LVI.  TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Nohant, 9 May, 1867

Dear friend of my heart,

I am well, I am at work, I am finishing Cadio.  It is warm, I am alive, I am calm and sad, I hardly know why.  In this existence so even, so tranquil, and so gentle as I have here, I am in an element that weakens me morally while strengthening me physically; and I fall into melancholies of honey and roses which are none the less melancholy.  It seems to me that all those I love forget me, and that it is justice, because I live a selfish life having nothing to do for any one of them.

I have lived with tremendous attachments which overwhelmed me, which exceeded my strength and which I often used to curse.  And it happens that having nothing more to carry them on with, I am bored by being well.  If the human race went on very well or very ill, one would reattach oneself to a general interest, would live with an idea, wise or foolish.  But you see where we are now, you who storm so fiercely against cowards.  That disappears, you say?  But only to recommence!  What kind of a society is it that becomes paralyzed in the midst of its expansions, because tomorrow can bring a storm?  The thought of danger has never produced such demoralizations.  Have we declined to such an extent that it is necessary to beg us to eat, telling us at the same time that nothing will happen to disturb our digestion?  Yes, it is silly, it is shameful.  Is it the result of prosperity, and does civilization involve this sickly and cowardly selfishness?

My optimism has had a rude jolt of late.  I worked up a joy, a courage at the idea of seeing you here.  It was like a cure that I carefully contrived, but you are worried about your dear, old mother, and certainly I can not protest.

Well, if, before your departure from Paris, I can finish Cadio, to which I am bound under pain of having nothing wherewith to pay for my tobacco and my shoes, I shall go with Maurice to embrace you.  If not, I shall hope for you about the middle of the summer.  My children, quite unhappy by this delay, beg to hope for you also, and we hope it so much the more because it would be a good sign for the dear mother.

Maurice has plunged again into Natural History; he wants to perfect himself in the micros; I learn on the rebound.  When I shall have fixed in my head the name and the appearance of two or three thousand imperceptible varieties, I shall be well advanced, don’t you think so?  Well, these studies are veritable OCTOPUSES, which entwine about you and which open to you I don’t know what infinity.  You ask if it is the destiny of man to drink the infinite; my heavens, yes, don’t doubt it, it is his destiny, since it is his dream and his passion.

Inventing is absorbing also; but what fatigue afterwards!  How empty and worn out intellectually one feels, when one has scribbled for weeks and months about that animal with two legs which has the only right to be represented in novels!  I see Maurice quite refreshed and rejuvenated when he returns from his beasts and his pebbles, and if I aspire to come out from my misery, it is to bury myself also in studies, which in the speech of the Philistines, are not of any use.  Still it is worth more than to say mass and to ring the bell for the adoration of the Creator.