What a long time it is since I have written to you, dear master. I
have so many things to say to you that I don't know where to begin.
Oh! how horrid it is to live so separated when we love each other.
Have you given Paris an eternal adieu? Am I never to see you again
there? Are you coming to Croisset this summer to hear Saint-Antoine?
As for me, I can not go to Nohant, because my time, considering my
straitened purse, is all counted; but I have still I a full month of
readings and researches in Paris. After that I am going away with my
mother: we are in search of a companion for her. It is not easy to
find one. Then, towards Easter I shall be back at Croisset, and
shall start to work again at the manuscript. I am beginning to want
to write.
Just now, I am reading in the evening, Kant's Critique de la raison
pure, translated by Barni, and I am freshening up my Spinoza. During
the day I amuse myself by looking over bestiaries of the middle
ages; looking up in the "authorities" all the most baroque animals.
I am in the midst of fantastic monsters.
When I have almost exhausted the material I shall go to the Museum
to muse before real monsters, and then the researches for the good
Saint-Antoine will be finished.
In your letter before the last one you showed anxiety about my
health; reassure yourself! I have never been more convinced that it
was robust. The life that I have led this winter was enough to kill
three rhinoceroses, but nevertheless I am well. The scabbard must be
solid, for the blade is well sharpened; but everything is converted
into sadness! Any action whatever disgusts me with life! I have
followed your counsels, I have sought distractions! But that amuses
me very little. Decidedly nothing but sacrosanct literature
interests me.
My preface to the Dernieres Chansons has aroused in Madame Colet a
pindaric fury. I have received an anonymous letter from her, in
verse, in which she represents me as a charlatan who beats the drum
on the tomb of his friend, a vulgar wretch who debases himself
before criticism, after having "flattered Caesar"! "Sad example of
the passions," as Prudhomme would say.
A propos of Caesar, I can not believe, no matter what they say, in
his near return. In spite of my pessimism, we have not come to that!
However, if one consulted the God called Universal Suffrage, who
knows?...Ah! we are very low, very low!
I saw Ruy Blas badly played except for Sarah. Melingue is a sleep-
walking drain-man, and the others are as tiresome. As Victor Hugo
had complained in a friendly way that I had not paid him a call, I
thought I ought to do so and I found him ...charming! I repeat the
word, not at all "the great man," not at all a pontiff! This
discovery greatly surprised me and did me worlds of good. For I have
the bump of veneration and I like to love what I admire. That is a
personal allusion to you, dear, kind master.
I have met Madame Viardot whom I found a very curious temperament.
It was Tourgueneff who took me to her house.
CCXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
Nohant, from the 28 to the 29 February 1872. Night of Wednesday to
Thursday, three o'clock in the morning.
Ah! my dear old friend, what a dreadful twelve days I have spent!
Maurice has been very ill. Continually these terrible sore throats,
which in the beginning seem nothing, but which are complicated with
abscesses and tend to become membranous. He has not been in danger,
but always IN DANGER OF DANGER, and he has had cruel suffering, loss
of voice, he could not swallow; every anguish attached to the
violent sore throat that you know well, since you have just had one.
With him, this trouble continually tends to get worse, and his
mucous membrane has been so often the seat of the same illness that
it lacks energy to react. With that, little or no fever, almost
always on his feet, and the moral depression of a man used to
continual exercise of body and mind, whom the mind and body forbids
to exercise. We have looked after him so well that he is now, I
think, out of the woods, although, this morning, I was afraid again
and sent for Doctor Favre, our USUAL savior.
Throughout the day I have been talking to him, to distract him,
about your researches on monsters; he had his papers brought so as
to hunt among them for what might be useful you; but he has found
only the pure fantasies of his own invention. I found them so
original and so funny that I have encouraged him to send them to
you. They will be of no use to you except to make you burst out
laughing in your hours recreation.
I hope that we are going to come to life again without new relapses.
He is the soul and the life of the house. When he is depressed we
are dead; mother, wife, and children. Aurore says that she would
like to be very ill in her father's place We love each other
passionately, we five, and the SACROSANCT LITERATURE as you call it,
is only secondary in my life. I have always loved some one more than
it and my family more than that some one.
Pray why is your poor little mother so irritable and desperate, in
the very midst of an old age that when I last saw her was still so
green and so gracious? Is her deafness sudden? Did she entirely lack
philosophy and patience before these infirmities? I suffer with you
because I understand what you are suffering.
Another old age which is worse, since it is becoming malicious, is
that of Madame Colet. I used to think that all her hatred was
directed against me, and that seemed to me a bit of madness; for I
had never done or said anything against her, even after that vile
book in which she poured out all her fury WITHOUT cause. What has
she against you now that passion has become ancient history?
Strange! strange! And, a propos of Bouilhet, she hated him then, him
too this poor poet? She is mad.
You may well think that I was not able to write an iota for these
twelve days. I am going, I hope, to start at work as soon as I have
finished my novel which has remained with one foot in the air at the
last pages. It is on the point of being published but has not yet
been finished. I am up every night till dawn; but I have not had a
sufficiently tranquil mind to be distracted from my patient.
Good night, dear good friend of my heart.
Heavens! don't work nor sit up too much, as you also have sore
throats. They are terrible and treacherous illnesses. We all love
you, and we embrace you. Aurore is charming; she learns all that we
want her to, we don't know how, without seeming to notice it.
What kind of a woman do you want as a companion for your mother?
Perhaps I know of such a one. Must she converse and read aloud? It
seems to me that the deafness is a barrier to that. Isn't it a
question of material care and continual diligence? What are the
stipulations and what is the compensation?
Tell me how and why father Hugo did not have one single visit after
Ruy Blas? Did Gautier, Saint-Victor, his faithful ones, neglect him?
Have they quarreled about politics?
CCXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND
March, 1872
Dear master,
I have received the fantastic drawings, which have diverted me. Is
there perhaps profound symbolism hidden in Maurice's work? But I did
not find it. ... Revery!
There are two very pretty monsters: (1) an embryo in the form of a
balloon on four feet; (2) a death's head emanating from an
intestinal worm.
We have not found a companion yet. It seems difficult to me, we must
have someone who can read aloud and who is very gentle; we should
also give her some charge of the household. She would not have much
bodily care to give, as my mother would keep her maid.
We must have someone who is kind above all, and perfectly honest.
Religious principles are not objected to! The rest is left to your
perspicacity, dear master! That is all.
I am uneasy about Theo. I think that he is getting strangely old. He
must be very ill, doubtless with heart trouble, don't you think so?
Still another who is preparing to leave me.
No! literature is not what I love most in the world, I explained
myself badly (in my last letter). I spoke to you of distractions and
of nothing more. I am not such a pedant as to prefer phrases to
living beings. The further I go the more my sensibility is
exasperated. But the basis is solid and the thing goes on. And then,
after the Prussian war there is no further great annoyance possible.
And the Critique de la raison pure of the previously mentioned Kant,
translated by Barni, is heavier reading than the Vie Parisienne of
Marcelin; never mind! I shall end by understanding it.
I have almost finished the scenario of the last part of Saint
Antoine. I am in a hurry to start writing. It is too long since I
have written. I am bored with style!
And tell me more about you, dear master! Give me at once news of
Maurice, and tell me if you think that the lady you know would suit
us.
And thereupon I embrace you with both arms.
Your old troubadour always agitated, always as wrathful as Saint
Polycarp.
CCXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
17 March, 1872
No, dear friend, Maurice is almost well again but I have been tired,
worn out with URGENT work: finishing my novel, and correcting a mass
of proof from the beginning. And then unanswered letters, business,
no time to breathe! That is why I have not been able to write the
article on Bouilhet, and as Nanon has begun, as they are publishing
five numbers a week in le Temps, I don't see where I shall publish
that article very soon.
In the Revue des Deux Mondes, they don't want me to write criticism;
whoever is not, or was not of their circle, has no talent, and they
do not give me the right to say the contrary.
There is, to be sure, a new review wide open to me, which is
published by very fine people, but it is more widely read in other
countries than in France, and you will find perhaps that an article
in that would not excite comment. It is the Revue universelle
directed by Amedee Marteau. Discuss that with Charles Edmond. Ask
him if, in spite of the fact that Nanon is being published, he could
find me a little corner in the body of the paper.
As for the companion, you may rest assured that I am looking for
her. The one whom I had in view is not suitable, for she could not
read aloud, and I am not sure enough of the others to propose them.
I thought that your poor mother was too deaf to listen to reading,
and to converse, and that it would be enough for her to have some
one very gentle, and charming, to care for her, and to stay with
her.
That is all, my dear old friend, it is not my fault, I embrace you
with all my heart. For the moment that is the only thing that is
functioning. My brain is too stupefied.