That which I predicted has come true; you are enamoured of Arabian manners and morals! How much time you will lose, after you return, dreaming, beside the fire, of dark eyes beneath a cloudless sky!
Send me a line as soon as you return to Paris. You said you expected to arrive by the end of the month. That time is now here. We must not let any longer time elapse without seeing each other. Bouilhet’s play will have its first performance about the 15th or the 20th of November.
My mother and my niece are well, and thank you for your kind remembrance. As to my niece, I believe I shall be made a great-uncle next April. I am becoming a veteran, a sheikh, an old man, an idiot!
May you enjoy the last days of your journey and have a good voyage home. I embrace thee!
TO MADEMOISELLE LEROYER DE CHANTEPIE.
Croisset, September 8, 1860.
I received on Tuesday morning your letter of the first of September. It saddened me to read the expression of your grief. Besides your private sorrow, you are surrounded by exterior annoyances, as I understand, since you are forced to perceive the ingratitude and selfishness of those who are under obligations to you. I must tell you that such is always the case,—a very poor consolation, it is true! But the conviction that rain is wet and that a rattlesnake is dangerous has its share in helping us to support our miseries. Why is this so? But here we attempt to encroach upon the omniscience of God!
Let us try to forget evil, and turn to the sunshine and the good we may find in life. If a malicious person wounds you, try to remember the kindness of some noble heart, and fill your mind with that recollection.
You tell me that you find absolutely no sympathy of ideas. That is one reason why you should live in Paris. One always finds there some person to whom one can talk. You were not made for provincial life. I am convinced that among other surroundings you would have suffered less. Each soul has its own atmosphere. You must suffer keenly, in the midst of the folly, lies, calumnies, jealousies, and indescribable pettiness which are almost the inevitable accompaniment of bourgeois life in small towns. Of course, that sort of thing exists in Paris also, but in another form—less direct and less irritating.
There is still time to form a good resolution. Do not continue to live “on foot” as you have lived heretofore. Tear yourself away! Travel! Do you think you may die on the way? Ah, well, never mind! No, no, believe me when I tell you that you would be better for it, physically and morally. But you need a master, who would order you to go, and force you to it! I know you as well as if I had lived with you twenty years. Is this presumption on my part,—an excessive sympathy that I feel for you?