The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 452 pages of information about The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters.

The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 452 pages of information about The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters.

And the novel, is it getting on?  Your courage has not declined?  Solitude does not weigh on you?  I really think that it is not absolute, and that somewhere there is a sweetheart who comes and goes, or who lives near there.  But there is something of the anchorite in your life just the same, and if envy your situation.  As for me, I am too alone at Palaiseau, with a dead soul; not alone enough at Nohant, with the children whom I love too much to belong to myself,—­and at Paris, one does not know what one is, one forgets oneself entirely for a thousand things which are not worth any more than oneself.  I embrace you with all my heart, dear friend; remember me to your mother, to your dear family, and write me at Nohant, that will do me good.

The cheeses?  I don’t know at all, it seems to me that they spoke to me of them, but I don’t remember at all.  I will tell you that from down there.

XLIII.  TO GEORGE SAND Croisset, Saturday night

No, dear master, you are not near your end.  So much the worse for you perhaps.  But you will live to be old, very old, as giants live, since you are of that race:  only you must rest.  One thing astonishes me and that is that you have not died twenty times over, having thought so much, written so much and suffered so much.  Do go then, since you have the desire, to the Mediterranean.  Its azure sky quiets and invigorates.  There are the Countries of Youth, such as the Bay of Naples.  Do they make one sadder sometimes?  I do not know.

Life is not easy!  What a complicated and extravagant affair!  I know something about that.  One must have money for everything!  So that with a modest revenue and an unproductive profession one has to make up one’s mind to have but little.  So I do!  The habit is formed, but the days that work does not go well are not amusing.  Yes indeed!  I would love to follow you into another planet.  And a propos of money, it is that which will make our planet uninhabitable in the near future, for it will be impossible to live here, even for the rich, without looking after one’s property; one will have to spend several hours a day fussing over one’s income.  Charming!  I continue to fuss over my novel, and I shall go to Paris when I reach the end of my chapter, towards the middle of next month.

And whatever you suspect, no “lovely lady” comes to see me.  Lovely ladies have occupied my mind a good deal, but have taken up very little of my time.  Applying the term anchorite to me is perhaps a juster comparison than you think.

I pass entire weeks without exchanging a word with a human being, and at the end of the week it is not possible for me to recall a single day nor any event whatsoever.  I see my mother and my niece on Sundays, and that is all.  My only company consists of a band of rats in the garret, which make an infernal racket above my head, when the water does not roar or the wind blow.  The nights are black as ink, and a silence surrounds me comparable to that of the desert.  Sensitiveness is increased immeasurably in such a setting.  I have palpitations of the heart for nothing.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.