Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert

by Gustave Flaubert

  I tenderly embrace you, my dear old fellow, and Maurice thinks your letter so fine that he is going to put the phrases and words at once in the mouth of his first philosopher. He bids me embrace you for him.

  Madame Juliette Lambert [Footnote: Afterwards, Madame Edmond Adam.] is really charming; you would like her a great deal, and then you have it 18 degrees above zero down there, and here we are in the snow. It is severe; moreover, I rarely go out, and my dog himself doesn’t want to go out. He is not the least amazing member of society. When he is called Badinguet, he lies on the ground ashamed and despairing, and sulks all the evening.

  1868

  LXXV. TO GEORGE SAND 1st January, 1868

  It is unkind to sadden me with the recital of the amusements at Nohant, since I cannot share them. I need so much time to do so little that I have not a minute to lose (or gain), if I want to finish my dull old book by the summer of 1869.

  I did not say it was necessary to suppress the heart, but to restrain it, alas! As for the regime that I follow which is contrary to the laws of hygiene, I did not begin yesterday. I am accustomed to it. I have, nevertheless, a fairly seasoned sense of fatigue, and it is time that my second part was finished, after which I shall go to Paris. That will be about the end of the month. You don’t tell me when you return from Cannes.

  My rage against M. Thiers is not yet calmed, on the contrary! It idealizes itself and increases.

  LXXVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

  Nohant, 12 January, 1868

  No, it is not silly to embrace each other on New Year’s day: on the contrary, it is good and it is nice. I thank you for having thought of it and I kiss you on your beautiful big eyes. Maurice embraces you also. I am housed here by the snow and the cold, and my trip is postponed. We amuse ourselves madly at home so as to forget that we are prisoners, and I am prolonging my holidays in a ridiculous fashion. Not an iota of work from morning till night. What luck if you could say as much! — But what a fine winter, don’t you think so? Isn’t it lovely, the moonlight on the trees covered with snow? Do you look at that at night while you are working? — If you are going to Paris the end of the month, I shall still have a chance to meet you.

  From far, or from near, dear old fellow, I think of you and I love you from the depth of my old heart which does not know the flight of years.

  G. Sand

  My love to your mother always. I imagine that she is in Rouen during this severe cold.

  LXXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

  Paris, 10 May, 1868

  Yes, friend of my heart, am I not in the midst of terrible things; that poor little Madame Lambert [Footnote: Madame Eugene Lambert, the wife of the artist] is severely threatened.

  I saw M. Depaul today. One must be prepared for anything! — If the crisis is passed or delayed, for there is question of bringing on the event, I shall be happy to spend two days with my old troubadour, whom I love tenderly.

  G. Sand.

  LXXVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

  Paris, 11 May, 1868

  If you were to be at home Wednesday evening, I should go to chat an hour alone with you after dinner in your quarters. I despair somewhat of going to Croisset; it is tomorrow that that they decide the fate of my poor friend.

  A word of response, and above all do not change any plan. Whether I see you or not, I know that two old troubadours love each other devotedly!

  G. Sand Monday evening.

  LXXIX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

  Paris, 17 May, 1868

  I have a little respite, since they are not going to bring on the confinement. I hope to go to spend two days at that dear Croisset. But then don’t go on Thursday, I am giving a dinner for the prince [Footnote: Prince Jerome Napoleon.] at Magny’s and I told him that I would detain you by force. Say yes, at once. I embrace you and I love you.

  G. Sand

  LXXX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

  I shall not go with you to Croisset, for you must sleep, and we talk too much. But on Sunday or Monday if you still wish it; only I forbid you to inconvenience yourself. I know Rouen, I know that there are carriages at the railway station and that one goes straight to your house without any trouble.

  I shall probably go in the evening.

  Embrace your dear mamma for me, I shall be happy to her again.

  G. Sand

  If those days do not suit you, a word, and I shall communicate with you again. Have the kindness to put the address on the ENCLOSED letter and to put it in the mail.

  LXXXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

  Paris, 21 Thursday — May, 1868

  I see that the day trains are very slow, I shall make a great effort and shall leave at eight o’clock Sunday, so as to lunch with you; if it is too late don’t wait for me, I lunch on two eggs made into an omelet or shirred, and a cup of coffee. Or dine on a little chicken or some veal and vegetables.

  In giving up trying to eat REAL MEAT, I have found again a strong stomach. I drink cider with enthusiasm, no more champagne! At Nohant, I live on sour wine and galette, and since I am not trying any more to THOROUGHLY NOURISH myself, no more anemia; believe then in the logic of physicians!

  In short you must not bother any more about me than about the cat and not even so much. Tell your little mother, just that. Then I shall see you at last, all I want to for two days. Do you know that you are INACCESSIBLE in Paris? Poor old fellow, did you finally sleep like a dormouse in your cabin? I would like to give you a little of my sleep that nothing, not even a cannon, can disturb.

  But I have had bad dreams for two weeks about my poor Esther, and now at last, here are Depaul, Tarnier, Gueniaux and Nelaton who told us yesterday that she will deliver easily and very well, and that the child has every reason to be superb. I breathe again, I am born anew, and I am going to embrace you so hard that you will be scandalised. I shall see you on Sunday then, and don’t inconvenience yourself.

  G. Sand

  LXXXII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 26 May, 1868

  Arrived while dozing. Dined with your delightful and charming friend Du Camp. We talked of you, only of you and your mother, and we said a hundred times that we loved you. I am going to sleep so as to be ready to move tomorrow morning.

  I am charmingly located on the Luxembourg garden.

  I embrace you, mother and son, with all my heart which is entirely yours.

  G. Sand Tuesday evening, rue Gay-Lussac, 5.

  LXXXIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 28 May, 1868

  My little friend gave birth this morning after two hours of labor, to a boy who seemed dead but whom they handled so well that he is very much alive and very lovely this evening. The mother is very well, what luck!

  But what a sight! It was something to see. I am very tired, but very content and tell you so because you love me.

  G. Sand

  Thursday evening. I leave Tuesday for Nohant.

  LXXXIV. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset

  Nohant, 21 June, 1868

  Here I am again, BOTHERING you for M. Du Camp’s address which you never gave me, although you forwarded a letter for me to him, and from WHOM I never thought of asking for it when I dined with him in Paris. I have just read his Forces Perdues; I promised to tell him my opinion and I am keeping my word. Write the address, then give it to the postman and thank you.

  There you are alone at odds with the sun in your charming villa!

  Why am I not the…river which cradles you with its sweet MURMURING and which brings you freshness in your den! I would chat discreetly with you between two pages of your novel, and I would make that fantastic grating of the chain [Footnote: The chain of the tug-boat going up or coming down the Seine.] which you detest, but whose oddity does not displease me, keep still. I love everything that makes up a milieu, the rolling of the carriages and the noise of the workmen in Paris, the cries of a thousand birds in the country, the movement of the ships on the waters; I love also absolute, profound silence, and in short, I love everything that is around me, no matter where I am; it is AU
DITORY IDIOCY, a new variety. It is true that I choose my milieu and don’t go to the Senate nor to other disagreeable places.

  Everything is going on well at our house, my troubadour. The children are beautiful, we adore them; it is warm, I adore that. It is always the same old story that I have to tell you and I love you as the best of friends and comrades. You see that is not new. I have a good and strong impression of what you read to me; it seemed to me so beautiful that it must be good. As for me, I am not sticking to anything. Idling is my dominant passion. That will pass, what does not pass, is my friendship for you.

  G. Sand

  Our affectionate regards.

  LXXXV. TO GEORGE SAND

  Croisset, Sunday, 5 July, 1868

  I have sawed wood hard for six weeks. The patriots won’t forgive me for this book, nor the reactionaries either! What do I care! I write things as I feel them, that is to say, as I think they are. Is it foolish of me? But it seems to me that our unhappiness comes exclusively from people of our class. I find an enormous amount of Christianity in Socialism. There are two notes which are now on my table.

  “This system (his) is not a system of disorder, for it has its source in the Gospels, and from this divine source, hatred, warfare, the clashing of every interest, CAN NOT PROCEED! for the doctrine formulated from the Gospel, is a doctrine of peace, union and love.” (L. Blanc).

  “I shall even dare to advance the statement that together with the respect for the Sabbath, the last spark of poetic fire has been extinguished in the soul of our rhymesters. It has been said that without religion, there is no poetry!” (Proudhon).

  A propos of that, I beg of you, dear master, to read at the end of his book on the observance of the Sabbath, a love-story entitled, I think, Marie et Maxime. One must know that to have an idea of the style of les Penseurs. It should be placed on a level with Le Voyage en Bretagne by the great Veuillot, in Ca et La. That does not prevent us from having friends who are great admirers of these two gentlemen.

  When I am old, I shall write criticism; that will console me, for I often choke with suppressed opinions. No one understands better than I do, the indignation of the great Boileau against bad taste: “The senseless things which I hear at the Academy hasten my end.” There was a man!

  Every time now that I hear the chain of the steam-boats, I think of you, and the noise irritates me less, when I say to myself that it pleases you. What moonlight there is tonight on the river!

  LXXXVI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset

  Nohant, 31 July, 1868

  I am writing to you at Croisset in any case, because I doubt if you are in Paris during this Toledo-like heat; unless the shade of Fontainebleau has kept you. What a lovely forest, isn’t it? but it is especially so in winter, without leaves, with its fresh moss, which has chic. Did you see the sand of Arbonne? There is a little Sahara there which ought to be lovely now.

  We are very happy here. Every day a bath in a stream that is always cold and shady; in the daytime four hours of work, in the evening, recreation, and the life of Punch and Judy. A TRAVELLING THEATRICAL COMPANY came to us; it was part of a company from the Odeon, among whom were several old friends to whom we gave supper at La Chatre, two successive nights with all their friends, after the play; — songs, laughter, with champagne frappe, till three o’clock in the morning to the great scandal of the bourgeois, who would have committed any crime to have been there. There was a very comic Norman, a real Norman, who sang real peasant songs to us, in the real language. Do you know that they have quite a Gallic wit and mischief? They contain a mine of master-pieces of genre. That made me love Normandy still more. You may know that comedian. His name is Freville. It is he who is charged in the repertory with the parts of the dull valets, and with being kicked from behind. He is detestable, impossible, but out of the theatre, he is as charming as can be. Such is fate!

  We have had some delightful guests at our house, and we have had a joyous time without prejudice to the Lettres d’un Voyageur in the Revue, or to botanical excursions in some very surprising wild places. The little girls are the loveliest thing about it all. Gabrielle is a big lamb, sleeping and laughing all day; Aurore, more spiritual, with eyes of velvet and fire, talking at thirty months as others do at five years, and adorable in everything. They are keeping her back so that she shall not get ahead too fast.

  You worry me when you tell me that your book will blame the patriots for everything that goes wrong. Is that really so? and then the victims! it is quite enough to be undone by one’s own fault without having one’s own foolishness thrown in one’s teeth. Have pity! There are so many fine spirits among them just the same! Christianity has been a fad and I confess that in every age it is a lure when one sees only the tender side of it; it wins the heart. One has to consider the evil it does in order to get rid of it. But I am not surprised that a generous heart like Louis Blanc dreamed of seeing it purified and restored to his ideal. I also had that illusion; but as soon as one takes a step in this past, one sees that it can not be revived, and I am sure that now Louis Blanc smiles at his dream. One should think of that also.

  One must remind oneself that all those who had intelligence have progressed tremendously during the last twenty years and that it would not be generous to reproach them with what they probably reproach themselves.

  As for Proudhon, I never thought him sincere. He is a rhetorician of

  GENIUS, as they say. But I don’t understand him. He is a specimen of

  perpetual antithesis, without solution. He affects one like one of

  the old Sophists whom Socrates made fun of.

  I am trusting you for GENEROUS sentiments. One can say a word more or less without wounding, one can use the lash without hurting, if the hand is gentle in its strength. You are so kind that you cannot be cruel.

  Shall I go to Croisset this autumn? I begin to fear not, and to fear that Cadio is not being rehearsed. But I shall try to escape from Paris even if only for one day.

  My children send you their regards. Ah! Heavens! there was a fine quarrel about Salammbo; some one whom you do not know, went so far as not to like it, Maurice called him BOURGEOIS, and to settle the affair, little Lina, who is high tempered, declared that her husband was wrong to use such a word, for he ought to have said IMBECILE. There you are. I am well as a Turk. I love you and I embrace you.

  Your old Troubadour,

  G. Sand

  LXXXVII. TO GEORGE SAND

  Dieppe, Monday

  But indeed, dear master, I was in Paris during that tropical heat (trop picole, as the governor of the chateau of Versailles says), and I perspired greatly. I went twice to Fontainebleau, and the second time by your advice, saw the sands of Arboronne. It is so beautiful that it made me almost dizzy.

  I went also to Saint-Gratien. Now I am at Dieppe, and Wednesday I shall be in Croisset, not to stir from there for a long time, the novel must progress.

  Yesterday I saw Dumas: we talked of you, of course, and as I shall see him tomorrow we shall talk again of you.

  I expressed myself badly if I said that my book “will blame the patriots for everything that goes wrong.” I do not recognize that I have the right to blame anyone. I do not even think that the novelist ought to express his own opinion on the things of this world. He can communicate it, but I do not like him to say it. (That is a part of my art of poetry.) I limit myself, then, to declaring things as they appear to me, to expressing what seems to me to be true. And the devil take the consequences; rich or poor, victors or vanquished, I admit none of all that. I want neither love, nor hate, nor pity, nor anger. As for sympathy, that is different; one never has enough of that. The reactionaries, besides, must be less spared than the others, for they seem to be more criminal.

  Is it not time to make justice a part of art? The impartiality of painting would then reach the majesty of the law, — and the precision of science!

  Well, as I have absolute confidence in your great mind, when my third part is finished, I
shall read it to you, and if there is in my work, something that seems MEAN to you, I will remove it.

  But I am convinced beforehand that you will object to nothing.

  As for allusions to individuals, there is not a shadow of them.

  Prince Napoleon, whom I saw at his sister’s Thursday, asked for news of you and praised Maurice. Princess Matilde told me that she thought you “charming,” which made me like her better than ever.

  How will the rehearsals of Cadio prevent you from coming to see your poor old friend this autumn? It is not impossible. I know Freville. He is an excellent and very cultivated man.

  LXXXVIII. TO GEORGE SAND

  Croisset, Wednesday evening, 9 September, 1868

  Is this the way to behave, dear master? Here it is nearly two months since you have written to your old troubadour! you in Paris, in Nohant, or elsewhere? They say that Cadio is now being rehearsed at the Porte Saint-Martin (so you have fallen out with Chilly?) They say that Thuillier will make her re-appearance in your play. (But I thought she was dying). And when are they to play this Cadio? Are you content? etc., etc.

  I live absolutely like an oyster. My novel is the rock to which I attach myself, and I don’t know anything that goes on in the world.

  I do not even read, or rather I have not read La Lanterne! Rochefort bores me, between ourselves. It takes courage to venture to say even hesitatingly, that possibly he is not the first writer of the century. O Velches! Velches! as M. de Voltaire would sigh (or roar)! But a propos of the said Rochefort, have they been somewhat imbecilic? What poor people!