CCCXVII. To MAURICE SAND
Croisset, Tuesday, 3rd October, 1876
Thank you for your kind remembrance, my dear friend. Neither do I
forget, and I dream of your poor, dear mamma in a sadness that does
not disappear. Her death has left a great emptiness for me. After
you, your wife and the good Plauchut, I am perhaps the one who
misses her most! I need her.
I pity you the annoyances that your sister causes you. I too have
gone through that! It is so easy moreover to be good! Besides that
causes less evil. When shall we meet? I want so much to see you,
first just to see you--and second to talk of her.
When your business is finished, why not come to Paris for some time?
Solitude is bad under certain conditions. One should not become
intoxicated with one's grief, however much attraction one finds in
doing so.
You ask me what I am doing. This is it: this year I have written two
stories, and I am going to begin another so as to make the three
into one volume that I want to publish in the spring. After that I
hope to resume the big novel that I laid aside a year ago after my
financial disaster. Matters are improving in that direction, and I
shall not be forced to change anything in my way of living. If I
have been able to start at work again, I owe it partly to the good
counsel of your mother. She had found the best way to bring me back
to respect myself.
In order to get the quicker at work, I shall stay here till New
Year's Day,--perhaps later than that. Do try to put off your visit
to Paris.
Embrace your dear little girls warmly for me, my respects to Madam
Maurice, and-sincerely yours, ex imo.