dear master,
Why no letters? Haven't you received mine sent from Dieppe? Are you
ill? Are you still alive? What does it mean? I hope very much that
neither you (nor any of yours) are in Paris, capital of arts,
cornerstone of civilization, center of fine manners and of urbanity?
Do you know the worst of all that? IT IS THAT WE GET ACCUSTOMED TO
IT. Yes! one does. One becomes accustomed to getting along without
Paris, to worrying about it no longer, and almost to thinking that
it exists no longer.
As for me, I am not like the bourgeois; I consider that after the
invasion there are no more misfortunes. The war with Prussia gave me
the effect of a great upheaval of nature, one of those cataclysms
that happen every six thousand years; while the insurrection in
Paris is, to my eyes, a very clear and almost simple thing.
What retrogressions! What savages! How they resemble the people of
the League and the men in armor! Poor France, who will never free
herself from the Middle Ages! who labors along in the Gothic idea of
the Commune, which is nothing else than the Roman municipality. Oh!
I assure you that my heart is heavy over it!
And the little reaction that we are going to have after that? How
the good ecclesiastics are going to flourish again!
I have started at Saint-Antoine once more, and I am working
tremendously.
CLXXXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset.
Nohant, 28 April, 1871
No, certainly I do not forget you! I am sad, sad, that is to say,
that I am stunned, that I watch the spring, that I am busy, that I
talk as if there were nothing; but I have not been able to be alone
an instant since that horrible occurrence without falling into a
bitter despair. I make great efforts to prevent it; I do not want to
be discouraged; I do not want to deny the past and dread the future;
but it is my will, it is my reason that struggles against a profound
impression unsurmountable up to the present moment.
That is why I did not want to write to you before feeling better,
not that I am ashamed to have crises of depression, but because I
did not want to increase your sadness already so profound, by adding
the weight of mine to it. For me, the ignoble experiment that Paris
is attempting or is undergoing, proves nothing against the laws of
the eternal progression of men and things, and, if I have gained any
principles in my mind, good or bad, they are neither shattered nor
changed by it. For a long time I have accepted patience as one
accepts the sort of weather there is, the length of winter, old age,
lack of success in all its forms. But I think that partisans
(sincere) ought to change their formulas or find out perhaps the
emptiness of every a priori formula.
It is not that which makes me sad. When a tree is dead, one should
plant two others. My unhappiness comes from pure weakness of heart
that I don't know how to overcome. I cannot sleep over the suffering
and even over the ignominy of others. I pity those who do the evil!
while I recognize that they are not at all interesting, their moral
state distresses me. One pities a little bird that has fallen from
its nest; why not pity a heap of consciences fallen in the mud? One
suffered less during the Prussian siege. One loved Paris unhappy in
spite of itself, one pities it so much the more now that one can no
longer love it. Those who never loved get satisfaction by mortally
hating it. What shall we answer? Perhaps we should not answer at
all. The scorn of France is perhaps the necessary punishment of the
remarkable cowardice with which the Parisians have submitted to the
riot and its adventurers. It is a consequence of the acceptance of
the adventurers of the Empire; other felons but the same cowardice.
But I did not want to talk to you of that, you ROAR about it enough
as it is! one ought to be distracted; for if one thinks too much
about it, one becomes separated from one's own limbs and lets
oneself undergo amputation with too much stoicism.
You don't tell me in what state you found your charming nest at
Croisset. The Prussians occupied it; did they ruin it, dirty it, rob
it? Your books, your bibelots, did you find them all? Did they
respect your name, your workshop? If you can work again there, peace
will come to your spirit. As for me, I am waiting till mine gets
well, and I know that I shall have to help myself to my own cure by
a certain faith often shaken, but of which I make a duty.
Tell me whether the tulip tree froze this winter, and if the poppies
are pretty.
I often take the journey in spirit; I see again your garden and its
surroundings. How far away that is! How many things have happened
since! One hardly knows whether one is a hundred years old or not!
My little girls bring me back to the notion of time; they are
growing, they are amusing and affectionate; it is through them and
the two beings who gave them to me that I feel myself still of the
world; it is through you too, dear friend, whose kind and loving
heart I always feel to be good and alive. How I should like to see
you! But I have no longer a way of going and coming.
We embrace you, all of us, and we love you.