Part 11 (1/2)
Must one find some fas.h.i.+on of accepting the honor, the duty, and the fatigue of living? As for me, I revert to the idea of an everlasting journey through worlds more amusing, but it would be necessary to go there quickly and change continually. The life that one fears so much to lose is always too long for those who understand quickly what they see. Everything repeats itself and goes over and over again in it.
I a.s.sure you that there is only one pleasure: learning what one does not know, and one happiness: loving the exceptions. Therefore I love you and I embrace you tenderly.
Your old troubadour G. Sand
I am anxious about Sainte-Beuve. What a loss that would be! I am content if Bouilhet is content. Is it really a good position?
LVII. TO GEORGE SAND Paris, Friday morning
I am returning to my mother next Monday, dear master. I have little hope of seeing you before then!
But when you are in Paris, what is to prevent you from pus.h.i.+ng on to Croisset where everyone, including myself, adores you? Sainte-Beuve has finally consented to see a specialist and to be seriously treated. And he is better anyway. His morale is improving.
Bouilhet's position gives him four thousand francs a year and lodging. He now need not think of earning his living, which is a real luxury.
No one talks of the war any more, they don't talk of anything.
The Exposition alone is what ”everybody is thinking about,” and the cabmen exasperate the bourgeois.
They were beautiful (the bourgeois) during the strike of the tailors. One would have said that SOCIETY was going to pieces.
Axiom: Hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of virtue. But I include in the word bourgeois, the bourgeois in blouses as well the bourgeois in coats.
It is we and we alone, that is to say the literary men, who are the people, or to say it better: the tradition of humanity.
Yes, I am susceptible to disinterested angers and I love you all the more for loving me for that. Stupidity and injustice make me roar,-- and I HOWL in my corner against a lot of things ”that do not concern me.”
How sad it is not to live together, dear master, I admired you before I knew you. From the day I saw your lovely and kind face, I loved you. There you are.--And I embrace you warmly.
Your old
Gustave Flaubert
I shall have the package of pamphlets about faience sent to the rue des Feuillantines. A good handshake to Maurice. A kiss on the four cheeks of Mademoiselle Aurore.
LVIII. TO GEORGE SAND
I stayed thirty-six hours in Paris at the beginning of this week, in order to be present at the Tuileries ball. Without any exaggeration, it was splendid. Paris on the whole turns to the colossal. It is becoming foolish and unrestrained. Perhaps we are returning to the ancient Orient. It seems to me that idols will come out of the earth. We are menaced with a Babylon.
Why not? The INDIVIDUAL has been so denied by democracy that he will abase himself to a complete effacement, as under the great theocratic despotisms.
The Tsar of Russia displeased me profoundly; I found him a rustic.
On a parallel with Monsieur Floquet who cries without any danger: ”Long live Poland!” We have chic people who have had themselves registered at the Elysee. Oh! what a fine epoch!
My novel goes piano. The further I get on the more difficulties arise. What a heavy cart of sandstone to drag along! And you pity yourself for a labor that lasts six months!
I have enough more for two years, at least (OF MINE). How the devil do you find the connection between your ideas? It is that that delays me. Moreover this book demands tiresome researches. For instance on Monday; I was at the Jockey Club, at the Cafe Anglais, and at a lawyer's in turn. Do you like Victor Hugo's preface to the Paris-Guide? Not very much, do you? Hugo's philosophy seems to me always vague.