CCXCVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 8th October, 1875
Well, well, your health has come back in spite of you, since you are
sleeping all night. The sea air forces you to live and you have
made progress, you have given up a work that would not have made a
success. Do something more of earth earthy, which would reach
everybody. Tell me what price they would sell Croisset for if they
are obliged to sell it. Is it a house and garden, or is there a farm
and grounds! If it is not beyond my means I might buy it and you
should spend the rest of your life there. I have no money, but I
should try to shift a little capital. Answer me seriously, I beg of
you; if I can do it, it shall be done.
I have been ill all the summer, that is to say, that I have suffered
continually, but I have worked all the more not to think of it. In
fact they are to put on Villemer and Victorine at the Theatre
Francais again. But there is nothing now in preparation. I do not
know at what time in the autumn or winter I shall have to go to
Paris. I shall find you there ready and courageous, shan't I? If you
have made, through goodness and devotion, as I think, a great
sacrifice for your niece, who, in truth, is your real daughter, you
will forget all about it and will begin your life again as a young
man. Is one old when one does not choose to be? Stay at the seaside
as long as you can. The important thing is to patch up the physical
machine. Here with us it is as warm as in midsummer. I hope that you
still have the sun down there. Study the life of the mollusc! They
are creatures better endowed than one thinks, and, for my part, I
should love to take a walk with Georges Pouchet! Natural history is
the inexhaustible source of agreeable occupations for even those who
seek only amusement in it, and if you actually attacked it you would
be saved. But you must by all means save yourself, for you are
somebody, and you cannot drop out of the running, as can a mere
ruined grocer. We all embrace you with our best love.