Letter to Gustave Flaubert from George Sand

To Gustave Flaubert, at Croisset Nohant June 21, 1868

Why am I not the ... river which cradles you with its sweet murmuring and which brings you freshness in your den! I would chat discreetly with you between pages of your novel, and I would make that fantastic grating of the chain* which you detest, but whose oddity does not displease me, keep still. I love everything that makes up a milieu, the rolling of the carriages and the noise of the workmen in Paris, the cries of a thousand birds in the country, the movement of the ships on the waters; I love also absolute, profound silence, and in short, I love everything that is around me, no matter where I am; it is auditory idiocy, a new variety. It is true that I choose my milieu and don't go to the Senate nor to other disagreeable places. 

*The chain of the tug-boat going up or going down the Seine.

George Sand Gustave Faubert Letters translated by A.L. McKenzie (p171)