SAND, George (1804–1876).

A beautiful letter about her sorrows following her break-up with Chopin and the falling-out with her daughter, and about her brand-new lover, the German Hermann Müller-Strübing. She feels guilty for having delayed writing to him. ‘But I wanted to have something to tell you about myself, for to speak is not merely to hide something from one another. I didn’t know where I stood in those early days. It was a mixture of hope and deep sadness. Not that I didn’t have complete and utter confidence in this good German [Hermann Müller-Strübing]. But how can one go from despair to happiness without a tremendous effort? You know what a terrible weight these family sorrows have placed upon my chest. I am like someone who would like to, who could breathe, if only a heavy stone crushing them were removed. It takes strength and perseverance to free me from such a burden and to bring me back to life, I who was three-quarters dead. It runs so deep, this pain that refuses to complain and hides behind a façade of carefree cheerfulness! – At last I am happy now, and I hope that if not a complete healing of my life, then at least some balance to make up for it. He is good, he is perfect, it seems to me. Only I have lost the ability to believe in the permanence of things. I would give ten years of my future life to have behind me the ten years of certainty that you can count on. I do not want to look ahead; I want to live day by day.’ Rozanne has been very ‘kind and tender’ to her: ‘You are still my daughter, Rozanne, and it seemed to me that I was reliving my youth with you. […] And that good Alexandre, I love him and hold him dear with all my heart. To know how to love is everything; it is the rarest virtue, the truest greatness before God. Men are almost all fools who have no inkling of its worth. We know full well that when a man brings us happiness, it is because he possesses a host of outstanding, priceless qualities that no one understands as we do. The world understands nothing of all this. Only love knows how, and is able, to repay love. So be happy, my darling; it almost consoles me for not having been so myself’… Correspondence, IX, 4387.