Part 41 (2/2)
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!
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