TO ERNEST FEYDEAU.
Croisset, Thursday.
I have not forgotten you at all, my dear old boy, but I am working like thirty niggers! I have finally finished my interminable fourth chapter from which I have stricken out that which I liked best. Then, I have made the plan of the fifth, written a quantity of notes, etc. The summer has not begun badly. I believe that the work will go smoothly now, but perhaps I delude myself. What a book! Heavens! It is difficult!
Yes, I find, contrary to D’Aurevilly, that there is now a question of hypocrisy and nothing else. I am alarmed, amazed, scandalised at the transcendent poltroonery that possesses the human race. Everyone fears “being compromised.” This is something new,—at least, to such a degree as appears. The desire for success, the necessity, even, of succeeding, because of the profit to be made, has so greatly demoralised literature that one becomes stupid through timidity. The idea of failure or of incurring censure makes the timid writer shake in his shoes. “That’s all very well for you to say, you, who collect your rents,” I think I hear you remark. A very clever response, the inference of which is that morality is to be relegated to a place among objects of luxury! The time is no more when writers were dragged to the Bastille. It might be rebuilt, but no one could be found to put in it.
All this will not be lost. The deeper I plunge into antiquity, the more I feel the necessity of reforming modern times, and I am ready to roast a number of worthy citizens!
Do not think any more about Daniel. It is finished. It will be read, be sure of that.
When you come to Croisset, before setting out for Luchon (about the beginning of July, I suppose), bring me the detailed plan of Catherine. I have several ideas on your style in general and on your future book in particular.
You are a rascal! You compromise my name in public places! I shall attack you in a court of justice for a theft of titles.
I have two pretty neighbours who have read Daniel, twice running. And the coachmen of Rouen fall off their seats while reading Fanny (historic)!
À propos of morality, have you read that the inhabitants of Glasgow have petitioned Parliament to suppress the models of nude women in the schools of drawing?
Adieu, old boy; dig hard!
What news of your wife? Why is she at Versailles? It is an atrocious place, colder than Siberia.