I am sending you two novels for your collection of my writings: you
are not OBLIGED to read them immediately, if you are deep in serious
things.
CCXLI. TO GEORGE SAND
Monday evening, eleven o'clock, 25 November, 1872
The postman just now, at five o'clock, has brought your two volumes
to me. I am going to begin Nanon at once, for I am very curious
about it.
Don't worry any more about your old troubadour (who is becoming a
silly animal, frankly), but I hope to recover. I have gone through,
several times, melancholy periods, and I have come out all right.
Everything wears out, boredom with the rest.
I expressed myself badly: I did not mean that I scorned "the
feminine sentiment." But that woman, materially speaking, had never
been one of my habits, which is quite different. I have LOVED more
than anyone, a presumptuous phrase which means "quite like others,"
and perhaps even more than average person. Every affection is known
to me, "the storms of the heart" have "poured out their rain" on me.
And then chance, force of circumstances, causes solitude to increase
little by little around me, and now I am alone, absolutely alone.
I have not sufficient income to take unto myself a wife, nor even to
live in Paris for six months of the year: so it is impossible for me
to change my way of living.
Do you mean to say that I did not tell you that Saint-Antoine had
been finished since last June? What I am dreaming of just now, is
something of greater scope, which will aim to be comic. It would
take too long to explain to you with a pen. We shall talk of it when
we meet.
Adieu, dear good, adorable master, yours with his best affection,
Your old friend.
Always as indignant as Saint Polycarp.
Do you know, in all history, including that of the Botocudos,
anything more imbecile than the Right of the National Assembly?
These gentlemen who do not want the simple and frivolous word
Republic, who find Thiers too advanced!!! O profoundness! problem,
revery!
CCXLII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 27 November, 1872
Maurice is quite happy and very proud of the letter you wrote him;
there is no one who could give him as much pleasure and whose
encouragement counts more with him. I thank you too, for my part;
for I agree with him.
What! you have finished Saint-Antoine? Well, should I find a
publisher, since you are not doing so? You cannot keep it in your
portfolio. You don't like Levy, but there are others; say the word,
and I will act as if it were for myself.
You promise me to get well later, but in the mean time you don't
want to do anything to jolt yourself. Come, then, to read Saint-
Antoine to me, and we will talk of publishing it. What is coming
here from Croisset, for a man? If you won't come when we are gay and
having a holiday, come while it is quiet an I am alone. All the
family embraces you.