I beg you to give me very frequent news of your dear mother-in-law.
Embrace her for me and believe that I am
Your very devoted
Gustave Flaubert
Beginning with the middle of next week, about Wednesday or Thursday,
I shall be at Croisset.
Saturday morning, 3d June, 1876.
CCCXVI. To MAURICE SAND
Croisset, Sunday, 24 June, 1876
You had prepared me, my dear Maurice, I wanted to write to you, but I was waiting till you were a little freer, more alone. Thank you for your kind thought.
Yes, we understood each other, yonder! (And if I did not remain longer, it is because my comrades dragged me away.) It seemed to me that I was burying my mother the second time. Poor, dear, great woman! What genius and what heart! But she lacked nothing, it is not she whom we must pity.
What is to become of you? Shall you stay in Nohant? That good old house must seem horribly empty to you! But you, at least, are not alone! You have a wife…a rare one! and two exquisite children. While I was with you, I had, over and above my grief, two desires: to run off with Aurore and to kill M. Marx.[Footnote: A reporter for le Figaro.] There you have the truth, it is unnecessary to make you see the psychology of the thing. I received yesterday a very sympathetic letter from good Tourgueneff. He too loved her. But then, who did not love her? If you had seen in Paris the anguish of Martine![Footnote: George Sand's maid.] That was distressing.