CCXXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 28 April, 1872
I hold my poor Aurore, who has a terrible case of whooping-cough, day and night in my arms. I have an important piece of work that I must finish, and which I shall finish in spite of everything. If I have not already done the article on Bouilhet, rest a.s.sured it is because it is IMPOSSIBLE. I shall do it at the same time as that on l"Annee terrible. I shall go to Paris between the 20th and 25th of May, at the latest. Perhaps sooner, if Maurice takes Aurore to Nimes where Lina and the littlest one are. I shall write to you, you must come to see me in Paris, or I will go to see you.
I thirst too to embrace you, to console you--no, but to tell you that your sorrows are mine. Good-bye till then, a line to tell me if your affairs are getting settled, and if you are coming out on top.
Your old G. Sand
CCXXV. TO GEORGE SAND
What good news, dear master! In a month and even before a month, I shall see you at last!
Try not to be too hurried in Paris, so that we may have the time to talk. What would be very nice, would be, if you came back here with me to spend several days. We should be quieter than there; "my poor old mother" loved you very much, would be sweet to see you in her house, when she has been gone only such a short time.
I have started work again, for existence is only tolerable when one forgets one"s miserable self.
It will be a long time before I know what I have to live on. For all the fortune that is left to us is in meadowland, and in order to divide it, we have to sell it all.
Whatever happens, I shall keep my apartments at Croisset. That will be my refuge, and perhaps even my only habitation. Paris hardly attracts me any longer. In a little while I shall have no more friends there. The human being (the eternal feminine included) amuses me less and less.
Do you know that my poor Theo is very ill? He is dying from boredom and misery. No one speaks his language anymore! We are like fossils who subsist astray in a new world.
CCXXVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 18 May, 1872
Dear friend of my heart, your inability does not disturb me at all, on the contrary. I have the grippe and the prostration that follows it. I cannot go to Paris for a week yet, and shall be there during the first part of June. My little ones are both in the sheepfold. I have taken good care of and cured the eldest, who is strong. The other is very tired, and the trip did not prevent the whooping- cough. For my part, I have worked very hard in caring for my dear one, and as soon as my task was over, as soon as I saw my dear world reunited and well again, I collapsed. It will be nothing, but I have not the strength to write. I embrace you, and I count on seeing you soon.
G. Sand
CCXXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, Monday, 3 June, 1872, Rue Gay Lussac, 5
I am in Paris, and for all this week, in the horror of personal business. But next week will you come? I should like to go to see you in Croisset, but I do not know if I can. I have taken Aurore"s whooping-cough, and, at my age, it is severe. I am, however, better, but hardly able to go about. Write me a line, so I can reserve the hours that you can give me. I embrace you, as I love you, with a full heart.
G. Sand
CCXXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND 1872
The hours that I could give you, dear Master! Why, all the hours, now, by and by, and forever.
I am planning to go to Paris at the end of next week, the 14th or the 16th. Shall you be there still? If not, I shall go earlier.
But I should like it much better if you came here. We should be quieter, without callers or intruders! More than ever, I should like to have you now in my poor Croisset.
It seems to me that we have enough to talk about without stopping for twenty-four hours. Then I would read you Saint-Antoine, which lacks only about fifteen pages of being finished. However, don"t come if your cough continues. I should be afraid that the dampness would hurt you.
The mayor of Vendome has asked me "to honor with my presence" the dedication of the statue of Ronsard, which occurs the 23rd of this month: I shall go. And I should even like to deliver an address there which would be a protest against the universal modern flap- doodle. The occasion is good. But for the production of a really appropriate little gem, I lack the snap and vivacity.
Hoping to see you soon, dear master, your old troubadour who embraces you.
CCXXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 7 June, 1872
Dear friend,
Your old troubadour has such a bad cough that a little bit more would be the last straw. On the other hand, they cannot get on without me at our house, and I cannot stay longer than next week, that is to say, the 15th or the 16th. If you could come next Thursday, the 13th, I should reserve the 13th, the 14th, even the 15th, to be with you at my house for the day for dinner, for the evening, in short, just as if we were in the country, where we could read and converse. I would be supposed to have gone away.
A word at once, I embrace you as I love you.
G. Sand
CCx.x.x. TO GEORGE SAND
Dear master,
Have you promised your support to the candidacy of Duquesnel? if not, I should like to beg you to use to the utmost your influence to support my friend, Raymond Deslandes, as if he were
Your old troubadour,
G. Flaubert
Thursday, three o"clock, 13 June, 1872.
Answer me categorically, so that we may know what you will do.
CCx.x.xI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset ..Nohant, 5 July, 1872
I must write to you today. Sixty-eight years old. Perfect health in spite of the cough, which lets me sleep now that I am plunging daily in a furious little torrent, cold as ice. It boils around the stones, the flowers, the great gra.s.ses in a delicious shade. It is an ideal place to bathe.
We have had some terrible storms: lightning struck in our garden; and our stream, the Indre, has become like a torrent in the Pyrenees. It is not unpleasant. What a fine summer! The grain is seven feet high, the wheat fields are sheets of flowers. The peasant thinks that there are too many; but I let him talk, it is so lovely!
I go on foot to the stream, I jump, all boiling hot, into the icy water. The doctor says that is madness. I let him talk, too; I am curing myself while his patients look after themselves and croak. I am like the gra.s.s of the fields: water and sun, that is all I need.
Are you off for the Pyrenees? Ah! I envy you, I love them so! I have taken frantic trips there; but I don"t know Luchon. Is it lovely, too? You won"t go there without seeing the Cirque of Gavarnie, and the road that leads there, will you? And Cauterets and the lake of Gaube? And the route of Saint-Sauveur? Heavens! How lucky one is to travel and to see the mountains, the flowers, the cliffs! Does all that bore you?
Do you remember the editors, the theatrical managers, the readers and the public when you are running about the country! As for me, I forget everything as I do when Pauline Viardot is singing.
The other day we discovered, about three leagues from here, a wilderness, an absolute wilderness of woods in a great expanse of country, where not one hut could be seen, not a human being, not a sheep, not a fowl, nothing but flowers, b.u.t.terflies and birds all day. But where will my letter find you? I shall wait to send it to you till you give me an address!