Must one find some fashion of accepting the honor, the duty, and the fatigue of living? As for me, I revert to the idea of an everlasting journey through worlds more amusing, but it would be necessary to go there quickly and change continually. The life that one fears so much to lose is always too long for those who understand quickly what they see. Everything repeats itself and goes over and over again in it.
I assure you that there is only one pleasure: learning what one does not know, and one happiness: loving the exceptions. Therefore I love you and I embrace you tenderly.
Your old troubadour G. Sand
I am anxious about Sainte-Beuve. What a loss that would be! I am content if Bouilhet is content. Is it really a good position?
LVII. TO GEORGE SAND
Paris, Friday morning
I am returning to my mother next Monday, dear master. I have little hope of seeing you before then!
But when you are in Paris, what is to prevent you from pushing on to Croisset where everyone, including myself, adores you? Sainte-Beuve has finally consented to see a specialist and to be seriously treated. And he is better anyway. His morale is improving.
Bouilhet's position gives him four thousand francs a year and lodging. He now need not think of earning his living, which is a real luxury.
No one talks of the war any more, they don't talk of anything.
The Exposition alone is what "everybody is thinking about," and the cabmen exasperate the bourgeois.