What is the measure that the most advanced proposed after Varennes?  Dictatorship and military dictatorship.  They close the churches, but they raise temples, etc.

I assure you that I am becoming stupid with the Revolution.  It is a gulf which draws me in.

However, I work at my novel like a lot of oxen.  I hope on New Year’s Day not to have over a hundred pages more to write, that is to say, still six good months of work.  I shall go to Paris as late as possible.  My winter is to pass in complete solitude, good way of making life run along rapidly.

XCVIII.  TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris Nohant, 20 November, 1868

You say to me, “When shall we see each other?” About the 15th of December, we are baptizing here our two little girls as Protestants.  It is Maurice’s idea; he was married before the pastor, and does not want the persecution and influence of the Catholic church about his children.  Our friend Napoleon is the godfather of Aurore, and I am the godmother.  My nephew is the godfather of the other.  All that takes place just among ourselves, in the family.  You must come, Maurice wants you to, and if you say no, you will disappoint him greatly.  You shall bring your novel, and in a free moment, you shall read it to me; it will do you good to read it to one who listens well.  One gets a perspective and judges one’s work better.  I know that.  Say yes to your old troubadour, he will be exceedingly grateful to you for it.

I embrace you six times if you say yes.

G. Sand

XCIX.  TO GEORGE SAND Tuesday

Dear master,

You cannot imagine the sorrow you give me!  In spite of the longing I have, I answer “no.”  Yet I am distracted with my desire to say “yes.”  It makes me seem like a gentleman who cannot be disturbed, which is very silly.  But I know myself:  if I go to your house at Nohant, I shall have a month of dreaming about my trip.  Real pictures will replace in my brain the fictitious pictures which I compose with great difficulty.  All my house of cards will topple over.

Three weeks ago because I was foolish enough to accept an invitation to dinner at a country place nearby, I lost four days (sic).  What would it be on leaving Nohant?  You do not understand that, you strong Being!  I think that you will be a little vexed with your old troubadour for not coming to the baptism of the two darlings of his friend Maurice?  The dear master must write to me if I am wrong, and to give me the news!

Here is mine!  I work immoderately and am absolutely enchanted by the prospect of the end which begins to be visible.

So that it may arrive more quickly, I have made the resolution to live here all winter, probably until the end of March.  Even admitting that everything goes perfectly, I shall not have finished all before the end of May.  I don’t know anything that goes on and I read nothing, except a little of the French Revolution, after my meals, to aid digestion.  I have lost my former good habit of reading every day in Latin.  Therefore I don’t know a word of it any more!  I shall polish it up again when I am freed from my odious bourgeois, and I am nowhere near it.