I thirst too to embrace you, to console you—­no, but to tell you that your sorrows are mine.  Good-bye till then, a line to tell me if your affairs are getting settled, and if you are coming out on top.

Your old G. Sand

CCXXV.  TO GEORGE SAND

What good news, dear master!  In a month and even before a month, I shall see you at last!

Try not to be too hurried in Paris, so that we may have the time to talk.  What would be very nice, would be, if you came back here with me to spend several days.  We should be quieter than there; “my poor old mother” loved you very much, would be sweet to see you in her house, when she has been gone only such a short time.

I have started work again, for existence is only tolerable when one forgets one’s miserable self.

It will be a long time before I know what I have to live on.  For all the fortune that is left to us is in meadowland, and in order to divide it, we have to sell it all.

Whatever happens, I shall keep my apartments at Croisset.  That will be my refuge, and perhaps even my only habitation.  Paris hardly attracts me any longer.  In a little while I shall have no more friends there.  The human being (the eternal feminine included) amuses me less and less.

Do you know that my poor Theo is very ill?  He is dying from boredom and misery.  No one speaks his language anymore!  We are like fossils who subsist astray in a new world.

CCXXVI.  TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Nohant, 18 May, 1872

Dear friend of my heart, your inability does not disturb me at all, on the contrary.  I have the grippe and the prostration that follows it.  I cannot go to Paris for a week yet, and shall be there during the first part of June.  My little ones are both in the sheepfold.  I have taken good care of and cured the eldest, who is strong.  The other is very tired, and the trip did not prevent the whooping-cough.  For my part, I have worked very hard in caring for my dear one, and as soon as my task was over, as soon as I saw my dear world reunited and well again, I collapsed.  It will be nothing, but I have not the strength to write.  I embrace you, and I count on seeing you soon.

G. Sand

CCXXVII.  TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Paris, Monday, 3 June, 1872, Rue Gay Lussac, 5

I am in Paris, and for all this week, in the horror of personal business.  But next week will you come?  I should like to go to see you in Croisset, but I do not know if I can.  I have taken Aurore’s whooping-cough, and, at my age, it is severe.  I am, however, better, but hardly able to go about.  Write me a line, so I can reserve the hours that you can give me.  I embrace you, as I love you, with a full heart.

G. Sand

CCXXVIII.  TO GEORGE SAND 1872