Your ears must have burned last night. I dined with my brother and his family. We spoke of scarcely anyone but you, and everyone sang your praises, dear and well-beloved master!
I re-read, à propos of your last letter (and by a natural train of ideas), Father Montaigne’s chapter entitled “Some Verses of Virgil.” That which he says about chastity is precisely my own belief.
It is the effort that is difficult, and not abstinence in itself. Otherwise, it would be a curse to the flesh. Heaven knows whither this would lead. So, at the risk of eternal reiteration, and of being like Prudhomme, I repeat that your young man was wrong. If he had been virtuous up to twenty years of age, his action would be an ignoble libertinage at fifty. Everyone gets his deserts some time! Great natures, that are also good, are above all things generous, and do not calculate expense. We must laugh and weep, work, play, and suffer, so that we may feel the divine vibration throughout our being. That, I believe, is the characteristic of true manhood.
TO GEORGE SAND.
Croisset, Saturday night, 1866.
At last I have it, that beautiful, dear, and illustrious face! I shall put it in a large frame and hang it on my wall, being able to say, as M. de Talleyrand said to Louis Philippe: “It is the greatest honour my house ever has received.” Not quite appropriate, for you and I are better than those two worthies!
Of the two portraits, the one I like the better is the drawing by Couture. As to Marchal’s conception, he has seen in you only “the good woman”; but I, who am an old romanticist, find in it “the head of the author” who gave me in my youth so many beautiful dreams!
TO GEORGE SAND.
Croisset, 1866.
I, a mysterious being, dear master? What an idea! I find myself a walking platitude, and am sometimes bored to death by the bourgeois I carry about under my skin! Sainte-Beuve, between you and me, does not know me at all, whatever he may say. I even swear to you (by the sweet smile of your grand-daughter!) that I know few men less “vicious” than myself. I have dreamed much, but have done little. That which is deceptive to superficial observers is the discord between my sentiments and my ideas. If you wish to have my confession, I will give it frankly.