Letters of Two Novelists
While Frederick Chopin, in the year 1837, was living out the slow
decomposition of his love, George Sand was back at her little Château
de Nohant. There she spent long months alone, with her children and
her work. The summer brought her the Liszt-d’Agoult ménage, nights of
music, new dreams of happiness. Then her mother died unexpectedly,
and she was obliged to return to Paris, while the Countess and Franz
took the road for Italy. She planned to rejoin them there, but was
prevented by a sudden inclination for the new tutor of her children,
Félicien Mallefille. The rupture with Michel de Bourges still bled
feebly, but George felt that she had finally “slain the dragon,” and
that this attachment, more stubborn than she had dreamed, would be
cured by a gentle affection, “less enthusiastic, but also less sharp,”
and, she hoped, lasting. She was mistaken. Six months were sufficient
to drain this spring to the bottom. Nevertheless she had pity on this
rather vapid lover, who never interested her physically. For several
months more she dragged him about with her luggage between Paris,
Fontainebleau, and Nohant.
In January of 1838, the great Balzac stumbled one fine evening into
this country seat and stayed for several days. The two novelists
passed the nights in gossip and confidences. Balzac set down his
still warm impressions for Countess Hanska: “I reached the Château de
Nohant on Holy Saturday, about half-past seven in the evening, and
I found comrade George Sand in her dressing-gown, smoking an after
dinner cigar, in front of her fire in an immense empty room. She had
lovely yellow slippers ornamented with fringe, bewitching stockings
and red trousers. So much for her state of mind. As to physique, she
had doubled her chin like a prebendary. She has not a single white
hair in spite of her frightful misfortunes; her swarthy complexion has
not changed; her fine eyes are as brilliant as ever; she has the same
stupid air when she is thinking, because, as I told her after studying
her, her whole countenance is in her eye. She has been at Nohant for a
year, very sad and working prodigiously. She leads about the same life
that I do. She goes to bed at six in the morning and gets up at noon; I
go to bed at six in the evening and get up at midnight. But, naturally,
I conformed to her habits, and for three days we have gossiped from
five o’clock in the evening, after dinner, till five in the morning.
The result is that I know her, and she knows me, better after these
three talks than during the whole of the preceding four years, when she
used to visit me while she was in love with Jules Sandeau and when she
was attached to Musset... It was just as well that I saw her, for we
exchanged mutual confidences regarding Jules Sandeau... However, she
was even more unhappy with Musset, and now there she is, in profound
seclusion, raging at both marriage and love, because in each she has
found nothing but disappointment.
“Her right male was hard to find, that is all. All the harder because
she is not amiable, and, consequently, loving her will always be beset
with difficulties. She is a bachelor, she is an artist, she is big,
generous, loyal, chaste; she has the features of a man. _Ergo_, she is
not a woman. While I was near her, even in talking heart to heart for
three days, I felt no more than before the itch of that gooseflesh of
gallantry that in France and in Poland one is supposed to display for
any kind of female.
“It was to a friend I was talking. She has high virtues, virtues
that society regards askance. We discussed the great questions of
marriage and of freedom with a seriousness, a good faith, a candour, a
conscience worthy of the great shepherds who guide the herds of men.
“For, as she said, with immense pride (I should not have dared think of
it myself), ‘Since by our writings we are preparing a revolution in the
customs of the future, I am not less struck by the inconveniences of
the one state than by those of the other.’
“We spent the whole night talking of this great problem. I am
absolutely in favour of liberty for the young girl and bondage for
the woman, that is, I want her to know before marriage what she is
undertaking: I want her to have considered everything; then, when
she has signed the contract, after having weighed the chances, to be
faithful to it. I gained a great point in making Mme. Dudevant realize
the necessity of marriage; but she will come to believe in it, I am
sure, and I feel that I have done good in proving it to her.
“She is an excellent mother, adored by her children; but she dresses
her daughter Solange like a little boy, and that is not right.
“She is like a man of twenty, _morally_, because she is chaste, modest,
and only an artist on the outside. She smokes inordinately, she plays
the princess, perhaps, a little too much, and I am convinced that
she portrayed herself faithfully as the princess in _Le Secrétaire
Intime_. She knew and said of herself, before I told her, just what
I think,—that she has neither power of conception nor the gift of
constructing plots, nor the ability to attain to the truth, nor the
art of pathos; but that, without knowing the French language, she has
_style_. This is true. She takes fame, as I do, lightly enough, and has
a profound scorn for the public, whom she calls _Jumento_.
“I shall tell you of the immense and secret devotion of this woman
for these two men, and you will say to yourself that there is nothing
in common between the angels and the devils. All the follies she has
committed entitle her to glory in the eyes of great and beautiful
souls....
“Anyway, it is a man she would like to be, so much so that she has
thrown off womanhood, and is no longer a woman. A woman attracts and
she repels, and, since I am very masculine, if she produces that effect
on me, she must produce it on men who are like me. She will be unhappy
always. And so,—she is now in love with a man who is her inferior, and
in that covenant there is only disillusionment and disappointment for a
woman with a beautiful spirit. A woman should always love a man greater
than she, or she be so blinded that it is the same as though he were.
“I have not come from Nohant unscathed. I carried away one enormous
vice; she made me smoke a _hooka_ with _Lattakieh_; it has suddenly
become a necessity to me...”
* * * * *
Balzac’s eye and ear were not mistaken in their diagnosis. Yet he could
neither fully see nor fully hear what was passing behind the windows
of this being who was more complex than he knew. This spring of 1838
germinated once again the strong dark violet of a new love.
* * * * *
George Sand had been to Paris several times. She had seen Chopin again.
And the drama of pleasure, of difficulties, of pains, had involved
them. Both Sand and Chopin had come through too many sufferings to
turn the new page of their story with anything but distrust and
uncertainty. But with Chopin it had all been buried in silence, and his
music alone had received his queries and his secret raptures. We may
consult all his work of this period, which witnesses magnificently to
this: the _Twelve Studies_, dedicated to Mme. d’Agoult (Vol. 2, op.
25), the _Impromptu_ (Op. 29), the _Second Scherzo_ (Op. 31), the _Two
Nocturnes_ (Op. 32), the four mazurkas of op. 30 (C minor, B minor, D
flat major, and C sharp minor), the three _Valses Brillantes_ of op.
34, and four other mazurkas (op. 33) dedicated to Mlle. la Comtesse
Mostowska.
As for George, the first hint of her new passion is found in a letter
to her friend, Mme. Marliani, dated the 23rd of May, where she says:
“Pretty dear, I have received your letters and have delayed replying
_fully_, because you know how _changeable_ the weather is in the season
of love. There is so much _yes_ and _no_, _if_ and _but_, in one week,
and often in the morning one says: _This is absolutely intolerable_,
only to add in the evening: _Truly, it is supreme happiness._ So I
am holding off until I may tell you _definitely_ that my barometer
registers something, if not stable, at least set fair for any length of
time at all. I have not the slightest reproach to make, but that is no
reason to be happy....”
Yet it was not to Mme. Marliani that she showed the singular and
interesting fluctuations of her sentimental barometer, but to Count
Albert Grzymala, a close friend of Chopin. But here is what she wrote
him at the beginning of that summer:
“Nothing could ever make me doubt the loyalty of your advice, dear
friend; may you never have such a fear. I believe in your gospel
without knowing or examining it, because once it has a disciple
like you it must be the most sublime of all gospels. Bless you for
your advice, and be at peace about my thoughts. Let us state the
question clearly, for the last time, for on your final reply on
this subject will depend my whole future conduct, and since it had
to come to this I am vexed at not having conquered the repugnance I
felt to questioning you in Paris. It seemed to me that what I was
to hear would blanch _my poem_. And, indeed, now it has browned,
or rather it is paling enormously. But what does it matter? Your
gospel is mine when it prescribes thinking of oneself last and not
thinking of oneself at all when the happiness of those we love
claims all our strength. Listen to me well, and reply clearly,
categorically, definitely. This person whom he wants, ought, or
thinks he ought to love, is she the one to bring him happiness?
Or would she heighten his suffering and his sadness? I do not ask
if he loves her, if he is loved, if she is more or less to him
than I. I know, approximately, by what is taking place in me, what
must be happening to him. I want to know which of _us two_ he must
forget and forsake for his own peace, for his happiness, for his
very life, which seems to me too precarious and frail to withstand
great sorrows. I do not want to play the part of a bad angel. I am
not Meyerbeer’s Bertram and I shall never fight against a childhood
friend, provided she is a pure and lovely Alice. If I had known
that there was a bond in the life of your child, a sentiment in
his soul, I should never have stooped to inhale a perfume meant for
another altar. By the same token, he would without doubt have drawn
back from my first kiss had he known I was as good as married. We
have neither of us deceived one another. We gave ourselves to the
wind that passed, and for a few minutes it carried us both into
another region. But we had, none the less, to come back down here,
after this celestial embrace and this flight through the empyrean.
Poor birds, we have wings, but our nest is on the ground, and when
the song of the angels calls us on high, the cries of our family
recall us below. For my part, I have no wish to abandon myself
to passion, although there is in the depths of my heart a fire
that still occasionally threatens. My children will give me the
strength to break with anything that would draw me away from them,
or from the manner of life that is best for their education, their
health, their well-being.... Thus I am unable to establish myself
at Paris because of Maurice’s illness, etc., etc. Then there is
an excellent soul, _perfect_, in regard to heart and honour, whom
I shall never leave, because he is the only man who, having been
with me for a year, has never once, _for one single minute_, made
me suffer by his fault. He is also the only man who has ever given
himself absolutely and entirely to me, without regret for the past,
without reserve for the future. Then, he has such a good and wise
nature that I can in time teach him to understand everything, to
know everything. He is soft wax on which I have put my seal. When
I want to change the imprint, with some precaution and patience I
shall succeed. But it cannot be done to-day, and his happiness is
sacred to me.
“So much for me. Tied as I am, bound fairly tightly for years to
come, I cannot wish that our _child_ should on his side break
the bonds that hold him. If he should come to lay his existence
in my hands, I should be indeed dismayed because, having already
accepted another, I could not offer him a substitute for what
he had sacrificed for me. I believe that our love could last
only under the conditions under which it was born, that is, that
sometimes, when a good wind blows us together, we should again make
a tour among the stars and then leave each other to plod upon the
ground, because we are earth children and God has not decreed that
we should finish our pilgrimage together. We ought to meet among
the heavens, and the fleet moments we shall pass there shall be so
beautiful that they shall outweigh all our lives below.
“So my task is set. But I can, without ever relinquishing it,
accomplish it in two different ways; the one, by keeping as aloof
as possible from C[hopin], by never seeking to occupy his thoughts,
by never again being alone with him; the other, on the contrary,
by drawing as close to him as possible without compromising the
position of M[allefille], to insinuate myself gently into his hours
of rest and happiness, to hold him chastely in my arms sometimes,
when the wind of heaven sees fit to raise us and transport us
up to the skies. The first way will be the one I shall adopt if
you tell me that the _person_ is fit to give him a pure, true
happiness, to care for him, to arrange, regularize, and calm his
life, if, in fact, he could be happy through her and I should be
an impediment. If his spirit _strongly_, perhaps _madly_, perhaps
wisely scrupulous, refuses to love two different beings, in two
different ways, if the eight days I might pass with him in a whole
season should keep him from inner happiness for the rest of the
year,—then, yes, then I swear to you that I should try to make him
forget me. I should adopt the second way if you should say one of
two things: either that his domestic happiness could and should
do with a few hours of chaste passion and of sweet poetry, or
that domestic happiness is not possible to him, and that marriage
or any union that resembled it would be the grave of this artist
soul, that he must at any cost be saved from it and even helped to
conquer his religious scruples. It is thereabouts that I arrive
in my conjectures. You shall tell me if I am mistaken; I believe
the person charming, worthy of all love and all respect, because
such a being as he could love only the pure and the beautiful. But
I believe that you dread marriage for him, the daily bond, real
life, business, domestic cares, everything in a word that seems
remote from his nature and detrimental to the inspiration of his
muse. I too should fear it for him; but on this point I can say
nothing and decide nothing, because there are many aspects under
which he is quite unknown to me. I have seen only the side of his
being that is warmed by the sun. You shall therefore settle my
ideas on this point. It is of the very greatest importance that I
should know his position, so that I can establish my own. If it
were left to me, I should so arrange our poem that I should know
nothing, absolutely nothing of his _positive_ life, nor he of mine,
and that he should follow all his own ideas, religious, social,
poetic, artistic, without question from me, and _vice versa_, but
that always, in whatever place or at whatever moment of our lives
we might meet, our souls should be at their apogee of happiness and
goodness. Because, I am sure, one is better when one loves with a
heavenly love, and, far from committing a sin, one comes near to
God, the fountain-head of this love. It is perhaps this, as a last
resort, that you must try to make him thoroughly understand, my
friend, and without opposing his ideas of duty, of devotion and
of religious sacrifice, you may put his heart more at ease. What
I fear above anything in the world, what would be most painful to
me, what would make me decide even to make myself _dead for him_,
would be to see myself become a horror and a remorse in his _soul_.
I cannot (unless, quite apart from me, she should be tragic for
him) fight against the image and memory of someone else. I have too
much respect for decency for that, or rather it is the only decency
I respect. I will steal no one from anyone, except captives from
jailers and victims from executioners and, consequently Poland
from Russia. Tell me if it is a _Russia_ whose portrait haunts our
child. Then I would ask heaven to lend me all the seductions of
Armida to keep him from throwing himself away on her. But if it
is a Poland, let him be. There is nothing like a native land, and
when you have one you must not take another. In that case, I shall
be an _Italy_ to him, an Italy which one goes to see and where one
enjoys the days of spring, but where one does not stay, because
there is more sun than there are beds and tables, and the _comforts
of life_ are elsewhere. Poor Italy! The whole world dreams of her,
desires her, and sorrows for her, but no one may live with her,
because she is unhappy and cannot give the happiness which she has
not. There is a final supposition that I must tell you. It might be
possible that he no longer loves the _childhood friend_ at all, and
that he would have a real repugnance towards any alliance, but that
the feeling of duty, the honour of a family, or what not, demands
a remorseless sacrifice of himself. In that case, my friend, be
his good angel. _I_ could scarcely meddle in it, but you should.
Keep him from too sharp attacks of conscience, save him from his
own virtues, prevent him, at all costs, from sacrificing himself,
because in this sort of thing (I mean marriage or those unions
that, without the same publicity, have the same binding power and
duration), in this sort of thing, I say, the sacrifice of him who
gives his future is not in proportion to what he has received in
the past. The past is something appreciable and limited; the
future is infinite, because it is unknown. The being who, for a
certain known sum of devotion, demands in return the devotion of
a whole lifetime, asks too much, and if he on whom the demand is
made is hard pressed to defend his rights and satisfy at the same
time both generosity and justice, it is the part of friendship to
save him and to be the sole judge of his rights and his duties. Be
firm in this regard, and believe that I, who detest seducers, I,
who always take the part of outraged and deceived women, I who am
thought the spokesman of my sex and who pride myself on so being;
I, when it has been necessary, have on my authority as a sister or
mother or friend broken more than one engagement of this kind. I
have always condemned the woman when she has wanted to be happy at
the expense of the man; I have always absolved the man when more
was demanded of him than it is given to freedom and human dignity
to undertake. A pledge of love and faithfulness is criminal or
cowardly when the mouth speaks what the heart disavows, and one
may ask anything of a man save a crime or a cowardice. Except in
that case, my friend, that is to say except he should want to make
too great a sacrifice, I believe we must not oppose his ideas, nor
violate his instincts. If his heart can, like mine, hold two quite
different loves, one which might be called the _body_ of life, the
other the _soul_, that would be best, because our situation would
dominate our feelings and thoughts. Just as one is not always
sublime, neither is one always happy. We shall not see each other
every day, we shall not possess the sacred fire every day, but
there will be beautiful days, and heavenly flames.
“Perhaps we should also think of telling him my position regarding
M[allefille]. It is to be feared that, not knowing it, he might
conjure up a kind of duty towards me which would irk him and come
to oppose _the other_ painfully. I leave you absolutely to judge
and decide about this confidence; you may make it if you think the
moment opportune, or delay it if you feel that it would add to his
too recent sufferings. Possibly you have already made it. I approve
of and confirm anything and everything you have done or will do.
“As to the question of possession or non-possession, that seems
secondary to the question we are now discussing. It is, however,
an important question in itself, it is a woman’s whole life, her
dearest secret, her most pondered philosophy, her most mysterious
coquetry. As for me, I shall tell you quite simply, you, my
brother and my friend, this great mystery, about which everyone
who mentions my name makes such curious observations. I have no
secrets about it, no theory, no doctrine, no definite opinion,
no prejudice, no pretence of power, no spiritual aping—in fact,
nothing studied and no set habit, and (I believe) no false
principles, either of licence or of restraint. I have trusted
largely to my instincts, which have always been worthy; sometimes I
have been deceived in people, never in myself. I reproach myself
for many stupidities, but for no platitudes or wickednesses. I hear
many things said on the question of human morality, of shame and
of social virtue. All that is still not clear to me. Nor have I
ever reached a conclusion. Yet I am not unmindful of the question;
I admit to you that the desire to fit any philosophy at all to
my own sentiments has been the great preoccupation and the great
pain of my life. Feelings have always been stronger than reason
with me, and the limits I have wanted to set for myself have never
been of any use to me. I have changed my ideas twenty times.
Above everything I have believed in fidelity. I have preached it,
practised it, demanded it. Others have lacked it and so have I.
And yet I have felt no remorse, because in my infidelities I have
always submitted to a kind of fatality, an instinct for the ideal
which pushed me into leaving the imperfect for what seemed to me
to come nearer to the perfect. I have known many kinds of love.
The love of the artist, the love of the woman, the love of the
sister, the love of the mother, the nun’s love, the poet’s love,—I
know not what. Some have been born and dead in me within the same
day without being revealed to the person who inspired them. Some
have martyred my life and have hurled me into despair, almost into
madness. Some have held me cloistered for years in an excessive
spirituality. All of it has been perfectly sincere. My being passed
through these different phases as the sun, as Sainte-Beuve said,
passes through the signs of the zodiac. To one who watched my
progress superficially I would have seemed mad or hypocritical;
to one who watched, reading me deeply, I seemed just what I am,
a lover of beauty, greedy for truth, very sensitive of heart,
very weak of judgment, often absurd, always sincere, never small
or vindictive, hot tempered enough, and, thank God, perfectly
forgetful of evil things and evil people.
“That is my life, dear friend. You see it is not much. There is
nothing to admire, much to regret, nothing for good souls to
condemn. I am sure that those who have accused me of being bad have
lied, and it would be very easy to prove it if I wished to take the
trouble to remember and recount it; but that bores me, and I have
no more memory than I have rancour.
“Thus far I have been faithful to what I loved, absolutely
faithful, in the sense that I have never deceived anyone, and that
I have never been unfaithful without very strong reasons, which,
by the fault of others, have killed the love in me. I am not
inconstant by nature. On the contrary, I am so accustomed to loving
him who loves me, so difficult to inflame, so habituated to living
with men without consciousness of being a woman, that really I have
been a little confused and dismayed by the effect produced on me by
this little being. I have not yet recovered from my astonishment,
and if I had a great deal of pride I should be greatly humiliated
to have fallen full into an infidelity of the heart, at the very
moment when I believed myself for ever calm and settled. I think
this would be wrong; if I had been able to foresee, to reason, and
combat this inroad; but I was suddenly attacked, and it is not in
my nature to govern myself by reason when love possesses me. So
I am not reproaching myself, but I realize that I am still very
impressionable and weaker than I thought. That matters little;
I have small vanity. This proves to me that I should have none
at all, and should never make any boast of valour and strength.
This makes me sad, for here is my beautiful sincerity, that I had
practised for so long and of which I was a little proud, bruised
and compromised. I shall be forced to lie like the others. I assure
you that this is more mortifying to my self-respect than a bad
novel or a hissed play. It hurts me a little; this hurt is perhaps
the remains of pride; perhaps it is a voice from above that cries
to me that I must guard more carefully my eyes and my ears, and
above all my heart. But if heaven wishes us to remain faithful to
our earthly affections, why does it sometimes allow the angels to
stray among us and meet us on our path?
“So the great question of love is raised again in me! No love
without fidelity, I said only two words ago, and certainly, alas! I
did not feel the same tenderness for poor M[allefille] when I saw
him again. Certainly since he went back to Paris (you must have
seen him), instead of awaiting his return with impatience and being
sad while he is away, I suffer less and breathe more freely. If
I believed that a frequent sign of C[hopin] would increase this
chill, I would feel it my _duty_ to refrain.
“That is what I wanted to get to—a talk with you on this question
of possession, which to some minds constitutes the whole question
of faithfulness. This is, I believe, a false idea; one can be
more unfaithful or less, but when one has allowed one’s soul to
be invaded, and has granted the simplest caress, with a feeling
of love, then the infidelity is already consummated, and the
rest is less serious; because whoever has lost the heart has
lost everything. It would be better to lose the body and keep
the soul intact. So, _in principle_, I do not believe a complete
consecration to the new bond would greatly increase the sin; but,
in practice, it is possible that the attachment might become more
human, more violent, more dominating, after possession. It is even
probable. It is even certain. That is why, when two people wish
to live together, they must not outrage either nature or truth
in recoiling from a complete union; but when they are forced to
live apart, doubtless it is the part of prudence. Consequently,
it is the part of duty and of true virtue (which is sacrifice) to
abstain. I have not reflected seriously on this and, if he had
asked me in Paris, I should have given in, because of this natural
straightness that makes me hate precautions, restrictions, false
distinctions and subtleties of any kind. But your letter makes me
think of scuttling that resolution. Then, too, the trouble and
sadness I have endured in again experiencing the caresses of
M[allefille], the courage it has taken to hide it, is a warning to
me. So I shall follow your advice, dear friend. May this sacrifice
be a kind of expiation for the perjury I have committed.
“I say sacrifice, because it would be painful for me to see this
angel suffer. So far he has had great strength; but I am not a
child. I saw clearly that human passion was making rapid progress
in him and that it was time we parted. That is why, the night
before my departure, I did not wish to stay with him and why I
almost sent you both home.
“And since I am telling you everything, I want to say to you
that only one thing about him displeased me; that is, that he
himself had bad reasons for abstaining. Until then I thought it
fine that he should abstain out of respect for me, from timidity,
even from fidelity for someone else. All that was sacrifice, and
consequently strength and chastity, of course. That is what charmed
and attracted me most in him. But at your house, just as he was
leaving us, and as if he wished to conquer one last temptation,
he said two or three words to me that did not answer to my ideas.
He seemed, after the fashion of devotees, to despise _human_
grossness and to redden at the temptations he had had, and to fear
to soil our love by one more transport. This way of looking at the
last embrace of love has always been repugnant to me. If the last
embrace is not as sacred, as pure, as devoted as the rest, there
is no virtue in abstaining from it. These words, physical love,
by which we call what has no name under heaven, _displease_ and
_shock_ me, like a sacrilege and at the same time like a false
notion. Can there be, for lofty natures, a purely physical love,
and for sincere natures a purely intellectual one? Is there ever
love without a single kiss and a kiss of love without passion? _To
despise the flesh_ cannot be good and useful except for those who
are all _flesh_; with someone one loves, not the word _despise_,
but the word _respect_ must serve when one abstains. Besides, these
are not the words he used. I do not exactly remember them. He
said, I think, that _certain acts_ could spoil a memory. Surely,
that was a stupid thing to say, and he did not mean it? Who is the
unhappy woman who left him with such ideas of physical love? Has
he then had a mistress unworthy of him? Poor angel! They should
hang all the women who degrade in men’s eyes the most honourable
and sacred thing in creation, the divine mystery, the most serious
act of life and the most sublime in the life of the universe.
The magnet embraces the iron, the animals come together by the
difference of sex. Plants obey love, and man, who alone on this
earth has received from God the gift of feeling divinely what the
animals, the plants and the metals feel only materially, man in
whom the electric attraction is transformed into an attraction
felt, understood, intelligent, man alone regards this miracle
which takes place simultaneously in his soul and in his body as a
miserable necessity, and he speaks of it with scorn, with irony or
with shame! This is passing strange! The result of this fashion of
separating the spirit from the flesh is that it has necessitated
convents and bad places.
“This is a frightful letter. It will take you six weeks to decipher
it. It is my _ultimatum_. If he is happy, or would be happy through
_her_, _let him be_. If he would be unhappy, _prevent him_. If he
could be happy through me, without ceasing to be happy through
_her_, _I can for my part do likewise_. If he cannot be happy
through me without being unhappy with her, _we must not see each
other and he must forget me_. There is no way of getting around
these four points. I shall be strong about it, I promise you,
because it is a question of _him_, and if I have no great virtue
for myself, I have great devotion for those I love. You are to tell
me the truth frankly. I count on it and wait for it.
“It is absolutely useless to write me a discreet letter that I
can show. We have not reached that point, M[allefille] and I. We
respect each other too much to demand, even in thought, an account
of the details of our lives....
“There has been some question of my going to Paris, and it is still
not impossible that if my business, which M[allefille] is now
looking after, should be prolonged I shall join him. Do not say
anything about it to the _child_. If I go, I shall notify you and
we will surprise him. In any case, since it takes time for you to
get freedom to travel, begin your preparations now, because I want
you at Nohant this summer, as soon and for as long as possible.
You shall see how happy you will be. There is not a hint of what
you fear There is no spying, no gossip, no provincialism; it is an
oasis in the desert. There is not a soul in the country who knows
what a Chopin or a Grzymala is. No one knows what happens in my
house. I see no one but _intimate_ friends, angels like you, who
have never had an evil thought about those they love. You will
come, my dear good friend, we shall talk at our ease and your
battered soul will regenerate itself in the country. As for the
_child_, he shall come if he likes; but in that case I should like
to be forewarned, for I should send M[allefille] either to Paris or
to Geneva. There is no lack of pretexts, and he will never suspect
anything. If the _child_ does not want to come, leave him to his
ideas; he fears the world, he fears I know not what. I respect in
those I love everything I do not understand. I shall go to Paris
in September myself, before the final departure. I shall conduct
myself with him according to your reply to this letter. If you
have no solution for the problems I put, try to draw one from him,
ransack his soul; I must know what he feels.
“But now you know me through and through. This is such a letter as
I do not write twice in ten years. I am too lazy, and I do so hate
talking about myself. But this will spare me further talk on that
subject. You know me by heart now, and you can _fire at sight on
me_ when you balance the accounts of the Trinity.
“Yours, dear good friend, yours with all my heart. Ostensibly I
have not spoken of you in all this long chat. That is because it
seemed as though I were talking of myself to another _me_, the
better and the dearer of the two, I swear.
“George Sand.”
Let us, above all, admire the woman’s method of so conducting her
battle that she necessarily remains victorious, no matter what the
attacks or shifts of the enemy. Everything is foreseen, arranged,
admitted, except the omission to become the lover of George Sand.
Besides, she must have known perfectly well that the little “Russia”
she pretended to fear had already surrendered her arms, that Chopin
had flung her out of his proud heart. But such a letter, such a
rare psychological document, deserves to be included intact in the
_dossier_ of this love. The personality of the writer becomes clearly
illuminated, even—perhaps above all—in what it tries to hide. One
feels the intelligence; weighs the slightly heavy goodness, once more
maternal, _pelicanish_; one wonders at the moist-lipped desire of
a woman of thirty-four for the “child” of twenty-eight, who looked
still younger and whose very purity intoxicated the voluptuous woman
enamoured of it. She called it “doing her duty.” It is all a matter of
well-chosen words. She admitted also: “I must love or die,” which is
less pretentious.
To sum up the matter, be it admitted that Chopin needed a fine,
generous tenderness after the poor, dried-up little romance he had
hidden in an envelope. He also needed care. George began by sending
him to Doctor Gaubert, who sounded him, and swore that he was not
phthisical. But he needed air, walks, rest. The new lovers set out in
quest of solitude.
Paris soon heard that the novelist had left with her three children:
Maurice, Solange and Chopin, for the Balearic Isles.