LIX.  TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset Nohant, 30 May, 1867

Here you are at home, old friend of my heart, and I and Maurice must go to embrace you.  If you are still buried in work, we shall only come and go.  It is so near to Paris, that you must not hesitate to tell us.  I have finished Cadio, hurray!  I have only to polish it a little.  It is like an illness, carrying this great affair for so long in one’s head.  I have been so interrupted by real illnesses that I have had great trouble in setting to work again at it.  But I am wonderfully well since the fine weather and I am going to take a bath of botany.

Maurice will take one of entomology.  He walks three leagues with a friend of like energy in order to hunt in a great plain for an animal which has to be looked at with a magnifying glass.  That is happiness!  That is being really infatuated.  My gloom has disappeared in making Cadio; at present I am only fifteen years old, and everything to me appears for the best in the best possible of worlds.  That will last as long as it can.  These are the intervals of innocence in which forgetfulness of evil compensates for the inexperience of the golden age.

How is your dear mother?  She is fortunate to have you again near her!  And the novel?  Good heavens! it must get on!  Are you walking a little?  Are you more reasonable?

The other day, some people not at all stupid were here who spoke highly of Madame Bovary, but with less zest of Salammbo.  Lina got into a white heat, not being willing that those wretches should make the slightest objection to it; Maurice had to calm her, and moreover he criticised the work very well, as an artist and as a scholar; so well that the recalcitrants laid down their arms.  I should like to have written what he said.  He speaks little and often badly; but that time he succeeded extraordinarily well.

I shall then not say adieu, but au revoir, as soon as possible.  I love you much, much, my dear old fellow, you know it.  My ideal would be to live a long life with a good and great heart like yours.  But then, one would want never to die, and when one is really old, like me, one must hold oneself ready for anything.

I embrace you tenderly, so does Maurice.  Aurore is the sweetest and the most ridiculous person.  Her father makes her drink while he says:  Dominus vobiscum! then she drinks and answers:  Amen!  How she is getting on!  What a marvel is the development of a little child!  No one has ever written about that.  Followed day by day, it would be precious in every respect.  It is one of those things that we all see without noticing.

Adieu again; think of your old troubadour who thinks unceasingly of you.

G. Sand

LX.  TO Gustave Flaubert Nohant, 14 June, 1867

Dear friend of my heart, I leave with my son and his wife the 20th of the month to stay two weeks in Paris, perhaps more if the revival of Villemer delays me longer.  Therefore your dear good mother, whom I do not want to miss, has all the time she needs to go to see her daughters.  I shall wait in Paris until you tell me if she has returned, or rather, if I make you a real visit, you shall tell me the time that suits you best.