CLXXIX. TO GEORGE SAND.
Tuesday, 11 October, 1870
Dear master,
Are you still living? Where are you, Maurice, and the others?
I don't know how it is that I am not dead, I have suffered so atrociously for six weeks.
My mother has fled to Rouen. My niece is in London. My brother is busy with town affairs, and, as for me, I am alone here, eaten up with impatience and chagrin! I assure you that I have wanted to do right; what misery! I have had at my door today two hundred and seventy-one poor people, and they were all given something. What will this winter be?
The Prussians are now twelve hours from Rouen, and we have no commands, no orders, no discipline, nothing, nothing! They hold out false hopes to us continually with the army of the Loire. Where is it? Do you know anything about it? What are they doing in the middle of France? Paris will end by being starved, and no one is taking her any aid!
The imbecilities of the Republic surpass those of the Empire. Are they playing under all this some abominable comedy? Why such inaction?
Ah! how sad I am. I feel that the world is going by.
CLXXX. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croisset.
Le Chatre, 14 October, 1870
We are living at Le Chatre. Nohant is ravaged by smallpox with complications, horrible. We had to take our little ones into the Creuse, to friends who came to get us, and we spent three weeks there, looking in vain for quarters where a family could stay for three months. We were asked to go south and were offered hospitality; but we did not want to leave the country where, from one day to another, one can be useful, although one hardly knows yet in what way to go at it.