Thursday, three o'clock, 13 June, 1872.
Answer me categorically, so that we may know what you will do.
CCXXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset
..Nohant, 5 July, 1872
I must write to you today. Sixty-eight years old. Perfect health in
spite of the cough, which lets me sleep now that I am plunging daily
in a furious little torrent, cold as ice. It boils around the
stones, the flowers, the great grasses in a delicious shade. It is
an ideal place to bathe.
We have had some terrible storms: lightning struck in our garden;
and our stream, the Indre, has become like a torrent in the
Pyrenees. It is not unpleasant. What a fine summer! The grain is
seven feet high, the wheat fields are sheets of flowers. The peasant
thinks that there are too many; but I let him talk, it is so lovely!
I go on foot to the stream, I jump, all boiling hot, into the icy
water. The doctor says that is madness. I let him talk, too; I am
curing myself while his patients look after themselves and croak. I
am like the grass of the fields: water and sun, that is all I need.
Are you off for the Pyrenees? Ah! I envy you, I love them so! I have
taken frantic trips there; but I don't know Luchon. Is it lovely,
too? You won't go there without seeing the Cirque of Gavarnie, and
the road that leads there, will you? And Cauterets and the lake of
Gaube? And the route of Saint-Sauveur? Heavens! How lucky one is to
travel and to see the mountains, the flowers, the cliffs! Does all
that bore you?
Do you remember the editors, the theatrical managers, the readers
and the public when you are running about the country! As for me, I
forget everything as I do when Pauline Viardot is singing.
The other day we discovered, about three leagues from here, a
wilderness, an absolute wilderness of woods in a great expanse of
country, where not one hut could be seen, not a human being, not a
sheep, not a fowl, nothing but flowers, butterflies and birds all
day. But where will my letter find you? I shall wait to send it to
you till you give me an address!
CCXXXII. TO GEORGE SAND
Bagneres de Luchon, 12th July, 1872
I have been here since Sunday evening, dear master, and no happier
than at Croisset, even a little less so, for I am very idle. They
make so much noise in the house where we are that it is impossible
to work. Moreover, the sight of the bourgeois who surround us is
unendurable. I am not made for travelling. The least inconvenience
disturbs me. Your old troubadour is very old, decidedly! Doctor
Lambron, the physician of this place, attributes my nervous
tendencies to the excessive use of tobacco. To be agreeable I am
going to smoke less; but I doubt very much if my virtue will cure
me!
I have just read Dickens's Pickwick. Do you know that? There are
superb passages in it; but what defective composition! All English
writers are the same; Walter Scott excepted, all lack a plot. That
is unendurable for us Latins.
Mister ***** is certainly nominated, as it seems. All the people who
have had to do with the Odeon, beginning with you, dear master, will
repent of the support that they have given him. As for me, who,
thank Heaven, have no more connection with that establishment, I
don't give a whoop.
As I am going to begin a book which will exact much reading, and
since I don't want to ruin myself in books, do you know of any
dealer in Paris who would rent me all the books that I designated?
What are you doing now? We saw each other so little and so
inconveniently the last time.
This letter is stupid. But they are making such a noise over my head
that it is not clear (my head).
In the midst of my bewilderment, I embrace you and yours also. Your
old blockhead who loves you.
CCXXXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 19 July, 1872
Dear old troubadour,
We too are going away, but without knowing yet where we are going;
it doesn't make any difference to me. I wanted to take my brood to
Switzerland; they would rather go in the opposite direction, to the
Ocean; the Ocean will do! If only we travel and bathe, I shall be
out of my mind with joy. Decidedly our two old troubadourships are
two opposites. What bores you, amuses me; I love movement and noise,
and even the tiresome things about travelling find favor in my eyes,
provided they are a part of travelling. I am much more sensible to
what disturbs the calm of sedentary life, than to that which is a
normal and necessary disturbance in the life of motion.
I am absolutely like my grandchildren, who are intoxicated
beforehand without knowing why. But it is curious to see how
children, while loving the change, want to take with them their
surroundings, their accustomed playthings, when they go out into the
world. Aurore is packing her dolls' trunk, and Gabrielle, who likes
animals better, intends to take her rabbits, her little dog, and a
little pig that she is taking care of until she eats it. SUCH IS
LIFE [sic].
I believe that, in spite of your bad temper, this trip will do you
good. It will make you rest your brain, and if you have to smoke
less, so much the better! Health above all. I hope that your niece
will make you move around a bit; she is your child; she ought to
have some authority over you, or the world would be turned upside
down.
I cannot refer you to the bookshop that you need for borrowing
books. I send for such things to Mario Proth, and I don't know where
he finds them. When you get back to Paris, tell him from me to
inform you. He is a devoted fellow, as obliging as possible. He
lives at 2 rue Visconti. It occurs to me that Charles Edmond, too,
might give you very good information; Troubat, [Footnote: Sainte-
Beuve's secretary.] also.
You are surprised that spoken words are not contracts; you are very
simple; in business nothing holds except written documents. We are
Don Quixotes, my old troubadour; we must resign ourselves to being
trimmed by the innkeepers. Life is like that, and he who does not
want to be deceived must go to live in a desert. It is not living to
keep away from all the evil of this nether-world. One must swallow
the bitter with the sweet.
As to your Saint-Antoine, if you let me, I shall see about finding
you a publisher or a review on my next trip to Paris, but we ought
to talk about it together and you ought to read it to me. Why
shouldn't you come to us in September? I shall be at home until
winter.
You ask me what I am doing now: I have done, since I left Paris, an
article on Mademoiselle de Flaugergues, which will appear in
l'Opinion nationale with a work by her; an article for le Temps on
Victor Hugo, Bouilhet, Leconte de Lisle and Pauline Viardot. I hope
that you will be pleased with what I said about your friend; I have
done a second fantastic tale for the Revue des Deux Mondes, a tale
for children. I have written about a hundred letters, for the most
part to make up for the folly or to soften the misery of imbeciles
of my acquaintance. Idleness is the plague of this age, and life is
passed in working for those who do not work. I do not complain. I am
well! every day I plunge into the Indre and into its icy cascades,
my sixty-eight years and my whooping-cough. When I am no longer
useful nor agreeable to others, I want to go away quietly without
saying OUF! or at least, not saying anything except that against
poor mankind, which is not worth much, but of which I am part, not
being worth perhaps very much myself.
I love you and I embrace you. My family does too, Plauchut included.
He is going to travel with us.
When we are SOMEWHERE FOR SEVERAL DAYS I shall write to you for
news.