Plauchut is still in Nohant, I suppose. Tell him that I love him because I saw him shed so many tears.
And let yours flow, my dear friend, do all that is necessary not to console yourself,—which would, moreover, be impossible. Never mind! In a short time you will feel a great joy in the idea alone that you were a good son and that she knew it absolutely. She used to talk of you as of a blessing.
And when you shall have rejoined her, when the great-grand-children of the grandchildren of your two little girls shall have joined her, and when for a long time there shall have been no question of the things and the people that surround us,—in several centuries,— hearts like ours will palpitate through hers! People will read her books, that is to say that they will think according to her ideas and they will love with her love. But all that does not give her back to you, does it? With what then can we sustain ourselves if pride desert us, and what man more than you should have pride in his mother!
Now dear friend, adieu! When shall we meet now? How I should feel the need of talking of her, insatiably!
Embrace Madam Maurice for me, as I did on the stairway at Nohant, and your little girls.
Yours, from the depths of my heart,
Your Gustave Flaubert
CCCXVII. To MAURICE SAND
Croisset, Tuesday, 3rd October, 1876
Thank you for your kind remembrance, my dear friend. Neither do I forget, and I dream of your poor, dear mamma in a sadness that does not disappear. Her death has left a great emptiness for me. After you, your wife and the good Plauchut, I am perhaps the one who misses her most! I need her.
I pity you the annoyances that your sister causes you. I too have gone through that! It is so easy moreover to be good! Besides that causes less evil. When shall we meet? I want so much to see you, first just to see you—and second to talk of her.