TO MAURICE SAND.
Croisset, Sunday, June 24, 1876.
You have forestalled me, my dear Maurice! I wished to write to you, but I waited until you should be a little more free, more alone. I thank you for your kind thought.
Yes, there are few of us left now. And if I do not remain here long, it is because my former friends have drawn me to them.
This has seemed to me like burying my mother a second time. Poor, dear, great woman! What genius and what a heart! But she lacked nothing; it is not she who calls for pity!
What shall you do now? Shall you remain at Nohant? That dear old house must seem terribly empty to you. But you, at least, are not alone. You have a wife—a rare woman!—and two exquisite children. While I was with you there, I felt above all my sadness, two desires: to run away with Aurore, and to kill Monsieur ...! That is the truth: it is useless to try to analyse the psychology of the thing.
I received yesterday a very tender letter from the good Tourgueneff. He, too, loved her! But who did not love her? If you had beheld the grief of Martine in Paris! It was overwhelming.
Plauchut is still at Nohant, I suppose. Tell him I love him after seeing him weep so bitterly.
And let your own tears flow freely, my dear friend! Do not try to console yourself—it would be almost impossible. Some day you will find within yourself a deep and sweet certainty that you were always a good son, and that she knew it well. She spoke of you as a blessing.
And after you shall have joined her once more, and after the great-grandchildren of the grandchildren of your two little daughters also shall have rejoined her, and when for a long time people have ceased to talk of the things and the persons that surround us at present—in some centuries to come—there will still be hearts that will palpitate at her words! People will read her books, will ponder over her thoughts, will love as she loved.
But all that does not give her back to you! With what shall we sustain ourselves, then, if pride fails us, and what man can feel more of that for his mother than yourself?
Now, my dear friend, adieu! When shall we meet again? For I feel an insatiable desire to talk of her!
Embrace Madame Maurice for me, as I embraced her on the stairs at Nohant, also your little ones.
Yours, from the depths of my heart.