CCLXXXII. TO GEORGE SAND
Saturday, 26 September, 1874
Then, after having been bored like an ass on the top of the Righi, I
returned home the first of August and started my book. The beginning
was not easy, it was even "direful," and "methought" I should die of
despair; but now things are going, I am all right, come what may!
But one needs to be absolutely mad to undertake such a book. I fear
that, by its very conception, it is radically impossible. We shall
see, Ah! supposing I should carry it out well ... what a dream.
You doubtless know that once more I am exposing myself to the storms
of the footlights (pretty metaphor) and that "braving the publicity
of the theatre" I shall appear upon the boards of Cluny, probably,
towards the end of December. The manager of that "little theatre" is
enchanted with le Sexe faible. But so was Carvalho, which did not
prevent him ... You know the rest.
Of course every one blames me for letting my play be given in such a
joint. But since the others do not want that play and since I insist
that it shall be presented to make a few sous for the Bouilhet
heirs, I am forced to pass that over. I am keeping two or three
pretty anecdotes about this to tell you when we meet. Why is the
theatre such a general cause of delirium? Once one is on that
ground, ordinary conditions are changed. If one has had the
misfortune (slight) not to succeed, friends turn from one. They are
very inconsiderate of one. They never salute one! I swear to you on
my word of honor that that happened to me on account of le Candida.
I do not believe in Holbachic conspiracies, but all that they have
done to me since March amazes me. But, I decidedly don't bat an
optic, and the fate of le Sexe faible disturbs me less than the
least of the phrases of my novel.
Public intelligence seems to me to get lower and lower! To what
depth of imbecility shall we descend? Belot's last book sold eight
thousand copies in two weeks. Zola's Conquete de Plassans, seventeen
hundred in six months, and there was an article about it. All the
Monday-morning idiots have just been swooning away about M. Scribe's
Une Chaine. France is ill, very ill, whatever they say; and my
thoughts are more and more the color of ebony.
However, there are some pretty comic elements: (1) the Bazaine
escape with the episode of the sentinel; (2) l'Histoire d'un Diamant
by Paul de Musset (see the Revue des Deux Mondes for September); (3)
the vestibule of the former establishment of Nadar near Old England
[sic], where one can contemplate a life-size photograph of Alexander
Dumas.
I am sure that you are finding me grouchy and that you are going to
answer me: "What difference does all that make?" But everything
makes a difference, and we are dying of humbug, of ignorance, of
self-confidence, of scorn of grandeur, of love of banality, and
imbecile babble.
"Europe which hates us, looks at us and laughs," said Ruy Blas. My
Heavens, she has a right to laugh.
CCLXXXIII TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 5th November, 1874
What, my Cruchard, you have been ill? That is what I feared, I who
live in the woes of indigestion and yet hardly work at all, I am
disquieted at your kind of life, the excess of intellectual
expenditure and the seclusion. In spite of the charm that I have
proved and appreciated at Croisset, I fear for you that solitude
where you have no longer anyone to remind you that you must eat,
drink and sleep, and above all walk. Your rainy climate makes you
keep to the house. Here, where it does not rain enough, we are at
least hustled out of doors by the beautiful warm sun and that
Phoebus invigorates us, while our Phoebus-Apollo murders us.
But I am always talking to you as to a Cruchard philosophic and
detached from his personality, to a Cruchard fanatical about
literature and drunk with production. When, then, shall you be able
to say to yourself: Lo! this is the time for rest, let us taste the
innocent pleasure of living for life's sake, of watching with
amazement the agitations of others and of not giving to them
anything except the excess of our overflow. It does one good to
ruminate over what one has assimilated in life, sometimes without
attention and without discrimination.
Old friendships sustain us and all at once they distress us. I have
just lost my poor blind Duvernet, whom you have seen at our house.
He expired very quietly without suspecting it and without suffering.
There is another great void about us and my nephew, the substitute,
has been nominated for Chateauroux. His mother has followed him.
So we are all alone. Happily we love one another so much that we can
live like that, but not without regret for the absent ones. Plauchut
left us yesterday to return at Christmas. Maurice is already at
work preparing a splendid performance of marionettes for us. And
you, if you are in Paris, won't you come to keep the Christmas Eve
revels with us? You will have finished your rehearsals, you will
have had a success, perhaps you will be in the mood to return to
material life, eating truffles?
Tell us about yourself, do not be ill, always love your old
troubadour and his people who love you too.