of incarnate idleness in the midst of this hard work.  I botanize and I bathe in a little icy torrent.  I teach my servant to read, I correct proof and I am well.  That is my life and nothing bores me in this world where I think that as far as I am concerned all is for the best.  But I am afraid of becoming more of a bore than I used to be.  People don’t like such as I am very much.  We are too inoffensive.  However, love me still a little, for I feel by the disappointment of not seeing you, that it would have gone hard with me if you had meant to break your word.

And I embrace you tenderly, dear old friend.

G. Sand

CXXV.  TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Thursday

I know nothing either of Chilly or la petite Fadette.  In a few days I am going to make a tour of Normandy.  I shall go through Paris.  If you want to come around with me,—­oh! but no, you don’t travel about; well, we shall see each other in passing.  I have certainly earned a little holiday.  I have worked like a beast of burden.  I need too to see some blue, but the blue of the sea will do, and you would like the blue of the artistic and literary firmament over our heads.  Bah! that doesn’t exist.  Everything is prose, flat prose in the environment in which mankind has settled itself.  It is only in isolating oneself a little that one can find in oneself the normal being again.

I am resuming my letter interrupted for two days by my wounded hand which inconveniences me a good deal.  I am not going to Normandy at all, my Lamberts whom I was going to see in Yport came back to Paris and my business calls me there too.  I shall then see you next week probably, and I shall embrace you as if you were my dear big child.  Why can’t I put the rosy, tanned face of Aurore in the place of mine!  She is not what you would call pretty, but she is adorable and so quick in comprehending that we all are astonished.  She is as amusing in her chatter as a person,—­who might be amusing.  So I am going to be forced to start thinking about my business!  It is the one thing of which I have a horror and which really troubles my serenity.  You must console me by joking with me a little when you have the time.

I shall see you soon, have courage in the sickening work of proof-reading.  As for me I hurry over it quickly and badly, but you must not do as I do.

My children send you their love and your troubadour loves you.

G. Sand

Saturday evening

I have just received news from the Odeon.  They are at work putting on my play and do not speak of anything else.

CXXVI.  TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 6 September, 1869

They wrote me yesterday to come because they wanted me at the Opera-Comique.  Here I am rue Gay-Lussac.  When shall we meet?  Tell me.  All my days, are still free.