There you are, and I am very glad of it. You have never done anything to me that was not good; I love you tenderly!
CCCXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Sunday, Nohant, 5th April, 1876.
Victor Borie is in Italy, what must I write him? Are you the man to go to find him and explain the affair to him? He is somewhere near Civita-Vecchia, very much on the go and perhaps not easy to catch up with.
I am sure that he would receive you with open arms, for, although a financier to his finger-tips he has remained very friendly and nice to us. He does not tell us if he is on his mountain of alum for long. Lina is writing to him and will know soon, shall she tell him that you are disposed to go to meet him, or that you will wait until his return to Paris? anyway until the 20th of May he will get letters addressed to him at the Hotel Italy in Florence. We shall have to be on the watch, for he writes AT LONG INTERVALS.
I have not the time to say any more to you today. People are coming in. I have read Fromont et Risler; I charge you to thank M. Daudet, to tell him that I spent the night in reading it and that I do not know whether I prefer Jack or Risler; it is interesting, I might almost say GRIPPING.
I embrace you and I love you, when will you give me some Flaubert to read?
G. Sand
CCCXII. To GEOBGE SAND
Monday evening
Dear master, Thanks to Madame Lina's kind note, I betook myself to V. Borie's yesterday and was most pleasantly received. My nephew went to carry him the documents today. Borie has promised to look after the affair; will he do it?
I think that he is in just the position to do me indirectly the greatest service that any one could do me. If my poor nephew should get the capital which he needs in order to work, I could get back a part of what I have lost and live in peace the rest of my days.
I presented myself to Borie under your recommendation, and it is to you that I owe the cordiality of his reception. I do not thank you (of course) but you can tell him that I was touched by his kind reception (and stimulate his zeal if you think that may be useful).
I have been working a great deal lately. How I should like to see you so as to read my little medieval folly to you! I have begun another story entitled Histoire d'un coeur simple. But I have interrupted this work to make some researches on the period of Saint John the Baptist, for I want to describe the feast of Herodias.
I hope to have my readings finished in a fortnight, after which I shall return to Croisset from which spot I shall not budge till winter,—my long sessions at the library exhaust me. Cruchard is weary.
The good Tourgueneff leaves this evening for Saint Petersburg. He asks me if I have thanked you for your last book? Could I be guilty of such an oversight? You will see by my Histoire d'un coeur simple where you will recognize your immediate influence, that I am not so obstinate as you think. I believe that the moral tendency, or rather the human basis of this little work will please you!
Adieu, dear good master. Remembrances to all yours.
I embrace you very tenderly.
Your old Gustave Flaubert
CCCXIII. To MAURICE SAND
Tuesday evening, 27th
All I can say to you, in the first place, my dear friend, is, that your book has made me pass a sleepless night. I read it instantly, at one fell swoop, only stopping to fill my good pipe from time to time and then to resume my reading.
When the impression is a little less fresh I shall take up your book again to find the flaws in it. But I think that there are very few. You must be content? It ought to please? It is dramatic and as amusing as possible!
Beginning with the first page I was charmed with the sincerity of the description. And at the end I admired the composition of the whole, the logical way the events were worked out and the characters related.
Your chief character, Miss Mary, is too hateful (to my taste) to be anything but an exact picture. That is one of the choicest parts of your book, together with the homelife, the life in New York?
Your good savage makes me laugh out loud when he is at the Opera.
I was struck by the house of the missionaries (Montaret's first night). You make it seem real. Naissa scalping, and then wiping her hands on the grass, seemed to me especially well done. As well as the disgust that she inspires in Montaret,
I venture a timid observation: it seems to me that the flight of father Athanasius and of Montaret, when they escape from their prison, is not perfectly clear? Is not the material explanation of the event too short?
I do not care for, as language, two or three ready-made locutions, such as "break the ice." You can see that I have read you attentively! What a pedagogue I make, eh! I am telling you all that from memory, for I have lent your book, and it has not been returned to me yet. But my recollection of it is of a thing very well done.
Don't you agree with me that a play of very great effect could be made from it for a boulevard theatre?
By the way, how is Cadio going?
Tell your dear mamma that I adore her.
Harrisse, from whom I have received a letter today, charges me to remember him to her, and, for my part, I charge you to embrace her for me.
And I grasp your two hands heartily and say "bravo" to you again, and faithfully yours.
Gustave Flaubert
CCCXIV. To MADAM MAURICE SAND
Thursday evening, 25th May, 1876
Dear Madam,
I sent a telegram to Maurice this morning, asking for news of Madam
Sand.
I was told yesterday that she was very ill, why has not Maurice answered me?
I went to Plauchut's this morning to get details. He is in the country, at Le Mans, so that I am in a state of cruel uncertainty.
Be good enough to answer me immediately and believe me, dear madam,
Your very affectionate,
Gustave Flaubert
4 rue Murillo, Parc Monceau
CCCXV. To MADAM LINA SAND
Dear Madam,
Your note of this morning reassures me a little. But that of last night had absolutely upset me.
I beg you to give me very frequent news of your dear mother-in-law.
Embrace her for me and believe that I am
Your very devoted
Gustave Flaubert
Beginning with the middle of next week, about Wednesday or Thursday,
I shall be at Croisset.
Saturday morning, 3d June, 1876.
CCCXVI. To MAURICE SAND
Croisset, Sunday, 24 June, 1876
You had prepared me, my dear Maurice, I wanted to write to you, but I was waiting till you were a little freer, more alone. Thank you for your kind thought.
Yes, we understood each other, yonder! (And if I did not remain longer, it is because my comrades dragged me away.) It seemed to me that I was burying my mother the second time. Poor, dear, great woman! What genius and what heart! But she lacked nothing, it is not she whom we must pity.
What is to become of you? Shall you stay in Nohant? That good old house must seem horribly empty to you! But you, at least, are not alone! You have a wife…a rare one! and two exquisite children. While I was with you, I had, over and above my grief, two desires: to run off with Aurore and to kill M. Marx.[Footnote: A reporter for le Figaro.] There you have the truth, it is unnecessary to make you see the psychology of the thing. I received yesterday a very sympathetic letter from good Tourgueneff. He too loved her. But then, who did not love her? If you had seen in Paris the anguish of Martine![Footnote: George Sand's maid.] That was distressing.
Plauchut is still in Nohant, I suppose. Tell him that I love him because I saw him shed so many tears.
And let yours flow, my dear friend, do all that is necessary not to console yourself,—which would, moreover, be impossible. Never mind! In a short time you will feel a great joy in the idea alone that you were a good son and that she knew it absolutely. She used to talk of you as of a blessing.
And when you shall have rejoined her, when the great-grand-children of the grandchildren of your two little girls shall have joined her, and when for a long time there shall have been no question of the things and the people that surround us,—in several centuries,— hearts like ours will palpitate through hers! People will read her books, that is to say that they will think according to her ideas and they will love with her love. But all that does not give her back to you, does it? With what then can we sustain ourselves if pride desert us, and what man more than you should have pride in his mother!
Now dear friend, adieu! When shall we meet now? How I should feel the need of talking of her, insatiably!
Embrace Madam Maurice for me, as I did on the stairway at Nohant, and your little girls.
Yours, from the depths of my heart,
Your Gustave Flaubert
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.
Gustave Flaubert
CCCXVIII. To MAURICE SAND
Saint-Gratien par Sannois, 20th August, 1877
Thank you for your kind remembrance, my dear Maurice. Next winter you will be in Passy, I hope,—and from time to time we can have a good chat. I even count on seeing myself at your table by the side of your friends whose "idol" I am.
You speak to me of your dear and illustrious mamma! Next to you I do not think that any one could think of her more often than I do! How I miss her! How I need her!
I had begun un coeur simple solely on account of her, only to please her. She died while I was in the midst of this work. Thus it is with our dreams.
I still continue not to find diversion in existence. In order to forget the weight of it, I work as frantically as possible.
What sustains me is the indignation that the Imbecility of the Bourgeois affords me! Summed up at present by the large party of law and order, it reaches a dizzy height!
Has there been anything in history more inept than the 16th of May?
Where is there an idiot comparable to the Bayard of modern times?
I have been in Paris, or rather at Saint-Gratien, for three days. Day after tomorrow I leave the princess, and in a fortnight I shall make a little trip to Lower Normandy for the sake of literature. When we meet I shall talk a long time with you, if you are interested, about the terrible book that I am in the process of concocting. I shall have enough work in it to take me three or four years. Not less!
Don't leave me so long without news. Give a long look for me at the little corner of the holy ground!…My regards to your dear wife, embrace the dear little girls and sincerely yours, my good Maurice,
Your old friend
Gustave Flaubert
CCCXIX. To MAURICE SAND
Tuesday morning, April, 1880
My dear Maurice,
No! Erase Cruchard and Polycarp and replace those words by what you like.
The Public ought not to have all of us,—let us reserve something for ourselves. That seems to me more decent (quod decet). You do not speak of a COMPLETE EDITION? Ah! your poor dear mamma! How often I think of her! And what need I have of her! There is not a day when I do not say: "If she were there, I should ask her advice."
I shall be at Croisset till the 8th or the 10th of May. So, my old fellow, when you wish to come there, you will be welcome. I embrace you all from the oldest to the youngest.
Cruchard for you,
Polycarp for the human race,
Gustave Flaubert for Literature
THE END OF THE GEORGE SAND-GUSTAVE FLAUBERT LETTERS
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