I embrace you.

G. Sand

CXXVII.  TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, 8 September, 1869

I send you back your handkerchief which you left in the carriage.  It is surely tomorrow Thursday that we dine together?  I have written to the big Marchal to come to Magny’s too.

Your troubadour

G. Sand

Wednesday morning.

CXXVIII.  TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, Tuesday, 5 October, 1869

Where are you now, my dear troubadour?  I am still writing to you at the boulevard du Temple, but perhaps you have taken possession of your delightful lodgings.  I don’t know the address although I have seen the house, the situation and the view.—­I have been twice in the Ardennes and in a week or ten days, if Lina or Maurice does not come to Paris, as they have a slight desire to do, I shall leave again for Nohant.

We must then meet and see each other.  Here am I a little sfogata (eased) from my need for travel, and enchanted with what I have seen.  Tell me what day except tomorrow, Wednesday, you can give me for dinner at Magny’s or elsewhere with or without Plauchut, with whomever you wish provided I see you and embrace you.

Your old comrade who loves you.

G. Sand

CXXIX.  TO GEORGE SAND

Dear good adored master,

I have wanted for several days to write you a long letter in which I should tell you all that I have felt for a month.  It is funny.  I have passed through different and strange states.  But I have neither the time nor the repose of mind to gather myself together enough.

Don’t be disturbed about your troubadour.  He will always have “his independence and his liberty” because he will always do as he has always done.  He has left everything rather than submit to any obligation whatsoever, and then, with age, one’s needs lessen.  I suffer no longer from not living in the Alhambra.

What would do me good now, would be to throw myself furiously into Saint-Antoine, but I have not even the time to read.

Listen to this:  in the very beginning, your play was to come after Aisse; then it was agreed that it should come before.  Now Chilly and Duquesnel want it to come after, simply and solely “to profit by the occasion,” to profit by my poor Bouilhet’s death.  They will give you a “sort of compensation.”  Well, I am the owner and the master of Aisse just as if I were the author, and I do not want that.  You understand, I do not want you to inconvenience yourself in anything.

You think that I am as sweet as a lamb!  Undeceive yourself, and act as if Aisse had never existed; and above all no sensitiveness?  That would offend me.  Between simple friends, one needs manners and politenesses; but between you and me, that would not seem at all suitable; we do not owe each other anything at all except to love each other.