CANNES, _January 3, 1867_.
I received your letter with great remorse. For a long time I have wanted
to write to you, but, in the first place, an uncertainty as to your
abode is a great vexation. You are always on the wing, and no one knows
where to catch you. In the second place, you have never replied to a
long letter, written with great care, which I sent to you. Moreover, you
can not imagine how the time passes in a place like this, where it never
rains, and where the principal thing to do is to warm one’s self in the
sun, or to paint trees and rocks.
I brought with me books for work, but as yet I have done nothing but
read and take notes from a history of Peter the Great, about which I
should like some day to write an article for the _Journal des Savants_.
The great man was a downright savage, who used to get horribly tipsy,
and committed an error against good taste, concerning which I found you
very severe when you used to study Greek literature. For all that, he
was without question a man in advance of his age. I should like to say
all this some day to persons as full of prejudice as yourself.
As for the story about which I told you, I have said that I would read
it to you when I have the pleasure of seeing you once more. I am not
thinking of having it published. As there is in this work nothing
favourable to the temporal power of the Pope, I suspect that it might
not meet with a cordial reception. Are you not touched and humiliated by
the profound stupidity of the present time? Everything that is said both
for and against the temporal power is so silly and absurd, that I blush
for my century....
Another thing that enrages me is the manner in which the proposition for
the reorganization of the army has been received. All well-born young
persons are dying of terror at the thought of being called upon at a
moment’s notice to fight for their country, and say that these vulgar
occupations should be left to the Prussians. Try to imagine what will
remain of the French nation if she should come to lose her military
courage!
I am reading the novel of my friend Madame de Boigne.[36] It is pitiful.
She is a woman of much intelligence, who lays bare her own defects, and
criticises them with excessive bitterness, but who still persists in
them. She passed more than thirty years without saying a word to me of
this novel, and in her will she ordered its publication. It was as great
a surprise to me as if I had learned that you had just published a
treatise on geometry.
Although the subject is not an agreeable one, I must tell you something
of my health. I am becoming more and more short-breathed. Sometimes I
feel as robust as a Turk. I take long walks, and it seems to me that I
am as well as when we used to tramp through our woods together. The sun
goes down, my chest becomes inflated, I suffocate and the slightest
exertion is very painful. The singular thing is, that I am no worse. I
am even better in a horizontal position than when standing or sitting.
Good-bye, dear friend. I wish you health and prosperity.