I am all alone at Nohant as you are all alone at Croisset.  Maurice and Lina have gone to Milan, to see Calamatta who is dangerously ill.  Should they have the misfortune to lose him, they will have to go to Rome to settle his estate, an irksome task added to a sorrow, it is always like that.  That sudden separation was sad, my poor Lina weeping at leaving her daughters and weeping at not being with her father.  They left me the care of the children whom I rarely leave and who only let me work when they sleep; but I am happier at having this care on my shoulders to console me.  I have, every day, in two hours news from Milan by telegram.  The patient is better; my children are only as far as Turin today and do not know yet what I know.  How this telegraph changes one’s idea of life, and when the formalities and formulas are still more simplified, how full existence will be of facts and how free from uncertainties.

Aurore, who lives on adorations in the lap of her father and mother and who weeps every day when I am away, has not asked a single time where they are.  She plays and laughs, then she stops; her great eyes stare, she says:  My father? another time she says:  Mamma?  I distract her, she thinks no more of it, and then she begins again.  They are very mysterious, children!  They think without understanding.  Only one sad word is needed to bring out their sorrow.  She carries it unconsciously.  She looks in my eyes to see if I am sad or anxious; I laugh and she laughs, I think that we must keep her sensitiveness asleep as long as possible, and that she never would weep for me if they did not speak of me.

What is your advice, you who have brought up an intelligent and charming niece?  Is it wise to make them loving and affectionate early?  I thought so formerly:  I was afraid when I saw Maurice too impressionable and Solange too much the opposite, and resisting affection.  I would like little ones to be shown only the sweet and the good of life, until the time when reason can help them to accept or to fight the bad.  What do you say?

I embrace you and ask you to tell me when you are going to Paris, my trip is delayed as my children may be absent a month; I shall be able, perhaps, to meet you in Paris.

Your old solitary,

G. Sand

What an admirable definition I rediscover with surprise in the fatalist Pascal!

“Nature acts progressively, itus et reditus.  It goes on and returns, then it goes still further, then half as far, then further than ever.” [Footnote:  George Sand had copied this and fastened it over her work table at Nohant.]

What a way of speaking, eh?  How the language turns, is twisted, made supple, is condensed under this grandiose “hand.”

CVII.  TO GEORGE SAND Tuesday night