"I don't understand how I could have separated myself from you. I am just like this! It is my lamentable nature. If you didn't love me I would die, you love me and here you have me writing to you that enough is enough. I am repulsed by my own imbecility." That is how passionate and forceful Gustave Flaubert (Rouen, 1821 - Canteleu, 1880) sounded when, at 25 years old, he communicated by letter with Louise Colet, the great love of his life. Eleven years older than the future writer, married and mother of a girl, Colet began a relationship with Flaubert that lasted for almost a decade and grew above all at a distance, thanks to the correspondence that the two authors sent each other.