I embrace you tenderly, dear master!
TO GEORGE SAND.
Monday night, 1866.
You are sad, my poor friend and dear master; I thought of you at once on learning of the death of Duveyrier. Since you loved him, I pity you. This loss is one of many. These deaths we feel in the depths of our hearts. Each of us carries within himself his own burial ground.
I am all unscrewed since your departure; it seems to me now as if ten years have passed since last I saw you. My only topic of conversation with my mother is yourself; we all cherish the thought of you here.
Under what constellation were you born, to have united in your person qualities so diverse, so numerous, and so rare? I hardly know how to characterise the sentiment I feel for you, but I bear you a particular tenderness, such as I never have felt for anyone else. We understand each other well, do we not? And that is charming!
I regretted you especially last night at ten o’clock. There was a fire on my wood-merchant’s premises. The sky was rosy, and the Seine was the colour of gooseberry sirup. I worked at the pumps for three hours, and came home as weak as the Turk of the giraffe.
A journal of Rouen, the Nouvelliste, has mentioned your visit at Rouen, and in such terms that on Saturday, after you had gone, I met several worthy bourgeois who were indignant at me because I had not exhibited you! The most absurd remark was made by an old sub-prefect:—“Ah! if we had only known that she was here ... we should have ... we should have” ... pause of five minutes, while he searched for a word—“we should have ... smiled!” That would have been a great compliment, eh?
To love you “more” is difficult, but I embrace you tenderly. Your letter of this morning, so melancholy, has touched the depths of my heart. We are separated just at the time when we wish to say so many things. Not all doors have yet been opened between you and me. You inspire me with a deep respect, and I dare not question you.