CXCIV. TO GEORGE SAND
Croisset, Wednesday, 6 September
Well, dear master, it seems to me that you are forgetting your
troubadour, aren't you? Are you then quite overwhelmed with work!
How long a time it is since I saw your good firm writing! How long
it is since we have talked together! What a pity that we should live
so far from each other! I need you very much.
I don't dare to leave my poor mother! When I am obliged to be away,
Caroline comes to take my place. If it were not for that, I should
go to Nohant. Shall you stay there indefinitely? Must we wait till
the middle of the winter to embrace each other?
I should like very much to read you Saint-Antoine, which is half
done, then to stretch myself and to roar at your side.
Some one who knows that I love you and who admires you brought me a
copy of le Gaulois in which there were parts of an article by you on
the workmen, published in le Temps. How true it is! How just and
well said! Sad! Sad! Poor France! And they accuse me of being
skeptical.
But what do you think of Mademoiselle Papevoine, the incendiary,
who, in the midst of a barricade, submitted to the assaults of
eighteen citizens! That surpasses the end of l'Education
sentimentale where they limit themselves to offering flowers.
But what goes beyond everything now, is the conservative party,
which is not even going to vote, and which is still in a panic! You
cannot imagine the alarm of the Parisians. "In six months, sir, the
Commune will be established everywhere" is the answer or rather the
universal groan.
I do not look forward to an imminent cataclysm because nothing that
is foreseen happens. The International will perhaps triumph in the
end, but not as it hopes, not as they dread. Ah! how tired I am of
the ignoble workmen, the incompetent bourgeois, the stupid peasant
and the odious ecclesiastic!
That is why I lose myself as much as I can in antiquity. Just now I
am making all the gods talk in a state of agony. The subtitle of my
book could be The Height of Insanity. And the printing of it
withdraws further and further into my mind. Why publish? Who pray is
bothering about art nowadays? I make literature for myself as a
bourgeois turns napkin rings in his garret. You will tell me that I
had better be useful. But how? How can I make people listen to me?
Tourgueneff has written me that he is going to stay in Paris all
winter beginning with October. That will be some one to talk to. For
I can't talk of anything whatever with anyone whatever.
I have been looking after the grave of my poor Bouilhet today; so
tonight I have a twofold bitterness.
CXCV. TO GEORGE SAND
Croisset, 8 September, 1871
Ah! how sweet they are! What darlings! What fine little heads so
serious and sweet! My mother was quite touched by it, and so was I.
That is what I call a delicate attention, dear master, and I thank
you very much for it. I envy Maurice, his existence is not arid as
mine is. Our two letters crossed again. That proves beyond a doubt
that we feel the same things at the same time in the same degree.
Why are you so said? Humanity offers nothing new. Its irremediable
misery has filled me with sadness ever since my youth. And in
addition I now have no disillusions. I believe that the crowd, the
common herd will always be hateful. The only important thing is a
little group of minds--always the same--which passed the torch from
one to another.
As long as we do not bow to mandarins, as long as the Academy of
Sciences does not replace the pope, politics as a whole and society,
down to its very roots, will be nothing but collection of
disheartening humbugs. We are floundering in the after-birth of the
Revolution, which was an abortion, a failure, a misfire, "whatever
they say." And the reason is that it proceeded from the Middle Ages
and Christianity. The idea of equality (which is all the modern
democracy) is an essentially Christian idea and opposed to that of
justice. Observe how mercy predominates now. Sentiment is
everything, justice is nothing. People are now not even indignant
against murderers, and the people who set fire to Paris are less
punished than the calumniator of M. Favre.
In order for France to rise again, she must pass from inspiration to
science, she must abandon all metaphysics, she must enter into
criticism, that is to say into the examination of things.
I am persuaded that we shall seem extremely imbecile to posterity.
The words republic and monarchy will make them laugh, as we on our
part, laughed, at realism and nominalism. For I defy anyone to show
me an essential difference between those two terms. A modern
republic and a constitutional monarchy are identical. Never mind!
They are squabbling about that, they are shouting, they are
fighting!
As for the good people, "free and compulsory" education will do it.
When every one is able to read le Petit Journal and le Figaro, they
won't read anything else, because the bourgeois and the rich man
read only these. The press is a school of demoralization, because it
dispenses with thinking. Say that, you will be brave, and if you
prevail, you will have rendered a fine service.
The first remedy will be to finish up with universal suffrage, the
shame of the human mind. As it is constituted, one single element
prevails to the detriment of all the others: numbers dominate over
mind, education, race and even money, which is worth more than
numbers.
But society (which always needs a good God, a Saviour), isn't it
perhaps capable of taking care of itself? The conservative party has
not even the instinct of the brute (for the brute at least knows how
to fight for its lair and its living). It will be divided by the
Internationals, the Jesuits of the future. But those of the past,
who had neither country nor justice, have not succeeded and the
International will founder because it is in the wrong. No ideas,
nothing but greed!
Ah! dear, good master, if you only could hate! That is what you
lack, hate. In spite of your great Sphinx eyes, you have seen the
world through a golden color. That comes from the sun in your heart;
but so many shadows have arisen that now you are not recognizing
things any more. Come now! Cry out! Thunder! Take your great lyre
and touch the brazen string: the monsters will flee. Bedew us with
the drops of the blood of wounded Themis.
Why do you feel "the great bonds broken?" What is broken? Your bonds
are indestructible, your sympathy can attach itself only to the
Eternal.
Our ignorance of history makes us slander our own times. Man has
always been like that. Several years of quiet deceived us. That is
all. I too, I used to believe in the amelioration of manners. One
must wipe out that mistake and think of oneself no more highly than
they did in the time of Pericles or of Shakespeare, atrocious epochs
in which fine things were done. Tell me that you are lifting your
head and that you are thinking of your old troubadour, who cherishes
you.
CXCVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset
Nohant, 8 September, 1871
As usual our letters have crossed; you should receive today the
portraits of my little grandchildren, not pretty at this period of
their growth, but with such beautiful eyes that they can never be
ugly.
You see that I am as disheartened as you are and indignant, alas!
without being able to hate either the human race or our poor, dear
country. But one feels too much one's helplessness to pluck up one's
heart and spirit. One works all the same, even if only turning
napkin rings, as you say: and, as for me, while serving the public,
I think about it as little as possible. Le Temps has done me the
service of making me rummage in my waste basket. I find there the
prophecies that the conscience of each of us has inspired in him,
and these little returns to the past ought to give us courage; but
it is not at all so. The lessons of experience are of no use until
too late.
I think that without subvention, the Odeon will be in no condition
to put on well a literary play such as Aisse, and that you should
not let them murder it. You had better wait and see what happens. As
for the Berton company, I have no news of it; it is touring the
provinces, and those who compose it will not be reengaged by Chilly,
who is furious with them.
The Odeon has let Reynard go, an artist of the first rank, whom
Montigny had the wit to engage. There really is no one left at the
Odeon, as far as I know. Why don't you consider the Theatre
Francais?
Where is the Princess Mathilde? At Enghien, or in Paris, or in
England? I am sending you a note which you must enclose in the first
letter that you have occasion to write to her.
I cannot go to see you, dear old man, and yet I had earned one of
those happy vacations; but I cannot leave the HOME, for all sorts of
reasons too long to tell and of no interest, but inflexible. I do
not know even if I shall go to Paris this winter. Here am I so old!
I imagine that I can only bore others and that people cannot endure
me anywhere except at home. You absolutely must come to see me with
Tourgueneff, since you are planning to go away this winter; prepare
him for this abduction. I embrace you, as I love, and my world does
too.