Gustave FLAUBERT (1821-1880). L.A.S. "G.", [Croisset] Thursday evening 10 h. [8 October 1846], to Louise COLET 4 pages in-8 very full of small handwriting. Very beautiful love letter, at the beginning of his affair with Louise Colet, in which he returns to his love for Élisa Foucault. [Élisa FOUCAULT, the future Mme Schlesinger, Flaubert's first love, met in Trouville, the model for Mme Arnoux in L'Éducation sentimentale]. "When my day is done and I have thought enough, written, read, dreamed, yawned when I am drunk with work and I feel the fatigue of the worker in the evening, I rest in your memory. Like on a good bed, I surrender myself to you, I breathe you in. It refreshes me and cheers me up, like those lovely night breezes that fill your soul with life and youth. You open your window, you open your heart to be filled with that unnamed something that is so sweet and so great. It seems to me that the night is made for a very special order of ideas, different from the one we live in all day. It's a time for sighs, desires, memories and hopes; it's a time when thought, alone and awake, hovers at ease between earth and sky like the birds that live in the clouds. The body, too, has its most violent joys there. Who ever had the idea of having a feast other than by torchlight? I'll be damned if I know what I want to say, except that tonight I'd like to have you here, kiss you on the lips, put my hands under your light wrappings - and put my head on your throat, even though I'm forbidden to do so since you saw that I was talking to Mr Foucaud about his. So you found my letter a bit tender? I had no idea. On the contrary, it seems to me that at times it was a little insolent and that the general tone was slightly gentlemanly? You're telling me that I loved this woman seriously. That is not true. - Only when I wrote to her, with the ability I have to be moved by the pen, did I take my subject seriously, but only while I was writing. Many things that leave me cold, either when I see them or when others talk about them, excite me, irritate me, hurt me if I talk about them and especially if I write about them. This is one of the effects of my nature as an acrobat. My father, in the end, forbade me to imitate certain people (convinced that I had to suffer a lot, which was true even though I denied it), including an epileptic beggar whom I had met one day by the sea. He told me his story. He had started out as a journalist and so on. It was superb. It's certain that when I returned this funny man I was in his skin. You couldn't see anything more hideous than me at that moment. Can you understand the satisfaction I felt? I'm sure not. To come back to this venerable creature, here is the whole truth about her. I've had other more or less amusing adventures. But out of all this nonsense, which even in the old days didn't penetrate my heart very far, I only had one true passion. I've already told you. I was barely 15, it lasted until I was 18, and when I saw that woman again after several years I found it hard to recognise her - I still see her sometimes, but rarely, and I look at her with the astonishment that emigrants must have had when they returned to their dilapidated castles: "Is it possible that I lived there! And you think to yourself that these ruins were not always ruins and that you warmed yourself in this dilapidated fireplace where the rain flows and the snow falls. - There would be a magnificent story to tell, but I'm not the one to tell it, nor is anyone else, it would be too beautiful. It's the story of modern man from the age of 7 to 20. Whoever accomplishes this task will remain as eternal as the human heart itself. When you want, I'll tell you something about this unknown drama that I've observed in myself and in others too. Something similar must happen to women, but I have no idea. I haven't yet met one who has shown me the ashes of their heart; they want you to believe that everything is embers, they believe it themselves. - A word of advice: while I'm thinking about it, my darling, don't talk so much about me to Phidias [the sculptor James PRADIER], you'll end up boring him with me. You know there is nothing unpleasant to hear like the praise of a friend, especially when it is repeated. Pradier suggested to Flaubert that he should go with him to Nîmes: "as if I could!"... Then he talks about Maxime DU CAMP and a dinner party organised by Louise: "I would have the air of the host who invites his friends to his house. - As it rained today, we didn't go out and we had to make conversation. Oh God! the Greek suffered and so did I - and then the children - decidedly, although it's all very nice, I don't like brats, they're too much like men. Artificial feelings are boring, but the natural ones sometimes have that privilege. Today I proved the truth of this maxim. Farewell dear Love, a thousand kisses, think of me, there's no need to tell you, is there? Send yourself, in the mirror, two good kisses from me". Correspondance (Pléiade), t. I, p. 361.