The Romantic.com

Gustave Flaubert – August 19, 1846

August 21, 1853

Have you really not noticed, then, that here of all places, in this private, personal solitude that surrounds me, I have turned to you? All the memories of my youth speak to me as I walk, just as the sea shells crunch under my feet on the beach.  The crash of every wave awakens far-distant reverberations within me.

I hear the rumble of bygone days, and in my mind the whole endless series of old passions surges forward like the billows.  I remember my spasms, my sorrows, gusts of desire that whistled like wind in the rigging, and vast vague longings that swirled in the dark like a flock of wild gulls in a storm cloud.

On whom should I lean, if not on you?  My weary mind turns for refreshment to the thought of you as a dusty traveler might sink onto a soft and grassy bank.

Gustave Flaubert, French writer, to his wife Louise Colet